The Universe Twister (50 page)

"But never mind that," he reminded himself firmly. "Getting this infernal machine into safe hands is the important thing. I'll lock it in the palace vault, and then try to get in touch with Central, and . . ." His train of thought was interrupted by the clank of heavy boots on the pavement of an alley which debouched from between narrow buildings a few yards ahead. O'Leary shied, reaching instinctively for his sword-hilt—

But of course he wasn't wearing a sword, he realized as his fingers closed on nothing. Hadn't worn one in years, except on gala occasions, and then just a light, bejeweled model that was strictly for show. But then, he hadn't been out in the midnight streets alone for quite a while. And it had never occurred to him tonight to do anything as melodramatic as buckling on the worn blade he'd used in the old days . . .

As he hastily tucked the Mark III away out of sight, three men emerged from the alley mouth, all in floppy feathered hats, green-and-yellow-striped jackets—Adoranne's colors—wide scarlet sashes, baggy pants above carelessly rolled boots: The Royal City Guard.

"Oh, boy, am I glad to see you fellows," Lafayette greeted the trio. "I thought you were footpads or worse. Look, I need an escort back to the palace, and—"

"Stay, rogue!" the leading musketeer barked. "Up against the wall!"

"Turn around and put your hands against it, over your head, you know the routine!" a second guardsman commanded, hand on épée hilt.

"This is no time for jokes," O'Leary announced in some asperity. "I've got some hot cargo for the royal vault—high-priority stuff. Shorty"—he addressed the smallest of the trio, a plump sergeant with fiercely curled mustachios—"you lead the way, and you other two chaps fall in behind—"

"Don't go calling me by my nickname!" the short cop roared, whipping out his blade. "And we ain't no chaps!"

"What's got into you, Shorty?" Lafayette demanded in astonishment. "You're not mad because I won two-fifty from you playing at skittles the other night—"

The sword leaped to prick his throat. "Jest you button the lip, Clyde, 'fore I pin you to the wall!" Shorty motioned curtly. "You boys frisk him. I got a funny feeling this bozo here's more'n a routine vagrant."

"Are you all out of your minds?" O'Leary yelled as the guardsmen flung him roughly against the wall, began patting his pockets none too gently. "Shorty, do you really mean you don't recognize me?"

"Hey—hold it, boys," Shorty said. "Uh—turn around, you," he addressed Lafayette in a more uncertain tone. "You claim I know you, hah?" He frowned at him searchingly. "Well, maybe you went downhill since I seen you last . . . but I wouldn't want to turn my back on an old pal. What was the name again?"

"O'Leary!" Lafayette yelled. "Lafayette O'Leary.
Sir
Lafayette O'Leary, if you want to get technical!"

"OK," Shorty rasped with a return to his gravelly voice. "You picked the wrong pigeon! It just so happens that me and Sir Lafayette are just like that!" He held up two fingers, close together, to indicate the intimacy of the relationship. "Why, on his first night in town, five years ago, Sir Lafayette done me a favor which I'll never forget it—me and Gertrude neither!"

"Right!" Lafayette cried. "That was just before I went all wivery and almost disappeared back to Mrs. McGlint's—and as a favor to you boys, I stuck around, just so you wouldn't have anything inexplicable to explain to the desk sergeant, right?"

"Hey," one of the troopers said. "Lookit what I found, Sarge!" He held up a fat gold watch, shaped like a yellow turnip.

"W-where did that come from?" Lafayette faltered.

"And how about this?" A second man produced a jeweled pendant from O'Leary's other pocket. "And this!" He displayed a silver inlaid Elk's tooth, an ornate snuffbox with a diamond-studded crest, a fistful of lesser baubles. "Looks like your old pal has been working, Sarge!"

"I've been framed!" Lafayette cried. "Somebody planted that stuff on me!"

"That cuts it," the NCO snarled. "Try to make a monkey out o' me, will you? You'll be on maggoty bread and green water for thirty days before your trial even comes up, wittold!"

"Let's just go back to the palace," Lafayette shouted. "We'll ask Daphne—Countess Daphne, to you, you moron—she'll confirm what I say! And after this is straightened out—"

"Put the cuffs on him, Fred," Shorty said. "Hubba hubba. We go off duty in ten minutes."

