As soon as he stepped on the walk it speeded up. Now it carried him toward the looming tower at a great rate. He was right. He was awaited.
It was a quarter of an hour before he reached the foot of the tower. As he rode toward it Blade studied it with appreciation and awe. It was of the same shining metal as the wall across the valley, but here mere utilitarianism had been forsaken for beauty. As an aesthetic concept it had the just-rightness of perfection, in that Blade could not have imagined it any different. It stair-stepped up in massive beauty and was lost in small, moist clouds newly formed about the spire. The tower was, he reflected, very nearly a mile high.
The moving walk slowed and stopped opposite a tall arched entrance. Blade left the walk and went into the tower, past robot guards and attendants, past men and women and children, all robots, all frozen into workaday attitudes. There could have been no warning, Blade thought. These robots had been cut off in the midst of life. And yet they were not dead in the real sense. They waited.
He crossed a vast lobby to where a bank of elevators hung motionless, their machinery as dead as the robots. Blade began to search for a stair, wondering if he had the strength to climb a mile into the sky, when he heard a faint whirring sound. He found the source at the far end of the elevator bank. One small lift, nothing but a series of barren cages, was in operation. Like empty boxes on a chain the little cages constantly ascended and descended on the far side.
Blade hesitated, still wary, and for the first time the voice spoke to him. Spoke in his brain. There was no outward sound, no echo in the great lobby, nothing but the neutral and unshaded voice — pure sound — speaking clear in his mind. Wearily he wiped his sweat away again and prepared to obey. Sound telepathy.
In his brain the voice said: «Step into one of the cages, Richard Blade. Ascend to me. Fear nothing. When you have reached my level I will speak again.»
Blade stepped into a moving box and was carried upward. The journey was slow and seemed endless. There were no doors, no windows, apparently no floor stops, and when the lobby vanished from sight he was in a tube of steel being borne upward. And up and up and up—
The voice spoke to him again: «Soon you will come to a light. Step off the cage there.»
Up and up. He saw the light sliding down to meet him. As the box slid past, Blade stepped off and was in a narrow, upward-slanting tunnel of steel. A light glowed at the top of the tunnel. Blade made for it. He passed under it and through an open door and into a vast open rotunda. It was open to the sky on all sides and guarded only by a railing. Moonlight drenched it and Blade caught his breath. To the south, far off beyond the wall, he could see the fires of the Jedd camp.
The voice came back. «There is a ladder near where you now stand. Find it and climb 'to the next level.»
Blade ascended the ladder. He was weak now, still drenched in sweat, and the head pains came with ever-increasing frequency. He could feel the tumors growing in his armpits and groin. How soon would the crazy laughter begin?
He was halfway up the ladder when the voice spoke to him: «You are dying of plague, Richard Blade. You know it and I know it. But you will live yet a time. Long enough to do something for me — the one thing I cannot do for myself.»
Blade stared up, his big hands white-knuckled on the rungs of the steel ladder. «How do you know my name?»
«I have followed your every move, and known your every thought, since you arrived in my dimension.»
Blade halted just beneath a square opening that led to the level above. «You understand that? You know of computers and X Dimensions?»
Laughter in his brain. «I understand the concepts. But do not waste time. Climb. I am in need of you.»
Blade climbed up through the aperture and found himself in a high-walled room of steel. A gleaming square room with no openings. In the exact center of the room was a high tank on stilts of metal. It too was square, about forty by forty feet and twenty feet in depth. A ladder led up the side to a runway atop the tank.
In his brain the voice spoke again: «Stop now. Try to understand what I say. I depend on you.»
Blade put his hands on his hips and scowled around him. He might be dying of plague — as indeed he was — but the calm assurance, the superiority, of the bodiless voice was beginning to irk him.
«Where are you?» he asked.
Voice: «I am in the tank. As you will see presently. But now that you are here and cannot leave, and must do as I ask, I will take some little time for explanation. The plague will not kill you immediately and I–I have stood my pain for ages. I can bear it a little longer. I would have you understand, Blade.»
Blade put a hand on his sword. «Understand what?»
Voice: «About the Jedds. When they were a great people and ruled the world. Our world. You have seen the robots?»
«I have seen them.»
Voice: «They are part of the joke. A great cosmic joke. It was the old Jedds who invented the robots. But they did their work too well — the robots soon surpassed the Jedds and took over and sent them into exile. Far back in the beginning of time, this was, and ever since the Jedds, the humans, have been trying to find their way back here to the land of the Kropes. For so the robots called themselves. Kropes.»
Blade frowned. He was sick, very sick, yet found himself with the will and strength to grow angry with this voice. Why the anger he could not understand. But it was there. He was beginning to hate.
Blade said: «Why do you tell me all this?»
Voice: «It amuses me. And can do no harm. And I would strike a bargain with you.»
«What sort of bargain?»
«In time — in time. Listen — it was the custom of the Jedds to destroy all their robots when they reached a certain age. They were junked, cannibalized, and new robots made from the parts saved. I, who speak to you now, was a robot and I was in turn discarded and torn apart. But that one time they were careless, the Jedds. My brain was not destroyed as usually was done, the thousands of parts not beaten into a fine powder as was the custom. Instead, a lazy Jedd flung my brain into a pond. I lay in that ooze for centuries and somehow, someway, life came to me. Real life and real intelligence. My own. And I began to grow. I was cunning and I learned how to hide myself. And all the time, over all the long eons, I grew. And at last I had my revenge on the Jedds. I ruled. I invented the Kropes. I built the marvels you have seen. The wall and this tower and all the rest. I built it with my brain. With my will. Are you familiar with the theory of telekinesis, Blade?»
Blade's head was spinning. Fever flamed in him and things began to shift slightly out of focus. He took a firmer grip on himself and answered, «I know the theory. I have never seen it work. To create actual physical things by sheer power of will — by willing them into existence.»
Laughter in his brain. For a moment Blade feared it was his own, the dying manic laughter of plague, then shook it off. He had yet a little time — and in spite of all he still hoped.
Voice: «You have seen it, Blade. Look around you and see it again. But enough — to our bargain!»
«I am sick. Ill. I have a great tumor that is killing me. Even my will cannot cure it. But you, Blade, you with your sword can cut the tumor out and destroy it and I will be well again. You will do this?»
Blade stared defiantly up at the tank. «Why should I?
You are no friend to me. Why should I, who am myself dying, help you to escape death? On the contrary — I would rather have you die. Then the Jedds can come into this land and build it anew for themselves and their children. No. I refuse. You get no help from me.»