Part 2 (1/2)
Blade's hand and arm ached from the blow he had given it.
Blade sniffed at the burnt-out computer sh.e.l.l. He found that he could grin. The old boy had really fouled this one up. Six months of work gone up in smoke and the old man had conjured up some sort of a hairy demon from somewhere out there in limbo.
Blade shrugged. And laughed.
He touched the unconscious creature with his bare foot The body hair was long and coa.r.s.e and clotted with dirt and sweat, and the smell from it was fast overpowering the acridity of the smoke.
Blade was still chuckling when Lord L came back with a tray on which was a hypodermic needle and several small bottles containing a clear liquid. His Lords.h.i.+p gave him a reproving glance as he filled the needle and injected the brute thing on the floor.
”This is a very serious matter,” said Lord L. ”Not at all funny, Richard. We have probably made the greatest scientific discovery of all time. A serious matter, my boy. Very serious.”
”Yes, sir,” said Blade. ”But now what, sir? Where do we go from here?”
Lord L glanced around as though he expected spies to leap from the shattered computer. ”We shall have to be very careful and very cunning. And there is much hard work in store for us. All of us. I have already used my authority to clear the outer areas and seal us off. The first thing, Richard, is that you go and fetch J at once. Best not try to explain this matter to him. I will do that. Go now. Hurry.”
Blade pointed out that he could not have explained the matter to J even had he wished. You cannot explain what you do not understand yourself.
Lord L ignored him. All he said was, ”Go at once, please.”
”Is it all right if I dress first, Lord Leighton?”
His Lords.h.i.+p did not hear.
Chapter Four.
The next month was as frenetic as any Blade had experienced in his thirty years. Lord Leighton, always a martinet and a slavedriver, reached into some hidden reserve of energy and summoned a demonic fury that sorely tried Blade and J, both younger men. All three became master liars. Lord L, as chief Ananias, was a good teacher and was expert in twisting the truth into odd shapes. His Lords.h.i.+p's great fear, his chief nightmare, was that the world would find out about Ogar, as they had come to call the creature, from the snarling sounds he made, and wrest his prize from him before he could complete his studies.
J, who had a plan of his own, had a blazing battle with Lord L about this. J insisted that the Prime Minister be let in on the secret. His Lords.h.i.+p said no. J insisted.
”He must know,” J said flatly. ”For our protection and his. Else how do we explain the delay in Project DX? Be practical, Leighton! Our money is running out. The PM has to go before a committee and beg for more secret funds. He can't, and won't, do that unless he knows exactly what is going on.”
J won that argument. It was the only one.
When the ma.s.sive complex was excavated beneath the Tower someone had thought to include a single large cell, a modern dungeon, in the lowest sub-bas.e.m.e.nt. It was to this cell that Blade carried the unconscious Ogar after Lord L summarily cleared the place of all personnel. It was there that Ogar slept his drugged sleep, fed intravenously, while Lord L did a detailed and loving Bertillon, crooning happily to himself as he made cranial measurements. When J rashly suggested that perhaps a professional anthropologist should be called in, the old man flew into a rage.
The Prime Minister came in the dead of night, spent half an hour viewing Ogar and listening to Lord L, and left in a state of shock, muttering to himself. His position, he told J later, was unique in every sense of the word. No politician had ever had to cope with a situation like this before.
The coming of Ogar did accomplish one other thing. For the time being, at least, it healed the growing breach between J and Lord Leighton. There was no more talk of brain surgery and, as they became less snappish, the two older men regained some of their former rapport. Even so, J, on the first day, could not refrain from jabbing the needle into Lord L.
With a malicious grin he quoted directly from the old man's computer speech at Reading University: ”, we have at least succeeded in eliminating the danger of schizophrenia, when they are built, they function exactly as intended.”
He received a cold glare from the hooded yellow eyes. ”May I point out,” said his Lords.h.i.+p, ”that some of the greatest scientific discoveries have been made by accident. In any case I have already found the error and the computer will be rebuilt in a month or so. But that is not my chief concern at the moment. I have plans, great plans.”
Both J and Blade left their apartments and moved into quarters far below the Tower computer complex. Here they were self-sufficient, with no need to venture outside. There was no elevator, it stopped on the level above , and the only way out or in was by a narrow stairway. This was guarded by a ma.s.sive steel door that was kept locked. Above them the lesser computers were humming again, all personnel back at work, and the security had been redoubled.
The stone axe was s.h.i.+pped away, with elaborate security precautions, for an appraisal by experts. Within three days the report was back and his Lords.h.i.+p shared it with them.
