The Galaxy Builder (19 page)

            "What's that got to do with anything?"
Lafayette demanded hotly.

            "Everything," Mickey Jo returned
firmly. "All this is the direct result of that unique event."

            "But, if it ever happened, it was fifteen
or twenty billion years ago," Lafayette protested. "I've only been
around for thirty-three."

            "And no matter how far back or forward we
travel along the temporal axis," the girl said, "the Bang's always
twenty gigayears off. That's the temporal diameter of this manifold. The entire
cosmos naturally had to readjust to accommodate the new mass. All else
follows."

            "But what's all that got to do with
me?" Lafayette yelled. "I was just sitting quietly in the garden
..."

-

            "Figure, Laugh," Mickey Jo put in.
"Everything shifts one parameter, right? Now, you figure the spatial
distance of the Event, plug in one hundred eighty-six thousand miles is equal
to a second, and a couple finagle factors like the cosmological constant, and
whata ya got? Three hundred years displacement is what. So, of course some
compensation is required."

            "What kind of compensation could that
be?" Lafayette wondered aloud. "All that, if it ever happened, was
still maybe twenty billion years ago. What can anyone do
now
to
influence that?"

            "Time is a convenient fiction," Mickey
Jo said flatly. "A billion years or a billionth of a second: What's the
difference, really? They're both just ideas, existing only in the mind."

            "Maybe," Lafayette replied. "The
question still stands."

            "There are two choices," Mickey Jo
said crisply. "It can be all at once, or distributed over the whole
reality manifold."

            "And ...?" Lafayette prompted.

            "And somebody is busy redistributing
it," Mickey Jo finished. "We thought it was you," she added.
"But I guess that idea was just grabbing at a straw."

            "Who's 'they'?" Lafayette demanded.
"I'm getting very weary of the impersonal 'they', and calling them a
committee doesn't help. And who are you, and what were you doing in the beer
joint?"

            "I'm just who I said I am," Mickey Jo
retorted. "I work part-time out of Supreme HQ, and I was at Special Ed's
dump to meet you."

            "What's the survey?" O'Leary asked.
"And don't tell me it's the executive wing of the Council or something.
Just skip ahead. I don't need all the intermediate obfuscations."

           
"Somebody
has to keep an eye on
things," Mickey Jo said in tones of exasperated patience. "After all,
if every little entropic vortex generated over a low probability area were
allowed to gather energy until it became a full-scale probability storm, the
entire cosmos would remain in a state of chaos."

            "So this Supreme HQ has appointed itself
Boss of All," Lafayette deduced without approval. "But they've gotten
too big for their swivel chairs when they start bouncing a law-abiding Artesian
nobleman around like a mouse in a washing machine."

            "That's purely incidental, O'Leary,"
Mickey Jo said, waving the idea aside with a shooing motion of her hand.
"In fact when your presence was discovered I was dispatched here to enlist
your cooperation in a scheme devised by the Technical Council to try to divert
the main thrust of the entropic surge off into a manifold of unevolved
continua. Will you help?"

            "Why me?" Lafayette demanded.
"What can I do?"

            "Hey, Al," Marv's distant voice echoed
across the mud-flat. "Come on, I can see sumpin'."

            "Ignore him," Mickey Jo rapped.
"As for what you can do, it seems somehow you are the focal point of
certain gigantic forces, over which in some curious fashion you are able to
exercise some influence. We want you to employ that ability in the interest of
restoring order to the Manifold."

            "How would I do that?" Lafayette
inquired. Marv was on his way back now, waving his arms and shouting:

            "Hunherts of 'em! Got some heavy equipment.
Camped out around that old building yonder! Better try a sneak-up after
dark." He arrived, panting. "Don't think they seen me. We needa get
outa sight, find some cover."

            "Why?" Lafayette demanded. "Why
assume they're hostile?"

            "Got a whole bunch o' guys hung up by the
neck," Marv explained.

