Looters of Tharn.

byJeffrey Lord.

Chapter 1.

The last words of the christening ceremony, echoed away through the high vaulted nave of the church. As the echoes died away, Richard Blade heard the bells in the tower high above begin to ring.

Bim-bong-bunnnng. Bim-bong-bunnnng.

Reginald Smythe-Evans turned to Blade. His thin face split in a broad, toothy, but unmistakably sincere grin. "Well, Richard. Very glad you could be young Edward's second G.o.dfather. Zoe wanted it badly, but we couldn't be sure you'd be around for the christening. Dashedly awkward if one of the G.o.dfathers didn't show up, eh? And we know you're always flitting off on dangerous business of some sort. But you made it." He thrust out a pale, long-fingered hand, to grip Blade's with surprising strength.

Blade found himself able to smile back with almost as much sincerity as Reginald. He hadn't felt much like smiling when Zoe's letter first arrived, asking him to be second G.o.dfather to Edward Thomas Richard Smythe-Evans. A long time ago Richard Blade had loved Zoe. She had loved him, too. But one evening she had said good-bye, and a few months later she married Reginald. That had hurt. It stopped hurting for a while, but Zoe's letter picked away at the old scar.

Yet there was nothing Blade could have done about it. It was his "always flitting off on dangerous business of some sort" that had done in his relationship with Zoe. But he couldn't give that up. It was a matter of duty-duty to England.

Richard Blade's business was to travel into other dimensions-the infinity of other dimensions that exist parallel to the one where he had been born and lived most of his life. It was an infinity called Dimension X, to conceal how little even wise men really knew about it.

It had been discovered the day Richard Blade's mind was linked to Lord Leighton's latest computer. The scientist had wanted to combine Blade's mind and the computer into a superintelligence.

Instead Lord Leighton had altered Blade's mind until he sensed and lived entirely in one of those parallel dimensions-a barbaric land called Alb. Blade was a superb mental and physical specimen, so he had survived in Alb long enough for Lord Leighton to figure out what had happened and bring him back to England. It had also helped that Blade was a top agent for the secret intelligence agency MI6. That made him very much a professional survivor type.

It didn't require much thinking for people to realize how valuable the ability to travel among dimensions might be for England. It didn't require much argument to persuade the Prime Minister to underwrite Project Dimension X from the secret funds.

But it did require Richard Blade to keep his sudden and mysterious comings and goings secret from the woman he loved. The Official Secrets Act dropped down between him and Zoe like an armored wall.

Eventually she had decided she wanted a husband who would stay close at hand and said good-bye. Blade went off to a land called Tharn, and a few months later Zoe married Reginald Smythe-Evans, the only son and heir of some large and wealthy figure in the city's financial circles.

Blade had seen her get married. In fact, he had seen the wedding nearly disrupted by an actor pretending to be him making a drunken a.s.s of himself. That had been part of a trick to throw the Russians off the scent of Project Dimension X. Poor Zoe couldn't know that, of course.

But apparently she had forgiven the wedding and remembered other things. Thus the request that he stand as G.o.dfather to her son.

There was Zoe now, coming up the church aisle with the nurse behind her, carrying young Edward. She walked up to her husband and took one tweed-covered arm, but her eyes were on Blade and her smile was for him. The eyes were as bright as ever, and the smile as warm. She hadn't changed or aged much, in spite of two children and marriage to Reginald. Blade didn't imagine that Reginald was complaining, either. Over the years they would no doubt make a marriage as good as most and better than a good many.

But Blade couldn't look at the red-faced, whimpering bundle the nurse was handing to Zoe without remembering how it had been between him and that baby's mother. If things had been otherwise, that baby might be his son as well-his and Zoe's.

The christening party drifted out into the sunlight on the church lawn and broke up. Blade exchanged a few polite words with the parish priest, a few more with Reginald, and finally a long last exchange with Zoe. Then he turned his back on the party, b.u.t.toned up his Burberry against the chill breeze, and climbed into his MG.

It took him three tries to start the car, and once again he considered trading it in on something newer. He could afford a much better car now, if he wanted one. From his last trip into Dimension X, he had returned with a diamond worth so much that even Lord Leighton had whistled at the appraiser's figure. Twenty thousand pounds of that sum sat in a special tax-free account for him. If he wanted to, he could afford a Lotus or even a Rolls-Royce!

