Jeffrey Lord - Blade 11 - Dimension of Dreams.pdf - Jeffrey Lord - margozap

Dimension of Dreams

Blade Book 11

by Jeffrey Lord

Chapter One

^»

Richard Blade looked up at the forty-foot aluminum mast to the spinnaker fittings at the masthead. Then

he looked forward to the big orange spinnaker, straining and pulled drum-tight by the rising wind.

And then he raised his voice to carry over the wind and shouted to be heard below in the cabin of the

motorsailer, "Annie! Come on deck and take the wheel while I go forward and drop the spinnaker. It's

getting on to blow."

A muffled acknowledgment floated out from behind the polished teak door. Then the door swung

open and Lady Annette Pangborn popped out, mounting the steps to the cockpit with the poise and

balance of a seasoned sailor. She was wearing a bikini that concealed only nominal portions of her

tanned, fashion-model's body. She slipped gracefully into the padded helmsman's seat and took the

chromed wheel from Blade. With a winch handle swinging in one hand he went forward along the heaving

deck.

He didn't care much for having to drop the spinnaker. Its two thousand square feet of orange nylon

almost gave the deep-keeled motorsailer the performance of a racing sloop. But the blue sky to the

southwest was beginning to turn gray and the blue gray waters of theEnglish Channel were beginning to

heave up higher and higher in white-capped waves. The motorsailer was lurching and heaving in a way

she had not done that morning when they left the French coast behind.

The oiled winch worked smoothly, but he had not expected it to do anything else. Everything aboard

Annie's motorsailer was the result of abundant money and good judgment. She had inherited both from

four generations of shipping magnates. If Annie ever married, Blade expected that she would do her best

to send that same money and judgment on to another few generations. But theEnglish Channel was as

likely to turn to onion soup as Annie was to marry.

That was why he was aboard her motorsailer this spring day. Blade had all the assets needed to

make him attractive to women. Good looks, an athletic body well over six feet tall, charm, apparent

wealth, and (as those women who carried matters far enough discovered) abounding virility. There were

always women around him, and among them were always a good many who could not help imagining

themselves as Mrs. Blade.

Which was impossible. Richard Blade was not merely the imposing, middle-aged man-about-town

he seemed. In reality he was the best secret agent the intelligence office MI6 had ever possessed. He had

survived the better part of twenty years of the deadliest sort of fieldwork. And more than fieldwork.

What often seemed like half a lifetime ago,Britain 's leading computer expert, Lord Leighton, had

conducted an experiment directly linking a man's mind to his latest computer. That man had been Blade.

With his combined qualities of mind and body, he had been the perfect—well, call it the perfect guinea

pig.

And now he was still a guinea pig. The computer had hurled Blade straight into another dimension

with a Dark Ages level of civilization. Only those qualities of mind and body that had led to his selection

in the first place kept Blade alive to return to his own dimension. Those same qualities had kept him

alive-at times by the narrowest of margins-during nine more trips into nine different dimensions, or at least

nine different aspects of what Lord Leighton called Dimension X.

Project Dimension X had been launched the moment Blade returned from his first trip. The value

toEngland of being able to penetrate and explore other dimensions and bring back their wealth or

knowledge was obvious. Blade's superior, the man called J, who headed MI6, had reluctantly parted

with his best agent. The prime minister himself had funneled generous support in money and trained

people to the project. But the key man in the project was still Blade himself. He was still the only man

inEngland able to travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane.

Obviously, either his luck or his endurance would run out sooner or later if they kept sending him

back. Blade knew it and took it for granted. J also knew it and was horrified at the thought. Lord

Leighton knew it and usually seemed quite indifferent. There was a subproject afoot to find other

qualified candidates for trips into Dimension X, and both J and the prime minister had given it their

blessing and their personal support. But so far it had produced nothing. Blade was still indispensable.

So he could not marry. Few women could tolerate having their husbands suddenly snatched away on

mysterious errands for weeks or months at a time and unexpectedly returning scarred, tanned, and

trimmed down. Blade would not ask those few women he could rely on to silently suffer such an

existence. His other dimensional travels had already driven away Zoe, the woman he had come closest to

marrying—would have married under other circumstances. He would not take the chance of that

happening twice. So he sought out those women, like Annie, who were interested in fun, frolic, and

freedom.

Now the spinnaker was down, bagged, dropped through the forward hatch, and stowed in the sail

locker in the forepeak. The heaving of the motorsailer's deck subsided enough to make Blade's trip aft

easier than his trip forward. With only the mainsail and the number-two jib up, the yacht rode easily

through the chop.

Annie was holding her on course with no sign of effort when Blade dropped down into the cockpit

and squatted beside the wheel. "Think we can make Folkestone with the spinnaker down?" he asked.

She frowned. "Not unless we want to make the approach after dark."

Blade shook his head.

She grinned and said, "You're as careful as if you'd been at sea for twenty years. Where did you ever

learn the habit?"

