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

super-civilizations, even nonhuman intelligences from outer spaceтАФhe had met them all. And so far he
had survived each meeting. Thirteen times, to be exact.
Not only natural gifts, but training and experience had kept him alive. He had been one of the top
agents for the secret intelligence agency MI6 for the better part of twenty years. He had learned to be a
professional survivor long before Lord Leighton had even dreamed of the computer that made the
Dimension X Project possible.
He hoped that sooner rather than later Lord Leighton and J would come up with someone equally
qualified. He was tough, he was smart, so far he had been lucky, and by temperament he was an
adventurer in a century where adventurers too often found themselves the odd man out. But he could
push his luck only so far. If it ran out before Lord Leighton and J found anybody else, Project Dimension
X would be left high and dry. The whole purpose of the Project was to explore and perhaps someday
exploit Dimension X for knowledge and raw materials thatEngland could use. Without somebody able to
travel into Dimension X, this would become impossible.
So Lord Leighton was looking for somebody new. J, head of MI6 and Blade's guide and mentor for
twenty years, was looking for somebody new. And the prime minister, who had backed Project
Dimension X and all its host of subprojects to the tune of many millions of pounds, was looking for
somebody new. But so far Blade was in no danger of joining the ranks of the unemployed.
He went over to the sideboard and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Four fingers of Scotch, a dash of
soda, and he had a good stiff nightcap. He raised the glass in a silent toast to his unknown successor,
whoever he might be, and drained it. Then he went to bed.


He was up early the next morning, and had a large breakfast. He had no idea how long he would be
in Dimension X before he could find food. The last time he had gone across, Lord Leighton had sent
along a comprehensive survival kit with several days' survival rations. But Blade had arrived with nothing
and as naked as he had all the previous times. For safety's sake he preferred to assume the same thing
would happen this time. Blade's experience as a field agent and then as an explorer of Dimension X had
taught him the wisdom of assuming the worst.
A taxi took him to theTowerofLondon through a chill, gray, unremarkable winter day. And the
expressions of the Special Branch men guarding the entrance to the complex were as chill as the weather.
Was that look something they were trained to assume, or did it come naturally after one had been a
Special Branch operative long enough?
In the complex itself, two hundred feet below, the gloomy weather and the gloomy Special Branch
men seemed like a bad dream. Light gleamed off polished floors and walls, and the air was warm. All the
guarding was done by invisible electronic sentinels, some of them Lord Leighton's own inventions, others
from the Ministry of Defense's bag of tricks. And J was waiting for Blade when the elevator door slid
open, to walk with him down the corridor to the computers.
Blade looked more closely than usual at J as they walked side by side. If J was aging at all, he was
doing so as imperturbably as he did everything else. Perhaps he had acquired a few more wrinkles in the
years since Project Dimension X had begun. Certainly some of his still thick gray hair had definitely begun
to turn white. But J still looked more like an aging senior bureaucrat in the Ministry of Agriculture or
something equally prosaic than what he wasтАФone of the most experienced and respected spymasters in
the world, with a career of achievement going all the way back to World War I.
Certainly nothing showed in J's voice as he chatted with Blade. "Lord Leighton says we're going to
be reverting to the old procedure this time."
"No survival kit?"
"Quite right. He thinks yourтАФ'materializing'тАФin Dimension X well above ground level the last time
wasn't an accident. He thinks the extra mass of the survival kit wasn't quite compensated for by the
adjustments to the computer, so you went through in an unbalanced state. Physically, that is."
Blade nodded. "And he's worried that the next time I might pop through into Dimension X a hundred