The Universe Twister (42 page)

"Good question," O'Leary mumbled. "Lorenzo would be the likeliest suspect if he weren't in a cell . . ."

"Exactly! Which brings us back to the original query: where is she!"

"Beats me. But if she got away from you, good for her."

"I'll have the truth out of you if I have to extract it with red-hot pincers, you miserable ingrate!"

"I thought the kid-glove treatment was the prescription," Lafayette said. His eyes were closed, watching the pattern of red blobs that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

"I'll kid-glove you! I'll have the hide off your back under a cat-o'-nine-tails—" Krupkin broke off, took a deep breath, let it out between his teeth.

"Such are the burdens of empire," he muttered. "You try to give a vile wretch of a double-crossing sneak an even break, and what happens? He throws it in your face . . ."

Lafayette forced both eyes open, looked long into the irate features of the prince.

"It's amazing," he muttered. "You talk just like him. If I hadn't already met Swinehild and Hulk and Lady Andragorre and Sprawnroyal, and Duke Rodolpho, I'd swear you were—"

"Ah, that slippery eel, Rodolpho! He seduced you from the path of duty, eh? What did he promise you? I'll double it! I'll triple it!"

"Well, let's see: as I recall, he said something about undying gratitude—"

"I'll give you ten times the gratitude that petty baron can bring to bear!"

"I wish you'd make up your mind," Lafayette said. "What's it to be, the red carpet or the rack?"

"Now, now, my boy, I was just having my little jest. We have great things to accomplish together, you and I! A whole world to whip into shape! The riches of all the mines and seas and forests, the fabled loot of the East!" Krupkin leaned forward, his eyes bright with plans. "Consider: no one here knows the location of the great diamond mines—the richest gold deposits—the rarest beds of emeralds! But you and I do—eh?" He winked. "We'll work together. With my genius for planning, and your special talents"—he winked again—"there's no limit to what we can accomplish!"

"Special talents? I play the harmonica a little—learned it via correspondence course—"

"Now, now, don't twit me, lad," Krupkin waggled a finger good-naturedly.

"Look, Krupkin—you're wasting your time. If the lady's not in her chambers, I don't know where she is." Lafayette held his head in his hands, supporting it delicately, like a cracked melon. Through his fingers he saw Krupkin open his mouth to speak, and suddenly freeze, lean forward, staring at him with an expression of total amazement.

"Of course!" the prince breathed. "Of course!"

"See something green?" Lafayette snapped.

"No. No, not at all. Not green at all. Amazing. That is to say, I don't notice a thing. I mean to say I didn't see anything at all. But it suddenly comes to me that you're tired, poor lad. Surely you'd like a hot tub and a few handmaidens to scrub your back, and a cozy bed to snuggle down in? And after you've rested, we can have a long chat about your further needs, eh? Splendid. Here!" The prince snapped his fingers at an attendant. "Prepare the imperial suite for my honored guest! A scented bath, my most exquisite personal masseuses—and let the royal surgeon attend with balms and unguents for this nobleman's hurts."

Lafayette yawned hugely. "Rest," he mumbled. "Sleep. Oh, yes . . ."

He was only half-aware of being led from the room, along a wide corridor, up a grand staircase. In a big, soft-carpeted chamber, gentle hands helped him out of his grimy garments, lowered him to a vast, foamy tub, scrubbed him, dried him, laid him away between crisp sheets. As the rosy light faded to sweet-scented gloom, he snuggled down with a sigh of utter contentment . . .

Abruptly, his eyes were wide open, staring into the darkness.

"
You and I know the location of the diamond mines . . . the gold deposits
," he seemed to hear Krupkin's unctuous voice saying. "
With your special talents
 . . ."

"Only someone from outside Melange—someone from a more highly developed parallel world—would know anything about gold mines and emerald beds," he muttered. "The geology is very much the same from world to world—and an outsider could dig into the Kimberley hills or the Sutter's Mill area and be dead sure of a strike. Which means Krupkin is an outsider—like me. And not only that—" Lafayette sat bolt upright. "He
knows
I'm
an outsider! Which means he knew me before, which means he's who he looks like: Goruble, ex-king of Artesia! Which means he has a method of shifting from here to there, and maybe he can get me back to Artesia, and—"

Lafayette was out of bed, standing in the middle of the room. He groped, found a lamp, switched it on, went to the closet, extracted his clothes—including the innocent-looking blackout cloak—neatly cleaned and pressed.

