The Galaxy Builder

Chapter Eighteen

"That reminds me," Bother said testily. "Talking about walking through walls, how'd you get in here? I never seen you come through the door."

"That's just a little trick of mine, Bother," Roy waved the query away. "Maybe later I can show you how it's done."

"You, small sir, may address me as 'Your Grace', the nobleman said haughtily. "I overlook Sir Lafayette's informal mode of address," he added, "because, after all, his wits are addled, poor lad. In any case, tis 'neath my ducal dignity to perform tricks, like any wandering jongleur."

"No offense, pal," Roy muttered.

"Wish me luck," O'Leary said as he paused at the door by which the Lady Henriette in the Hill had departed. Nothing was visible but deep shadow. Lafayette took a cautious step, felt cracked paving stone underfoot. He felt his way carefully to where the top step should be, but the floor ended instead in loose rubble. Another step, and O'Leary's feet went out from under him. He yelled and grabbed, succeeding only in raking his palms across rusty metal; then he was falling.

"You OK, Slim?" Sprawnroyal's voice echoed from surprisingly far above, but before Lafayette had time to draw breath to reply in the negative, he struck. Hard.

Lafayette sat up, peered through dimness, and made out the shape of a large easy chair. He groaned. "Not again," he protested. "Not right now. I'm busy."

"Enough," Frumpkin's oily voice said above him. Then: "On your feet, fellow!" O'Leary got up shakily and opened one eye to see the Man in Black standing before him, a sneer on his pinched features. Before he could speak, Lafayette said:

"I don't know what good this hide-and-seek game is doing you. But you're going to do it once too often." He paused to feel for the flat-walker in his pocket.

"Don't bother," Frumpkin said curtly. "Your little engine of confusion has been confiscated."

"Fine," Lafayette came back promptly. "I'm eager for you to use it. Just align it—"

"I know all about that, O'Leary," Frumpkin cut him off. "All in good time." He turned away.

"This is as good a time as any," O'Leary decided, and threw his best punch at the angle of the jaw of the Man in Black; but something went wrong, he realized as he was swept up and away, then dropped with an impact which was surely sufficient to break bones—all of them.

For a moment, as he struggled to get his breath going again, Lafayette was quite sure that this time he had Really Done It. Then he found that he was hurting in too many places to be actually dead. He groped, felt underfoot the heaped rubbish which had padded his fall, and became aware of an almost tangible stink. Then he got his feet under him and stood up, peering unavailingly into circumambient darkness. He made his way forward a few steps and encountered rough masonry. Feeling over that, he soon discovered a doorway, barred by a splintery wooden-plank door. At his touch, it swung outward, and he stepped out into cool night air.

"OK, that'll hafta do," a half-familiar voice said nearby. "We got no time to be perfectionists like, so just get it tied in any old way."

"If it be ill-done, we'll blow ourselfs into the next continuum, Yer Lordship," a sullen voice replied.

"You think I don't know it?" the first voice came back hotly. "No more of your lip now, fellow; just do as yer told!"

"Sheriff Tode!" O'Leary blurted, recognizing the voice. "Where'd you come from? Look, I need help: I thought Lady Henriette came this way, but she couldn't have; she'd be lying here with a broken neck, because she doesn't have my knack of always landing on my feet, figuratively speaking."

"All right, Cease," Tode's voice spoke tensely. "You know whatta do. So do it!" There was a scrape of feet moving quickly on heaped rubble; Lafayette stepped aside, and someone slammed against the wall where he had been a moment before.

"Oh, Lordy," Cease's mellow baritone sounded shocked. "I... I think I've fractured my skull ..."

"That Cease," Tode said impatiently. O'Leary heard him approach and feel his way over the fallen man. "Always did have too soft a head for a deppity. Now, you, boy! Stand right where ye'r at!" O'Leary heard the double click of a heavy revolver action being thumbed back.

"You messed me up some, boy," Tode said ag-grievedly. "Like to cost me my job. Now this time there's not going to be no slipups. You jest speak up to let me know jist where you're at, now."

"Where I am, you mean," O'Leary corrected.

"Sure: what I said. Now jest you don't move a muscle—" Tode's voice cut off as a dull thonk! sounded, followed by the crash of his body striking rubble.

"Don't get excited, Sir Lafayette," a voice Lafayette almost recognized said coolly. "Same orders, just a change in jurisdiction. I'm going to hand you a pair of handcuffs, and you're going to put them on," the voice went on, maddeningly familiar. Where, O'Leary demanded of himself, had he heard it before? Not here, in this Aphasia, he was sure. Then it came to him: Troglouse III, the Ajax deserter and sometime boss of Aphasia I.

"Where are ya at?" Trog demanded. O'Leary sensed him groping his way past; carefully judging the distance and angle in the dark, Lafayette directed his ochi-dan chop at the hairy tyrant's neck, connected solidly, and heard Trog collapse, the handcuffs rattling on the rubble underfoot. He followed the sound, found the cuffs, and fitted them around Trog's thick wrists and closed them with a solid clack. Trog snored. Behind him, Sheriff Tode was muttering to Cease:

"Hope he never hit the sucker too hard; din't like the sound o' that smack. Boss won't pay off for no dead body."

