"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 06 - Monster of the Maze" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Monster of the Maze by
Jeffrey Lord
Chapter 1
Richard Blade had not given much thought to getting bald. He was too young and
his hair much too luxurious, though well kept and clipped, for such worries. Old age,
senility, the palsied paceтАФall that was years in the future. If he lived. If he made this
final trip through the great computer and came back alive.

But at the moment he was bald. He was wearing a most expensive
toupeeтАФcourtesy of Her Majesty's GovernmentтАФand beneath his shorn skull,
implanted in the dura mater enveloping his left frontal lobe, was a paper-thin wafer of
crystal. Blade's brain was in direct communication with Lord Leighton's computer.
That monster, really a connected bank of nine 7th-generation computers, was telling
Blade exactly what to do. At the precise moment it directed him to leaveBayswater
Roadat Marble Arch and stroll downPark Laneto Piccadilly, then to his right
toWellington Placeand into Constitution Hill and pastBuckinghamPalaceinto the Mall.
He was headed for theThamesnow, and the tang of salt and the sludgy smell of oily
mud mingled with the fumes of a million cars.

No stranger, nor even a friend, could have guessed that Blade was at the moment
little more than an automaton; and this was not, in the usual sense, true. The
computer, directed by Lord L, was directing his steps, but in no other way did it
interfere with his sentience. He smiled back at the pretty miniskirted birds that smiled
at himтАФand many didтАФand walked briskly on. He was still Richard Blade, never
mind the sliver of crystal in his brain, and he was a handsome and superbly
conditioned young giant. He had been through the computer five times and was soon
to go for the sixth and last time and then his life would be his own again. He could
go back to working for J and MI6, instead of for Lord L and MI6A, and never in all
his thirty years had he been happier about anything. It was nearly over. One more
time into the dangerous mystery and it was overтАФhe had done his time in hell,
served England and St. George and Western civilization and all the other rot, and he
would be alive and his own man and free of it all.

Blade came toNorthumberland Avenueand turned toward the river. It was an early
November day, dour and with what the Scots call a louring sky, and dusk was
falling. The amber-silver splash of car lights onHungerfordBridgewas incessant. He
came to the Victoria Embankment and swung to his left toward Blackfriars. When he
reached theTempleStepshe halted and stood at the rail, gazing out at the busy river,
here known as King's Reach, and watched the tugs bully their barges to and fro and
admitted that, to a point, Lord L's experiment with the brain crystal was a success.
He had just walked the route chosen by his Lordship, who at the moment was in his
lab far below theTowerofLondon. Lord L, using an ordinary street map ofLondon,
had penciled a route and fed it into his computer and Blade had obeyed. He had, of
course, been cooperating. He had exercised no volition of his own. He felt sure now,
as he realized that the computer control had ended, that he could have broken away
from the machine at any time he chose. Or could he?

Richard Blade grinned, shrugged his big shoulders and went in search of a taxi.
At that hour inLondonit was not easy and, as he turned back towardWaterlooand
then over to theStrand, hailing cab after cab with no luck, it occurred to him that here