The Galaxy Builder (30 page)

            "Where are we going, Roy?" O'Leary
asked.

            "Got to find the wall," the little man
answered. "You still got the flat-walker, right? But you can't walk
through no walls if you ain't got a wall to walk through."

            "Let's just go back up the stairs,"
O'Leary suggested. "Daph— I mean Henriette—is obviously not here."

            "Prolly took the stairs and got off at the
next landing," Roy hazarded. "Good thing, too. Too much of a fall fer
a lady."

            "Funny thing," Lafayette told Roy.
"Somebody Tode calls 'Boss' knew I'd be here. He sent Tode and Cease ahead
to put the arm on me."

            "Figures," Roy replied. "I tole
you Frumpy got aloose. He knew you'd go through that door and miss the top
step. So
he
must be their Boss."

            "Right. He told me he was planning on
taking over the Cosmos, remember?"

            "My boner, Slim, not securing the sucker
better. But we'll find him—or he'll find us." Roy's pull at the knee of
Lafayette's gold-striped breeches stopped. Abruptly, O'Leary slammed against a
solid barrier of compacted rubbish. He called to Roy, but there was no reply.
Carefully, he got out the flat-walker, oriented it approximately parallel to
the irregular wall before him, and pressed.

-

            Bright light, blinding him; a strident alarm
bell. A voice shouting "—is it! Plane One, activate!" all cut off
like a broken film. Then a deep-toned vibration that shook the floor beneath
his feet—no, the bare earth, with tall weeds, dim lights, moving in curious
patterns; the tolling of a bell, the perfume of night-blooming flowers, a
clamor of childish voices, and the odor of chalk dust; a glimpse of an
octagonal clock with the hands at high noon, the rush of water, a dash of cold
spray; splintering sounds as of timber shattering before a high wind, the
grating of massive stone grinding massive stone to rubble in utter darkness;
the glare of a great blue-white sun, unshielded, close at hand; heat,
turbulence, a deafening explosion ...

            Lafayette shook his head and sat up, astonished
to find himself alive and, as far as he could see, intact. The floor under him
was smoothly carpeted.

            "Good," he said aloud. "I'm out
of that garbage bin, at least," he went on, and called Roy's name. No
reply.

            "You think it good, do you, fellow?" a
cold male voice said above him. "Let us hope you're clever enough to
ensure that you continue so to believe."

            "Is that you, Frumpkin?" Lafayette
demanded of the darkness above. He got to his feet, tucked the flat-walker
away, and took a tentative step in the direction from which the voice had
seemed to come. He tripped over something soft and fell heavily.

-

            After half an hour of blundering about in what
appeared to be a large room furnished with overstuffed furniture, pursuing the
voice which spoke mockingly from time to time, O'Leary felt his way up onto a
long chaise longue and collapsed, winded. He closed his eyes for a moment.

            First Lafayette was aware of a mild clamor of
voices, then of dim light. He sat up and saw that he was far from being alone
in the big room. In divans, easy chairs, couches, davenports, and settees
arranged in conversational groupings all across the rather faded
pseudo-oriental carpets, were people of all ages, both sexes and many degrees
of apparent cultivation. Most, but not all of them, were at least vaguely
familiar to him. Only the Man in Black, now clad in a wine-colored brocaded
dressing gown with a satin shawl collar, was near him. He stood rocking
slightly on his heels, glass in hand, looking down at O'Leary with an
expression of mild distaste.

            "The time has come at last," he said
blandly, "for me to confront you directly, my boy, and to discover
precisely what has motivated your unexampled persecution of me. You've had a
nice nap; would you care for a bite, or perhaps a spiritous beverage? Later we
shall dine."

            "That's a good one," O'Leary said
bluntly. "I've been persecuting
you,
have I? Funny, I thought it
was the other way around. Anyway, we've been all over that."

            Frumpkin's eyebrows went up in a shallow mime of
surprise. "Why would I, in my position, trouble to persecute such a one as
you, Sir Lafayette?"

