The Galaxy Builder

Chapter Nine

O'Leary woke slowly from vague dreams of strolling in the palace gardens at Artesia City. Reluctantly he became aware that he was lying on his side on what felt very much like a bed. Hard and rather lumpy, but still a bed. Fine! Maybe someone had finally dropped a net over him and carted him off to the booby hatch to start his cure. He moved tentatively: no stab of pain from his back, he noted with relief. He tried a leg, felt it respond. No more fins; that was good news. Obviously the shrinks had some effective techniques going for them nowadays. He'd only been in the pest house for a few hours and already he was thinking clearly, his hallucinations gone.

He opened his 'eyes to dim light and a tall woman standing beside the narrow cot.

"No more mischief now, sir," she said in a cool, melodious voice. "I'm Doctor Smith, and I want to help you."

"That's fine, Doctor," Lafayette replied briskly, sitting up. The woman at once bent to rearrange his pillows to support him in a half-erect position. "Please don't exert yourself, sir," she said in a no-nonsense tone. "And actually I must ask you to do nothing at all for the present; don't even think. The debriefing team will be along in a moment to wire you up and set things to rights."

"Wire me up?" Lafayette echoed vaguely. "I don't think I like the sound of that."

"Please, sir—"

"My name's Lafayette," he stated, feeling a vague impulse to stabilize the situation. "I've had a bad time of it, but I'm better now, I think. Is Daphne OK? Is she here?"

"I'm sorry, sir. The DB team will handle all your queries. You may sleep a little now, and they'll be here." Then she was gone with a rustle of starched whites.

Let's hold it right here, O'Leary said sternly to himself. This has gone far enough. They've been herding me along like a sheep to the slaughter. I haven't been just wandering around at will, he told himself with dawning comprehension. Someone's been manipulating me— and the time has come to break the cycle! He rose from the Spartan hospital bed and discovered he was clad only in a threadbare purple pajama bottom. There was a steel locker against the wall. Inside, Lafayette found his once splendid court suit, sadly worn and stained but freshly cleaned and pressed. He at once checked the trick pocket. The flat-walker was still in place.

"But that's what's been messing me up," he said aloud. "Every time I used it, I got in deeper; so I won't touch it again until I'm back at Ajax—or an Ajax field station." With that decision, he felt a surge of confidence. "Now I can start unraveling this mess," he told himself. 'It's still not too late to rescue Daphne. But I've got no time to waste."

