The Galaxy Builder (22 page)

            "Don't count on it, rube," the cop
snarled, whacking his palm with his billy club. "The rest o' you riffraff
stay here," he added, eyeing Tode without approval. "I'll get to you
later."

            "Sir," Tode stated firmly. "I
myself am Shurf Tode of Colby County. You may depend on my cooperation in any
police matter."

            "Happens the shire reeve's a close
acquaintance o' mine," the cop growled, "and he's over to the ducal
quarters right now tryna splain to His Grace how he happen to be in that lynch
mob."

            Trailed by Marv with Tode at his side while
Mickey Jo disappeared into the bathroom, O'Leary followed the cop out into
moonlit darkness along a catwalk improvised from debris. The catwalk protected
his mirror-polished boots from the mud, from which at irregular intervals the
ruins of former masonry buildings projected, vaguely visible by moonlight. The
moon itself, Lafayette noted, had resumed its normal size. Studying the ragged
rows of huts, Lafayette was struck by a thought: "Marv," he said
quietly to the gaudily dressed Prime agent, "this used to be a city, and
the shacks are lined up along the old streets. Do you think it could be Colby
Corners? If it is, it means the Chantspell Mountains ought to be over there, to
the west, but there's nothing there but those low hillocks. Somehow we're close
to home, but an awful long way off, too."

            "Beats me," Marv muttered. O'Leary now
noticed up ahead a curiously rickety structure some fifty feet tall, with a
solid-looking room at the top. He pointed it out to Marv. "As I figure
it," he said, "That's just about where the Y is back in Colby
Corners—and the palace, in Artesia."

            "That don't look safe," Marv said,
eyeing the fragile underpinnings of the top-heavy building. Ignoring the
curious edifice, their guide turned in at a tumble-down affair he referred to
grandly as the Palace of Justice, a collapsed building with one brick wall and
two more of packing crates and tarpaper, roofed with a rotted tarpaulin. Only
the top step of a wide flight projected above the mud level.

            "Had a flood here, eh?" O'Leary
hazarded.

            "You could say that, wise guy,"
Lafayette's escort grunted. "Now, you ack nice in front of the Inspector,
and I'll try to make it easy on you."

            O'Leary looked around at the squatter's village
of mean hovels linked, he could now see, by a network of catwalks of an extent
that indicated more than a brief occupation of the site. A few drably clad
people were in sight, apparently engaged in routine tasks.

            "C'mon, feller," the cop urged from
the step. "Ain't got no backlog in the courts anyways. Jedge's waitin' on
ye." Tode hurried up the steps; Lafayette followed. Marv was nowhere to be
seen. Tode forged ahead confidently.

            They pushed through heavy oak doors with pieces
of billboard nailed over the broken plate-glass panels. Inside, Lafayette
detected the stale odor of boredom, incompetence, bribery, treachery, and poor
sanitation common to all such institutions of law-without-justice. He trailed Tode
and the arresting officer to an inner pair of swinging oak doors and inside
into a small theatrelike room where a middle-aged man with a plump and
half-familiar face sat hunched in a black robe behind a lectern on a raised
platform. The smack of the gavel made O'Leary jump.

            "All right, Agent X-9," the presumed
judge muttered, not quite looking at O'Leary's guard. "Case of the Supreme
Authority versus O'Leary. Court is now in session." He looked vaguely at
O'Leary. "Do you have anything to say before I pronounce sentence?"

            After a moment of appalled silence, O'Leary
burst out, "Damn right I do!" He stopped short as the gavel banged
again.

            "Looky here, boy," the judge said
without heat. "No profanity in the court."

            "Sorry about that," Lafayette said
contritely. "But this is no trial! I don't even know what I'm accused
of!"

            "No matter; the rest of us do."

            "Not me," Tode spoke up from behind
O'Leary. "Him and me both, we're innercent is what we are."

            "And," the judge went on, "you're
not 'accused', O'Leary; you're convicted."

