The Galaxy Builder (6 page)

            "Just a contact device," Frumpkin
reassured him. The touch of the thin stiff wire was icy cold, and tingled.
Frumpkin ran it along O'Leary's arm while consulting dials in his suitcase, his
expression grave.

            "I say!" Belarius exclaimed after a
glance at the dials.

            "Just so," Frumpkin concurred
expressionlessly. Both men turned quickly to eye Lafayette without visible
approval.

            "Where have you hidden it?" Belarius
barked. Before Lafayette could protest, Frumpkin said sternly: "Young man,
it is now quite clear that you have not only committed the gravest offence in
the Civil Code, but have compounded the crime with a breach of the Primary
Regulation itself—though how you managed such villainy remains obscure, I
concede."

            "A mystery which will be elucidated
promptly, once the full attention of I-Branch is focused upon you, 'Mr.
O'Leary', as I assure you it will be in a very few minutes now," Belarius
elaborated and gestured curtly to Frumpkin. "Power-up the
shift-field," he commanded.

            "Wait!" Lafayette yelled. "What
if I really
am
Lafayette O'Leary; after all, your own gadgets are
telling you I'm not just a routine case."

            With a keen glance at Belarius, Frumpkin said
quietly, "We
might
be justified in holding him for higher-level
review ..."

            "You
said
we've got seventy-two
hours!" Lafayette cried. "Let me go, and I'll find Daphne, and you
can at least shift her to a more civilized locus! Where's your chivalry?"

-

            Belarius and Frumpkin muttered together; then
Belarius touched a button on the panel in the trunk, and Lafayette felt the net
fall away. He looked down, saw what looked like a wire coat hanger bent into a
wad; he picked it up and, as Frumpkin jostled past him, dropped it in the
latter's pocket, from which it at once extruded a questing tendril. Frumpkin
halted abruptly, uttered a croak, and made an abortive grab at the filaments
now busily trussing his biceps, before coming to rest red-faced, his arms
half-raised.

            "What is it, Frumpy?" Belarius
inquired casually of his subordinate. "Just remember something?" Then
he came over to drape a comradely arm over the other's shoulders, started back
with a yelp, and froze, locked to Frumpkin.

            "Seems your magic hair-net has a few
bugs," Lafayette said. "It can't tell its boss from the other guy. So
just hang loose, gentlemen, until I get back."

            While the two Primary inspectors made
inarticulate sounds behind him, Lafayette went to the telephone box, seized the
stubs of the cut wires, and tapped the exposed conductors together. A tiny pink
spark jumped. Encouraged, he went on, tapping out an SOS in Morse, then
amplified his message: TRAPPED IN N-'S TOWER BY BELARIUS V AND ONE FRUMPKIN
FROM PRIMARY QUERY GET ME OUT OF HERE DASH DAPHNE TOO STOP.

            That done, he listened at the door. Hearing
nothing, he opened it half an inch and was instantly thrust backward as a
small, whiskery man even shorter and uglier than Trog burst through. As
Lafayette regained his balance, the newcomer turned on him, raising a stone ax,
but froze at the boom of a resonant voice from across the room:

            "Stop where you are, Murg."

            "Geeze, Allegorus hisself!" Murg
croaked, the ax dropping from his hand. Lafayette turned to see a tall,
cloak-wrapped figure stepping in through the open French doors from the
balcony.

            The newcomer shot O'Leary a single sharp glance
from piercing eyes which were the only part of his face visible in the deep
shadows of the hood over his head; then he went directly across the room to
confront Belarius and Frumpkin.

            "Stand fast, O'Leary," he called over
his shoulder before he began a low-voiced conversation with the two, who
responded to the terse questions with excited protestations:

            "... line of inquiry!"

            "... desperate criminal!"

            "... got to be done!"

            "... my career!"

            At last the hooded stranger turned away, and the
two Nuclear agents fell strangely silent, still standing in rigid postures as
if awaiting a command to resume activity. As the tall intruder approached,
O'Leary began organizing his confused thoughts, readying his first question.

