The words came out clear and distinctly. He could talk! That was something, he supposed, though he could not see how it would aid him at the moment. It might even be wise to forget it. Babies his age didn't talk.

Blade clasped his little fists in rage and began to howl. He grew red in the face and howled on. Might as well get it over with and be found, if there was anyone to find him. He couldn't do anything for himself, not a damn thing, and someone had to find him and help him or he would starve to death. Between his cries and his sobs, he let an adult curse slip in now and then. He hoped that the crystal was working, however imperfectly, and that the computer was picking up his brain waves and encoding them and handing them to Lord L on a printout.

Strange, but Blade smelled the women before he saw or heard them. His more primitive senses were sharpening as they always did when he entered DX-smell and sight and hearing and taste and all the guile of his primary and noncivilized brain. They were all working. And small good it did him.

Female bodies nearby. A mixture of perfume and sweat, the musky woman odor he had known in a thousand beds. Close by. Very near. Blade began to hope. If a woman found him ….

A woman said, «What was that, Valli? Did you hear it?»

«Shhh-be quiet a moment. Yes, I heard something. It sounded like a baby crying.»

«A baby! How could that be, Valli? You know babies aren't allowed in the harem. I must have been mistaken. Come on. It was only the wind in the reeds.»

«Be quiet, I say. I'm sure I heard something. And we both know, Stel, that some of the women have babies and put them out to die.»

The woman Valli had a light and pleasant voice, with some force in it, and, Blade thought, a tinge of kindness. He made his decision. With a woman like this he might stand a chance. He let out a series of wails and waved his hands and feet frantically in the air. He felt his sphincter muscles let go and cursed as he wet himself.

The reeds parted and the two women stood looking down at him. Blade closed his eyes, but continued to kick and scream. It would not do to let them see his eyes. Adult eyes. Not yet. Not until he had established a claim to their affections.

«It is a baby,» said the woman called Stel. «You were right, Valli. One of the women has had a child and put it out here to die. Come away. We mustn't touch it. You know the penalty for concealing babies in the harem.»

Damn it. Blade almost stopped crying. He must have strayed into a pretty weird dimension if they killed off babies.

«I can't leave it,» said she called Valli. «I just can't, Stel. Look at it-so helpless. Poor little thing. It's all wet and dirty.»

«And deformed, too. Look at its head. See how big it is. Ugh-no wonder the mother got rid of it. It's a monster.»

Blade stopped crying and smiled up at them. His gums hurt him and for the first time he realized that he was toothless. He smiled on, sweetly, and felt an intense dislike for the woman called Stel.

As his fate hung in the balance he stared at their feet. Four bare feet with red-painted toenails and jeweled rings on each great toe. These were harem women and babies were forbidden them. It was going to be a near thing-already he was feeling the pangs of hunger in his small belly. How long did it take a baby to starve to death?

Valli had not spoken. The woman Stel said, «Come on now, before we get into trouble. If the Izmir finds you with a child he'll have your head off just like that. You know the law, Valli. And this little monster isn't worth breaking it.»

When the woman Valli spoke, it was as if to herself. Blade, listening intently to every word, did not and could not at that time understand all of circumstance and nuance, but he understood enough to take heart. This woman Valli was going to be his salvation.

«They made me kill my baby,» said Valli. «You know that. Stel. I obeyed the law and let that filthy old priest thrust into me with his knife and cut the living child from my body. I did that, I obeyed, when all the time I wanted to seize the knife and slay the priest.»

Stel whispered in horror. «Be careful, Valli. That is treason. That is death-you must not dare to talk so. I think you have gone mad-losing your child has turned your mind. Come away now. I beg you. Is this big-headed monster-child worth your life?»

«I will not leave it to die,» said Valli. «I cannot. I think that the gods, those gods of which the priests know nothing, have sent me this child to replace the one I lost. If I abandon this one I will be twice damned. Go, Stel, if you are afraid. I am going to keep this child. I will hide it and somehow try to keep it alive. So go now and you have seen nothing and know nothing.»

«You are bewitched,» said the woman Stel, «and I will have none of it. I have no desire to be tortured and have my head cut off. But I will be silent. This is all I promise. Goodbye, Valli. I know nothing of this.»

She disappeared into the reeds. Good riddance, thought Blade bitterly, glad that he was not being left to her not-so-tender mercies. Then he forgot Stel. He must concentrate on this Valli, see to it that she did not change her mind. He smiled and showed his pink gums and gurgled and waved his tiny fists at her. A fine goddamn business for a grown man!

«Poor darling.» The woman knelt beside him and Blade caught his first full glimpse of her. She was young, probably not yet twenty by Home-Dimension time, and she wore only a short skirt, or kilt, with underpants of some silver color. Her breasts were bare, large and firm with brown-tinted nipples. A mass of dark hair was piled atop her head and held with golden combs.

She took him into her arms. «Is the poor little thing hungry?»

Blade very nearly spoiled it all by speaking, by saying that Christ yes he was hungry, that he was damn near dead of starvation. He remembered in time and gurgled. He stared up into her eyes. She patted his behind and stroked his belly and joggled him. Blade saw that her eyes were black, coal black, and in them he read love and kindness and fear and determination. He began to feel a little easier about matters. He had found an ally.

He flailed at her with his little fists. Valli took one of her breasts and held it to him and thrust the nipple into his mouth. She had some milk, thin and warm and strange tasting, but Blade knew that it would keep him alive for the time being. He sucked contentedly, holding that firm round breast in both his chubby hands and making noises. It was an odd form of survival, but so far it was working.

Valli stroked the fuzz on his great head. «You are a little monster,» she said. «Stel was right about that. Already you've got the head of a grown man. Any other woman would call you ugly, but not me. Not Valli. I love you already and I am going to take care of you. I won't let them kill you, baby. But I will have to hide you somehow, keep you someplace where the guards can't find you. Ohh-honey, you mustn't bite Valli.»

Blade had not meant to bite her teat. But the milk was running out and he was still hungry. He eased up and sucked away and found, once his immediate hunger was appeased, that he was taking a very odd pleasure, what amounted to a physico-sexual sensation, in keeping her warm breast in his mouth. If he ever got out of this, he thought, he could tell old Dr. Spock a thing or two about babies. Not that anyone would believe him. Not that he could, in point of fact, tell anybody anything. Security was too tight for that.

Valli was carrying him close to her now, walking rapidly along paths leading through gardens and vast expanses of shrubbery and trees. She was almost running. They had met no one and he realized that her chief fear was that they would. His fear, too. The guards that had been mentioned, for instance. Blade did not like to think of that. For the moment he had only an infant's body, if a man's head and brain, but if they cut off that head he would be just as dead as if they had killed the adult Blade.