Pearl Of Patmos rb-7

by Джеффри Лорд

  Blade stared down at the electrodes attached to his scrotum. «No, sir. We never have. Why now? That’s a rather sensitive spot, sir, and I don’t see how-«

  «Of course you don’t, Richard. Nothing to bother your head about. But we can’t stand still, you know. We must progress, always progress. You will have noted that I am using forty electrodes this time instead of thirty?»

  Blade had noted.

  Lord L finished a girdle of electrodes around Blade’s narrow waist. «I may let you remain in Dimension X a bit longer this time, Richard. I said nothing to J about it, because he is turning into a nervous old maid, but you have a right to know.»

  «How much longer, sir?»

  He could not see His Lordship’s face. The old man was behind him, taping electrodes to the small of his back.

  «Not too long,» he said cheerfully. «But a bit longer than you have been staying. Give you a chance to explore and accomplish more, eh? Of course we can’t know, other than a priori, just what sort of time scale you will encounter out there. But in terms of Home Dimension time I plan to keep you out at least two months. You have no objections?»

  Ensnared as he was, caught in a net of wires and electrodes, Blade could do nothing but laugh at the question. «No objections, sir.»

  «Good-good. Fine. J will worry and call me names, as usual, but I’ll handle him. There, just about ready. Let’s run through the briefing one last time, my boy. I know it is all very old hat by now, but to humor me we’ll just run through the checklist. Right.»

  Lord L ticked off the points on a clip board as Blade ran through them. Emergency measures, bow to best preserve his brain potential, optimum conditions for a computer recall. Blade knew them all by heart and had never had to use any of them.

  The old scientist made a final tick on the list and put down the board. «We are set, then. Just remember that you cjo not have to make an effort to consciously remember. None at all. Your sessions with the chronos computer, and the magnesium pemoline, will take care of that. You will remember, just as you always have. Your brain protein synthesis has been doubled. When you get back we’ll put you into hypnosis and drain it all out of you.»

  Lord Leighton hobbled back toward the instrument console. Blade watched his gnarled old hand reach for the red enameled switch. The fear was gripping him now and, though he made no sign, his guts were a mass of ice. There would be pain. There would be madness. He was, once again, on the brink of the unknowable and unthinkable-until that switch closed and his brain cells dissolved and flowed and ran molten into some new matrix that would restructure them. It would be a new and different brain and it would perceive a new and different world.

  Only he, Richard Blade, was blessed and cursed in this fashion. Of all the trillions who had lived and died on this tiny capsule called Earth, this spaceship careering out of nothing into nowhere, only Blade had been granted the miracle-that he for a time escape, that he see beyond the veil.

  Lord Leighton smiled and waved a hand. «Good luck, my boy. Take every care.»

  The switch closed.

  Blade felt his eyes popping out as a thousand gallons of blood was pumped into his head. Lord L was a white scrawl on a blackboard and a giant eraser whisked him away. Blade felt his blood harden into raw red stuff, a conduit for the current that invaded him. Suddenly he was very small, a micro-man, and he was scooped up and attached to a whirring dynamo wheel. Around and around and around and around-he was doing 5000 rpm.

  The giant bloody-pawed rat came out of a Hansel and Gretel house and laughed at Blade. The rat knelt and raised his scarlet paws in prayer. Blade, still tiny, saw that the rat was wearing a saddle. It wished to be ridden. Blade vaulted into the saddle.

  The rat changed into a gigantic black steed, pawing air and snorting fire. Blade was riding, riding, riding. He looked back and saw his followers: millions of them, millions of Blades, all himself and all on black chargers.

  Blade raised his sword, so long it touched the sun, and shouted into the black rushing wind. «Chargel»

  Eternal winds caught the word and hurled it back to the horde behind him and he heard the million echoes: «Charge-charge-charge-charge-charge-«

  He lost his seat on the black steed and fell. And fell. And fell. He was in a sunny meadow, unhurt, already forgetting, hearing the sound of running water and consumed by a great thirst. He saw a brook and ran toward it. As he was about to drink, the brook changed into a girl, a slim and red-upped girl and Blade kissed her and found her lips made of salt and there was no surcease for his thirst. The girl changed into a cat and clawed his face and leaped away from him, spitting.

