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

Well, Richard was a professional and a gentleman. He would not cry over the inevitable. But one of
these days, J swore, he would do something to see Richard get some part of the credit he deserved for
all he had done for England. Someday, somehow, if it was the last thing he did.

By the time J reached that thought, he had also reached the end of his cigar. Since he couldn't think of
anything else that needed his attention that night, he went to bed.

Blade appeared at the Tower of London promptly at ten o'clock Wednesday morning. To J's eyes he
showed no sign of as much as a shaving-nick, let alone having been in a train wreck.

"I gather the doctor gave you a clean bill of health?" said J.

"Absolutely, sir," replied Blade. "He couldn't find anything except a bit of bruising on the scalp."

"What about the X-rays?"

"Nothing showed up on those either. It seems I still have the same old hard head."

"That's good. It would be a trifle on the silly side to have you survive twenty-odd trips and then buy it in
a train wreck here in England."

"I quite agree." J's words were a monumental understatement. For all his qualities of mind and body,
Blade also knew that he was still alive partly because of good luck that could run out at any time. It
certainly would be bloody silly to have it run out here in England, when he spent so much time in so much
danger in Dimension X.

Blade reached up to press the elevator button. "I see you're wearing a ring," said J, looking at the raised
hand. "Ruby?"

"Yes. Nothing really fancy, though. My father gave it to me when I left Eton."

"Are you going to try wearing it into Dimension X?"

Blade recognized the concern in J's voice. The older man didn't care very much for anything that
increased the uncertainty of Blade's trips into Dimension X. Blade didn't blame him, particularly after the
last trip.

It wasn't quite correct to say that everything had gone wrong the last time, but certainly a lot hadn't gone
the way it was planned. Blade had ended up being bounced about from one dimension to another, first
with a courtesan from the black-jade city of Kano, then with a Russian secret agent Lord Leighton had
sent into Dimension X as a way of disposing of her. It had been nearly the hairiest mission in the whole
history of Project Dimension X, and that was saying a good deal.

"Yes, sir, I am. It's small and light, so it won't take up any room or throw me off balance. Also, it's
something that's been around me for quite a while. If there are such things as a human body's
individual-oh, call them 'vibrations'-it's more likely to be 'in tune' with mine than something like a survival
pack or even a survival knife."

J frowned. "Sounds rather like mystical guesswork to me."