The World Shuffler (12 page)

“And it certainly cuts down on the shilly-shally factor.

“Of course, it is a sign of insanity.

“Poof—what’s a little touch of schizophrenia, among all my other ailments?”

He pushed on, limping alternately on the left and right ankles, both of which he had twisted during his several sprints, leaps, and falls of the night before. Gradually the trees thinned; the tangled vines and undergrowth thickened. Patches of bare rock showed through the greenery. As he emerged on a bare, wind-swept slope dotted with stunted, wind-twisted cedars, it began to rain, a needle-sharp spray that stung his eyes, numbed his face. Fifty feet farther, the slope ended in a sheer drop. O’Leary crept close to the edge, looked down a vertical face that disappeared into mistiness.

“Splendid,” he commented to the airy abyss. “Perfect. Fits right in with everything else that’s happened. No wonder the old lady flew off on a broomless broom. Not even a fly could climb down that.

“So—I simply continue along the edge until I come to a road, path, or stairway leading down,” he advised.

“You left nut a rope ladder or a funicular railway.

“A regrettable omission. Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo ... that way.” He set off, following the cliff line. Another hour passed, the monotony of fatigue, pain, and frostbite broken only by two or three slips that almost pitched him over the edge.

“You’re losing your stuff, O’Leary,” he panted, struggling back to his feet after the last spill. “Just a few years ago, a little hike like this would have been child’s play.

“Well, I can’t expect to live in luxury, with every whim attended, and stay as hard as I was when I lived by my wits.

“There must be a lesson in that for me, but I hate to admit it.”

The wind had increased; a driving downpour sluiced across the rock. O’Leary staggered on. His fingers and toes and lips were numb. He covered another half-mile before he paused for another conference.

“Something’s bound to turn up soon,” he told himself in tones of false confidence, rubbing his stiff fingers against his aching ears. “A footprint, or a dropped hanky, say ...”

BEE-beep, BEE-beep, BEE-beep ... The tiny sound seemed to be right beside him. Lafayette looked all around, saw nothing.

“Look here,” he said aloud. “Talking to myself is bad enough, but in Morse code?”

He resumed rubbing his ears.

BEE-beep, BEE-beep, BEE-beep, the tone sounded sharply. O’Leary looked at his hands. Duke Rodolpho’s ring winked on his middle finger. The ruby light glowed, dimmed, glowed, dimmed ...

“Hey,” O’Leary said weakly. He put the ring cautiously to his ear. It beeped steadily on in time with the flashing light.

“It didn’t do that before,” he told himself suspiciously.

“Well—it’s doing it now,” he came back smartly. “And it must have some significance.

“Maybe—maybe it’s a radio beam—a beacon, like the airlines use.

“Maybe. Let’s test it.” He slogged downslope, fifty feet—listened again.

Bee-BEEP,
bee-BEEP, bee-BEEP ...

“A-ha! That means I’m moving off course.” He moved on, angling back upslope. Now the ring emitted a steady hum.

“On course,” O’Leary breathed. “But on course for what?

“What does it matter? Anyplace would be better than here.

“True.” Head down, his eyes squinted against the freezing rain, O’Leary plowed on, the ring held to his ear. The hum grew steadily louder. A clump of sodden stalks barred his way. He pushed through—and was teetering over empty space. For a wild instant he clutched at the sky for nonexistent support. Then the wind was blasting past him like a hurricane. The cliff face flashing upward like the shaft of an express elevator; O’Leary noticed the large 21 painted in white as it shot past; the 20; the 19, a mere blur—

From somewhere, a giant baseball bat swung, knocked him over the fence for a home run amid a vast display of Roman candles, while thousands cheered.

Seven

Someone had used his back as a diving board; or possibly they had mistaken it for a Persian rug and given it a good flailing with steel rods. His stomach had been employed by a gang of road menders for brewing up a batch of hot tar; he could distinctly feel the bubbles swelling and popping. His head had been dribbled up and down a basketball court for several close-fought quarters; and his eyes—apparently they’d been extracted, used in a Ping-Pong tournament, and rudely jammed back into their sockets.

“Hey—I think he’s coming around,” a frog-deep voice said. “That last groan was a lot healthier-sounding.”

“He’s all yours, Roy. Let me know if he relapses.” Footsteps clunked; a door opened and closed. Lafayette pried an eye open, looked up at a perforated acoustical ceiling with flush-mounted fluorescents. Ignoring the fish spear someone had carelessly left embedded in his neck, he turned his head, saw a stubby little man with a cheerful, big-nosed face peering at him anxiously.

