by Джеффри Лорд
On this side the hill sloped away more gently, leveling out in an immense grassy plain. The plain began less than half a mile away and continued all the way to the horizon, as flat and featureless as a billiard table. Far off to the north Blade saw what looked like one end of an enormous bridge, with more ruined buildings clustered around it. He couldn't see what the bridge crossed, or any more signs of life than he'd seen elsewhere.
Blade tore off another branch and started tying it with lengths of vine to the first branch, to make a heavier club. By the time he'd finished, his hands were red and sore from the acid sap of the creepers. He'd also decided to go east, exploring the ruined city at the foot of the hill, then cutting through the forest. What lay on the far side of the forest certainly looked more interesting than the plain to the west. The forest would also give him better shelter from the weather and probably more food. He took a last look around the ruined building, then started down the hill.
It didn't take Blade long to see all of the ruined city he needed to see. One rubble-clogged street or one house with its windows and doors gaping like the eye sockets of a skull looked very much like another. Like the building on the hill, the city had been abandoned for generations, possibly centuries. Unlike the building, it had been visited a number of times after its people abandoned it. Blade saw ragged holes in a dozen walls, where fixtures had been pulled or chopped free. He saw rooms swept almost clean of dust. Under an overhanging piece of roof he found the remains of a campfire and a pile of animal droppings no more than a few weeks old. Blade looked briefly for the animals' tracks, then realized the night's rain would have completely wiped them out.
The visitors seldom went above the third floor and apparently never went into the cellars. Blade struggled down some of the crumbling, treacherous flights of stairs and found whole untouched piles of metal waiting for him. Much of it was so rusted or corroded he couldn't tell what it had been, but he found a piece with a sharp point just the right size to be used one-handed. He also found strips of a plasticlike material which he wrapped around one end of the piece of metal to give him a better grip on this improvised knife. A longer strip of the plastic tied around his waist made a belt.
Blade came up from the last cellar faster than he'd gone down. It was definitely inhabited-by ordinary-looking mice and by something considerably larger which never left the shadows in a corner. Blade could only hear its chittering and the scrabbling of claws, on stone, and smell an unbelievably rank odor.
By the time Blade left the city the clouds were almost gone, and it was a bright, if somewhat chilly, day. He could now see clearly that the tall shapes beyond the forest to the east were colossal buildings. They stood so close together that some of them were linked by aerial bridges, and most of them looked nearly intact. Blade was sure that their appearance was deceptive, but the towers would provide better shelter than the ruins. They should also tell him more about the fate of this Dimension and its people.
The moment Blade plunged into the forest, he was back in twilight. The trees grew in such regular order that it was clear they'd been planted that way. No doubt the spaces between the trees were wide enough when the park was laid out. Now, after long years of neglect, the ground between the trees was overgrown with bushes, ferns, and vines. Blade lost a good deal of skin pushing through some particularly thick patches. He kept going, since he didn't want to spend the night in the forest or reach the city after dark if he could help it.
Around mid-afternoon he came out onto the bank of a sluggish, weed-choked stream, with an unmistakable path on the far bank. He probed the stream with a fallen branch and learned he'd be swimming rather than wading across it. He was about to slip into the water when a patch of the weeds started swirling back and forth. Then a long row of black bony spines broke the surface briefly, heading toward Blade. He pulled his foot out of the water just as the creature swam close enough to give him a good look at it.
It looked like a cross between a giant catfish, a piranha, and a stingray. It had spines on either side of its jaws as well as along its back, a large mouth full of needle-sharp teeth, and a long thin tail with a barb on the end. It was at least nine feet long and coal-black except for sickly green eyes.
Blade decided that swimming across the stream might not be such a good idea after all. He started working his way upstream, looking for bridges or fallen trees. He found neither, but eventually he came to the ruins of a small dam. Beyond the dam the stream spread out in a small lake, but over the top of the dam the water was no more than ankle-deep. Blade crossed the top of the dam as fast as he dared go on the crumbling, slimy stones, keeping a watchful eye on the lake. Two sets of black spines rose near the dam only moments after he reached dry land and the path.