Blade looked at Annie's windblown beauty and wondered how he would have answered that

question if he had not been bound hand, foot, and tongue by the Official Secrets Act. Would he have to

tell Annie about the pirates of Neral, whom he had fought both for and against, and about how he had

learned seamanship from the sadistic she-pirate named Cayla and the tough old fighter Tuabir aboard the

galleys of the pirate Brotherhood? And if he had decided to tell her about these things, could he have

made her believe him? Perhaps not. Perhaps the Official Secrets Act had saved him more than once from

being branded a madman. There was so much he had learned, so much he had seen, during his

adventures. And so much of it would have seemed incredible even to Blade if he had not lived through it

himself.

Suddenly a shout of surprise from Annie made him turn and look out across the whitecaps to where

her slender arm was pointing. A larger patch of foam was spreading across the sea, breaking up on the

fringes as the waves tossed it about. From its center rose a squat black tower, rising still higher as Blade

watched, and then a long black hull lifted from beneath the foam and sliced through the waves. One

ofEngland 's diminishing fleet of submarines was on the surface again, heading intoPortsmouth after a long

patrol in the depths of theAtlantic .

Blade watched tiny figures appear on the submarine's bridge, and then a patch of white that grew

suddenly larger as the wind caught it and whipped it out stiff and brilliant in the sun—the white ensign of

the Royal Navy. An impulse to follow what had once been tradition moved Blade. He reached for the

halyard of the motorsailer's own flag and pulled gently, so that it dipped twice. Across the water there

was a flurry of motion on the submarine's bridge. Blade realized he had caught them by surprise with the

traditional gesture. Probably no one aboard the submarine, from the captain on down, had ever

witnessed this act. But then the white ensign shivered and moved down and then up with stately grace.

Blade smiled—the Royal Navy could usually come up punching.

Annie was watching him with a strange mixture of emotion in her eyes—half amusement, half

something indefinable. She was part of a generation that tended to scoff at the kind of gesture Blade had

just made. But she was also from a family whose fortunes had been founded in the great days of that now

sadly shrunken Royal Navy. Her family home was filled with portraits, models, and books telling of those

days and of sons who had "gone down to the sea in ships" flying that same white ensign—and sometimes

not returned. She might smile at Blade's nostalgic gesture, but she would never ridicule him for it. And in

an odd way she was moved by it.

Whatever combination of emotions he had aroused in her was still working that night, after they had

dropped anchor in the sheltered mouth of a small creek and snugged the yacht safely down for the night.

Blade was conscious of her brown eyes, more intent on him and wider than ever, as they sat in the cabin,

baking the chill out of their bodies with the cabin heater and shoveling in soup, corned beef, and peaches

out of cans from the galley lockers.

Champagneglowed in the light of the lanterns and bubbled in plastic cups as she poured it from a

chilled bottle, then curled up on the leather-covered couch beside Blade. That couch was the one Annie

called her passion pit. As she passed in front of the light, Blade saw the silhouette of her lithe figure

through the thin yellow robe that was her only clothing.

She clicked cups with him and drained hers in a single long swallow, then put it on the floor and

reached out one long-fingered hand to caress the hard, chiseled line of his jaw. The hand moved down

along his neck and under the collar of his shirt, stroking the sinewy muscles of his shoulder. Blade turned,

his lips crinkling in a smile, and reached out with his own large left hand to stroke in gentle but rapid

succession her cheek, lips, jaw, neck, shoulder—and then the delicate curve of breast that thrust out the

light fabric of the gown and the even more delicate bud of the nipple, visible in its center.

Normally she liked the long, slow warm-up, hands and lips roaming over each other's body,

approaching inch by inch the final merging and the joy. But that night whatever emotions had her in their

grip made her more urgent, more hungry, as though she had already been half-aroused before Blade's

hand reached out to her.

She loosened the belt of the robe and let it fall open so that Blade's hands could slip down inside it

easily and wander over her bare skin. Her breathing quickened as he cupped both breasts gently, his

fingers playing a gentle rhythm on their curves while his palms pressed with steadily increasing force

against the already rigid nipples. She shrugged the robe from her shoulders and stood up in a single

flowing motion, there reached out once more toward Blade.

Blade pulled off his own clothes. By the time he was naked, he was fully aroused by the sight of

Annie's body gleaming in the light, her blazing eyes and quick breathing, and her sinuous swaying. Now

he shared her urgency, responding to it in the most natural way. His engorged member jutted rigidly

before him as he turned to face her.

She flowed up against him, her long slim arms and legs winding around his, her firm breasts flattening

against his chest. This aroused him still further, more than he would have believed possible. His hands

traced a line down her spine and cupped her buttocks. She moaned softly and burrowed her face into the

side of his neck, her mobile lips and darting tongue working from his earlobe down to his shoulder and

then back again. It was his turn to make an incoherent sound. All the sensations of his body seemed to be

flowing from that swollen and stiffened rod. He felt his throat drying out and his breath coming in irregular

gasps that would have made it impossible for him to speak even if he had wanted to. But there was

nothing to say, only to do.

