Blade knew this. The crystal in his brain was working. Faint, faltering, imperfect and fading, the computer was feeding him thought impulses. Lord L and J knew of his situation and were trying to do something about it.
What they could do, if anything, Blade had not the slightest idea. But he was growing. No doubt of it. And that would create new problems. Blade sucked at the last of Valli's milk. He would need all his strength.
Chapter 4
And so it was that Richard Blade came to the Land of Zir. Valli hid him in a pavilion in a deserted reach of the harem grounds. She put him in a closet there and swaddled him in rugs and contrived to bring him milk in bottles. Valli dared not trust any other woman or guard with her secret and so had to leave him alone for long periods. This was a great worry to the woman and none at all to Blade. His strength increased by the hour and soon he could open the closet door and crawl all about the ornate pavilion. On the second day he was walking, on the third striding, and on the fourth day he could run. His hair began to come in thick and dark.
He kept all this from Valli. She held him and gave him the bottle and marveled at how he grew, but in no way did she suspect the truth. Blade knew that he would have to tell her soon. She was the only friend he had, still the only means of his survival, and he spent long hours in pondering just how to go about breaking the news to her. He must not frighten her, or shock her into uselessness. Beyond his self-interest was his real fondness for the woman. Valli was, after all, the nearest thing he had to a mother for many years. But there was the mission to get on with.
The crystal told him that Lord L knew of his predicament and that it could be remedied on the instant that his Lordship worked out some intricate calculations and translated them for encodement into computer macroergs.