But luxury cars drew attention. That wasn't a good idea for a man in any kind of secret work. Blade had learned that many times over during his years as a secret agent. Secret agents who didn't learn that didn't live very long.

Besides, Blade knew he drew enough attention as it was.

He stood six feet one in his socks, weighed two hundred and ten pounds, and his heavy-boned frame was layered with ma.s.ses of perfectly conditioned muscle. He was an expert with a dozen kinds of deadly weapons, as well as holding a black belt in karate. About him hung the mysterious air always attached to a strong, attractive man who does something unknown but obviously dangerous and refuses absolutely to talk about it. It drew many women to him, but since Zoe Blade had discouraged any who showed interest in more than a casual affair.

Blade threw in the clutch and the MG went jolting down the church driveway. He shook his head in weary amus.e.m.e.nt. He almost filled the cla.s.sic picture of "the man who has everything." He even had the best of all imaginable jobs, for Blade preferred to live on the frontiers of danger. Dimension X gave him all the opportunities for that any man could ask for.

But he had never found a woman who could or would live out there on the frontiers with him, or at least understand what drove him out there. So he did not have everything, and sometimes it hurt.

Chapter 2.

The elevator door slid silently open, and Richard Blade stepped out into the corridor beyond it. He was two hundred feet below the Tower of London, in the overgrowing complex that housed most of Project Dimension X. At the end of that corridor stood Lord Leighton's computer. In less than half an hour that computer would be hammering its complex pulses into Blade's brain, twisting his perceptions so that for him reality itself would also be twisted.

When it untwisted itself again, he would be seeing Dimension X.

Blade strode down the apparently empty corridor, listening to the echo of his footsteps from the tile floors and the whir of machinery behind metal doors. There was no sound from the all-seeing, unsleeping electronic sentinels that kept watch on every inch of the corridor.

He found that he felt his usual mixture of tension and antic.i.p.ation as the time of his next journey came closer. It was impossible for even a man as used to danger as Blade to ignore the fact that each trip was a leap into the unknown. So far there was no way of controlling or even predicting where he would land. The one thing that was certain was that Richard Blade was the only living man who could return from Dimension X both alive and sane.

One day, from one dimension, Richard Blade would not return to England. His body would lie in the soil of an unimaginably distant land. The project itself would come to a grinding halt until they found someone else equally tough. Lord Leighton would curse the delay and the Prime Minister would curse the loss of a man valuable to England. The head of MI6, the aging spymaster known as J, would mourn Blade as he would have mourned the son he never had.

But Blade was also palled with antic.i.p.ation. If each dimension had unknown dangers, it also held unknown adventures, challenges, opportunities. He could and did live the way he could live best-by his own wits, his own skills, his own strength. He did not have to worry about women who wanted stay-at-home husbands. He could say what he wanted, to whom he wanted, as he had to, without any d.a.m.ned Official Secrets Act mucking up the works! He was a free man in Dimension X, and that was good for him and often for the people he traveled among. Everywhere he went, Blade left marks of his pa.s.sage. More often than not what he left behind was better than what had been there before.

J once referred to that sort of thing as "interdimensional social work." But the old man wasn't nearly as cynical as he sounded. That was just a mannerism, picked up during too many years of sending men to their deaths and playing deadly games. J had seen too much to really sneer at anything or anyone that helped make any world a little less grim and harsh for even a few people.

As though Blade's thoughts had conjured him out of the floor. J appeared in the corridor ahead.

"h.e.l.lo, Richard."

"Good morning, sir. Lord Leighton on schedule?"

"Have you ever known him not to be?"

Blade shook his head and laughed. Lord Leighton was one of the greatest scientific minds alive, and also one of the greatest curmudgeons. All the skill he refused to use in getting along with his fellow human beings he put into getting along with computers. So computers that drove other men mad with frustration worked flawlessly for him.

The two men walked side by side down to the first of the computer rooms. Usually Lord Leighton came out to meet them at this point. But there was n.o.body in the room except two technicians in white coats, seated in steel swivel chairs and monitoring the visual readouts on a bank of consoles.

One of them turned in his chair as the two men entered. "Lord Leighton says he's using a new variant on the main sequence. It doesn't allow as much time as before, so you're going to have to hurry."

