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  Warlords Of Gaikon

  ( Richard Blade - 18 )

  Джеффри Лорд

  Роланд Джеймс Грин

  Warlords of Gaikon

  Blade 18

  By Jeffrey Lord

  Chapter 1

  Richard Blade was in his London flat. It was late evening, but he was not alone. The company was the kind he preferred at that time of night-or at any other time of the day or night when he was at leisure. She called herself Suzanne Aulin-a name that Blade knew was not her real one.

  But her long brown hair was real and deliciously silky as he stroked it. Her clear complexion was real, and so were the long, dark brown lashes above very wide and bright dark eyes. Blade couldn't be sure if her figure was all real, because so far she was still fully clothed. But the curves under the red and green pantsuit were promising.

  He ran a hand over the crown of «Suzanne's» head, stroking and caressing the fine hair, then down onto the back of her neck. He stroked the fine short hairs there, then brought his hand around and stroked the side of her neck. A receptive glow appeared in her eyes, and a very small, pink tongue crept out to moisten half-parted lips. His hand moved down, under the collar of her blouse, and felt the delicate ridge of her collarbone under the satiny skin. She moved closer to Blade on the sofa.

  Blade took encouragement from that. Not that he ever really needed encouragement to approach an attractive woman-he was a man who lived life to the fullest and savored every moment of it, the dangerous ones as well as the tender or passionate ones. Blade considered for a moment what «Suzanne» might think of some of the things the man beside her had faced, some of the things he had done.

  He was almost amused at the thought. Of course neither «Suzanne» nor any other woman he met would ever know about his far-flung adventures. The Official Secrets Act saw to that. He doubted if they would be amused even if they could know. Horrified, more likely.

  Blade turned his attention back to the girl, who was now staring at him with aroused curiosity-and also aroused desire. His hands stroked her throat and neck again, then moved down to unbutton her blouse in a few swift motions. Under the blouse was nothing except «Suzanne»-she wore no bra.

  She didn't really need one, either. The bare breasts that Blade could feel under his hands seemed full enough, subtly but beautifully curved, and as firm as perfectly ripened fruit. They were very real. Blade pushed the opened blouse and the leather vest aside and off the girl's shoulders. She lay back on the sofa, bare to the waist, as Blade ran his hands from her throat down to her navel. He followed his hands with his lips, nibbling and licking gently in the little hollow of her throat. He flicked the small, dark nipples with a fast-moving tongue until they stood up, swollen and engorged. «Suzanne» whimpered from deep in her throat, twisted her head from side to side, and thrust her pelvis up toward Blade.

  Her nipples weren't the only thing around that was swollen now. Blade stood up to pull off his own shirt, then returned to the girl. His tongue explored her navel and occasionally wandered up to her breasts again. Meanwhile his hands worked slowly on the belt of her slacks. There was an urgency swelling in Blade's groin that made him want to rip off the girl's slacks and his own trousers and fall on her in an erotic fury. But he also wanted to slowly and teasingly build up her passion until it was as ready as his own to explode.

  So he unbuckled her slacks and then drew them and the panties under them down over her hips and down her thighs an inch at a time. An almost invisible bulge at the base of her stomach came into view, then curls of dark brown hair. The smooth skin of her thighs had a pearly sheen in the dim light.

  Now she was bare above the knees. A quick jerk, and she sprawled nude on the sofa. She looked up at him, smiling. Then her smile broadened as Blade rested one hand lightly on the curly, dark brown triangle exposed between her legs. With the other hand he began undoing his own trousers. If he didn't get them off now, he knew he would find it hard to get them off at all.

  A moment later Blade was naked and standing up-and erect. «Suzanne's» eyes focused on his jutting maleness. His hand returned to the place between her legs, found the hair already damp, and probed deeply into a warm, wet cleft. She smiled. So did he.

  «Petunia Bupp,» he said softly, almost caressingly. He had ferreted out her real name before he had invited her up here for the evening. «Petunia Bupp. What an awful name for such a lovely girl. How-«

  He felt her stiffen under his hands. Her eyes were still on him, but the passion had gone out of them in a split-second. Her mouth snapped shut so hard he heard her teeth click, and her lips tightened into a thin line. Her nostrils wrinkled as she took in a long breath.

  Then the breath came out in a rush of words. «How-how the bloody hell did you find out my real name? It wasn't any of your damned business, you snoopy bastard! Why did you go looking for it? Why, damn you?»

  She rolled off the sofa and snatched at her panties and slacks. Blade reached out for her, but she slapped his hand away. She stood up, balancing precariously on one leg while she tried to get the other into her slacks, glaring at Blade.

  Her face was flushed-but not with passion-and her voice was almost shaking with shame and fury as she spoke. «You stupid, rotten-! You didn't think I might've changed my name for some good reason did you? Well, it is an awful name. I hated it. I still hate it. Nobody's called me «Petunia» in three years. I thought I'd never hear it again. Now you looked it up like some damned spy, and you've spoiled everything!»

