The Universe Twister (40 page)

"Well, look who's here," the grinning face hovering before him said in tones of pleased surprise as hands slapped his pockets, relieving him of the gadgets pressed on him by Pinchcraft. "You get around, bub. But you should of thought twice before you tried this one, which his Nibs ain't going to like it much, you in here with her Ladyship, and her in the altogether!"

"She's not altogether in the altogether," O'Leary mumbled, attempting to focus his eyes. "She's wearing her rosebuds."

"Hey, look!" another of the new arrivals called. "Lord Chauncy's over here back o' the divan! Boy oh boy, will you look at the size o' the mouse on his jaw!"

"Add assaulting his Lordship to the charges on this joker," the sergeant in charge said. "Kid, you should of stayed where you was. You didn't know when you was well off."

Two men were holding Lafayette's arms. The third had placed the unconscious girl on the bed.

"O.K., Mel, don't stand back to admire your work," the NCO growled. "Let's hustle this joker back to the cell block before somebody finds out he's gone and starts criticizing the guard force."

"Can't I . . . can't I just say a word to her?" O'Leary appealed as his captors hustled him past the bed.

"Well—what the heck, kid, I guess you paid for the privilege. Make it fast."

"Daphne," Lafayette said urgently as her eyelids quivered open. "Daphne! Are you all right?"

For a moment, the girl looked dazedly around. Her eyes fell on Lafayette.

"Lancelot?" she whispered. "Lancelot . . . dearest . . ."

"OK, let's go," the NCO growled. Lafayette stared despairingly back as they escorted him from the room.

Lafayette sat in pitch darkness, slumped against a damp stone wall, shivering. The tomblike silence was broken only by the soft rustlings of mice frisking in the moldy straw and the rasp of heavy breathing from the far corner of the dank chamber. His fellow prisoner had not wakened when he was thrown into the cell, nor in the gloomy hours since. The aroma of Moonlight Rose still lingered in O'Leary's nostrils, in spite of the goaty stench of the dungeon. The memory of those soft, warm contours he had held briefly in his arms sent renewed pangs through him every time he let his thoughts rove back over the events since his arrival at the Glass Tree.

"I really handled it brilliantly," he muttered. "I had every break—even stumbled right into her room, first try—and I still muffed it. I've done everything wrong since the second I found myself perched on the windmill. I've let down everybody, from Swinehild to Rodolpho to Pinchcraft, not to mention Daph—I mean Lady Andragorre." He got to his feet, took the four paces his exploration of the dark chamber had indicated were possible before bumping a wall, paced back.

"There's got to be
some
thing I can do!" he hissed to himself. "Maybe . . ." He closed his eyes—an action which made very little difference under the circumstances—and concentrated his psychic energies.

"I'm back in Artesia," he muttered. "I've just stepped outside for a breath of air in the midst of a costume ball—that's why I'm wearing this fancy outfit Sprawnroyal gave me—and in a second or two I'll open my eyes and go back inside, and . . ."

His words trailed off. With the stench of the cell in his nostrils, it was impossible to convince himself that he was strolling in a garden where nothing more odiferous than a gardenia was to be found.

"Well, then—I'm inspecting the slums," he amended "—except that there aren't any slums in Artesia," he recalled. "But how about Colby Corners? We had a swell little slum back there, created and maintained by as determined a crew of slum dwellers as ever put coal in a bathtub." He squinted harder, marshaling his psychic forces. "I'm in a Federal Aid to Undesirables project," he assured himself, "doing research for a book on how long it takes the average family of ne'er-do-wells to convert a clean, new, modern welfare-supplied apartment into the kind of homey chaos they're used to . . ."

"Say, would you mind hallucinating a little more quietly?" a querulous voice with an edge like a gnawed fingernail inquired from the far corner of the room. "I'm trying to catch a few winks."

"Oh, so you're alive after all," Lafayette replied. "I certainly admire your ability to doss down in comfort in the midst of this mare's nest."

"What do you suggest?" came the snappish reply. "That I huddle here with every nerve a-tingle to monitor each nuance of total boredom and discomfort?"

"How do we get out?" Lafayette said tersely. "That's the question we ought to be thinking about."

"You're good at questions, how are you at answers?" The voice, O'Leary thought, was a nerve-abrading combination of petulant arrogance and whining self-pity. He suppressed the impulse to snap back.

