"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 15 - The Towers of Melnon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade leaves the changing booth and sits down in the master chairтАФcheck. (And as usual, the chair
sitting in its glass booth reminds him of an electric chair, and the rubber of the chair's seat is cold against
his bare bottom.)
Lord Leighton comes up to the booth and busies himself attaching cobra-headed electrodes all over
Blade's bodyтАФcheck. (And as usual, by the time Leighton finishes, Blade looks as though he is being
overgrown by some bizarre tropical growth. Wires of a dozen different colors run off from the electrodes
into the guts of the computer.)
Lord Leighton steps back, surveys his work with both care and pride, and then goes over to the
master consoleтАФcheck.
Blade leaned back in the chair as far as the attached electrodes would let him, and stared upward.
The vast computer consoles in their crackled gray finish loomed over him like the ruins of some
abandoned and forgotten city.
Lord Leighton, standing at the main console in his dirty white lab smock, looked like some cheerful
gnome inhabiting the ruins. Blade took a deep breath, and forced as much of the tension out of his body
as he could. From this point on there was no routine. He could not predict, he could only hope to
survive.
Leighton turned toward him. For a moment Blade thought the scientist was going to ask if he was
ready. But the questions appeared only in Leighton's eyes, not on his lips. And Blade replied in the same
way, nodding silently. Leighton's gnarled hand flexed once or twice, then came down. The red master
switch came down with it.
As the switch moved, a low muted whine rose up from somewhere far below. It filled Blade's ears
and made his teeth ache. It sounded like a gigantic dentist's drill, and in instinctive reaction Blade shut his
eyes and clenched his fists.
But no sharp pain seared through any of his teeth. Instead the whine increased in volume until it was a
deafening roar. Now it sounded more like a jet engine winding up for takeoff than any kind of drill. Blade
felt the blackness around him become tangible and start to shake and quiver and pulse against his skin. It
was like being in an immense bowl of jellied soup that someone was shaking violently. And all the while
the whining roar tore at his ears.
The sound rose still further, and Blade knew that his mouth was open and he was screaming in agony
as it tore through him. This was sound that could reduce a man's eardrums to powder, his brain to jelly,
his whole body to an oozing red paste. If the sound was real, Blade knew he had only a few more
seconds to live. But the terrible whine filled his brain so completely that there was no room left in it for
any kind of fear or panic.
The sound rose yet further. It passed the point where Blade's brain would accept it any more. Silence
fell down on Blade like an enormous weight, crushing him down into blackness.


Chapter THREE
┬л^┬╗
Blade first became aware of the sound of insects. They were in the long grass that rose up around his
aching head, whining softly to themselves. Hearing them was an agreeable surprise. After the nightmare
sounds of his transition from Home Dimension, he would not have been surprised to wind up deaf.
Perhaps the sound had never had any physical reality? It might have been merely a hallucination
produced by his brain as it writhed in the grip of Lord Leighton's computer.
The grass was not only long, it was stiff and sharp. Blade felt it prickling and jabbing against his bare
skin. Slowly, painfully aware of his throbbing head, he sat up and looked around him. The movement
startled the insects around him into silence or frantic efforts to escape. Some of them flew across his field
of vision, bright darting splotches of red, black, and purple. The whine and hum from the grass died away
as he became more aware of his surroundings.
It was just after dawn, with a morning mist hanging low over the ground. A yellow glow higher up