            "Maybe they've just got a hanging
judge," O'Leary suggested. "We could use some Law and Order." He
looked around at the seemingly endless mud-flat which surrounded the lake and
stretched to the horizon on all sides, interrupted only by a low knoll beyond
the ruined building. The sun was low in a sky heavy with clouds the color of
used dishwater. The gusty breeze was cool, and his wet clothes were clammy.

            "We need to find some shelter, whether we're
hiding or not," he commented. "Come on, Mickey Jo, let's take a
walk." He offered the girl a hand, which she ignored.

            "And you'd better give me the gun," he
added. She fished it out from her sodden décolletage and handed it over
silently. As he dropped it in his pocket, Lafayette noticed it was not a common
slug-throwing pistol. He leaned to grasp Mickey Jo's arm and hauled her to her
feet. Marv fell in on her other side, and they set off across the mud, their
feet squelching at each step. Lafayette looked back: their footprints filled
with water as soon as they were made.

            "An inch of rain and we'll be
swimming," he commented.

            "Ain't seen no rain in years," Marv
commented.

            "Nonsense," Lafayette replied.
"It was raining cats and dogs the evening we met. That's why Daph and I
had to run for it."

            "No rain outa clouds like them,"
Mickey Jo remarked. "Gotta have vertical structure to squeeze the rain
out."

-

            "Oh, Al?" Marv called, pausing and
falling a pace behind. "Talk to ya a minute?" Lafayette glanced at
him. He was mouthing words with grotesque facial distortions.

            " 'Gotta get ridda the dame',"
Lafayette interpreted. "Go ahead, Mickey Jo," he told the girl.
"I'll catch up."

            "Ever occur to you I might hafta take a
leak too?" she demanded in an irascible tone, but she went on ahead.

            "Don't trust that little broad," Marv
said hoarsely. "We gotta ditch her, Al; she's some kinda fink. We can lose
her easy, come dark."

            "You seem to stick to me like a burr to
tweed," Lafayette said. "Why? It isn't sheer affection, I feel
sure."

            Marv looked at Lafayette blankly for a moment;
then, as if at a decision, his expression firmed to a look of shrewd
determination.

            "I'll level with you, milord," he
grated. "You seem like a right guy, and you stuck up for me when you
didn't hafta. So I'll lay it all out. I'm a agent of Prime. My assignment is to
stay with you. That's taken some doing, too, I can-tell you, pal."

            "Why?" Lafayette inquired casually.

            " 'Cause that's my orders," Marv
replied.

            "Sure, but why the orders?" Lafayette
persisted.

            "Look, Al, I'm just a plain guy, see? I got
the job because I happena pick a big shot's kid outa the way of a runaway rail-wagon.
I don't unnerstan half I know about entropic disjunctions and Schrodinger
Functions, and-"

            "Collapsed ones," Lafayette put in.
"Somebody said that," he added vaguely. "Go on."

            "What we got here is a classic worst-case
analysis," Marv stated. "Course, I dunno what that is, but it don't
sound good. And we're into what ya call 'nondeterministic polynomial complete'
problems, too. Tie that, will ya?"

            "According to Ramsey," O'Leary said
dully, "total disorder is impossible."

            "Maybe: I don't hear about this
Ramsey," Marv said. "But we're close, I can tell you that. And we're
tryna hold it short of the edge. We don't want to let any more temporal
anomalies sneak in, and that's where you come in, Al."

            "I had nothing to do with it, I tell
you!" Lafayette snapped. "I'm as much a victim as you are—maybe more;
at least you've got some kind of official status. Mickey Jo, too."

            "I don't trust that broad," Marv said.
"Like I said, Al; she's working some kind of a angle."

            "She's a duly accredited agent of Supreme
HQ," O'Leary said. "She's got you outranked."

            "Maybe, maybe not," Marv grunted.
"That's a point for the philosophers. Meanwhile, let's you and me kinda do
a fast fade, and leave her go on into town alone."

