The Universe Twister (28 page)

"O.K.," the woman said. "Rib me. I'm laughing, ha-ha."

"Could you manage a ham sandwich?" Lafayette said, a hint of desperation in his voice. "Bavarian ham on Swiss rye is a favorite of mine—"

"Sausage and small beer," the serving wench said flatly. "Take it or leave it."

"I'll take it," Lafayette said quickly. "Well done, and no rind, please."

The woman turned, tucked a strand of pale hair behind her ear. "Hey, Hulk," she shouted. "Saw off a grunt, skin it, and burn it, the gent says."

Lafayette was staring at her wide blue eyes, her short, finely modeled nose, the uncombed but undoubtedly pale-blond curls on her forehead.

"Princess Adoranne!" he yelped. "How did
you
get here?"

The barmaid gave Lafayette a tired look. "The name's Swinehild, mister," she said. "And how I got here's a long story."

"Adoranne—don't you know me? I'm Lafayette!" His voice rose to a squeak. "I talked to you just this morning, at breakfast!"

A sliding panel behind her banged open. An angry, square-jawed, regular-featured, but unshaven face peered out.

"Breakfast, hah?" it growled. "That calls for some explanation, bub!"

"Alain!" Lafayette cried. "You, too?"

"Whattya mean, me
too!
"

"I mean, I thought I was the only one—Adoranne and I, that is—of course I didn't realize until just now that she—I mean that you—"

"Two-timing me again, hey!" A long, muscular arm that went with the unshaven face made a grab for the girl, missed as she jumped aside and grabbed up a frying pan.

"Lay a hand on me, you big ape, and I'll scramble that grease spot you use for a brain," she screeched.

"Now, now, easy, Adoranne," Lafayette soothed. "This is no time for a lovers' spat—"

"Lovers! Ha! If you knew what I'd been through with that slob—" She broke off as the subject of the discourse slammed through the swinging door from the kitchen. She skipped aside from his lunge, brought up the iron skillet, and slammed it, with a meaty thud, against the side of his uncombed head. He took two rubbery steps and sagged against the counter, his face six inches from Lafayette's.

"What'll it be, sport?" he murmured, and slid down out of view with a prodigious clatter. The girl tossed the makeshift weapon aside and favored Lafayette with an irate look.

"What's the idea getting him all upset?" she demanded. She frowned, looking him up and down. "Anyway, I don't remember you, Sol. Who are you? I'll bet I never two-timed him with you at all!"

"Surely you'd remember?" Lafayette gulped. "I mean—what's happened? How did you and Alain get into this pig sty? Where's the palace? And Daphne—have you seen Daphne?"

"Daffy? There's a bum with a couple screws missing goes by that name, comes in here sometimes to cadge drinks. I ain't seen him in a couple weeks—"

"Not daffy,
Daphne
. She's a girl—my wife, to be exact. She's small—but not too small, you understand—nice figure, cute face, dark, curly hair—"

"I'll go fer that," a deep voice said blurrily from the floor. "Just wait till I figure out which way this deck is slanting—"

The girl put her foot in Hulk's face and pushed. "Sleep it off, ya bum," she muttered. She gave Lafayette an arch look and patted her back hair. "This dame got anything I ain't?" she inquired coolly.

"Adoranne! I'm talking about Daphne—the countess—my wife!"

"Oh, yeah, the countess. Well, to tell you the truth, Clyde, we don't see a lot o' the countess these days. We're too busy counting our pearls, you know how it is. Now, if you got no objection, I got some garbage to drag out back."

"Let me help you," Lafayette volunteered quickly.

"Skip it. I can handle him."

"Is he all right?" Lafayette rose and leaned across the counter to look down at the fallen chef.

"Hulk? You couldn't bust his skull with a horseshoe, even if the horse was still wearing it." She grabbed his heels and started backward through the swinging door.

"Adoranne—wait—listen to me—" Lafayette called, scrambling around the counter.

"I told you—Swinehild's the name. What's this Adder Ann jazz all about?"

"You really don't remember?" Lafayette stared at the familiar, beautiful face, so unfamiliarly smeared with soot and grease.

"I'm leveling with you, bub. Now, if you're done clowning, how's about clearing out of here so's I can close the joint up?"

"Isn't it a little early?"

Swinehild cocked an eyebrow. "You got other ideas in mind?"

"I have to talk to you!" Lafayette said desperately.

