The Galaxy Builder (25 page)

            "Aye, as the great evil differs from the
lesser," Bother proclaimed.

            "No," Lafayette objected. "The
difference is magic versus science." He went on to explain that a shift
from one probability to another potentiality was accomplished by the
manipulation of natural forces.

            "Aye, with the help of the Evil One,"
the duke agreed, "as when by a potion of the poisonous love-apple steeped
in the broth of nettle and thorn-of-rose a lady's love is obtained."

            "That's not the same at all," O'Leary
objected doggedly. "In the first place, that's nonsense; and in the second
place, it doesn't work. Science works."

            "And so had we best, lad!" Bother
replied, giving O'Leary a hearty clap on the back with a mailed gauntlet which
so emptied the latter's lungs that for some moments his attention was fully
occupied with the effort to draw a wheezing breath.

            He felt himself reeling, consciousness fading
into grayness. A few feet away, Frumpkin was busily packing a gladstone bag
with what appeared to be a mixture of iron rations and high-tech gadgets. The
Man in Black looked up, shook his head impatiently, and snapped his bag shut.
"See here," he barked. "Can't you see the futility of this
persecution of me? I've made you a gentleman's offer; why not accept it,
eh?"

            "Where's Daphne?" O'Leary came back
coldly.

            "Back to that, eh?" Frumpkin inquired
rhetorically. "I can assure you—"

            "Don't bother," Lafayette cut him off.
"Just call her out; I notice she comes on command," he added
bitterly.

            "That is not convenient, Lafayette,"
Frumpkin said with finality. "I'm in the midst of launching a significant
new initiative," he explained, "and your interference now will not be
tolerated."

            "What are you going to do about it?"
Lafayette challenged.

            Frumpkin frowned at him thoughtfully, then
smiled a wintry smile. "You shall see, in due course," he stated,
turned away, and was gone. Lafayette spent a few minutes wandering among the
big chairs, looking for the vanished agent, then went over to the control panel
where a red light glowed over a dial calibrated in regular degrees from DUBIOUS
to IRON-CLAD. On impulse, he closed a switch labeled RANDOM-INTRO. Needles
jumped on the panel, and red and amber lights began to wink in phase. Frumpkin
uttered a yell and his leap caught O'Leary off-guard. He staggered, caught
himself, and found himself as out of breath as if he had run a mile. He
staggered, unsure of where he was.

            When he returned his attention to his immediate
surroundings, he saw two large saddle horses approaching, led by a liveried
groom along the narrow catwalk. The immaculately curried flanks of the great
steeds were already mud-flecked.

-

            "That's quite ... a neat trick too,"
O'Leary observed with some difficulty.

            "Nay, Sir Lafayette, I'll take no credit. I
but employ my summoner"—he paused to show Lafayette a small hand-held
intercom unit—"and give the appropriate instructions."

            "Neat," Lafayette repeated, craning to
get a better view of the device before the duke tucked it away in a pouch slung
from his baldric. "But ... where did they come from? I don't see any royal
stables around here," he finished with a gasp and paused again to breathe.

            "Trouble not thyself with trifles, Milord
of Leary," Bother said solicitously, "but hast thou taken a quartan
ague? I see you puff and wheeze like an aged chieftain in his dotage. Fear not,
boy, Milady Henriette will have you fit in a trice. Good looker, too, tis
rumored," he added. "Let's be off without ado!" He climbed
aboard the nearest horse, a sturdy bay, with surprising agility, rejecting the
aid of the groom who fell on his back in the mud, spurned by the ducal foot.

            "You don't hafta overdo it,
Inspector," the servitor muttered, getting up. "After all, we got a
union, same as anybody else, and when this caper is over—" he broke off as
Bother's mount, apparently accidentally, brushed him aside as the duke spurred
forward.

            "What was that?" O'Leary asked the
confused lad as he rose for the second time from the muck.