J raised an eyebrow and exchanged looks with Blade. In both their minds was the thought, "The old b.u.g.g.e.r might have told us in advance." But when Lord Leighton got a technical bee in his balding bonnet, there was no power on earth that could halt or delay him.

They practically trotted up to the door of the main room. Lord Leighton was waiting for them there, scurrying back and forth on his polio-twisted legs, rubbing his hands together. With his hunchback under his white coat, he looked like an overworked gnome.

"Ah, very good," he said briskly as the two men came up. "The new sequence is underway and I'd rather not interrupt it. So if Richard can be in the chair within-oh, five minutes-it will make life simpler for all of us."

J fixed Lord Leighton with a singularly chilly stare. "It might have made life simpler for us if you'd told us beforehand. We could have been here earlier."

"Oh, quite, quite. But-"

Blade knew that he would never have time to listen to the argument and still be in the chair on time. He nodded politely to both men and darted into the chamber.

In the little changing booth in one corner, he stripped to the skin. Then he smeared himself with greasy, foul-smelling cream for protection against electrical burns and knotted a loincloth around his waist. By the time he stepped out into the chamber again, Lord Leighton was already standing by the black metal chair in its gla.s.s cubicle.

Blade sat down in the chair and began breathing slowly and deeply, trying to relax as much as possible. As usual at this point, he didn't find it easy. Meanwhile, Lord Leighton scurried about again, fastening cobra-headed metal electrodes to every conceivable and inconceivable part of Blade's body. From the electrodes ma.s.ses of wires trailed off into the bowels of the computer. By the time the scientist was finished, Blade looked and felt like a part of the computer himself.

"There," said Lord Leighton, stepping back. Usually he stopped at this point to make a final visual inspection. This time he trotted straight over to the main controls. He also drew a grimy, crumpled handkerchief from his coat pocket and mopped his bald forehead.

Blade grinned. Lord Leighton, the mighty scientific intellect, was more nervous than he was! Yet it was he who would be risking life and limb in no more than a few minutes.

But it was worth it. He had felt it at the church after the christening of Zoe's child, and he felt it even more strongly now. Life in Home Dimension was too b.l.o.o.d.y complicated, sometimes. In Dimension X it was more often than not a very simple matter of survival.

In Dimension X there had also been women Blade had loved as deeply as Zoe. He had left at least two of them carrying his children. There was Princess Aumara in Zunga. Probably Queen Aumara now, raising their child to rule after her over the warriors of Zunga.

There was also Zulekia, the red-haired Maiduke woman of Tharn. She too had been carrying his child when the computer had s.n.a.t.c.hed him back from Tharn. But he had been there long enough to do much of what needed to be done. He had smashed the decadence that had gripped Tharn for centuries and opened a future for it. He wondered how they were coming along in their struggle toward that future. Those who had survived the great battle with the Pethcines and the destruction of Urcit would be Lord Leighton's hand came down on the master switch. Blade saw it too late to relax, to compose his mind, or ever to clear his musings about Tharn out of it. Zulekia's high-browed golden face with its ma.s.s of red-gold hair floated before his eyes as the switch snapped downward.

It still hung there as Lord Leighton, the computer, the whole gloomy chamber snapped out of existence in a single moment. There was no light or sound, no sense of heat or cold. Blade was alone in a lightless, soundless, senseless void, motionless, speechless. Nothing registered on his senses except Zulekia's face in front of him.

Then the face flared brightly, the gold hues of her skin turning luminous. It rose to incandescence, flickered, and was gone. The void was all around Blade, and a chill of utter loneliness entered his bones. In a single moment all awareness left him.

Chapter 3.

Blade came back to consciousness several feet up in the air. He landed with a thud and rolled down a gra.s.sy slope, arms and legs flailing wildly. At the bottom he crashed against a small tree, picking up a few more bruises, then lay quietly.

Gradually the splitting pain in his head and the ringing in his ears faded away. Now he heard the thin moan of wind sweeping past from vast distances, the creak of strained trees, the whispering ripple of wind-blown gra.s.s, the chirrrrr of a bird or an insect.

Off to his right a mighty range of hills sprawled across the horizon, towering against a pale blue sky where white wisps of clouds raced before the wind. Blade sat up, and perspective returned to his vision in a moment.

