Undying World

Lord L slammed the phone down. Where in bloody damnation was the lad!

J would know, of course, but then he couldn't very well ask J. The man was dead set against Blade making another trip through the computer. The trouble with J was that he had a bloody father complex.

J did know where Richard Blade was. When he had left Lord L, he took a taxi directly to his own office in Copra House, off Threadneedle Street near Bart Lane, where he was now sitting, reading the report on Blade. For the past month he had had a tail on him.

The first signs of spring had come to London and several of the tall arched windows were open in J's office. A lemony sun drenched the grimy city and there was a subtle difference in the sounds and smells. J paid no attention to it as he pored over the report. He wondered if Blade knew he was being followed? Probably. Blade had been a top operative back before Project DX and he would not have forgotten much. He knew he was being tailed and made no attempt to lose the shadow. He was probably laughing. He just didn't give a damn.

J went to a window and stood staring down into Lothbury. There was a vendor with a mass of yellow crocuses for sale. J flicked the sheaf of paper against his teeth. Blade knew he was being followed, of course, but he must wonder why. Yet he had made no effort to check with J, not even a phone call.

J dialed the number of Blade's flat and listened for five minutes. Same old story-not home… or not answering. He hadn't seen Blade in nearly a fortnight. Blade was avoiding him, but why?

J went over the report again. Same story there, too. Blade was sleeping around-brothels, clubs, bars. When he was in his flat he usually had a woman with him. He wasn't drinking too much, which J supposed was something to be thankful for, but certainly he wasn't living a normal life.

And the doctors! J rifled through the pages of the report. More than a dozen doctors, half of them psychiatrists. Harley Street. Baker Street. Half Moon Street. Even one in Edinburgh. Blade had gone all that way, paid the doctors from his own pocket instead of entering it on his unlimited expense account. Why? What was wrong with Richard Blade?

At the moment Blade was back in Harley Street. He was in the treatment room of a famous specialist and he was also in a bit of a dilemma. He and the specialist, a Dr. Poindexter, were gazing at an X-ray of Blade's skull. The doctor was puzzled and Blade couldn't blame him. That small faint shadow in his left frontal lobe, at the top of his brain in the neocortex, was the thin wafer of crystal implanted some months before so that Blade might receive thought impulses from Home Dimension while he was himself in X Dimension. It had not worked perfectly, there had been lapses, but it hadn't troubled Blade. He had nearly forgotten it was there.

Dr. Poindexter was on it like a hawk. «It could be a tumor,» he said gravely, «though it is early on to be sure. It certainly calls for an exploratory.»

Blade cursed himself for not having foreseen this. He couldn't tell the good man what it was, and he had no intention of allowing his skull to be opened again. Damn security and the Official Secrets Act! There were times when they bound a man like a net of steel cable.

The doctor rubbed his hands. He was cheerful. «Yes, indeed. We shall certainly have to go in there and have a look.»

Blade had been doing a great deal of reading of late. He was not drinking too much, and it had become his habit, after each sexual failure, to go to his flat, lock himself in, and read from a stack of books. Most were overdue and he owed the library a small fortune.

Now, as he prepared for a graceful retreat, he said, «The tumor, whatever it is, seems to be in the wrong part of my brain to be causing my trouble. Sex, as I understand it, is controlled by the paleocortex, what you people call the limbic system. Of course, if it is a tumor (which it wasn't — it was Lord L's damned crystal) I suppose the effect could spread to other parts of my brain?»

Dr. Poindexter looked startled, then frowned. Plainly he did not approve of amateur diagnosticians. He thought again that there was something decidedly odd about this handsome young man with the strange shadow in his brain.

«If you know that much,» the doctor said, «you surely know that all parts of the brain are closely interrelated. And you are right-if it is a tumor and it looks like one, it could certainly affect your sexual drive.»

«That's not quite the problem, Doctor. There's nothing wrong with my sexual drive. If anything, I am in overdrive all the time. The trouble is that when I get right down to it, I can't do anything.»

«Nothing happens at all? Not even a partial erection?»

Blade winced inwardly. It still hurt to admit it, even to a doctor. «Not even that, Doctor. Absolutely nothing.»

Dr. Poindexter was a brain man not a sexologist, but he was interested. He flipped through the papers on his desk. «You're not married, I see. So it probably isn't a question of too much familiarity, of staleness, of a marriage gone sour.»

«It is certainly not that.»

The doctor pursed his lips and stared at Blade. «You have tried, I presume, with more than one… er… partner?»

Blade smiled. «In the last month, Doctor, I have tried it with fourteen partners.»

Dr. Poindexter looked envious. «They were women you desired, that you really wanted? They were attractive? The ambiance-by that I mean the background, the setting and the time, they were all satisfactory? You were not rushed, or hurried, worried?»

Blade grew a little tired of the game. The man couldn't help him, it was obvious. He rose, his broad-shouldered bulk nearly filling the small room, and headed for the door.

«Nothing like that,» he assured the doctor. «Two nights ago I had the most beautiful woman in London naked on a bed. Her husband was in South Africa and the servants had been sent away. Nothing happened, Doctor, absolutely nothing.»

Dr. Poindexter followed him to the door of the treatment room. «It is not, I suppose, a question of alcohol?»

«I think not, Doctor. I have been a heavy drinker in my day, but not now.»

The doctor held the door open. «I could recommend a psychiatrist-«

«Please don't,» said Blade, smiling. «I have been to half-a-dozen already.»

The doctor shook his head. «It wouldn't hurt to see another, you know, several perhaps. Sometimes it is just a question of finding the right man. In the meantime we can't neglect that thing in your brain. I'll set up a hospital date for you. They'll want to run some preliminary tests and-«

«Don't bother just now,» Blade said. «I'll be in touch.» It was a lie-he wasn't coming back.

The doctor sensed the truth and hastened to add, «You just can't neglect it, you know. It won't go away, and it could be dangerous-very dangerous.»

It already has been, thought Blade. The X-rays had been taken by a technician and the doctor had not seen the great slash of scar on his skull, now concealed by his thick dark hair. Nor could the doctor, nor any of the doctors he had seen recently, know how his brain had been tortured and distorted by the computer over the past few years. He could not tell them and they would not have understood. It was a cheat and a waste of money and time, but he was desperate. Anxiety fed on itself and produced a feedback of fear.

Never again to have a woman? Suicide would be preferable.

He extricated himself, paid five guineas, left the aseptic chambers and entered the bright afternoon. London was burgeoning, wrapped in the promise of spring. Blade began to walk, feeling bitter, noting that his shadow was moving along on the opposite sidewalk, a bit ahead of him. Blade did not know the man; J would hardly be so clumsy as to plant a familiar face on his tail. But Blade had made a check of his own. The man was from MI6, right enough, and it was nice of old J to be concerned. It would be better all around, of course, if Blade simply went to his boss and explained.