Then Richard Blade trod wearily back up the bill to where Gath and his men were waiting to march.
Chapter Seventeen
Two weeks passed. A week of preparation and a week on the march. Blade, encapsuled in work, sleeping but two or three hours a day, was so snared by the flow of time that he forgot it. Jeddia was burned and he married the Child Princess Mitgu who, on their wedding night, proved no child after all. As dawn broke, Blade was near exhaustion and salved his conscience by admitting that a Jedd girl of ten was like a woman of thirty in Home Dimension. Mitgu had been a virgin, had bled copiously, but if she felt pain it in no way dimmed her ardor. And when she left him alone at last and he tried to sleep he was stricken with new head pains as the computer probed for him. The pains were fierce but short-lived. Lord L had missed him again.
This bright morning Blade, accompanied by Captains Gath and Kaven, had gone far ahead of the long column of trekking Jedds. They were nearing the valley mouth to the north, where the ascending terrain tunneled through a narrow gut and spread out in a broad and spreading plain. And there the way was barred by the Shining Gate.
Now, high on a crag, the three men stood and gazed, near blinded by the darling reflection of the sun on metal. Both Gath and Kaven were astounded and afraid at the sight. Blade was only astounded. He recognized at once that the gate, dam, wall or rampart — call it what you would — was of stainless steel. Half a mile across and some two hundred feet high, it blocked the valley mouth. There was no sign of life on or near it. Desolate, towering, brooding, it shimmered in the heat and mirrored the valley in itself.
Some of the desolation touched Blade and by the alchemy of time and place was turned to loneliness. It was his first leisure in weeks and now it turned sour — he sensed the beginning of an end. What the end would be he could not guess. He recognized the pattern as before, the ever upward terrain, the sense of forward progress, of wandering through the evolutionary process with eons compressed into days and weeks.
None of this could he share with his companions. No more than he could explain to them that the dam, or wall, or gate was of steel and so the Kropes who had built it must be an industrial people. There must lie, beyond that shining barrier, a highly sophisticated civilization.
Gath said, «And now, Sire Blade, now that we have reached the Shining Gate — what?»
Kaven peered at Blade anxiously, the same question in his eyes. He was awe-stricken and afraid and trying not to show it. His sword arm, still heavily bandaged, was in a sling fashioned by Blade.
Blade did not answer for a moment. His eye was on another crag, a jagged, bent needle of stone that reared far overhead and, he was certain, would overlook the shining barrier. After studying it for a minute he turned to them with a grim smile.
«Don't ask me riddles. You have never seen a Krope?»
Both men said they had not. No Jedd had actually ever seen a Krope. In long years past a few exploring parties had been sent up the valley to the wall. None had ever returned, No word had ever been sent. The Shining Gate spoke in silence. Stay clear.
Blade nodded. «They why ask me? I know as little as you Jedds. But I intend to find out» He pointed to the hook of stone outlined far over them. «From that vantage I can see over the wall.»
Both Jedds gazed up, craning their necks, then said in disbelief, «It cannot be done, Sire. No man could climb that.»
«I can. I will. But it will take me all day, and in the meantime here are orders. Get back to the column and see they are carried out at once.»
When they had gone he made his preparations for the climb. He lay on his belly and studied the terrain for an hour, formulating and discarding various attacks on the crag. For a short period disillusionment set in — this task would make Sir Edmund Hilary, the great mountaineer, himself quail — then Blade chuckled and told himself that he had no choice. Press on. He sensed that his time in this Dimension X was growing short and he still had his job to complete. It was but half done. He had made tools, or had them made, and had explored the mountains as they trekked between the ranges. They were indeed rich in every mineral known to Home Dimension. Blade had tested samples and sealed the knowledge gained away in his memory file for Lord L to unlock and record. And yet there was more to do — he must press on and on, learning all he could, until this mission came to a natural and inevitable end. When that would be he could not know.
The sun was near to setting when at last Blade lay exhausted on the upjutting needle of rock. He had done it and had cheated Death a dozen times in the doing. Now he clung to the smooth gray surface, his fingers and toes digging into crevices, and stared out over the steel wall. With the sun behind him he could see well and clearly.
The vast plain stretched out to infinity. Here and there it was dotted by small houses, also seemingly made of steel, and beyond the houses he saw row on row on row of what looked like huge factory buildings. Yet there were no chimneys, no smoke. And nothing moved. No sound came. It was like an industrial town deserted, a wasteland barren of people, lacking any slightest human touch.
Yet near the shining barrier itself there was movement Near one end of the wall, closest to Blade, was a large structure built of the same metal as the gate. Through its doors the figures constantly came and went. Blade frowned. If they were men — and they moved and looked like men — they were the strangest he had ever seen. They were made of metal and they glistened in the last rays of sunlight f ailing over the great wall.
Blade frowned and considered. Then he had it, given the hint by the very faint awkwardness of articulation. These Kropes, if they were Kropes, moved with an arthritic stiffness.
Robots!
Blade studied the figures for a long time, checking and doublechecking, then accepted it as fact. He was up against robots. Mechanical and electronic men.
That meant a central control. Blade took the risk of standing on his crag and, shading his eyes with a hand, sought to find again what he in one fleeting second thought he had seen. Something floating in the clouds far away over the plain.
He did see it. Saw it for a microsecond before the low clouds closed in again. The very tip of a tower, the spire of a tall building far away, the upthrust lance of a skyscraper that took his breath away. Then it was gone, wrapped in moist clouds, but not before he had made a rapid triangulation and worked it out in his head. He slipped down to his rock again and did the computation over and did not believe himself. And yet he had seen it.
The tower he had seen must be twice as high, plus a little, as the Empire State Building!
Central control.
He shook off his awe and turned to tactics, to practical things. And was in luck. Within five minutes he had located a possible way around the steel barrier. The Kropes were careless, or their control inefficient, for at the end of the wall nearest Blade, where the wall abutted on the sheer cliffside of the valley, erosion had taken a minute toll. But it was enough. Centuries of rain and wind had so eaten away the living rock that a narrow and shallow trench had been dredged between the end of the wall and the cliff. One resolute man might worm and squeeze his way through. Blade marked it well and began his descent, thankful for the moon that would rise soon. It would take Mm nearly all night to get down from his perch.
It lacked two hours of dawn when he rejoined the Jedds. The orders he had given Gath and Kaven had been carried out to the letter. The main body of the column had camped far back in the valley, protected by its twisting and turning course, and out of sight of the Shining Gate.