He dressed quickly, then went to a window and looked down on a city street bathed in afternoon sunlight, lined with cars parked by shops bearing signs announcing Giant Sales and Discounts up to 70%, and Your Credit's Good. For the first time in years, Lafayette remembered his old life in Colby Corners as a junior draftsman at the foundry, living on a diet of Tend-R Nood-L soup, sardines, and crackers, and saltwater taffy, his sole indulgence—except for his scientific work, of course. And that was what was needed now, he realized with sudden insight. The mundane bustle in the street below seemed to him to restore a correct perspective to the mad jumble of events of the last day or so. Now, before committing himself to another move, it would be well to sum up, to reexamine affairs in the cold, precise light of the scientific method. First, as he had already concluded, it was clear that he had been manipulated, herded along from one blunder to the next. But for what purpose? That point would have to await furthur clarification. Basically, the thing that had been nagging at the back of his mind was the problem of energy imbalance. Formerly, in simply shifting himself by means of the Psychical Energies from one locus to an adjacent one, the transfer of energy had been slight, and as had been explained to him by Nicodaeus, the equation had been balanced by an equivalent displacement of inorganic matter at scattered points. Thus, when he had first changed loci from Colby Corners to Artesia, a number of small items equal in mass to his own one hundred thirty-eight pounds had, quite unknown to him or to anyone, slipped across from Artesia to the Corners, causing some Artesian housewife, perhaps, to wonder what had become of her antique ginger jar, while some ragpicker in Colby Corners had come upon a perfectly good cannister marked GINGER in an ash-can on his regular route. A loose stone on an Artesian road might have disappeared when no one was looking and just as unobtrusively appeared on the potholed tarmac of the Springs Road. So that part—as had been explained to him at length by Nicodaeus on the latter's last visit to Adoranne's court—was rational enough. But these shift-overs he'd been making lately to loci well outside his home widerange involved massive energy demands across wide stretches of E-space. That fact, in turn, implied that someone, somewhere, for some reason, was supplying the required energies. Question: who? Also, why, how, etcetera, Lafayette reflected in frustration. His fingers, idly exploring his pocket, encountered the angular shape of the flat-walker. Only slowly, and with a sense of shock, did he realize what he was fingering; with sudden awe, he brought out the waferlike device and studied it carefully, as if he had never seen it before. It looked like nothing more than a rectangle of bluish plastic embossed with wavy lines. Could this thing actually enable one to pass through solid matter? Again, whence the energy supply? It was too silly, he decided, and checked an impulse to toss it into the immaculate wastebasket beside the window. Had he been hallucinating? The question shook him. Some people did hallucinate, and if he were one of them, where did the imaginary begin? With Zoriel, or with Doctor Anschluss and the waspish Miss Gorch, or earlier, with Shurf Tode and Cease? Or the gray room that kept popping up? Or was it Frodolkin and his troops who had initiated the nonobjective phase of his mental life? Or Lord Trog—or Allegorus, the mysterious visitant to the tower? Or did it go farther back, to Artesia itself, to Adoranne and Alain, and Lod, the two-headed giant, or even to Daphne—dear, loyal, lovely Daphne? No! he almost yelled aloud. His bride of ten years was no figment: of that he was sure. But where was she now? Why had she been taken from him? Where was the gray room?

The pattern of his manipulation was far from clear, but a few points could be fixed firmly: He had drifted progressively farther from the Artesian locus. Aphasia I was a recognizable analog, Aphasia II not much different. Then, in the swamp, his attempt to find Artesia had misfired, placing him, along with Marv, in an alternate version of Colby Corners, in some ways much like his old home town but grossly different at the geological level—which meant a massive shift indeed. Then the disembodied passage through half-phase, to emerge at Prime, no doubt of another order of reality entirely, quite outside the purview of Central. Then, once again he had made use of the flat-walker ... How clear it was, now that he was pausing to consider matters in depth, that the seemingly innocuous device, outré though it was, was at the bottom of most of his trouble. He put it back in its pocket, fully resolved not to use it again. That last time, he recalled with a shudder, had almost finished him: thinking he was a fish—but not exactly a fish, merely some life form indigenous to half-phase, existing weightless and intangible in the void between worlds, a subjective experience which his mind had automatically rationalized by concluding that he was immersed in a featureless fluid like a fish in water. But somehow, by sheer luck, perhaps, he had been recovered from that eerie environment, too. He remembered the descending scalpel, Fred's immense face, then —nothing, until he woke here, in this hospitallike room, with the view of a sane and normal street in the late spring sunshine.

And now, he told himself firmly, now I'm taking over. I'm not going to be herded anymore, not going to take any more sudden desperate measures. Not even going to try to focus the Psychical Energies, moments at which, he abruptly realized, he was peculiarly susceptible to manipulation. And he would definitely not mess with the flat-walker. Except, he hedged, perhaps to use it to communicate with Ajax.

The decision made, he turned from the window to ponder for a moment his next move—a move he must be quite certain was entirely his own idea, made at his own volition and not under some pressure, subtle or gross.

OK, he agreed firmly. That brings me to the question of what to do now. What do they expect me to do, want me to do? They've left me alone and ambulatory, with my clothes handy. And I'll bet the door is conveniently unlocked. So, they think I'll do a bolt for freedom—but I'll fool 'em. This time I'll play it smart: I'm staying.

