Undying World

CHAPTER 2

Lord Leighton's humped figure shuffled to the enormous instrument complex and pressed the red toggle. J was there, white faced and nervous, mouth open in last useless entreaty, still begging Blade to change his mind.

A few minutes before, as Lord L bound him into the chair with a web of electrodes, Blade had found the courage to try to explain to J.

«I must go, J. I don't want to go, but I must. I am in deep trouble and I must.» He sought to recall the Edinburgh man's exact words. «I must seek out a highly successful sexual climate. Where else but Dimension X? I have never had any sexual difficulties there. I am going, J. Wish me luck.»

Then Lord L pressed the red toggle. A mist filled the little computer chamber. A mist that soon dispelled. He was still in the chamber, bound to the chair, with Lord L fussing and using bad language.

«Something wrong, my boy. Probably minor. A circuit, a condenser or resistor. Have it fixed in no time. You better go down to the apartment and rest for a bit. I'll call you when I've put matters straight.»

Blade opened his mouth and nothing came out. He knew then that the computer had him, but in a way he had not experienced before. No pain this time. He was struck dumb and now he was moving, his limbs not his own, subject to the will of the machine.

Blade tore away the encumbering electrodes. Flame hissed, smoke spurted and he felt nothing. He strode naked and free to the door of the chamber. J made a move to detain him and Blade struck him aside. J crumpled. Lord L cursed and pleaded. Blade found stairs and began to climb. His flesh was scorched here and there. He could smell the tar-paste Lord L had smeared on him.

Naked he mounted the long flight of stairs… moving now… an escalator. Men and women saw him and waved and smiled. No one minded his nakedness.

Blade wandered the crowded streets, trying to find the tube, the underground kiosk. The spring sun was pleasant on his bare hide. He began to achieve an enormous erection. Aha. That was more like it. The computer had come through for him. He was cured of impotency. He stopped to admire himself in a shop window. The computer was a friend indeed.

He stopped to ask directions of a policeman. The man was obviously jealous of Blade, for after one glance at his erection he frowned and his voice was curt. But he told Blade how to find a subway that would take him to Hell.

Blade did not want to go to Hell, but he had no volition of his own in the matter. The computer was sending him to Hell and he was duty bound to obey. The machine was his friend.

He found the kiosk and took the stairs down. A lovely woman, a blonde, naked beneath her mink coat, bumped into him and smiled and asked directions.

«Such a burrow down here,» she complained. «I am sure I will never find my way out. And I have to be in Paradise by five o'clock.»

Blade apologized for not being able to help. He told her he was going in the opposite direction. Her smile was sad.

«You're making a terrible mistake,» she said. «Why not change your mind and come with me?»

Blade shook his head. He was a slave, the computer his master, and how could he explain that?

The blonde opened her mink coat. Her breasts were resplendent, breathtaking, little pointed bombs of satin flesh. Her nipples crackled and gave off sparks. Around her waist was a garter belt made of puce neon. It kept flashing off and on-follow me to Paradise.

Blade left her and found his platform. He felt like a fool. It was foolish to take a train to Hell when he should be following the blonde to Paradise, but what could he do? The computer commanded.

He was alone on the platform. He heard the sound of a train approaching. The sound grew and grew into a roar, filling the bowels of the earth. Blade cringed. A terrible odor filled the platform, an odious stench that made Blade hold his nose. He wished the train would hurry up.

The train slid into the station. It was brightly lit and empty. The destination board said: HELL. Blade stepped aboard and the doors wheezed shut after him. The train lurched out of the station. Blade found that he was alone. There were no other passengers. He began to walk through the cars.

They were all the same. Bright and empty. Newly painted. The paint had a sulphur smell about it. Blade kept walking, through car after car, mile after mile. There was no end to the train.

Blade was tired of walking. He hung on to a strap and peered out a window. Strange. He had no reflection. The train roared along at great speed-rackety clickety clack — rackety clickety clack. Stations flashed past in a bright blur. Then he saw that they weren't stations at all, but shop windows, and in them the manikins were copulating. Blade thought it shameless of them. He glanced down at his own penis. It was gone.

He screamed. His penis was gone. There was nothing there but a black scar. Blade screamed again and raced back through all the cars, looking for his penis.

No good. It was not to be found. Blade reversed himself and ran toward the front of the train. Ran and ran and ran. At last he reached the front car. The headlight sent a bright shaft down the black tunnel. The rails glinted silver. The train crashed on and on. Blade glanced into the driver's compartment.

The blonde in the mink coat was running the train. She smiled at Blade and pushed the throttle up another notch. «I changed my mind,» she told him. «I have decided to go with you to Hell. Maybe it won't be so bad. A man like you could make it Heaven.»

Blade managed a smile. He did not go into the compartment. He moved so she could not see that he had no penis. She certainly would not want to go with him if she knew that.

The train left the tunnel and shot into the open air. The speed increased. The tracks led off on an upward slant. For a time they rolled through the sky, headed into the glare of the sun.

Blade thought that this was a hell of a way to run a subway, but when he complained to the blonde he found her replaced by a hag, naked and toothless, who grinned at him and dripped saliva on her shrunken breasts. Terror and revulsion gripped Blade. He began to run back through the cars.

The train dipped under water. It flashed past station after station; each platform was crowded with waiting commuters, patient, reading their papers, each with his or her feet planted in a cask of cement. They did not look up as the train roared past.

He glanced out the opposite window and screamed. Another train, its headlight an enormous moon, was approaching from a side track.

Collision. Wreck. No time to escape. The moon headlight bore down. Closer and closer.

The oncoming train whistled once: a warning shriek, a sobbing moan, a fearful blast that tore Blade's head apart. The train crashed through the window and ran him down, smashed him, flattened him, dismembered him. His arms were severed and his legs. His bowels gushed out. His head was lying on the floor of the train.

A high-heeled slipper appeared. It was attached to a beautiful leg. Blade saw the mink coat and through a slit in it he could see her luscious body. He saw she was really a blonde. He blinked his eyes at her, trying to get her attention, trying to get her to save him.

Blade began to scream. The blonde made a comforting noise and bent to pick up his head. She pressed it to her marvelous breasts and crooned to him.

«Don't you worry,» she told him. «You kept your head. Or at least I have it now, and we'll find you another body. You just trust Lascivia and don't worry about a thing. Little old Lascivia will take good care of you.»

She took a suitcase from the luggage rack and put Blade's head in it. The suitcase had a false bottom and the head fell out and through a hole in the floor, beneath the grinding, flashing wheels of the train.

Pain now. Darkness now. Nothing now. His last sob was of relief that this should be. Nothing was beautiful.