The Golden Steed

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Once again Richard Blade was riding the Golden Steed. But instead of the yellow-brown plains of Pendar, the rolling green hills of Surrey stretched out around him. And instead of the white walls and gilded roofs of Vilesh, red brick cottages lurked among the trees, sending curls of blue smoke up from their chimneys into the dawn sky. It was a clear bright crisp dawn, too, something rare for the English winter. The Golden Steed's hoofs left a distinct trail across the white frost on the brownish grass underfoot.

Blade felt very much at peace with the world, for it had been a good trip into the Dimension of the Pendari. Its incredible wealth of gold had made the prime minister sit up and take notice with a vengeance. Blade hoped, however, that if large-scale teleportation was ever perfected to the point where Pendari gold could be brought to England by the ton, it would be traded for. Otherwise England would be acting as badly as the Lanyri, and that was a possibility Blade did not like.

Certainly Lord Leighton felt that teleportation was a good deal closer than it had ever been before. The return of the Golden Steed had been proof of that. Of course, there had been rather a lively time getting the horse out of the underground complex. It had nearly panicked on first emerging, and only Blade's best efforts had kept it from running wild and smashing up many hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment. Then there had been the problem of cleaning up the chamber-a disagreeable surprise for some of the technicians. They had not expected to find themselves drafted as stable hands when they signed on with Lord Leighton.

Of course all the electronically guarded doorways had never been intended to let horses through, so the only way they could get the Golden Steed to the elevator was to disconnect all the electronic surveillance equipment. That was another lively time-somebody pulled one switch too many, and the entire complex was plunged into darkness for the better part of half an hour. It turned out that the emergency system had been accidentally cross-connected to the main one, so the two systems went out together, and the technicians had to grope around with flashlights and even matches to get things back on the line.

Finally they had managed to get the Golden Steed to the elevator. But «you can lead a horse to an elevator, but you can't make him get in.» Once more the Golden Steed had nearly panicked, and to calm it down, they had to shoot it full of tranquilizers. They called it a carefully regulated dose, but someone was evidently not careful enough. For two hours they had faced the problem of concealing a full-sized, semi-conscious horse on the grounds of the Tower of London. Finally a horse trailer from Scotland Yard's Mounted Section arrived, with a security-cleared veterinarian, and hauled the Golden Steed off to J's country estate. It was being stabled there now, rapidly eating its way through J's budget, and making J wonder if he could get some of the money back in stud fees, if nothing else. Blade wondered how Lord Leighton had managed to put the whole story of the Golden Steed into suitably detached scientific language. That would be an achievement sufficient to tax even Leighton's intellect, to say nothing of his command of scientific language.

Oh well, that wasn't his problem. What bothered Blade when he thought about it were those quixotic impulses that had continually struck him during the last battle in Pendar. Words like «honor» and «chivalry» had popped into his head repeatedly, unasked and unexpected. Admittedly the ideas weren't completely alien or ridiculous to him-public school and university had made that impossible. But if he were going to suddenly start thinking like a fifteenth-century French knight-one of the kind that had been slaughtered by the thousands at the Battle of Agincourt-he was courting trouble. He could easily wind up just as dead as those French knights if he overindulged in grand gestures.

That was a new kind of overindulgence for him. As a secret agent there were professional standards to follow, but the key one had nothing to do with traditional notions of honor. It was: stay alive. It had been impressed on him very early in his career that it didn't matter how an agent played the game, but rather that he won it and came out on his feet. And if necessary, that the opponent did not come out on his feet. But now, Blade found himself unable to keep his mind set in that mold.

Was it the computer affecting his brain again? Possibly. It had already given him problems with sex and with alcohol. Perhaps it was now giving him more subtle psychological problems?

Or was it simply too much exposure to worlds where fighting and violence had not been mechanized, where one could be «honorable» without winding up a corpse? Where in fact it was even sometimes to one's advantage to play the game a certain way? He didn't know. Nor did he know how far these new attitudes might lead him. He would have to keep it under control though. If it led him too far, he would wind up very dead, far from home, and perhaps for no good reason.

Or was honor perhaps a good reason for accepting death? There I go again, he told himself sharply. A year ago he would have given a professional's answer to the question. A large resounding no. Today… He would have to speak to both J and Lord Leighton about it, that was certain. It was something that might endanger his fitness for further trips into Dimension X.

But there was one consolation. Neither J nor Lord Leighton would laugh at him for admitting this problem. J was of the old school, and he tried to preserve its standards in his personal life if he could not do so in his profession. He would appreciate Blade's situation. And the scientist? Well, a sense of personal honor was not scientifically measurable, so Leighton would never admit its existence. At least not aloud to Blade. But there was a particular expression on Leighton's face when he was forced to recognize something that went beyond the limits of the measurable. It would be on his face when he listened to Blade explaining this new problem.

His mind was really wandering down strange paths today, Blade told himself. Time to get moving, get a little fresh air blowing in his face. He dug his heels into the flanks of the Golden Steed and felt it surge forward.