            "Maybe to get even for all the times I made
you look like a jackass," Lafayette hazarded, a remark which netted a
comfortable chuckle.

            "You mistake me, boy," the dandified
Frumpkin commented before taking a sip from his glass. "I employed a
number of my analogs, of course, a few of whom you encountered in your mad
course. It would be foolish of you to mistake any of them for my actual
Prime-line self."

            "What is this place, Frumpkin?"
O'Leary demanded, looking around the big room—the gray room, he realized
belatedly, which he was seeing for the first time in a good light. He noted the
standing bridge lamps with their fringed, orange-parchment shades, the framed
rotogravures on the flowered, brownish wallpaper, and on a nearby would-be
Hepplewaite side-table, an Atwater Kent radio in a walnut-stained wooden
cabinet. "It looks like a set for a Nils Asther movie," he commented.
"Except for that." He nodded toward the control panel.

            "I chose the decor for its ambience of
complacent respectability, far pleasanter than bare, functional
collapsed-matter," Frumpkin replied lazily. "As for the Big Board, it
is of course a necessity. And you will call me 'Lord of All'."

            "I doubt it," Lafayette said. "As
soon as your keepers find you, you'll be back in a padded cell."

            "There's no need to be rude," the Lord
of All complained. "I've told you I brought you here for a nice chat,
after which we shall no doubt have agreed on a mutually satisfactory division
of spheres of influence. I'm quite willing to go half-and-half with you, so
long as my half is the larger." He finished his drink and put down the
empty glass beside the radio, which he absent-mindedly switched on.

-

            "Seem like to me, Brudder Andy," a
resonant baritone voice said amid static, "you is jest temporaciously
regusted wid de taxicab business. But when de Kingfish tell you about how we
gonna redisorganize, you goin' be singin' anudda choon."

            "I indulge you, boy, out of admiration for
your ingenuity, no more," the Frumpkin lookalike said grandly.

            "Where's Daphne?" O'Leary demanded,
rising abruptly to confront his host, who stood his ground, looking a trifle uneasy.

           
"That
silly alibi again,"
Frumpkin commented and flopped his arms as one despairing of reasonableness.
"Think, Sir Lafayette!" he urged. "Once you've made your peace
with me, you'll have second choice of all the wonders in all the worlds that
are or might have been!"

            O'Leary himself was surprised to see his left
fist shoot out in a straight jab to the middle of the fellow's smug face.
Frumpkin went down on his back, bleating. Heads turned. O'Leary saw Chuck of
Chuck-and-Chick take a quick look and busy himself with lighting a cigar.
Sheriff Tode took a step his way and abruptly changed his mind, pausing to
engage in conversation with Mickey Jo. Her cowgirl outfit was badly stained,
but her hairdo was in place. Neither looked directly at him. Only Marv came
forward, and with an apologetic look at Lafayette, bent over the furious
Frumpkin and helped him to his feet.

            "Don't waste your sympathy on that skunk,
Marv," O'Leary said disparagingly. "He's the one who's responsible
for all the problems we've been having. Where've you been, anyway? I lost you
in the crowd back in Mudville."

            "Is that right, mister?" Marv demanded
of the no longer dignified Frumpkin, who was dabbing at the blood on his lip.
"Is that what you told him?" Marv insisted. Behind him, Trog was
making his way forward in haste, looking distressed.

            "Hold on there, Marv," he called
ahead. "I thought I tole you and Omar to consider yerselfs under house
arrest!" Marv turned to look coldly at his whiskery boss. "Don't push
it, milord," he said in a deadly tone. Trog responded by turning aside to
join a conversational group including Dr. Smith, still in her starched whites,
talking to a man of oriental appearance, and Special Ed. But his eyes searched
in vain for a glimpse of the Lady Henriette.

            "Some guest list," he said shortly to
Frumpkin when the Prime agent had resumed his position facing Lafayette but out
of range of left jabs now. "It's pretty clear that you were herding me
every'step of the way," Lafayette went on. "And you had these people
of yours planted to intercept me. Why? I think before this farce goes any
furthur, we'd better clear up that point."

