The Galaxy Builder

Chapter Twenty

As Lafayette opened his mouth to congratulate his diminutive ally, he noticed that the grayish fog had reappeared, which made even Roy's homely, good-natured face appear blurred, though he was only a yard distant. Lafayette took a step—or tried to: His feet seemed stuck to the floor by a gluey substance. He pulled harder, and realized that he was firmly trapped. He yelled, felt the glue flow into his mouth, immobilizing his tongue, and down his throat. He couldn't breathe.

Roy's mouth was moving, but no sound emerged. The light grew dimmer. Only Frumpkin's face seemed to glow through the opaque air, his eyes glittering like highlights on polished gem stones.

As Lafayette fought to draw breath, he saw dimly that no one was moving. Marv stood over Frumpkin, his arms folded as if he noticed nothing unusual. Casper was nowhere to be seen.

"As you see, Lafayette," Frumpkin's voice seemed to echo from an immense distance, "I still have a few resources on which to call. Don't panic; the difficulty with your breathing will clear up in a moment, just as soon as we've completed our transit across extra-time, a matrix with which perhaps you are unfamiliar. Only another, oh, perhaps ten seconds subjective, then we shall correct a number of inequities. Take a final look at your former companions, my boy, since you'll not be seeing them again. They will remain suspended in the Eternal Now forever, neither realized nor totally dissubstantiated, conscious and able to reflect at length on their treasonous folly in attempting to foil me."

Still straining desperately to draw breath, O'Leary watched Marv, Casper, and a total stranger of Chinese appearance standing nearby, arrested in mid-motion, looking like waxworks. All but Sprawnroyal, Lafayette saw with a sudden access of hope. The little man was in the act of turning toward Marv. As Lafayette watched, he saw him languidly complete the movement, reach out deftly to pluck something from Marv's pocket, then turn to give O'Leary a slow wink. There was no one else in sight; the big room, looking like a deserted warehouse now, was deep in shadow. The silence was total. Roy took a slow step around Frumpkin, still supine, toward O'Leary who, striving mightily to draw breath, felt the resistance collapse and revivifying air rush into his lungs.

"Roy!" he gasped. "What happened?"

"The sucker was a little trickier than I gave him credit for," Roy said without apology. "But of course, his tricks only work in his own jurisdiction. I'm outside, because I'm not really here, Slim. You see, at Ajax we worked out what we call the counter-grid, a complete set of alternates to the natural grid, and to this bozo's own personal construct too. You might say nature and Frumpkin's setup lie at right angles, so to speak, in overspace. Well, we engineered the counter-grid vertical to that plane. So, we can operate anywhere we like—as long as we're within range, natch. After old Frumpkin here cut off our power-tap we were drawing from the natural entropic potential; gave us all the juice we needed and gave us a little edge in some of our more unlikely gadgets, too. We set up a jury-rig, drawing on Frumpkin's own pseudo-entropic energy, and that was just barely enough to let me punch through to this semi-half-phase layout here."

"Much good it will do you!" Frumpkin barked. "So far, I've stayed my hand, out of sheer altruism; but now I'm at the end of my patience."

"Gosh," Roy said in mock awe. "What do you do when you run out of patience, you silly-looking maniac?"

At this insolence, Frumpkin literally began to foam at the mouth. Red-faced and with spit dribbling from his chin, he shook both fists and yelled.

"I dismiss you all back to the nothingness from which, after all, you were never really evoked!" He turned to a boxy apparatus beside him which until now Lafayette had not noticed. It was the same unit, he thought, that Frumpkin and Belarius V had had with them at O'Leary's first meeting with them.

"Don't let him use that gadget, Roy," O'Leary urged as he himself strove mightily, but without success, to make a move to intercept the furious fellow.

"No sweat, Slim," Roy said easily. "He's about to find out Ajax equipment won't work when it's directed against Ajax personnel—a little sort of safety device we install in all our stuff."

