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

Nor would he have to this time, either. Lord Leighton popped out the door to the central room. His
eyes gleamed behind their thick glasses in a way that, Blade knew, meant the main computer was all
ready to go.
"Good morning, good morning, Richard. I trust you're ready to go? The computer certainly is. I don't
like to keep it on the line at maximum level for very long now. All these new attachments increase the
current drain by over forty percent. One of these days Richard is going to find himself caught between
Dimensions by nothing more exotic than a blown fuse. We've got to convince the PM that the supporting
equipment for the power plant has to be replaced, and soon."
"No doubt," said J with an urbanity that Blade recognized as a hidden mischievous impulse to indulge
in a little verbal fencing with Leighton. "But most of those new attachments were provided for your
subprojects. If you hadn't insisted on installing them, there wouldn't be any problem. And the PM didn't
balk at providing the money for that."
"Oh, quite. But if politicians had any scientific training, they'd logically realize one can't really install
new equipment without providing for all the consequences. And the PM is a politician, for better or for
worse." He, turned his hunched back on J and Blade, as if the term politician were a hitherto unutterable
curse consigning the prime minister to the nether regions. Then he began the visual check of the master
control panel, which he would never delegate to any subordinate.
"Well, Richard," said J with resignation in his voice, "I suppose his Lordship's right. Time to go." With
a precise motion he thrust out a hand and strongly shook Blade's. Then he stepped back to the small
recess beside the main control panel. There was a stool in it, which Lord Leighton had provided so he
could sit and watch Blade flicker out of his Home Dimensional existence. Such a gesture from Lord
Leighton assured Blade that the scientist possessed an actual, genuine, real heart, lurking somewhere
behind that searingly brilliant intellect and the brusque, cynical, eccentric manner.
For himself, however, there was no softening or modification of the familiar routine. He went into the
dressing room, stripped off his street clothes, and reappeared naked except for a loincloth and a
head-to-toe covering of blackish cream intended to prevent electrical burns. Whether smearing himself
with that foul-smelling gunk was really necessary he didn't know. But considering the amount of current
that flashed through his body each time he was shifted into Dimension X, it was probably a reasonable
precaution. He had no desire to wind up barbecued to a turn in the chair; that chair in its glass cubicle
already looked rather too much like an electric chair.
He sat down in the chair, and Lord Leighton went to work, darting about the chair with his once
white laboratory smock flapping and making him look like some energetic and untidy bird, attaching the
gleaming cobra-headed electrodes all over Blade's body. The gnarled hands were amazingly steady and
sure in their movements. In a few minutes Blade was sitting festooned with electrodes, and the
multicolored wires leading from them like some abandoned building overgrown with vines and fantastic
fungi. He found that his breathing had increased and that his stomach felt tight and cold. He forced himself
to breathe more slowly and flexed as many of his muscles as he could to relieve the tension. Save the
adrenaline for Dimension X, where you may really need it, you idiot! Then he turned his head to where
Lord Leighton stood at the master panel and nodded. The gnarled right hand lifted in salutation, then
came down, pulling the red master switch with it.
This time it happened with explosive suddenness. Lord Leighton whipped out of sight between one
heartbeat and the next. The computer consoles charged in on him from all sides with a single gigantic
lurch. For a second he felt like a man standing at a four-way rail crossing and watching runaway
locomotives thunder toward him down all four tracks.
Then the hurtling gray bulks struck, and he dissolved into a fine mist that still retained sensation as the
impact of the computers hurled it upward into the black sky. The mist coiled and dissipated as it rose but
never lost sensation. He felt a deadly cold seep down from the sky and attack each separate microscopic
particle that he had become, felt all sensations heightened by this new and terrible dispersal, which was
spreading him across cosmic distances.
He rose farther, farther; the cold continued to envelop and chill him, and soon; he began to lose