The Galaxy Builder (14 page)

            "Ah, doubtless you refer to Professor
Doctor Anschluss," Zoriel said soothingly. "If the professor saw fit
to bring you here, no doubt he had an excellent reason." Zoriel rose and
came around the big desk. "In the meanwhile," he added, "you'll
hand over that, er, item, which is producing a category-blue indication on my
E-stress sensor." He showed Lafayette the compasslike instrument he was
holding in his left hand, while pointing the gun with his right. Lafayette saw
the needle was well into the blue range marked HIGHLY IMPROBABLE.

            "I can't help that," he said between
his teeth. "This whole crazy situation is improbable. Nobody just goes
bouncing across the loci like the ball on a roulette wheel."

            The door burst open behind Lafayette.

            "There you are, you jailbird," Sheriff
Tode's raucous voice yelled. "Ain't nobody ever broke from me, and it
ain't gonna start now!" Lafayette turned in time to see Tode's large hand
descending, clamplike, toward his shoulder. He ducked aside and Tode followed,
planting himself between Lafayette and the door, barring his way, then
advancing.

            Still holding the flat-walker in working
position, Lafayette stood his ground. Tode's bulk pressed against him—then the
pressure was gone, and with it light and sound, except for a bewildering
display of the highspeed particles, like those he had observed before while
passing through solid matter. But they were whirling in dizzying patterns now,
concentrated immediately in front of O'Leary's wide-open eyes. The nucleus of
the speeding lights widened, engulfed him.

           
... Let this feller get past me again, Boss
Jukes ain 't gonna like it none a-tall. Where'd he go to? I had him right here,
and—hey, what's goin' on? Can't hardly think straight... dizzy. Better do like
Boss said and call fer help ...

           
Carefully disentangling himself from
Sheriff Tode's confused thoughts, Lafayette made a determined effort to orient
himself; then took a precise step sideways, felt his foot slip, experienced a
momentary vertigo, then opened his eyes to dimness. He had a view of
Frump-kin's back as the latter stood before a large and complex instrument
panel where colored lights blinked excitedly. Frumpkin spun around, then
recoiled as he saw O'Leary.

            "How?" he croaked. "Deal: Just
explain how you can broach a Type Nine force-bubble at will, and I'll... well,
I'll go easy on you."

            "It's how I'll go on you you'd better be
worrying about," Lafayette countered grimly. "Get away from that
board."

            "But," Frumpkin protested, "this
is unthinkable. I happen to know you were relegated to nonrealization some time
ago! You
can't
be here!"

            "Too bad," O'Leary replied, and
started across toward the cowering Man in Black, who turned and scuttled away
behind the big panel. Lafayette peered around the corner of the massive
equipment cabinet, saw nothing except a tangle of rudely cut cables and a
stretch of dusty floor. He turned back to the big room. Light glared, dazzling
him. He tottered; hands caught his arms, not restraining him, but easing him
down into a chair.

            "Take it easy, Al," the familiar voice
of Sprawnroyal urged gently. "You had a bad experience there, stuck in
half-phase for six weeks and all, but we got you out OK. So just take a minute
to get it together before we debrief you."

            "Roy," Lafayette said urgently.
"Where did it go? A big gray room full of fog. That's where he's keeping
her. What do you mean 'six weeks'? It hasn't been more than twenty-four hours
since this whole crazy thing started. And I've only got forty-eight more to get
Daphne out of Aphasia II before it disappears!"

            "Easy, boy," Roy soothed. "We'll
take it one step at a time. First, we have to extricate your ego-gestalt from
Mr. Tode's—that's a delicate procedure. You should never have merged with him,
Slim. I know you were under pressure. Still, it was a lousy idea."

            "It wasn't an idea," Lafayette
returned in a silent yell which echoed in blackness. "It was an accident.
I walked through a man once before with that infernal device of yours and
nothing happened; how was I supposed to know it was dangerous? Anyway,
he
walked
into
me.
I was standing still."