  Blade found his voice. «Suzanne, I'm sorry. You-«

  «Oh, never mind your being sorry!» she snapped. «You opened your big, fat mouth and that was it. I'm leaving. I can't stay here and make love to you, not after this. Not for a million pounds! I-oh, what's the use!» She sounded on the edge of tears. Blade stepped forward, arms outstretched to hold her, pull her against his chest, comfort and calm her.

  Petunia lashed out with both hands. It was a hard blow but a clumsy one. Blade was an expert at several kinds of unarmed combat and normally it would have troubled him no more than a mosquito bite. But he was off balance and surprised. He sprawled backwards onto the sofa. Petunia snatched up her blouse and vest with one hand and her purse with the other and dashed for the door. As Blade struggled to his feet she vanished out into the hall, still bare to the waist. The door slammed behind her with a crash that made the glasses on the bar rattle and the cocktail forks jump off the coffee table onto the rug.

  Blade swore. Not a placid man at the best of times, he was now filled with anger and frustration. He was tempted to launch a kick at the coffee table, but just in time he remembered that it was solid teak, four inches thick, with a marble top. The last time he had kicked it, he had spent the next week with three toes on his right foot in splints and bandages.

  The memory cleared his head and made him laugh just as loudly as he had cursed. Poor Petunia. Poor, sensitive Petunia! He had had no way of knowing that she would fly into such a rage at the mention of her real name. Particularly in the middle of another sort of passion. But perhaps he should have guessed it and kept his mouth shut about the results of his little bit of research.

  Yes, he should have. He had been a spy, in fact, and it was very much in his blood to go on being one whenever the chance arose. But like the American CIA, he had played spy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Fortunately, he knew Petunia's address. He could and would send her a note of apology and perhaps some flowers and a bottle of her favorite sherry. That might get things back on the track again. But if not-well, the world was full of more women who would be good company than Blade would ever have a chance to meet if he lived to
be a thousand years old.

  Which, considering his profession, was bloody unlikely.

  He crossed the room to the bar, opened it, and pulled out a bottle of Glenlivet and a glass. He had just put his hand on the soda-water siphon when the telephone rang. Blade picked up the receiver while he poured out the whiskey with the other hand.

  «Hello, Richard?»

  Blade couldn't help tensing for a moment, and he felt his heartbeat speed up in a brief flurry. The voice on the line belonged to the man called J. He was Blade's chief-among other things.

  «Yes, sir?»

  «Are you alone?» J had ever approved of Blade's open and energetic pursuit of women, but he had never done anything to interfere with it, either. He would not do that to Blade, whom he loved like the son he had never had. Besides, it was simply not proper for one gentleman to intrude into the private affairs of another or to pass judgment on them. And J was a gentleman to his fingertips.

  He was also one of the most formidable spymasters in the history of intelligence operations.

  «Yes, sir.» Blade couldn't help adding ruefully, «I hadn't planned to be, but that's the way it worked out.»

  J's voice held a tinge of amusement as he continued. «Well, then, Richard. Will you be free to be at the Tower tomorrow at eleven?»

  Blade grinned. «Of course, sir.»

  «Very good, Richard,» said J. «His lordship will be waiting.» A click, and the line went dead.

  Blade slowly put the receiver back in its cradle and finished preparing the Scotch and soda. Then he stretched out on the sofa and sipped it leisurely, savoring the smell and taste of every drop. It might be a long time before he tasted good Scotch again. In fact, he might never do so at all.

  There was only one thing Richard Blade ever did at the Tower of London. He descended two hundred feet below it to a secret laboratory complex, to be strapped into a chair in the heart of a gigantic computer, the most advanced in the world. Then «his lordship»-Lord Leighton, England's most brilliant scientist-pulled a red switch. And Richard Blade vanished from England, to reappear-somewhere else.

  That «somewhere else» they called Dimension X.

  They would go on calling it Dimension X until they knew more about it, which would be a very long time. But Richard Blade was definitely the farthest-traveling man in the world, because he had been into Dimension X time after time. Each time so far he had returned to England alive and sane. Every journey into Dimension X was a grim battle for survival, and sooner or later he was going to lose one of those battles.

  But Richard Blade believed that he owed England his best, everything his superb mind and body together could give. He had believed that when he was one of J's best agents in the secret intelligence agency MI6. He had gone on believing it when he became the only man in the world to travel into Dimension X and return safely.

  Chapter 2

  Richard Blade was walking along the main corridor of the Project Dimension X complex below the Tower of London. J was walking beside him. The corridor stretched on ahead of the two men, apparently deserted and lifeless, with no ears to hear or eyes to. see anything the two men might do. But Blade knew that every step he took, every word he spoke, every gesture he made, was recorded by supersensitive electronic devices that scanned the corridor more intensively than a hundred human sentries could have done. The ability to travel to other dimensions was the most closely guarded secret in England, one that millions of pounds and a few lives had been spent to protect. Not even England's friends could be trusted with the secret of what Lord Leighton had done, and as for her enemies-

  A thought struck Blade. «Is Lord Leighton planning any special effects for me this time?»

  J shook his head. His voice held a mixture of relief and annoyance as he said, «There's really nothing ready to test that hasn't already failed. Lord Leighton doesn't dare make your trips too much more unpredictable than they already are!»

