The Ruins Of Kaldac

Chapter 24

«Good night, Mr. Blade.»

The blond nurse sounded disgustingly cheerful. Blade wouldn't have replied even if his broken jaw hadn't been wired shut so that all he could do was grunt. She went out, and Blade was alone in his hospital room, waiting for the sleeping injection to take effect.

He'd been tempted to refuse it, but that would simply have brought the doctor back in to make a fuss, and Blade was in no mood to be fussed at when he could only grunt in reply. At least Lord Leighton and J hadn't insisted on his doing more than writing a brief summary of his adventures this trip, although he suspected the scientist would do his share of fussing as soon as Blade could talk again.

Perhaps it was just as well that Blade wouldn't be talking for about ten days. He was in a thoroughly vile temper over being snatched back to Home Dimension when there was so much left undone in Kaldak and so many questions he'd never have answered. Did Bairam kill Nungor and catch up with Feragga? What happened between Kaldak and Doimar after that? How was Kareena doing with his child? Was she considering Sidas as a possible husband, as he'd hinted she ought to?

Blade made a string of noises which with an unwired jaw would have been a string of oaths. He would keep his temper when he could talk again, and tell Lord Leighton and J everything they needed to know and everything they asked in addition. He would even help the Project's scientists test the control chair-apparently they were excited about something in it, although he didn't know exactly what. Lord Leighton hadn't been able to explain it in plain English.

After that, though, he was going to say good-bye to the Project and everyone else who knew him from Adam for at least two weeks. He'd go on a walking tour and perhaps look for a country house he could buy cheaply. He had been looking for country property for sometime, since in his London apartment he couldn't keep Lorma, the hunting cat he'd brought home from the Forest of Binaark on his last trip. She deserved better than a cage in the Project's complex even if he did visit her every few days to see that she was well fed. He would tell Lord Leighton what to do with the Project for those two weeks, and if the scientist protested he would head for Brazil and try a career as chief of a tribe of Amazon Indians! Enough was enough.

In spite of his irritation, the sleeping injection was beginning to work. Blade leaned back on the pillows and let it do so. By the time the nurse came back, he was so soundly asleep that even her knocking over the bedpan and having to clean it up didn't make him blink.

In Kaldak, the people from the command center sat at the entrance, breathing the night air and listening to the sounds of their city celebrating victory. None of them wanted to stay down below and have to look at the empty space where Blade and his chair had been.

«He must have been one of the Sky Masters themselves,» said Bairam to Sidas. «They sent him to bring us out of the darkness, then took him home when his work was finished.»

«I don't know that it was finished,» said Sidas. «But certainly the rest is up to us.» He thought of Kareena.

Peython and Kareena sat beside a fire, watching steaks cut from a captured munfan broil over the fire. Peython held his daughter as he had when she was a little girl. Kareena rested her head against her father's chest and thought of another meal of munfan steaks, with the father of her child who had now gone-far away, she knew that much.

Twenty miles away, Feragga of Doimar sat staring into another campfire, waiting for Nungor. She knew now that Doimar had lost and would have to make peace once and for all with the triumphant Kaldakans. She had been betrayed by Blade, and that hurt her deeply. Ah well, at least she still had Nungor.

But Nungor lay on the hilltop behind the fallen Fighting Machine, half his head burned away.