The Galaxy Builder (24 page)

            "Indeed? Why, the miscreant thinks to
outrank me, it doth appear," Bother replied indignantly.

            "It's even worse than that," O'Leary
said. "He's out to conquer the world—or all the worlds."

            "Forsooth, he be no man of war," the
duke objected doggedly. "And of liegemen hath he none. And if he should
win to the Demon Chamber yonder, and fall not from the scaffold, we'll see him
no more; for he'll to the infernal regions instanter, and we'll be well rid of
him."

            "Your Grace," O'Leary addressed the
armored duke solemnly. "We have need to speak in private to him. We can't
let him escape. I'm going after him. Will you dare the Demon Chamber with
me?"

            The duke declined, pointing out that suicide by
going voluntarily into the clutch of demons was not required by knightly honor.
"... And I urge you, Sir Lafayette, to stay your hand. Together we can yet
bring order to this rabble scum, recoup my manor, and live out our days as
befits noblemen."

            "Sorry," Lafayette said, starting to
press his way through the rank of awed yokels gaping at Frumpkin's slow and
unsteady progress upward toward his unthinkable doom.

            "Hey, Al," Marv's voice came to
O'Leary's ears over the babble of the crowd. "Wait up; I'm coming."

            Lafayette turned to see his recent denouncer
hurrying toward him, face aglow. He turned away, but a moment later Marv was at
his side, excitedly recounting his experiences of the last few moments.

            "I fooled 'em good, Al," he boasted.
"Got 'em all worked up on a wild-goose chase."

            "I heard," Lafayette told him
tonelessly. "And the wild goose is me. Thanks a lot."

            "You don't get it, Al," Marv
protested. "None of 'em don't know what you look like, so you're safe as
can be, long's you don't let on. I hadda tell 'em sumpin'; they was about to
string me up."

            "I don't suppose it matters,"
Lafayette conceded. "I noticed they weren't paying me any attention. But
that fellow on the ladder: he's the one we have to nail. I think he's at the
bottom of this whole affair."

            "He's gettin' away," Marv stated,
slowing. He pointed; Frumpkin had reached the relative security of a raftlike
platform slung beneath the top-floor room, and was fumbling at something on its
underside. Lafayette forged ahead, Marv complaining at his heels.

            Reaching the ladder, which at close range looked
even less dependable than from a distance, being crudely lashed-up of
well-rotted lengths of scrap two-by-four, Lafayette started up without
hesitation. Above, Frumpkin looked down at him, his pinched face pale in the
shadow.

            "Get back, fool!" he croaked.
"You don't know the potency of the forces with which you seek to
meddle."

            "No, but I intend to find out, with your
help," Lafayette returned, sounding more cheerful than he felt. Only a
dozen feet from Frumpkin now, he could see a hinged panel set in the rough
flooring between the black and cobwebbed joists. Frumpkin returned his
attention to his efforts to open the rusted hasps as Lafayette gained the
narrow platform. He looked down. Marv was at the base of the ladder, looking
upward with an unreadable expression on his meaty features.

            "Better hold on a minute, Al," Marv
called in a cautious tone, as if he didn't want to overhear himself.
"Fella wants to see ya."

            "I can't guarantee anything, Marv,"
Lafayette replied. Off to his right, Frumpkin had succeeded in raising the
panel in the plank floor above him and was starting through. For a moment
O'Leary considered using the flat-walker to present the megalomaniacal Man in
Black with a shock when he completed his climb up into the sealed chamber.

           
Nope,
he told himself firmly.
I
decided
to stop using it, and I'm sticking with that decision.

           
"Hey, you, feller, come on down here
now," a beefy voice called from below. Lafayette looked down, saw the
gross, hounds-tooth-check figure of Chuck glaring up at him over the sights of
a fat black automatic pistol which he was holding with both hands in a position
which allowed O'Leary to see the rifling inside the barrel.