At that moment, the door to the big room opened and Doctor Smith appeared, carrying a tray rather awkwardly. Lafayette caught a whiff of poached egg and over-boiled coffee.

"It's time for your lunch, Mr. O'Leary," the woman said in a tone in which he could read no fell intent. She showed no surprise at seeing him up and dressed.

"No, thanks," he said casually. "Not hungry. By the way, what town is this?"

"Why, the Institute is at Caney, Kansas," she replied glibly.

"Why?" Lafayette asked bluntly. "Why did you bring me to Caney, Kansas?"

"You were found, Mr. O'Leary, nearly dead of exposure and alcohol, in an alley only a block east of the Institute. A kindly passerby brought you here, since it was the nearest facility."

"I've never been in Kansas in my life," Lafayette stated more firmly than his certainty warranted. "And I don't drink—just a nice wine with dinner, perhaps, or a cold beer on a hot afternoon."

"Nevertheless, your body shows the ravages of advanced alcoholism," the doctor rebutted equally firmly.

"Uh, where's the men's room?" Lafayette blurted.

"You'll find a facility through that door," she said, pointing to a brown-painted panel Lafayette had not previously noticed. She put the tray on a table and came closer to Lafayette. "Seven P.M. at the YW," she breathed in his ear, and turned away before he could see her expression.

"Thanks, Doc," Lafayette said with a show of casualness. He went to the undersize door and opened it. A glance inside revealed the usual plumbing. He went in and closed the door.

"OK," he told himself. "She expects me to break out of here—probably through the window." He eyed the small square unglazed opening through which a brick wall opposite was visible. " 'Seven p.m. at the Y', he echoed silently. "She must think I'm the original sucker —and why shouldn't she? I've taken every cue, so far— went along like a puppet on strings. But no more. So, I'll just kill a few minutes here and see what they try next."

This decided, he felt a sense of accomplishment which he recognized as out of proportion to his actual achievement. He determined to take it easy, resort to no desperate measures, and to look for the unexpected opportunity. Meanwhile, it wouldn't hurt to take a peek out that window to check on the lay of the land. He pushed a dusty crate into position under the window, climbed up, and looked out at a narrow slice of street visible between corroded red bricks on the left and a slant of heavily tarred roof on the right. An intersection was partly visible, and a drug store on the corner. A dusty old Buick was parked on the side street, and a man stood leaning on it, his arms folded. The man was Marv. Lafayette blinked and looked again; there was no doubt of it. Old Marv, here, in this far-out locus! How had he managed it? He was dressed in an anonymous suit and seemed quite at home, gnawing a toothpick and idly gazing up toward Lafayette's vantage point. Marv's head jerked in a mild double take. He was looking Lafayette squarely in the eyes. He came away from the car, swiftly consulted his wristwatch, glanced around him, and returned his gaze to O'Leary. He raised a hand and gestured a furtive greeting. Lafayette ducked back, climbed quickly down, and without hesitation thrust open the door and was back in the big airy room with the narrow bed and faintly steaming tray on the table. Dr. Smith was gone.

"Clever," Lafayette conceded. "Just when I'd decided to play it my own way, they spring Marv on me, and I nearly took the bait. It would have been an easy drop from that window to the ledge, then to the adjacent roof, and no doubt all the way down I'd've found a wide-open route. But I'm not taking it. So they'll have to think up another one. But who is this 'they' I'm blaming everything on? Sounds remarkably like paranoia. I'd better be careful what I think even." He went across to the door the doctor had used; as he neared it he heard voices on the other side:

"... careful. A shock at this point, and all our careful work could be undone. He's in a delicate condition, you must remember, balanced on a knife-edge."

"Sure, I know all that—but we can't just sit on the case. You know as well as I do he'll expect expeditious action."

"Of course, Mel, and the first step is to get him out of here to a safe place; so let's do it."

Then the latch rattled and the door opened, causing Lafayette to step quickly aside. A man whom Lafayette had never before seen came through at a brisk pace. He paused to turn and look incuriously at O'Leary.