            "As I've already told you, dear boy,"
Frumpkin began in an unctuous tone, "I acknowledge your expertise; you've
unleashed forces which even I"—he paused to glance toward his guests, now
busily chattering again as if no episode of violence had marred the
tranquillity of the gathering—"skills which I admire, and indeed wish to
learn from you. Do you have a drink, lad, and let's discuss way and
means."

            "Where is she?" was O'Leary's only
response.

            Frumpkin fluttered his hands. "Pray believe
me, Lafayette, I haven't the faintest idea."

            O'Leary shook his head. "Nope," he
said. "I don't believe you."

            "I have never so much as set eyes on this
Daphne person," Frumpkin said loftily.

            "You jostled her coming through the door of
the lab not more than an hour ago," Lafayette stated flatly. Frumpkin
threw up his hands.

            "Dear boy, that was the Lady Henriette in
the Hill, with her serving-wench, one Betty Brassbraid."

            "Sure," Lafayette agreed. "I
still want to talk to her. But you seem to forget that here in your gray room
you call her 'Dame Edith'."

            "Wait here," Frumpkin said, his tone
of command once more in working order. Without awaiting O'Leary's response, he
turned and made his way briskly across the wide room. Once more, Lafayette
examined the familiar faces among those present. Of all those he had
encountered in his wanderings since the sudden shower in the palace garden,
only Duke Bother-Be-Damned, it seemed, was nowhere to be seen.

           
—and Roy,
O'Leary told himself. He took
out the flat-walker and held it to his ear:

            "... Alpha Relay, via Forward Station
Ten," a tiny voice whispered. "Kindly come in, whoever you are,
Raf
trass spintern!"

            "Raf trass spoit,
" Lafayette
said softly. "Get Roy on the line, quick!"

            A different voice responded: "This is your
Plane Supervisor. May I help you?"

            "Where's Roy?" Lafayette demanded.

            "Kindly speak up," the supervisor said
sharply. "I have in excess of ten-to-the-thirtieth Roys listed. To which
do you refer?"

            "OK, Slim," Roy's more audible voice
cut in. "What happened? We started through, and—zap!—there I was in
ultraspace, alone! But—maybe I got it! Slim, I'm glad you're OK enough to talk,
but did you maybe not orient the flat-walker precisely like it says in the
brochure? You gotta realize Ajax can't accept no responsibility if the unit is
not used as directed. Says so right in the guarantee."

            "I don't know, Roy," O'Leary came back
impatiently. "But don't worry, I'm not planning to sue. Listen, every so
often I get snagged by Frumpkin into a place I call the gray room. His HQ, it
seems. Right now he's staging some sort of convention. Everybody's here but
Bother. Can you get your strongarm squad in here to nab Frumpkin in a
hurry?"

            "Don't worry, Bother's OK. He's here, in
fact, putting away a stack o' flapjacks higher'n me. I don't know about the
squad; you're almost out o' range, Slim, right outside the whole of explored
space-time! Fact is, I'm surprised we even got the voice link—" With those
words, his voice dwindled amid rising static.

            "See here," Frumpkin said sharply.
O'Leary looked up; the Man in Black was back, confronting him in challenging
fashion, two troglodytic men in waiter's togs at his side.

            "I've lost patience with you,"
Frumpkin snapped. "You will now give me your complete cooperation, or I
shall simply destroy you. Now, speak up!"

            "You're a lousy liar," O'Leary told
the irate autocrat. "You pretend I just stumbled around after I met you
burgling the old lab—or whatever you were doing there—but it's pretty clear now
I was herded every step of the way. Every time I almost broke the pattern, one
of your boys or girls was on hand to nudge me back in line." O'Leary's
eyes went past Frumpkin to the crowd. "Look at 'em," he added. "What
is this, a convention of your hirelings?"