The Universe Twister (43 page)

"Lafe," she breathed. "Where'd you get that hat?"

"Quick! Get Lady Andragorre onto the rug outside the window at the next landing down," Lafayette barked, and thrust the girl forward.

"Gee, Lafe, I never knew you was a ventriloquist," Swinehild blurted as he turned back to see Lorenzo, just coming to all fours, his plumed cap awry, one eye black, a smear of blood under his nose. Lafayette hauled the dazed man to his feet, sent him staggering after the women.

"I'll hold these clowns off until you're aboard," he barked. "Make it fast!" He stepped forward to intercept one of the redcoats as he lunged after Lorenzo, tripped him, gave a side-handed chop to another, then whirled, raced down the passage after the others.

Swinehild's face was visible in the window ahead as she tugged at the still-dazed Lorenzo's hand.

"Who're you?" he said blurrily. "Aspira Fondell, the Music Hall Queen? Bu' I don' love you. I love Bev—I mean Lady Andragorre—or do I mean Beverly?"

"Sure, she's already aboard," Swinehild gasped. "Come on!" She hauled backward, and Lorenzo disappeared through the window with a wild leap. Muffled cries came from the darkness as Lafayette reached the open sash. Six feet away, the Mark IV carpet sagged in the air, sinking under the weight of the three figures huddled on it.

"She's overloaded." Swinehild's voice seemed thin and far away. "I guess we got one too many, Lafe—so—so—I guess I won't be seeing you no more. Good-bye—and thanks for everything . . ." Before Lafayette's horrified gaze, she slipped over the side and dropped into the darkness below, while the carpet, quickly righting itself, slid away into the night.

"On, no!" Lafayette prayed. "She won't be killed—she'll land on a balcony just below here!" He thrust his head out the window. In the deep gloom he barely made out a slim figure clinging to a straggly bush growing from the solid rock fifteen feet below.

"Swinehild! Hang on!" He threw a leg over the sill, scrambled quickly down the uneven rock face, reached the girl, caught her wrist, tugged her upward to a narrow foothold beside him.

"You little idiot!" he panted. "Why in the world did you do that?"

"Lafe . . . you . . . you come back for me," she quavered, her pale face smiling wanly up at him. "But . . . but that means her Ladyship is all alone . . ."

"Lorenzo's with her, blast him," Lafayette reassured her, aware suddenly of his precarious position, of the cold wind whipping at him out of the surrounding night.

"Lorenzo? Who's he?"

"The clown in the floppy hat. He has some fantastic notion that the Lady Andragorre is his girl friend, some creature named Beverly. He's probably bound for that love-nest he was on his way to when Krupkin's men grabbed him."

"Gee, Lafe—I'm getting kind of mixed up. Things have been happening too fast for me. I guess I wasn't cut out for a life in the big time."

"Me too," Lafayette said, looking up at the glassy wall above, then at the sheer drop below. He clutched his meager handholds tighter and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Which way do we go, Lafe?" Swinehild inquired. "Up or down?"

He tried a tentative move, slipped, grabbed, and clung, breathing shallowly so as not to disturb any boulders which might be delicately poised. The icy wind buffeted at him, whipped Swinehild's skirt against her legs.

"What we need," he said in a muffled voice, his face against the stone, "is a convenient door in the side of the mountain."

"How about that one over there?" Swinehild suggested as a tremor went through the rock under O'Leary.

"Where?" He moved his head cautiously, saw the small oak-plank door with heavy wrought-iron strap hinges set in a niche in the solid-rock wall ten feet to his left.

"We'll have to try," he gulped. "It's our only chance." He unclamped his aching fingers, edged a toe sideways, gained six inches. Five minutes of this painful progress gave him a grip on a tuft of weeds directly beside the door. He reached with infinite care, got his fingers on the latch.

"Hurry up, Lafe," Swinehild said calmly from behind him. "I'm slipping."

He tugged, lifted, pulled, twisted, pushed, rattled. The door was locked tight. He groaned.

"Why didn't I wish for an open door while I was at it?"

"Try knocking," Swinehild suggested in a strained voice.

Lafayette banged on the door with his fist, careless now of the pebbles dribbling away under his toe.

"No need to say good-bye again, I guess, Lafe," Swinehild said in a small voice. "I already done that. But it was sure nice knowing ya. You were the first fella that ever treated me like a lady . . ."

