The Galaxy Builder (31 page)

            Frumpkin dismissed the question with a flip of
his well-manicured hand. "After all, lad," he murmured unctuously,
"when one can call on unlimited resources, why be stingy? It's true my
cadres are extensive; but, far from docilely following my wishes, as you
suggest they forced you to do, you repeatedly committed a curious act which cut
across my complex pattern of causality, plunging my carefully constructed
scenario into confusion! At last my experts were able to learn that it was at
moments when you, ah—to employ your own curious term—'focused the Psychical
Energies', that my control of Destiny itself was broken. But"—Frumpkin
paused to look triumphant—"they furthur established that it was also at
precisely those moments that you were vulnerable to my own Prime
Directive!"

            "No bull?" Lafayette said
contemptuously. "Professor Schimmerkopf didn't mention that part."

            "I have also investigated this Professor
Doktor Hans Josef Schimmerkopf, late of the University of Leipzig and the
Homeopathic Institute of Vienna, in an obscure locus now forever dissolved both
into the past and into the quasinothingness of the unrealized. He and all his
works no longer exist and never did!"

            "Too bad," Lafayette said carelessly.
"I was going to write his estate a fan letter."

            "You dare to jape at this, the crucial
contretemps of all the cosmos?" Frumpkin demanded savagely. "Almost I
incline to believe that you are indeed no more than an ignorant blunderer with
an uncanny knack for precisely that paradoxical behavior which alone can seem
to set my plans at naught. I say 'seems' because of course, in the end, I shall
prevail!"

            "You say Prof Schimmerkopf never
existed?" O'Leary queried, unmoved by Frumpkin's outburst. "That has
to mean that the locus he was a part of never existed, because without him it
would be a different locus. And it follows that Colby Corners never existed,
nor I— since he was on record in the local library, and he changed the course
of my life. And if I never existed, then ... who am
I
?" He glared
at Frumpkin, who smiled sleekly.

            "You begin to see the magnitude of the
problem, lad. Your one chance is to attach your trifling destiny to the great
engine of my own fate, and then to refute the unacceptable. But I'm wasting
time." Frumpkin turned to wave a hand, and at once the cocktail-sipping
crowd begain to drift away. O'Leary noticed Marv standing nearby. Noticing
Lafayette's eye on him, Marv came over and looked curiously at Frumpkin.

            "Now what, Al?" he inquired genially.
"I guess this is the like showdown, eh? I heard what His Nibs here was
saying, about how it was you or him. But where does that leave me?" He
looked more keenly at the haughty Man in Black.

            "What you got in mind for a honest fellow
like myself?" he asked in an edged tone. Frumpkin waved him aside.
"Later, my man," he said coolly.

            While the two talked, O'Leary again put the
flat-walker to his ear.

-

            "—outside our jurisdiction, Slim,"
Roy's voice peeped faintly. "We got one chance: Focus the Psychical
Energies one more time, and I can get a hard fix and rotate a strong-arm gang
in there fast. Maybe—"

            The message was interrupted as a hand grabbed
Lafayette's wrist just as something swept his feet from under him. The
flat-walker was wrenched away, and as Lafayette fought his way back to his
feet, Frumpkin was saying:

            "—my own inspection!" He was holding
the Ajax device close to his face, studying it. Marv was at his side, looking
anxious.

            "Hmmm, yes," Frumpkin muttered.
"One of the fiendish devices of Ajax, I see." He glanced up at O'Leary.
"Oh, yes, Sir Lafayette," he commented. I'm well aware of the warped
ingenuity of those little beasts. You'll recall that I retain in my employ one
Troglouse III, a
renegado,
who has briefed me thoroughly on the Ajax bag
of tricks. I can't tell you the trouble they've caused me. Seem to have links
to high orders of reality. One day I shall deal with them as they
deserve."

            "In that case," a hearty voice spoke
from low and behind Frumpkin, who jumped as if prodded with a pin, "you
can gimme the medal
now—
quick, before you find out you been fired off
the job." It was Sprawnroyal's bass tones. O'Leary thrust Frumpkin aside
to grab the small man's calloused hand and greet him enthusiastically.

