"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 19 - Looters of Tharn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade 19: Looters of Tharn

By Jeffrey Lord

Chapter 1
The last words of the christening ceremony, echoed away through the high vaulted nave of the church.
As the echoes died away, Richard Blade heard the bells in the tower high above begin to ring.

Bim-bong-bunnnng. Bim-bong-bunnnng.

Reginald Smythe-Evans turned to Blade. His thin face split in a broad, toothy, but unmistakably sincere
grin. "Well, Richard. Very glad you could be young Edward's second godfather. Zoe wanted it badly, but
we couldn't be sure you'd be around for the christening. Dashedly awkward if one of the godfathers
didn't show up, eh? And we know you're always flitting off on dangerous business of some sort. But you
made it." He thrust out a pale, long-fingered hand, to grip Blade's with surprising strength.

Blade found himself able to smile back with almost as much sincerity as Reginald. He hadn't felt much
like smiling when Zoe's letter first arrived, asking him to be second godfather to Edward Thomas Richard
Smythe-Evans. A long time ago Richard Blade had loved Zoe. She had loved him, too. But one evening
she had said good-bye, and a few months later she married Reginald. That had hurt. It stopped hurting
for a while, but Zoe's letter picked away at the old scar.

Yet there was nothing Blade could have done about it. It was his "always flitting off on dangerous
business of some sort" that had done in his relationship with Zoe. But he couldn't give that up. It was a
matter of duty-duty to England.

Richard Blade's business was to travel into other dimensions-the infinity of other dimensions that exist
parallel to the one where he had been born and lived most of his life. It was an infinity called Dimension
X, to conceal how little even wise men really knew about it.

It had been discovered the day Richard Blade's mind was linked to Lord Leighton's latest computer.
The scientist had wanted to combine Blade's mind and the computer into a superintelligence.

Instead Lord Leighton had altered Blade's mind until he sensed and lived entirely in one of those parallel
dimensions-a barbaric land called Alb. Blade was a superb mental and physical specimen, so he had
survived in Alb long enough for Lord Leighton to figure out what had happened and bring him back to
England. It had also helped that Blade was a top agent for the secret intelligence agency MI6. That made
him very much a professional survivor type.

It didn't require much thinking for people to realize how valuable the ability to travel among dimensions
might be for England. It didn't require much argument to persuade the Prime Minister to underwrite
Project Dimension X from the secret funds.

But it did require Richard Blade to keep his sudden and mysterious comings and goings secret from the
woman he loved. The Official Secrets Act dropped down between him and Zoe like an armored wall.

Eventually she had decided she wanted a husband who would stay close at hand and said good-bye.
Blade went off to a land called Tharn, and a few months later Zoe married Reginald Smythe-Evans, the
only son and heir of some large and wealthy figure in the city's financial circles.