"It'll cost you," Swinehild said flatly.

"H-how much?"

"By the hour, or all night?"

"Well, it won't take but a few minutes to explain matters," Lafayette said eagerly. "Now, to begin with—"

"Wait a minute." The girl dropped Hulk's heels. "I got to slip into my working clothes."

"You're fine just as you are," Lafayette said hastily. "Now, as I was saying—"

"Are you trying to tell me my business, stranger?"

"No—that is, I'm not a stranger! We've known each other for years! Don't you remember the first time we met, at the ball King Goruble decreed to celebrate my agreeing to take on a little chore of dragon-slaying? You were wearing a blue dress with little bitty pearls on it, and you had a tiger cub on a leash—"

"Aw—you poor sucker," Swinehild said in sudden comprehension. "Your marbles is scrambled, huh? Why didn't you say so? Hey," she added, "when you said you wanted to talk, you really meant talk, huh?"

"Of course, what else? Now, look here, Adoranne: I don't know what's happened—some kind of hypnotic suggestion, maybe—but I'm sure with a little effort you could remember. Try hard, now: Picture a big, pink quartz palace, lots of knights and ladies in fancy costumes, your apartments in the west wing, done in pink and gold, and with a view of the gardens, the gay round of parties and fetes—"

"Slow down, bub." Swinehild took a bottle from under the bar, selected two cloudy glasses from the mismatched collection heaped in the wooden sink, and poured out two stiff drinks. She lifted her glass and sighed.

"Here's to you, mister. You're nutty as a couple of dancing squirrels, but you got a nifty delusional system working there, I'll say that for you." She tossed the shot back with a practiced twist of the wrist. Lafayette sampled his, winced at the pain, then swallowed it whole. Swinehild watched sympathetically as he fought to draw breath.

"I guess life in these parlous times is enough to drive any kind of sensitive guy off his wire. Where you from, anyway? Not from around here. You dress too fancy for that."

"Well, the fact is," Lafayette started, and paused. "The fact is, I don't quite know how to explain it," he finished in a hopeless tone. Suddenly, he was acutely aware of the pain of scratches and the ache of unaccustomedly stretched muscles, conscious of his urgent need of a good dinner and a hot bath and a warm bed.

Swinehild patted his hand with a hard little palm. "Well, don't worry about it, sugar. Maybe tomorrow everything'll look brighter. But I doubt it," she added, suddenly brisk again. She refilled her glass, drained it, placed the cork in the bottle, and drove it home with a blow of her palm. "It ain't going to get no better as long as that old goat Rodolpho's sitting on the ducal chair."

Lafayette poured his glass full and gulped it without noticing until the fiery stuff seared his throat.

"Listen," he gasped, "maybe the best thing would be for you to fill me in a bit on the background. I mean, I'm obviously not in Artesia any longer. And yet there are certain obvious parallels, such as you and Alain, and the general lie of the land. Maybe I'll be able to detect some useful analog and take it from there."

Swinehild scratched absently at her ribs. "Well, what's to say? Up to a couple years ago, this used to be a pretty fairy duchy. I mean, we didn't have much, but we got by, you know what I mean? Then everything just kind of went from bad to worse: taxes, regulations, rules. The cricket blight took out the tobacco and pot crops, then the plague of mildew spoiled the vintage two years running, then the yeast famine: that knocked out the ale. We squeaked by on imported rum until that ran out. Since then it's been small beer and groundhog sausage."

"Say, that reminds me," Lafayette said. "That ground hog sounds good."

"Brother, you
must
be hungry." Swinehild recovered the skillet from behind the door, shook up the coals in the grate, tossed a dubious-looking patty of grayish meat into the melting grease.

"Tell me more about this Duke Rodolpho you mentioned," Lafayette suggested.

"I only seen the bum once, as I was leaving the ducal-guard barracks about three at the A.M.; visiting a sick friend, you understand. The old boy was taking a little stroll in the garden, and being as it was early yet, I skinned over the fence and tried to strike up a conversation. Not that his type appeals to me. But I thought it might be a valuable connection, like." Swinehild gave Lafayette a look which might have been coy coming from anyone else. "But the old goat gave me the swift heave-ho," she finished, cracking an undersized egg with a sharp rap on the edge of the skillet. "He said something about me being young enough to be his niece, and yelled for the johns. I ask you, what kind of administration can you expect from an old buzzard with no more sporting instinct than that?"

