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.