“How are ya, pal?” the watcher inquired.

“Yockabump,” O’Leary chirped feebly, and lay back to watch the lights whirl.

“Cripes, a foreigner,” the froggy voice said. “Sorry, Slim—me no spikka Hungarisha, you savvy?”

“But I guess you’re not really Yockabump.” O’Leary managed a thin whisper. “You just look like him, like everybody else in this nightmare looks like somebody they aren’t.”

“Hey, you can talk after all! Boy, you had me worried. I never lost a customer yet, but I came close today. You were in some rush, Slim— couldn’t even wait for the elevator.” The little man mopped at his face with a green-monogrammed red bandanna.

Lafayette’s eyes roved around the room. It was ivory-walled, tile-floored. The soft susurrus of air-conditioning whispered from a grille above the door.

“What happened?” He tried to sit up, flopped back.

“Don’t worry, Slim,” the little man said. “The doc says you’re O.K., just shook up.”

“I ... I seem to have a sort of confused memory,” O’Leary said, “of stepping down an elevator shaft—out in the wilderness?”

“Yeah. Fell two floors. Lucky at that, no busted bones.”

“Isn’t that a rather peculiar location for an elevator shaft?”

The little man looked surprised. “How else you figure we’re gonna get up and down? Hey, you ain’t got in mind filing no claim against the company, I hope? I mean, I picked up your beep, and I was coming as fast as I could, right? You should of just held your horses.”

“No doubt you’re right. By the way—who are you?”

The little man thrust out a square, callused hand. “Sprawnroyal is the handle, Slim; Customer Service. Glad to make your acquaintance. You’re a day early, you know. The order’s not quite ready.”

“Oh ... the order,” Lafayette temporized. “Frankly, I’m a little confused. By the fall, you know. Ah ... what order was that?”

“Yeah, I guess you got a little concussion. Affects the memory.” Sprawnroyal shook his heavy head sympathetically. “Your boss, Prince Krupkin, give us a down payment on a two-passenger rug, a blackout cloak, and a dozen illusions, the number-seventy-eight assortment.”

“Oh, a two-passenger assortment and a dozen rugs,” O’Leary mumbled. “Splendid. Ready tomorrow, you say?”

“You better lay here awhile and get it together, kid,” Sprawnroyal advised. “Your brains is still a little scrambled.”

“No—no, I’m fine.” O’Leary sat up shakily. He had been bathed, he saw, and shaved and bandaged here and there and dressed in baggy pajamas—yellow with purple dots.

“By the way,” he said. “How did you ... ah ... know I was here about the, ah, prince’s order?”

Sprawnroyal blinked at him. “Who else would be wearing one of the tight-beam signalers we made up for him?”

“Of course, how could I forget a thing like that?” O’Leary swung his legs over the side of the bed and got to his feet. His knees wobbled but held.

“I just need a little fog to clear the exercise out of my head,” he said. “I mean some head, to fog the clear ... some clead. I mean the head—”

Sprawnroyal’s hand grabbed for Lafayette’s elbow. “Yeah. Take it easy, Slim. How’s about some hot chow, hey? Good for what ails ya.”

“Chow,” Lafayette creaked. “Yes, by all means.”

“Come on—if you’re sure you can walk O.K.” The little man handed him a bathrobe, led the way along a twisting corridor apparently cut from living rock and carpeted in pale nylon, into a low-ceilinged wood-paneled room with a long bar at one side backed by huge copper-bound kegs. At tables spread with checkered cloths other small, sturdily built men sat talking volubly over large coffee mugs. Several of them waved or nodded to O’Leary’s guide as he steered him across to a table beside a curtained window beyond which rain swirled and beat against the glass. A jaw-aching aroma of fresh-ground coffee and fresh-baked bread filled the air. A plump little waitress with a turned-up nose, no taller than Lafayette’s middle button, bustled over and slid cups in front of them, gave O’Leary a wink, and poised a pencil over her pad.

“What’ll it be boys? Hotcakes? Steak and eggs? Strawberries and cream? Toast and jam and honey-butter?”

“Right,” O’Leary said eagerly. “And a big glass of milk.”

“Sounds good, Gert,” Sprawnroyal said. “Me, too.”

“Coming up.”

Sprawnroyal rubbed his hands together, grinning. “Well, this is more like it, eh, Slim? Nothing like a snack to brighten the outlook.”

“It’s a distinct improvement over that.” O’Leary indicated the dreary downpour outside. “There’s just one little point that bothers me: where am I?”

