Return To Kaldak

Chapter 3

Blade woke before dawn, feeling better than usual after his first night in a new Dimension. At least he felt better until he thought of Cheeky. Then he had to tell himself all over again that he wouldn't find Cheeky by worrying or blaming Lord Leighton.

Without leaving cover, he ate a chocolate bar and watched dawn break over the river. Several small boats passed slowly down the main channel, trailing fishing nets and lines. The fishermen wore broad-brimmed hats, and both men and women were bare to the waist.

From farther upriver a whistle sounded. Then a stern-wheel steamboat appeared, trailing a thick cloud of gray smoke. Her decks were crowded and she towed several heavily loaded barges. A boat the size of a large cabin cruiser followed in her wake, gliding along silently without noise or smoke. The fishermen waved as the two larger craft plowed past. The people aboard the steamer waved back.

Blade knew it was time to start moving. He wasn't going to find Cheeky or learn much about the Dimension by sitting here. The mix of technologies-steamboat, hovercraft, and rowboat-was odd but not unbelievable. He might be in some developing country or a land recovering from a nuclear war. Neither would be anything new.

He emptied one canteen, then headed for the stream to ref-ill it. He was bending down when he heard the drone of propellers from high overhead. He looked up, and stopped with the empty canteen dangling from his hand to stare at what was approaching.

You could call it a flying train, if you had to find a handy name for it. The locomotive was a squarish metal box with a wedge-shaped nose that was mostly tinted glass. It looked rather like the cabin section of a helicopter with the rotors and tail cut off. Two large propellers whirled on outriggers near the nose. Two more were mounted aft, blowing over large rudders.

From between the rudders a long cable stretched astern, to the nose of a large sausage-shaped balloon. Three more balloons followed, tied nose to tail like railroad cars. A long gondola hung from each one. Blade saw shrouded piles of cargo, men moving among them, and guns at the bow and stern of each gondola.

The whole train made a weird sort of sense, if you assumed the «locomotive» was held up by some sort of antigravity. Certainly the propellers could never have done the job alone, nor could the balloons, which were brightly colored, in checkerboard patterns of yellow and green or blue and white. Each of them had what looked like a number on its bulging flank, and there was lettering on each gondola. It looked like the same tantalizingly familiar lettering Blade had seen on the hovercraft. It was also out of sight before Blade could get a good look.

On any previous trip, it would have been common sense for Blade to go where the balloon train was going. That way probably lay civilization-there, or along the river. On this trip, needing to think about Cheeky was changing all the rules.

Blade wouldn't even guess what the chances were that the feather-monkey was still alive. He'd made the transition into Home Dimension with Blade, but had he made it out the other side? And if he'd reached the same Dimension, had he landed anywhere close? Even if he'd landed only a few hundred yards away, he might have drowned in the marsh or the river.

Nonetheless, Blade was going to search at least the immediate area, if only because he would find it hard to live with himself otherwise. In fact, he was ready to spend most of his time in this. Dimension hunting for Cheeky. The trip would be pretty much wasted if he didn't find Cheeky!

Even the immediate area along the riverbank was a pretty good-sized haystack, and he was looking for a needle with a mind of its own and the ability to move around. So the first thing to do was communicate with some friendly natives and get them to help him.

Not just any natives, though. Blade alone or Cheeky alone probably wouldn't appear suspicious. The two of them together could be. In a Dimension advanced enough to produce hovercraft and antigravity, the people would have many ways to discover the origin and identity of two such suspicious strangers. That meant danger to the Dimension X secret, and Blade's most important duty was always to protect that secret. He had to be ready to kill anybody or let himself be killed, rather than let anyone seriously suspect the existence of inter-Dimensional travel.

So he would have to find a community so isolated that even if they got suspicious, they might not be able to get word to the authorities or convince them if they did. It should also have so few people that he could kill them himself if necessary.

Blade devoutly hoped it wouldn't be necessary. He didn't like killing anybody, and certainly never peasants who probably wouldn't even know that they'd learned something dangerous. However, Blade was alive and sane after so many years as an agent and a traveler in far Dimensions because he could and would kill where necessary, as efficiently and ruthlessly as if he did enjoy it.

The first people he'd try were the fishermen on the river. He wouldn't signal them from the bank, though. Such signals might attract other people's attention. Better to find a fishing village.

Blade looked back toward the wooded hill. From the top of one of those trees, he could see a good deal of countryside. Once he'd found the nearest fishing settlement, he could spy it out at night, then approach the people tomorrow morning. Being that careful would take a lot of time, when every hour counted, but not being careful-

Blade started to turn, then his instinct for danger suddenly flashed a warning: turn around slowly. He did so, keeping his hands well away from his sides and spreading out his fingers to show that he was unarmed.

Five men in green coveralls were standing among the trees. Four wore a variety of hats, and one a steel helmet. If they were soldiers, they must have armed themselves from a museum. One carried a crossbow, very much like Blade's except that the bow and winch were metal. Two carried what looked like turn-of-the-century army rifles with magazines and short thick bayonets. The man with the helmet carried a long-barreled pistol. The last man-Blade now saw it was a woman-carried something futuristic, made of what looked like black plastic.

One of the riflemen took Blade's stare as a hostile gesture. He raised his weapon and took aim. The helmeted man drew his pistol and knocked the barrel of the rifle up just in time. The bullet whistled over Blade's head. Before the man could fire again his leader was cursing him-and Blade stopped as if he'd grown roots.

He'd heard the language before. It was reaching his ears as English, thanks to the usual change in his brain as he passed into Dimension X. But he'd learned that if he concentrated and didn't try to translate, he could hear the original words clearly enough to recognize them.

The soldiers were speaking the language of Kaldak and Doimar, the rival cities of a war-scarred Dimension groping its way back to civilization. He'd been there two trips ago. Before he left, he'd temporarily ended the rivalry by teaching Kaldak to use the ancient weapons of the fallen civilization, overcoming centuries of superstitious fear. Doimar's army was smashed, and at least a chance for recovery had been brought to the Dimension. It was one of his proudest accomplishments.

Now he was back in the same Dimension. A Dimension where he could easily be a legend, and which might have scientists who could learn the Dimension X secret from his return!