J added, «You're free to refuse the assignment.»
Again the mildly amused voice. «I know that. I'm always free to refuse, but I never have.»
J thought, How many times have I sent you out into God knows where? Twenty-five? Thirty? I've stopped counting. Someday you'll pass through that bloody machine and you won't come back.
J's eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness… or had the fog lifted a little? He could make out the outlines of Richard Blade's massive six-foot-one-inch frame, clad, it appeared, in the usual light wool Burberry coat with no hat. As Blade inhaled, the tip of his cigarette glowed brightly, faintly illuminating his clean-shaven, square-cut features. Blade was smiling, but it was an odd little smile, a smile that reminded J of the ancient Roman gladiator's motto, «We who are about to die salute you.»
Two other overcoated men materialized out of the fog. A flashlight snapped on, blazing in J's eyes. An emotionless voice said, «Good evening, sir. Identification please.»
While the Special Services men examined his papers, J shifted impatiently from one foot to the other, angry at the cold, angry at the dampness, angry at the delay. Blade, by contrast, appeared abnormally calm and impassive. Feverishly J glanced around, seeking something in the real world that would justify the uneasiness that had followed him out of the world of sleep.
The Special Services men returned the documents. «Everything seems to be in order, sir. May I trouble you for this week's password?»
«Raven,» answered Richard Blade, pocketing his own documents matter-of-factly.
«Countersign nevermore,» said the man.
«Very good,» said Blade.
«Follow me, please.»
The man gestured with his flashlight beam.
The Special Services men led and J and Richard Blade followed. They trudged along an ancient causeway, past a grassy sward that had been, before it was filled in, a moat. They passed through a grove of leafless skeletal trees interspersed with hulking cannons from some bygone era. On their left arose the outer walls of the Tower complex, the top lost in whiteness overhead. On their right, beyond a stout retaining wall, flowed the River Thames.
A ship was out there, heard but not seen, its diesel engines rumbling softly as it went by. A moment later the waves from its wake broke against the shore with a rhythmic hiss.
This was not, J reflected, a site he would have selected for England's most secret project, had he been given the choice. In the afternoons, when the tide was out, that narrow sandy shore became a beach on which antlike hordes of children from Stepney and most of the East End swarmed, laughing and shouting and wading and feeding the ill-tempered swans. Above the beach, in the narrow strip of park between river and wall, tourists from every country in the world strolled and gossiped and took pictures. God, how they took pictures! Once J had seen two Russian sailors taking snapshots of each other in the very shadow of the entrance to the secret project.
«One moment, sir,» said the taller of the two agents. They halted before a heavy grillwork gate beneath the broad archway at the base of Saint Thomas's Tower. The gate was secured by a chain and combination padlock at the center, and the taller Special Services man now busied himself with the tumblers while his partner held the flashlight. Richard leaned forward to watch; J knew Blade could memorize the combination of a lock by watching someone open it just once, and that he practiced this skill whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Richard said softly, «The Tower of London frowned dreadful over Jerusalem.»
«What's that supposed to mean?» J demanded.
«It's poetry,» Blade explained. «William Blake wrote those lines way back in the eighteenth century. He rather caught the spirit of this place, don't you think?» Richard had memorized an astonishing amount of classic verse at Oxford, and had a habit of quoting it at the most unlikely times. «Blood! Horror! Doom! That's what we think of when we hear about the Tower of London, and small wonder. Some of the grandest rascals in English history passed through this old Watergate on their way to torture, imprisonment or beheading. That's why it's called the Traitor's Gate.»
J thought, The Traitor's Gate! How apt. Two Russian spies have passed through here in very recent history and penetrated to the heart of the secret project, in spite of all our fanatic security precautions. Neither had returned alive to reveal what went on there, but next time…
J shuddered.
«There you are, sir,» the tall man said. The gate opened with a creak. J and Richard Blade stepped inside.
The Special Services men locked them in and vanished into the fog, returning to their posts. In the yellow light from a bare electric bulb in the ceiling, Blade and J proceeded onward, locating the almost invisible secret door that led into a long, dim, damp tunnel, into a maze of sub basements, and finally to the familiar door of the elevator.
J pressed the elevator button, aware that the button was photographing his thumbprint as he did so. Far below a computer would compare his print with that of everyone who had a security clearance for the project and, deciding that J was «all right,» would, in a few seconds, send up the elevator.
The elevator arrived with a rush.
The door slid open. J and Blade entered. The elevator dropped through two hundred feet of solid bedrock with a speed J had never quite gotten used to, then slowed to a stop. They stood in silence until the heavy bronze door hissed open.
They stepped out into a brilliantly lighted foyer, bare except for a desk and two chairs freshly painted an uninspiring olive drab.
«Where's Lord Leighton?» Blade wondered aloud.
«I fancy he's waiting for us in the computer area,» said J.
Blade moved through the foyer with a catlike lightness that belied his powerful two-hundred-and-ten-pound mass of rock-hard muscle and bone.
They walked briskly through long corridors, passing closed doors, closed doors and more closed doors. J could hear muffled voices behind the doors, the clatter of typewriters, the whir of spinning computer tapes, but within the hallways not a soul was to be seen. No human guards were needed. Electronic sensors followed their every step, checking and rechecking that they were who they were supposed to be, and were going where they were supposed to go. As long as the sensors functioned, no stranger could enter these passages without setting off an alarm, no matter how careful he was.
At the end of the final passage, a massive door slid open automatically for them and they entered the central computer area. J glanced around and frowned.
In these rooms surrounding the heart of the whole project J was accustomed to seeing a crew of technicians hard at work, but now there was nobody here. In fact the computers themselves had changed. They had been changing slowly over a period of time, but this was the first time J had really noticed.
The consoles, which had once been so large they filled the rooms, had shrunk and become fearfully silent, though the lights that blinked and glowed and the screens that displayed everchanging patterns, numbers and words seemed to indicate that everything was turned on and running. J understood. Bit by bit diodes and transistors had replaced big bulky tubes, and had been in turn replaced by tiny integrated circuit chips that contained whole libraries of preprogramming in an area the size of a thumbnail. Everything had become smaller, cooler, quieter, yet at the same time more powerful. Now the last step had been taken. Automation had replaced human control, and the last human operator had been banished.