The Universe Twister (52 page)

Hesitantly, he fingered an ear, poked at his cheek, writhed his lips. The mirrored face aped every action.

"Zorito, why are you weegling your leeps?" Gizelle inquired anxiously. "You aren't goeeing to have a feet, are you?"

"Who knows?" he said, with a hollow laugh, fingering a lean but tough biceps. "I seem to be stuck with someone else's body; it might have anything from paresis to angina pectoris. I suppose I'll find out as soon as the first attack strikes."

"You are a naughty boy, Zorito, not to tell me you are a seek man," Gizelle said reproachfully. "But eet's OK—I'll marry you eenyway. Eet weel be fun while you last." She kissed him warmly. "I won't be a meenute," she breathed as she slid through into the next room with a soft clash of beads.

Dimly through the curtain he saw her toss a garment aside with a deft motion; saw the soft ivory glow of her skin in the colored light.

"Why don't you get comfortable?" she called softly. "And pour us a glass of blackberry wine. Eet's een the cupboard over the Ouija board."

"I've got to get out of here," Lafayette mumbled, averting his eyes from the alluring vision. "Daphne would never understand the Law of the Tribe." He tiptoed to the door, had his hand on the knob when Gizelle's soft voice spoke behind him:

"Seely—that's not the cupboard. The door beside eet!" He turned; she stood in the doorway, clad in an invisible negligee.

"Oh, of course. My amnesia, you know," he jerked his hand back.

"Amnesia, nothing," she snapped. "You don't theenk I eve let eeny man eento my bedroom before, do you?"

"No offense," Lafayette said quickly, forcing his gaze from her figure to the corner of the room.

Gizelle giggled. "Oh, boy, what a surprise eef you'd stepped out there and run eento Borako. The sight of you would drive heem mad weeth jealousy."

"Maybe I'd better just go out and have a word with him," Lafayette suggested.

"Don't overdo the hero routine, my Zorito. Borako ees steel the tribal champ weeth a knife, even eef you deed accidentally treep heem up. Better geev heem time to cool off . . ." She came to him, slipped her arms around his neck. "Now you better kees me, before
I
cool off, my lover!"

"Ah . . . mmnnn," Lafayette said as their lips met. "I just remembered something I have to do—"

Gizelle made a swift movement; the knife glittered under Lafayette's nose.

"I theenk you remember the wrong theengs at the wrong time, beeg boy," she said in a tone like a torn metal. "Better geet weeth the program!"

"Do you . . . carry that knife all the time?" O'Leary inquired, edging away from it.

"As long as I have one leetle wisp on to hide eet een," she said sweetly.

"Oh," Lafayette said. "In that case—I mean, ah . . ."

"You forgot the wine," Gizelle said. She brushed past him, took out a purple bottle and two long-stemmed glasses, poured them full.

"To our wedded blees," she murmured and sipped. "What's the matter, you don't dreenk?" she asked sharply as Lafayette hesitated.

"Uh—to wedded bliss," he said, and drank. "And now, why don't we, ah, repair to the, er, nuptial couch?"

Gizelle giggled.

"I'll turn off the light," Lafayette said, and quickly snuffed the candle.

"What's the matter, you don't like to look at me?" Gizelle pouted. "You theenk I'm ugly?"

"I'm afraid of a heart attack," Lafayette said. "Can I, ah, help you with your, er, garment?"

"As you weesh, carissimo," she breathed. Lafayette's fingers brushed satin skin; then he was holding the wispy negligee. Something heavier than sheer silk thumped against his knee; the knife, in a thin leather sheath.

"Now—take me, my Zorito—I am yours!"

"Uh, I'd better make sure the door's locked," Lafayette said, backing away from the sound of her voice.

"Don't worry about trifles at a time like theese!" she whispered urgently. "Where are you, Zorito?"

"How about the back door?" Lafayette persisted, groping in the dark for the doorknob.

"There ees no back door!"

"I'll just make one last check," Lafayette said as his fingers found the latch. He jerked the door open, slid through into bright moonlight, slammed the door and shot home the bolt. From beyond the panel, Gizelle's voice called his name in a puzzled tone. As Lafayette hastily descended the three steps, the bulky figure of Borako separated itself from the shadow of a giant tree fifty feet away.

