"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 22 - Forests of Gleor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade 22: The Forests of Gleor

By Jeffrey Lord

Chapter 1
If Richard Blade's MG hadn't burned out a bearing in Windsor, he wouldn't have been in the train
wreck. He might still have been involved in an accident on the way to London, of course. The sleet storm
that made the rails so slick made the roads even worse. He might have gone off the road and broken his
neck, or gone into the Thames and drowned. But those would have been more private accidents.

The commuter train rattled toward London at full speed. Blade stretched his long legs out as far as he
could and opened his copy of the Times. In the opposite seat of the compartment sat a young mother and
her little girl.

Perhaps it was time he admitted that the old MG had come to the end of its road. It would be hard
parting with the car after all these years of driving it. Yet he had to face the fact that the MG was no
longer reliable transportation. A sentimental relic, yes. A valuable antique, too. The car hadn't been
brand-new even when he bought it, and that had been when he was fresh out of Oxford. Perhaps he
could find some antique-car lover to give the MG a good-

The train jerked savagely, as if it had been caught in an explosion. Blade flew out of his seat, to crash
into the opposite side of the compartment. Twisting his body in midair, he just missed landing on top of
the mother and child. He didn't miss the lamp fixture. The glass globe shattered and for a moment Blade
felt as though his head would shatter too. Pain exploded in his skull, with a roar that for a moment
drowned out the screeching of tearing, twisting metal.

When Blade could see and hear clearly again, he realized that the car was now tipped sharply forward.
Blade unfolded himself cautiously. His head still throbbed, but otherwise there didn't seem to be anything
wrong with him.

That was good. Blade had been on his way back to London when the MG gave out. In London he
would sit down in a room carved out of the rock far below the Tower of London. His brain would be
electronically linked to the giant computer that filled most of the room. Then the computer's inventor Lord
Leighton would pull a red switch and the pulses from that computer would flow into Blade's brain. The
room, the computer, Lord Leighton, everything Blade saw with his normal senses would vanish. He
would whirl off into nothingness, and awake somewhere in the vast unknown they called Dimension X.

Blade was the only living human being who could travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane. He
was about the most perfect combination of physical and mental qualities anyone could imagine-as long as
he was in good health. If he succeeded in getting himself thoroughly battered and banged about in an
ordinary train wreck, the trip to Dimension X would be off until he was fully recovered. Even Lord
Leighton would have to admit that, though he would do so with the worst possible grace. Lord Leighton
had the finest scientific mind in Britain and one of the worst tempers in the world.

There was also the man called J. He was one of the greatest of living spymasters, the head of the secret
intelligence agency MI6, the man who saw Blade's promise while the younger man was still at Oxford.
Under J's guidance Blade became one of the top agents for MI6. But to J he was also the son the older
man had never had. J would be worried about Blade's accident, even though his worrying would be
hidden from everyone-except Blade-behind a sober, reserved mask.