"England is a city with-?" began the slim girl. The other one struck her sharply across the mouth.

"You talk only when the man says you can, little fool! Didn't your Initiation teach you anything?"

The slim girl knelt at Blade's feet, eyes on the floor. "You may beat me before you take your pleasure with me, Master."

"No doubt I may," said Blade dryly. "But I do not choose to. I will always forgive one mistake." He pulled off his shirt. "Now-into the bed with you." He felt no real desire for these two poor creatures, but if he didn't take them Nungor might get suspicious, and the girls would surely be punished. He could hardly let them suffer for his scruples. The slim girl pulled her shift over her head and started toward the bed. As she did, Blade saw her back.

"Good G.o.d!"

She stopped as if he'd struck her, quivering all over. He stared at her. In spite of her thinness, she was quite lovely, with the taut, spare curves of a girl who's just turned into a woman-except for her back. From just below her shoulder blades to the base of her spine, her back was a ridged mess of criss-crossing scars. She must have been flogged half to death and would certainly carry scars like that to the end of her life.

"That was your Initiation-the flogging?" asked Blade gently. In spite of his tone the girl seemed too frightened to speak, so her companion spoke for her.

"Yes. She and the boy there were made slaves when their parents refused to pay their taxes. She was unruly and disobedient, so she was Initiated by the whip. The boy was even worse, so he was Initiated with the knife."

Blade decided not to ask what "Initiation with the knife" meant. He didn't really need to know. He did know that he would have to be more careful than ever, if "Initiation" for Kareena meant being flogged like this. He doubted if either her mind or her body could survive the experience.

"You have not been Initiated?" he asked the second girl. "I?" She looked insulted. "Only a fool sells herself into slavery, then says what she should not. I found an easier life in Feragga's house than I could ever have outside." She pulled her shift over her head and raised her arms over her head. "Have I not done well?"

She certainly looked well-fed, almost complacent, although the other girl would have been much more attractive without the scars and her fear. Blade sat down on the windowsill, pulled off his boots, and began undoing his trousers.

As his silver loinguard came into sight, both girls stared. The scarred girl was the bolder of the two. She reached out a finger and touched the metal, then jerked her hand back as if the loinguard was red-hot.

"You may speak," Blade said. They were both obviously dying of curiosity.

"Is-do you have-your power in that?" said the plump girl. "Do you-keep it on?"

Blade laughed. "No. My power is where it is in any other man." He unhooked the loinguard, took it off, and held it up in front of the girls so they could see it more clearly. "You see. It is only a thing of Oltec, to protect me in battle, so that I will not lose the place where my power stays."

"Ah," they said almost in unison. Then also in unison they reached out and started stroking Blade's thighs and p.e.n.i.s. This led to the inevitable conclusion, although Blade could never use the term "making love" when he spoke of what he did in the bed with the two slave girls. He'd had much more pleasant erotic experiences with women he'd seduced as part of an a.s.signment. At least the two girls seemed happy enough, probably at knowing they would not be punished for failing to please him.

When he'd finished with the girls, Blade walked over to the boy still cowering in the corner. "If you wish either of the girls, and she consents, I will let you have her. I will even go into one of the other rooms and leave you alone."

The boy stared at Blade as if he'd grown a second head, then burst into tears and curled up almost in the fetal position. In the process his loincloth slipped. Blade had a strong stomach, and he'd seen more ghastly sights than any other six men he knew put together. He still had to swallow and close his eyes for a moment at the sight of the boy's groin. It was nothing but a ma.s.s of scar tissue. He'd been castrated, so crudely and brutally that it was a miracle he was still alive.

Blade sighed. There was nothing to say to the boy and nothing to say even to himself except what he'd already said a number of times: Doimar had to be stopped.

He helped the boy to his feet, then called the guards. The two girls were supporting the boy between them as the guards led all three of them out. Blade stood with his face firmly turned to the window until he heard the door close behind him. He did not want anyone who might inform Feragga or Nungor to see the look on his face.

The sun was close to the horizon now. Most of Doimar's towers still had part of their metal facing, and these reflected the reddish sunset over the rest of the city. It looked almost as if the entire city had been dipped in blood. Blade thought this was a highly appropriate color for Doimar.

Chapter 15.

