"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 01 - The Bronze Axe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

The Bronze Axe
Blade Book 1


by Jeffrey Lord




Chapter One
^┬╗
Richard Blade, quite by coincidence, had been reading that very morning inThe London Timesof the
scientific marvels to come. The writer inThe Timeshad labeled his piece: "What's Ahead In Technology."
He had been considerate enough to include a tentative time schedule for the miracles he was writing
about.
Blade, folding his paper neatly at the place, and heartily enjoying his bacon and eggs, read through it
with no look of skepticism on his handsome face. He was a skeptic, but not about science. It was what
mendidwith science that was a cause for concern, and cynicism. Blade had been a top man in British
espionage circles for nearly twenty yearsтАФhe had been recruited while still at OxfordтАФand he held no
delusions about the human animal.
Thinking of animals, he noted that the year 2000 was given as a probable date when intelligent
animals might be used for low-grade labor. He poured himself more tea and pondered. Just what did it
mean? A gorilla foreman directing a crew of dogs, mules and horses? While a graduate chimp kept the
time and pay sheets? Mutants of some sort, bred especially for the job? Blade's mobile mouth quirked in
a smile as he helped himself to more bacon. Cats might be very good at espionage work.
He ate contentedly and read more of the article. He was between jobs; spring had come toLondon
and his chief, J, was leaving him alone as he had promised. Zoe Cornwall, the sloe-eyed beauty he
eventually meant to marry, was waiting for him at the cottage inDorset . When he finished breakfast and
attended to some minor matters, he would drive the little MG down to the Channel coast and spend the
weekend with Zoe.
For a moment the image of Zoe, her tawny and expectant body awaiting him on a crisp and
fresh-smelling bed, interposed between Blade and the paper. He banished the image with resolution and
read that as early as 1990 the scientists expected to establish direct electromechanical interaction
between the human brain and a computer.
Direct electromechanical interaction. It had quite a ring to it! Blade, who had always had a vague
distrust of computers, wondered just what it meant. Would they make the man into a computer, or the
computer into a man?
 The phone rang. Blade, a fork halfway to his mouth, stared at the offending instrument. He had two
phones and the wrong one, the red phone, with connections directly into Copra House and J's desk, was
ringing. It had to be J, then. Simple logic. That meant a job. Blade swallowed, cursed and considered not
answering. J had promised him this little vacation. And Zoe was waiting.
Blade answered the phone. He was always on call. And duty was, quite simply, duty, and that was
an end to it. "Hallo."
It was J, of course, an elderly tweedy type with a voice so mellifluous that it flowed around the
omnipresent pipe without hindrance.
J said: "Good morning, my dear fellow. Lovely morning, eh? Or have you looked at it yet? No
matter. Will you scramble, please?"
Blade pressed the button on the base of the phone. "Done, sir."
"I know," said J, "that I promised you a vacation, that there would be no jobs for a time. You will be
happy to know, dear boy, that I am going to keep that promise."