The Galaxy Builder (4 page)

            "On which side?" O'Leary demanded.
"Which way is north?"

            Marv hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "I
got a keen sense o' direction, Al, but so what? Inside this hole, the onney
direction innersts me is up."

            "I mean on the map," O'Leary explained
testily. "Now, if we're to the west, that's where the wine cellars used to
be. And if the lower dungeon is under the cellars, say, that would put us just
about in the unused storeroom where Goroble had his stolen equipment stashed;
and if that's so—" O'Leary rose unsteadily on legs which felt as if they
had been freshly molded of papier-mâché; he staggered, but righted himself and
went across the room to study the crudely mortared blocks of rough-hewn masonry
which comprised the partition. He identified the faint arrow he had scratched
on the stone so long ago, reached, pressed, and felt the apparently solid
masonry yield and swing inward, exposing a pitch-black passage beyond.

            "Come on, boys," he said, and without
waiting for a response, stepped through.

            At once, he was at home, and memories came
flooding back:-creeping through dark passages behind Yockabump as the court
jester led him for the first time through the system which gave covert access
to practically every room in the great pile; later, exploring alone and finding
the false king's hidden store of stolen high-technology gear; then, still
later, leading Princess Adoranne and Count Alain to the ballroom just in time
to cut short Quelius' bold attempt to usurp the throne of troubled Artesia. It
was like the old days, Lafayette tried to tell himself—the bad old days when he
was, at first, a displaced pauper in flight from the law and an outraged
populace, and later, when he was a pampered favorite of the sovereign, in
flight from the cops as well as from a gang of cutthroat wayfarers plus the
Central Security Forces, all determined to cut him to small bits without trial.
Compared with those days, he assured himself, this was a cinch: All he had
chasing him now was Lord Trog's hit squad—and he was inside the ruins of the
palace, with free access to the Tower, of all places, the one place he was
likely to find some key to this mad situation; and surely Daphne was up there,
waiting for him to rescue her.

            But, he reminded himself sternly, he had
promised Daphne to stay away from the lab, and now she was gone, poor trusting
girl ... But she
had
to be in the Tower, unless Trog and his boys were
better liars than seemed likely ... So all bets were off: His promise didn't
count. And the pivot-stone opening on the narrow passage to the Tower stair had
to be right along here ...

            He found it and slipped through onto the landing
outside which he had first been grabbed by Marv and Omar, which reminded him
...

            "This way, fellows," he called
heartily. "Stick with me and we'll be out of here in maybe a trice and a
half."

            "Where are we at?" Marv demanded
sullenly from the darkness hiding him.

            " 'Where' means 'at what place', Lafayette
told the uncouth fellow. "So you don't need to hang that 'at' on the end
of your sentence; it's redundant."

            "Skip all that jazz, bo," Marv
returned. "But whereat are we?"

            "Where we are at," O'Leary replied
with dignity, "is right back where you two clowns clobbered me in the
first place."

            "You mean—?" Omar's voice choked up
before he could utter the thought.

            "I mean," Lafayette confirmed.
"It's a lot better than the lower dungeon, right?"

            "Excuse us, bo," Omar's voice floated
back as the two exited hastily into the night.

-

            "Daphne," O'Leary yelled up the
stairwell, but only a sardonic echo returned. He started up into darkness,
brushing aside cobwebs, tripping over small objects on the stone steps;
doubtless, he thought, items dropped by thieves as they hastily looted the
ruin. He paused to yell again: nothing, not even a good echo this time. But she
had
to be up there, didn't she? he thought desperately. There was one
way to find out. He started up, one step at a time. Round and round the spiral
stairway climbed. The steps continued to be littered with loose objects. It was
strange that the Tower had survived, essentially intact, when all the rest had
been reduced to rubble; but that was a good sign, he thought contentedly—that
Central still maintained an interest in their only permanent point of contact
with Locus Alpha Nine-Three, Plane V-87, Fox 221-b, known to its inhabitants as
Artesia.

            He was halfway up when he heard the first sounds
of pursuit from below. Apparently Lord Trog had offered his loyal hit squad a
fate even more dismal than the Dread Tower to any who failed to enter the
latter in pursuit of the quarry. He sat on a step and listened. The pursuers
seemed to be moving rather slowly. But even so, he'd be trapped at the top and
would be able to do nothing but await their arrival.

            O'Leary rose and went on. At last he reached the
big iron-bound door. A ragged hole gaped where the big combination lock
installed by Nicodaeus had formerly served to bar intruders. It was just as
well: he wasn't sure he could remember the combination. He called once again
for Daphne as he pushed the door open wide. For a moment he thought he had
elicited a response, if only a faint sound of movement within, but as he
stepped eagerly forward he saw that the room was empty. Of course, the old lab
equipment of Nicodaeus was long gone: the tables covered with alembics and
retorts, the shelves containing eye of newt and best mummy-dust, the
crackle-finish panels crowded with dials, indicator lights, and flickering
oscilloscope traces. Now it had the appearance of some ancient tomb, deep with
dust, festooned with cobwebs, eerie in the moonlight streaming through the
double doors which opened on the small balcony from which he had been forced
more than once to flee to safety.

            There was one more possibility, he reminded
himself, sternly rejecting hopelessness: the most important item of all—the
special telephone to Central, in the cabinet beside the door. He turned to it,
ready to utter a cry of relief, but instead he groaned. The door of the
compartment had been ripped from its hinges, and the interior was empty but for
a scattering of dust and a number of bits of waste paper. A stub of wire,
rudely hacked short, projected from the cabinet wall near one corner.

