Monster Of The Maze rb-6 Read online

  And the blackouts, the terrible and frightening blackouts. He had wakened once in Liverpool with some doxy by his side and absolutely no recollection of the events of the week before. True, he had sought help and it had been given by J and Lord L and the most famous specialists in England-but it was not enough. There were times when a million famous doctors could not have helped him.

  J said, «Lord L has always assured me that the machine restructures the brain cells, but it does not cause them to deteriorate.»

  «I know.»

  And he did know. He trusted and admired Lord L. And yet he did not really believe.

  Lord L hobbled back into the office and waggled a finger at Blade. «I have the cycle upcoming on the machine. Half an hour. You had better get ready. Unless-you’ve changed your mind?»

  «No,» said Blade.

  J came to shake hands. «I don’t believe I’ll go with you to the computer room this time, my dear boy. Not in person, at least. But I will be-well, you know.»

  «Of course, sir.»

  They shook hands. «Bless and keep,» said J.

  Lord L glanced at his wristwatch. «Best get a move on, lad. If we miss the cycle it will be a lost twenty-four hours. And since you’re so dead set on going now. .»

  Blade grinned. The old man died hard. «I am,» he said. «Let’s go.»

  As Blade followed Lord L through the maze of corridors and past the various security checks into the computer complex, he conceived the weird fantasy that Lord L was not really Lord L at all, but a white-smocked Apollyon leading him into the Pit. Which might well be. You never knew, until you had gone through the computer and landed in Dimension X, whether it was to be hell or paradise. In most cases it was a bit of both. Which this time, and in what proportions?

  They passed the final security check and walked amidst the smaller computers, heading for the room that housed the monster machine that would launch Blade. All around him the lesser brood hummed and clicked and flashed and rang bells and made complex decisions in a billionth of a second. The big man felt his usual antipathy taking over; he did not like computers and no use pretending he did. Now and then, when they passed a white-smocked figure in attendance, a human being in charge of all these electronic brains, Blade felt a small positive charge of relief. The machine had not entirely taken over. Not yet.

  At last they came to the central room that housed the master computer. Lord L did what he had never done before: he followed Blade into the little disrobing cubicle. The old man talked as Blade stripped and donned a loincloth and began to smear himself with the tar salve that prevented computer burns.

  Blade took off his toupee and flung it into a corner. His naked skull glistened blue in the fluorescent light. The toupee looked like some small dead animal; it would serve, Blade thought, as a reminder to take care of his hair when he returned from the mission. If he did.

  It came hard for Lord Leighton to beg, but he was near it now.

  «I wanted this word alone with you, Richard, away from J. He is against me in everything these days. And he treats you like a child, you know. He is like a mother hen with a chick. That’s all wrong, Richard. You’re the dominant one, the hero, the adventurer. It is you who must go into DX and suffer whatever comes. So all final decisions should be yours.»

  Blade smeared tar salve on his bottom. «Exactly, Sir. I agree. I do. I am-making the final decisions.»

  Was there ever such an obdurate old boffin?

  «If you would only wait for a month, Richard? Surely that isn’t asking too much and I, er, have so much to do yet.»

  Blade shook his head. «No. I also have things to do, sir. I want to get into Dimension X and get it over with. Now.»

  «You don’t understand,» said Lord L. «None of you really understands what I am trying to do.» There was real despair in his voice. «The computer-cortex link, my boy, is only the first step in what I am trying to do, what I can do. Even Dimension X is of secondary importance compared to what I am really after. I want to change the world, Richard! I want to change people and so the world. But I need time and I haven’t much. I am an old man and my sands are running out.»

  Blade rubbed tar salve between his toes. The old boy was never so dangerous as when he waxed dramatic and turned to florid usage. In self-defense Blade was flip.

  «I’m sorry, sir, but there is nothing I can do about your sands. Shall we get on with it?»

