"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 11 - Dimension of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

┬л^┬╗
There was no doubt about itтАФthe city was dead. Blade surveyed it carefully, noting details. Broken
windows stared emptily. One of the high walkways connecting two towers sagged in the middle. The
bridge ahead of him was littered with debrisтАФmetal panels peeling off the high towers from bad weather,
chunks of unidentifiable material resembling plastic, wheels, rods, and odd boxes that had perhaps once
been part of vehicles. The inevitable purple thistles sprouted from the cracked pavement and sidewalks.
Beyond the bridge the whole rank of buildings along the riverbank, nearly two miles of buildings that must
have once risen ten and fifteen stories, lay in piles of rubble. Only an occasional hollow-eyed wall rose
free.
Blade shook his head and frowned. Had the computer finally sent him into a dimension completely
empty of human life? No, there was that skeleton on the road. And unless he was mistaken, there were
other skeletons gleaming whitely amid the dark thistle leaves on the bridge. There were other people in
this dimensionтАФhuman, as far as he could tell from the skeletons. And he strongly suspected that the first
skeleton had come to its final resting place long after the city had been abandoned. Was there some life
still lurking in the ruins, or were the skeletons wanderers drifting in from somewhere else and dying by
accident, starvation, or disease? Had the city been depopulated by a plague, a plague that perhaps still
lingered in the ruins?
Blade strode out onto the bridge. At least out here on the broad roadway nothing could come at him
unexpectedly. Halfway across, the moon vanished again, but not before he had spotted a long metal bar
lying on the road. He picked it up and hefted it, testing its weight and balance. It weighed more than five
pounds, and it was thicker at one end than at the other. He found after a few trial swings that he could
handle it as an improvised mace. Not that improvised medieval weapons would help him very much if any
people he ran into had weapons as advanced as their city. But if their civilization had collapsed and the
survivors had descended into barbarism, he would be far from helpless. Feeling a little less like a mouse,
though not yet like a lionтАФperhaps a foxтАФnow he stalked forward again, using the mace to probe ahead
in the darkness and test the footing. He had no desire to step through an unseen hole in the roadway and
drop a hundred feet to the liver below.
He passed two more skeletons. Both were completely fleshless, but again their garments and
footgear showed no signs of decay. In addition to the sandals and kilt, one of them wore a sleeveless
tunic with a V neck and a large embroidered patch on the right side of the chest. Blade bent down to try
to make out the patch, and as he did so, he caught sight of a fourth body, lying half-hidden in a
particularly rank growth of thistles a few yards farther on.
 This was a body, not a skeleton. In the darkness Blade could not tell for sure how long it had been
there, but a quick sniff indicated no decay. He doubted it could be more than twenty-four hours old. This
body was also clad in sandals, tunic, and kilt, but the tunic was encrusted with soot, sweat, and grease,
as well as blood from the gaping wound in the man's side.
Blade sprang to his feet, hand gripping the mace and eyes probing along the bridge in both directions.
Somebody did indeed live in the cityтАФor at least prowled it and killed in it. He bent again to examine the
body more closely.
It was the body of a man in his thirties, at a rough guess, but Blade knew that in the darkness all his
guesses would be very rough indeed. The dead man wore a full beard, and his hair reached his shoulders.
Both beard and hair were ragged and greasy. The man's skin was so coated with soot and grease that it
was impossible to tell its color. He looked lean, like a track runner, but not emaciated. There was no sign
of weapons or gear on or near him.
Now Blade realized that he would have no need to fear advanced weapons. Whoever the people
living in the city or at least roaming about in it might be, they had sunk far into barbarism. Which did not
make them less dangerous. Far from it. Primitive peoples were even more likely than civilized ones to
believe that stranger equals enemy and react accordingly. He would have to approach even more
cautiously. And finding anything worth bringing home in this dimension would be a matter of luck. He
stood up and as he did so; he saw lights moving amid the ruins along the riverbank.