  «No,» said Blade. «For better or worse, I'm his indispensable man.»

  That was really doing the brilliant little scientist something of an injustice. Leighton normally had more regard for his computers than for any ten thousand human beings. But he did have some regard for Richard Blade, and it wasn't entirely the result of Blade's being indispensable to Project Dimension X. The scientist would rather have his budget canceled than admit it, but where Blade was concerned he almost had a heart.

  «No, this time it's just a simple trip,» J continued. «Go out, and do your best to come back.»

  That was just as well, all things considered. Sooner or later they would have to develop the ability to send Blade off to a specific dimension at will. And they would also have to stop landing Blade in Dimension X as naked as a newborn babe. And finally, they would have to learn to bring back from Dimension X more than what happened to be on or around Blade at the moment the computer gripped him for the return trip.

  All of these things would be necessary if the project were ever to repay the millions of pounds it had swallowed up since its beginning. But in spite of all the time and money spent trying to do them, nothing much had happened. Even the trials had mostly just made Blade's trips more dangerous-and even Lord Leighton agreed that a trip into Dimension X was hair-raising enough at the best of times.

  Besides, if Blade were killed, everything would come to a screeching halt. All the efforts to find even one other person who could travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane had also fallen flat.

  So Blade was for now indeed the indispensable man for a project vital to England's future. It was not a status he enjoyed, although by temperament he was a natural adventurer.

  As they approached the door into the computer rooms, Lord Leighton came out to meet them. He scuttled up to them on his polio-twisted legs, holding out a hand whose long, thin fingers were still surprisingly strong and skilled.

  «Good morning, Richard. J's told you we're not putting any icing on your cake this time.»

  «Yes, sir. He did.» After a pause, Blade said, «I sometimes wonder if we're not going to solve some of our problems by accident. We'll have given up any hope of finding a solution, and then suddenly one will leap out at us. Then all the sub-projects-«

  Leighton shot Blade a venomous look, as if the younger man had just confessed to poisoning babies for a living. Blade managed to keep a grin off his face. Leighton believed almost religiously that the systematic application of the scientific method could solve any problem. Blade and J, on the other hand, had been professionals in the intelligence business. That was a business that ran as much by accident and educated guesswork as by any sort of system.

  Now they were passing through a succession of rooms filled with supporting equipment, terminals, and white-coated technicians bending over them. There were three or four of those rooms-Blade had never bothered to count them exactly. Then finally they were in the heart of the whole complex, the main computer room.

  The monstrous main computer towered toward the bare rock ceiling. The gray, crackled finish of the ranked consoles gave off no reflections, even from the harsh lighting. Blade walked over to the metal chair that stood in its glass booth in the middle of the chamber and looked down at it.

  Then quickly he stepped into the small changing room in one corner of the chamber and stripped himself to the skin. Just as quickly, but much more carefully, he smeared himself all over with foul-smelling, black, greasy cream. Then he pulled on a loincloth and stepped back out into the chamber.

  The rubber seat and back of the chair were as chilly as ever against his bare skin. Lord Leighton bustled about, busily attaching the mass of cobra-headed electrodes whose multicolored wires linked Blade to the computer. There seemed to be more of them than usual. Or was it just his impatience to be off that was making the wiring-up process seem longer?

  Eventually there were no more. J raised his hand in a final salute to Blade, then withdrew to the small folding chair that had been installed on the wall for him. Lord Leighton stepped up
to the main control panel, lifting his hand over the red master switch.

  Blade suddenly felt an impish and almost uncontrollable desire to say something memorably scandalous, something that would have turned Lord Leighton's remaining hair white if it hadn't been white already. Then he fought down the desire. They didn't know much about Dimension X. But they had begun to suspect that what Blade was thinking about at the moment of transition might be connected with where he wound up. So it might not be wise to go sailing off into Dimension X with a bawdy joke on his mind.

  Then Lord Leighton drew the master switch downward in its slot. The chamber vanished.

  For a moment the after-image lingered in Blade's vision. It lingered so vividly that for another moment he doubted whether he had even started the transition. Something had gone wrong; he was still in the chamber below the Tower, and Lord Leighton-

  Then he realized that he was standing alone and naked in the middle of an immense, dark red plain. As far as his eyes could reach it was the color of old blood and as featureless as a tabletop. Above it arched a totally black sky, without a single star. There was no wind, no feeling of, either heat or cold, and a silence that could not have been more complete if Blade had been marooned in outer space.

  The silent red plain and the silent black sky were beginning to become oppressive when Blade noticed something high in the sky, directly above his head. A pulsating spot of raw, rich gold appeared in the sky. Then the spot began to rotate. It whirled faster and faster, throwing out long streamers down toward the horizon.

  The golden streamers reached the horizon. As they did so, the plain under Blade's feet began to rotate in turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until it was matching the speed of the golden spot high above.

  The golden streamers began to waver and dance wildly, shimmering and hurling sparks and bits of fire down out of the sky like meteors. The plain under Blade's feet whirled faster and faster. Now it began to quiver like a driven piece of machinery and give out a high-pitched hum.