Blade soon learned there were two factions in Doimar's army. One was led by the Seekers. These rule-of-thumb scientists and engineers had rediscovered most of the military Oltec. Their faction included the men and women trained to operate the waldoes, and certain others with rare technical skills.

The second faction was led by the older officers, who'd learned warfare before Feragga became ruler of Doimar.

They had the support of the infantry, who would fight with nothing but rifles, grenades, and some mortars.

The infantry faction should have won by sheer weight of numbers. Doimar's infantry counted at least seven thousand men and women, while the Seekers could call on the support of no more than five or six hundred. However, even the infantrymen usually admitted that the waldoes would be nearly indispensable in the war against the other cities of the Land. They resented this fact, but they didn't deny it. By the time Blade reached Doimar, the two factions had signed an uneasy truce. This didn't keep either one from seeking to gain whatever advantage it could over the other, by fair means or foul.

It helped keep the peace that Feragga and Nungor both tried to be impartial, at least in public. Both learned swordsmanship, became experts with rifles, and could handle grenades and mortars. Both also knew how to operate the waldoes and put them through their paces. But it was still no secret that Feragga's sympathies lay with the Seekers, and Nungor's lay with the infantry.

None of this surprised Blade at all. In any army, those who do their fighting with machinery seldom get along with those who expose their own bodies to the enemy's weapons. The machine operators think the infantrymen are stupid. The infantrymen think the machine operators are cowards. In Doimar matters were even worse than usual. Blade had learned that the waldoes were operated by some sort of remote control, and thus the waldo operators would be many miles from the battlefield, doing their work with all the comforts of home around them. The infantry would be out in front, hungry, cold, thirsty, stinking, and dying in the mud like the infantry of every army in every Dimension throughout history. Blade was quite sure that each side in the feud would try to win him over. When this happened, he was almost as sure he could get some advantage from it.

The training room was two hundred feet long and a hundred feet wide, with an arched roof eighty feet high. At the far end one of the waldoes stood to the right of a tall steel door. At the near end stood Blade, a female Seeker, one of the control chairs for the waldoes, and several electronic consoles. The chair and the consoles stood on a rubber-tired cart.

Blade contemplated the control chair. It reminded him of the equipment once used to send him into Dimension X, before the invention of the KALI capsule. There was the same chair with a polished steel frame and black leather seat and back. There was the same tangle of multicolored wires crawling all over it like demented snakes. It looked like something you'd expect to find in the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition.

There were also a few differences. The chair and its wiring stood in the middle of a steel frame eight feet high. From the frame hung long metallic mesh gloves and a helmet which covered the whole head and bulged with electronic and optical gear. Knee-high mesh boots stood on the base of the frame.

"Now listen carefully, Blade of England," said the Seeker sharply. "To work the Fighting Machines is not as simple as it looks. Many have thought so. Their mistakes have damaged many machines. We do not often let fighters of Doimar near a Voice Chair until we have tested them in many ways. But it is Feragga's order that you are to be taught everything you want to learn. We obey her orders." She shook her fist in his face. "But if you wreck a Machine, nothing Feragga says will save you from me."

The Seeker had to reach up to shake her fist in Blade's face. She was hardly more than five feet tall, with a trim figure showing through a sort of uniform of green leather trousers and shirt. Her dark eyes were enormous.

"I will listen and not wreck a Machine," said Blade. "In England the best warriors are trained to use both the weapons of their bodies and the weapons of Oltec. Only those who know both can command in war."

"If that is truly the case in England, you are wiser than we," said the woman. "As it is, we who know the Machines must often give way to those who know nothing but a child's weapons. If Feragga was not wise, we would be as badly off as the people of Kaldak, chained by the Law."

She started explaining the operation of the waldoes. It was very much as Blade had expected, a masterpiece of simplicity. The waldo operator put his hands into the gloves and his feet into the boots. Then every motion of his arms and legs was transmitted by radio to the waldo, which matched those movements. The helmet contained video and sound pickups so the operator could see and hear what the waldo saw and heard. Still other controls fired the laser-or Fire Beam, as the Doimari called it.

"Don't the Fighting Machines have any other weapons than the Fire Beam?" asked Blade.

"No, curse it," said the woman. "We know they have throwers for fire bombs, like the ones the foot soldiers carry. But the throwers need a special kind of bomb, and we have found no such bombs in any city of the Land."

