Slowly Blade drifted back to consciousness. He was in his usual room in the Project's private hospital. J just standing at the foot of the bed, flanked by two attractive nurses. Blade struggled up into a sitting position, discovering in the process that his right arm was in a cast. He looked a question at J.
«Just a simple fracture,» the older man said with a smile. «You'll be out of here within a few days, unless the doctors really dig in their heels.» J understood what a bad patient Blade was and how he usually recovered faster out of the hospital than in it.
«How is the Wizard?» Blade asked.
«The man who came back with you? We've got him in another room, under sedation. Yes, we heard your warning. We'll keep a close eye on him once he's conscious, although I doubt if an old man like that could really be dangerous, physically or mentally.»
«You haven't had any experience of what-«began Blade, then stopped. His mind was still foggy, but somewhere far in the back of it a warning bell was chiming faintly. «Old man?»
«Oh yes-must be as old as Leighton or older. I admit he looked younger when we first saw him. That must have just been a trick of the lighting in the computer room. He-«
Slowly Blade shook his head. «He is younger. Or at least he was. He-«
«Richard, are you all right?»
Blade ignored J. In his mind the warning bell was now clanging like a fire alarm. Ignoring the presence of the nurses, he leaped out of bed and snatched up a hospital gown. The nurses drew back, not quite willing to tackle Blade in this condition without J's permission. Before J could say anything, Blade pulled the gown over his head and was out the door.
He trotted down the corridor as fast as he could go without jarring his broken arm. Then he realized that in his haste he'd forgotten to ask what room the Wizard was in. Before he could turn back, two doctors and three nurses came charging down the corridor at a dead run, carrying every sort of emergency medical gear Blade had ever seen. One of them recognized Blade and snapped, «Get back into bed, for God's sake! We've got a total cardiac arrest in that old man Leighton dumped on us!» Before Blade could reply the medical team vanished into the nearest room.
Blade followed them in. The doctor turned to whisper savagely, «Get out of here, you-«But another doctor pointed at the electroencephalograph standing beside the bed. It showed that all brain function had ceased in the man lying in the bed.
Bernardo Sembruzo, Conde di Pietroverde, captain for the Visconti, Wizard of Rentoro, genius, was dead-dead of the old age his mental powers had kept at bay for so long, until those powers were destroyed by the passage from Rentoro to Home Dimension.
Blade looked down at the wrinkled, shrunken, white-haired thing in the bed, and once again he could not have said a word to save his life. The Wizard had turned all his wisdom to uses that grew more and more evil, but he'd had that wisdom. He'd had it until Richard Blade-or at least something that Richard Blade set in motion-destroyed it.
In silence Blade walked back to his room, leaving the doctors and nurses standing around the dead Wizard. In spite of his broken arm, his exhaustion, and the sleeping pills the nurses gave him, Blade found it rather hard to get to sleep that night.
Four days later Blade was sitting in a chair in Leighton's private office. J was sitting in another, and Leighton sat behind his great battered Victorian desk. Beside the desk was a rectangular box covered with canvas and a battered briefcase.
Leighton looked up from his desk with a strangely satisfied smile on his face. Blade wasn't sure what there was to be satisfied about, considering that this trip to Rentoro seemed to have been a complete waste for everybody except the Rentorans.
«Ah, Richard,» said Leighton cheerfully. «J tells me that you've been rather depressed over the fate of the Wizard. Blaming yourself for his death and all that.»
There were times when J carried his fatherly interest in Blade a little too far. Blade frowned. «I think depressed is too strong a word. However, I will admit that I do feel responsible for a somewhat unfortunate situation.» When he chose, Blade could use an understatement as well as anybody. «The Wizard must have had one of the most powerful minds that ever lived. That mind was working, even if rather oddly, until I dragged him with me into Home Dimension.»
«The Wizard's situation was already unfortunate before you had anything to do with him,» said Leighton. «The autopsy showed that. He'd been able to control the aging process in his body, but only partly in his brain. The autopsy showed a good many brain cells that had lost function long before you came on the scene. He must have already been on the edge, and those last efforts put him over. He was caught in a vicious circle. The more his brain deteriorated, the more wild ideas he got, and the more wild ideas he got, the more he increased the strain and the rate of deterioration.
«No, Richard, there's nothing you did to the Wizard that wasn't already inevitable-and close. In fact, one might say that you gave him a more merciful death than he would have had otherwise. If he hadn't come with you, he would have ended up a mindless animal, staggering, then crawling, then lying in his own filth until he died of thirst or starvation or disease. As it was, he died painlessly in a hospital bed, not even knowing that he was dying.»
Blade felt a great sense of relief. If Leighton said this, it was true to the best of his knowledge. Leighton would lie with a perfectly straight face about quite a few things, but never about anything scientific. On scientific questions he would not tell a lie to save himself from a firing squad, let alone to make Richard Blade feel less guilty.
Blade smiled. «So I suppose he would not have been able to teach me or anyone else his skills, even in Rentoro?»
«Unlikely, to say the least. The effort involved in the teaching would probably have pushed him over the edge.»
«So now he really is gone, and all his secrets with him,» said Blade.
Leighton's eyes sparkled. «Not quite, Richard, not quite.» Painfully he bent down and pulled off the canvas cover, revealing a wire cage with two white mice in it. Then he opened the briefcase and took out two pairs of sky-bridge crystals. They were only a fraction of the normal size, but there was no mistaking the material.
Leighton placed one pair carefully on his desk, then put the other pair on the floor in front of the cage. Blade held his breath. Leighton opened the cage door, the mice darted out, they passed between the crystals on the floor-
— then with a faint pop they appeared between the crystals on Leighton's desk. Both were lying motionless on their sides, but Leighton reached over and gently prodded their stomachs with a finger. Slowly they got to their feet, then darted for the edge of the desk. J caught them as they reached it, cupped one in each hand, and gently returned them to the cage.
«We are able to cut these from one of the crystals you brought, then activate them electrically,» said Leighton. «Unlike mental force, electricity makes the crystals permanently active, and uses them up rather quickly. So we can't make any really high-capacity sky-bridges with the crystals you brought back.
«However, we're working on that. A spectrographic analysis suggests at least the possibility of synthesizing the crystals on a large scale. It will require a fairly large investment in research-don't groan out loud, J, if you please! but I suspect that in the near future…»
Blade found himself unable to pay attention to Leighton's predictions about the near future. A single, magnificently satisfying thought was echoing around his mind.
It hadn't been wasted, after all.