The World Shuffler (23 page)

It was falling, the empty sleeves waving a hectic farewell, dropping toward him. Wind-tossed, it whirled out away from the building.

With a wild lunge, Lafayette threw himself into space. His outstretched fingertips brushed the coat, snatched, caught the heavy cloth. As wild wind screamed past him, O’Leary groped for the pocket; his fingers closed over the greasy lump of salami Swinehild had placed there—

“A miracle! Any miracle! But make it fast!”

A terrific blow smashed at O’Leary; out of the darkness he went spinning end over end into fire-shot darkness filled with shatterings and smashing and screams. Then blackness closed in like a filled grave.

“It was a miracle,” a voice that Lafayette remembered from another lifetime, ages before, was saying. “As I reconstruct events, he fell from the roof, struck the flagpole, and was catapulted back up and through the window, to land squarely atop his Highness, who was rushing to discover the source of the curious sounds outside.”

“Give him air,” another voice snapped.

Lafayette found his eyes open, looking up at the frowning visage of Lorenzo, somewhat bruised but as truculent as ever.

“You could at least have let me in on your plan,” the other O’Leary said. “I was getting worried there at the last, just before you arrived.”

“You ... you were marvelous, sir,” a sweet voice murmured. With an effort like pushing boulders, Lafayette shifted his eyes, was looking into the smiling face of Daphne—or Lady Andragorre, he corrected himself with a pang of homesickness.

“You ... really don’t know me, do you?” O’Leary managed to chirp weakly.

“You’re wondrous like one I know well, yclept Lancelot,” the lady said softly. “I ween ‘twas you I saw from my coach as I rode forth to my tryst in the forest. But—no, fair sir. We are strangers ... and I am all the more in your debt.”

“As am I,” another voice spoke up. A man stood beside Lady Andragorre, his arm familiarly around her girlish waist. He wore a short, trimmed beard and a curling moustache under a floppy hat. “Methought I’d languish till doomsday in his Grace’s dungeons—until you arrived to spring me.” He studied Lafayette’s face, frowning. “Though I cannot for my life see this fancied resemblance of which my bride prates.”

“Face it, Lafayette,” Lorenzo spoke up. “This character’s in on the ground floor. He belongs here in Melange, it seems. He used to be duke, before Krupkin came along and stuck Rodolpho up in his place. Now he’s in charge again, and Krupkin’s in the dungeon. And the lady isn’t Beverly after all. She finally convinced me.” He sighed. “So—I guess we lose out.”

“Swinehild,” Lafayette muttered, and managed to sit up. “Is she all right?”

“I’m here—and in the pink, thanks to you, Lafe,” the former barmaid cried, elbowing a nervous-looking medico aside. “Gee, sugar, you look terrible.” She smiled down at him, radiant in her court costume.

“I just want to talk to her!” a shrill male voice was yelling in the background. A ruffled figure in tight silks thrust through the circle, shot Lafayette a hot look, confronted Lady Andragorre.

“What’s this all about, Eronne? Who’s this bewhiskered Don Juan who’s fingering your hipbone? And where did you get that get-up? What is this place? What’s going on—”

“Hold it, chum,” Lorenzo said, taking the stranger’s elbow. “This is going to take a little explaining, but it seems we’re all in the same boat—”

“Get lost, junior; who asked you to meddle?” The newcomer jerked his sleeve free. “Well, what about it, Eronne?” he addressed Lady Andragorre. “You act as if you’d never seen me before! It’s me, Lothario O’Leary, your intended, remember?”

“The lady’s name is Andragorre,” the moustached Duke Lancelot spoke up harshly. “And she happens to be my intended, not yours!”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Absolutely! Wouldst dispute me?”

As peacemakers moved in to soothe the ruffled disputants, Lafayette rose unsteadily, and, supported by Swinehild, tottered away.

“I have to get out of here,” he said. “Look, Swinehild—I’ve had a stroke of luck at last. I’ve recovered my ability to manipulate the cosmic energies—so I’m going home, where I belong. And I wonder—well, I have Daphne waiting for me, so I don’t want you to misunderstand my motives—but wouldn’t you like to come with me? I can pass you off as a long-lost cousin of Adoranne’s, and with a little tutoring in how to walk and talk, you can soon fit right in—”

“Gee, Lafe—you really gotta go?”