  Lord L glanced at his wrist. «Another ten minutes. I had thought, Richard, to implant another electrode in your brain. In the hypothalamic region. As a part of the new ESB experiments I am undertaking. It would not take very long and if we delay-«

  «No,» Blade said. For the first time he began to understand what the old man was really up to. The computer-cortex experiments had evolved into something new, something of such a magnitude and importance that Lord L had all but forgotten DX. He was trying to phase one experiment out and leap headlong into a new one. And he needed Blade, for of all the men alive in the world only Blade had a brain already geared to receive and react to computer signals.

  Lord Leighton was afraid-afraid that Blade would not come back from this mission and that he, Lord L, would have to start all over again with a new subject. Blade knew then that his understudy, the trainee whom he had never met, had not proved out. Something had gone wrong.

  «Hear me,» said Lord L. «I foresee the day, Richard, when this earth can be a paradise. Because men can make it that way. They can do that because they will be able to control their own mental functions. It will be a psychocivilization and as near to perfection as we dare not dream today. Each man will carry his own computer, no larger than a hearing aid, and by means of it will control his thoughts and his passions. It is complex, Richard, and there is no time for detail now, but believe me-I can rid the world of evil, Richard! I can. I know I can. Given time and money and the proper personnel.»

  Blade was ready to go. His huge brawny body glistened with tar salve. He gave the old scientist a smile and said, «Quite apart from all you’ve said, sir, and the fact that if you can do what you say you can there will be, sooner or later, a brain dictator, I am not very interested. Now-do we go through with it or do I resign and get dressed again?»

  Lord L stepped aside and let Blade precede him through the door. He said nothing.

  As Blade took the last few steps into the computer launch chamber, the words of Sir Charles Sherrington echoed in his brain. The brain that Sir Charles had been describing when he called it «an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern.»

  Yes. It was all of that. The thought only hardened Blade’s resolve. After this time no more tampering. Fini. Kaput. All over.

  The small glass cage stood as always, containing the chair with its straps and electrodes. Blade hesitated for just a moment, then strode over to the chair and sat down. Lord L began to tape the shiny-headed electrodes to his greased body. The old man worked silently and intently, frowning and mumbling to himself, the usual bandinage missing. Once, as he taped an electrode to Blade’s naked skull, Lord L did pat his shoulder. I am not forgiven, Blade thought, but he is a professional and it is business as usual.

  The preparations went on. Blade felt himself going rigid and tense, though he willed against it, and the queasy liquid of fear began to seep through him. There was no way to dam the fear, to hold it back-not in these latter days-and so he let it flow. It would vanish soon enough when he went through the computer and found himself in a new dimension fighting for his life. It always came to that. It was never easy.

  Blade stared at the instrument panel on the far wall, concentrating on the red toggle that, in a minute or so now, Lord L would pull and so catapult Blade into-what?

  Lord L taped the last electrode into place and went to the instrument board. His hand hovered over the red toggle.

  «A final chance, Richard. Won’t you consider-wait a month or so-or perhaps we can scrub your mission altogether and let your backup man
do this mission?»

  Blade’s nerves were screaming. He knew that if he hesitated he would be screaming. The battery of his courage, sapped cumulatively by so many trips into DX, was running low.

  «Pull the lever,» he said. «Pull the lever, you damned old fool!»

  He had only time to read the amazement and shock on Lord L’s face before the red toggle came down. No one had ever spoken to his Lordship in that manner.

  The current washed through him like bloody surf. For a moment there was pain, pain that could not be borne and yet must be, and then his body vanished and with it the pain and he was only a brain on a stalk..

  The stalk was planted in purple gravel and atop it his brain waved and moved in a hot wind. Lights flashed and bells rang and behind a shadow screen he saw horned figures copulating. A clown ran up from nowhere and smote his raw brain with a bladder and there was more pain. The clown and the pain locked hands and danced off into silver fog. A girl with fur all over her came out of the fog and stood looking at him. She sucked her thumb and stared at him and mouthed words that he could not understand. As his brain watched she grew a penis, a huge pole of flesh, and laughed and began to toy with herself and then went off turning cartwheels.