            "... just another few days," Roy was
saying in a tone of controlled patience. "I assure you I'm as
uncomfortable as yourself."

            "Who said anything about comfort?"
O'Leary demanded. "Just get me out of this moron's skull!"

           
"Who you callin a moe-roan?"
Tode's
heavy thought pattern cut across O'Leary's demands.
"Sure is a funny
kinda dream to be havin' and I ain't touched a drop all the day."

           
Gradually, Lafayette was becoming more
able to ignore the sheriff's elemental conceptualizations. A dim, sourceless
light became visible, but it revealed nothing. So far as Lafayette could see,
he was alone in a vast, empty space suffused with an eerie glow which emanated
from the space itself. Abruptly, he was overwhelmed with a bleak loneliness.

            "Hey, Roy, where are you?" he called;
as before, no sound was to be heard. He tried to draw a deep breath to reassure
himself that he was breathing—but nothing happened. Still, he reflected,
suppressing panic, he was quite comfortable, physically. He assessed his bodily
sensations, but was unable to decide whether he was standing, sitting, or
reclining. He had no idea which way was up. He tried a swimming motion, and was
rewarded with a sensation of darting swiftly ahead—but with no fixed point of
reference, no actual motion was apparent.

            "... Slim, I told you to stay put!"
Roy's faint voice seemed to ring, echoing, all about him. "If I lose my fix—hey!
Where are you at?"

            "Over here," Lafayette called
silently, feeling a sudden apprehension. "Don't go away, Roy," he
added. "You're my only contact with ... whatever I was in contact
with."

            "Swell," O'Leary told himself half an
hour —or half a lifetime—later. He had been resting quietly, waiting, making no
furthur move; and still he hung suspended in the featureless glow which he knew
was characteristic of half-phase, the anomalous pseudo-space between the loci
of actualization. He was lost as he had never been lost before. Perhaps, if he
sculled back the way he had come in his swift fish-dart... But Roy had said to
stay put before he had faded out. Maybe he was still in the vicinity, but
keeping quiet.

            "Oh, Roy!" Lafayette shouted, and this
time he heard an echo, faint and distant. Encouraged, he tried again. This time
it was the hoarse voice of Sheriff Tode he heard:

            "Whunder whut that feller meant about six
weeks? Ain't got no six weeks to waste; got a 'lection comin' up."

            The voice, O'Leary realized with relief, was no
longer coming from within his own personal mind-volume. It was close, but
external. Somehow he had unmerged himself from the irate peace officer.

            "That's a start," he told himself.
"Maybe Roy's working on it."

            "Looky here, feller," Tode's voice
spoke from what seemed to be a point approximately half an inch from
Lafayette's left eye. "Let's make us a gentleman's agreement, like they
say: You lay off the tricks and come on out whur I can see ye, and I'll put in
a good word about your cooperation and all at the trial."

            "Where are you, Sheriff?" Lafayette
inquired desperately. "I can't see you—just hear you."

            "Why, I'm right here, settin' on this here
fancy settee, just like the feller told me. Said he'd be right back, but I got
a feelin' I been tooken. By the way, feller, where have you got to? Hear ya but
cain't see ya nowheres."

            "That's too complicated to explain,
Sheriff. Just sit tight and hope for the best," O'Leary said silently.

            At that point Lafayette became aware of the
distant mutter of voices, distinct from Tode's hoarse croak, near at hand; more
like people arguing in the next room, he decided. He tried a move toward the
sound, a flick of the tail which sent him gliding from the deep shadow under
the lily pads out into the dazzling, diffuse glare of open water—or open
something,
he corrected, noting that his gills were pumping nicely, sluicing cool,
oxygen-laden
something
over the absorptive membranes.

            "—told you it's a ghost bogie on number
seven," an aggrieved voice said loudly from across the room.

            "And I said you better check the Manual;
this could be a type nineteen, for all
we
know," someone answered
sharply.

            "Fruits and nuts. It's just another dumb
exercise they forgot to put in the OD book."

