The Galaxy Builder (3 page)

            "You referred to some place called
Aphasia," O'Leary commented, "I thought Aphasia was a mental
state." Then he added in a desperate attempt at rationality, "Well,
maybe it is at that."

            "Oh, I get it," Trog said, "ya
poor slob, you're off your chump, huh? Well, Lord Trog ain't one to be too
tough on a guy which he's afflicted of Allah. So relax, pal, and I'll leave my
official leech have a look at your dome."

            "I don't want any leech, official or
otherwise, to look at my dome," Lafayette came back hotly. With an effort,
he calmed himself.
Nothing to get excited about, O'Leary,
he told
himself sternly.

           
Somehow,
he explained to himself
patiently,
somehow, I've done it again—gotten myself involved in another of
those ridiculous situations where everybody thinks I'm somebody else and nobody
is who he seems to be. And it's not fair! This time I wasn't tinkering with
gadgets swiped from the Probability Lab at Central, or practicing focusing the
Psychic Energies, or meddling in Nicodeaus' lab, or anything else ...

           
"No spells, now, Bub!" the
hoarse voice of Lord Trog broke into Lafayette's self-instructive reverie.
"Nor no prayers, neither," he added. "Don't worry, you'll get a
fair trial and a relatively painless demise. Nobody ain't never said Lord Trog
don't give a fella a even break, even if it's a compound fracture o' the
femur." The barbaric lord snickered at his own wit, and shifted in his
chair, which creaked ominously under his weight.

           
I know that chair,
O'Leary realized
abruptly.
It's one of the ones that used to be in the Great Hall, spaced
between the mirrors! So these ruins really are the palace!

           
For the first time, O'Leary took a good
look around at the scrub woods that seemed to have sprung up where the south
gardens ought to have been. His eyes went to the ruined tower of chipped pink
stone looming above the treetops, the only structure in sight. Broken cut-stone
blocks and drifted rubble were scattered all about, glowing pale pink in the
moonlight. It was the east tower, where Nicodaeus' old laboratory occupied the
top story—all that was left of the palace, Lafayette realized with a sinking
feeling. He stooped and picked up an egg-sized fragment of pink stone, polished
flat on one side, and felt a pang of regret as he realized that it had once
been a part of the radiant facade of the palace; he dropped it into his pocket,
silently vowing revenge on the vandals.

            "I'm wasting time," he told himself
sternly. "The poor kid is probably alone, scared—or worse yet, not alone
and scared."

            "Daphne!" he said aloud, and took a
step past Trog and toward the ruin.

            "No, you don't, Al," the seated man
barked. "Hey, Marv, Omar! Where in Tophet are them bums which they're
pulling the duty tonight?"

            "In the lower dungeon, Your Lordship,"
O'Leary supplied.

            "So you really
are
Allegorus,
eh?" Trog grumbled. "Wit' duh second sight and all—"

            "One sight was enough," O'Leary
countered. "What happened to the palace?" He stooped and picked up
another crumbling chip of pink quartz, seeing at once that it was severely weathered.
Whatever had happened, it appeared, had happened a long time ago. That being
the case, he must be suffering from amnesia, and Daphne couldn't have been
caught in the collapse of the great building.

            "Still," he said aloud, "that's
where she was last seen —or almost seen: it was pretty hazy. So that's where
I've got to start."

            "Nix, Bub," Trog came to his feet, an
unwashed gnome less than five feet tall, wrapped in foul-smelling half-cured
hides; but he had the arms of a weight lifter and oversize, scarred-knuckle
fists, which he thrust under O'Leary's nose. "One more step and I'll
summon the boys, which dey'll trow yuz inna lion pit."

            "Nope, lower dungeon, remember?"
Lafayette said, and delivered a sharp kick to the boss's left kneecap.
"Anyway, I don't have time to be bum-rapped right now," he added as
he pushed past Lord Trog, now hopping on one leg and holding the other knee in
both hands. O'Leary ran across the expanse of rubble-littered weeds past the
last of the trees. He had reached the cracked and tilted slabs of the former
terrace when a boulder struck him on the side of the head and sent him spinning
down into a coal-black fog.