The hills were not a mile high and many miles away. They were only a low undulating ridge, perhaps two hundred feet high at most. A few stunted trees, no more than saplings, poked out above the bushes and long gra.s.s along the crest. Between Blade and the ridge lay a gra.s.sy depression no more than a mile wide.

Blade rose to his feet and brushed gra.s.s and dirt off his bare skin. He reached down and broke off one of the saplings, then stripped it of leaves and branches. It was hardly thicker or heavier than a walking stick and wouldn't be much of a weapon against any human or large animal. But he could at least jab it into the ground ahead of him, testing his way. It also made him feel better, which was even more important. The right frame of mind was always a good part of the job of survival.

Blade looked toward the ridge again. It certainly looked like the highest point anywhere close at hand. In the other three directions gently rolling gra.s.sland stretched away endlessly to a distant horizon. The gra.s.s grew thickly, in tangled ma.s.ses. It was dark green, with pale yellowish brown stripes and spots on it that made it look diseased. Blade turned back toward the ridge and strode down toward the valley, the sapling over his shoulder like a rifle.

He moved forward with long, steady strides, occasionally prodding at the ground ahead of him with the sapling. Tangles of gra.s.s jerked at his ankles and an occasional thistlelike plant jabbed thorns into his calves. But these slowed him only slightly. The hope of seeing something more than miles and miles of gra.s.s from the top of the ridge pushed him on.

Beyond the ridge, the ground dropped away again, then swept out across more miles of gra.s.sland. But the horizon was no longer a featureless line where green plain met washed-out blue sky.

On it rose a city. It sprawled across nearly half the horizon, a ma.s.s of graceful white towers mixed with lower buildings, bridges, walls, amphitheaters-every sort of architectural shape. Everything had been conceived and built on a soaring, monumental scale. But even from many miles away everything showed the telltale signs of long abandonment. Windows gaped darkly, bridges sagged, here and there a wall had collapsed and gra.s.s had already overgrown the spilled rubble. It was a beautiful city, so beautiful that Blade involuntarily stopped to admire it. But it was also a dead city.

Blade swore and sat down. Had the computer finally hurled him into a dimension without human life? Men-or something intelligent-had built that city, no doubt about that. But he had equally little doubt that the builders of the city no longer lived and ruled in it.

Who did?

Perhaps no one did. Perhaps nothing moved in that city except gra.s.s waving in the wind. In any case, Blade knew that he was not going to find out anything standing there on top of the ridge.

Blade was striding down the far slope of the ridge toward the city when he heard the sound. Like the thunder of a distant storm, it rolled across the plains from the direction of the city. First a single sharp clap, then a long, slowly fading rumble. Blade felt bits of grit drive into his eyes and sting his skin. The bushes, trees, and gra.s.s danced for a long moment in something that wasn't the wind.

Somewhere not too far away, something had produced a violent shock wave. Blade doubted that it was natural. This land seemed to be as flat as a billiard table, and just about as unlikely to produce anything noisy and geological.

So whatever had made the shock wave was probably artificial. Blade crouched low behind a bush. Anything or anybody able to make an explosion this powerful might also be able to detect a man miles away.

Blade started to shift his position to where he could see out in all directions and no one could easily see him. Another crack-boom-rumble sounded from the direction of the city. Blade scanned the horizon and the buildings for some possible sign of where the blasts came from. No flash of flame, not even a rising and spreading cloud of smoke. What was making the explosions, and where?

For the third time the sounds blasted their way across the plain. Watching closely, Blade saw the blast wave kick up dust and debris in the streets of the city. There was a lot of power behind those blasts, whatever they were. No doubt his view of the blast site itself was cut off by the ma.s.s of thousand-foot buildings. But why no smoke clouds rising even higher into the sky? There was something increasingly odd about those explosions, if that was what they were.

Three more explosions came in rapid succession, then five minutes of silence and after that three more. Blade waited in concealment as the silence following the last three explosions grew longer and longer. Five minutes, ten, twenty. After half an hour, Blade crawled out from under the bush, stood up, and scanned the city again. It stood as before silent and grim. Nothing moved in its rubble-strewn streets or buildings with windows staring like the eye-sockets of bleached skulls.