"Swinehild!" As her grip slipped, Lafayette lunged, caught her hand, clung. His own grip was crumbling—

There was a click and a creak from beside him; a draft of warm air flowed outward as the door swung in. A small, stocky figure stood there, hands on hips, frowning.

"Well, for Bloob's sake, come in!" Pinchcraft snapped. A calloused hand grabbed Lafayette, hauled him to safety; a moment later Swinehild tumbled in after him.

"H-h-how did you happen to be here?" O'Leary gasped, leaning against the chipped stone wall of the torchlit passage.

"I came with a crew to do a repossession." The Ajax tech chief bit the words off like hangnails. "The idea was to sneak up and grab before he knew what hit him."

"Sure glad you did, Cutie-pie," Swinehild said.

"Don't call me Cutie-pie, girl," Pinchcraft barked. He took out a large bandanna and mopped his forehead, then blew his nose. "I told Gronsnart he was an idiot to keep on making deliveries on an arrears account. But no: too greedy for a quick profit, that's the business office for you."

"You're taking over the Glass Tree?"

"This white brontosaur? Not until the last hope of payment has faded. I was after the last consignment of portable goods we were so naïve as to deliver."

"Well, I'm glad you came. Look, we have to grab Krupkin at once! He's not what he seems! I mean, he
is
what he seems! He recognized me, you see—which means he's actually ex-King Goruble and not his double, but he doesn't know I know that, of course, so—"

"Calmly, sir, calmly!" Pinchcraft cut into the spate of words. "I was too late! The check-kiting fast-shuffler and his private army have flown the coop! He packed up bag and baggage and left here minutes before I arrived!"

"Late again," Lafayette groaned. He was sitting, head in hands, at a table in the glittering, deserted dining room of the glass palace. A few servants and guards had eyed the party uncertainly as they invaded the building, but the sudden absence of their master combined with the rugged appearance of the repossession squad had discouraged interference. The well-equipped kitchens had been deserted by the cooks, but Swinehild had quickly rustled up ham and eggs and coffee. Now Pinchcraft's group sat around the table morosely, looking at the furniture and décor and mentally tallying up the probable loss on the job.

The Ajax representative said petulantly, "What about me? For the past three years this swindling confidence man who called himself Krupkin has been gathering resources—largely at the expense of Ajax—for some grandiose scheme. Now, abruptly, he decamps minutes before my arrival, abandoning all this!" Pinchcraft waved a hand to take in the installment-plan luxury all around them. "
Now
who's going to pay the bills?"

"Why did he suddenly abandon his plans?" Lafayette inquired. "Could he have been afraid of me—afraid I'd tip Central off to his takeover bid?"

Pinchcraft was frowning in deep puzzlement. "Are you saying, lad, that you know about Central? But that's—that's the second most closely guarded secret of the Ajax Specialty Works!"

"Sure—I'm a sort of parttime Central agent myself," Lafayette said. "But Goruble knew me; and that must be why he packed up and left in the middle of the night—after first bundling me off to bed to get me out of the way. He was afraid I'd recognize him; but I was so dopey with lack of sleep I didn't know what I was doing. By the time I realized—it was too late." He sat down heavily and groaned again. "If I'd just gone straight to his apartment, instead of wasting time trying to find Lady Andragorre, I'd be back home by now."

"Don't take it too hard, Lafe," Swinehild said. "You done your best."

"Not yet, I haven't!" Lafayette smacked a fist into his palm. "Maybe I can still get ahead of him. He doesn't know I know what I know—not that I know much. But I still have an ace or two: Goruble doesn't know I know who and what he is. And he doesn't know I have a line of credit with Ajax!"

"Who says you have a line of credit with Ajax?" Pinchcraft cut in.

"Well—under the circumstances—since you and I are interested in the same thing: laying Krupkin/Goruble by the heels . . ."

"Well—all right," Pinchcraft muttered. "Within limits. What do you have in mind?"

"I need to get back to Port Miasma and tip Rodolpho off. Maybe between us we can throw a stillson wrench into Goruble's plans. How about it, Pinchcraft? Will you help me?"

"I suppose it can be arranged—but you already owe us for a number of items—"

"We'll settle all that later. Let's get moving; it's a long walk, and time's of the essence and all that."

"I suppose I can crowd you into the tunnel car we came in," Pinchcraft said reluctantly. "Even though it's suppose to be for official use only."