"That is unfortunate for the Seekers," said Blade. "If the Fighting Machines could throw their own bombs, they might not need the help of the men on foot. They could win the war by themselves."

The Seeker's eyes became still larger. "You think so?" Blade nodded. "Then perhaps we could ask that the war be put off, until we learned how to make the special bombs...." Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head. "No. Feragga is too eager to begin the conquest of the Land. She would not allow it, and Nungor's friends would see it as weakness."

"Perhaps," said Blade and left the matter there. He hoped he'd sown a little more disagreement in Doimar, without giving the Doimari an idea they could use against Kaldak. He was going to have the same delicate problem time after time as long as he was in Doimar. He had to appear to be helpful without actually giving any help. He couldn't be sure of still being in this Dimension to help Kaldak defeat any schemes he'd suggested to the Doimari. Advising both sides in a war was fun in theory, but in practice it was more often than not a b.l.o.o.d.y headache!

Blade had to strip naked to use the control chair. As he did he was very aware of the woman's eyes roaming up and down his body. But she was still as thoroughly businesslike as Lord Leighton when it came time to get him hooked up.

The gloves and boots opened down the back, so they would fit almost any size of hand and foot, or at least almost any size of hand and foot in Doimar. Blade found them uncomfortably snug, although he could still move all his essential joints and muscles.

When the girl was sure of this, she pressed a green b.u.t.ton on the frame. Blade heard a faint hum from the consoles, saw lights glowing on several of the consoles, and stood up. A second b.u.t.ton made the chair swing back out of Blade's way. "All right, Blade. The Machine lives. Now start walking in place slowly, as if you'd just got up from being sick-no, no, not that slowly, you're not a baby!" and she clutched at her thick brown hair with both hands.

At the far end of the training room the waldo gave off a metallic squealing noise which set Blade's teeth on edge. Then slowly it started walking, with little shuffling steps very unlike the six-foot strides Blade knew the waldoes could take. He stopped, and it stopped, swaying so that for a moment Blade was afraid it would fall over. The Seeker winced. Then Blade cautiously turned his body to the left and started walking in place again. The waldo started off, this time heading for a point along the right wall of the room. Another stop, another turn, and it was heading to the left. Blade zig-zagged the waldo all the way down the training room until he could practically reach out and touch it, then sent it back to the far end and started all over again.

Within half an hour Blade felt confident he could make the robot do anything its mechanism could stand. After another half-hour, even the Seeker was convinced Blade knew how to handle the Fighting Machine safely. She cut off the power and showed Blade how the helmet worked.

"This mouthpiece is the basic control for the head and the laser. Bite down on the left end, and it turns the head. Bite down on the right, and it fires the laser. Don't get the two confused, or you might wind up killing yourself!"

Blade didn't kill himself, but he did take a chunk out of the wall of the training room by accident. Judging from the number of holes in the wall, he wasn't the first man to have such an accident. The woman made a great show of pounding her head against the consoles in frustration, but she was laughing as she did. Blade knew that he'd begun to impress her.

The video and audio systems had the same essential simplicity as the rest of the waldo. Padded earphones gave Blade stereo hearing, and padded eyepieces gave him a three-dimensional view complete with a sighting grid for aiming the laser. When Blade finally pulled off the helmet he was dripping sweat. He was also more than ever impressed with the technological gifts of the Tower Builders.

In fact he couldn't help wondering why they'd used these gifts to build the waldoes. They were an expensive and complicated way of getting armored firepower into battle. A remote-controlled tank would have been easier to build and probably more effective. The waldoes were deadly against any sort of primitive opponent, but they could hardly have been designed for action against one.

Not that Blade was unhappy with things as they were. A more effective kind of Fighting Machine would have meant a longer and harder war, with more dead among Doimar's enemies and more destruction in the Land. It might also have been harder for Doimar's enemies to learn to use, if they could find any in their own cities.

As it was, an intelligent child could almost learn to use one of the waldoes. The Seekers were talking nonsense when they spoke of their complexity, and Blade thought he knew why. They wanted to keep Nungor's infantrymen from realizing that almost anyone could use a waldo, and that the Seekers were basing their reputations on a lie. Blade wondered if he shouldn't reveal this secret to make real trouble between the two factions. Then he decided against it. He didn't know how many waldoes Doimar had. If it was only a hundred, it wouldn't make much difference how many men could use them. If it was a thousand, then increasing the number of men who could use them would make Doimar more powerful and dangerous.