“Certainly! But as I said, you may come too. So if you’re ready—”

“Uh, say, excuse me, ma’am,” a deep voice aid hesitantly. “Begging your ladyship’s pardon, but I was looking for—I mean, I hear tell my, er, wife—what I mean to say is, I plan to get around to marrying her as soon as ...”

“Hulk!” Swinehild cried. “You come looking for me! You must care!”

“Swinehild?” Hulk quavered incredulously. “H-holy jumping Georgie Jessel—you’re—you’re plumb beautiful!”

“Hmmmphh,” Lafayette said as the pair moved off, grabbing at each other. He managed to work his way across the room unnoticed, slipped out into a small cloakroom off the grand ballroom.

“Home,” he said, patting his pockets. “Home sweet home ...” He frowned, patted his pockets again, in turn. “Damn! I’ve lost the salami ... must have dropped it somewhere between the flagstaff and Goruble’s head.” He reemerged, encountered Lorenzo.

“There you are!” his double exclaimed. “Look here, Lafayette—we have to talk! Maybe between the two of us we can summon up enough cosmic power to get back where we belong! I’m going crackers watching Duke Lancelot squeeze Andragorre—”

“Just help me find my salami,” Lafayette countered. “Then I’ll see what I can do.”

“Food, at a time like this?” But he followed as Lafayette led the way down into the courtyard directly below the scene of his miraculous coup of an hour before.

“It should be lying around here someplace ...”

“For heaven’s sake, why not go to the kitchen?”

“Look, Lorenzo, I know it sounds silly, but this salami is vital to my psychic-energy-harnessing. Don’t ask me why—ask a bureaucrat named Pratwick.”

Ten minutes’ diligent search of the enclosed space yielded no salami.

“Listen, was I holding it in my hand when I came through the window?” he inquired urgently of Lorenzo.

“How would I know, I had two bruisers sitting on my chest at the time. I didn’t know what was happening until that Lancelot character came charging in and demanded the return of his ducal estates.”

“We’ll have to go back up and ask.” Back in the ballroom, now only sparsely crowded as the former adherents of the now-imprisoned Rodolpho maneuvered for position in the entourage of their new master, Lafayette went about plucking at sleeves, repeating his question. He netted nothing but blank stares and a few polite laughs.

“A blank,” he said as Lorenzo, equally luckless, rejoined him. “To think I had it that close—and let it get away.”

“What’s up, Lafe,” Swinehild spoke behind him. “Lost something?”

“Swinehild—the kosher salami from our lunch—have you seen it?”

“Nope. But wait a minute, I’ll see if Hulk’s got some. He loves the stuff.”

Hulk sauntered over, wiping his mouth. “Somebody call me?” he inquired, and belched. “Par’ me,” he said. “Kosher salami gives me gas.”

Lafayette sniffed. “You didn’t—you didn’t
eat
it?”

“Was that yours, Mister O’Leary? Sorry about that. Can’t get any more just like it, but we got plenty liverwurst back at Ye Beggar’s Bole.”

“That does it,” Lafayette moaned. “I’m sunk. I’m stuck here forever.” He slumped in a chair, put his face in his hands. “Daphne,” he muttered. “Will I ever see you again?” He groaned, remembering her as he had seen her last, her voice, the way she moved, the touch of her hand ...

The room had grown curiously still. Lafayette opened his eyes. A few dropped hankies and smeared cigar butts on the polished floor were all that remained to indicate that a few moments before a noisy crowd had thronged the room. Faintly, voices floated from the passage outside. Lafayette sprang up, ran to the high, ornately carved, silver-handled door, pushed through into the red-carpeted hall. A figure—he thought it was Lothario, or possibly Lorenzo—was just disappearing around the shadowy corner. He called but no one answered. He hurried along the empty passage, looked into rooms.

“Swinehild!” he called. “Lorenzo! Anybody!”

Only echoes answered him.

“It’s happened again,” he whispered. “Everyone’s disappeared, and left me marooned. Why? How?”

A sound of padding feet approaching along a side passage. A small, rotund figure in green-leather pants and a plaid sportcoat appeared at the head of a band of Ajax men.

“Sprawnroyal!” O’Leary greeted the customer-service man. “Thank Grunk someone’s left alive here!”