"I've tried the door," he said in tones of forced optimism. "It's a single slab of cast iron, as far as I can determine, which seems to limit the possibilities in that direction."

"You're not going to let a little thing like a cast-iron door slow you down, surely? From your tone of voice, I assumed you'd just twist it off its hinges and hit someone over the head with it."

" . . . which means we'll have to look for some other mode of egress," O'Leary finished, gritting his teeth.

"Splendid. You work at that. As for me, I'm catching up on my sleep. I've had a pretty strenuous forty-eight hours—"

"Oh, have you? Well, it can't begin to compare with
my
last forty-eight hours. I started off on top of a windmill, worked my way through a homicidal giant and a set of pirates, two jail cells, an execution, a fall down an elevator shaft, a trial for espionage, and a trip on a flying carpet, to say nothing of the present contretemps."

"Uuuum-ha!" Lafayette's cellmate yawned. "Lucky you. As for myself, I've been busy: I've parlayed with a mad prince, dickered with a duke, carried out a daring rescue, double-crossed a sorcerer, and been beaten, kicked, hit on the head, slugged, and thrown in a dungeon."

"I see. And what are you doing about it?"

"Nothing. You see, it's actually all a dream. After a while I'll wake up and you'll be gone, and I can get back to my regular routine."

"Oh, I see. The solitude has driven you off your hinge. Rather ironic, actually," he added with a hollow chuckle. "You, imagining I'm a figment of your nightmare. I remember when I had similar ideas about a lot of things that turned out to be painfully real."

"So if you'll stop chattering, so I can go back to sleep, I'll be grateful," the abrasive voice remarked.

"Listen to me, Sleeping Beauty," O'Leary said sharply. "This is real—as real as anything that ever happened to you. Maybe hardship has driven you out of whatever wits you may once have had, but try to grasp the concept: you're in a cell—a real, live, three-dee cell, complete with mice. And unless you want to stay here until you rot—or the hangman comes for you—you'd better stir your stumps!"

"Go 'way. I haven't finished my nap."

"Gladly—if I could! Wake up, numbskull! Maybe between the two of us we can do something!"

"Poo. You're nothing but a figment. All I have to do is go back to sleep, and I'll wake up back in Hatcher's Crossroads, bagging groceries at Bowser's."

Lafayette laughed hollowly. "You remind me of a poor innocent nincompoop I used to know," he said. "By the way, where's this Hatcher's Crossroads located?"

"In the Oklahoma Territory. But you wouldn't know about that. It's not part of this dream."

"Oklahoma—you mean you're from the States?"

"Oh, so you do know about the States? Well, why not! I suppose in theory you could know anything I know, eh? Well, ta-ta, I'm off to dreamland again—"

"Wait a minute," O'Leary said urgently. "Are you saying you were brought here from the U.S.? That you're not a native of Melange?"

"The U.S.? What's that? And of course I'm not a native. Do I look as though I'd run around in a G-string, waving an assegai?"

"I don't know, I can't see in the dark. But if you come from Oklahoma, you must know what the U.S. is!"

"You don't mean the U.C.?"

"What's that?"

"The United Colonies, of course. But look, be a good imaginary character and let me catch a few winks now, all right? This was all rather lark at first, but I'm getting tired of it, and I have a hard day ahead tomorrow. Mr. Bowser's running a special on pickled walnuts, and the whole county will be there—"

"Try to get this through your thick skull," Lafayette snarled. "You're here, in Melange, like it or not! It's real—whatever real is! If they hang you or cut your head off, you suffer the consequences, get it? Now, look, we have to talk about this. It sounds as if you were shanghaied here the same way I was—"

"I never knew my subconscious could be so persuasive. If I didn't know you were just a subjective phenomenon, I'd swear you were real."

"Look, let's skip that part for now. Just act as if I were real. Now, tell me: how did you get here?"

"Easy. A troop of Prince Krupkin's cavalry grabbed me by the back of the neck and threw me in here. Satisfied?"

"I mean before that—when you first arrived—"

"Oh, you mean when I focused the cosmic currents?" Lafayette's cellmate laughed hollowly. "If I'd known what I was getting into, I'd have stuck to my tinned kippers and jelly doughnuts. But no, I had to go intellectually questing, searching for the meaning of it all. And then I had the bad luck to stumble on Professor Hozzleshrumph's book,
Modern Spellbinding, or Self-Delusion Made Easy
. I tried out his formulae, and—well, one second I was in my room at Mrs. Ginsberg's, and the next—I was in the middle of a vast desert, with the sun glaring in my face."