            "Of what?" O'Leary and Tode said
together.

            "Can you deny ..." the judge said
sternly, at the same time beckoning to a gaudily attired couple sitting in the
front row of the sparse audience. They rose and bustled forward eagerly,
skirting O'Leary to take up proprietary positions flanking the podium.
"Uh, can you deny, as I was saying," the jurist continued, peering
sharply at Lafayette, "that on the fourteenth instant— that would be
yesterday—at approximately nine pee em, you did willfully disposess the
plaintiffs, Chuck and Chick, of the motel accommodations which they had
reserved, engaged, and paid for in advance, at a time they were briefly absent
therefrom?"

            "Well, not exactly," O'Leary responded
dubiously.

            "We're the Chick and Chuck of 'Chuckles
with Chick and Chuck', a clean family act which we're playing the Twilight Room
of the Holiday Inn right here in Duluth," the male member of the duo of
variety artists volunteered in the silence which followed O'Leary's statement.
O'Leary recognized him as the paunchy man he had seen in the gray room.
"Which we stepped out for a bite after we unpacked," Chuck went on,
"and when we come back we couldn't find our room no place. Seemed like
there was just a kinda open space where it shoulda been. Checked the number,
too: skipped right from one thirteen to one seventeen. We didn't hardly know
what to do. Then this cop feller came along, and here we are."

            "... and all our brand-new costumes in
there, too," Chick mourned. "Most of 'em not even wore yet—and
he's
wearing one of 'em right now!" She pointed an indignant finger at
Lafayette.

            "So's
he,"
Chuck added, aiming
an accusatory digit at Marv, who had retired to a position behind Tode.

            "Well," the judge growled, scowling at
O'Leary. "I'm waiting. Can you make such denial? Remember, you're under
oath."

            "I am not!" Lafayette declared.
"I just got here, and I don't know what's going on. I'm sorry about Chuck
and Chick, but I can explain."

            "Very well," the judge said agreeably.
"Explain."

            "I guess I can't exactly explain,"
Lafayette confessed. "But I didn't mean any harm. I mean, we were cold and
wet and hungry, and I just thought it would be nice if we had a first-class
motel room waiting for us."

            "So you tooken ourn!" Chuck supplied.
"Dern if I can see how you done it; must be one o' them new packaged-unit
buildings like I seen onta the tube."

            "So you admit taking the room," the
judge recapped carefully, "but you plead necessity."

            "I didn't take it on purpose,"
Lafayette protested. "I mean, it was like the time I wanted a bathtub, and
I got one with Daphne in it. You see, when I seem to conjure up something out
of thin air by focusing the Psychical Energies, I'm not really creating it; I'm
just shifting it from another, nearby locus. So there was no malicious
intent."

            "Now we're getting somewheres," the
judge said in a satisfied tone. He motioned unobtrusively, and two uniformed
bailiffs moved in to flank O'Leary closely. The judge was peering sharply at
him. "You confess freely and without duress, that you did willfully tamper
with the entropic integrity of this locus, known and referred to hereafter as
Alpha Nine-Two, Plane V-87, Fox 1-W."

-

            "Hey!" O'Leary yelled. "That's
not far from Artesia, only Artesia's Fox 221-b! We're almost back! I guess
we've been luckier than we thought," he added more calmly to Marv.

            "I assume," the judge, whose name
O'Leary belatedly saw lettered on a brass plate on the lecturn, was Grossfarb,
continued implacably, "that you are aware that this constitutes a gross
violation of the GRC."

            "I never heard of it," Lafayette said.
"Or maybe Belarius mentioned it."

            "Ignorance of the law is no excuse,
Bub," the judge returned coldly.

            "Still, it goes to establish that my intent
was innocent," Lafayette insisted.