"Ha!" he growled; in the moonlight his teeth flashed white in a wide and unfriendly grin. "Threw you out, deed she? Eet feegures. And now I feex you, permanently." Borako jerked the knife from his belt, whetted it on a hairy forearm, advancing toward Lafayette.

"Look here, Borako," Lafayette said, edging sideways. "I bounced you on your head once today; am I going to have to do it again?"

"Last time you treecked me," Borako snarled. "Theese time I've got a few freends along to referee." As he spoke, three large men materialized from the deep shadows behind him.

"Well, now that you have a foursome, you can play a few holes of golf," Lafayette snapped. As he spoke, the door of the wagon rattled; a sharp, furious shriek sounded, followed by the pounding of irate feminine fists on the panels.

"Hey—what deed you do to her?" Borako grunted.

"Nothing," Lafayette said. "That's what she's mad about."

As his cohorts rushed to the locked door, Borako uttered a roar and charged. Lafayette feinted, ducked aside and thrust out a foot, hooked Borako's ankle. The Wayfarer plunged headfirst into a wagon wheel, wedging his head firmly between the big wooden spokes.

The other three men were fully occupied in impeding each other's efforts to unbar the door. Lafayette faded back between wagons, turned, and sprinted for the shelter of the deep forest.

1

For half an hour, the sounds of men beating the brush waxed and waned around O'Leary where he lay facedown in the concealment of what he had belatedly realized was a patch of berry bramble. At length the activity dwindled, a last voice called a final curse. Silence fell. Lafayette crawled forth, dusted himself off, wincing at the impressive variety of aches and pains he had acquired thus far in the night's adventures. He groped inside his coat; the Mark III was still in place. He scanned the dark slope below. Terraced formations of crumbling rock strata led precariously downward.

He started down, keeping his eyes carefully averted from the vista of black treetops beneath him. It was a stiff twenty-minute climb to a wide ledge where he flopped down to rest.

"Out of condition," he told himself disgustedly. "Lying around the palace with no more exercise than a set of lawn tennis now and then is making an old man of me. When I get back, I'll have to start a regimen of dieting and regular workouts. I'll jog early in the morning—say ten laps around the gardens while the dew is still on the roses—then a nice light breakfast—no champagne for a while—then a light workout on the weights before lunch . . ." He paused, hearing a faint sound in the underbrush. A hunting cat? Or Borako and his men, still on the prowl . . .

Lafayette got to his feet, resumed his cautious descent. The moon went behind a cloud. In pitch darkness, his feet groped for purchase. A rock moved underfoot; he slid, caught at wiry roots, slithered down a sudden steep declivity, fetched up with a painful thump while small stones rattled down around him.

For a moment he lay still, listening for alarums and excursions from above. Except for a high, faint humming as of a trapped insect, the night silence was unbroken.

Lafayette got cautiously to his feet. Inches from the spot where he had fallen, the ledge dropped vertically away; a yard or so on either side of him it curved back in to meet the cliff face.

"Nice going, O'Leary; you've got yourself trapped like a mouse in a wastebasket."

His eyes, accustoming themselves to the darkness, were caught by a faint hint of light emanating from a vertical cleft in the rock face, two feet to the right of the ledge. He leaned out, peered into a narrow, shadowy passage cutting back into the rock, barely visible in the pale glow from an unseen source.

There might be room to squeeze through, he decided. "And maybe there'll be a rear entrance. It's either that, or spend the rest of the night waiting for Borako and Luppo to find me when the sun comes up."

Without further debate, he swung himself out, found a foothold, and squeezed through the narrow opening. A narrow passage led inward ten feet, turned sharply to the right, and debouched into a wide, cool cave bathed in a ghostly blue light.

2

The rock chamber in which Lafayette found himself was high-vaulted, smooth-floored, with rough-hewn walls. The eerie glow came from an object resting on a pair of trestles in the center of the room—an object that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a coffin. It was seven feet long, a foot deep, tapering toward each end from the three-foot breadth of its widest point. A remarkable assemblage of wires and pipes led from the foot of the sarcophagus—if it was a sarcophagus—down to a heavy baseplate where an array of dials glowed a bilious yellow from their own inner illumination.

"Just take it easy," Lafayette soothed himself. "There's nothing spooky about it. It's all perfectly natural. Outside the sun will soon be shining. It just happens to be a cave with a box in it, that's all . . ."