"But why is he interested in Lady Andragorre?" he ruminated as he dressed quickly. "And Swinehild? But—of course! Being who he is, he realizes that Swinehild is the double of Princess Adoranne, and that Lady Andragorre is Daphne's twin . . ."

"Never mind that right now," he advised himself crisply. "Your first move is to get Daph—that is, Lady Andragorre—out of his clutches. And Swinehild too, of course. Then, when they're safely tucked away, you can talk from a position of strength, make some kind of deal to get home in return for not turning him into Central.

"Right," he agreed with himself. "Now, which way to the tower?" He went to the window, pulled aside the hangings, looked out at deep twilight, against which the minarets of the Glass Tree glittered like spires of varicolored ice. He visually traced the interconnecting walls and walkways and airy bridges linking the keep in which he found himself with the tall tower. "If I can just keep my sense of direction . . ."

Silently he let himself from the room. A lone guard under a light at the far end of the passage failed to look around as he eased off along the deep-carpeted hall.

Three times in the next half-hour O'Leary reached a dead end, was forced to turn back and find another route. But at last he gained the circular stair down which the guards had dragged him some hours earlier, on the way to the dungeons. On the landing above, he could see an armed guard in scarlet and white, yawning at his post. O'Leary went up silently, invisible inside his cloak, carefully cracked the man over the head, and laid him out on the floor. He tried the door. It was locked. He tapped.

"Lady Andragorre! Open up! I'm a friend! I came to help you escape!"

There was no answer, no sound from inside. He checked the guard, found a ring of keys, tried four before finding the correct one. The doors swung in on a dark, untenanted room.

"Daphne?" he called softly. He checked the bathroom, the closet, the adjacent sitting room.

"It figures," he said. "Krupkin/Goruble said she was gone. But where could she have gotten to?"

He stepped out onto the balcony. The Mark IV was missing from the spot where he had left it propped against the wall. He groaned.

"Why didn't I hide it? But no, I was so loaded with gadgets and confidence, I thought I'd be back in ten minutes with Daphne, and off we'd go. So now I'm stuck—even if I found her, there'd be no way out." Lafayette left the room, closed the door behind him. The guard was just coming to, mumbling to himself. As Lafayette stepped over him, he caught the blurred words.

" . . . not my fault, Sarge, I mean, how could anybody get loose outa a room at the top of a tower with only one way down, except if they jumped? And there ain't no remains in the courtyard down below, so my theory is the dame was never here in the first place . . ."

"Huh?" O'Leary said. "That's a good point. How could she have gotten away? Unless she took the Mark IV. But that's impossible. It's just an ordinary rug to anybody but me."

"Hey." The guard was sitting up, feeling of the back of his head. "I need a long furlough. First, I got these fainting spells, and now I hear voices . . ."

"Nonsense," O'Leary snapped. "You don't hear a thing."

"Oh. Well, that's a relief." The guard slumped back against the wall. "For a minute there I was worried."

"There's nothing I can do for Lady Andragorre now," Lafayette told himself, keeping his thought subvocal now. "But—good night, I've been forgetting all about Swinehild, poor kid, all alone down there in the dark . . ." He hurried down the stairs, headed for the dungeons.

The passage was dark, narrow, twisting and turning its way downward to keep within the narrow confines of the spire of rock from which it had been hollowed. Lafayette passed barred doors behind which forlorn-looking prisoners in grimy rags and lengthening beards slumped dejectedly on straw bunks. The meager light came from unshielded fifteen-watt bulbs set in sockets at intervals along the way. The doors in the final, deepest section of the subterranean installation were solid slabs secured by heavy hasps and massive, rusted locks.

"The solitary-confinement wing," Lafayette murmured. "Close to paydirt now. Let's see . . . it must have been about here . . ." He placed himself in the approximate spot at which he had emerged from the cell in which he had been confined with Lorenzo. As he studied the wall to orient himself—it wouldn't help to get the direction wrong again and wind up hanging in space, or back out in the courtyard—he heard stealthy footsteps approaching from around a curve above, down which he had just come. At once, he activated the flat-walker, waded forward into pitch darkness, switched back to natural density.

"Swinehild?" he called. "Swinehild?"