"You're all ready," he commented. "Good. We're a bit early, but no matter."

The other man busied himself closing the door, and it was some moments before Lafayette caught a clear look at his warty face, which he recognized at once as that of Fred, one of the two giant faces from the hallucination about being hooked like a fish.

"It's good to see a familiar face, Fred," Lafayette said glibly. "There are a few points I wish you'd clear up for me. First, where was I when you and Les found me?"

Fred gave Lafayette an astonished look, then turned to his colleague: "Hasn't this subject received initial conditioning?"

"Well, as to that..." Mel hesitated. "You recall this is a special case, referred in by Number One personally."

"Say, fellows, if you'll excuse me," Lafayette cut in heedlessly. "I think I'd better see to my tropical fish. See you soon. Ta." He jostled past Fred, still hovering in the doorway and set off briskly down a long, well-lit corridor.

"One moment, there!" Fred's authoritative voice rang out belatedly. Lafayette ignored it and went through a door on the left marked 'Private. No Entry', and found himself at the top of a steep flight of gray concrete steps with a rusted handrail improvised of two-inch I.D. galvanized pipe. He went down three steps at a time until he heard feet on the landing he had just vacated, accompanied by Fred's hoarse cry: "Stop, there!"

As O'Leary grabbed the newel to whirl around the next turn, he felt a sudden vertigo, as if he had spun around and around ...

The gray room again, Lafayette realized in frustration. Still, perhaps it was as good a hidey-hole as any—if he was really here and not just dreaming. He tried a step forward, found the faded rug normally firm underfoot. Neither Frumpkin nor Daphne was in sight. The big panel was off to the right, a trifle dim through the curiously semi-opaque air. He went to it and on impulse threw a large knife-switch marked MAIN STAGE ON OFF. As it slammed home, the dimness seemed to flicker for a moment, and at once Frumpkin's hoarse voice rang out. "No! Get away from that!"

Quickly, Lafayette opened and closed other switches at random, noting no effect other than a busy blinking among the idiot lights on the panel.

"Look here," Frumpkin said more calmly, from near at hand now. "I'll... make a concession," he offered. "Stop now and there's no great mischief done, except perhaps for a few relatively minor astronomical oddities, the odd meteor, that sort of thing. Stop your sabotage at once, and I shall arrange for a retroaction in the case of Henriette. What say? Is it a gentleman's agreement?"

O'Leary glanced around at the renegade, looking haggard now, his once immaculate uniform dusty and rumpled.

"I don't know any Henriette," Lafayette said coldly, "and I wouldn't make a deal with you anyway. I don't trust you, you slimy little toad."

"Very well! Beverly, then, or Androgorre, or possibly Cynthia; whatever you choose to call her: the female upon whom you've anchored your defense, as young fellows will do. You're a fool. She sold you out at once when I mentioned the furs and jewels and other trifles she'd possess as a willing collaborator. Don't be a fool, O'Leary! Throw in with me and end this needless contest! There's plenty for us both in all the worlds of if!"

"If you knew how silly you sounded," Lafayette told Frumpkin, "you'd blush purple. Now bring Daphne here, right now, or I'll have to close the big one marked "PROGRAM DUMP."

"Certainly, lad, whatever you say; but she'll be disappointed, just you watch! Kindly just step back from the panel a trifle. And why here? You'll be trapped."

O'Leary put a hand on the DUMP switch. "Get going," he ordered. "You've got ten seconds."

"No! I mean, of course!" Frumpkin gabbled. "But it will take at least half a minute! Do nothing hasty, Mr. O'Leary!" Frumpkin backed away, still gibbering, then turned and ran, disappearing in the dimness. The room seemed to tilt, then began to slide sideways. Lafayette clung to a convenient post as the room whirled around him. Now he was leaping down narrow concrete steps, feeling dizzy; he staggered, caught himself, went on, down, down, into dusty daylight.