O'Leary circled the coffin—if it
was
a coffin, he reminded himself doggedly, suppressing a tendency for the hair on the nape of his neck to stand erect. There was nothing else in the chamber; no other passage led from it; there was no sound but the soft hum, like that of a heavy-duty freezer, Lafayette thought.

"A coffin-shaped freezer? Why would anyone want a coffin-shaped freezer?" he inquired aloud in a breezy tone; but the hollow, echoic quality of his words robbed them of the cheeriness he had intended. In silence he approached the box; it was covered by a thick lid, sealed with a strip of sponge rubber. At close range he saw that a layer of dust overlay the smooth, gray-green plastic. Lafayette drew a finger across the surface, leaving a distinct mark that glowed more brightly than the surrounding area.

"The accumulation of a few days—or a few weeks," he assessed. "So whatever this is, it hasn't been here long . . ."

There was a small nameplate attached to the side of the box. Lafayette could barely make out the lettering in the weak light:

STASIS POD, MARK XXIV

220v., 50 amp, 12 HP

Below this terse legend, other words had been carefully defaced, the metal scraped bare. Lafayette felt a deeper excitement stir within him.

"More Central equipment," he murmured. "First the Focal Referent—plus rumors of more of the same in a cave; then this—in another cave. There has to be a connection—and the connection has to tie in with me being somebody I'm not . . ."

He felt over the plastic case for further clues to its nature; under his hands he could feel a minute vibration, plus a barely perceptible sensation as of electrical current flowing over the surface. His finger encountered a small depression; as he explored it, a soft
click!
sounded from deep inside the container.

At once, the humming sound took on a deeper tone. Lafayette stepped back, startled. Further clickings and snickings as of closing relays came from the box. A sound remarkably like that of a blower motor started up. Lights winked on the panel. Needles stirred and jumped on dials, moving toward red lines.

Lafayette grabbed for the switch he had tripped, poked and prodded at it frantically; but the process he had set in motion proceeded serenely. He searched for another switch; there wasn't one. On all fours, he peered at the instrument faces, but their readings were cryptic:

97.1 SBT; BM 176 . . . 77 . . . 78; NF 1.02; 1AP 15 kpsc.

"Now I've done it," he muttered. Scrambling to his feet, he cracked his head a dizzying blow on the underside of the container. Through the momentary haze, it seemed that the top of the case was slowly sliding back, revealing an interior lined with padded red satin.

"It looks like Dracula's coffin," he mumbled, holding his head in both hands. "It even has . . ." His voice faltered as the retracting cover revealed a pair of feet clad in pointed black shoes. "It even has feet like Dracula . . . and . . ."

Now a pair of purple-clad legs were visible. A long cloak swathed the knees and upper legs. There was a heavy gold chain at the waist. A pair of long-fingered, knuckly hands were folded on the broad chest. From them, rings winked in the gloom. A white beard appeared, clothing an age-lined but powerful chin. A great hawk nose came into view, closed eyes under bushy black eyebrows, a noble sweep of forehead, a purple velvet skullcap atop backswept white locks.

"Not Dracula after all," O'Leary managed. "It's Merlin . . ." He watched in total fascination as the sleeper's chest rose and fell. A finger stirred. The lips parted, uttered a sigh. The eyelids fluttered, opened. Lafayette stared into a pair of immense, violet-pale eyes which fixed on him in a piercing stare.

"I, ah, I'm sorry, sir," O'Leary said hastily. "I just happened along, and I, ah, accidentally seem to have, er, interfered with your arrangements. I hope I haven't caused you any serious inconvenience . . ." As he spoke he backed away, followed by those hypnotic eyes.

"I'll go for help," he said, edging toward the exit, "and before you know it . . ." His voice trailed off as the staring eyes bored fixedly into his. The old man sat up suddenly, an expression of ferocity contorting his noble features. He drew a deep breath, uttered a snorting roar, and lunged—

As if released from paralysis, O'Leary gained the entry in a bound, squeezed into the narrow passage, lost skin thrusting through the cleft. His foot trod air. He grabbed, slipped, yelled—

And was falling through space. For a long moment he was aware of the rush of wind, of the starry canopy wheeling above him—

Then a silent explosion filled the world with Roman candles.

3

How lovely
, Lafayette thought dreamily,
to be lying in a big, soft bed, warm and cozy and without a problem in the world.