The Universe Twister (29 page)

Lafayette dug in his pocket, came up with a handful of silver and gold coins. He handed over a fat Artesian fifty-cent piece. "Will that cover it?"

Swinehild eyed the coin on her palm, bit down on it, then stared at Lafayette.

"That's real silver," she whispered. "For sobbin' into your beer, why didn't you say you was loaded, Lafe—I mean Lafayette? Come on, dearie! For you, nothing but the best!"

O'Leary followed his guide back inside. She paused to light a candle, led the way up steep steps into a tiny room with a low ceiling, a patch-work-quilted cot, and a round window glazed with bottle bottoms, with a potted geranium on the sill. He sniffed cautiously, caught only a faint odor of Octagon soap.

"Capital," he beamed at the hostess. "This will do nicely. Now, if you'd just point out the bath? . . ."

"Tub under the bed. I'll fetch some hot water."

Lafayette dragged out the copper hip bath, pulled off his coat, sat on the bed to tug at his shoes. Beyond the window, the rising moon gleamed on the distant hills, so similar to the hills of home, and at the same time so different. Back in Artesia, Daphne was probably going in to dinner on the arm of some fast-talking dandy now, wondering where he was, possibly even dabbing away a few tears of loneliness . . .

He wrenched his thoughts away from the mental picture of her slim cuddliness and drew a calming lungful of air. No point in getting all emotional again. After all, he was doing all he could. Tomorrow things would seem brighter. Where there's a will there's a way. Absence makes the heart grow fonder . . .

"Of me?" he muttered. "Or of somebody closer to the scene? . . ."

The door opened and Swinehild appeared, a steaming bucket in each hand. She poured them in the bath, tested it with her elbow.

"Just right," she said. He closed the door behind her, pulled off his clothes—the rich cloth was sadly ripped and snagged, he saw—and settled himself in the grateful warmth. There was no washcloth visible, but a lump of brown soap was ready to hand. He sudsed up, used his cupped palms to sluice water over his head, washing soap into his eyes. He sloshed vigorously, muttering to himself, rose, groping for a towel.

"Damn," he said, "I forgot to ask—"

"Here." Swinehild's voice spoke beside him; a rough cloth was pressed into his hand. O'Leary grabbed it and whipped it around himself.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, stepping out onto the cold floor. He used a corner of the towel to clear an eye. The girl was just shedding a coarse cotton shift. "Here," O'Leary blurted. "What are you doing?"

"If you're through with the bathwater," she said tartly, "I'm taking a bath."

O'Leary swiftly averted his eyes—not for aesthetic reasons: quite the opposite. The quick flash he had gotten of her slender body, one toe dipped tentatively in the soapy water, had been remarkably pleasant. For all her straggly hair and chipped nails, Swinehild had a figure like a princess—like Princess Adoranne, to be precise. He mopped his back and chest quickly, gave a quick dab at his legs, turned back the covers, and hopped into the bed, pulling the quilt up to his chin.

Swinehild was humming softly to herself, splashing in a carefree way.

"Hurry up," he said, facing the wall. "What if Alain—I mean Hulk—walks in?"

"He'll just have to wait his turn," Swinehild said. "Not that he ever washes below the chin, the slob."

"He
is
your husband, isn't he?"

"You could call him that. We never had no magic words said over us, or even a crummy civil ceremony at the county seat, but you know how it is. It might remind somebody to put us on the tax rolls, he says, the bum, but if you ask me—"

"Almost finished?" O'Leary squeaked, screwing his eyes shut against a rising temptation to open them.

"Uh-huh. All done but my—"

"Please—I need my sleep if I'm going to cover all that ground tomorrow!"

"Where's the towel?"

"On the foot of the bed."

Soft sounds of feminine breathing, of brisk friction between coarse cloth and firm feminine flesh, the pad of bare feminine feet—

"Move over," a soft feminine voice breathed in his ear.

"What?" Lafayette sat bolt upright. "Good Lord, Swinehild, you can't sleep here!"

"You're telling me I can't sleep in my own bed?" she demanded indignantly. "You expect me to bed down in the goat pen?"

"No—of course not—but . . ."

"Look, Lafe, it's share and share alike, or you can go sleep on the kitchen table, silver piece or no silver piece." He felt her warm, smooth body slide in next to him, lean across him to blow out the candle.