  Blade began to cry. He found a leaf and formed it into a cup and cried into it. When it was full. he drank his own tears.

  There came a terrible sound, a hissing and crackling and screaming. A wall of fire rushed toward him. The fire encircled him and began to close in, compressing him into an even smaller space. As the wall of flame drew nearer he saw that it was composed of thousands and thousands of individual fires. People. Men and women and children.

  Each aflame, each pointing burning fingers at Blade, each screaming oaths at him with fiery tongues.

  There was a stench of hell. Blade began to burn. He watched, feeling no pain, as his feet charred and turned black. On came the flame wall, to consume him, consume him ….

  CHAPTER 3

  Flame. Smoke, pungent and stinging in his eyes and nostrils, making him cough and retch. Blade, stupefied, his head a mass of pain, opened his eyes and saw fire devouring wooden beams high above him. He lay on hot stone, the floor of a vast, arching, groined structure that could only be a temple of some sort. A temple now dedicated to fire and smoke and the cries of men and women being put to the sword.

  Blade, naked and unarmed, stunned by the trip through the computer, managed to raise himself on an elbow. Never before had he been so weakened physically, so nearly paralyzed, by the electronic restructuring of his brain cells. He was in Dimension X again, but nearly as weak as a babe and in, imminent danger of being either burnt alive or crushed.

  He saw a rafter sag and begin to peel away from the dome directly over him. Blade rolled, scrabbled on. his hands and knees, clawing frantically through debris. He pawed over a dead man, then another, and a man and woman locked in a final embrace. The rafter tore away and came crashing down with a thunderous explosion of smoke and fiery splinters. Blade huddled behind another corpse as the flaming shards rained about him. He felt his strength returning. None too soon. He had to get the hell out of this mess, and fast.

  Somewhere near him a woman screamed. Blade got unsteadily to his feet and peered around through the dense curtain of smoke. He saw a sword near the hand of the corpse that had sheltered him just now, and he picked it up in a reflex action. Somewhere in the smoke the woman screamed again, a high keen of agony and terror. Blade, the sword out-thrust before him, stumbled in the direction of the sound. He was conscious now of another sound, one that came from outside the temple; a mob roar, an all-pervading tumult composed of many lesser chords, all of. them unpleasant and threatening: the clash of metal on mtal, men gurgling in death and laughing in triumph, women weeping and children crying, victors’ shouts and losers’ moans-and always the sinister, obbligato of consuming fire.

  The woman screamed a third time. This time the cry ended in words. «Juna help me-Juna save me-JunaJuna-Ahhhhhhheeeeeee»

  Blade had the sound pinpointed now. He reeled through a veil of smoke and saw them on the great stone altar. It was rape. Rape in progress. Still the woman struggled and fought, trying to elude her tormentor. Blade ran, the sword poised.

  The soldier was prolonging his pleasure as long as possible. He had cast off his plumed helmet and dropped his sword belt, kicked away his pantaloons. He was squat and powerful and easily held the woman down on the altar, cuffing her and laughing as she sought to disengage herself from his rapacious flesh. To no avail. He was far in her and driving with brutal lunges toward his conqu
est.

  Blade did not stop to think. He put the sword through the man’s back. The soldier screamed and, still deep in the woman, clutched at the bloody steel pushing through his chest. He screamed again, rolled off the woman, looked at Blade with staring wild eyes, and crumpled at the foot of the altar. Blade put his foot on the body and tugged out the sword. He turned back to the woman.

  Too late. From somewhere in her torn robes she took a dagger and, before Blade could prevent her, plunged it into her heart. He caught her as she fell forward, blood streaming from her mouth. Her glazing eyes met his and she muttered, «Dishonored-dishonored. Juna has turned her face from me. I die. There is only death in Thyme.»

  Blade held her in his arms, kneeling, cursing his luck. She could have been of enormous help, have told him much that he must know to survive. A rafter crashed savagely close by and he flinched instinctively. Time to be going. Always before, in his six previous trips into Dimension X, he had been fortunate enough to be given a period of grace, time to adjust and adapt. This time he had landed squarely in the midst of a raging battle. Survival this time depended on his superb body and brain-and on his luck.

