The Galaxy Builder (13 page)

            "Jist you hold it right there,
feller!" he yelled. Then through the bars to Cecil:

            "It's OK, Cease, I got the skunk! Get out
here and get the cuffs on him! Then we got to find out where the secret tunnel
is at. Where is it at, boy?" He switched his attention from Cecil to
Lafayette. "You gonna tell me polite, or has Cease got to loosen you
up?" He cocked the pistol. "You can have it hard or you can have it
easy; up to you, wise guy." He raised his voice. "Snap it up, Cease,
my trigger finger is getting twitchy!"

            Lafayette shrank back against the wall, speaking
soothingly to Tode as the pistol's bore seemed to expand to the size of a
tunnel.

            "Here, you," Tode yelled. "Don't
go pulling no tricks on
me,
you low-down!" The detonation of the
.44 was deafening, but the slug hissed past Lafayette's ear, smacked the wall,
and whined off into the distance. The light-shot darkness was closing in again.
Disoriented in the sudden gloom, O'Leary took a step and stumbled; then he
seemed to be falling freely, end-over-end. He yelled, but heard no sound. His
breathing was getting labored. Slowly, orientation returned; he groped with his
feet, felt a springy surface, and took a tentative step. He seemed for a moment
to glimpse the gray room, then lunged forward—or in some direction—tripped, and
fell headlong into glaring light and a half-familiar odor of office supplies
and duplicating fluid. The floor was smooth and cold, regulation asphalt tile
in nine-inch squares, pale gray with pink and yellow flecks, he saw as his eyes
reluctantly focused.

-

            "Oh, brother," a dispirited female
voice said from somewhere above: O'Leary lifted his head and saw a desk with a
telephone, in- and out-baskets, and behind it a severely handsome woman of
middle age, eyeing him sharply.

            "Another nine-oh-two," she complained.
"Why do all the hard-luck cases have to phase in here in Reception?"
She was jabbing vigorously at a button set in a small console beside the desk.

            "Just keep calm; a realignment team will be
here in a moment," she said rapidly to O'Leary, jabbing even more
urgently. As Lafayette was getting shakily to his feet, the doors across the
gray-floored room burst open and an unperturbed medical type in starched whites
came through, manipulating a hypodermic to expel air and totally ignoring
O'Leary to address the woman:

            "I assume, Miss Gorch, that you have some
adequate reason for calling me away from a staff meeting with Class Four
emergency signal." His eyes wandered to Lafayette.

            "Who's this fellow, Mary-Ann? I suppose
he's something to do with your disaster alert?"

            "Damn right, Clyde," Miss Gorch
replied, coming to her feet. "That last nut-case one of you big-domes
accidentally shifted into HQ from some kind of orgy in a classified locus tried
to attack me before I could even get his grab number! I'm taking no chances with
this one!"

            "Calmly, my dear girl, calmly," the
official said, moving to confront Lafayette directly.

            "I'll be calm when this rapist is in
irons," Mary-Ann snapped.

            "Wait a minute," O'Leary cut into the
conversation. "I don't know who you think I am or what you claim I've
done, but the fact is I'm Lafayette O'Leary, and I'm the victim of a whole
series of disasters I had nothing to do with."

            The man in white dismissed this with a wave of
his hand. "Take him, men," he ordered; and his two aides sprang to
grab Lafayette's arms and twist them into complicated come-along holds.

            "Wait!" Lafayette yelled. "Don't
do anything hasty! If you'll take a minute to check your records, you'll find
I'm a legitimate part-time agent of Central!" He paused. "This
is
Central,
isn't it?" he demanded. The man in white wagged his head solemnly.

            "By no means, fellow. You are now at Prime,
impelled here by our irresistible Come Hither device. Now it remains merely to
assess the full impact of your guilt, so as equitably to assign penance."
He turned on his heel and strode away, shied violently as the uncouth figure of
Sheriff 'Hoppy' Tode materialized in his path. The two musclemen released
Lafayette's arms and leapt to their chief's side.