            "Fade where?" Lafayette inquired.
"The landscape is as flat as a pool table in all directions."

            "In the wrecked car," Marv suggested,
nudging Lafayette in the direction of the overturned roadster half-buried in
mud and sand. When they were close enough for Lafayette to see the
chrome-plated cranks on the cherry-red dash for opening the headlight covers, a
sound from the hulk brought them to an abrupt halt.

            "Somebody in there," Marv said.

            "Or hiding behind it," Lafayette
suggested.

            A blurry voice contradicted him. "Never hid
from no wight in my life, by my halidom!" Then a bulky, menacing figure
rose from behind the long hood of the formerly elegant vehicle.

            "Just catching a little rest is all,"
the deep voice went on. "Spot of bother, damned tidal wave washed me right
off the king's highroad. But bother be damned! I'll find the scamps responsible
for broaching the dam and see them hanged on the windy tree for nights full
nine!"

            Lafayette took a hesitant step forward.
"Uh, sir," he began, at which the mud-coated, bulletlike head of the
stranger turned as if noticing him for the first time.

            "Are you Duke Bother-Be-Damned, by any
chance?" Lafayette blurted.

            "By no chance, sirrah, but by proof of
single combat!" His Grace roared, groping for the hilt of an oversized
sword. "But bide thee until I get this damned muck out of me eyes,"
he added more calmly, "and I'll prove it on your person."

            "That won't be necessary, Your Grace,"
Lafayette said. Then to Marv, "We're back on the track; this is the chap I
was setting out to find when everything got confusing."

            "I be no 'chap', the duke bellowed.
"You sought me, did you? You'll rue the day you found me, wittol!"
The mud-coated nobleman took a step back and at once toppled sideways with a
splash that sent a sheet of mud across the scarlet lacquer of the fender,
spattering both Lafayette and Marv. The latter slapped at the mud globules sliding
down his soaked trench coat, and turned away.

            "Come on, Al," he urged. "I guess
we'll just hafta go in right in plain sight and take our chances."

            "Wait," Lafayette countered. He
squelched around past the crushed radiator shell of the Auburn and stooped to
lend a hand to the fallen duke, who lay on his back, his arms and legs moving
aimlessly like an overturned beetle. Lafayette caught one hand: the duke's
grip, though slippery, was powerful. Lafayette winced even as he heaved
backward, and was rewarded with a sudden lessening of the load as the duke sat
up with a loud sucking sound.

            "Again!" the nobleman commanded, as he
strove without success to raise his seat from the grip of the mud.

            "Get your feet under you," Lafayette
suggested. The big man complied and in a moment was standing, towering over
Lafayette's two meters by at least half a foot.

            "You have our thanks, Sir Knight," the
featureless head said, brushing a forearm across the muddy brow with a metallic
clank.

            "You're wearing armor," Lafayette
guessed aloud. "No wonder you're so heavy."

            "Aye," the armored duke agreed.
"In these parlous times you pretty near gotta. Woods are full of brigands
which they'd assault the very bitch that bore them, onney the woods is gone
now." He waved a hand. "Useta be fine country for the chase of hart
and boar," he commented sadly. "Then the big flood come and ain't
never went down." He eyed O'Leary doubtfully. "Who're you?" he
demanded abruptly. "Never seen you before, nor your squire yonder
neither." The duke's hand had wandered to the muddy hilt of the six-foot
broadsword slung at his side. "If you be the warlock that brought the doom
on all Aphasia," he rumbled, "dire shall be thy fate."

            "Not me, Duke," Lafayette said
briskly. "Actually I was caught in the flood myself. Did you say
'Aphasia'?"

            "Art a warlock, then?" Duke
Bother-Be-Damned growled. "The waters rose these three hundred winters
since. No living Christian man could have seen that day. Speak! Dost claim
mastery of the black art?"