  He put the dead woman gently aside and began to strip the body of the rapist soldier. He donned the plumed helmet, with a nose piece and metal strips to protect his cheeks and jaw. The shirt was of leather and a vest of chain mail fitted over it. The pantaloons, of coarse wool, were loose fitting and wide legged. The thick sandals were of rawhide and caught with thongs around the ankle.

  Blade examined the plume of the helmet. Red feathers, clipped to a smooth nub. There was nothing else that could be insignia. The color red, then, must be his identification and, by the lack of any indication of rank, he must be a common soldier. It did not matter. He bad taken the first essential step. He had clothing and a weapon and, he supposed, an identity of sorts.

  A great stone fell from the dome and crashed six feet from Blade. It bounced toward him and he dived wildly to one side, barely missing being pulped. Another beam came down and framed him in spattering fire. Blade did the only thing he could do, follow his nose and his eyes through the smoke, plunging through the thinner spots where the visibility was only semiopaque and trying not to breathe.

  He felt a rush of fresh air from his left and moved toward it. The floor was burning through his sandals now. He dashed through a last wall of flame and smoke and came into a narrow passage which led to a door. The door was half open and beyond it Blade could hear the dreadful sound he had heard before. Louder now as he approached the open air. An ever-rising tumult of clashing arms, clangor of steel on steel and shield on shield, the screams of dying horses and the shouts of sweating and bleeding men.

  Thyme? That had been the word-Thyme. The raped woman had spoken it before she died.

  Thyme. Blade, alone, a stranger in peril, friendless in Dimension X, knew nothing of Thyme. Except that it must be a city, or a town, or even a state or country. Whatever it was-it was dying. He was witnessing the death throes.

  Behind him the ceiling of the temple fell in with a hellish roar. Flame licked down the corridor toward him. Blade tried to wedge his big shoulders through the half open door, but was balked. Something was holding it. He peered around the door and saw a corpse serving as a doorstop. Smoke, blinding and suffocating, swirled down the passage and choked him. Blade bent low, put all his muscle into it and shoved at the door with everything he had. He squeezed through just as the ceiling of the passage caved in and the tunnel became a holocaust.

  He was in a cobbled lane. A narrow band of night sky, all that he could see, was tinted lurid red by a thousand fires. But there was a night wind blowing down the lane, a fresh strong wind that came somewhere off a salt marsh. Blade breathed deeply, reveled in the wind, filled his lungs and did not mind that the air was tainted with death.

  The temple from which he had just escaped collapsed inward, a pyre of scorched stone and wood ash. The wind blowing around Blade caught at floating embers, balloons of flame, and bore them on to fire another edifice. Blade, on impulse, reached down and got a hand around an ankle of the corpse that blocked the door. He dragged it down the lane to where there was a small square and the light was better. He examined the corpse.

  The man had been killed by a blow from a sword, or an axe, that had sheared through his helmet and cleft the skull as far as his jaw. The two halves of the helmet still clung to the greasy, bloody dark hair. Blade noted that the helmets were much alike-the one he wore and this shattered grisly thing-except that the latter had a crest of blue feathers. Blue. Red. The colors of opposing armies or only regimental or divisional insignia? The rapist he had killed in the temple, and this man, had they been enemies? Blade could not know and this was no time to worry about it. His own helmet plume was red. He had the uneasy feeling that he would know soon enough if there was a difference, and what it meant.

  He tugged a shield off the arm of the corpse and adjusted. it on his own left arm. It was small and circular, with a metal boss embellished with the curious design of a snake with its tail in its own mouth. Trying to swallow itself?

  Beneath the snake, in script that was half cursive, half glyphic, were two words-Ais Ister.

