The Galaxy Builder (33 page)

            "What it boils down to," Bother was
saying after hours of intense discussion, "is a contest of strength between
the miscreant Frumpkin or his master, Marv, and you, Sir Lafayette—they with
their vast technical expertise and all the potency of the apparatus to which
Frumpkin is linked, and you with your native naiveté, your simple faith in some
abstraction you think of as 'right', your single-minded devotion to this fair
lady, for the which I blame you not, begad!"

            "What contest?" O'Leary demanded.
"He's been sitting on the floor bragging about all the terrible things
he's going to do, and I've been standing here wondering what I could do about
it." His agonized gaze went to Daphne who, comforted by Betty, had been
weeping.

            "What happened, Daph?" Lafayette
implored her. "How did I lose you? You were right in front of me."

            "Two men," Daphne replied, calming
herself. "These two villeins." She looked contemptuously at Frumpkin
and at Marv, who was still protesting his innocence. "They fell upon me as
I gained the terrace, threw a dirty cloth over my head, and dragged me away,
then left me in a thicket. I heard you call, my Lafayette, but my own cries
seemed remote, even to me. Then, later, I saw George, and together we bowled
over someone called Omar, and fled to the woods. There was a flood, and we rode
it here—or
there—
wherever it was, and then
he
came back one
day." She indicated Frumpkin. "He demanded that I submit to him. I
struck him, and he swore I'd never escape him. But I knew somehow you'd come,
my Lafayette!"

            "I'm sorry it's taken so long,"
Lafayette said, going to her to embrace her slim form again. His eye fell on
the faded pale velvet rag around her shoulders.

            "That was my brand-new cloak," he
said. "It must have taken years to fade that much! How long
has
it
been, Daph?"

            "I know not, my Lafayette," she
replied, sniffling. "After the first year I lost count—everything was so
strange."

            Lafayette patted her comfortingly. "Poor
kid," he murmured. "For me, it's only been a few days—I think. But
it's all over now."

            "Sir knight," Bother spoke up beside
him, "pray forgive my intervention at this tender moment, but we must make
certain decisions in haste. As you've heard, I am Chief Inspector Mobius,
carrying Category Nine credentials, empowered to act for the Council. Now, it
seems that if I'm to credit this fellow's boasts"—he paused to look
without approval at Frumpkin—"matters are in an even more parlous state
than we had assumed. I defer, of course, to your unique status; what's to be
done?"

            "What
is
my 'unique status'?"
Lafayette demanded of the stern-faced inspector. "I'm just a dumb guy who
got in over his head!"

            "Be none so modest, sirrah!" Bother
boomed. "The time for pretense is past. Now you must act!"

            O'Leary turned to Roy and squatted down to put
his face on a level with the Ajax rep's. "What do you think, Roy?" he
appealed. "What does he expect me to do? Who does he think I am?"

            "Beats me, Slim," Roy said
sympathetically, "unless he knows about the Category Ultimate Anomalies
and all. But how could he?"

            "He's an inspector, from Prime. Prime
outranks Central, I understand. But what's a Category Ultimate Anomaly?"

            "Come on, Slim, you don't need to fake it
with
me.
A CUA is what you make every time you focus, you know. By the
way, I was right about Daph. The louse told her if she didn't cooperate he'd do
you in, painful. That's why he kept pulling you back here, so she'd see you in
trouble. But how do you focus the old PEs?"

            "I don't know, Roy. But if I did know, what
should I do now—before the bubble closes in the rest of the way and squashes
all of us?"

            "Except maybe me, Slim," Roy pointed
out. "I'm not really here, remember? But to heck with that kinda talk. You
use the flat-walker"—he handed it over— "and I'll see if I can punch
a signal through to Ajax's field office for this quadrant. Doubt it, but I can
try." Noting Lafayette's surprise at seeing the flat-walker, Roy added,
"Marv lifted it off Frumpy when he was doing the Alphonse and Gaston
routine, dusting him off. I taken it outa Marv's pocket. Right now, I got Marv
on 'hold', till I can check out Frumpy's story."