            "Just humor me, Fred: run a six-oh-two on
it. Please? Pretty please wit' sugar on?"

            The pellucid something dimmed, grew thicker.

            Lafayette waved his limbs slowly until the now
rapidly jelling medium immobilized him. He made a mighty effort, managed to
thrust with his pectoral fins. Cracks opened across the solid medium in which
he was suspended like a fly in amber.

            "Got something here!" Fred's voice
yelled. "Les, maybe you better get off a Class One after all: don't know
if the field's gonna hold!"

            "I'm way ahead of ya, Fred; got a net team
on the way already."

            "Seems OK now." Fred said more calmly.
"Or maybe I lost it; don't feel nothing now ..."

            Lafayette tried a tentative flick of the tail,
was rewarded by a stab of pain from somewhere around the dorsal-fin area; he
relaxed and the pain subsided, then became a steady pressure, tugging him in
some undefinable direction. For a moment he went along, then made a sudden
resolution: time to use the Psychical Energies.

            He concentrated on the face of Daphne, her dark
eyes and snub nose, her sweet lips and the delicate curve of her cheekbones.
The lustrous dark hair ...

            " 'Through the black of night, I gotta go
where you are, ' " he hummed to himself. " 'And no place can be too
far, where you are. Ain't no chains can bind me, if you live I'll find thee.
Love is calling me. I gotta go where you are ..'."

            "Lafayette?" Daphne's voice said
uncertainly. O'Leary squinted through the gloom. It clarified into the familiar
dimness of the gray room. Daphne was nowhere to be seen. Lafayette saw a door
across the room, went to it, past big chairs arranged in conversational groups,
from one of which a conversation was emanating:

            "... too good of a offer to turn
down," a harsh female voice was saying.

            "Ain't saying it wasn't," a meaty male
voice replied. "Only what guarantee we got?"

            "You have my word," a voice that
sounded like Marv's put in. "Hurry up," he added.

            "Looky here," Meaty-Voice started,
"we got— ouch! Don't go doing nothing like that feller! All's I said
was—"

            Lafayette reached the door, found it locked.
Only then did he realize that he was no longer limited to swimming through gray
Jello. He paused, considering: He no longer felt the pressure of the
dim-glowing substance in which he was trapped. He thrust hard, burst through a
membrane and lay gasping on a shaggy surface which, he realized, was a grassy
bank sloping down to a mirror surface marred by ripples.

            "Got him!" the gigantic voice of Les
boomed out from far above.

            "What is it?" Fred inquired in
Olympian tones. "How'd it get into our Y-field anyway?"

            "Probably one o'
them,"
Les
replied. "Just got a little too tricky for his own good. Let's get it up
under the light and check it out."

            The pain stabbed in Lafayette's back; he uttered
a choked yell as the giant hook jerked him upward into blinding light where two
large, homely faces peered down at him.

            "Hooked from the outside," Les's voice
said, issuing from the face on the left, the whiskery one. That meant the round
face with warts belonged to Fred.

            "Fred," Lafayette gasped, "Les.
Help! I'm an innocent victim, not one of
them."

           
"Les," Fred said casually.
"Did you hear this thing say sumpin'?"

            "Don't be silly," Les replied.
"How could I of? Only folks can talk. Let's open it up and see what makes
it tick."

            Lafayette caught only a glimpse of a polished,
razor-edged scalpel poised over him before the light winked out and he was back
in pitch darkness. He waited, but no blow fell. He slept.

            O'Leary woke slowly from vague dreams of
strolling in the palace gardens at Artesia City. Reluctantly he became aware
that he was lying on his side on what felt very much like a bed. Hard and
rather lumpy, but still a bed. Fine! Maybe someone had finally dropped a net
over him and carted him off to the booby hatch to start his cure. He moved
tentatively: no stab of pain from his back, he noted with relief. He tried a
leg, felt it respond. No more fins; that was good news. Obviously the shrinks
had some effective techniques going for them nowadays. He'd only been in the
pest house for a few hours and already he was thinking clearly, his
hallucinations gone.