On the other hand, if Kaldak could find some waldoes of its own, it would not take long for the Kaldakans to learn to use them. Blade knew that if he could get away and find waldoes in Kaldak, intelligent warriors like Sidas and Kareena would be using them effectively within a few weeks. Then Doimar's Fighting Machines would be meeting their own kind of battle, instead of walking over nearly helpless infantrymen.

Blade swung the seat back into place and sat down while the woman wiped him off with a towel. As she did, she chattered on about the problems of using the Fighting Machines without enough cooperation from Nungor's infantrymen.

"-all the sight and sound is much clearer here in the training room than out in the field. The Sky Voice reaches the Machines much more easily over short distances than over long ones."

"That must be why the Machine in Gilmarg did so poorly," said Blade helpfully. "The Voices were not reaching it clearly. The man in the chair could not see or hear clearly either."

The woman looked alarmed. "I hope you haven't told Nungor about the Machine's poor work."

This called for a polite lie. "Not yet. You think I should not?"

"Oh, yes, please. Knowing how poorly the Machine did will be a weapon for him against the Seekers. And it's all his fault that we can't take the Voice machines close to the battles."

She started ma.s.saging Blade's back and shoulders. It felt good but didn't take his mind off pumping the Seeker for more details. With only a little prompting, she told him practically everything he wanted to know, although he had to mentally translate many of the terms she used.

The Seekers knew they could not move the main control center for the waldoes. That was fixed in its underground complex three hundred feet below Doimar. They also knew enough about radio to understand the solution to the problem. If they had a network of mobile relay stations moving with the army, the radio signals (or "Voices") from the command center could reach and control waldoes all over the Land.

Unfortunately there was no way of moving Voice machines out of Doimar. "Can't you put them on munfans?" asked Blade.

She shook her head. "The strong Voice machines are too heavy to carry on munfans, and there is nothing else. There will be nothing else, thanks to Nungor, curse his black heart!"

"What has he done?"

"What hasn't he done, you mean? There are three whole rooms larger than this full of Oltec machines which could carry anything all over the Land. Not like the Fighting Machines, but other kinds, with wheels and other things. We of the Seekers could learn how to make them run, then carry voice machines into battle. It would be easy."

"But Nungor won't let you?"

"No! He says those machines belong to his army, the foot soldiers. He says this, and Feragga lets him say it, even though she knows the foot fighters have no knowledge of such machines. They talked about making the machines live someday, but they do not know how. Meanwhile the machines sit dead, while we who could make them live are not allowed near them." Her voice was getting shrill. "Nungor is like a dog who p.i.s.ses on food he cannot eat himself." She leaned against Blade's back, shaking with rage or perhaps grief for her city.

"I am not surprised to hear this," said Blade quietly. "Nungor seems to be that sort of man. But maybe I can help you. Some of these machines might be like those I have used in England. If Nungor showed them to me, I might know how to make them live. After that, who could stop me from teaching the Seekers what I have learned? Not Nungor, certainly, and possibly not even Feragga." He smiled. "Of course the Seekers could not be too proud to learn from a stranger, but that-"

Her laughter held a slight note of hysteria. "Proud? Blade, I myself would eat dung if it would give us all the knowledge we must have. There are others who would do the same. If you can see the machines, and learn to use them...." She sighed. "We will all be grateful." She ran her hands down Blade's chest and across his belly to his groin. "I will be grateful."

As Blade stood up, she peeled off her shirt and stood before him, naked to the waist. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were small but her nipples were large. As he soon discovered, they were also exquisitely sensitive. He used his fingers and lips on them until she was moaning happily even before they lay down together on a pile of clothing. Although she was small she lay down underneath, but his weight on top of her didn't keep her from thrashing wildly when she reached her climax.

Blade was glad he'd given her this much happiness, and with so little effort that he could keep half his thoughts on other matters. He didn't know what the other Oltec machines might be, but they certainly sounded worth investigating. They might even be the vehicles he and Kareena would need for a quick escape. He would still have to be careful not to teach Doimar too much. He would have to be even more careful in speaking to the ever-suspicious Nungor.

Blade turned back to the girl, and this time he gave their lovemaking all his attention.

