"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 14 - The Temples of Ayocan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

TheTemples of Ayocan
Blade Book 14


By Jeffrey Lord




Chapter 1
^┬╗
Making a living by being whisked off to other dimensions on short notice has advantages. Also
disadvantages. At the moment, Richard Blade was more conscious of the disadvantages.
The voice on the telephone was that of a young woman in a mighty rage. Even so it was a beautiful
voice, as beautiful as the body it was coming from. Blade had learned to know the body intimately over
several nights during the past few weeks. But then the message had come from JтАФget ready for another
trip into Dimension X. So he had called Cynthia to tell her that he would be out of town for the next few
weeks or months.
"No, I can't give you an address where you can reach me. I'll be traveling around too much for that."
"You're trying to give me the brush-off, Dick. I wish you'd come right out and say, 'Get lost, Cynthia.'
I'd have more respect for you if you did. You men are all alike. Stallions in bed, but when it comes to
something like this, you haven't got the courage of a cockroach!"
"Now, damn it all, Cynthia, I'm not saying get lost because I don't wantтАФ"
"You don't want? What about me not wanting something? We were so good together, Dick. I can't
stand it for you to just walk off like this. Especially when you won't tell me where you're going, or
anything! You just want to go off tomcatting around, and don't want to tell me!"
"Cynthia, you're being ridicuтАФ Hello, Cynthia? Cynthia?"
The line was dead.
Blade put the receiver back in the cradle. Then he let out his frustration and annoyance in language
much stronger than merely "Damn it all!"
There definitely were disadvantages to being the key man in Project Dimension X. When the
demands of the Project came down on even his most casual relationships like DDT on a mosquito and
killed them just as dead, it got more than a little annoying. Oh, well, Cynthia had been showing signs of
getting possessive, perhaps even marriage-minded. That would have meant telling her goodbye sooner or
later, but certainly not now. Lord Leighton had barged in properly!
At least Blade knew that he would not have too much trouble finding another congenial woman after
he returned from Dimension X, even if Cynthia had given him the brush-off. For Blade, this was simply
recognizing a fact. He was inevitably attractive to women. And why not? Six feet plus, two hundred and
ten pounds of athletic Englishman, pushing forty but looking ten years younger, radiating charm, vitality,
and virility. Not a fluent talker, but not tongue-tied either. And with the indefinable but definite glamor that
hangs around a man who always seems to be on the move, whose scars suggest an active and even
dangerous life, but who never talks about what he does. To almost all who knew him, Blade's profession
was a mystery.
He hoped it would stay that way, considering what it really was. Tomorrow morning Blade would go
to theTowerofLondon . A secret elevator would carry him two hundred feet down to an equally secret
underground complex that housed the most advanced computers in the world. These computers were the
brainchildren of Lord Leighton,England 's most brilliant and most irascible scientist. Blade's brain would
be directly linked to these computers.
And then he would be hurled, as naked as the day he was born, into another dimension, where
anything and everything might happen. Animals that walked like men, savage warriors, decadent