The Galaxy Builder (35 page)

-

            "Ah," Lord Marvelous said comfortably.
"Shot your bolt and fell short, eh, Lafayette? Pity, and all that. Here
you are, separated from all you hold dear by a barrier so thin and so
insubstantial as to be indetectable by the subtlest instruments of mankind. Yet
you can never cross it. Look yonder ..." Marv paused to wave a hand toward
the pink-spired palace gleaming rosy in the early sun. Chauncy, the assistant
chamberlain, appeared briefly on the terrace, setting out the morning's wash
for the laundry truck. Other familiar faces were in sight, including on the
upper terrace Adoranne, slim and blond and beautiful as ever, Count Alain at
her side. O'Leary made a tentative step toward them, felt himself stopped cold
as by a resilient but infinitely tough film. Daphne was coming toward him along
the walk, but appeared not to see him.

            "It's not really there, lad,"
Nicodaeus' voice said at Lafayette's ear. "This is a shadow of what might
have been and almost was. Something—I don't know what— is preventing our
reality from shifting that microscopic distance to merge into full identity and
give it all the flush of life."

            "We're closer than before," O'Leary
said. "The palace was in ruins at first; now it's back in place, as perfect
as ever. Nicodaeus, I
have
to get across the barrier. What can I
do?"

            Daphne came closer, seemed to brush past
Lafayette almost within reach; but as he turned to speak to her, he felt the
impalpable membrane close in on him, stifling his breathing. He fought clear,
stood breathing hard, looking after his wife's retreating image.

            "She's real enough, Slim," Roy told
him. "Just out of reach. Something's not meshing quite right. Wait a
minute." He went to Nicodaeus, who had herded Marv and Frumpkin aside.

            "Maybe we can squeeze it outa this
pair," Roy said. Nicodaeus turned, shook his head. "It's nothing
they're doing, Roy. It's some sort of residual resistance preventing our
matchup."

            "Scratch your heads in vain, petty
wretches," Frumpkin said in his haughtiest tone. "As you see, in the
eleventh hour my dream of glory is the master of your protégé's soulful
yearnings. Let him face me if he dares!"

            "I heard that," Lafayette said,
regretfully taking his eyes from the ghostly Daphne retreating along the path
while the real Daphne dabbed her eyes, beside him.

            "Oh, Lafayette," she wailed, "I
saw how you looked at her, and even though I knew it was really me you were
admiring, I'm still jealous. Never mind her," she went on briskly after
blowing her dainty nose on a bit of lace; she rose, and suddenly her expression
was one of astonishment and alarm. "Lafayette!" she screamed. Her
face went slack as she collapsed on the grass. Lafayette reached her first and
knelt down at her side. Nicodaeus bent over the girl, then gave O'Leary a look
of commiseration.

            "Pity, Lafayette. The stress of the
juxtaposition was too much. Her vital energy has merged with her other self,
beyond the barrier. Wave good-bye, lad. You're fated never to touch her
again."

            "Hard lines, Slim," Roy comforted
O'Leary. "Nice dame, but now we still got a problem. Think hard: Focus the
Psychical Energies one more time."

           
It's easy,
Lafayette told himself.
All
I have to do is realize that this is Lord Marvelous' doing, and it's not
binding—not if I can just think. What should I do?
He looked up to meet
Nicodaeus' sympathetic gaze.

            "Look carefully, Lafayette," the older
man said. "Can you find something, some tiny flaw that will invalidate
this almost-world, and allow your own vision to emerge into full reality?"

            Beyond Nicodaeus, Lafayette saw Marv and
Frumpkin with their heads together.

           
After all,
he informed himself doggedly,
it's
only their world view against mine. They believe in lies and treachery, and I
don't. It's up to me to be right. I have to be right
^!
.

           
"What is it, Lafayette?"
Nicodaeus broke in on his thought. "Have you noticed something that would
tend to discredit the actuality of this construct?"

            "The facade of the real palace is
perfect," O'Leary replied, his eyes fixed on a small but unsightly scar on
the polished pink marble slab inside the ballroom entrance. He walked across to
it.

-

            "Laugh, honey," a feminine voice came
from behind Lafayette. He turned. Mickey Jo, slim and radiant in a trim white
uniform with gold shoulder boards, was hurrying toward him across the lawn.

            "I don't suppose it's important," she
went on, "but my conscience got to bothering me. Remember when I put your
pocket stuff in your new suit, back in the motel? Well, I kept something as
sort of a souvenir, you know, to remember you by and all. Just a pebble. I
figured it wasn't worth anything and if I asked you about it you'd throw it
away. So I kept it. Now, it came to me I ought to give it back." She
extended her hand, on which rested a lump of pink marble, polished on one side.
Lafayette remembered picking it up and casually dropping it in his pocket long
ago, before Trog's throne.

            "Is it your lucky stone?" Mickey Jo
asked wistfully. Lafayette took the bit of rock, turned and fitted it into the
raw wound on the wall before him. It seated perfectly, leaving not even a
visible seam. At that instant, a subtle
change
came over the scene.
Behind Mickey Jo, Lafayette saw Daphne hurrying toward him.

            "I guess it was," he said as Daphne's
fog-soft hair brushed his face and his lips met hers.

The End

* * * * * *

"I fear you'll have to come to terms, Lafayette. Unless
you put an end to your resistance, you shall never find the headquarters."

"What resistance?" Lafayette demanded. "All I
want to do is get back home with Daphne and go on having a swell life."

"Precisely. Your conceptualizations of the swell life
are no longer viable, Lafayette. You must accept the new order—willingly."

O'Leary rounded on him truculently. "If your 'new
order' means I'm supposed to like being kidnapped, thrown in dungeons, kicked
from pillar to post, and kept in the dark about what's going on, you can forget
it ..."

KEITH LAUMER

^THE
GALAXY

BUILDER

ACE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS

NEW YORK

THE GALAXY BUILDER

An Ace Science
Fiction Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace Original /
February 1984

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1984 by
Keith Laumer

Cover art by John
Ennis

This book may not be
reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without
permission. For information address:

The Berkley
Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10016

ISBN: 0-441-27280-0

Ace Science Fiction
Books are published by

The Berkley
Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue,
New York, New York 10016.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

* * * * * *

Back cover

THE ADVENTURES OF LAFAYETTE

O'LEARY CONTINUE AT LAST!

The world, as Lafayette O'Leary knew it, disappeared in a
flash. Perhaps it was his own doing—after all, he had the uncanny gift of
creating alternate realities by sheer mental power.

But the result was a nightmare gone out of control. All
O'Leary wanted was to find his wife and return to the familiar world of
Artesia. Yet no sooner did he manage to extricate himself form one bizarre
situation than he was thrust into another, equally threatening ...

There was only one thing to do: he had to penetrate the very
center of power from which his destiny was being controlled and—take it into
his own hands!