"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 26 - City of the Living Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

of some new problem?

Blade didn't know. He would mention it to Lord Leighton and J, of course. They would pass it on to the
Project's staff of psychologists. Meanwhile Blade would be off to Dimension X. One nightmare, however
gruesome, wasn't enough reason for canceling a trip. A gamble? Yes, but every trip into Dimension X
was a gamble that would have given a normal person not just one nightmare but fifty.

Richard Blade wasn't quite normal. He was too fond of matching his own skills against great danger to
be a very comfortable citizen for any peaceful twentieth-century country. Field intelligence work had
been the most rewarding career he could find-until Project Dimension X came along.

At times Blade grumbled over Lord Leighton's latest whims and fancies. At times he felt like a beast of
burden. He was never happy over the innocent people who got caught up in his battles and adventures to
end up dead or mindless. Yet he could never imagine leaving the Project entirely. It was too important to
Britain-and too important to Richard Blade.

Blade went to the kitchen, poured himself a tall glass of beer, drank it, and went back to bed. It was
several more hours to dawn, and the best thing to do with those hours was sleep: His first few days in a
new Dimension were usually rather busy, and it helped to be as well-rested as possible.

Blade's alarm woke him at eight-thirty. The housekeeper appeared and produced the large breakfast
that Blade always ate before a trip into Dimension X. Like sleep, food was sometimes rather hard to
come by at first in a new Dimension.

Filled with porridge, bacon, eggs, toast, marmalade, and coffee, Blade left the flat and hailed a taxi. The
taxi carried him through the traffic-clogged streets of London to the Tower and left him there. The
Special Branch men guarding the entrance to the underground complex checked his identification and
passed him through. The elevator took him two hundred feet down in a few seconds, and when the door
whispered open at the bottom, J was waiting for him. Blade couldn't help blinking. The memory of the
nightmare was so vivid he'd half expected J not to be on hand for today's departure.

They shook hands. "You look rather surprised to see me, Richard," said the older man. J was nearer
seventy than sixty, but the gray eyes in the long aristocratic face missed very little. They never had, one
reason why J was still alive.

Blade explained the nightmare as they walked down the long central corridor toward the computer
rooms at the other end of the complex. J listened without comment, his face expressionless.

"You think there's no risk to you in going ahead?" he asked, after Blade finished.

"I can't be certain, of course, but I doubt it very much. One nightmare, after all . . ." he shrugged.

"I hope you're right," said J. His face was no longer so expressionless. Blade knew that J loved him like
a son and was always troubled at the thought of him running unnecessary risks.

They approached the door to the computer rooms. The last of the electronic monitors scanned them,
identified them, and opened the door for them. They passed in through a series of rooms packed with
auxiliary equipment and the small army of technicians needed to run it and reached the door to the room
holding the main computer. The door slid open, and Lord Leighton ushered them into his private
sanctum.