"Yes? Go on."

"Well, I started hiking east—that way the sun wasn't in my eyes—and after a while I reached the hills. It was cooler there, and I found a stream, and some nuts and berries. I kept on, and came out in a tilled field, near a town. I found a lunch counter, and just as I was about to take my first bite of grilled Parmesan cheese on rye, the local police force arrived. They took me in to the prince, and he offered me a job. It all seemed pretty jolly, so I went along. I was doing all right, too—until I got a look at the Lady Andragorre."

"Lady Andragorre? What do you know about Lady Andragorre?" Lafayette barked.

"I have to keep reminding myself this is just a dream," the unseen voice said agitatedly. "Otherwise, I'd be tearing my hair out!" Lafayette heard a deep breath drawn and slowly let out. "But it's all a dream, an illusion. Beverly really isn't in the clutches of that slimy little Krupkin; I haven't really been double-crossed and thrown in a cell. These aren't real hunger pangs I feel. And if you'd just shut up and go away, I could get back to my career at Bowser's!"

"Let's get back to Lady Andragorre!"

"Wouldn't I love to? Those sweet, soft lips, that curvy little frame—"

"Why, you—" Lafayette caught himself. "Listen to me, whoever you are! You've got to face up to reality! You have to help me! Right now Lady Andragorre's in the hands of these lechers—and I do mean hands—"

"Just last week Mr. Bowser was saying to me: Lorenzo, my boy, you have a great future ahead in the provisions game . . ."

"Lorenzo! Then you're the one that sold out Lady Andragorre!" Lafayette lunged in the direction from which the voice came, slammed into the wall, acquiring a new contusion to add to those already marring his head. "Where are you?" he panted, making grabs at the air. "You dirty, scheming, double-crossing, kidnapping, conniving snake-in-the-grass!"

"What are you getting so excited about?" the voice yelped from the opposite corner. "What's Bever—I mean Lady Andragorre to you, you jailbird?"

"Jailbird, eh?" Lafayette panted, stalking the detestable voice. "You're a swell one to talk, sitting here in your cell—" He jumped, almost got a grip on an arm, saw stars as a fist connected with his eye.

"Keep your distance, you!" the voice barked. "Troubles enough I didn't have, they had to toss a homicidal maniac in with me!"

"You lured her out of the city with your sweet talk, just so you could turn her over to her aunt! I mean to the old bat who was fronting for Krupkin!"

"That's what Rodolpho thought—but once I'd seen her, I had no intention of taking her there, of course—not that it's any of your business!"

"Where
were
you taking her? To some little love-nest of your own?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, big nose. And I'd have made it, too, if something hadn't set that gang of mounted police swarming through the woods. We had to run for it, and as luck would have it, that long-legged sheik, Lord Chauncy, was out hunting and nabbed us."

"Oh. Well, maybe it's just as well. At least here she has a decent bed."

"Oh? What do you know about Bever—I mean, Lady Andragorre's bed?"

"Plenty. I just spent an exciting half-hour under it."

"You did say—
under
it?"

"Exactly. I overheard her fending off the advanced of that Chauncy character. I had my flying carpet—I mean my Mark IV personnel carrier—waiting right outside on the balcony. Just as I was about to whisk her away, the palace guard arrived."

"Yes, I warned Krupkin to keep an eye on Chauncy. Looks like they got there just in time, too!"

"Just too soon! I had her in my arms when they burst in on us—"

"Why, you—" An unseen body hurtled past O'Leary; he thrust out a foot and had the satisfaction of hooking an ankle solidly. The resultant crash went far to assuage the pain of his swelling eye.

"Listen, Lorenzo," Lafayette said, "there's no point in our flailing away at each other in the dark. Apparently we both have an interest in the welfare of Lady Andragorre. Neither of us wants to see her in Krupkin's clutches. Why don't we work together until she's safe and then settle our differences?"

"Work together, ha," Lafayette's unseen cellmate muttered from a point near the floor. "What's to work? We're penned in, empty-handed, in the dark. Unless," he went on, "you have something up your sleeve?"

"They cleaned me out," Lafayette said. "I had some dandy items: a two-way intercom sword, a blackout cloak, a fast-key, a fast-walker . . ." He paused, quickly felt for his belt. It was still in place. He unbuckled it, pulled it free, felt over the back, found the zipper tag there, pulled it.