            Aha! This was more like the old O'Leary luck. He
could scrape the insulation away, cross the bare wires, and tap out an SOS.
Surely some on-the-ball operator at Central would get the message, trace it,
and—

            "Move not, on your life!" A harsh
voice called so close to O'Leary's ear that he uttered a yelp and started
violently. Hard hands grabbed his arms, half-supporting, half-restraining him.
He considered stamp-kicking the man behind him, but upon seeing the other man,
in front of him, he chose discretion.

            Fists on hips, clad in a close-fitting outfit of
black trimmed with silver, a large businesslike handgun in his fist, stood a
man only half a head shorter than Lafayette's six-one, his face thrust forward
to bring its expression of hostility within an inch of O'Leary's own features.
It was the face from the dream.

            "Caught you red-handed, simpleton!"
the familiar voice barked. "Did you actually imagine you could commit
these outrages against the august peace and security of Reality Prime with
complete impunity? Saucy rogue, eh, Chief, thus to bait Belarius in his very
den?" The stranger's gaze went past O'Leary's shoulder to the man behind
him.

            "Did you say 'Belarius'?" Lafayette
croaked.

            "So, you recognize the name of the fabled
Scourge of Scoundrels, eh?" Suddenly Lafayette was spun from behind.

            "You're not Belarius," he blurted, nose-to-nose
with a stocky fellow, also in black-and-silver uniform and gun, his outfit also
trimmed with black-and-gold tracings at the wrist and collar.

            "You picked the wrong name, wise guy!"
O'Leary went on hotly. "I happen to know Belarius personally, even if he
is
a big shot; in fact, I was instrumental in getting him out of a serious
scrape once. He's a big fellow —six inches taller than you, at least, with
these really piercing blue eyes, blue like a cave of ice, and a beak on him
like an eagle; not that he's not a distinguished-looking old boy—and he's lots
older than you. Go on, kid me some more ..."

            "The description you offer is that of my
grandfather's grandfather, Belarius I," the self-styled Belarius said
coldly. "Is your remarkable longevity another trivial detail to be
dismissed with a wave of the hand?"

            "I'm not really three hundred and
thirty-one years old," Lafayette replied with dignity. "That is,
maybe I was born three hundred and thirty-one years ago, but I've only lived
thirty-one years."

            "So, having been cut down in your boyhood,
you rose from the grave after three centuries to resume your mischievous ways,
is that it?" the imposter demanded sarcastically.

            "That's not what I said!" O'Leary
yelled. "Don't start trying to put me in one of those dumb false positions
again! I'm Sir Lafayette O'Leary, and I
know
you're not Belarius!"

            "Am I not?" the fellow replied coolly.
"That would come as a great shock to my lady mother, who reared me as the
fifth of that ilk."

            "Oh, I forgot this is three hundred years
later," O'Leary gobbled, his sarcasm lost on his impassive captor.
"You can let go my arm now; I won't fall down. But that
was
quite a
shock, having you creep up on me in this spooky place. How did you fellows get
in here?"

            "Rather tell
me
how you gained
ingress to the Sealed Chamber," Belarius demanded, releasing O'Leary.

            "And why, as well," his partner chimed
in from behind. "What sought you here which was worth the forfeit of your
existence out to eight parameters from your native locus?"

            "Locus? You know about loci?"
Lafayette babbled in relief. "So you must be from Central, right? You
discovered something awful had happened to Artesia, and they sent you out to
investigate, right? Boy oh boy, am I glad to see you!"

            "A defense of insanity will avail you
naught, wit-told!" Belarius snorted. "As for Central, be assured that
it is four levels of command inferior to Reality Prime, and that regardless of
what chicaneries with which you may have deluded petty Central, your career of
crimes against reality has now come to an end!"

-

            "I didn't do anything, fellows,"
O'Leary protested wearily. "For once, I'm really innocent. I was just
sitting in the garden admiring the stars with Mrs. O'Leary—I mean, Countess
O'Leary, Daphne, my wife, you know, and all of a sudden—"

            "Yes?" Belarius prompted, "go
on."

            "All of a sudden it was raining; and that's
strange because I had just been reflecting that, from locus to locus, the
weather never changes, even when everything else does."

            "You may as well confess all, Mr.
'O'Leary', as you have the effrontery to style yourself."

            "I didn't style myself," Lafayette
objected. "That's the name they gave me at the orphanage. In honor of Mrs.
Beldame O'Leary, the founder, you know. And there's nothing to confess,"
he added. "What is it you think I've done, anyway?"

            "The primary charge," Belarius said
coldly, "is that you did willfully and with malice aforethought commit an
act or acts of the third level of malfeasance, thereby creating an anomaly of
Category Ultimate, the full repercussions of which act or acts having not yet
been manifested. Shall I go on?"

            "No. Go back," O'Leary suggested.
"What's the third level of whateveritis, and what does Category Ultimate
mean?"

            "It means, quite simply," Belarius
said harshly, "that you have forfeited whatever claim to continued
existence you may have had. You're under arrest, and will be taken at once to a
designated holding locus and there terminated."

            "He means killed," the other man
contributed, "all in compliance with the Code, of course. It's quite a
coup for His Lordship: he deduced you'd be here—and we've caught you
red-handed."

            "I never heard of this code of yours,"
Lafayette stated flatly.

            "Ignorance of the law is no excuse,"
Belarius quoted. "But you could hardly have failed to notice the class-AA security
barrier around the Chamber, or the crack regiment of guards patroling the area,
or the prominently posted notices reading 'NO ENTRY', to say nothing of the
type-Z combination lock on the door itself, all of which you somehow broached.
Now, it will be of some interest to know how you did it, never mind 'why?' for
the moment. Begin with the steel-and-concrete legtraps. The Chief of Security
assured me personally that they were impassable. How did you pass them?"