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breasts. She stared ahead
with a fixed smile. The Russian manipulated her breasts Blade could almost
feel the flesh on his own fingers squeezing and pushing first to one side,
then the other, his fingers twiddling at her nipples.
The hands went lower along the tiny waist and slid over buttocks and reached
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around and explored her front. The girl trembled and moaned a bit, and Blade
felt himself reacting.
The Russian gave her a little push and stepped away. "That is all. You may
go."
The girl bowed. "Thank you, master."
The double came back to sprawl on the couch beside Blade. "How about that, old
man! They're all like that, all happy to oblige, and there must be a thousand
of them around the palace. Nothing like that back in Russia, I assure you. I
doubt if there is in England, from what I've seen."
Blade sampled his wine just as the Russian did. Blade had poured and waited.
The double raised his mug and his white teeth flashed. "No monkey business,
chap. No drugged wine. Not bad, is it?"
The wine was tart and dry. Blade guessed it had figs or dates as a base. He
nodded. "Very good.
Now are you interested in hearing my proposition?"
The Russian filled his glass again. Blade nurtured a faint hope, vain as it
turned out, that the man was a drunk. It would make things easier.
"I'm listening," said the double. For the first time there was a hard glint
in his eyes that Blade recognized. He had seen it in his own.
Blade explained, briefly and without giving away any secrets, that the agent
could regain Home
Dimension only through Lord L's computer. There was no other way.
"This is not a time-space thing," Blade said. "Nor is it an all a dream, a
reversal of reality. Nothing like that at all. There is no time slippage that
can be corrected. I can't really explain it, and wouldn't if I
could, but take my word for it. You are not going to suddenly wake up
. Your brain was altered, molecularly restructured, by the computer. What
has happened, in the simplest of terms, is that you have become aware of a new
dimension that has been there all the time. You may very well have been
walking through it, without perception, every time you entered the Kremlin.
And the computer is the only way back."
"Wizard," said the Russian. "Absolutely wizard. You chaps are far ahead of us.
Our boffins haven't a clue to anything like this."
Blade smiled. "We hope to keep it that way. And I may as well tell you, by the
way, that you overdo the 'British' bit a little. You sound like a stage
Englishman."
"Do I now? Strange, that I've only been copying you
, Blade."
Blade had to grin. "Then I had better look to myself. Funny. I thought I was
beginning to sound like a bloody Yank."
"The proposition, old man?"
"Just that you defect to us."
The Russian's amazement was genuine. "Defect? Me? My very dear fellow, I "
Blade watched him closely. "Why not? In time, after all your security stuff is
out of the way, you would have a better life. England a better place to live,
you know."
is
The other man nodded slowly. He stared at Blade over the wine mug. "That is
opinion, not fact. But granting it how could this be arranged?"
"Not difficult at all. You arrived naked, did you not?"
Another nod. A wry smile. "Did I! Naked in a raging sea. Thinking I had lost
my mind. If I hadn't found some floating wreckage I would have drowned."
"You will be naked when you go back," Blade said. "You will be stunned and
helpless and you will be arrested immediately. As a spy, an enemy agent, a man
who threatened to blow up half of London.
You will be put away for a very long time. You might want to defect then, but
coming after the fact it won't carry much plausibility. But if you defect now,
if you arrange it now with me, I can vouch for you when we get back. If we get
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back."
The man leaned toward Blade. "If, old man?"
Blade wanted to ruffle him, to worry him a bit. The man was too cool and sure
of himself and Blade didn't like it. Psyche him a little, as the Americans
said.
"There always has to be a first time," he said gravely, "when the computer
will fail. When they won't be able to take contact."
The Russian lit his pipe again. He took his mug of wine and went to the
balcony and peered out. It was beginning to get dark. It was a trick to keep
Blade from seeing his face and there was nothing Blade could do about it.
"Tell me, old man can a dead man be transported back to your Home Dimension? A
body?"
"No. A man is dead when his brain dies. The computer can't alter dead cells."
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