            "I'm sorry about your costumes,
Chuck," Lafayette improvised, "but it was an emergency. Would you
mind aiming that thing elsewhere? You couldn't want any holes in your fancy
suit, remember."

            The pistol came down. Chuck tried an
ingratiating expression reminiscent of Dracula approaching a bared throat.

            "Guess you and me better talk," he
said. "Never mind about Ga—or Frumpkin I guess you call him. We can see
about him later on."

            "We'll talk, all right," O'Leary said
hotly. "Start with the gray room: Where is it? What were you doing
there?"

            "Never played no Gray Room, Mister,"
Chuck demurred. "Lousy name for a night spot, anyways."

            "I saw you there," Lafayette charged.
"You looked as if you were taking orders from Frumpkin. Where is it?"

            "You claim you seen me there, you orter
know where it's at," Chuck pointed out reasonably.

            "Where it
is,"
O'Leary
corrected briefly. "I wasn't really there; I just
saw
it."

            "Oh, you have visions do ye?" Chuck
chortled. "Sorry, bub, I can't use no palm-reader in the act."

            "Don't you go going soft, Charles,"
the harsh voice of Chick came from offside. Lafayette looked over his shoulder
and saw the hard-faced woman, her wig awry, climbing to the scaffolding a few
feet away. She gripped a small nickle-plated .735, aimed at Lafayette's right
knee.

            "Go on, git down there," the lady
added. "And this corn-popper ain't much, but at this range it'd smart
some."

            Back on the ground, Lafayette went along
apparently docilely when Chuck's pudgy but surprisingly powerful fingers
clamped on his arm and urged him toward a nearly intact tent of an offensive
ocher-pink color, with contrasting patches. Inside, in an odor of hot
rubberized canvas, he accepted a seat on the edge of a folding director's chair
with MINE lettered on its back. The showman took a position behind an
un-painted board-and-orange-crate desk, the big .45 in front of him. Chick
posted herself beside the fly, gun in hand.

            "We're finely beginning to get a handle
onta you, Mr. Whatever-Your-Name-ls," Chuck stated in the tone of a
magistrate introducing a dull stretch on his calendar. "We know now we got
to take you inta account. Leastways, Chief says so; and I'm a kump'ny man, so
just you lay it out plain: What's your angle in this?"

            "I have to find Daphne and get back home
with her," Lafayette said tightly. "That's all. You can keep the
rest."

            "Don't go tellin' me what I can keep,"
Chuck instructed Lafayette coldly. "Don't get no idear you're in the
saddle here; onney you got a couple tricks Chief wants to find out about, is
all's kep you alive up to now; so spill it: How'd you tie in to the Prime
Generator?"

            "Never heard of it," Lafayette said.

            "Now, don't go givin' us
that
old
crap," Chick commanded in an irascible tone. "We ain't got all the
mornin'."

            "I thought it was afternoon,"
Lafayette said.

            "Don't matter none," Chuck stated.
"Mornin' or evenin', you're openin' up
now."

           
"I would," O'Leary assured his
captors, "if I knew what to tell you. All I know is, I don't know what's
going on, and haven't, since I did that dumb trick with the tail of the
Unicorn."

            "Ain't no sich of a thang's a unnercorn,
not in this whole lamina," Chuck cut in.

            "Not a real unicorn," O'Leary
explained. "The constellation, you know—the same one some people call Ursa
Major, or the Great Wain."

            "Now let's not get inta that level o'
energy transfer," Chuck admonished. "Stick to plain old A-level stuff
fer now. Chief'll wanna know all about the G-scale stuff later."

            "I didn't do it intentionally,"
Lafayette explained. "I was just musing, sort of."

            "Well, we ain't amused," Chick put in.
"Come on, Charles, might's well take this feller on in to Field HQ; we
ain't gonna get anyplace with him. Let's face it, we ain't got the education to
ask the right questions."

            "Guess yer right," Chuck conceded.
"Jest figgered it'd be kind of a nice note in the old Performance Record
if we could take Chief the whole story all wrapped up."