            He was back in the gray room, back in the same
dumb dream, he saw, except that the angry fellow had calmed down and was
sitting across the table from him, speaking reasonably—or almost so:

            "... cut you in for a full share; I'm not
greedy. Don't be a spoilsport." A serving-wench came up and put a full
tankard before the fellow; as she turned away O'Leary realized it was Daphne, a
drab cloth tied around her once-lustrous dark hair in place of the
diamond-studded coronet. He jumped up, knocking over the table on the man in
gray, who yelled and leaped clear. His limbs strangely heavy, Lafayette tried
to clamber over the fallen table, but it seemed to grow and elaborate under
him. Daphne was gone.

            It seemed to Lafayette that he had been climbing
for a very long time, an exhausting ascent of a vertical wall, in total
darkness. He paused to catch his breath, wincing at the ache in his head, and
tried again to remember just where it was he was going—and whence he had come.
But the problem was too complex; with a groan, he gave it up and reached up for
a new handhold on the cold, wet wall against which he clung like an exhausted
fly. He dug in his fingertips for a better purchase; they merely slipped
painfully; then his other hand, groping upward, encountered something different
from the unyielding texture of the stone wall. Cloth, it felt like, and under
it, tough stringy flesh, which recoiled at his touch.

            "Come on, pal, gimme a break, OK?" an
aggrieved voice which O'Leary had heard before broke the stillness. "How's
about you just relax now, and leave me do the same."

            "Marv," O'Leary said aloud and,
remembering his precarious position clinging to the wall, made a wild grab and
secured a firm grip on a spongy mass of whiskers.

            "Cripes!" Marv's voice yelled.
"Come on, lay off the rough stuff, which me and Omar handled you wit' kid
gloves all the way, right?"

            "Pray accept my apologies, gentlemen,"
Lafayette said. "I have no intention of savaging you. Actually, I came
along simply to assist you in escaping the unjust punishment visited on you by
your ungrateful master."

            "Yeah, after all we done for
him,
"
Omar agreed. "Right, Marv? The kid's got something there. We din't do
nothing but follow orders, and—by the way, kid, how do you figure on springing
us outa here?"

            During the exchange, Lafayette had gradually
become aware that, rather than crawling up a rough, damp stone wall, he had
been creeping across a rough, damp stone floor. He relaxed gratefully and
worked on getting his pulse and respiration back down into a range more
characteristic of a patient with a positive prognosis.

            "There's the way we come in," Marv
suggested without enthusiasm, "only I for one can't jump no forty feet
straight up and hover long enough to undo a tricky latch onna trap door before
I start back down."

            "Before we go," Lafayette said,
"suppose you gentlemen fill me in on some details, such as what happened
to the palace and all the people in it, especially Daphne? Are you sure you
didn't grab her just before you waylaid me? And who is this Trog fellow,
anyway?"

            "Geeze, kid, we musta conked ya a little
hard at that; sounds like you don't know nothing."

            "Precisely," O'Leary agreed.
"Start with Daphne. Did she escape up the stairs, or what?"

            "If she done," Omar said gloomily,
"it's curtains for sure for the poor broad, which you said she was a
looker, right, Al?"

            "Why do you fellows keep calling me
'Al'?" O'Leary demanded.

            "Meaning no disrespect, Yer Honor,"
Omar said hastily.

            "Just meant to be friendly-like," Marv
added reassuringly. " 'Allegorus' is too long fer a name, anyways. No
offense," he added.

            "Suppose I assure you, once and for
all," O'Leary said, "and for the last time: I'm not this Allegorus
person."

            "Ya must be, Al," Marv said
persuasively. "Otherwise how could you of aced old Trog inta letting ya in
here to help us out?"

            "Oh, I know a few tricks, I'll admit,"
Lafayette acknowledged. "Who
is
Trog, and where'd he come from?
Does he have anything to do with the palace being in ruins?"

