"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 35 - Lords of the Crimson River" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade 35: The Lords of the Crimson River

By Jeffrey Lord

Chapter 1
"Bring it straight back when it's run," Lord Leighton told the programmer.

"There's a backlog," said the young man with the long but well-kept hair. "If you'd like me to give this
priority-"

Leighton's desire to have the data back right away fought with his equally strong desire not to call
unnecessary attention to what he was doing. The first desire won. "Give it priority, then. How long will it
be?"

The man looked at his watch. "With luck, I should have it back by four o'clock. Without luck-" He
shrugged.

Leighton smiled thinly. He knew everything that could happen to a computer much better than this young
man ever would if he lived to be a hundred. Leighton had been working on computers before the
programmer was born.

The programmer picked up the briefcase with the "secret" label on it and hurried out. Leighton sighed
with relief, then leaned back in his custom recliner as far as his hunchback would let him. After a moment
he closed his eyes and listened to the spattering of rain on the office window. He hoped a few minutes
relaxing would get rid of his headache, but doubted it. Nothing would do that except learning if his latest
scheme for Project Dimension X was all he hoped it would be. The next best thing would be to have the
KALI capsule which sent Richard Blade into Dimension X back in operation. If he didn't get either of
these, he'd be happy enough to get the Project's master computer back on line. He wasn't wildly
optimistic about any of them.

The trouble started with Richard Blade's return from the Dimension which held the city of Kaldak. He
returned seated in a complicated piece of electrical equipment: one of the control chairs used for the
fighting robots of the Dimension. Somehow, current had surged into the KALI capsule, but circuit
breakers failed to operate, and Blade was brought back to Home Dimension in the chair instead. There
was no damage to the computer, but with the KALI capsule heavily damaged and Blade's jaw broken
when the chair fell over, the Project was going nowhere fast. While both the capsule and Blade's jaw
were being fixed, it seemed like a good time to downline the master computer for a major inspection and
overhaul.

Things could have been worse, of course. A year ago Leighton would have had to leave all the problems
he couldn't tackle on his desk calculator to pile up until the main machine was back on line. That was
when the whole top-secret Project Dimension X was concentrated in the complex two hundred feet
below the Tower of London. Now things were different, although Leighton wasn't sure they were better.

As the Project grew, the complex got more crowded. The obvious solution was to move some of the
Project's work aboveground.

Leighton himself thought this was a good idea. So did J, the quiet gray-haired spymaster in charge of the
Project's security. So did Richard Blade, in many ways the most important man of the three. Years after
one of Leighton's computer experiments led to the discovery of travel into alternate Dimensions, Richard