There was a soft clank and rasp of tumblers from behind him. A line of light appeared, widened. A male figure in a floppy hat with a broken, curling plume stood silhouetted there, holding a ring of keys in his hand.

"Lafayette!" an irritating voice hissed. "Are you here?"

"Lorenzo!" Lafayette said. "What are you doing here? I thought—"

"Well, so you did come back!" Lorenzo said in a relieved tone. "It's about time! This is the third time I've checked this pesthole! Let's go! This luck can't hold out forever!"

"I left you locked in; how did you get out?"

"Well—when I discovered you'd left without even saying good-bye, I knew there had to be a way—so I searched until I found the trapdoor in the ceiling. Since then I've had nothing but narrow escapes. Still, I suppose you were right about acting as if all this were real. At least it's more fun playing hide-and-seek around the palace with the guards than it was trying to sleep in here with the mice. Now, let's go—"

"Not without Lady A! She's disappeared—"

"I've got her. She's just outside the landing window, on your Mark IV. Nice little gadget, that. Lucky this is just a dream, or I'd never have believed it when you described it. Now, let's get moving!"

"Swell," Lafayette grumbled. "It was supposed to be tuned to my personal wavelength . . ."

"Keep it quiet! The guards are playing pinochle at the head of the stairs."

"Wait a minute!" Lafayette called urgently. "Give me those keys. I have another detail to attend to—"

"Are you kidding? I risk everything on the off-chance you came back to the cell for me—out of a misguided feeling that I couldn't take your Mark IV and go off and leave you stranded—and you start babbling about errands you have to do!" He tossed the keys. "Do as you like; I'm on my way!"

Lafayette botched the catch. By the time he had retrieved the ring and jumped after Lorenzo, the latter was already disappearing around the tight curve of the passage.

"Hold the carpet for me!" O'Leary hissed. Hastily he examined the doors, picked one, tried keys. The door opened. From the darkness came a growl like a grizzly bear. O'Leary slammed it hurriedly, an instant before a heavy body struck the panel. He tried the next door—opened it a crack.

"Swinehild?" he called. This time he was rewarded by a quick intake of breath and a glad cry. There was a rustling near at hand, a faint whiff of garlic, and a warm, firm body hurled itself against O'Leary.

"Lafe—I figgered you'd went off without me!" Soft-skinned, hard-muscled arms encircled his neck. Eager lips found his.

"Mmmmhhhnnnmmm," O'Leary tried to mumble, then discovered that the sensation of kissing Swinehild was not at all unpleasant—besides which, the poor girl's feelings would be hurt if he spurned her friendly advance, he reminded himself. He gave his attention to the matter for the next thirty seconds . . .

"But looky here, Lafe, we can't get involved in no serious spooning now," Swinehild said breathlessly, coming up for air. "Let's blow outa this place pronto. It reminds me o' home. Here, you hold the lunch. It's rubbing a blister on my chest."

He stuffed the greasy parcel in his side pocket, took her hand, led her on tiptoe along the upward-slanting passage. Suddenly, from ahead, there was a sharp outbreak of voices: a deep, rasping challenge, a sharp yelp which sounded like Lorenzo, a feminine scream.

"Come on!" Lafayette broke into a run, dashed on ahead. The sounds of scuffling, gasps, blows grew rapidly louder. He skidded around the final turn to see two large men grappling with his former cellmate, while a third held the Lady Andragorre in a secure grip with one arm around her slender waist. At that moment one of the men kicked Lorenzo's feet from under him, threw him on his face, planted a foot on his back to hold him down. The man holding the girl saw O'Leary, goggled, opened his mouth—

Lafayette whipped the cloak around himself, took two quick steps forward, delivered a devastating punch to the solar plexus of the nearest guard, swung a hearty kick with his sharp-toed boot to the calf of the next. Dodging both victims' wild swings, he sprang to the Lady Andragorre's side and drove a knuckle blow to her captor's left kidney, grabbed her hand as the man yelled and released his grip.

"Don't be afraid! I'm on your side!" he hissed in her ear, and towed her quickly past the two whooping and cursing men. One made a grab at her, was rewarded with a clean chop across the side of the jaw that sent him to his knees with glazed eyes. Swinehild appeared, stared with wide-open eyes at Lady Andragorre, past O'Leary at something behind him.