"Hmm," Lafayette said thoughtfully. "Tell me, ah, Swinehild, how would I go about getting an audience with this duke?"

"Don't try it," the girl advised. "He's got a nasty reputation for throwing pests to the lions."

"If anybody knows what's going on here, it ought to be him," Lafayette mused. "You see, the way I have it figured out, Artesia hasn't really disappeared:
I
have."

Swinehild looked at him over her shoulder, tsked, and shook her head.

"And you not hardly more'n middle-aged," she said.

"Middle-aged? I'm not quite thirty," Lafayette pointed out. "Although I admit that tonight I feel a hundred and nine. Still, having a plan of action helps." He sniffed the crisping patty as Swinehild lifted it onto a chipped plate, added the brownish egg, and slid it in front of him.

"You
did
say ground hog?" he inquired dubiously, eyeing the offering askance.

"Groundhog is what I said. More power to you, mister. I could never choke the stuff back, myself."

"Look here, why don't you call me Lafayette?" he suggested, sampling the fare. Aside from a slight resemblance to library paste, it seemed to be tasteless—possibly a blessing in disguise.

"That's too long. How about Lafe?"

"Lafe sound like some kind of hillbilly with one overall strap and no shoes," O'Leary protested.

"Listen, Lafe," Swinehild said sternly, planting an elbow in front of him and favoring him with a no-nonsense look. "The quicker you get over some o' them fancy ideas and kind of blend into the landscape around here, the better. If Rodolpho's men spot you as a stranger, they'll have you strung up on a curtain stretcher before you can say
habeas corpus
, tickling your secrets out of you with a cat-o'-nine tails."

"Secrets? What secrets? My life is an open book. I'm an innocent victim of circumstances—"

"Sure: you're just a harmless nut. But just try convincing Rodolpho of that. He's as suspicious as an old maid sniffing after-shave in the shower stall."

"I'm sure you're exaggerating," Lafayette said firmly, scraping his plate. "The straightforward approach is always best. I'll just go to him man to man, explain that I seem to have been accidentally shifted out of my proper universe by some unspecified circumstance, and ask him if he knows of anyone carrying on unauthorized experiments in psychical-energy manipulation. In fact," he went on, warming to his subject, "he might even be in touch with Central himself. In all likelihood there's a sub-inspector of continua on duty here, keeping an eye on things, and as soon as I explain matters—"

"You're going to tell him
that
?" Swinehild inquired. "Look, Lafe, it's nothing to me—but I wouldn't if I was you, get me?"

"I'll start first thing in the morning," Lafayette murmured, licking the plate. "Where did you say this duke maintains his establishment?"

"I didn't. But I might as well tell you, you'd find out anyway. The ducal keep is at the capital, about twenty miles west of here as the buzzard flies."

"Hmmm. That puts it at just about the position of Lod's H.Q. back in Artesia. Out in the desert, eh?" he asked the girl.

"Nix, bub. The city's on a island, in the middle o' Lonesome Lake."

"Fascinating how the water level varies from one continuum to another," Lafayette commented. "Back in Colby Corners, that whole area is under the bay. In Artesia, it's dry as the Sahara. Here, it seems to be somewhere between. Well, be that as it may, I'd better get some rest. Frankly, I'm not as used to all this excitement as I once was. Can you direct me to an inn, Swinehild? Nothing elaborate: a modest room with bath, preferably eastern exposure. I like waking up to a cheery dawn, you know—"

"I'll throw some fresh hay into the goat pen," Swinehild said. "Don't worry," she added at Lafayette's startled look. "It's empty since we ate the goat."

"You mean—there's no hotel in town?"

"For a guy with a chipped knob, you catch on quick. Come on." Swinehild led the way through the side door and along a rocky path that led back beside the sagging structure to a weed-choked gate. Lafayette followed, hugging himself as the cold wind cut at him.

"Just climb over," she suggested. "You can curl up in the shed if you want, no extra charge."

Lafayette peered through the gloom at the rusted scrap of sheet-metal roof slanting over a snarl of knee-high weeds, precariously supported by four rotting poles. He sniffed, detecting a distinct olfactory reminder of the former occupant.

"Couldn't you find me something a trifle more cozy?" Lafayette asked desperately. "I'd be forever in your debt."

"Not on your nickelodiodion, Jack," Swinehild said briskly. "Cash in advance. Two coppers for the meal, two more for the accommodations, and five for the conversation."