            "Slow down, Al," Omar suggested.
"You're getting ahead of us. Trog is just Trog, which Frodolkin hisself
put him onna job guarding the Tower, they say."

            "Which brings us to the question of who is
Frodolkin?" Lafayette persisted.

            "He's a shot which he's so big, nobody
don't ever get to see him. He stays out at his fort, a few leagues west o'
here, wit' a big army of, like, henchmen and cronies and guys like that,"
Marv contributed.

            "What happened to the palace?" O'Leary
demanded. "Was it destroyed by this Frodolkin?"

            "Naw, nothin' like that," Omar
replied. "I mean, according to tribal legend and all, this here bunch o'
busted rock useta be some kind o' palace, like, maybe three hunnert years ago;
then it fell into roon, like they say, all but the Dread Tower, and you got
that sealed off pretty good, Al. Now you tell me one: What's so hot about that
crummy Tower, ya wanna stay in it alia time, huh?"

            "Yeah," Marv echoed. "What ya got
in there, anyways?"

            "Nothing much," Lafayette conceded.
"It's just that apparently Daphne's in there. Three hundred years, did you
say? That's ridiculous! It was perfectly all right less than an hour ago."

            "Now," Marv said, "let's get back
to how you're going to spring Omar and I. And we better get moving, which I got
a idear His Lordship has got something on his mind, like that message he got
from Frodolkin."

            "What message?" Omar demanded. "I
never heard nothing about no message."

            "You know," Marv replied glumly.
"The usual: about the sacrifice to the vampire-god and all. Like every
year. Only this time ..."

            "Yeah,
what,
this time?" Omar
persisted. "I guess we'll hafta round up some o' the local churls and
villeins and ship 'em over, like always. So what?"

            "So, Master Wise Guy, if you'd care to
refresh yer membry, ya might recall we ain't seen none o' the local clods fer
some time now, what wit' the tide of battle, like, surging back and forth
acrost their farms. Ain't nobody left in these here parts except us loyal
retainers; including the hit squad, about forty souls in all. So who's gonna
get to go and meet the vampire-god, except whatever guys happen to be on the
gig-list at the moment? Here's three of us, onney four to go to make up the
quota. We prolly got until daylight tomorrow."

            "Have you went nuts, Marv?" Omar
demanded without conviction. "You think a swell boss like Lord Trog would
send his faithful boys off to a horrible end, just to save his own neck?"
After a moment's thought he added, "Let's get outa here." He turned
to O'Leary, "Now's yer chanst, bo," he said, "to get on our good
side by working that nifty breakout you was telling about."

-

            Lafayette heard sounds of fumbling in the dark.
Then, with a sharp scratch of flint on steel, a spark glowed, and a moment
later a candle-flame ignited, shedding a mellow glow on the stone walls. It
showed a mildewed gray here in the tower base, rather than the soft pink of the
outer structure; in its radiance, Marv and Omar squatted, heads together, a
pair of hairy troglodytes eyeing O'Leary with inscrutable expressions on their
rough-hewn features.

            "Let's sum up," O'Leary proposed
briskly. "I'm still in Artesia, although Lord Trog called it Aphasia—I'm
not somehow shifted off into another continuum like Melange, or Colby Corners;
but I've gotten myself shifted in time, three hundred years into the future,
and this pile of rubble is all that's left of Adoranne's beautiful pink palace.
I'll worry about 'how' later. And Daphne's here, too, probably hiding up in
Nicodaeus' old lab at the top of the Tower, poor kid. But wait a minute: If it
really
is
the palace, then the system of secret passages is still there,
inside the walls. So—just where am I now, in relation to the palace? Marv, show
me where this dungeon is in relation to the Tower." He smoothed the mud on
the rough stone floor to create a sketching surface. "Draw me a map,"
he urged the barbaric ex-guard.

            "Well, Al," Marv began reluctantly,
"I ain't much of a one fer drawrin' pitchers, but if this here"—he
made an X with a blunt forefinger—"is the Tower, the upper dungeon is over
here to the side, like this here ..." He added a rectangle adjacent to the
X.