by Джеффри Лорд
«Blade!» said Feragga and Nungor together. Feragga continued to stare at the approaching machine, while Nungor ran toward the nearest Doimari machine. He shouted as he ran.
«Seeker! Seeker! You damned coward, bring that piece of iron over here and pick up Feragga! Pick up your lady and run her to safety! Pick her up, or, by the Lords, I'll burn every Seeker alive when I get home!» As he said this he realized that his chances of ever getting home were rapidly vanishing, but as long as Feragga's remained good-
Nungor was about to give up hope, when the Fighting Machine turned toward him, then tramped past and bent over Feragga. She shouted in surprise and fear as the metal hands picked her up, then shouted again as she saw Nungor turning back toward Blade's machine.
«Nungor, damn you! You can't-«
«Yes, I can, my lady and my love. Your safety is Doimar's future. My life will not be much loss if it ends here.» He shouted for the Seeker to hear. «Now get that scrapheap moving, and get your lady out of here!»
Dirt flew as the Fighting Machine's feet dug in. Then it was on its way, walking, trotting, finally running, with Feragga clinging desperately to its head and straddling one shoulder. She still looked back as long as she could.
After the machine started running, Nungor didn't pay it any more attention. He lay down behind a fallen Fighting Machine, and put three fire-bombs and a fresh fire-box ready to hand. Then he aimed his rifle at the towering figure of Blade's Fighting Machine and waited for it to come into range.
Blade's waldo was moving at a walk because Blade himself needed to catch his breath. He'd come nearly ten miles, most of it at a run, and on the way destroyed eighteen Doimari waldoes. Only four had given him any sort of a fight. Destroying the rest was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Then in the distance he caught sight of a waldo running off with a human figure perched on one shoulder. He increased the magnification of the visual scanners and recognized Feragga. Suddenly he found he had the strength to run again. He wasn't going to be able to catch most of the waldoes, but if he could catch Feragga and kill or capture her-Well, she was all that held the balance between the Seekers and the infantry. Take her out of the picture and there'd be civil war in Doimar. Kaldak would have a complete victory without losing another soldier or firing another laser blast.
Blade was starting to run when the laser hit the waldo in the head. It didn't wipe out the visual scanners, but it dazzled him so that it was a moment before he could see clearly again. When he could, he saw Nungor crouched behind a fallen waldo, his rifle aimed for another shot.
Blade started turning the waldo's own laser toward Nungor at the same moment the War Captain fired again. This time one scanner died, and Blade felt a sharp pain in his head. That was odd-damage to the waldo didn't register as pain in the operator. The controls had automatic cutouts-
The pain in his head grew sharper, and suddenly Blade knew what was happening. The computer was calling him back to Home Dimension-now, of all times!
«Damn!» Then he shouted, «Sidas-get ready to take over. I'm going to be sick.»
Sidas nodded, the technicians switched on his chair, and all its wiring promptly went up in a cloud of smoke. Sidas screamed and through pain-blurred eyes Blade saw the technicians beating out little fires all around him. They pulled him out of the chair, though, and from the way he was swearing he didn't seem to be seriously hurt.
«Bairam-get into a chair and take over. Now, for the Lord's sake and Kaldak's future. Move, you stupid little-!»
Those were Blade's last words in Kaldak's Dimension. He knew he shouldn't have called Bairam «stupid,» tried to apologize, but found the pain in his head freezing his jaws. Bairam dashed past and leaped into the first chair he reached, shouting to the technicians, «Quick! Blade's after Nungor and Feragga! If we can kill them-«
Then Blade couldn't hear any better than he could talk. He fought desperately to hold onto sensation in this Dimension as long as he could, but the battle was as hopeless as ever. He felt as if his head was being wrenched apart, then the command center vanished and in the next moment the computer room in the Project complex took its place. He'd made the transition between the Dimensions almost between one breath and the next.
Then Blade realized he was still in the control chair, not in the KALI capsule, and it was teetering drunkenly. He tried to straighten up, but his transition-slowed reflexes weren't fast enough. The chair went over with a clanging crash which echoed around the room. Blade felt new pains all over, the sharpest one in his jaw. He saw J's face bending over him, twisted with alarm. Then he stopped seeing faces or feeling pain as a comfortable, soothing blackness took him.
Chapter 24
«Good night, Mr. Blade.»
The blond nurse sounded disgustingly cheerful. Blade wouldn't have replied even if his broken jaw hadn't been wired shut so that all he could do was grunt. She went out, and Blade was alone in his hospital room, waiting for the sleeping injection to take effect.
He'd been tempted to refuse it, but that would simply have brought the doctor back in to make a fuss, and Blade was in no mood to be fussed at when he could only grunt in reply. At least Lord Leighton and J hadn't insisted on his doing more than writing a brief summary of his adventures this trip, although he suspected the scientist would do his share of fussing as soon as Blade could talk again.
Perhaps it was just as well that Blade wouldn't be talking for about ten days. He was in a thoroughly vile temper over being snatched back to Home Dimension when there was so much left undone in Kaldak and so many questions he'd never have answered. Did Bairam kill Nungor and catch up with Feragga? What happened between Kaldak and Doimar after that? How was Kareena doing with his child? Was she considering Sidas as a possible husband, as he'd hinted she ought to?
Blade made a string of noises which with an unwired jaw would have been a string of oaths. He would keep his temper when he could talk again, and tell Lord Leighton and J everything they needed to know and everything they asked in addition. He would even help the Project's scientists test the control chair-apparently they were excited about something in it, although he didn't know exactly what. Lord Leighton hadn't been able to explain it in plain English.
After that, though, he was going to say good-bye to the Project and everyone else who knew him from Adam for at least two weeks. He'd go on a walking tour and perhaps look for a country house he could buy cheaply. He had been looking for country property for sometime, since in his London apartment he couldn't keep Lorma, the hunting cat he'd brought home from the Forest of Binaark on his last trip. She deserved better than a cage in the Project's complex even if he did visit her every few days to see that she was well fed. He would tell Lord Leighton what to do with the Project for those two weeks, and if the scientist protested he would head for Brazil and try a career as chief of a tribe of Amazon Indians! Enough was enough.
In spite of his irritation, the sleeping injection was beginning to work. Blade leaned back on the pillows and let it do so. By the time the nurse came back, he was so soundly asleep that even her knocking over the bedpan and having to clean it up didn't make him blink.
In Kaldak, the people from the command center sat at the entrance, breathing the night air and listening to the sounds of their city celebrating victory. None of them wanted to stay down below and have to look at the empty space where Blade and his chair had been.
«He must have been one of the Sky Masters themselves,» said Bairam to Sidas. «They sent him to bring us out of the darkness, then took him home when his work was finished.»
«I don't know that it was finished,» said Sidas. «But certainly the rest is up to us.» He thought of Kareena.
Peython and Kareena sat beside a fire, watching steaks cut from a captured munfan broil over the fire. Peython held his daughter as he had when she was a little girl. Kareena rested her head against her father's chest and thought of another meal of munfan steaks, with the father of her child who had now gone-far away, she k
new that much.
Twenty miles away, Feragga of Doimar sat staring into another campfire, waiting for Nungor. She knew now that Doimar had lost and would have to make peace once and for all with the triumphant Kaldakans. She had been betrayed by Blade, and that hurt her deeply. Ah well, at least she still had Nungor.
But Nungor lay on the hilltop behind the fallen Fighting Machine, half his head burned away.
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