            "Get us kilt or worse, tryna second-think
old Chief," Chick stated bluntly.

            "Quite right, my dear," Frumpkin's
voice interrupted as the Man in Black strolled casually into the tent.
"Actually," he went on, "I've decided to remain at this locus
until I have all the facts from our Mr. O'Leary here. You two may go along now.
I shall conduct the interrogation in my own way."

           
"Tole
ya, Charles," Chick's
metallic voice was informing her partner as they exited clumsily, Chuck
muttering under his breath.

            "Have no fear," Frumpkin said over his
shoulder. "Your apprehension of this fellow will be noted in the
record." Frumpkin turned casually toward the rude desk, but before he had
taken a step toward it, O'Leary had reached him and taken a secure grip on the
elegant official's neck.

            "We'll talk, all right," Lafayette
said. "But you'll be answering the questions. Start with that fiasco back
in Nicodaeus' old lab: What were you and your sidekick Belarius V doing there?
And why did you try to grab me? Where's Daphne?"

            "Unhand me, Lafayette," Frumpkin
ordered in a strained voice as he attempted to reach inside his well-tailored
black tunic, a move which Lafayette countered by seizing the arm and bringing
it up behind his would-be captor's back. Seeming to take no notice, Frumpkin
continued: "You gain nothing by submitting my person to indignities, my
lad. Inasmuch as I'm well aware you've not the necessary toughness of spirit to
commit murder in cold blood, we may as well conduct ourselves as
gentlemen."

            "My blood could warm up," O'Leary
informed his captive, "unless you tell me right now what's happened to
Daphne." He increased pressure on both neck and arm, eliciting a sharp
squeak from the no longer haughty Man in Black.

            "Kindly accept my assurances that I know
nothing of this Daphne persona to whom you allude," Frumpkin blurted,
attempting to twist free of O'Leary's grip, which he accordingly tightened.

            "Better not struggle," Lafayette
advised the smaller man concernedly. "I don't like the sound of that
shoulder joint."

-

            "Oho," the hearty voice of Duke
Bother-Be-Damned boomed in the entry. "I see you've the situation well in hand,
Sir Lafayette. I encountered the curious pair calling themselves Chick of
Chickenchuck and Chuck of Chuckenchick, or the like. I managed to elicit from
them the cause of their abrupt exit from this rude pavilion, and came hither at
once, in the event you required my aid. But of course, 'twere footless. I am
about to proceed now on the errand which was interrupted by the mishap to my
fire-chariot, the which I hope will dispel this wretched enchantment. Wilt
accompany me, Sir Lafayette? I'd fain have a true man at my side when I go to
consult the dread witch-woman."

            "Sure, Bother, I'll come," Lafayette
agreed, watching closely as Frumpkin, whom he had released, crept to the seat
behind the desk, all trace of arrogance gone from his demeanor. He sat and
began plucking at the papers scattered on the desk.

            "Tis good," the duke commented
cheerfully, "to see this popinjay's airs punctured. His manner was too
pushy by half. Now," he continued, fixing a fierce-eyed gaze on the
crestfallen Man in Black, "no mischief in my absence, mind. On my return I
shall deal with your pretensions in mete fashion. Come, Sir Lafayette." He
turned, and Lafayette followed him to the tent-fly and out into the watery
sunlight.

            "This witch-woman," O'Leary said,
overtaking the big fellow, "this is the first I've heard of her. Who is
she? Why do you want to see her?"

            "How now? This province of Leary must
indeed lie in the remote boondocks," Bother returned. "If you've
heard naught of the fame of Henriette in the Hill, mistress of the Black
Art."

            "Yes, it's a long way from here,"
Lafayette conceded. "Do you really believe in magic?"

            "How not?" the duke snorted.
"Have I not seen the very world transformed before mine eyes?"

            "Sure," O'Leary agreed. "So have
I—lots of times; but that's different."