            "It's an invasion!" Clyde barked.
"I've been expecting this! Archie, sound the alarm!" He thrust the
smaller of the two guards toward the door as the other put a hammerlock on
Tode, who struggled to no avail. The .44 was back in its holster. He pointed a
shaky finger at O'Leary.

            "That man's my prizner!" he yelled.
"Hadda shoot him, and he up and vanished. I ain't had a drop! Turned into
smoke and went out, sure as I'm standing here ..." He paused; looking
puzzled. "But
am
I standing here? Whereat am I anyways?"

           
"Where
am I," Lafayette
corrected sharply. "I told you before. And. 'anyway', without the
s,
is
modern Artesian usage."

            "How do
I
know where you're at,
boy?" Tode shouted toward O'Leary. "I don't know where I'm at my
ownself! Now," he went on in a carefully controlled tone, addressing
Clyde:

            "You look like a responsible individual,
sir. So I hope you can see you got no call to sic these here fellers onto me,
which I'm a duly elected peace officer. This here feller"—he nodded toward
O'Leary—"he's the one you want. Only I got first call; had him right in my
jail and he snuck out and—and after that it gets kindy hazy. But I'm still
shurf and he's still my prizner."

            "I fear Prime's jurisdiction overrides all
petty claims," Clyde countered coldly. "Now, how did you get
here?"

            He turned to Miss Gorch. "What's his grab
number?" he demanded impatiently. "And what is your explanation for
initiating a retrieval not on the master schedule?"

            "Don't look at me, Clyde," Mary-Ann
returned hotly. "I had nothing to do with bringing these clowns in here.
Must be your Come Hither field was tuned a little too wide."

            "Rather than imputing slovenly technique to
your superiors, my girl," Clyde cut in icily, "you'd best busy
yourself getting your voucher files in order for investigation. This incident
could create a detectable imbalance in the energy budget."

            Lafayette took advantage of the internecine
wrangle to ease toward the door, reached it, and slid through to find himself
in a long corridor which he at once saw was the precise analog of a similar
passage at Central which he had once visited briefly. If the parallel held, he
should find the office of the Chief of Operations behind one of these doors. He
flattened himself against the wall as Clyde and his bodyguard burst through the
door at a run. Neither man looked to the side, but hurried past only inches
away.

            "Where's he gone? He's got to be
here!" Clyde yelled, sprinting ahead.

            "Wait a minute, Chief," the attendant
wheezed, slowing. "He couldn'ta got clear that fast! Are you sure he come
this way? Maybe he done another shift."

            "Nonetheless, we must give chase!"
Clyde threw the words over his shoulder.

            As the two pounded off along the carpeted
corridor, yelling, Lafayette eased along to the first door on the right and
opened it a crack to peer in. At once a booming voice cried:

            "There you are at last! Messenger service
is a disgrace! What's kept you, boy?" Lafayette slid inside the small
office to confront a large, irate executive type with a mane of bushy gray hair
and an expression of apoplectic fury.

            "I'm not a messenger," Lafayette
gasped. "I just need to get a few things cleared up. They sent me to you,
said you'd know, if anybody would."

            The seated man's expression softened slightly. "What's
all that commotion outside?" he inquired offhandedly. "How's a Chief
of Logistics to function in this bedlam?"

            "Beats me," Lafayette conceded,
sinking unbidden into a leather chair. "I'm Sir Lafayette O'Leary,"
he proceeded. "I've had a bad time of it, what with one or another set of
barbarians determined to do me in. Something's up—I don't know what; but the
Ajax crack investigation team is onto it, and a fellow named Allegorus is
involved. That's about all I've managed to find out; and Daphne's lost
somewhere along the line— some renegade named Frumpkin's got her, I think—and
the more I try to find her, the farther away I get. Judging from the swamp in
Colby County, I'm well outside my usual widerange. I seem to be shifting loci
spontaneously—so what can you do to help me?"

            "Why should I help you, sir?" the
Chief of Logistics inquired blandly. "Outside my interest cluster
entirely. The chap you want is Belarius, over in Ops. I'm Zoriel, Supply."