            "Who are you?" he blurted instead.

            "I am called Allegorus," the strangely
authoritative man said impressively.

            "I heard you only come out once every three
hundred years," O'Leary countered uncertainly.

            "Nonsense," Allegorus replied coolly.
"It's just that it's been three centuries since I was last here."

            "Oh," Lafayette replied, as if
enlightened.

            Behind him, there was a scuttling sound as Murg
made a dash through the door.

            "No matter," Allegorus said with a
careless wave of a long-fingered hand. "We can round up that lot when
needed. But as for this precious pair you've cornered here," he went on in
a lower tone, "I fear, my boy, you've gotten in over your head there. Top
brass, you know. Still, we'll find a way out. As for yourself, Lafayette,
you're in deep trouble, lad. I don't know how you managed to get involved in
all this, but I'm glad I managed to intercept you before the next temporal
segment assumed complete actualization; this way, there's at least a chance ...
if you'll lend me your complete cooperation, that is." Allegorus looked
inquiringly, or perhaps hopefully, at O'Leary. "You
will
cooperate,
won't you, lad?" He voiced the wish hesitantly, almost, O'Leary thought,
as if he were worried he might be refused. Strange, what with Allegorus being
the high cockalorum in these parts, and himself a mere intruder ...

            "Perhaps," O'Leary said coolly.
"Just what
is
the situation, as you see it?"

            "Disaster, in the most literal sense,"
Allegorus replied promptly. "It appears an entropic disjunction has
occurred," he went on grimly, his eyes fixed on Lafayette. "You're
aware of what
that
could mean, I'm sure."

            "Don't be so sure, Al," Lafayette countered
breezily. "It sounds bad, but I never heard of it before." He paused,
awaiting explanation. "But make it fast," he added. "I'm going
to find Daphne. The poor kid's out
there
—" with a wave of his
arm—"somewhere."

            "All in good time, sir," Allegorus hastened
to reassure him. "An E.D. is the most drastic sort of temporal
anomaly—"

            "I know about those," Lafayette cut
in. "Central claimed I caused them whenever I focused my psychical
energies—like the time I shifted myself to Artesia, and then when I turned that
swill at the Ax and Dragon into Chateau Lafitte-Rothschilde, '29. At first I
thought I was just sort of hallucinating, you know, my subconscious trying to
bring my inner conflicts to my attention; but Nicodaeus straightened me out. He
told me I was actually moving things around from one reality level to another.
Pretty simple, once you understand it. But right now it seems I've gotten
myself—and Daph, too—into another locus, and I didn't even change a daisy from
white to pink! I don't get it. Maybe you know something about it: Maybe
you
were
twiddling around with
your
psychical energies, and somehow loused
everything up. How about it: Have you ever heard of Artesia? That's where this
tower belongs, you know—it was built by Nicodaeus, or not built—but he fitted
out this old garret as his lab." Lafayette looked around at the dim,
cobwebby stone walls, the littered stone floor. "It used to be very
impressive," he assured Allegorus. "But now it's been stripped, since
Nicodaeus was recalled to Central."

            The hooded man nodded. "But all this isn't
helping us with the main problem," he pointed out. "I'm very familiar
with dear old Artesia—spent some time there myself once, long ago."
Allegorus sighed, lost in nostalgia.

            "Then, let's
do
something!"
Lafayette cried, "... if you're as powerful as Belarius and Frumpkin
said."

            "Ah, yes." Allegorus turned to study
the two under discussion, still standing in their awkward poses.

            "I see you took the precaution of
stabilizing them with your Mark V," he said easily.

            "Not
my
Mark V," Lafayette
corrected. "I took that little gadget away from Frumpkin after he'd used
it on me.

            "Indeed? And how, might I inquire?"
Allegorus returned, sounding dubious.

            "He got a little careless, and I got a
little lucky," Lafayette replied modestly.

