Looters Of Tharn

The riders, on the other hand, were unmistakably of three different peoples, apparently the same three whose skeletons Blade had found along with the horses. Some were as stockily built as their mounts. Others were tall and graceful, and most of them were unmistakably women. Still others seemed to be combinations of the first two.

Then one tall rider's horse put a foot wrong and stumbled. The rider went sailing out of the saddle and sprawled on the grass as his horse bolted. In the fall the rider's leather cap came off, revealing a totally bald head. The man turned a grimy, deeply lined face up toward the approaching machine. Blade could see terror on the man's face, terror that fought with a grim determination not to show it to a hated and despised enemy.

Blade's hands danced over the controls, swinging the machine in a wide circle around the bald man. There was something familiar about the bald man-not as an individual, but as a type. Memory stirred in Blade, forming more precise images.

Blade could have sworn he was looking at a neuter of Tharn!

The man's garb was barbaric, his face was filthy and aged by strain and fear. But the bald head, the thin neck and limbs, the great intent eyes-if this wasn't a neuter of Tharn, what was it? And where was he?

Blade decided he'd been offered a perfect opportunity to find out where he was. A quick glance at the screens showed the horsemen still heading for the horizon as fast as their mounts could cover ground. They were already far out of bowshot. Soon they would be clear out of sight. The bald man below carried a short sword and a knife in his belt, but no bow. Nor did he look like a fighter, with his spindly limbs.

Blade's hands moved again. The machine spiraled down in a tighter and tighter circle, until it touched down on the grass less than fifty feet from the neuter. No-from the bald man. Blade told himself sharply not to let his hopes rise. The man might be the image of a neuter of Tharn, but it was long odds against his actually being one.

But the impossible had been known to happen, a small voice in the back of Blade's mind put in.

Blade unstrapped himself, rose, and stretched. Then he went to the locker and pulled out a helmet with knives and a hatch-key. He wouldn't need any other weapons or protection against this man.

He drank several cups of water, found a canteen, filled it, and added it to the gear hanging from his belt. He looked at the screen again. The bald man was standing knee-deep in the grass, motionless, his arms crossed on his chest. He looked like a man resigned to his fate, but still slightly bewildered by the sudde

Blade stepped to the hatch and jabbed the button in the center. The hatch swung open and the cool evening breezes flowed in and played pleasantly over his bare skin. He stepped out onto the rear platform, closed the hatch behind him, and turned to look at the man.

The man was staring wide-eyed at Blade. His hands had dropped to his sides and Blade could see them shaking slightly. The man's tongue was creeping back and forth over trembling lips. Whatever he had been expecting to crawl out of the machine, Blade was certainly not it!

Blade stepped down off the platform and strode through the grass toward the bald man. As he moved he spread his arms wide and kept his empty hands in clear sight, in an unmistakable gesture of peace. There was no danger for him in that. Blade suspected that he could break this man in two with his bare hands, if it became necessary. He hoped it wouldn't.

The bald man froze as Blade started toward him. When Blade was twenty feet away the other swallowed convulsively several times, then spoke.

«You-you are of the Looters?»

Blade stopped in mid-stride so suddenly that he nearly fell on his nose in the grass. The man's speech had come out in a series of clicks, whistles, and trills. Yet Blade's brain had registered them as plain English words.

That was a miracle, but it was a miracle that Blade was used to by now. The computer altered his brain each time he entered a new dimension, so that he could both understand and speak the language there. How this happened was something still poorly understood even by Lord Leighton and the high-powered doctors and linguists on the Project Dimension X staff. But this was not the miracle that stopped Blade dead in his tracks.

That series of clicks, whistles, and trills was unmistakably the language of Tharn.

He was back in Tharn.

He had returned to a dimension he had once visited.

Chapter 9

For a long moment Blade stood as motionless as the neuter. The realization of what had happened was too overpowering for him to do anything else. It flooded into his mind and completely absorbed his attention. He could not have moved or spoken to save his life.

At last he cleared his mind of the shock and bewilderment. His eyes focused again on the neuter. He replied in the same clicks, whistles, and trills the neuter had used.

«I am no Looter, whatever they may be. I have come to Tharn from another land, for other purposes than those of the Looters.»

The neuter quivered all over as though he had just been stabbed. Then he clasped his hands together until their calloused and grimy knuckles stood out white and the fingers knotted together stopped shaking. It was his turn to speak.

«How is it that you know the true name of this land?»

Blade smiled. He had to fight to keep the smile from turning into a foolish grin. «I have been in Tharn before. I saw the great battle with the Pethcines, and saw them perish by the thousands. I saw the end of the power and the destruction of Urcit. Then I went away. I have traveled far since then, but now I have returned to Tharn. Now I have returned.» Blade was having trouble keeping complete control of his voice. The first overpowering surprise was passing now. In its place was a swelling exaltation, bubbling up inside him like vintage champagne in a glass.

They had done it! After all the time and money wasted on a dozen schemes to bring about a controlled return, he was back in a dimension he had visited before! Back in Tharn, by pure accident. Or was it pure accident? He had been thinking of Tharn as the computer gripped his brain. A clear image of Zulekia, the Maiduke girl he had loved, the girl he had left carrying his child, had been floating before his eyes as he was whirled away from Home Dimension. Did this possibly have something to do with where he had landed?

Possibly. But that was a question for Lord Leighton, back in Home Dimension. For the moment he had landed in Tharn, on his own, as he had always been. But in Tharn he had been Mazda, HE WHO CAME TO THEY. He had been given godlike reverence even before he turned Tharn upside down, ended the power, slaughtered the Pethcines, and finally helped bring about the destruction of Urcit, the great city of Tharn.

A thought struck Blade. Could he be sure that Mazda was remembered with favor, considering how much destruction he had wrought in Tharn? It had been needed to break the mold which had caught and frozen Tharn for centuries, the mold that held people, neuters, Maidukes, bearer maidens, ceboids, and even the Pethcines. They had all been dying in that mold. But what he'd wrought was destruction nonetheless.

Blade remembered the battlefield littered with the corpses of men, women, and horses, the smoke boiling up from Urcit as the explosion of the power pool destroyed it, the screams of the maimed and dying. Was it possible that Mazda would be remembered as a force for evil, who had brought destruction and death when he came to his people?