"Oh, no," Lafayette said, half to himself. "This isn't going to turn into one of those idiotic farces where everything goes from bad to worse just because no one has sense enough to explain matters. All I have to do is just speak calmly and firmly to these perfectly reasonable officers of the law, and—"

From the nearby alley there was a sudden rasp of shoe leather on cobbles. Shorty whirled, grabbing for his sword-hilt as dark figures loomed. There was a dull
thunk!
as of a ball bat striking a saddle; the stubby sergeant's feathered hat fell off, as its owner stumbled backward and went down. Even as their blades cleared their scabbards, the other three musketeers received matching blows to the skull. They collapsed in a flutter of plumes, a flapping of silk, a clatter of steel. Three tall, dark men in the jeweled leathers and gaudy silks of a Wayfarers Tribe closed in about Lafayette.

"Let's get going, Zorro," one of them whispered in a voice that was obviously the product of damaged vocal chords, substantiating the testimony of the welted scar across his brown throat, only partially concealed by a greasy scarf knotted there. A second member of the band—a one-eyed villain with a massive gold earring—was swiftly going through the pockets of the felled policemen.

"Hey—wait just a minute," O'Leary blurted, in confusion. "What's going on here? Who are you? Why did you slug the cops? What—"

"Losing your greep, Zorro?" the leader cut him off brusquely. "You could have knocked me over weeth a feather wheen I see you in the clutches of the
Roumi
dogs." He stooped, with a quick slash of a foot-long knife freed a dagger in an ornately worked sheath from the belt of the nearest musketeer. "Queek, compadres," he rasped. "Someone's coming theese way." He caught O'Leary's arm, began hauling him toward the alley mouth from which the raiders had pounced.

"Hold on, fellows!" Lafayette protested. "Look, I appreciate the gesture and all that, but it isn't necessary. I'll just turn myself in and make a clean breast of it, explain that it was all a general misunderstanding, and—"

"Poor Zorro, a blow on the head has meexed up his weets, Luppo," a short, swarthy man with a full beard grunted.

"Don't you understand?" Lafayette yelped sharply as he was hustled along the alley. "I
want
to go to court! You're just making it worse! And stop calling me Zorro! My name's O'Leary!"

The leader of the band swung Lafayette around to glare down into his face from a height of close to seven feet of leather, bone and muscle. "Worse? What does theese mean, Zorro? That you deedn't come through on your beeg brag, eh?" He gave O'Leary a bone-rattling shake. "And so you theenk instead of facing up to King Shosto, you'll do a leetle time in the
Roumi
breeg, ees that eet?"

"No, you big ape!" Lafayette yelled, and landed a solid kick to the bulky Wayfarer's shin. As the victim yelled and bent to massage the injury, Lafayette jerked free, whirled—and was facing half a dozen bowie knives gripped in as many large, brown fists.

"Look, fellows, let's talk it over," Lafayette started. At that moment, there was a yell from the street where they had left the three musketeers. Lafayette opened his mouth to respond, caught only a glimpse of a cloak as it whirled at his head; then he was muffled in its sour-smelling folds, lifted from his feet, slung over a bony shoulder, and carried, jolting, from the scene.

1

Bundled in the reeking cloak and trussed with ropes, Lafayette lay in what he deduced to be the bed of a wagon, judging from the sounds and odors of horse, the rumble of unshod wheels on cobbles, and the creak of harness. His attempts to shout for air had netted him painful blows, after which he had subsided and concentrated his efforts on avoiding suffocation. Now he lay quietly, his bruises throbbing with every jolt of the cumbersome vehicle.

At length the sound of cobbles gave way to the softer texture of an unpaved surface. Leather groaned as the wagon bed took on a tilt that testified to the ascent of a grade. The air grew cooler. At last, with a final lurch, all motion ceased. Lafayette struggled to sit up, was promptly seized and pitched over the side where waiting hands caught him, amid a guttural exchange of questions and answers in a staccato dialect. The ropes were stripped away, then the muffling cloak. Lafayette sneezed, spat dust from his mouth, dug grit from his eyes and ears, and took a hearty breath of cool, resin-scented air.

He was standing in a clearing in the forest. Bright moonlight dazzled down through the high boughs of lofty pines on patched tents and high-wheeled wagons with once-garish paint jobs now faded to chipped and peeling pastel tones. A motley crowd of black-haired, olive-skinned men, women, and children, all dressed in soiled garments of bright, mismatched colors, stared solemnly at him. From tent flaps and the dim-lit windows of wagons more curious faces gazed. Except for the soft sigh of wind through the trees and the clop of a swaybacked horse shifting his hooves, the silence was total.

"Well," Lafayette began, but a spasm of coughing detracted from the tone of indignation. "I suppose (cough) you've kidnapped me (cough-cough) for a reason . . ."