Once on the path he moved more easily but also more cautiously. The existence of a path implied the existence of someone to make it, and Blade didn't want to surprise or be surprised by that someone.
So he moved from one patch of cover to the next, looking and listening around him before each move. The path was obviously in fairly regular use, but there'd been too much rain last night even here under the trees to leave any footprints.
Roughly a mile down the path from the stream, Blade stopped abruptly. On either side of the path, ferns, vines, bushes, and even small trees were crushed into the ground. A trail of more of the same damage led off into the woods to the left. A large tree at the head of the trail showed a black scar. Blade looked more closely at the tree. Something had gouged out bark and wood to a depth of at least six inches, and also burned the edges of the wound to charcoal.
Blade followed the trail. It came to an end within fifty yards, and the smell stopped Blade even sooner. Decay and insects hadn't left enough of the animal to make it worth going closer. It must have been about the size of a large bear, and its skull and ribs showed the same sort of blackening as the tree.
Blade began to wonder just how primitive the people of this Dimension were. They'd obviously wrecked much of their civilization. Just as obviously, they had enough technology left to produce a weapon very much like a laser. That didn't make them any less dangerous, of course. Civilized people can be as unfriendly to strangers as primitive ones. With machine guns, lasers, and artillery they can also be unfriendly at a much greater range and in a much more destructive way.
It was also more important than before to get out of the woods before nightfall. Blade was sure he could outtalk, outfight, or if necessary outrun most human opponents. He wasn't nearly so confident he could do the same with a creature ten times his weight and probably carnivorous.
Blade returned to the path and started off again, moving a good deal more briskly than before.
Chapter 3
Blade covered at least two miles at a trot, then saw the path was sloping downhill. At the same time the trees began to thin out. Soon Blade could make out the tumbled, overgrown stone blocks of a wall ahead. He climbed over the wall and picked his way across another stream on the half-submerged ruins of a bridge. After a few hundred yards more through young trees, Blade found himself on an open hillside. The sun was still well above the horizon. At the foot of the hill the city of towers loomed against a pale sky. In the clear air Blade felt he could reach out and touch it. Even from this distance it showed remarkably little damage. Most of the windows and doors were black and gaping, and here and there stone had crumbled or metal paneling had corroded through. Bushes sprouted from cracks in the streets, and the wreckage of one of the aerial bridges completely blocked an intersection. Otherwise the city might have been sleeping rather than dead. It was easy to tell that its builders had loved beauty and put that love into their city, without a thought for the war which their love of beauty hadn't been able to prevent.
On the hillside sloping down to the city, Blade saw clusters of ruined buildings. Some of the clusters were practically small towns in themselves, others were isolated and overgrown. The «suburbs» hadn't been so robustly built as the towers of the city i
tself.
In a way, Blade found the city of towers a more depressing sight than the ruins to the west. He was glad it was late enough in the day to give him an excuse to stay out of the city until morning. He didn't care for the thought of prowling dark streets where the least superstitious man might find himself watching and listening for ghosts.
Blade stiffened as he realized the morbid and dangerous turn his thoughts were taking. He'd been letting his attention wander, at a time when he had to be even more alert than he'd been in the forest. He took cover behind a bush and found that when he could no longer see those dead towers looming over him, the gloomy thoughts went away.
He also realized that if he hadn't been alone he wouldn't have felt this way. He wouldn't be too particular about the company, either. He remembered some of his old comrades from MI6A, dour men who seldom talked about anything except their profession and the price of whisky. Even one of them would have been a relief.