            "You
did
activate the 'hold'
capability of the contact device, I trust," Allegorus said blandly.
"Otherwise, of course, its sphere of effectiveness is less than three
minutes."

            "I didn't have time to read the owner's
manual," Lafayette explained. "I just stuck it on them the same way
Frumpkin stuck it to me—more or less."

            "In that case—" Allegorus began with
sudden urgency, turning toward the pair, too late. Already, Frumpkin was
bending over the trunk—a portable command center, O'Leary now realized.
Frumpkin raised his head, shot O'Leary a haughty look, and flipped switches
even as Allegorus lunged with a yell: "Get them!"

            Lafayette charged. There was a deep-toned
boom!
and the light suddenly dimmed. For an instant, O'Leary seemed to catch a
ghostly glimpse of the misty gray room, where Frumpkin was fading from view
even as Daphne came into sight. O'Leary yelled "Daphne!" and lunged
as the glimpse faded. O'Leary slammed against the wall, empty-handed, as his
quarry—both men, plus their trunk—seemed to duck aside, slipping from his
grasp. Allegorus was picking himself up, having fallen heavily as he missed his
grab for Frumpkin. Lafayette gave him a hand, at the same time scanning the
shadowy recesses of the big room for the two agile Primary agents, in vain.

            He put a hand to his forehead, trying to orient
himself. "I'm having visions," he muttered as Allegorus bent toward
him solicitously. "Waking dreams, or something.
He
was
there—'Frumpkin', Belarius called him—and Daphne, too. I know it's silly, but I
think he knows more than he's telling about her." He stepped back from the
wall and looked around the room.

            "Where are they?" he muttered.
"Let's get some light in here. I'll cover the door—unless they made it out
the window; but they couldn't have moved that fast, even without their
baggage."

            "No need, my boy," Allegorus said in
his deep voice, "they've well and truly flown. Too bad. Might have cleared
this whole thing up on the spot." He shook his head regretfully.
"Harm's done," he concluded. "No point in mourning. We must get
busy at once."

            "Sure," Lafayette said weakly.
"Doing what?"

            "Saving this entire manifold of loci from
utter dissolution, for a start," Allegorus snapped. "Come, Lafayette,
marshal your resources! This is your opportunity to display that dazzling
ingenuity of which the Record speaks in such extravagant terms!"

            "I'm wasting time," Lafayette cut him
off. "I'm leaving here right now to look for Daphne. Sorry I don't have
time for this E.D. of yours, but I've only got seventy-two hours. Ta." He
headed for the door, ignoring Allegorus' urgent plea to wait. As he set foot on
the landing, the stone slab cracked and shifted, affording him a glimpse,
through a quickly widening gap, of open air yawning below. He noticed a dull
rumbling sound; a stone block fell at his feet, slipped through the opening,
and was gone. Dust and gravel were dribbling down around him; the entire Tower,
he realized, was trembling, cracks appearing everywhere. More stones fell, went
bounding down the steps, knocking off chips from the worn treads. Lafayette
took a deep breath and followed, leaping down six steps at a bound as the walls
fell about him. He arrived at the bottom in a cloud of dust and ricoshays,
leaped clear of a heap of rubble, and was out the collapsing doorway and into
sunshine.

            It was early morning, Lafayette realized as he
stepped cautiously out onto the weed-choked vacant lot which had, back in
Artesia, been the rose garden. All was silent. Lafayette went boldly across to
the thicket where he had met Lord Trog and his minions. It was deserted now,
only the gilt chair, now lying on its side, remaining as evidence of the hairy
chieftain's visit. O'Leary set it upright and sat in it, remembering the long
row of which it had once been a member, lining the mirrored grand hall.

            There was a sound from the dense underbrush;
then Marv, moving uncertainly, emerged into view. He had the appearance of a
survivor of some disaster.

            He eyed O'Leary warily, then looked aside,
angling off as if to skirt his position rather than approaching.