He urged Annie back toward the couch again while his hands tightened their grip on her buttocks and

her arms locked more and more tightly around his torso. Their bodies were pressed so hard together that

he could feel the delicate curls of her pubic hair twining around his phallus, now pressed hard against her

but not yet in her. Then it was her turn to force the pace. She momentarily slipped free from his arms to

lie back on the couch, legs spread and raised, eyes open, fingers curling and uncurling in a series of

beckoning gestures.

Blade responded to that beckoning and in a single abrupt gesture swung himself into position above

her. He lowered himself slowly as she arched her body up toward him, and then he was in her. Her eyes

and mouth opened still wider as he drove deep inside her, timing his thrusts with the arching of her body

to bury himself deeper and deeper. Annie responded quickly and climaxed easily, but as far as she was

concerned, that simply meant even more opportunities for delight at each bout. So Blade was as careful

to pace himself with her as if she had taken half an hour to reach the boiling point.

Steadily he stroked, calling on all his endurance to hold himself back each time Annie heaved and

writhed under him. Her sweat-glazed thighs locked still tighter around him, and her feet beat a-tattoo on

his back. Her mouth was continuously open, but only incoherent animal noises came from it—sobs and

gasps and little screams as the spasms wrenched her body. Bit by bit Blade felt his endurance reaching its

limits and his control slipping—as though he were boiling inside and about to burst. He fought to hold,

held on through one more heave of Annie's thighs. Then with a choked sound no more human than

Annie's gasps and moans, he poured himself into her so fiercely that it seemed as though he would drain

away through his fiercely pumping organ and shrink away to nothing. Finally every part of him went limp

except the massive arms that still held his weight off Annie. Her eyes were glazed as they looked up at

him.

Gradually life and movement returned to both of them. He eased himself down on the floor with one

arm still trailing across Annie's body. Both her hands were still locked over his arm. Gradually they

sucked in enough air so that their chests no longer heaved like those of mountaineers struggling up a

slope. Gradually their eyes met again, and Annie's expression of animal contentment gave way to her

normal impish smile.

And gradually Blade realized that this night was the beginning of the end for them. They had pushed

the sexual attraction and companionship that lay at the base of their relationship as far as it would go.

Both would shy away from pushing things further, into marriage. It might take a few months, of course,

because there was nothing bad pushing them apart, merely their own preferences. But there would

eventually come a day when they would see each other at a party inLondon and do nothing more than

smile and nod in greeting, then pass on, each with his own partner.

Chapter Two

«^»

Lord Leighton's message caught up with Blade the next afternoon at the Sailor's Head Tavern in

Folkestone. On all his Channel trips with Annie the eighteenth-century pub on the waterfront had been

Blade's message drop. The pubkeeper, a retired Royal Navy petty officer, knew him well and could be

trusted to keep his mouth shut about Blade's comings and goings. Besides a discreet landlord, the Sailor's

Head also had good beer.

It was over a glass of that beer that Blade read the message. Simple, straightforward, familiar. As he

read it, his senses seemed to sharpen until everything in the room seemed to have extra force and

vividness—the smells of beer and tobacco and lemon-scented floor cleanser, the sounds of glasses

clinking and darts plunking into the board at the back of the room, the stray gleams of watery sunlight

wandering in through the windows and striking fire from the copper trays hanging above the bar.

He was going into Dimension X again, and this might be the last time he'd ever see any of these

familiar English sights: So far he had always returned, often battered and bruised and lame, but there was

always the possibility of something going wrong with either the computer or his own skills. He might be

trapped; he might be killed. The lust for adventure was strong in him, but as he looked around the pub, it

occurred to him that his Dimension X travels might be too much of a good thing. Then he paid his bill and

went outside to where his MG was parked, his equipment already in it. Annie was on her way back

toLondon , so there were no good-byes to be said before he fired up the engine and trundled the little

sports car onto the motorway forLondon .

During his absence the cleaning lady had whirled through Blade'sWest End apartment like an orderly

hurricane. All the carefully cultivated clutter of his bachelor life had been swept away and rearranged in

appropriate places—or at least what Mrs. Griggs thought were appropriate places. Blade could not help

laughing at the sight. The guerrilla warfare between bachelors and their cleaning ladies had been raging

long before he was born and would be going on long after he was dead. Undoubtedly, it would go on

until cleaning ladies became reconciled to clutter or bachelors became tidy—neither of which would

happen this side of the Day of Judgment.

It was certainly more than silly to worry about Mrs. Griggs' peculiarities, when within another

twenty-four hours he was going to—well, what was the correct word for moving into Dimension X?

Lord Leighton himself was still trying to pin down the exact relationship of Dimension X to Home

Dimension. Were the two dimensions completely parallel … with only the state of Blade's brain and

therefore of his senses standing between them? Or were they merely parallel in some ways and divergent

in others, each with some sort of independent continuity? Since their times could get out of phase, Blade

suspected the latter. Lord Leighton also suspected the latter and had nearly had kittens about it more

than once. However, he had also adjusted the computer so that Dimension X time and Home Dimension

time stayed in phase.

Jeffrey Lord - Blade 11 - Dimension of Dreams.pdf

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