Chapter 16.

Blade wasn't surprised by Nungor's reaction to his request, and he wasn't disappointed by the Oltec vehicles.

"The Seekers must have bought you," were Nungor's first words.

Blade shrugged. "You may say that if you wish. I will not take it as an insult, as I would have from a man of England. Yet I think you are not wise to say it, even though I will not have your blood for it."

"Why?"

"If the Seekers get any advantage from this, it will be your fault more than mine." Nungor's face set hard but Blade continued. "You did not say a single word to me about these vehicles. You left me ignorant until the Seekers chose to speak. If you had spoken first, I could have gone to see the vehicles with you many days ago. The Seekers would not have known anything until we finished our work and laid matters before Feragga. As it is, they will be watching and listening. This is your fault."

There was silence, while Blade mentally crossed his fingers. A strong attack was often the best defense in a situation like this, but he might have pushed Nungor too far. Certainly the man's fingers were twitching, as if they yearned to grip the hilt of his sword.

Then Nungor gave a quick, jerky nod. "All right. You make sense. We haven't had any luck with getting the machines to live ourselves. So we don't have anything to lose." He glared at Blade. "But don't breathe a word of how we failed to the Seekers. Otherwise Feragga herself won't be able to save you!"

"The Seekers will learn nothing from me," said Blade smoothly. It was a small concession to make, considering that the Seekers already knew practically everything about how the infantry had failed to make the Oltec vehicles run.

"Good. We'll go to the machine rooms tomorrow."

Each of the "machine rooms" was twice the size of the Seekers' training room for the waldoes. All three were filled with exotic military vehicles of at least twenty different kinds. They were parked in long rows on either side of wide aisles, which gave access to ramps leading to the surface at either end of the complex.

It looked like the vehicle park of an armored division whose vehicles were designed by madmen and a.s.sembled by drunks. Even the types of vehicles Blade could recognize at all were parodies of their Home Dimension counterparts. With others he couldn't even be sure what they were, let alone how they moved or how to operate them. Had the Tower Builders kept an experimental station in Doimar? Or had the last commander of the garrison before the war simply been part pack rat?

Trying to show more confidence than he felt, Blade lectured Nungor on the vehicles he thought he recognized or at least understood. The first one looked like the hull and turret of a small tank, but mounted on twelve stumpy articulated legs instead of on tracks.

"-not much use out of this unless there is ammunition for its weapon," he concluded. He couldn't tell what the weapon was, although it didn't look like a gun, a laser, or a grenade launcher. "Also, you would need two or three men to make this one work in battle."

"You have said that the war machines of England use four or five men," Nungor pointed out. "Could you not teach the men of Doimar to do the same?"

"I could, if you gave me the time," said Blade. "I would have to teach each man his work, then teach each crew to work together. It might take as much as half a year. Do we have that much time?"

Nungor hesitated for a moment, clearly reluctant to reveal such a vital part of Doimar's war plans. Then he shook his head. "No. I would not even want to ask for it. Feragga would refuse it and not think well of either of us for asking."

"I thought so," said Blade. "Well, then we'll have to look at something else."

They spent the rest of a long day looking at one "something else" after another. Some vehicles Blade rejected because he couldn't even guess what they were, although he tried to hide his ignorance. One machine looked like a ferris wheel mounted on a tracked carriage twenty feet long and ten feet wide. Blade somehow doubted that the Tower Builders' army held carnivals for its men.

Blade rejected other machines because they were obviously no more than junk. Still, others he rejected because they would be quite useless in Doimar's wars. A lot of engineering equipment fell into that category. Doimar's army wasn't going to build pontoon bridges, dig ditches, lay down fuel lines, or do many other engineering jobs a Home Dimension mechanized army faced in war.

Blade rejected some vehicles because he not only recognized them but knew they would be far too useful to Doimar and far too dangerous to Kaldak. There were a dozen or so tracked vehicles which could be nothing but armored personnel carriers. These could carry raiding parties of Doimari infantry deep into enemy territory. They could also carry the Seekers' radios, making the waldoes far more effective. Used either way they could mean disaster for Kaldak in the coming war.

Blade had to be particularly careful in explaining the uselessness of the more useful vehicles. Nungor was no fool. Catching Blade in even a small lie might make him so suspicious that Blade's position-and Kareena's-would become impossible.