            "I've met Belarius V," Lafayette put
in desperately, "and he tried to kidnap me. He and this other bureaucrat
named Frumpkin. He's no help."

            Zoriel frowned. "If Belarius tried to put
the arm on you, he doubtless had a reason," he mused, pressing a button on
his desk-top. "So perhaps we'd best just have him in on this."

            "And now Sheriff Tode's doing it,
too," Lafayette added. "Popped right into Prime here, and he's never
even so much as heard of focusing the Psychical Energies, I'd be willing to
bet. Things are coming apart." O'Leary rose to his feet to emphasize his
point. "This is an emergency," he declared feelingly. "And it's
time for someone in a position of responsibility to slow down and listen to me,
and then take some affirmative action!"

            "Calmly, Sir Lafayette—I trust I got your
style right? Calmly, we'll just get Belarius in here and get to the bottom of
all this nonsense."

            "Look," Lafayette said desperately,
"I'm no theoretician, but I know that when basic geological features like
the bay at Colby Corners turns into a swamp, something is drastically wrong.
Even back in Aphasia I, the weather was different—it seemed very close to
Artesia, otherwise, except for some kind of barbarian invasion, but it was
pouring rain in Artesia; and not a drop in Aphasia. So that must have been a
bigger jump than I thought at first. Then this whole string of loci: I've been
popping along from one to another, every time I ..." He paused, looking
thoughtful, then took the flatwalker from his pocket and examined it closely.
It seemed, he noticed, to be vibrating minutely; the faintest of buzzes was
audible when he held it to his ear.

            "At least twice I did a major shift when I
used this gadget," he told Zoriel. "Funny; it never had that effect
before." Then he noticed that the faint buzz was modulated into speech.

           
"Chidler ovigex, raf tras
spintern,"
Lafayette heard clearly, followed by a moment of silence.
"Repeat," the tiny voice resumed. "This device is under
emergency recall. It must be returned to Ajax at once. DO NOT USE. Repeat:
Chidler
ovigex, raf tras spintern,
uh, that's, 'This device is under IEC Bring it
in at once. An Ajax rep is standing by at your local field office. Repeat,
Zum
vix orobalt, insham totrus bewhif groat. Raf tras spintern. Onfrac: raf trass
spoit."

           
"Great," Lafayette murmured
half-aloud. "It's declaring an emergency in some unknown tongue." He
looked appealingly at Zoriel. "Do you have a translator handy?" he
inquired hopefully.

            "See here, young fellow," Zoriel
replied sharply. "I don't think I like your having that thing in your
possession, whatever it is. You'd better hand it over to me for
safekeeping."

            "Sorry," Lafayette said. "You're
not authorized. I have to turn it in to the Ajax field office at once. It said
so."

            "In that case," Zoriel said coldly.
"I shall be forced to place you under restraint." He opened a drawer
and took out a flat, deadly looking handgun. "I hope you're not going to
be difficult," he said distastefully.

            "Don't count on it," Lafayette said
bitterly. "I'm getting a little tired of being placed in custody for no
reason." As he spoke he noted a renewed buzzing from the flat-walker. He
held it to his ear. "OK, I heard that, O'Leary," the tiny voice said.
Lafayette remembered belatedly that all Ajax devices included emergency two-way
communications capability. "I have you on my 'A-list," the gadget
chirped, "so I'll send somebody around to assist you in turning in the
recalled item, IAW Section Nine."

            "I'm keeping it," Lafayette told
Zoriel. "It's mine, and I'm doing no harm; just trying to find Daphne and
go home. So forget the tough stuff and be civilized. After all, this is Prime,
not some barbarian HQ in the jungle."

            "Not Prime, lad, but Supreme Headquarters
itself! And you'll find SHQ is not lightly to be penetrated by nobodies such as
yourself."

            "I didn't penetrate your lousy HQ,"
Lafayette yelled. "I was yanked in here against my will by some quack
named Clyde, with a Come Hither field!"