Blade nodded. Anybody with a little scientific knowledge and a good imagination could in a very short time conjure up a dozen horrible results of direct genetic manipulation. It had been pure science fiction for a number of years. Now it was looming closer and closer as an unpleasant reality.
«Of course this makes matters even worse for us. Every scientist is trying to clutch Parliament by the lapels and shake an appropriation out of it for his particular project. If by some miracle we did get our four million, we'd have two-thirds of the research establishment howling for our blood. Even Leighton can't do his best without more cooperation than we'd get under those circumstances.»
«So where exactly do you feel that we stand, sir?» asked Blade. They were approaching the door into the computer rooms themselves. He wanted to get the conversation done and J calmed down before they entered. He had never seen J so close to losing his patience with anything or anybody, with the occasional exception of Lord Leighton.
J seemed to realize how much his agitation was boiling over. He took a deep breath and his posture became even more erect.
«What we need is for you to bring back something extraordinary from Dimension X. It could be a scientific breakthrough whose value would be obvious even to the most idiotic backwoods back-bencher who's forgotten the small amount of physics and mathematics he ever learned. If it were that obviously valuable, we'd be able to get our four million with no questions asked. We would simply call ourselves a «secret research facility» that had produced this discovery, and ask politely if they wanted us to produce some more like it.»
Blade laughed. «Yes. Under those circumstances we might wind up with more money than we could spend.»
J fixed the younger man with a look of mock severity. «Richard, that shows how little you know of administration. There is no such sum at the moment. Nor do I expect that either of us will live long enough to see the day when there is.»
«No doubt,» said Blade. «What is the second thing I could bring back to help the Project out of its hole?»
«A new process or product-something we could sell to private industry for at least-well, for whatever the market would bear. I wish I could be more optimistic about the chances of that.»
Blade nodded. He'd brought back a good many products and processes decades or centuries beyond anything known in Home Dimension. Unfortunately no one had yet been able to duplicate any of them on any useful scale. What the devil! The scientists were still struggling to duplicate teksin, and he'd brought the sample of that superplastic back from his first trip to Tharn, longer ago than he cared to think about.
Now they were at the entrance to the computer rooms. The door slid open in front of them. They moved on, through the familiar sequence of rooms crammed to the ceiling with supporting equipment and the technicians to handle it. They came to the door of the main computer room, waited while electronic monitoring systems scanned them and opened the door, then entered.
Lord Leighton's voice floated down to them from high above. «Richard, you can go ahead and change. Everything's in order. I'm just taking the chance to make a routine inspection.» The sound of metal tapping on metal followed before Blade could say a word in reply. The scientist was back at work, and he quite thoroughly detested making polite conversation at such times.
Blade didn't blame him. In fact, it was surprising that Leighton had bothered to speak at all. The scientist was more than eighty years old, his spine twisted by a hunched back, his legs almost as twisted by polio. Yet there he was, clambering about somewhere high above, putting himself to inconvenience and strain to make an inspection that a technician a third his age could have done easily. Lord Leighton was a man who considered any job-half-done unless and until he had done it or at least checked it himself.
Blade only hoped that he could remain half as conscientious and dedicated when age and physical frailty caught up with him.
Blade followed his usual path around the gray, crackle-finished bulks of the computer's consoles; to the changing room carved out of the rock wall. By now he could have followed that path blindfolded or in pitch darkness, without missing a turn or a step.
He could also have gone through the routine in the room in his sleep, he had done it so often. So he made a special effort to be alert during every moment of the routine. Long experience had taught him that the minute you start writing something off as «routine,» you start making careless mistakes. Blade didn't want to run any risk of that with any part of a trip into Dimension X. They still knew just enough about the process to know how much more they had to learn, and how many things could go wrong.
So he was as careful now as he had ever been, as he stripped to the skin and smeared himself from head to toe with greasy black cream. It felt dreadful and smelled worse, but it was intended to prevent burns from the massive jolt of electricity passing through his body in the moment of transition.
He took a loincloth down from a peg on the wall and tied it on. He always wore one, although none of them had ever passed into Dimension X with him. He had carried a gold ring on one trip and his old commando knife on another. Both of these had made the round trip with him, and both were now under intensive examination to reveal what special qualities they had.
Meanwhile, there was nothing else he could find that he'd had for many years and would also be useful in Dimension X. There were plenty of things he could take that he hadn't owned for years, but would any of them make the trip? Almost certainly not, from past experience. They would just add more uncertainties where there were already too many. It would be safer to go off into Dimension X, prepared to arrive with nothing but his wits and his naked body. He'd survived that way often enough before.
Blade finished knotting the loincloth, stepped out of the room, and walked to the glass booth that stood in the very center of the room. He sat down in the metal chair inside the booth, feeling the rubber of the seat and back cold against his bare skin, and settled down to relaxing as much as he could. He always succeeded, although he could never completely keep his mind off what might be waiting for him in Dimension X.
Meanwhile Lord Leighton practically ran in circles around the chair, pulling wires in a dozen different colors out of odd parts of the computer. Each wire ended in a gleaming metal electrode, shaped like the head of a cobra. Lord Leighton taped each electrode to Blade's skin. Then he stepped back, briefly surveyed his work with a satisfied smile, and walked across the room to the main control panel.
The panel was already lit up like a psychedelic Christmas tree. The computer's program was running on the main sequence, running steadily toward the moment when it would be ready to hurl Richard Blade away on his next journey.
In these last moments Blade always felt very much at peace with the world. He also knew better than ever how simple his job in the Project really was. No research to do, no appropriations to fight for, no security problems to track down and handle. At the moment, J was still fighting to sidetrack Scotland Yard from its search for the «mystery hero» who'd vanished after saving a dozen lives in a train wreck a few months ago. That mystery hero was Blade, who'd vanished to avoid publicity that would endanger the Project, then gone off into Dimension X while J was left holding the sack.