Perhaps he was selfish in wanting Zoe alive, and certainly it would have been hard for them to start up a life together again. The Ngaa not only left her a widow but murdered her three children as well. She would have carried her own set of scars to the end of her life.
But it still hurt-terribly.
Blade had read the whole report on the battle against the Ngaa, a stack of paper as long as a best-selling novel. He'd marveled at the ability of bureaucratic prose to reduce horrors and disasters to the proportions of a leaky faucet. He'd also been reassured that every possible precaution was being taken to prevent such a disaster from happening again. To be sure, there'd been only one Ngaa, but it was far from certain that Dimension X didn't hold other and perhaps worse menaces. In fact, very little was certain about Dimension X, and the affair of the Ngaa had if anything increased that uncertainty. If Blade hadn't known these precautions were being taken, he'd have been forced to have second thoughts about another trip to Dimension X. Danger to himself was one thing. Danger to the whole human race or even a few dozen innocent people was an entirely different matter.
These thoughts and memories carried Blade the rest of the way down the corridor and through the outer rooms of the main complex. J met him at the door to Lord Leighton's holy of holies, the room holding the master computer.
«Lord Leighton either hasn't arrived or hasn't noticed we're here,» said J with a thin smile.
«That's no surprise,» said Blade. The KALI computer which had caused much of the trouble last time no longer existed. A squad of strong men wielding sledgehammers and blowtorches had reduced it to unrecognizable electronic junk.
Fortunately the hardware of the previous master computer had survived, stowed away in a secret warehouse. Lord Leighton was a frugal soul at heart, in spite of his frequently extravagant ideas of what to do for the Project with the taxpayers' money. Once he'd been known for squirreling away copper wire and test tubes. Now he squirreled away entire computers.
So the old computer was back in place. Its installation was something of a tape-and-chewing gum job, though, and needed careful maintenance. Lord Leighton insisted that he was the best man for much of this maintenance, and he was probably right. He was quite possibly in the main room now, fussing with some components and as oblivious to the rest of the world as if he were on Mars.
Blade and J chatted for a few minutes-afterward Blade couldn't remember what they talked about-then the door opened and Lord Leighton's voice invited them in. J led the way. They passed into the familiar rock-walled room, with the equally familiar gray crackle-finished consoles back in place. They showed signs of neglect and hasty installation, though, and there were trailing wires all over the floor. J and Blade stepped over them as carefully as if they'd been poisonous snakes.
In spite of this J moved so fast that Blade found himself falling behind. J passed around a console and vanished from sight. Then a sudden, explosive, «What the bloody-?» echoed around the room, loud enough to make Blade break into a run. He came around the corner and stopped dead.
J was standing, glowering at Lord Leighton. The scientist was looking steadily back at J, refusing to be intimidated. In spite of his humpback and polio-twisted legs, there was something rocklike and enduring about his stance and manner.
Leighton was also standing beside a silvery metal object, about seven feet high and looking like a cross between a medieval Iron Maiden and a futuristic space capsule. It didn't look particularly sinister, but it made Blade start and he could understand why it made J angry.
It was the launch capsule used with the KALI computer, supposedly destroyed along with it. Its existence proved that Leighton had violated strict orders from the Prime Minister, with the cooperation of Project staff.
Blade said nothing, but headed for the changing booth. He wasn't sure this unexpected development justified canceling the trip, and if it didn't he'd need to strip as usual. He felt a trifle dubious about leaving J, because the older man looked quite genuinely on the verge of having a stroke. On the other hand, it was hard to believe he had anything to contribute if an all-out quarrel between J and Leighton was brewing. He had no illusions that either man would accept him as a mediator, even though J regarded him almost as a son and Leighton had great respect for his intellect and survival qualities. When the chips were down, both men were too stubborn to listen to anyone.
By the time Blade came back, wearing only a loincloth, the atmosphere seemed a bit less tense. Whatever was going to happen, it wouldn't be the sort of head-on collision that might make it impossible for the two men to work together again. That would be almost as final a disaster for Project Dimension X as another attack by the Ngaa!
«-radical reduction in the stresses imposed on the subject during the transition,» Leighton was saying.
«Is this a fact, or simply an educated guess?»
Leighton must have been in a fairly good mood, because he didn't bristle at being accused of the obscene act of «guessing.» He shook his head. «It's a hypothesis, but one supported by all the data we have on Blade's first transition into the Dimension of the Ngaa.»
J nodded slowly. «That's true. The stress on Richard was so low that he was in the other Dimension before he realized it. That's basically how the Ngaa was able to take him over.»
«Precisely,» said Leighton, obviously keeping the triumph out of his voice with difficulty. «I'm not going to defend my bending of the rules, except that I've kept only the most useful and least dangerous part of the KALI system. In fact, I would say that using the old launching chair with this hastily rigged computer installation could be much more dangerous than using the KALI capsule.»
Leighton was capable of telling almost any sort of lie with a straight face. He would have made a superb politician if he hadn't had such a total contempt for politics. However, he seldom tried to lie to J on a matter of Richard Blade's safety. The old spymaster was too concerned about Blade and much too alert.
By now the snatches of the conversation he'd heard were triggering Blade's memories. Unlike the old system of wires and electrodes fastened in place by hand, the capsule made a circuit between him and the computer that was complete and identical each time. Leighton seemed to believe this might radically reduce the stress on the person in the capsule as he was shot off into Dimension X. That hadn't been in any of the reports, but it certainly sounded plausible. And if it was true — well, anything that reduced the danger of any part of the trip into Dimension X was a blessing.
For the moment at least Blade wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He cleared his throat, making the other two men pause, then asked Leighton:
«You'll be using the old manually-controlled main sequence with the KALI capsule this time?»
«Yes. The two are compatible, with a few modifications I've made.»
«And there's no other KALI hardware plugged in anywhere?»
«None.»
Blade turned to J. «Sir, I think I'd better take the chance. It doesn't sound like an unacceptable risk, as long as we're using nothing but the launch capsule. In fact, reducing the stress load on me won't do any harm at all. The faster I'm ready to fight when I reach the other side, the better. Most enemies there aren't so sneaky as the Ngaa.»
J frowned. «The problem is, you will be taking a chance, and a bigger one than I like.»
«That's possibly true,» said Blade. «But either I take the chance, or the whole Project takes it. If I know anything about the way politicians think-«
«Assuming their mental processes can be described as thinking,» put in Leighton.