Blade was as much a loner as any sane man can be. He wouldn't have joined MI6A in the first place if he wasn't. But even a man as naturally solitary as a cat can occasionally want someone to talk to or at least to guard his back. But Blade didn't even have someone else who'd faced the dangers of Dimension X and could swap stories with him over a bottle of Scotch! According to Leighton, they were one step closer to sending someone else to Dimension X, once an alloy-weapon or suit could he manufactured to increase the survival chances. Still, even if such a protective device were made, they'd still have to find someone who could travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane, and the search for such a person was as far from success as ever.
Blade decided that if he had a choice between a happy marriage in Home Dimension and a comrade-in-arms for travel into Dimension X, he'd choose the second. It was hard to imagine a woman worth marrying who would accept being shut out of most of her husband's working life. She would be shut out-the Official Secrets Act would see to that. Even worse, she'd have a good chance of ending up a widow without ever being allowed to know how!
Blade rose, stepped out into the open, then stopped in midstride. Smoke and dust were rising from one of the clusters of ruins, less than half a mile away. Then he saw running figures burst out of the ruins onto the open hillside. They seemed to be human, with dark skins or wearing dark clothing. Some ran singly, others in pairs. Darker shapes, low to the ground, seemed to be running after the people and among them. As Blade watched he saw the reddish flicker of sunset light on metal, then a longer, greenish glow which looked artificial. Lasers?
Blade drew his knife and started down the hill, using every bit of cover he could. About halfway down the hill he saw what the low dark shapes were. He saw the short legs, the smooth brown coats, the pointed heads with ugly red eyes, the obscenely hairless tails.
Rats.
Rats the size of German Shepherds!
Blade charged out from behind a stretch of broken wall and plunged down the hill like an Olympic sprinter.
Blade loathed rats. He'd loathed them ever since a night on one of his first missions for MI6A. He'd spent that night in a hut on the outskirts of Calcutta, along with the rat-gnawed corpse of a baby no more than three months old. Ever since that night he'd killed rats any time he had a chance, coolly, efficiently, and as thoroughly as possible.
Blade went down the hill with all thoughts of having no one to guard his back quite forgotten. He didn't quite forget that he had a back to guard. He never went that far, one of the reasons he was still alive after so many years of enough dangers to kill a dozen men. Instead of staying under cover of the ruins, Blade now stayed in the open, as far from any cover as possible. Crumbling walls and fallen roofs could hide the rats. With his knife and club, Blade could fight them safely only if he saw them coming a long way off. It would also help if he didn't suddenly burst out of nowhere at the people fighting the rats. They might be just a little bit trigger-happy right now!
Blade counted about a dozen people and at least twice that many rats. Four of the people seemed to be armed with rifles firing lasers or some other type of energy beam. The others carried bows or spears. All of them carried short swords strapped to their hips. So far none of the rats were close enough to make the people draw their swords.
The battle was moving uphill toward Blade, and the people were leaving a trail of dead or dying rats behind them as they climbed. Every time one rat went down, two or three more seemed to pop out of the ruins, and they were tough. Blade saw one lose a leg to a laser beam but keep coming on three legs until someone else put an arrow through its brain.
Most of the people were dressed in dark leather boots, trousers, and baggy shirts. Some also wore heavy jackets studded with bits of metal, as a crude sort of armor. Blade saw one with both a jacket and a rifle run up the hill toward him, then stop suddenly and turn without noticing the Englishman. A moment later Blade himself had to stop. At his feet was a steep-sided ditch at least ten feet deep and half again as wide, the bottom overgrown with bushes and grass. The angle of the slope had hidden the ditch from Blade.
Now Blade could see that the rifleman was a boy no more than seventeen years old, with long blue-tinged hair caught up in a pigtail and a red sash around his waist. He was kneeling and firing at the oncoming rats with more enthusiasm than accuracy. Blade winced as he saw one laser beam crisp grass at the feet of one of the boy's comrades.