"That's not the point," Lafayette said weakly. "The point is . . ."

"Yeah?"

"Well, I can't seem to remember the point right now. All I know is that this is a very chancy situation, with your hubby snoring downstairs and only one way out of here."

"Speaking of snoring," Swinehild said suddenly. "I haven't heard a sound for the last five minutes—"

With a crash of splintering wood, the door burst open. By the light of an oil lantern held high, Lafayette saw the enraged visage of Hulk, rendered no less fierce by a well-blacked eye and a lump the size of a pullet egg swelling above his ear.

"Aha!" he yelled. "Right under my roof, you Jezebel!"

"
Your
roof!" Swinehild yelled back, as O'Leary recoiled against the wall. "My old man left the dump to me, as I remember, and out of the goodness of my heart I took you in off the streets after the monkey ran away with your grind-organ or whatever that hard-luck story you gave me was!"

"I knew the second I set eyes on this slicked-up fancy-dancer, you and him had something cooking!" Hulk countered, aiming a finger like a horse pistol at O'Leary. He jammed the lantern on a hook by the door, pushed his sleeves up past biceps like summer squashes, and dived across the bed. Lafayette, with a desperate lunge, tore free of the confining coverlet and slipped down between the mattress and the wall. The impact as Hulk's head met the plaster was reminiscent of that produced by an enraged
toro
charging the
barrera
. The big man rebounded and slid to the floor like a two-hundred-pound bag of canned goods.

"Say, you've got quite a punch, Lafe," Swinehild said admiringly from somewhere above Lafayette. "He had it coming to him, the big side of beef!"

Lafayette, his arms and legs entangled in apparently endless swathes of blanket, fought his way clear, emerged from under the bed, to meet Swinehild's eyes peering down at him.

"You're a funny guy," she said. "First you knock him cold with one sock, and then you hide under the bed."

"I was just looking around for my contact lenses," Lafayette said haughtily, rising. "But never mind. I only need them for close work like writing my will." He grabbed for his clothes, began pulling them on at top speed.

"I guess you got the right idea at that," Swinehild sighed, tossing a lock of palest blond hair back over a shapely shoulder. "When Hulk wakes up, he's not going to be in his best mood." She sorted through the disarranged bedding for her clothes, began donning them.

"That's all right, you don't need to see me off," Lafayette said hastily. "I know the way."

"See you of? Are you kidding, Jack? You think I'm going to hang around here after this? Let's get out of here before he comes to, roaring, and you have to belt him again."

"Well—I suppose it might be a good idea if you went and stayed with your mother until Hulk cools down a little, so that you can explain that it wasn't what it looked like."

"It wasn't?" Swinehild looked puzzled. "Then what was it? But never mind answering. You're a funny guy, Lafe, but I guess you mean well—which is more than you could say for Hulk, the big baboon!" Lafayette thought he saw the gleam of a tear at the corner of one blue eye, but she turned away before he could be sure.

Swinehild did up the buttons on her bodice, pulled open the door to a rackety clothes press behind the door, and took out a heavy cloak.

"I'll just make up a snack to take along," she said, slipping out into the dark hall. Lafayette followed with the lantern. In the kitchen he stood by restlessly, shifting from one foot to the other and listening intently for sounds from upstairs while Swinehild packed a basket with a loaf of coarse bread, a link of blackish sausage, apples, and yellow cheese, added a paring knife and a hand-blown bottle of a dubious-looking purplish wine.

"That's very thoughtful of you," Lafayette said, taking the basket. "I hope you'll allow me to offer a small additional token of my esteem."

"Keep it," Swinehild said as he dug into his pocket. "We'll need it on the trip."

"We?" Lafayette's eyebrows went up. "How far away does your mother live?"

"What have you got, one of them mother fixations? My old lady died when I was a year old. Let's dust, Lafe. We've got ground to cover before himself gets on our trail." She pulled open the back door, allowing ingress to a gust of chill night air.

"B-but you can't come with me!"

"Why can't I? We're going to the same place."

"You want to see the duke too? I thought you said—"

"A pox on the duke! I just want to get to the big town, see the bright lights, get in on a little action before I'm too old. I've spent the best years o' my life washing out that big elephant's socks after I took 'em off him by force—and what do I get for it? A swell right-arm action from swinging a skillet in self-defense!"

