Джеффри Лорд - Monster Of The Maze

Richard Blade had not given much thought to getting bald. He was too young and his hair much too luxurious, though well kept and clipped, for such worries. Old age, senility, the palsied pace-all that was years in the future. If he lived. If he made this final trip through the great computer and came back alive.

But at the moment he was bald. He was wearing a most expensive toupee-courtesy of Her Majesty's Government-and beneath his shorn skull, implanted in the dura mater enveloping his left frontal lobe, was a paper-thin wafer of crystal. Blade's brain was in direct communication with Lord Leighton's computer. That monster, really a connected bank of nine 7th-generation computers, was telling Blade exactly what to do. At the precise moment it directed him to leave Bayswater Road at Marble Arch and stroll down Park Lane to Piccadilly, then to his right to Wellington Place and into Constitution Hill and past Buckingham Palace into the Mall. He was headed for the Thames now, and the tang of salt and the sludgy smell of oily mud mingled with the fumes of a million cars.

No stranger, nor even a friend, could have guessed that Blade was at the moment little more than an automaton; and this was not, in the usual sense, true. The computer, directed by Lord L, was directing his steps, but in no other way did it interfere with his sentience. He smiled back at the pretty miniskirted birds that smiled at him-and many did-and walked briskly on. He was still Richard Blade, never mind the sliver of crystal in his brain, and he was a handsome and superbly conditioned young giant. He had been through the computer five times and was soon to go for the sixth and last time and then his life would be his own again. He could go back to working for J and MI6, instead of for Lord L and MI6A, and never in all his thirty years had he been happier about anything. It was nearly over. One more time into the dangerous mystery and it was over-he had done his time in hell, served England and St. George and Western civilization and all the other rot, and he would be alive and his own man and free of it all.

Blade came to Northumberland Avenue and turned toward the river. It was an early November day, dour and with what the Scots call a louring sky, and dusk was falling. The amber-silver splash of car lights on Hungerford Bridge was incessant. He came to the Victoria Embankment and swung to his left toward Blackfriars. When he reached the Temple Steps he halted and stood at the rail, gazing out at the busy river, here known as King's Reach, and watched the tugs bully their barges to and fro and admitted that, to a point, Lord L's experiment with the brain crystal was a success. He had just walked the route chosen by his Lordship, who at the moment was in his lab far below the Tower of London. Lord L, using an ordinary street map of London, had penciled a route and fed it into his computer and Blade had obeyed. He had, of course, been cooperating. He had exercised no volition of his own. He felt sure now, as he realized that the computer control had ended, that he could have broken away from the machine at any time he chose. Or could he?

Richard Blade grinned, shrugged his big shoulders and went in search of a taxi. At that hour in London it was not easy and, as he turned back toward Waterloo and then over to the Strand, hailing cab after cab with no luck, it occurred to him that here was a minor irony. Blade was the only man in the world, the only man born, ever to escape his own dimension and go out into X, into spaces that the ordinary mortal was not even capable of conceiving, and he could not get a taxi.

As he waited impatiently at the curb on the Strand, a group of youths approached and demanded «something for the Guy.» They had blacked their faces and wore rags and tatters and carried bags of chalk dust to mark those who did not pay.

Blade paid, a shilling all around, remembering that it was indeed Guy Fawkes day, November 5. Until now he had forgotten. He had been preoccupied as usual before a mission into Dimension- X, and matters were not going well between Lord Leighton and J, who was Blade's real boss in MI6 and who had screamed bloody murder when Lord L suggested implanting the crystal in the young man's brain. J had done more than scream. J had gone to the Prime Minister and made an official protest. The project had nearly been called off, then the election had put in a new Government, and a new PM, and the project was on again. This last time.

The new PM had been most emphatic. Millions of pounds had been poured into Project DX so far with no results. This meant, in political language, no profits. Science, and especially Lord L, had reaped vast benefits. Very good. But England was so many million pounds the poorer. There had been, in short, no treasure in Dimension X. The old PM had been sympathetic; the new PM was not. Produce or close down was now the order of the day. One more chance: Venture No. 6 into DX. And if the sliver of crystal in Blade's brain would help in any way then the Prime Minister was all for it.

Blade could understand J's bitterness. He should, he supposed, be a little bitter himself. Yet he was not. England was a commercial nation fighting for her life in the world marketplace. The politicians could not be expected to understand Project DX. It was as far beyond their comprehension as the quantum theory was beyond the comprehension of that poor little street cur, just now so nearly struck by a taxi.

Blade realized that the taxi was empty. He ran for it, shouting, feeling very insecure beneath the damned toupee, and as he slammed into the musty leather-smelling interior he came to a sudden decision.

He had intended to go down to Dorset and stay at his cottage while his hair grew in again. The weather would not be pleasant on the Channel at this time of year, but he had a lot of reading to do and he could always have a girl down for the weekend. He would have to think up some excuse for looking like a young Yul Brynner, but his wits should be equal to that. There would be a little drinking-he had cut way down-and a little lovemaking and many long afternoons and nights before a snug fire.

And then, one day without warning, the crystal in his brain would summon him to London and he would go through the computer for the last time. That had been the plan.

Blade now changed the plan. He directed the driver to take him to the Tower of London, the old Watergate side.

The cabby, an ancient character with a Bairnsfather moustache, advised against it.

«Be closed now, mate. Them bloody beefeaters locks up shop at four sharp. Wasting your time, you'd be.»

Blade was surprised at his own reaction. It was most unlike him, yet he heard himself snapping, «Take me to the Tower fast, and keep your bloody advice bloody well to yourself. Understood?!»

«Yessir.» The cabby turned to his wheel with a shrug. You got all kinds. But if this toff was a tourist he was Prince Philip.

Lord Leighton was not pleased with Blade's decision. He sat hunched sideways in his chair and stared at the younger man with yellow eyes, looking every bit the hunchbacked and evil-tempered little gnome he was. Lord L was very old and very famous and quite properly considered himself the foremost cybernetic genius of his time.

«It is not nearly time,» he complained. «We've only just implanted the crystal. Your hair hasn't even grown in yet.»

«Damn my hair,» said Blade. «I want to get on with it. Otherwise I might not go at all. I might funk it.»

J had been sitting quietly in a corner, sucking on his pipe and listening and watching, rather enjoying himself. Enjoying Lord L's discomfiture. J had noticed that in himself of late-more and more he had come to dislike Lord L, and all scientists, and he had struggled against it and lost.