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were emerging from the park and climbing into the backs of the four trucks.
On each of the two tank transporters sat two small tanks. Like the Uzi
submachine guns, they were a perfectly recognizable type. They were Scorpions,
the light reconnaissance tanks the British Army had introduced a few years
before. Some of the antennas and other external hardware were different, but
the silhouettes seemed virtually identical. Blade felt somewhat relieved. He
definitely couldn't have been pushed too far into the future if the RAF still
flew C- 130s and the British Army still used Scorpion tanks.
All this time, traffic had been passing back and forth along the road in front
of him. He'd noticed a perfectly ordinary mix of cars and trucks and buses,
with an occasional motorcycle or scooter. Now his eyes were drawn to a large
green truck that pulled up to the curb in front of a newsstand. Several
bundles of newspapers were thrown out and the truck started off again. Another
policeman climbed out of the police van, darted across the street in the
intervals between cars, and bought an armful of newspapers from the boy at the
stand.
Blade's own bobby took his arm firmly and led him toward the van. As they
approached, the other man laid most of the newspapers down on the hood of the
car, then opened the one he held. Blade looked at the newspaper, and suddenly
he felt all his internal organs from his throat down to his groin turn into
solid ice.
The newspaper had the exact form of the familiar London Tames. But it called
itself Imperial Times.
Under the newspaper's name was a motto, "For Emperor, For Englor." Its price
was given as "One
Imperial Shilling."
That was bad enough, but it wasn't the worst. The headlines read, bold and
black:
RUSSLANDER ULTIMATUM. RED FLAMES SAY:
EVACUATE NORDSBERGEN. FOREIGN MINISTRY SAYS HOSTILITIES NOW
INEVITABLE.
Worst of all was the date. Somehow, this was the same day as it had been when
Blade sat down with the computer. The day, the month, and the year were all
identical.
Blade shook his head. Either his eyes were telling him more lies than he could
imagine, or else he was not in the future.
Yet this wasn't the England of Home Dimension, either. It was a land-an
empire-called Englor, facing war with somebody called the Red Flames who ruled
a land called Russland.
Where and when was he?
Chapter 3
There was a long, painful moment for Blade. He felt utterly alone, as alone
and isolated as he had ever felt while passing from Home Dimension into
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Dimension X. Never in all his life had he felt quite so confused, quite so
disoriented, or quite so close to the brink of outright fear.
The moment came to an end as Blade's superbly disciplined mind reasserted its
control. Now he could once again ask himself a few basic questions, and this
time he could also come up with some sort of answers.
Where was he? Undeniably, in spite of all the signs that pointed the other
way, he was in Dimension X.
The computer had done its work as well or as badly as ever.
However, this was a Dimension unlike any other he'd ever entered. This
Dimension looked and sounded and felt so much like the Home Dimension he'd
left that it was perfectly possible to mistake the one for the other.
Blade conjured up a mental image of Dimension X as an endless series of
different worlds, lined up side by side and stretching out of sight into-call
it infinity, for want of a better name. Anyway, in this series a world like
Gaikon with its warlords or Brega with its warrior women would be far down the
line, far away from Home Dimension. This Dimension where he'd landed, on the
other hand, would lie practically next door to Home Dimension.
So far so good. Lord Leighton could undoubtedly find a thousand and one flaws
in that image if he had the chance. But Lord Leighton was in the England of
Home Dimension and Blade was here in the Englor of Dimension X. The precise
accuracy of the image didn't matter. What did matter was that Blade found it
useful for settling and arranging his thoughts.
So he was here, in this next-door Dimension that seemed so much like home. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]