            "Roy! You got through! This Frumpkin is
even nuttier than I thought! Now he's talking about switching the basic planes
around so that I—and Artesia, and you, and Daphne, and everything
worthwhile—never existed!"

            "Easy, Slim," Roy replied soberly.
"It's not all bluff," he admitted. "What he's talking about is possible,
theoretically. If he can reweave the lines so as to render Plane V-87 less
likely than some alternate he's cooked up—then the rest follows
naturally."

            "Take him!" Frumpkin yelled, making a
grab for Roy, who stepped aside and casually tripped the taller man as he
lunged. Marv popped up from a deep chair nearby to seize Frumpkin's arm and
haul him to his feet.

            "I heard all that," Marv blurted.
"And I, for one, got no intention o' being relegated to a unrealized
status like Shorty here says. So how about it, sir?" Marv was making
ineffectual efforts to assist Frumpkin to rearrange his satin dressing gown.

            "Leave me alone, you cretin!" Frumpkin
snarled and thrust the clumsy Marv from him. He assumed as menacing an
expression as his shattered dignity allowed.

            "Whose side is the big bum on, Slim?"
Roy asked Lafayette in a stage whisper. "I thought he was a pal of
yours—"

            "He is," O'Leary confirmed, watching
Marv hovering at Frumpkin's elbow. "Or I thought he was. Frankly, Marv has
had me puzzled; he's stuck with me through thick and thin, I'll give him
that—but once I overheard him throwing me to the dogs. Of course, he had a
logical explanation."

            "Sure," Marv said eagerly, giving Roy
a sour look. "At the time, like I said, I hadda tell 'em
sumpin.
Why,
Al, they were planning on stringing me up!"

            "What's this 'Al' business, Slim?" Roy
asked.

            "He pretends to think I'm some mythical
character named Allegorus," O'Leary explained. "Or maybe he's not so
mythical; I met him once ..." Lafayette broke off, looking thoughtful.
"It was right back at the beginning of this farce, just after I ran into
Frumpkin here for the first time, in the tower. He had some errand or something
he wanted me to do, but before we got around to it, things started coming
apart, literally."

            "Enough of this idle chatter,"
Frumpkin barked. "Allegorus, indeed! It's well enough known that he's a
figment—a demi-corporeal pseudobeing evoked as a totem by petty minds in
moments of stress—a mere superstition, nothing more."

            "I still talked to him," Lafayette
said quietly. Glancing past Frumpkin across the low, now nearly dark and almost
deserted room, he realized that the guests had been quietly departing,
switching off bridge lamps as they went. But from the shadowy corners others
were emerging: small, gnarly men in pink uniforms, carrying in their hands
complex apparatuses which O'Leary felt sure were weapons. Noting Lafayette's
expression, Frumpkin turned to follow his gaze.

            "Oh, good enough, Trog," he called
brightly. "Just deploy your troops loosely here and stand fast. I expect
to transfer this interview to the technical installation in a moment. Here,
you!" he yelped at one stubby figure, forging in advance of the main body.
"Keep back there! I told you I'm about to effect a transfer. Can't have
any interference; it's a delicate technique."

            "Hard lines, Bub," the Ajax man
replied jauntily. "Maybe you better lay down, face-first, hands out wide,
flat on the rug."

            "You're not Troglouse!" Frumpkin
yelled, backing a step, only to recoil when Roy jabbed him sharply in the seat
with a hard thumb.

            "Better do like Casper says," the Ajax
rep suggested mildly, "before he forgets his training about destroying
evidence and gives you a jolt with the nothing-gun." Roy turned to wink up
at O'Leary. "Now we'll get a few answers out o' the sucker," he said.
"Old Casper's a real curious fellow, when I tell him to be."