Then Marv was between Frumpkin and his infernal device. "Back off, brainless," Marv said roughly, pushing Frumpkin aside. "You heard what the little runt said."

"He's bluffing!" Frumpkin yelled, and lunged again.

"Maybe," Marv replied, "and maybe not." He turned his attention to Sprawnroyal.

"How about it, pal? Anything to it?" he inquired genially, thrusting Frumpkin aside to take a position beside the control console of the boxy apparatus. He glanced at the dials there.

"According to this readout," he said tonelessly, "this here whole set-up is going to go insubstantial in about ten seconds. So long, fellows. And Sir Lafayette, I knew all along you weren't Allegorus. Hang loose." With a wave, Marv turned and walked away into deep shadow.

Roy was frowning quizzically up at O'Leary. "Slim, how well you know this Marv?"

"Pretty well," O'Leary replied. "At first, he was just my jailer, then we got to be fellow-sufferers, and we stuck together pretty well. You remember when we met in the woods in Aphasia I, he stood by loyally. He helped me out a couple of times, and somehow he seemed to be able to stick to me even when I had a wild ride in half-phase when I was totally lost. Once I caught him siccing the crowd on me, but he had an explanation: he was cornered, and it was the only way to save his own neck. Anyway, the mob didn't know me, so no harm was done."

"Unless maybe he was fingering you for someone," Roy suggested. "I don't like his sticking to you so close, Slim. How'd he do it? That would take all the Ajax equipment Frumpy here had, and then some."

"—like that last time," Lafayette continued thinking aloud. "He was washed away by the big wave, just like I was, and we fetched up on the same mud-flat."

"Slim, I checked out this Aphasia III," Roy said. "Funny, according to all readings the boys took on it, it's right outside space-time. Sort of scraps left over when reality itself, as we know it, was derealized."

"Why listen to this sawed-off intellectual?" Marv queried in an indifferent tone, as he came out of the shadows. "What we got to do now—we got to get outa here, before Frumpkin's boys arrive to finish the job."

"Any ideas how we should do that, Marv?" O'Leary asked, equally coolly.

"Sure, Al, just focus the old PEs," Marv recommended promptly.

"Wait a minute. Slim," Roy put in. "We better think about this. I don't know if you know it, but every time you pull that trick, you put out a signal that gives anybody that's interested a handle on you they can use any way they like—which is how old Frumpy here has been tailing you, I bet."

"Right," O'Leary confirmed. "He admitted it, even bragged about it—and he said the next time I do it, he'll be able to home in on the pattern and finish me off—and the whole pseudo-volume of probability I've ever occupied."

"Haw. ProIIy could do it, too, Slim," Roy mused.

"All he'd hafta do is put a vitality tap on the anomaly flux and drain off all the entropic energy. That'd be the end of Artesia and all the nearby loci out to prolly a hundred parameters. Too risky, Slim. We need some kind of tangle-field to work behind. Lemme think."

"I just happened to think, Marv," O'Leary said. "Ever since I met you, you've been urging me to focus my Psychical Energies. I don't know how you so much as knew I knew how. Now it seems you might have had an angle of your own."

"Who, me?" Marv inquired in a raised-eyebrows tone. "Hey, Al, this is your old pal, Marv, remember? How about the old days, back when we were lodged in durance vile together and all, hah?"

"You waste your final breaths, poor fools," Frumpkin spoke up with renewed vigor. "All your petty problems will be solved very soon now, with no effort whatever on your part. Look about you."

"Holy Moishe," Roy muttered. O'Leary looked around and saw featureless gray walls which now were closing them in on all sides. It was as if they were at the center of an immense bubble of concrete. Frumpkin snickered. Marv growled.

"While you nattered of trivialities," Frumpkin said contentedly, "I busied myself by draining the vacuole of all energies; and thus, of course, I cut it off from all possible communication with the Greater Universe—except, naturally, for my own lifeline."

