Blade went on. «I suspect we're not out of the woods yet, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned. If we don't produce a fairly straightforward and normal roundtrip to Dimension X fairly soon, he may have second thoughts about keeping us going. We're still in the 'risky' category, and politicians like to keep that category as small as possible.»
J managed to laugh. «Richard, telling me that is teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. I was dealing with politicians while you were in short pants. But you're basically right. Go, and you'll have my blessing.» He raised his right hand, with the fingers firmly crossed.
Then he turned to Leighton. «Leighton, I don't particularly like this business of the hidden KALI capsule. But I'll let it pass on one condition. You tell me exactly how you managed to keep the thing hidden, and who helped you. I'm not questioning anybody's loyalty, but facts are facts. A network like yours could hide more disagreeable things than a piece of equipment.»
«Yes, but-«
«No 'buts,' Leighton. I don't play games with your computers. In return, I'll have to ask you not to play games with the Project's security.»
He took a deep breath. «If you won't cooperate, I'll have to do a housecleaning myself. Nothing brutal, you understand-just reassigning everybody I suspect of having had anything to do with hiding the capsule.»
«That certainly won't speed up our recovery from the Ngaa affair,» said Leighton.
«I'm willing to risk up to six months delay in the Project over this,» said J firmly. «I'm also willing to put the whole matter before the Prime Minister if necessary. It's not just our enemies who could benefit from sloppy security. What about the CIA, for example?»
Leighton sighed. «All right. I trust you to keep your mouth shut and not get anybody in trouble.»
The two older men shook hands, and after that things went swiftly. Leighton punched the button to initiate the Main Sequence. Blade climbed into the capsule, lay back, and relaxed. Leighton counted down, and as the count reached six, pressed another button to close the lid of the capsule. A click and darkness swallowed Blade. He felt the firmness of the capsule's inner surface against his skin.
Then in rapid succession:
A dazzling golden flash.
A soft, warm blueness, and a subtle sensation all over his skin, like a dozen skilled masseuses all working on him together. It was pleasant, almost erotic.
A harder blueness, neither cold nor warm.
Complete blackness.
Chapter 2
Blade woke up in the middle of such a din that for a moment he thought he'd landed in the middle of a busy city. Then he recognized the chattering of birds and apes, the drone of insects, the rustle of leaves. Now he thought of a jungle instead of a city.
He opened his eyes-or at least he tried to. The world stayed dark. For a moment that seemed hours long, Blade was frozen by a gruesome question. Was he blind? If the KALI capsule had somehow destroyed his sight
Before these thoughts could go any farther, Blade realized what was wrong. His face was covered from hairline to mouth with something like half-melted tar. It smelled and tasted like rotten vegetables, but it wasn't doing anything except completely covering his eyes. He raised one arm and began carefully scraping the muck off his face with his fingers.
Slowly the world around Blade came into sight. The noises hadn't lied-he was in the middle of a jungle. Above him the vine-grown trunk of a massive tree soared up until it vanished into a canopy of shaggy green leaves which left the ground in a sort of greenish twilight. In every direction the ground was covered with a nightmarish tangle of thorny, bushes, creeping and climbing vines, and small trees, most of them bearing vividly colored flowers. It was impossible to take a breath without being half-choked by the smells of flowers and decaying vegetation.
It was also going to be difficult to move more than a few yards in any direction without getting caught in the undergrowth. This jungle was about the last place Blade would have chosen to land naked as the day he was born. He would have considered selling his left hand for a machete to wield with the right, as well as something to protect his feet and skin from thorns and insects.
He sat up and finished cleaning off his face. Then he realized that his chest and left arm and leg were also covered with the same saplike liquid. It seemed to be getting stickier, as if it were congealing on his skin. It was also beginning to itch. He started scraping it off as fast as he could, pulling handfuls of leaves off the vines to help him.
Eventually Blade got himself as clean as he could manage. There were streaks and strings of drying liquid all over his skin, itching like a mild attack of poison ivy. A good deal of it was also clinging to his hair, which now stuck out in all directions like the quills of a porcupine. Blade suspected he looked more like the Thing from the Bottomless Swamp than a human being, and hoped any natives he met wouldn't decide to shoot first and ask questions afterward.
Blade stood up and did a series of exercises to loosen up his muscles. He decided that his body had come through the transition into Dimension X in first-class condition. In fact, he'd never felt nearly as good this soon after the transition. Everything was in place, everything worked, and he didn't have the faintest trace of a headache.
The twilight seemed to be getting brighter. Blade looked up and couldn't tell whether the sun was rising or just coming out from behind some clouds. At least right now he had enough light for traveling.
He'd have to travel, unless he wanted to stay here by the tree until he took root along with it. Never mind the vines and thorns in his path. There was no water in sight, no fruits or fleshy plants, no birds large enough to be worth trying to catch. There was life all around him in the jungle-the up roar proved that. But he wasn't going to be able to get much use out of it here.
He also wasn't going to be able to find the human life of this Dimension, if there was any. Not that moving on would necessarily bring him to civilization, of course. In this jungle an army might pass half a mile away without his seeing it, and he might wander around until the computer drew him back to Home Dimension. A bloody lot of good that would do for the Project!
Or there might be no people at all-nothing but dinosaurs and birds. In that case Blade would finally end up, as he'd put it, «Playing Tarzan without any apes to help me.» Pointless, certainly uncomfortable, but hopefully not too dangerous unless the wildlife was too wild! That was another thing to find out by doing some exploring.
So it was time to move out. Find water and food, get a weapon, then go hunting for the natives. It was almost a routine for Blade, but not boring. Each new Dimension held too many surprises to ever let Blade become bored, and more than enough to kill him if he left anything out of this «routine.»
Blade broke a branch off a nearby bush to use as a flyswatter. He pulled a few leaves from the branch, tasted one, then started chewing it slowly for the moisture. Waving the branch ahead of him, Blade started off.
It was an hour before he was out of sight of the big tree. In another hour he couldn't have said how far he'd come, and only occasional glimpses of the sun told him he was traveling roughly northwest. Since he couldn't see that one direction was much better than another, he kept on in that direction. Sometimes he was even able to travel in a straight line for a whole five minutes.
After the first couple of hours, he'd learned to tell the places where he could push through from the places where he had to go around. He'd learned the hard way, and his skin showed a fine pattern of thorn gouges and pricks. The scent of blood attracted a swarm of insects, a few of them with stingers.
After another hour Blade was able to move faster, because the underbrush was thinning out. In places the ground was bare for fifty yards at a stretch, except for dead leaves and patches of moss and ferns. It was easy to see why. Overhead the trees now made such a perfect canopy that sunlight could barely reach the ground. Blade realized that he might be moving faster now, but without the sun to guide him he might also be moving in a circle. It still didn't matter too much, as long as he didn't have the foggiest idea of the best way to go. Meanwhile it was a great relief not to have thorns jabbing him every few yards.