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

disk of metal just as it swung fully open. Peering out from behind it, Blade saw a girl step out into the
corridor.
She wore the customary sandals and kilt, in a green so dark that it looked almost black in the dim
light. Her hair was unbound and flowed down her back, like a black waterfall. She was carrying her tunic
over her arm and wore nothing above the waist except a silver-glinting chain around her slim throat. As
she turned to survey the corridor, Blade could not help admiring the high, firm, youthful breasts and the
trim, flat stomach. But she was a living representative of the people who presumably had built the city. He
had to talk to her. Carefully laying his weapons down on the floor, he stepped out into the open, hands
spread wide in a conciliatory gesture.
She started and her eyes went wide as she saw him, but she made no sound or any move to run. In
fact, as her eyes went over him, there was a probing, even admiring look in them.
Then she smiled and said, "It is your Waking time, too? Where are you from?"
"My name is Blade. I am not from this basement тАж" he gestured around the corridor, wondering if
he had hit on the right word "тАж but from elsewhere."
 Even with his automatic command of the local language (a gift from the computer and its alterations to
his brain), even with this woman's apparently civilized background, this was not the time to explain how
he had come from another dimension. Changing the subject, he asked, "What is your name?"
"Narlena," she answered. Then with a smile she said, "You must have already been moving about in
Pura. Tell me, how is it now?"
Blade could not help hesitating. How could she not know what had happened to the city above her
head? And if she did not know, how could he tell her that the city lay in ruins and that marauding bands
of armed barbarians stalked through those ruins, preying on those of her people bold enough to venture
out on to the surface?
Fortunately, he did not have to face the problem at once. Her mobile lips curved upward in a warm
smile. "Never mind that for now. Come into my vault with me while I take my tests." Blade could not help
observing that her manner had become noticeably friendlier once she had completed her inspection of his
nude body. He decided against taking up his weapons; so far she had accepted him as one of her own
people. But displaying his array of marauder weapons might make her change her mind. He followed her
into the vault and helped her close the door behind them.
Moments after entering it, Blade knew that his hopes of finding an advanced civilization had been
realized. Or at least an advanced technology, he corrected himself; the two were not necessarily the
same.
The interior of the vault was about the same size as a large studio apartment. But the walls from the
soft, fur-covered floor up to the low, blue-enameled ceiling were almost completely covered with a maze
of tubing and cylindrical reservoirs and with squarish metal boxes in a variety of colors at irregular
intervals. Some of the boxes had conspicuous dials and lights on their sides. In one corner stood
something large. It looked like a mummy case and was mounted on a gimbaled pedestal to give it
movement in three directions. There were controls set into the cover, and both halves were lined with
maroon plush contoured into a shape very much like the girl's body.
Squarely in the center of the chamber stood an upright cylindrical chamber, apparently of glass, with
a vertical section on one side that swung open on almost invisible hinges. The cylinder was filled with
some sort of thick gaseous substance, Blade could see its green gray coils writhing and twisting as he
watched. But it could hardly be any ordinary gas, for although the door to the cylinder stood wide open,
not a single wisp seemed to be escaping into the vault. Blade thought he could see vague hints of dangling
wires and straps inside, half-revealed by the eddying and flowing of the gas.
Meanwhile, Narlena had stripped off her clothes and climbed naked into the mummy case. She
pressed one of the controls set in the cover, and the cover swung silently closed. For a moment Blade
stared uncertainly at its featureless, silvery metal surface. Then a faint hissing filled the chamber. Blade
saw a thinner, reddish gas being pumped into the mummy case through a transparent length of tubing. The
hissing lasted for perhaps a minute.