"You think you can get away with this?" Marv demanded, taking a threatening step toward Frumpkin, who waved him away casually.

"You know better than to contest me now, my dear fellow," he said. "At any move inimical to my best interests, the diameter of our little universe will shrink; and you will at all costs preserve the integrity of my lifeline, since it is your sole possible link with outside."

"Maybe so," Sprawnroyal grunted. "But we can make it mighty uncomfortable for you in the meantime. Slim, take his arms; Marv, you get on his head. I'll go for his legs." So saying, he launched himself, tackling the self-styled Lord of All, toppling him as O'Leary moved in and grabbed his arms. Marv flopped down across the fallen dictator's upper quarters. Beneath, Frumpkin kicked and flailed, uttering muffled cries.

"Just hang on to him a second, fellows," Roy suggested as he got to his stubby legs and dusted himself off. Marv rolled over Frumpkin's face.

"You won't get away with this," Frumpkin predicted, coldly furious now as he sat up, tugging in vain against O'Leary's grip while blood ran from his nose.

"Maybe not," Roy came back eagerly, "but it will be fun trying—for us, not you." He put his gnarled forearm in the angle of Frumpkin's elbow, and with his right arm forced the fallen man's wrist and forearm upward. Frumpkin rolled his eyes and yelled.

"Smarts some, don't it?" Roy remarked as he released the taller man's arm. "Want me to try the other arm?"

Frumpkin's reply was an inarticulate yell as he renewed his thrashing efforts to escape O'Leary's grip. Marv bent over and took a firm grip on a lock of Frumpkin's thin, well-oiled hair, and yanked gently.

"You can't really spare this, Frumpy," he said gently. "But it won't really matter much: you'll be bald soon anyway." With a sudden jerk, he pulled the tuft of hair out by its roots and held it before Frumpkin's wild eyes.

"Stop!" the tormented Frumpkin croaked as O'Leary manipulated his skinny arms behind his back. "All right, I confess I've no stomach for torture! I'll let you go—but only on your solemn promise to do nothing furthur to interfere with my great Plan!"

"You're in no spot to talk deal," Roy pointed out casually as he dug a knuckle into the muscle at the angle of Frumpkin's jaw, eliciting a roar of pain.

"Agreed!" Frumpkin yelled. "I'll release you unconditionally—and you'd best hurry; time is running out!"

O'Leary looked up: The domed 'ceiling' of the spherical chamber was noticeably closer. Even as he watched, it shrank in furthur as Frumpkin uttered a long drawn-out howl. O'Leary glanced toward him. Marv was now sitting at ease on the formerly arrogant Frumpkin's face. He caught O'Leary's look and rose. "It ain't comfortable anyways," he explained. "That sharp nose'd be hell on a feller if he's to sit there any length o' time."

Roy bustled forward and bent over the supine Frumpkin. "You ready to be reasonable?" he inquired solicitously. Frumpkin grumbled, which Roy took as assent. He hunkered down beside the fallen dictator. "Go ahead, spill it," he ordered.

Frumpkin sat up, wiped blood from his nose across his lower face, and gulped.

"Very well, you inhuman beasts," he started. Marv promptly knocked him flat.

"Just the facts, big shot; skip the insults," he prescribed. Frumpkin nodded and cautiously sat up again.

"Started with a little accident," he blurted. "I was on duty in the probability lab, and I noticed some anomalous readings on the main monitor panel, and I, well, I did a little investigating, and made a curious discovery." Frumpkin paused as if to savor the moment.

"Something was playing hell with the energy equipoise in a minor locus out on Plane V-87. Looked like every few years there'd been a drain that shuffled the loci like playing cards. No repercussions had showed up outside the manifold, but that didn't mean it would never happen. I should have reported it to YAC-19 at once, I know—but all of a sudden I saw it! If I could deduce just what was happening, I could use it myself, to shape this sorry scheme of things entire closer to my heart's desire, as the poet hath said. Ahem!" Frumpkin cleared his throat and fussed with the lapels of his rumpled dressing gown.