"Tunnel car? You mean there's a tunnel all the way from here to the Ajax plant?"

"Certainly. I told you I never trusted this fellow—"

"Then why," Lafayette demanded, "was I sent out here on that flimsy little Mark IV carpet? I could have broken my neck!"

"All's well that ends well," Pinchcraft pointed out. "I needed a diversion to cover my repossession. And when would I ever have a better chance to field-test the equipment? Let's go, men. The night's work's not over yet!"

It was a fast, noisy, dusty ride in a child-sized subway train that hurtled along the tracks laid through the twisting series of caverns underlying the miles of desert over which O'Leary had flitted so nervously the previous night. Swinehild cuddled next to him in the cramped seat and slept soundly until the car docked at their destination. She oohed and ahhed at the sights as they left the terminus and made their way through vast workshops, foundries, stamping plants, refineries, the odors and tumult of a busy underground manufacturing operation.

"I've always heard about elves toiling away under the mountain," Lafayette confided in his guide as they emerged into the comparative quiet of the admin level. "But I always pictured little fellows with beards pounding out gold arm rings at a hand forge."

"We modernized a while back," Sprawnroyal told him. "Production's up eight hundred percent in the last fiscal century alone."

In the retail-sales department, Swinehild watched in silence as a bustling crew of electronics men rolled out a small, dark-green carpet at Pinchcraft's instruction.

"This is our Mark XII, the latest model," the production chief stated proudly. "Windscreen, air and music, safety belt, and hand-loomed deep pile as soft as goofer feathers."

"It's cute," Swinehild said, "But where do I sit?"

"You can't go," O'Leary said shortly. "Too dangerous."

"I am too going," she came back sharply. "Just try and stop me!"

"You think I'd risk your neck on this contraption? Out of the question!"

"You think I'm going to sit around this marble factory ducking my head under the ceiling while you go off and get yourself killed?"

"Not on your life, lady," Sprawnroyal said. "Fitzbloomer, roll out a Mark XIII—a two-seater." He gave O'Leary a challenging look. "Anybody thinks I'm going to get myself saddled with the care and feeding of a broad two feet higher'n me's got wrong ideas."

"Well . . . in that case," O'Leary subsided.

It was the work of ten minutes to check circuits, carry the Mark XIII to a launching platform on the face of the cliff, and balance out the lift system for a smooth, level ride.

"Contraption, eh?" Pinchcraft snorted under his breath. "She'll handle like an ocean liner. Just hold her under sixty for the first few miles, until you get the feel of her."

"Sure," Lafayette said, tucking his fur-lined blackout cloak around him against the bitter night wind. Swinehild settled herself behind him, with her arms around his waist.

"Here we go," O'Leary said. There was the familiar lifting surge, a vertiginous moment as the rug oriented itself on the correct course line. Then the wind was whistling past their faces as the lights of the Ajax Specialty Works receded behind them.

"I hope you ain't mad at me for coming along," Swinehild whispered in Lafayette's rapidly numbing ear.

"No, not really," O'Leary called over his shoulder. "Just don't get in my way when the action starts to hot up. Krupkin beat it because he was afraid I'd realize who he was and unleash my psychic energies on him." He gave a humorless chuckle. "I recognized him, all right—but what he doesn't know is that I haven't got a psychic erg to my name anymore."

"You've got luck," Swinehild pointed out. "Like finding that door into the tunnel just when you did. That's just about as good, I guess."

"There's something strange about my luck," O'Leary said. "It's either unbelievably bad, or unbelievably good. Like finding that disguise in the park—and before that, in the boat, coming up with a knife just when I need it: sometimes it's almost as if my psychic energies were back at work. But then I try again, and draw a goose egg. It's very unsettling."

"Don't worry bout it, Lafe. Just take it as it comes. That's what I do—and somehow I always get by."

"That's all very well for you," O'Leary countered. "All you're interested in is getting to the big town and living high; as for me—there are times when I almost wish I was still back at Mrs. MacGlint's, with nothing to worry about but earning enough to keep me in sardines and taffy."

"Yeah—you got it rough, all right, Lafe, being a hero and everything."

"Hero? Me?" O'Leary laughed modestly. "Oh, I'm not really a hero," he assured his companion. "I mean, heroes love danger: they're always dashing around looking for adventure, and that sort of thing. Whereas all I want is peace and quiet."