  His brain detached itself from the stalk and began to rise like a balloon into polychromatic clouds wreathed around the base of a gigantic chryselephantine statue. The statue was hermaphroditic and towered into eternity and filled the cosmos and the brain knew that it was seeing GOD.

  GOD smiled. GOD smote. The brain fell and fell and fell ….

  Chapter 3

  At first Blade thought he was in a forest. Gradually, as the computer shock wore off, he realized that he lay not among trees, but among reeds, weeds, amid spindly stalks and bushes. As always he lay still, unmoving, waiting until his senses fully returned and he could assay the situation. It was his usual procedure upon entering Dimension X and so far it had ensured his survival.

  As time passed he became aware that something was terribly wrong. Things, objects, were all out of kilter, out of proportion and in false perspective. Why should weeds, or reeds, look like trees to him? Unless?

  Blade did not believe it. He did not want to believe it. The computer had played strange tricks before, but this? Was he a Tom Thumb, reduced in size to a minikin? Or was he still his normal self and had landed in a dimension where everything was so massive that he was dwarfed?

  It was much worse than that. So far he had not moved a muscle, he stared straight ahead of him and a bit upward. Now he tried to flex his muscles. Nothing much happened. His fingers moved and his fist clenched and relaxed, but there was no strength. He was as weak and uncoordinated as a baby.

  Blade looked at his hand. It was small and pink and chubby. Tiny. He was a baby. The computer had reduced him to an infant.

  In body only. For that Blade was grateful even as the curses formed in his brain. He damned the computer and Lord L and J and the gods and himself for a fool. And found some satisfaction therein. His brain was all right, unchanged, crystal and all. He was Richard Blade still, but his tiny pink body was that of a newborn babe.

  He tried to raise his head. Too heavy. He could not even move it. That made sense, if any of this made sense, because his brain was full grown and must be housed in the cranium of a full grown man. He must be a hell of a looking sight, Blade thought. A macrocephalic horror. Whoever found him would probably kill him on sight and either stuff him or preserve him in a bottle. Monster babe.

  Survival. How to live, how to beat this nasty turn of events? Think, Blade. Think harder than you have ever thought in your life. For this is it! This is all the trouble there is and the worst, the most dangerous, spot you have ever been in. Think. Because only your brain can save you now, the brain so seared, and distorted and twisted and restructured. Think fast, Blade!

  He was going to need luck and about that he could do nothing. It came or it did not. He would need all the luck in the world and he was helpless to summon it. What could he do?

  Always before he had been able to depend on his body, on his superb physique and conditioning, and on the fact that he adapted so rapidly to each new dimension. He could fight, do battle, kill or run as the circumstances dictated. Not this time. All he had was his brain-cunning, scheming, already beginning to adapt and take on the psychic coloration of his environment. No muscles, no strength. Only his brain in a grotesquely oversize head.

  Richard Blade squirmed over on his back and waved his chubby pink arms and legs in the air. He glanced down and saw his little worm of a penis and said: «Goddamn the fucking luck!»

  The words came out clear and distinctly. He could talk! That was something, he supposed, though he could not see how it would aid him at the moment. It might even be wise to forget it. Babies his age didn’t talk.

  Blade clasped his little fists in rage and began to howl. He grew red in the face and howled on. Might as well get it over with and be found, if there was anyone to find him. He couldn’t do anything for himself, not a damn thing, and someone had to find him and help him or he would starve to death. Between his cries and his sobs, he let an adult curse slip in now and then. He hoped that the crystal was working, however imperfectly, and that the computer was picking up his brain waves and encoding them and handing them to Lord L on a printout.

  Strange, but Blade smelled the women before he saw or heard them. His more primitive senses were sharpening as they always did when he entered DX-smell and sight and hearing and taste and all the guile of his primary and noncivilized brain. They were all working. And small good it did him.