            Grossfarb turned pages before him. "This
whole matter is quite irregular," he grumped. "I'd be tempted to
throw it out, except for the fact that I have an Emergency Directive here,
specifying that you're to be detained at all costs." He looked at O'Leary.
"You don't
look
dangerous," he conceded. "Still, we all
remember the Axe-handle Killer. He was only nine years of age and had an
angelic appearance. Now, before I remand you to custody, I want to clear up a
few minor points, just for my own satisfaction:

            "Where is your probability engine
hidden?"

            "I don't know what that is," O'Leary
replied with dignity. "And I certainly don't own one."

            "No question of ownership," Judge Grossfarb
corrected. " 'Possession' is the word. Though I confess I don't see how
you could transport and hide a fifty-ton unit, which is the minimum, I am
assured by my advisers, required to dislocate an entire motel suite."

            "It's ridiculous," O'Leary pointed
out. "I arrived here on foot, not packing a Mack truck on my back."

            "To be sure," Grossfarb murmured.
"Still, I'm given no latitude in the matter. Bailiff—" he broke off
as the courtroom doors were thrust open and a man dressed in immaculate black strode
in, heading directly for the bench.

            "Order!" Grossfarb barked weakly as
the newcomer briefly flashed a bit of bright metal, then leaned on the podium
and addressed the judge confidentially.

            "It's irregular!" the latter said in
protest, at which the Man in Black took out a folded document from an inner
pocket and slapped it down in front of Grossfarb, who rose, looking flustered,
and addressed the room:

            "Jurisdiction in this case has been
preempted by an overriding authority," he announced. "Bailiffs, pass
custody of the prisoners"—he paused at a word from the Man in Black, then
resumed—"prisoner, that is; the tall one; put the other fellow away until
I've clarified the matter furthur. Turn this O'Leary over to His Excellency
here. The present action is nol prossed." He sat looking frustrated.

            Lafayette turned to speak to Marv, who was
staring, open-mouthed, at the Man in Black standing by the bench in an attitude
of patience stretched to the limit.

            "Al, that there's the Man in Black!"
he gasped. "He's as bad a spook as you are—I mean ..."

            "I recognize him," O'Leary said.
"He's a big-shot Prime agent named Frumpkin. I wonder how he got
here."

            "Quite simply," Frumpkin spoke up.
"I followed you, Sir Lafayette, and a merry chase it's been. Your
resourcefulness has quite surprised me."

            "What happened to Belarius?" Lafayette
blurted.

            "Alas, he was a trifle slow in his last
transfer—from the laboratory, you'll recall. He fetched up somewhere in
uncontrolled space-time, no doubt, poor chap. Another crime to be laid at your
feet, fellow-me-lad."

            "I had nothing to do with it," O'Leary
rebutted.

            "It is your contention," Frumpkin
asked carefully, eyeing Lafayette keenly, "that you are a native of this
desolate locus? That you are not guilty of unsanctioned shifting, that you have
employed no probability device?"

            "No," Lafayette replied stiffly.
"That is
not
my contention. If you'd let me say something, I could
tell you what my contention is."

            "Say all you like, young fellow,"
Frumpkin acceded easily. "But I doubt you'll be able to say anything which
will give the lie to the official recordings of your unexampled peregrinations."
He tapped the papers he held in one hand. "It's all here, lad. I'm merely
giving you an opportunity to demonstrate whatever vestigial sense of social
responsibility you may possess, by speaking up manfully, to confess the part
you've played in this gigantic crime."

            "Speaking of crimes," Lafayette came
back hotly. "What about kidnapping?"

            "You wish to confess to a kidnapping?"
Grossfarb put in gingerly.

            "No.
He's
the kidnapper,"
O'Leary corrected, pointing at Frumpkin. "He's holding Daphne in a ... place."

            "What place?" Grossfarb demanded.

            "Sort of a vague place," Lafayette
explained. "A big, misty-gray room, full of easy chairs and a big control
console."

            "Where is this curious installation?"
the judge asked patiently.

            "That's what I want to know!"
Lafayette yelled. "Look, make him tell you, and we can go there and free
poor Daphne—or Dame Edith, or whatever name she goes by here!"