            "What should I do with it?" Lafayette
asked helplessly, holding the flat-walked gingerly.

            "Oh, just try the wall here." The
concrete-like surface of the contracting sphere was only a few feet away now,
crowding all its remaining occupants together like fraternity men in a phone
booth.

            Lafayette took a last, lingering look at
Daphne's anxious face, kissed it lightly, said, "Here goes nothing,"
and faced the wall.

            "If you get into trouble, Slim," Roy
said behind him, "reorient the walker at right angles, OK?"

            Lafayette nodded and pressed forward, the
flat-walker held parallel to his body. The wall yielded easily, like dense fog,
and the display of darting lights was dazzling. He took a cautious step, then
another. Then the floor was gone and he was falling—or so his first impression
was. Then he seemed to be hanging motionless in still air. The tiny sparks of
light whirled about him more quickly than ever, vast numbers of them, which
became a dazzling, whirling glow that consumed him.

-

            The floor was hard and cold. Lafayette grabbed
at it and willed it to stay under him. The darkness was as dense as the
brilliant glare had been a moment—or an eternity—before. He blinked, saw a
faint glimmer, held it, got to his feet, and groped toward a dim-glowing
rectangle at a remote distance. He bumped against it and, feeling over it,
found a door latch. He lifted it and the door swung outward, letting in cool
night air. The light sprang up behind him.

            "No, no, over here, my boy," an urbane
voice spoke behind the glare. Lafayette blinked and groped his way toward it,
averting his eyes from the bank of fluorescents above the marble-topped
counter.

            "I know you've had a shock,
Lafayette," the voice said kindly. Lafayette turned toward it and saw a
tall man in a black hooded cloak, sitting at ease in a large leather easy chair
beside the crackle-finish instrument panel.

            "Allegorus!" Lafayette blurted.
"And I'm back in the lab! How—what?" His voice trailed off as he
covered his face with his hands. "Or am I just off on another bad
trip?" He looked directly at Allegorus.

            "Ye gods!" O'Leary said feelingly.
"Nicodaeus! Why the spook getup? If I'd recognized you the first time I
ran into you, back when Frumpkin and Belarius V were conning me, we could have
saved this whole thing! All the torment poor Daph has been through, for
example."

-

            Allegorus/Nicodaeus shook his head. "No,
Lafayette, life is not after all so simple. What will be, will be. One way or
another, the equations had to balance, and just as Bother told you and Roy—in
the end it had to come to a face-to-face confrontation between you and your opposite
number, so to speak—Lord Marvelous, as he's calling himself. Yes,"
Allegorus held up an admonishing hand. "I am indeed Nicodaeus, or at least
I am the Prime-line original of the ego-gestalt of which he is a
manifestation—rather a close manifestation, too, only a few zillion parameters
away. But in spite of that, when elemental forces are in flux, only a rascal
(Frumpkin) or a fool (yourself—no offense intended) can influence them. You
see, Lafayette, when an individual of ordinary potential places himself in the
path of what we may loosely call destiny, he is simply ejected from whatever
locus he is occupying; thus the unexplained disappearances and other weird
experiences sometimes reported—and as often ignored by the more pedestrian
personalities who indeed provide the stability of such mundane loci, as for
example Colby Corners."

            "Sure," O'Leary dismissed the subject.
"But just what was going on back there in Aphasia I? I saw the palace in
ruins. And Trog, who turned out to be nothing but one of Frumpkin's hirelings,
was in charge—or he seemed to be. I guess I was gullible to accept him at face
value. And that Marv! Lord Marvelous, that's short for —he seems to be Mr. Big.
Some disguise, coming on like a hired thug taking orders from his own servants."

            "Lord Marvelous is less elementary than he
may seem, my boy," Nicodaeus pointed out. "Don't be misled by the
persona of Marv which he was forced to adapt hurriedly when you appeared on the
scene. He assumed you'd be dealt with by Frumpkin. But he reckoned without
me," he added almost with a smile.

            "What did
you
do?" Lafayette
demanded. "Except let me walk out there and get clobbered again."