Blade headed down the ridge toward the city. He couldn't help wishing he had something more than the sapling as a weapon. The explosions had been too powerful to think about with an easy mind. He would have felt a d.a.m.ned sight more comfortable walking toward the city with a couple of light ant.i.tank rockets or something like that slung on his back.

Oh well, they couldn't send through the computer everything he might need in a new dimension. Even if they could, they'd need to send six porters or a Land Rover to carry the whole lot! Blade smiled for a moment at the idea of seven stark-naked men tramping across some other-dimensional landscape, himself in the lead and six others following with heavy packs.

The gra.s.s rose a yard high as Blade descended the ridge. Once again he had to plow through it like a ship through pack ice, his ma.s.sively muscled legs moving up and down tirelessly. His eyes continuously scanned the city, and from time to time looked to either side and behind him. He couldn't imagine what danger might come at him from the miles of empty, open plain. But a man in a new world seldom died from the dangers he expected.

Blade had covered about half the distance to the city when something in the gra.s.s ahead made him stop and look more closely. Something gleamed whitely there, reflecting the sun from among the greens and yellow-browns of the waving gra.s.s. Blade took two more steps forward and saw the unmistakable glint of sunlight off metal.

White, bleached bones lay scattered in the gra.s.s, the bones of human beings and horses all mixed together. The sunlight glinted from the unrusted portions of swords, spear heads, iron-studded belts, round helmets, the metalwork of harnesses.

Blade picked up the most intact of the belts and tied it around his waist. Then he thrust the least-rusted of the swords into it and stood up. That made him feel better. Now he might stay alive if he ran into more of the people whose bones littered the ground around him.

Blade crouched down again and examined the remains more closely. At once he noticed a few odd things about them. For one thing; there were clearly three different types of people among the dead. One type was short, almost bandy-legged, broad-framed and squat, with round skulls and wide faces. A second was taller, some of them six feet or over, thinner, long-limbed and graceful. A third-the most numerous-looked like the results of cross-breeding between the first two. What was even odder was that most of the tall skeletons seemed to be those of women! The lighter bones and the pelvic girdle were hard to mistake.

There was also something odd about the armor and weapons. There was quite a lot of metal there-good but crudely finished wrought iron, most of it. Efficient but primitive. Yet some of the helmets, many of the breastplates, and nearly all of the belts were made of some pale, tough, plastic-like material.

Blade picked up one of the belts and tried to snap it in his hands. He pulled at it until the muscles of his thick arms stood out like rocks and the sweat popped out on his forehead. But he might as well have been trying to snap a length of steel cable. He braced one of the breastplates-designed for a woman, he noticed-against a horse's ribcage and tried to drive the sword through it. He put all his strength into the thrust, but the armor only dimpled and sprang back into shape. It took several jabs before he was able to drive his sword through it.

Tough stuff, this, thought Blade. He looked more closely at the belt in his hands. He'd be d.a.m.ned if this stuff wasn't almost identical to teksin, the ubiquitous material that the people of Tharn had made from the mani plant. Almost? He couldn't see any difference at all!

Could he be in Tharn?

The thought made his pulse race and his breath come more quickly. He couldn't help it. The idea that after all the failures he had finally returned to a particular dimension was too exciting.

Then the excitement faded. So far he had nothing to prove that he was in Tharn except a few pieces of something that looked very much like teksin and a few skeletons of warrior women. That wasn't enough. There was no reason why the people of some other dimension couldn't have come up with something identical to teksin. Nor were fighting women unique to Tharn. Until he had more to go on, he would a.s.sume that this was a new world, with a whole set of new dangers.

He turned back to examining the skeletons. They lay scattered every which way, and wind and time had broken some of them apart. But all the bones were intact, none of them broken or gouged. Some of the skeletons looked as though the people had simply lain down to sleep or fallen off their horses and never got up again. To Blade, those bones didn't look like those of people and horses who had died in battle. What had killed them, then?

Blade knew he could only guess for the moment. Meanwhile he would watch his step and his back even more carefully. He rummaged through the remains until he found a helmet and a breastplate that more or less fitted him. Then he tied two or three of the belts together at his waist as an improvised loinguard.

He looked toward the city again. He was armed and armored now. If any of the three peoples still lurked in the city, he felt he could give a good account of himself. But what then? None of these people could be the ones who had built the city. That was the relic of an advanced civilization. None of these people seemed much beyond early Iron Age.