"I never signt on to get mixed up in no murder," Cease complained in reply. "Hey, Lousy," he called, "you OK?" When there was no reply he backed away, muttering, "What is this dern place anyways, Sheriff?"

"Don't matter a hang what this place is," Tode replied in the darkness. "We was tole to wait here, and I guess we got no choice now. Boss'll be along purty soon, Cease, straighten things out," he added more moderately. "Must be about done with the job. Be home soon."

"I whisht!" Cease said fervently.

"Hey, Slim," Roy's hoarse voice called from above. "Whyn't you take the stairs? You in a big hurry about sumpin?" There was a rasp of shoe-leather on rusty iron, then a thump, and Roy was at O'Leary's side, panting from the descent.

"I didn't know about the stairs," Lafayette informed Roy. "I had quite a fall, but I lit on a heap of old newspapers or something, and nothing broke."

"You got off lucky, Slim. Say, din't I hear voices down here? You talking to yerself? By the way, old Frumpie got outa that closet; don't see how he done it, with the cuffs on. Tricky rascal. Where are we at, Slim?"

"Apparently this trash pile Henriette lives on is hollow," O'Leary told his ally. "And it's full of suspicious characters."

"I heard that, son," Tode spoke up. "Who you talkin' to, anyways? Tole us you was the only one here."

"Where's 'here', Sheriff?" O'Leary asked. "And why are you after me? I thought we had a truce going."

"Sure, onney we got word from Boss. Hadda get back onna job. Seems like you're in Big Trouble, son."

"What did I do?" O'Leary demanded. "Except try to stay alive and figure out what was going on?"

"Seems like you got old Boss plenty mad, son. Never heard him so worked up. Wants you dead or alive, and me and Cease here aim to oblige."

"Why?" O'Leary persisted. "I haven't broken any law."

Tode chuckled comfortably. "Law, boy? Don't you know a big man like Boss can make up the laws to fit anything a feller like you up and does? We got you on everything from a twelve-oh-five—that's Expectorating Onto the Grass—to Cosmic Total. Put you away fer a few years, I guess, happen we bring you in alive."

Too late, O'Leary realized that Tode had been steadily moving closer, zeroing in on his voice, no doubt. Even as he leaped aside, Tode's iron-hand grip clamped on his arm, and both men went down, Tode on top. Then the sheriff stood and heaved Lafayette to his feet.

"Now, son, no use adding Resisting Arrest to the charge sheet—" Tode broke off with a yell. Then O'Leary felt a tug at his knee, and Roy's voice urging him to follow.

"Now, how'd that feller kick me onna shin?" Tode was demanding of the circumambient darkness. He blundered away, calling to Cease.

Lafayette's feet groped over the strewn rubble, Roy tugging him along impatiently.

"Where are we going, Roy?" O'Leary asked.

"Got to find the wall," the little man answered. "You still got the flat-walker, right? But you can't walk through no walls if you ain't got a wall to walk through."

"Let's just go back up the stairs," O'Leary suggested. "Daph— I mean Henriette—is obviously not here."

"Prolly took the stairs and got off at the next landing," Roy hazarded. "Good thing, too. Too much of a fall fer a lady."

"Funny thing," Lafayette told Roy. "Somebody Tode calls 'Boss' knew I'd be here. He sent Tode and Cease ahead to put the arm on me."

"Figures," Roy replied. "I tole you Frumpy got aloose. He knew you'd go through that door and miss the top step. So he must be their Boss."

"Right. He told me he was planning on taking over the Cosmos, remember?"

"My boner, Slim, not securing the sucker better. But we'll find him—or he'll find us." Roy's pull at the knee of Lafayette's gold-striped breeches stopped. Abruptly, O'Leary slammed against a solid barrier of compacted rubbish. He called to Roy, but there was no reply. Carefully, he got out the flat-walker, oriented it approximately parallel to the irregular wall before him, and pressed.

Bright light, blinding him; a strident alarm bell. A voice shouting "—is it! Plane One, activate!" all cut off like a broken film. Then a deep-toned vibration that shook the floor beneath his feet—no, the bare earth, with tall weeds, dim lights, moving in curious patterns; the tolling of a bell, the perfume of night-blooming flowers, a clamor of childish voices, and the odor of chalk dust; a glimpse of an octagonal clock with the hands at high noon, the rush of water, a dash of cold spray; splintering sounds as of timber shattering before a high wind, the grating of massive stone grinding massive stone to rubble in utter darkness; the glare of a great blue-white sun, unshielded, close at hand; heat, turbulence, a deafening explosion ...

Lafayette shook his head and sat up, astonished to find himself alive and, as far as he could see, intact. The floor under him was smoothly carpeted.

"Good," he said aloud. "I'm out of that garbage bin, at least," he went on, and called Roy's name. No reply.

"You think it good, do you, fellow?" a cold male voice said above him. "Let us hope you're clever enough to ensure that you continue so to believe."

"Is that you, Frumpkin?" Lafayette demanded of the darkness above. He got to his feet, tucked the flat-walker away, and took a tentative step in the direction from which the voice had seemed to come. He tripped over something soft and fell heavily.

After half an hour of blundering about in what appeared to be a large room furnished with overstuffed furniture, pursuing the voice which spoke mockingly from time to time, O'Leary felt his way up onto a long chaise longue and collapsed, winded. He closed his eyes for a moment.