            "I remained here, with my equipment at
hand," Nicodaeus answered coolly, "until the moment when I could
safely snatch you across the plenum to relative safety. I tried a number of
times, actually: each time you ventured into half-phase. But I was blocked by
your Lord Marvelous—though it did give me an opportunity each time to keep Ajax
informed."

            "What connection do
you
have with
Ajax?" O'Leary demanded.

            Nicodaeus raised a hand. "Quietly,
Lafayette. No need to adopt that hectoring tone. I don't wish to pull rank on
you, but after all I
am
First Secretary to the Prime Postulate at
Nuclear City. Why, actually, it was I who established Ajax in a small way of
business back in Artesia's early days, long before you were born, of course,
Lafayette. Theiittle chaps proved surprisingly ingenious as well as
industrious, and soon expanded the scope of their operations far beyond
anything I had envisioned. Still, I never interfered. I did, however, keep them
posted as to your constantly fluctuating position in the plenum, and even
supplied the Words of Power of which you made such good, though random,
use."

-

            "You mean, 'raf—' " Lafayette was cut
off in midword by Nicodaeus' hand clapped over his mouth.

            "Never speak the Words of Power lightly,
Lafayette," he said severely, then removed his hand and used it to pat
Lafayette's shoulder. "Your pardon, my boy. I know you've been through a
lot."

            "So has Daph!" Lafayette cut in.
"And Roy and Bother, too, for that matter! I've got to get back to
Daphne—you have to help rne! Roy told me he and his boys had planted something
called a transfer box or something back here in the lab—the
real
lab, I
mean." He looked up: The gilded skeleton was not in its accustomed place.
"No skeleton," Lafayette told himself. "That's OK, because it
was taken down right after the first time I was here."

            "Umm," Nicodaeus agreed. "Trifle
too much, eh, lad? But let us remain calm. Transfer box: just where did Roy
install it? Useful gadget, if it is indeed present."

            "We'd better hurry, Al," O'Leary said
tensely. "That bubble's getting smaller by the second, and Daph's probably
being squashed between Marv and Frumpkin!"

            "To be sure," Allegorus replied
mildly. "A happier fate than those two deserve." The hooded man
paused thoughtfully, then spoke soberly:

            "Understandably enough, Lafayette, you've
expressed bafflement as to the motivation behind your persistent persecution
..."

            "In other words," Lafayette shot back
hotly, "why does this big shot—Marv or Frumpkin or whoever— have it in for
me? I'd like to know!"

            "Consider, Lafayette," Nicodaeus said
soothingly. "Here we have a petty fellow who comes to a great realization.
Performing menial labor in the Prime Probability Laboratory, he became aware in
time that the forces being monitored there, the great basic flows which
energize the fluctuation of any given alternative among the three states,
could, if properly—or improperly in this case—manipulated, bring into
actualization those elements of potentiality most conducive to the aggrandizement
of his own ego-gestalt."

            "What are these 'three states'?"
O'Leary asked humbly.

            "Why, you can deduce them for yourself,
Lafayette. Consider: Reality
is.
Being reality, it is not subject to
change." Allegorus paused significantly. "Consider," he went on.
"While reality is immutable, our perception thereof is constantly
undergoing modification. Any real event, artifact, or phenomenon, while
existing eternally, can be perceived serially in anticipation, experience, and
retrospect. This shifting viewpoint is the basis of the construct we call time.
Now, time comprises, in its entirety, the past and the future. The plane of
intersection of these two great realms, the zero-duration interface we call the
present, persisting for no length of time, clearly has no 'real' existence. It
is analogous to a line bisecting a plane, or indeed a plane which intersects a
three-dimensional volume. It is merely a location, not an artifact."
Allegorus pulled out the endless paper strip from a computer printout station
on the counter-top. "Now, my boy," he said as he took a pair of
shears from a drawer, "if I snip this strip in twain"—so saying he
clipped the paper across —"every molecule, analogous to elemental units of
reality, remains a part of one piece of paper or the other. The past"— he
indicated the paper left on the roll—"or the future." He tapped the
other loosly flapping end. "There is no paper between them. The cut—the present
moment—is only a position on the seamless fabric of past/future."