            "Tell ya," the groom said angrily,
"some o' these spot-checkers get too big for their britches—ack like they
was what they're spose to be—steada Civil Service like the rest of us." He
shut up abruptly, then continued in a brighter tone, "Spirited mounts, sir
knight. How's about if I just kinda hold the stirrup for ya?" He clung
desperately to the reins as the big black reared, rebuffing O'Leary's first
attempt to mount.

            As the mud-coated groom, now looking like all
the other residents of the village, tugged at his forelock and backed away,
Lafayette called after him:

            "Hey, wait a minute! What's your name? Who
are you?"

            "Sir, I hight Wryshanks, yclept Lard-Ass,
'prentice to the master of horse to His Ducal Grace, Lord
Bother-Be-Damned."

            "I mean
really,"
Lafayette
persisted. "When you're not on the job."

            "Oh. Uh, Horace Ungerfelt, G.S.-3.5, on
special TDY to AEDC."

            "Working out of Prime?" Lafayette
inquired casually.

            "Nossir. I'm on detached duty direct out of
Supreme HQ"

           
"Raf trass spoit?"
O'Leary said
clearly. Horace responded by snapping soggily to attention.

            "Yessir. You can count on
me,
sir,"
he said in a tone of awe somewhat alleviated by a quick flick of the forefinger
at the globule of mud quivering at the tip of his nose, a gesture which produced
the clownlike effect of a pale nose on an otherwise mud-caked face.

            "At ease, Lard-Ass," O'Leary said
easily. "Now just who is this duke fellow, and what's his mission?"

            "Inspector of Continua Second Grade
Mobius." the groom replied promptly. "Out to nail down some
designated Cosmic Enemy who's been overloading the potentiality grid at every
level from local to extragalactic. Real menace. Tricky rascal. I even got a
stopper tube to use on the devil if I get the chance." Horace patted his
chest, where a breast pocket would be, under the coating of mud.

            "Does this master criminal have a
name?" O'Leary demanded.

            "Oh, lot's of 'em. Goes by Sir Al, Slim,
Sir Lafayette, Allegorus, and a couple other aliases. A tricky one,
milord."

            "Wouldst waste time in gossip with a menial
while high adventure waits us yonder?" Bother's bass tones recalled
Lafayette to the mission at hand. His horse started forward with a leap as the
duke jerked at its bridle. Lafayette caught the reins, settled himself in the saddle,
and spurred to overtake the duke, who had set off at full gallop, sending up
sheets of mud which Lafayette tried with little success to duck. Coming up
alongside the duke, he called:

            "What's the hurry?"

            "Legend has it the witch-woman will
disappear one day, in a trice, as mysteriously as she appeared on that
long-gone day," Bother yelled over his shoulder. "We must not be
late."

            "What long-gone day?" O'Leary
persisted.

            "The same fell day when the great mud-flow
engulfed my dukedom. She, poor creature, had clung for life to a floating
pig-sty, and thus her devoir demands she honor my suit."

            "Does she really live in a hill?"
Lafayette cried over the thunder and splash of hooves. "Is she really
three hundred years old?"

            "As near as may be in these parlous
times," Bother called back. "A great heap of rubble it be, caught
round the ruin of a proud tower, a perch whence Henriette can oversee a vast
sweep of territory. As for her age, I but recount the legend known to
all." Having slowed to deliver this explanation, the duke spurred ahead
again, and Lafayette held his mount neck-and-neck.

            Perhaps an hour later, in full darkness,
Lafayette and the duke dismounted within hailing distance of a cluster of
lights which Bother assured O'Leary was the Place of the Hill. They went
forward on foot, leading their mounts. Bother pointed to a dim, greenish glow
emanating from a point perhaps seventy-five feet above the rest of the
yellowish lights at ground level.