“I don’t get you, Slim. You’re right here, at the Ajax Specialty Works, Melange Branch, having a midmorning snack in the Yggdrasil Room.”

“Oh, in a factory. Well, that’s a relief. Don’t laugh, but I had the silly idea I was inside a cliff.”

“Yeah, sure. But it wasn’t always a cliff, understand. When the branch was first set up, it was under level ground. But there was the usual geological activity, and the plain subsided on us. But we got used to the split-level layout. And the view ain’t bad.”

“Geological activity?” Lafayette frowned. “You mean an earthquake?”

“Naw, just a spell of mountain-building. Happens every now and then, you know. Next time, this place may wind up under half a mile of sea-water, you can’t tell.”

“O.K., move the elbows,” Gert called, arriving with a laden tray. Lafayette managed to restrain himself until she laid out the food; then he pitched in with a will.

“Say, Slim,” Sprawnroyal said with his mouth full. “How long you been on the prince’s payroll?”

“Ah ... not long,” Lafayette said, chewing. “In fact, you might say no time at all.”

“Say, just between the two of us—how’s the old boy’s credit rating holding up?”

“His credit?” Lafayette jammed his mouth full of hotcake and made incoherent sounds.

The Customer Service man held up a hand. “Not that we’re worried, you understand,” he said worriedly, “but he still owes us a bundle on the Glass Tree job.”

Lafayette paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.

“Glass Tree job?” he mused. “Where have I heard of that before?”

“Say, Slim, you’re
really
out of it.”

“I’ve got an idea, Mr. Sprawnroyal,” O’Leary said. “Why don’t you just pretend that I haven’t the faintest idea what’s been happening, and just sort of fill me in? It will speed my recovery.”

“Call me Roy. Well, where to start? We first hear from his Highness a few years back, when he drops around looking for a job. That was while he was still a commoner. He’s got a few ideas, you know, so we put him to work in R & D. After a couple months the boss has to let him go. He’s got the biggest light bill of anybody on the staff, but no production. The next we know, he’s back flashing a fat purse and with a set of specs, wants to know can we knock out a few special-order items. We fix him up, he pays off in cut gemstones, and everybody’s happy. Then he promotes himself to prince, and comes up with this construction job, wants to know if we’ll take the contract. The price is right, so we go along. Do him a nifty job, too: the whole thing is formed-in-place silicone, microfiber-reinforced. A plush installation, believe you me.”

“Yes—but where does this Glass Tree you mentioned come in?”

“That’s what the construction-crew boys started calling it; the name caught on. Looks kind of like a tree at that, with all them turrets and minarets and stuff branching off the main keep. Shines real snazzy in the sun. Only it ain’t paid for,” Sprawnroyal finished on a glum note.

“Does this prince have an old lady on his payroll—one who flies on a broom—I mean without a broom?”

O’Leary’s host eyed him solicitously. “Maybe you better go back and lay down, Slim—”

“Listen, Roy: last night an old lady mentioned the Glass Tree—just after she tried to kill me.”

“Cripes! With a gun?”

“No. She—”

“Oh, used a knife, eh?”

“No, it was a vicious bare-handed attack—”

“While you were asleep, I bet!”

“Certainly not! But—”

“You did say an old lady?”

“Please, Roy—I’m trying to tell you—”

“Maybe you ought to go in for lifting, Slim, you know, weights. Get you in shape in no time, you wouldn’t have to worry about no old ladies roughing you up. Now, I can make you a attractive price on our Atlas set number two-two-three, complete with a ear-link for pep talks and inspirational messages—”

“I don’t need a pep talk! What I’m trying to say is, this old lady has something to do with the Lady Andragorre’s disappearance!”

“Lady who?”

“Andragorre. She’s my wife. I mean, she isn’t
really my
wife, but—”

“Oh, I get it.” Sprawnroyal winked. “You can rely on my discretion, Slim.”

“That’s not what I meant! She’s a very beautiful girl, and she disappeared on her way to a kidnapping. I mean she was kidnapped on her way to a disappearance. Anyway, she’s gone! And the old bat at the hut mentioned the Glass Tree!”

“So? Well, I guess everybody in these parts would know about it.” Sprawnroyal frowned. “The only thing is, there ain’t nobody
in
these parts.”

“The old woman must work for this Prince Krupkin! She mistook me for someone else—she’s nearsighted, I guess—and let slip that she was expecting her Ladyship to be delivered to her at her hut!”