His Lordship snorted and banged on through the door. Blade shook hands with J. «Goodbye, sir. Just in case, you know.»
J winced. «Yes, of course. All nonsense, of course. Leighton may not be the sweetest old boffin in the world but I trust him to bring you back. I'll see you, my boy, I'll see you. Good luck out there.»
«Thank you, sir. Goodbye.»
Blade followed Lord L down a long straight corridor that led into the computer complex. Leighton moved fast for an old man and a polio victim, scuttling along sideways and dragging one leg. His mass of white hair, thin and as light as down on a pink scalp, waved in the air as he moved. It gave him the appearance of wearing a halo which, Blade thought with a concealed smile, the old genius certainly did not deserve.
They paused at the first auto-security check station. Lord L placed his hand, palm down, on a square of green glowing glass and stood aside so Blade could do the same. Somewhere in the complex a sentry domputer would read their palm prints and compare them with master prints on record.
Without preliminary Lord L said, «Did J tell you that we are trying to find another lad?»
Blade nodded. Obviously the subject was not taboo if His Lordship chose to speak of it.
«Don't like the idea myself,» said Lord L. He glared at Blade with his leonine eyes and rasped, «Lot of nonsense.. The trips into DX are getting safer all the time. I've slaved to make the computer foolproof. No reason why you can't come and go indefinitely, Richard. No reason at all. Only J says he is worried and J had got the ear of the Prime Minister. J is afraid you'll have a breakdown. Rot, I call it. Pure sentimental rot. No place for that sort of thing in science. What do you say, Richard?»
A metallic voice spoke from the wall grille. «Check out. You may proceed.»
They walked through a high voltage barrier-it would have knocked them unconscious had they tried to penetrate it without the permission of the scanner-and approached an L-turn in the corridor.
Blade, who never submitted to coercion of any type, was nonetheless tactful. The old man was not everybody's cup of tea, but Blade had a genuine liking for him, and enormous respect for his awesome talent and, not least, his courage. More than once Blade had speculated as to how he himself would stand up to polio and a hump and old age. Could he face it so boldly, keep the light of energy and defiance burning in his eyes. He would doubtless never know, being not only young but a superb specimen, but he had doubts.
Lord L was still waiting for an answer. Blade said, «I am inclined to agree with J, sir. It isn't so much that I am tired, or afraid of the cumulative effects of brain restruotuning-though there is that-as it is a matter of luck. I think about that, sir. A man's luck does run out, you know.»
«Bah,» said Lord L. «We make our own luck. You've been listening to J.»
«It's not that, sir. He barely mentioned it. The thought, about luck, is my own.»
They went through another security check. Their photos were taken and sent to an electronic brain for scanning. The brain compared and concurred. They were sent on.
Lord Leighton slowed his pace. They were now winding their way through a maze of cubicles, each containing a computer and a white-smocked attendent. This was the guts of the Computer II Annex, devoted to both routine and recondite projects. A humming and clicking, the sound as febrile as locusts on the move, filled the area. Here were data banks for practically everything that concerned Her Majesty's Government and its subjects. Blade always experienced a sense of unease when he passed through this section. These whirring, spinning, blinking machines held the most intimate secrets of millions of people. They catalogued sin and virtue impartially. They were dispassionate and untouchable. They could not be seduced and they never lied. Nothing was forgotten, nothing forgiven, no favors asked or taken.
After a last security check-this one by voice print they left Computer II Annex and got into Computer I. This was the original space, gouged out from the living rock far beneath the Tower, in which Lord Leighton had assembled his first computer. The machine that had sent Blade to the land of Alb.
As they entered the master control room, where the gigantic sixth-generation computer squatted like a brain encased in gray crackled armor, Lord L shot a look at Blade and said, «I still say it is all nonsense. But I am a reasonable man. We'll discuss it, Richard, when you get back this time. Now, if you'll get ready-I have some adjustments to make for the reset.» He disappeared behind a large finlike shield.
Blade went through the familiar preparations. He found the usual cubby and stripped down to the buff. He put on the — loin cloth and smeared. himself with tar paste against burns. Then he went through a door into the penetrailia of the computer. The chair was waiting on its square of rubberoid fabric inside the glass housing. Again, as it always did, it reminded him of an electric chair. He had never seen an electric chair, though he had been in the States, many times, but he had seen pictures and this chair was very similar. J, and even Lord L, agreed in that. It had, over the months, become something of an occupational joke.
Blade went to the chair and sat down. The seat was of molded rubber and cold on his bare arse. He stared, without much thought, at the hundreds of tiny colored wires that extended from portholes in the machine casing. They ran into thick leaders, these blue, red, yellow and green wires, and, about thirty of the leaders, each tipped with a shiny elecrode the size of a shilling, would be attached to his body. In the massive guts of the machine the wires diversified and thinned and multiplied, copulated and had progeny, and in the end numbered over a million. A million aluminum, steel and copper nerves-and Lord Leighton knew the exact location and precise function of each one.
His Lordship entered the room and went to the glittering instrument board facing Blade. Watching him pull toggles and set levers, twist dials, head to one side, hump grotesque under the white smock, Blade felt the usual chill of anticipation coming over him. And with it renewed awe and respect for this crippled old man. Lord L had told him once that the average human brain contained some ten billion complex cells.
«The trick,» Lord L had laughed, «is to use every one of them to the limit. But we don't, you know. Most people use less than a third of their brain capacity. Laziness.»
Blade could not believe that this applied to Lord L.
The old man finished his instrumentation and came to where Blade waited in the chair. As he began taping the electrodes to the big man's flesh he went into the usual line of patter designed to quiet Blade's nerves. Blade did not need this-his was a natural and healthy fear-and there had been times when he wished the old man would not run on like a hangman trying to make his client's last moments more comfortable. But it would have done no good to complain; the logorrhea was habit by now and, in any case, His Lordship was hardly aware of Blade's presence at moments like this.
Lord L patted an electrode into place below Blade's left ear. «Aha, just so. Did I tell you, Richard, that I am writing a book about this experiment?»
He gave Blade no time to answer. «I am, you know. I am calling it The Theory of Intellectronics. Of course I won't be able to publish for years yet, maybe never, but I intend to finish the book just the same. Unvnm let me see. Yes, I believe that is right. We have never used a gen ital connection before, have we?»
Blade stared down at the electrodes attached to his scrotum. «No, sir. We never have. Why now? That's a rather sensitive spot, sir, and I don't see how-«
«Of course you don't, Richard. Nothing to bother your head about. But we can't stand still, you know. We must progress, always progress. You will have noted that I am using forty electrodes this time instead of thirty?»