  Blade shook his head-it was all Greek to him-and began to make his way cautiously down the lane. It narrowed again and twisted this way and that, lined by rows of dark houses with narrow stone fronts and overhanging roofs of shingle. Some of the roofs were beginning to smolder and catch fire from the rain of fiery debris, but no one appeared to fight the flames. The houses were deserted, their occupants slain or fleeing. -Blade realized that, for the moment at least, he was alone in a deserted section of the city. He was suddenly thirsty and even felt a pang of hunger. He was beginning to adjust, to adapt to this Dimension X. The Richard Blade of Home Dimension was fading away, to be replaced by a supremely well-equipped survival mechanism.

  He entered another small square. It was ringed by deserted homes and shops, but in its center a fountain played and Blade made for it. His tongue was as dry as old leather. For a moment he regarded the fountain from which fell cool water in a delightful spray. It was in the form of a young woman holding a tilted vase from which the water poured. Blade stared and paid silent homage to the unknown sculptor. The girl was nubile and lovely and so cunningly delineated that he half expected her to stepoff her pedestal and offer him a drink.

  He raised his sword in a salute to her frozen beauty and plunged his face and arms into a basin beneath the flowing vase. The water was icy and refreshing, with a brackish taint that he did not find unpleasant. As he emerged, dripping and snorting, he noted the legend at the foot of the statue: Juna.

  Juna? That had been the name cried out by the raped woman just before she killed herself. Blade, as he drank again and scrubbed himself free of blood and grime and smoke, regarded the stone woman with a quizzical eye. Junal Obviously a goddess of some sort. Perhaps the patron goddess of this city, of Thyme. In which case, he thought with a grim smile, her work left much to be desired. That poor raped woman had said it all-Juna had turned her face awayl

  Then there was no more time for speculation. Blade heard them first. Under him. Beneath the cobbles. A clang of arms and the sound of men marching. At first he did not believe it, thought his senses were tricking him, then he spotted a blank slab of stone in the cobbled area near the fountain. A sewer opening, or at least a way in or out of some underground labyrinth of tunnels and passages. For a moment Blade had the delusive thought=friend or foe? Then he laughed atbimself even as he ran for cover. At this juncture, this early in the game, they were all his enemies.

  Beyond the fountain he found a dark aisle between two houses. He eased into the gloom and crouched low, watching the slab of stone. Moonlight, stained scarlet by onrushing fires, and increasingly laden with ash and smoke, was sufficient for him to see plainly. The stone slab was flung aside and soldiers began to climb out of the revealed dark opening. Their helmet crests were red. Blade’s teeth glinted
in a sardonic grin. He was, in a matter of speaking, among friends. He would not depend too much on it.

  The first man out of the hole was obviously an officer. His helmet plumes had not been shaven to a nubbed crest but stood tall, a red panache moving in the night wind. He carried a sword and a shield embossed with a figure of the goddess. Juna again. Blade nodded. He was beginning to sort them out now, a bit. These must be soldiers of Thyme. He gazed past them at their city, three-quarters engulfed in flame. They would seem to have lost a battle, but were still fighting.

  Man after man climbed out of the trapdoor in. the cobbles. Blade watched and listened, trying to piece it together, to make what he could of it.

  The officer strode nervously back and forth, shouting and prodding his men, using the flat of his sword to form them into some kind of line. These were weary men, begrimed and bloody from hard fighting, many of them heavily bandaged. Some were swordsmen, some carried lances, and still others had bows and slings. All wore short leather kilts and high-laced buskins. And all grumbled and complained as they stumbled into a rough formation. Judging from their looks, Blade could not much blame them. They must have fought well, to be so beat up, and now they were to be sacrificed in a last desperate rear guard action.

  The officer raised his sword for quiet, then began to speak.

  «Soldiers of Thyme, I salute you. You have fought well against surprise and treachery and overwhelming odds. You have earned rest.»

  A man spoke up in the front rank. «Aye, Captain Mijax. We have that. Then give us our rest. Grant us more than that-our lives. Let us leave this lost and dead city and make our way through the marshes to the coast. There is a chance that some of us will make it to Patmos. Then we can fight the Samostans again. But let us not fight here. Tbyrne is lost.»

  The soldier had spoken boldly. For a moment there was silence in the square but for the wind sighing past the statue of Juna and dropping red and black ash in the fountain. The spying Blade felt his stomach tighten. He had a premonition that he was about to see something nasty.