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

"Off again, darling?"
He nodded, still without looking at her, and began to toss things into the suitcase. He hadn't brought
much down fromLondon this time.
"When shall I see you again?"
At last he could be honest. "I don't know. And I'm not being evasive, Zoe. I just have no way of
knowing when I will see you again."
He was about to addтАФperhaps not ever, but cut it off in time. That would be cruel. She loved him.
She was going to imagine things anyway, but at least they would be in the realm of ordinary human fears.
Bad enough. Tell her he was going into a new dimension, with only a fifty-fifty chance of ever getting
back, and she would go mad. Or think he was. And anyway there was the ACT.
Blade said: "I have to do a little job. I can't say when it will be finished."
"Dick!"
He turned and she was holding out her arms to him, her eyes moist and her mouth trembling. He went
to her. It was like one of those beautifully done scenes in the silent movies when no word is spoken and
no shred of meaning lost.
She pulled him down on top of her. He took her tenderly, then with a rising lust and ardent savagery,
matched by her own, until the peak was reached and they could be tender again.
 Blade did not tarry. He left her crumpled and pale and completed, weeping a little, and went away.
He enteredLondon with the dawn. He drove straight to the TowerтАФJ had meant him to read Tower
forWhitehall тАФand found J waiting for him by the site of the old Water Gate. J was wearing a Burberry
against the morning chill and smoking his pipe. The harsh morning light made him look older then sixty,
and the sacs under his eyes were a flaccid purple.
Two burly Special Branch types were waiting for them near a postern. As they headed for it Blade
looked at the head of M16A and asked, "There is no possible way out of the Official Secrets Act, sir?
Ever?"
J's eyes were compassionate above their fleshy bags. In a tired voice he said, "But of course there is,
my dear boy. Death."
The Special Branch men took them down a long ramp and into a tunnel that emerged in a maze of
subbasements and, finally, to the bronze elevator door that Blade remembered so well. Even J was not
permitted beyond this point when an X-Dimension experiment was GO.
They shook hands briefly. J looked as weary, and worried, as Blade had ever seen him. He had little
to say.
"Good luck, my boy. Seems strange to say thisтАФwhere you're goingтАФbut don't worry about things
here. You've signed all the proper papers and your affairs are in order. I'll take care of everything in the
eventтАФ"
They were standing a little aside from the armed guards, waiting for the elevator to come up. Blade
smiled at his boss and half whispered, "I've been thinking about that, sir. In the eventтАФI'll just be a
non-person, won't I? That should cause a sweat over at Somerset House."
It was an effort, more than anything, to cheer the old chap up a bit. Blade had never seen him looking
so miserable.
J took him seriously. "It will be arranged, my boy. It will be taken care of. Here's your lift.
Good-bye."
Ten minutes later Richard Blade, wearing only the usual loincloth, followed Lord Leighton into the
master computer room. The hunchbacked old scientist, in a soiled white smock, hobbled on polio-ruined
legs through a maze of lesser computers. Blade, with a feeling of some revulsion, listened to the song of
the future:One-ohтАФoneтАФohтАФone-oh-one-ohтАФ. Binary logic.Be-bop-be-bop-be-bop-be-bopтАФ.
Milliseconds that would soon be nanoseconds. One billionth of a second. Spinning magnetic drums and
tiny bulbs flashing GO-GO-GO-GO.
It was most certainly GO. They entered the small room where the dimensional computer waited like
a gray crackled Moloch. Blade had not been in this room since his first trip through the computer. It had