“Hello, Slim. Boy, you get around. Me and the boys are here to see Krupkin—”

“He’s in the dungeon—”

“Say, we’re operating a half-phase out of sync with Melange; we usually duck over here for jobs like this to avoid the crowd, you know. But how’d
you
get here? When your Mark XIII come back empty, we thought you’d bought the farm! And—”

“It’s a long story—but listen. I just had a thought of blinding brilliance! Krupkin gave you plans for a Traveler. Will you build it—for me—so I can go back to Artesia, and—”

“Not a chance, friend.” Sprawnroyal held up both hands in negation. “If we pulled a trick like that, Central would land on us like a ton of twenty-two-karat uranium bricks!”

“Central! That’s it! Put me in touch with Central, so I can explain what happened, and—”

“Nix again, Slim. Pinchcraft just got through going round and round with some paper-pusher named Fernwick or something about an allegation Ajax had let slip some cosmic-total-secret info to Krupkin. We barely managed to square matters; we won’t reopen that can of worms for a while, believe me!”

“But—where is everybody?”

“We told Central about some of the monkey business going on here. Seems like Krupkin used stuff we sold him to make up a gadget to meddle with the probability fabric. He used it to yank a fellow named Lorenzo here. Wanted to use him as bait to get his hands on Lady A, so he could trade her back for Rodolpho’s help. But when he did, he started a chain reaction; he got Lorenzo, and a couple dozen other troublemakers from alternate realities. What a hassle! But Central pulled a few strings and whisked a lot of displaced characters back to where they belonged. I don’t know how it is they left you stranded here in half-phase. There’s no life here at all, you know.”

Lafayette leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. “I’m doomed,” he muttered. “They’re all against me. But maybe—maybe if I go back to Ajax with you, and explain matters directly to Pinch-craft and the others, they’ll think of something.”

Suddenly the silence was suspicious. O’Leary snapped his eyes open. Sprawnroyal was gone. The corridor was empty. There was not even an impress of feet in the deep-pile blue carpet to show where he had stood.

“Blue carpet?” he muttered dazedly. “But I thought it was red. The only place I’ve seen a blue carpet like this was in Lod’s palace ...”

He whirled and ran along the corridor, leaped down stairs, sprinted across a wide lobby, dashed out onto an expanse of sand-drifted lawn, turned to look back. Broken lavender neon letters spelled out LAS VEGAS HILTON.

“It’s it,” he gobbled. “The building Goruble supplied to Lod. And that means—I’m back in Artesia ... doesn’t it?” He looked out across the dark expanse of desert. “Or am I still in some kind of never-never land?”

“There’s just one way to find out,” he told himself. “There’s twenty miles of loose sand between here and the capital. Start walking.”

Dawn was bleaching the sky ahead as Lafayette tottered the last few yards to the door of the One-Eyed Man tavern on the west post road.

“Red Bull,” he whispered hoarsely, thumping feebly at the heavy panel. “Let me in ...”

There was no response from behind the shuttered windows. An icy chill stirred in Lafayette’s midsection.

“It’s deserted,” he muttered. “A ghost city, an empty continuum. They shifted me out of Melange, because I was unbalancing the probability equation, but instead of sending me home— they marooned me ...”

He hobbled on through the empty streets. Ahead was the high wall surrounding the palace grounds. He clung for a moment to the small service gate, then, with fear in his heart, thrust it open.

Morning mist hung among brooding trees. Dew glistened on silent grass. Far away, an early bird called. Beyond the manicured flower beds, the rose-marble palace loomed, soundless. No curtain fluttered from an open window. No cheery voices cried greetings. No footstep sounded on the flagged walks.

“Gone,” O’Leary whispered. “All gone ...”

He walked like a man in a dream across the wet grass, past the fountain, where a tiny trickle of water tinkled. His favorite bench was just ahead. He would sit there awhile, and then ...

And then ... he didn’t know.

There was the flowering arbutus; the bench was just beyond. He rounded it—

She was sitting on the bench, a silvery shawl about her slim shoulders, holding a rosebud in her fingers. She turned, looked up at him. The prettiest face in the known universe opened into a smile like a flower bursting into blossom. “Lafayette! You’ve come back!”

“Daphne ... I ... I ... you ...” Then she was in his arms.