HAFT, this wood is unknown to us. Suggest may be some species of iron-wood believed extinct since Lower Palaeolithic Age. Workmans.h.i.+p suggests culture unknown to us.
AXE, this macrolith also a puzzler. We have seen nothing like it before. Main component is undoubtedly quartz, but with a mixture of greenstone, quartzite and cherty. This is impossible according to present knowledge, yet repeated tests prove it to be so. Possible that meld might be a result of intense heat, in which case heat would have to approach that of inner sun. Workmans.h.i.+p again suggests no culture known to us.
At the bottom of the report was a scribble. Dear Leighton, what goes on here?
The scribble made Lord L most unhappy.
”They're bound to start nosing around sooner or later,” he told J and Blade.
”All the more reason to start cracking,” rejoined J, who had his plan and was keeping it to himself for the moment. J was in a very good form and biding his time. For the moment the Prime Minister was appeased, if slightly dazed, and matters were going smoothly enough. J kept a steady pressure on the old man to see that the computer was rebuilt as rapidly as possible. This was not easy, but J did it. Left to his own designs, Lord L would have spent every waking hour by the cot on which Ogar still lay drugged.
At the end of the first week Lord Leighton summoned them to the cell and, as they stood around the cot on which Ogar slept, gave his first full report. Blade and J were too impressed to interrupt. The cell by this time was full of the body smell of the hairy creature on the cot.
Lord L, using a ruler as a pointer, poked and prodded and explained. You would have thought, as J said later hi jest, that the old man had himself sp.a.w.ned the thing on the cot.
”Ogar,” said Lord L, ”is from another dimension. A Dimension X. It is very important to remember that.”
Blade, recalling the b.l.o.o.d.y struggle in the computer room, thought that he was hardly likely to forget it.
J said: ”Do get on with it, Leighton, and do remember to whom you are speaking. d.i.c.k and I aren't scholars or intellects. Keep it simple.”
His Lords.h.i.+p smiled. ”I will try. But remember also that any statement I make, any description, is only an a.n.a.logue and not an exact statement of fact.
”We know that in our own dimension, Home Dimension, our world,” the old man continued, ”that evolution develops along parallel lines, but at a slower or faster pace in remote and unconnected parts of the world. So, to get started at all, I must have a model, an abstract and theoretical model for guidance. I have chosen one. I have, a priori, chosen to think along the lines that Ogar here came from a dimension, a world, that is much like our own, but in a much earlier stage of development. Put it like this, when the computer malfunctioned and Ogar was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his world, his dimension, he left behind a world similar to our own, half a million years ago.”
J, practical man, and with the Prime Minister and committee to keep happy, relished this. Would there not, in such a dimension, be gold and oil and all the rest? Untold and untouched, wealth to be exploited by England when teleportation was perfected. It made a strong talking point.
Lord L tapped the creature's flattened skull with the ruler. ”A puzzle,” he admitted. ”Not Pithecanthropus. Far short of Cro-Magnon, though he did walk upright in the, er, short time we saw him move of his own volition. The braincase is flat and the brow ridges very heavy. Yet the arms and legs are sum and well developed, the body protected by hair with an undercoat for additional protection from cold. That itself is totally unknown to us, a subhuman species with an undercoating of hair like some dogs have.”
Blade said, with a faint smile, ”What makes him smell like that, sir?”
J tried not to laugh. His Lords.h.i.+p scowled but answered the question.
”Pure animal odor. Ogar never took a bath in his life. Over the years a protective coating of dirt and grease build up. It would come in very handy in bad weather.”
Ogar turned on the cot. Despite the heavy dosage of drugs he was given to tossing and turning and had several times fallen off the cot. Each time, Blade, the only one strong enough to lift him, had been summoned for the duty. And had taken a shower immediately to get the stink off him.
Now Ogar showed his teeth and snarled in his sleep. ”Ogarrrrrr, rrrrrr, Ogarrrrrrrrrr, ”
”Having a bad dream,” said Blade.
His Lords.h.i.+p tapped the hairy jaw. ”Teeth much the same as ours, but larger and lacking any wisdom teeth. The canines are long and fang-like, as you can see.”
Blade was still healing from the bites inflicted by Ogar in their brief scuffle.
Lord Leighton moved closer to the cot. He seized a handful of hair at the back of Ogar's neck and raised the head. He poked with the ruler at the nape of Ogar's neck. ”The amazing thing is the foramen magnum. Identical with our own, or so close to being as makes no difference. So he walks upright and his brain stalk is vertical. Ogar, my dear fellows, is a human being. Or very close to being one. I only wish it were possible to work out a lineal descent pattern, a phylogeny, but that is impossible since he is not of our dimension.”