Then suddenly the grass and bushes at the bottom of the ditch churned, and four of the rats scrambled up the side toward the boy. «Behind you!» Blade shouted. The boy whirled, finger closing on the trigger of his rifle. Blade dove for the ground as a laser beam singed his hair. Then the first of the rats reached the boy. He drew his sword, but not before the rat was too close for him to hold it off. Its jaws closed on his leg, and Blade knew from his yell that the leather wasn't tough enough to keep out those yellow-white teeth. The boy hacked down with the sword, splitting the rat's skull but dropping his rifle. It hit the lip of the ditch, teetered, then rolled down a few feet to fetch up against a bush.
Before the rifle stopped rolling, Blade was gathering himself for a leap. As it stopped, he jumped. He landed on hands and knees close to the rifle but closer to one of the rats. It lunged at him. Blade crouched and met it with knife in one hand and the other hand outstretched to guard. He saw that these giant rats moved more slowly in proportion to their size than normal rats.
As the rat closed, Blade's free hand shot forward, closing on the rat's ears. He jerked its head back and his knife slashed, laying the rat's throat open. Then he picked it up one-handed, threw it at its two remaining comrades, and bent down to scoop up the laser rifle.
It looked so simple that Blade couldn't believe anyone could miss with it. Then he missed two shots himself, and one rat got so close that he had to reverse the rifle and crush the rat's skull with the butt. After that he realized he'd been using the laser like a normal bullet-firing weapon, leading his target and allowing for the wind. Laser beams moved at the speed of light, unaffected by wind.
Blade killed the last of the four rats in the ditch with a long blast which nearly tore it in two. It rolled down the slope, its charred guts trailing, to land almost on top of five more rats coming out of the same burrow. They milled around long enough for Blade to drop two of them with shots to the head. He killed a third as it scrambled upward, and burned the tail off a fourth. That slowed it down enough for the boy to kill it with a sword thrust between the eyes. The fifth rat reared up on its hind legs to attack the boy's throat. The boy thrust it through the stomach, its jaws closed on empty air inches short of his throat, and then Blade burned halfway through its neck with his laser.
More rats were scurrying out of their burrow in the ditch as the last corpse rolled down. Blade scrambled up to join the boy on the edge before any of the new rats could start climbing up. The boy took one long look at Blade, examining him from head to foot. Then he shrugged and after that seemed to find nothing unusual about fighting side by side with a nearly
naked man half again his size and much lighter-skinned.
Blade picked off rats at long range, and the boy used his sword on any which got close. His wounded leg was bleeding freely, but the wounds didn't seem deep enough to slow him down. They were both too busy killing rats in the ditch to pay attention to the battle behind them. Blade's world shrank down to the matted, blood-smeared grass in the ditch, the blood-spattered boy beside him, the hot rifle in his hands, and the steadily more overpowering smell of burned rat flesh.
Eventually Blade's laser ran out of power in the middle of a burst. The rat was still alive, and the boy jumped down to kill it with his sword. He slipped on the grass and tumbled head over heels to the bottom of the ditch. Blade threw down his useless rifle and got ready to finish off the rat with his knife.
Then a laser beam sizzled past Blade's ankles, and the rat's head exploded gruesomely. He turned around, raising his knife. The man standing there was nearly his own size, with bare arms corded with muscles and covered with scars. His head was shaved bald, and he wore a mustache with small silver beads tied to each end. Wide golden eyes met Blade's for a moment, then shifted their gaze down into the ditch.
«Ho, Bairam!» the man shouted. «Your thoughts are still faster than your eye or your hand. Does nothing change?»
Young Bairam glared at the man in silence for a moment, then pointed at Blade. «Yes it does, Hota. It was this one who saved me, not you. Also he, unlike you, did not use Oltec when the battle was over and death-danger past.»
«The death-danger was not past. There were still living rats close.»
«I saw none.»
«You had your eyes turned the wrong way, as usual.»
«I had my eyes on these,» he said, pointing at the dead or dying rats littering the bottom of the ditch. «And he-«pointing at Blade «-and I kept them from biting you in the ass, until they were all dead. It was then that you used the Oltec. The Law says-«