            As Lafayette opened his mouth to congratulate
his diminutive ally, he noticed that the grayish fog had reappeared, which made
even Roy's homely, good-natured face appear blurred, though he was only a yard
distant. Lafayette took a step—or tried to: His feet seemed stuck to the floor
by a gluey substance. He pulled harder, and realized that he was firmly
trapped. He yelled, felt the glue flow into his mouth, immobilizing his tongue,
and down his throat. He couldn't breathe.

            Roy's mouth was moving, but no sound emerged.
The light grew dimmer. Only Frumpkin's face seemed to glow through the opaque
air, his eyes glittering like highlights on polished gem stones.

            As Lafayette fought to draw breath, he saw dimly
that no one was moving. Marv stood over Frumpkin, his arms folded as if he
noticed nothing unusual. Casper was nowhere to be seen.

            "As you see, Lafayette," Frumpkin's
voice seemed to echo from an immense distance, "I still have a few
resources on which to call. Don't panic; the difficulty with your breathing
will clear up in a moment, just as soon as we've completed our transit across
extra-time, a matrix with which perhaps you are unfamiliar. Only another, oh,
perhaps ten seconds subjective, then we shall correct a number of inequities.
Take a final look at your former companions, my boy, since you'll not be seeing
them again. They will remain suspended in the Eternal Now forever, neither
realized nor totally dissubstantiated, conscious and able to reflect at length
on their treasonous folly in attempting to foil me."

            Still straining desperately to draw breath,
O'Leary watched Marv, Casper, and a total stranger of Chinese appearance
standing nearby, arrested in mid-motion, looking like waxworks. All but
Sprawnroyal, Lafayette saw with a sudden access of hope. The little man was in
the act of turning toward Marv. As Lafayette watched, he saw him languidly
complete the movement, reach out deftly to pluck something from Marv's pocket,
then turn to give O'Leary a slow wink. There was no one else in sight; the big
room, looking like a deserted warehouse now, was deep in shadow. The silence
was total. Roy took a slow step around Frumpkin, still supine, toward O'Leary
who, striving mightily to draw breath, felt the resistance collapse and
revivifying air rush into his lungs.

            "Roy!" he gasped. "What
happened?"

            "The sucker was a little trickier than I
gave him credit for," Roy said without apology. "But of course, his
tricks only work in his own jurisdiction. I'm outside, because I'm not really
here, Slim. You see, at Ajax we worked out what we call the counter-grid, a
complete set of alternates to the natural grid, and to this bozo's own personal
construct too. You might say nature and Frumpkin's setup lie at right angles,
so to speak, in overspace. Well, we engineered the counter-grid vertical to
that plane. So, we can operate anywhere we like—as long as we're within range,
natch. After old Frumpkin here cut off our power-tap we were drawing from the
natural entropic potential; gave us all the juice we needed and gave us a
little edge in some of our more unlikely gadgets, too. We set up a jury-rig,
drawing on Frumpkin's own pseudo-entropic energy, and that was just barely
enough to let me punch through to this semi-half-phase layout here."

            "Much good it will do you!" Frumpkin
barked. "So far, I've stayed my hand, out of sheer altruism; but now I'm
at the end of my patience."

            "Gosh," Roy said in mock awe.
"What do you do when you run out of patience, you silly-looking
maniac?"

            At this insolence, Frumpkin literally began to
foam at the mouth. Red-faced and with spit dribbling from his chin, he shook
both fists and yelled.

            "I dismiss you all back to the nothingness
from which, after all, you were never really evoked!" He turned to a boxy
apparatus beside him which until now Lafayette had not noticed. It was the same
unit, he thought, that Frumpkin and Belarius V had had with them at O'Leary's
first meeting with them.

            "Don't let him use that gadget, Roy,"
O'Leary urged as he himself strove mightily, but without success, to make a
move to intercept the furious fellow.

            "No sweat, Slim," Roy said easily.
"He's about to find out Ajax equipment won't work when it's directed
against Ajax personnel—a little sort of safety device we install in all our
stuff."

            Then Marv was between Frumpkin and his infernal
device. "Back off, brainless," Marv said roughly, pushing Frumpkin
aside. "You heard what the little runt said."

            "He's bluffing!" Frumpkin yelled, and
lunged again.