"But—what will people think? I mean, Hulk isn't likely to understand that I have no interest in you—I mean no improper interest—"

Swinehild lifted her chin and thrust out her lower lip defiantly—an expression with which Princess Adoranne had broken hearts in job lots.

"My mistake, noble sir. Now that you mention it, I guess I'd slow you down. You go ahead. I'll make it on my own." She turned and strode off along the moon-bright street. This time O'Leary was sure he saw a tear wink on her cheek.

"Swinehild, wait!" He dashed after her, plucked at her cloak. "I mean—I didn't mean—"

"Skip it, if you don't mind," she said in a voice in which Lafayette detected a slight break, ruthlessly suppressed. "I got by O.K. before you showed up, and I'll get by after you're gone."

"Swinehild, to tell you the truth," O'Leary blurted, trotting beside her, "the reason I was, ah, hesitant about our traveling together was that I, ah, feel such a powerful attraction for you. I mean, I'm not sure I could promise to be a perfect gentleman at all times, and me being a married man, and you a married woman, and . . . and . . ." He paused to gulp air as Swinehild turned, looked searchingly into his face, then smiled brilliantly and threw her arms around his neck. Her velvet-smooth lips pressed hard against his; her admirable contours nestled against him . . .

"I was afraid I was losing my stuff," she confided, nibbling his ear. "You're a funny one, Lafe. But I guess it's just because you're such a gent, like you said, that you think you have to insult a girl."

"That's it exactly," Lafayette agreed hurriedly. "That and the thought of what my wife and your husband would say."

"Is that's all that's worrying you, forget it." Swinehild tossed her head. "Come on; if we stretch a leg, we can be in Port Miasma by cockcrow."

Topping a lose rise of stony ground, Lafayette looked down across a long slope of arid, moonlit countryside to the silvered expanse of a broad lake that stretched out to a horizon lost in distance, its smooth surface broken by a chain of islands that marched in a long curve that was an extension of the row of hills to his left. On the last island in line, the lights of a town sparkled distantly.

"It's hard to believe I made a hike across that same stretch of country once," he said. "If I hadn't found an oasis with a Coke machine, I'd have ended up a set of dry bones."

"My feet hurt," Swinehild groaned. "Let's take ten."

They settled themselves on the ground and O'Leary opened the lunch basket, from which a powerful aroma of garlic arose. He carved slices of sausage, and they chewed, looking up at the stars.

"Funny," Swinehild said. "When I was a kid, I used to imagine there was people on all those stars out there. They all lived in beautiful gardens and danced and played all day long. I had an idea I was an orphan, marooned from someplace like that, and that someday my real folks would come along and take me back."

"The curious thing about me," Lafayette said, "was that I didn't think anything like that at all. And then one day I discovered that all I had to do was focus my psychic energies, and zap! There I was in Artesia."

"Look, Lafe," Swinehild said, "you're too nice a guy to go around talking like a nut. It's one thing to dream pretty dreams, but it's something else when you start believing 'em. Why don't you forget all this sidekick-energy stuff and just face facts: you're stuck in humdrum old Melange, like it or not. It ain't much, but it's real."

"Artesia," Lafayette murmured. "I could have been king there—only I turned it down. Too demanding. But you were a princess, Swinehild. And Hulk was a count. A marvelous fellow, once you got to know him—"

"Me, a princess?" Swinehild laughed, not very merrily. "I'm a kitchen slavey, Lafe. It's all I'm cut out for. Can you picture me all dolled up in a fancy gown, snooting everybody and leading a poodle around on a leash?"

"A tiger cub," Lafayette corrected. "And you didn't snoot people; you had a perfectly charming personality. Of course you did get a little huffy once, when you thought I'd invited a chambermaid to the big dance—"

"Well, sure, why not?" Swinehild said. "If I was throwing a big shindig, I wouldn't want any grubby little serving wenches lousing up the atmosphere, would I?"

"Just a minute," O'Leary came back hotly. "Daphne was as pretty and sweet as any girl at the ball—except maybe you. All she needed to shine was a good bath and a nice dress."

"It would take more'n a new set of duds to make a lady out o' me," Swinehild said complacently.

"Nonsense," Lafayette contradicted. "If you just made a little effort, you could be as good as anyone—or better!"