            "Even there towers the Hill," he
explained. "As well we leave the steeds here." He patted the neck of
his big animal. "Poor brutes, tis but cruel to abandon them here without
their expected grooming and fodder to wait in the dark until the locals find
and butcher them. But there's naught else for it." He dropped his reins in
the mud. The horse stood as if tethered. Lafayette followed suit, and the two
set off in the intense darkness, locating obstacles by the simple expedient of
falling over them, after which they assisted each other to rise with much
puffing and many colorful oaths from the duke. They avoided the dim glow of
glassless windows and soon reached the accumulation of litter which marked the
tower's base. The drift slanted upward at a shallow angle to the more
substantive heaped trash of the Hill proper, which rose nearly vertically into
the night to where the pale green glow seemed to float disembodied.

            "Damme!" the duke exclaimed, halting
abruptly.

            "There be a great beast here, the witch's
guardian monster, I doubt not!" Even as he spoke, Lafayette heard a
whorffling, slurpy sound and sensed the bulk of something large and low-built
moving heavily to a position athwart their route, where it settled down with a
muddy squelch and again whoffled.

            "Faugh!" Bother snarled. "The
beast reeks of the infernal regions!"

            "Or of a pigsty," Lafayette suggested.
"You said the witch arrived on one. There was one behind the palace, back
in dear old Artesia, where the royal swine, Jemimah and George, used to produce
vast numbers of piglets for the palace kitchens." As Lafayette spoke, the
unseen beast made ploffy noises.

            "The beast soundeth eager for his next
meal," Bother said. "Stand back, my lad, and I'll try conclusions
with it." Lafayette saw a faint glint of starlight on the blade of the
ducal longsword as it cleared its sheath with an ominous
whoosh.

           
"Wait!" O'Leary blurted, moving
forward past the armed duke.

            "George?" he called tentatively into
the darkness, and was at once rewarded with renewed plobby, whoffl-ing sounds.
Lafayette advanced cautiously, sniffing the air.

            "It
is
George!" he cried.
"I'd know his brand of BO anywhere." A moment later, his outstretched
hand encountered bristly hide, a large ear, then the moist snout of the great
boar.

            "He's tame," Lafayette assured Bother
who, after briefly waving Lafayette back, had come up beside him. Lafayette
patted the big head and scratched behind the gristly ears.

            "I don't understand this, Duke," he
said in a low tone. "This is George, no doubt about it. So we must not be
as far from Artesia as it seemed."

            "Thinkst thou we can safely pass by this
monstrous beast?" Bother asked after he had felt his way all the way back
to the pig's hindquarter. "In sooth, it hath the form of a great
swine," he said doubtfully. "But an imp of hell can assume any form
it listeth."

            "George won't bother us," Lafayette
reassured his companion. "Come on." He forged ahead, encountering a
steep rise which, by the feel of it, was composed of stumps, planks, mud,
grasses, and assorted artifacts, all impacted into an impenetrable heap. He
sought foot-and hand-holds, and started up. After a moment, Bother followed.
George whoffled contentedly. A male voice hallooed not far away, and a moment
later flaming torches were converging on the base of the mound, their orange
light revealing the wild-eyed faces and tangled hair of those who bore them.
Yells broke out.

            "Stand whur ye be," a coarse voice
commanded. "Sergeant-at-Arms," it went on in a lower tone,
"ready yer arbalest to let fly when I give the word!"

            Abruptly, George whoffled, a note of anger
audible in his snorts. There were noises of sloppy movement below, and more
yells, followed by sounds of hasty retreat. The torches, tossed aside, lay
sputtering in the black mud, but afforded enough light to assist Lafayette in
picking his way upward.

            "Well done, George," Bother called
down. "Me-thinks a knighthood is in store for the noble beast," he
added, his pale unshaven face turned up to O'Leary who was a few feet in
advance. "Press on, lad, there's naught to stay us now, and Sir George
guardeth our flank right doughtily. They say there be a ledge near the top,
whence we'll gain the door which leadeth into the bowels of the pile."