"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 02 - The Jade Warrior" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade, his mouth against Zoe's earтАФas small and soft and velvety as a pet mouseтАФsaid: "The moon
is fair tonight along the Straits."
She had taken her mouth from his and turned away, and now she stirred but did not turn back to kiss
him again. She muttered: "And idiot armies struggle on the darkling plain."
It was a game they often played, quoting and requoting from a favorite poem, and her reply was not
exactly what Blade had expected. She had not used the word love. And she nearly always did, when she
could. Love. For, of, about, to, Richard Blade. Not this night. Zoe had not, even in the last gasping
throes of passion, murmured that she loved him.
Blade, dark-muscled giant that he was, was acute without being particularly intellectual. In many
ways he was a sensitive man, an image belied by his rugged good looks and his outsize, Greek athlete's
body. He was as tough as concrete, an efficient killer inEngland 's service, and one of the best secret
agents in the world.
 Had been. Lord Leighton's computer had changed all that.
Now he kissed her ear and said, "What is it, Zoe? What's wrong? Something is wrong, I've known it
all day."
She went tense for a moment, then relaxed. "Who is Taleen?" she asked.
For a moment he really did not know. His memories of Alb were faint, tenuous, like smoke drifting
and disappearing, faint beacons flashing for an instant and then doused in black. Lord L had explained it.
His memory molecules could not restore the past.
Taleen? TaleenтАФ-the ghost came then, for a breath, a shimmer of golden girl flesh, a savage little
mouth slashing at his, an imperious cry of passion somewhere in limbo.
Zoe said: "You don't answer me, Richard." She had been calling him Richard all day, not Dick.
He could not answer her. The brief carnal phantom vanished and he did notknowwho Taleen was.
Had he ever known?
"I don't know anyone named Taleen," he said. "Should I? Why are you asking?"
When he touched her again she went rigid and pulled away, but her voice was calm. Zoe was always
calm, except in passion.
"Really, Richard, I wish you wouldn't try to deceive me. I deserve better than that. So do you. We're
neither of us fools, nor lying children. If you've found another woman for God's sake tell me, just simply
tell me, and that will be that. I am not a clinger, you know. I don't make scenes. But after what we have
had of each other I think I deserve honesty. That's why I am so puzzled and hurt, really. I know you are
honest, just as I know you are a gentlemanтАФand that is why I cannot understand."
"Can't understand what, Zoe? For God's sake! What is this all about? You have been sulking
underneath all day, and when I ask why, suddenly you come up with a name! Taleen? I suppose it's a
name. And I don't know what in hell you're talking about!"
Did he know? What just now, faster than light, had pressed against his brain? A golden-orbed and
blueтАФpainted breast? Gone.
He pulled Zoe to him in an embrace that was nearly savage. She cried out. "Dick! PleaseтАФyou're
hurting me." For the first time today she had called him Dick.
"I'm sorry, honey." Yet he held her firmly, made her turn to face him so their eyes glinted close in the
moonlight. "But you've got to tell me what this is all about, Zoe. It is all getting a little crazy, you know.
Barmy as hell!"
Lord L would know, of course, and Lord L must be asked and made to tell. Was the giant
computer, and the subsequent, memory treatments, affecting his brain permanently? That could wait.
Right now he was in deep trouble with the woman he loved.
"All right," said Zoe. Some of the hurt left her voice. "Maybe it was only a nightmare. Maybe I'm only
a jealous fool. After all, Richard, I have never known you to lie to me."
She still called him Richard.
"Last night, Richard, after we had been in bed an hour or so, you began to make love to a woman
named Taleen. You woke me up by threshing about and calling her name. You were going through the