"Steeck around, Zorro. Don't get impatient," the one-eyed man said. "You'll geet the message queeck enough."

There was a stir in the ranks; the crowd parted.

An elderly man, still powerful-looking in spite of his grizzled hair and weather-beaten face, came forward. He was dressed in a purple satin shirt with pink armbands, baggy chartreuse pants above short red boots with curled toes. There were rings on each of his thick fingers; a string of beads hung around his corded neck. Through his wide green alligator belt were thrust a bulky pistol and a big-bladed knife with glass emeralds and rubies set in the plastic handle. He planted himself before Lafayette, looking him up and down with an expression of sour disapproval on his not-recently-shaved mahogany-dark face.

"Ha!" he said. "So Meester Beeg-mouth Zorro, he not so hot like he theenk, hey!" He grasped a long hair curling from his nose, yanked it out, held it up, looking at it, let his narrowed eyes slide past it to Lafayette.

"Look, I don't know what this Zorro business is," O'Leary said, "but if you're in charge of this menagerie, how about detailing someone to take me back to town before matters get entirely out of hand? I can square things by saying a word to a chap in the records department and have the whole thing scratched off the blotter, and—"

"Ha!" the oldster cut Lafayette's speech short. "You theenk you weegle out of the seetuation by pretending you got bats een the belfry! But eet's no use, Zorro! Theese is not the way the ancient Law of the Tribe, she works!"

A mutter of agreement rose from the bystanders. There were a few snickers; a single muffled sob came from a dark-eyed young creature in the front rank.

"What's your tribal law got to do with me?" Lafayette said hotly. "I was going quietly about my business when your gang of thugs grabbed me—"

"OK, I streeng along weeth the gag," the fierce-eyed old man interrupted with an ominous grin. "Last night, you dreenk a few bottles of Old Sulphuric, and you geet beeg ideas: you have the nerve to make a pass at the niece of the King! By the rule of the Tribe, theese offer, she cannot be ignored—even from a seemple-minded nobody like you! So—poor old King Shosto—he geeves you your chance!" The swarthy man smote himself on the chest.

"Look, you've got me mixed up with somebody else," Lafayette said. "My name is O'Leary, and—"

"But naturally, before you can have the preevilege of wooing Gizelle, you got to breeng home a trophy to qualify. For theese reason, you sleep eento the ceety under cover of darkness. I seend Luppo and a few of the boys along to keep an eye on you. And—the first theeng—the
Roumi
cops peek you up. Beeg deal! Ha!"

"This seems to be a case of mistaken identity," Lafayette said reasonably. "I've never seen you before in my life. My name is O'Leary and I live in the palace with my wife, Countess Daphne, and I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Oh?" the old chieftain said with a sly smile. "O'Leary, eh? You got any ideentification?"

"Certainly," Lafayette said promptly, patting his pockets. "I have any number of . . . documents . . . only . . ." With a sinking feeling, he surveyed the soiled red bandanna his hip pocket had produced. "Only I seem to have left my wallet in my other suit."

"Oh, too bad." King Shosto wagged his head, grinning at his lieutenants. "He left eet een hees other suit." His smile disappeared. "Well, let's see what you've got een
theese
suit to show for a night's work! Show us the trophy that proves your skeel weeth your feengers!"

With all eyes on him, Lafayette rummaged dubiously, came up with a crumpled pack of poisonous-looking black cigarettes, an imitation pearl-handled penknife, a worn set of brass knuckles, a second soiled handkerchief of a virulent shade of green, and a gnawed ivory toothpick.

"I, er, seem to have gotten hold of someone else's coat," he ad-libbed.

"And somebody else's pants," King Shosto grated. "And that somebody ees Zorro!" Suddenly the giant knife was in the old man's hand, being brandished under O'Leary's nose. "Now I cut your heart out!" he roared. "Only eet would be too queek!"

"Just a minute!" Lafayette back-pedaled, was grabbed and held in a rigid grip by eager volunteers.

"The penalty for failure to breeng home the bacon ees the Death of the Thousand Hooks!" Shosto announced loudly. "I decree a night of loafing and dreenking to get eento the mood, so we do the job right!"

"Zorro! What about your treeck pockets?" a tearful feminine voice cried. The girl who had been showing signs of distress ever since Lafayette's arrival rushed forward and seized his arm as if to tug him from the grip of the men. "Show them, Zorito! Show them you are as beeg a thief as any of them!"