"As even you are doubtless aware, all of existence rests on the principle of entropic equipoise. For each ordering force, there is a balancing force of disorder; and all this vast matrix of interpenetrating forces is modulated by the universal-probability field. To tamper at any one point with the probability flux is to cause the matrix itself to readjust so as to bring all forces back into balance. When you, Sir Lafayette, fecklessly employed the gigantic forces at your command, the nature of which still escapes me, to make certain minor local realignments in defiance of the pressures of local probability, you occasioned readjustments which resonated at vast distances. These caused realignments of reality on a scope unthinkable. But I soon saw that, at bottom, your method was simple enough; and used systematically, one could realign the natural forces so as to produce results specified by oneself—or myself, that is." Frumpkin paused again. "At first, I envisioned only local readjustments which would place me in a position of total authority, and provide such trifling comforts as the disposal of all the wealth in existence, my choice of all the world's delicacies of food and drink and luxury goods, plus the unselfish devotion of the Lady Xanthippe, the only person beside myself whom I considered deserving of the fruits of reality. Speaking of which—" Frumpkin snapped his fingers. There was a stir in the shadowy distance, and a lone figure came slowly forward into the light: then two more people appeared, one tall and broad, the other slim and graceful.

"... somehow unsatisfying," Frumpkin was droning on. "So, I asked myself why. The answer was simple enough: While there remained planes of probability outside my sway, what joy could I take in my petty rule of a portion of All That Is?"

"I've heard enough," Marv said roughly. He stepped close to Frumpkin and spoke quietly to him.

"It's far too late for that, Marv, old boy," Frumpkin cut him off curtly. "You erred in not acting at once, while my path was still unclear."

Marv replied to this by taking a firm grip on Frumpkin's neck, causing his victim to squirm ineffectively, while his face became purplish. Then Frumpkin's cold eyes met O'Leary's.

"Sir Lafayette!" he cried, "I call on you to intercede in the interest of justice. Don't you see? I lied just now, I admit, but only in a desperate effort to save what I have built—and that includes Artesia and all that outlying area—from utter dissolution. I did all I claimed, but not as a free agent. I made the error of telling of my discovery to the janitor who mopped up in the Prime Vault—a cretin, but I was bursting with the knowledge! So I told him. And rather than merely gaping at me in incomprehension, the low fellow began to behave most strangely. He went to certain controls and manipulated them with surprising deftness, then stood aside and dared me to look at the results. Unless, he said, I agreed to do as he dictated, he'd bring about a cataclysm which would set all of reality at Entropic Maximum—a state of which you have a sample here, in this vacuole—an eternity of absolute stasis. So I had to do as he said. He himself, he told me, was now far above such petty tasks. I was but a slave, but he—he was Lord Marvelous!" Frumpkin's trembling finger pointed at Marv, who backed a step, almost colliding with the foremost of the three advancing from the dimness: Duke Bother-Be-Damned. Even as the armored hands of the big man clamped on Marv's arms, Lafayette's eyes went past him to those behind him.

"Daphne!" he yelled and started toward her, then checked as he recognized Betty Brassbraid at her mistress's side. "But you're Henriette in the Hill," he groaned. "And you don't know me from Adam's pet mongoose."

"Fie, Lafayette!" the pretty brunette replied after a moment's hesitation. "Do you not know me, your own true love? Of course I'm Daphne, silly," she added more gently. "And Lafayette—if it really is you, my love, and not another beguiling dream—oh, how I've longed for this moment, and somehow knew that, in spite of all, at last it would come—someday." She broke off and began to cry silently. Lafayette stumbled to her and took her in his arms. Now Betty was sniffling behind her mistress, while Bother hurrumphed and fiddled with his sword-hilt. Marv stood to one side, looking sullen.