  Female bodies nearby. A mixture of perfume and sweat, the musky woman odor he had known in a thousand beds. Close by. Very near. Blade began to hope. If a woman found him ….

  A woman said, «What was that, Valli? Did you hear it?»

  «Shhh-be quiet a moment. Yes, I heard something. It sounded like a baby crying.»

  «A baby! How could that be, Valli? You know babies aren’t allowed in the harem. I must have been mistaken. Come on. It was only the wind in the reeds.»

  «Be quiet, I say. I’m sure I heard something. And we both know, Stel, that some of the women have babies and put them out to die.»

  The woman Valli had a light and pleasant voice, with some force in it, and, Blade thought, a tinge of kindness. He made his decision. With a woman like this he might stand a chance. He let out a series of wails and waved his hands and feet frantically in the air. He felt his sphincter muscles let go and cursed as he wet himself.

  The reeds parted and the two women stood looking down at him. Blade closed his eyes, but continued to kick and scream. It would not do to let them see his eyes. Adult eyes. Not yet. Not until he had established a claim to their affections.

  «It is a baby,» said the woman called Stel. «You were right, Valli. One of the women has had a child and put it out here to die. Come away. We mustn’t touch it. You know the penalty for concealing babies in the harem.»

  Damn it. Blade almost stopped crying. He must have strayed into a pretty weird dimension if they killed off babies.

  «I can’t leave it,» said she called Valli. «I just can’t, Stel. Look at it-so helpless. Poor little thing. It’s all wet and dirty.»

  «And deformed, too. Look at its head. See how big it is. Ugh-no wonder the mother got rid of it. It’s a monster.»

  Blade stopped crying and smiled up at them. His gums hurt him and for the first time he realized that he was toothless. He smiled on, sweetly, and felt an intense dislike for the woman called Stel.

  As his fate hung in the balance he stared at their feet. Four bare feet with red-painted toenails and jeweled rings on each great toe. These were harem women and babies were forbidden them. It was going to be a near thing-already he was feeling the pangs of hunger in his small belly. How long did it take a baby to starve to death?

  Valli had not spoken. The woman Stel said, «Come on now, before we get into trouble. If the Izmir finds you with a child he’l
l have your head off just like that. You know the law, Valli. And this little monster isn’t worth breaking it.»

  When the woman Valli spoke, it was as if to herself. Blade, listening intently to every word, did not and could not at that time understand all of circumstance and nuance, but he understood enough to take heart. This woman Valli was going to be his salvation.

  «They made me kill my baby,» said Valli. «You know that. Stel. I obeyed the law and let that filthy old priest thrust into me with his knife and cut the living child from my body. I did that, I obeyed, when all the time I wanted to seize the knife and slay the priest.»

  Stel whispered in horror. «Be careful, Valli. That is treason. That is death-you must not dare to talk so. I think you have gone mad-losing your child has turned your mind. Come away now. I beg you. Is this big-headed monster-child worth your life?»

  «I will not leave it to die,» said Valli. «I cannot. I think that the gods, those gods of which the priests know nothing, have sent me this child to replace the one I lost. If I abandon this one I will be twice damned. Go, Stel, if you are afraid. I am going to keep this child. I will hide it and somehow try to keep it alive. So go now and you have seen nothing and know nothing.»

  «You are bewitched,» said the woman Stel, «and I will have none of it. I have no desire to be tortured and have my head cut off. But I will be silent. This is all I promise. Goodbye, Valli. I know nothing of this.»

  She disappeared into the reeds. Good riddance, thought Blade bitterly, glad that he was not being left to her not-so-tender mercies. Then he forgot Stel. He must concentrate on this Valli, see to it that she did not change her mind. He smiled and showed his pink gums and gurgled and waved his tiny fists at her. A fine goddamn business for a grown man!