The Galaxy Builder (26 page)

            Lafayette, after a moment's rest, went on, soon
gaining the ledge to which the duke had alerted him. It was barely a foot wide
and unevenly surfaced with an improvisation of flattened tin cans. Bother clambered
up beside him, puffing.

            "Mayhap twere best I'd left my armor of
proof below," he gasped. "I'm nigh undone, lad. Let us rest and take
council here a moment."

            "If the settlement back there is actually
on the site of Colby Corners," O'Leary said, "this place is just
about where Lod's castle was back in Artesia, and this pile must be the analog
of the castle, which is actually the Las Vegas Hilton, which Lod had managed to
shift onto Plane V-87."

            "I wot nothing of these mysteries, sir
knight," Bother protested. "Work witchery if you must, but leave me
retain my purity, OK?"

            "Don't worry, Inspector," Lafayette
reassured his ally. "I'm not up to witchery just now, only trying to dope
out what we're up against."

            "I be up against a plank which formerly
performed a useful function in an outhouse," Bother grumped, "judging
by the aroma. I say let's up and seek the portal reputed to be here, ere I
perish from these evil vapors."

            "Might as well," Lafayette agreed, and
set off on hands and knees, the duke clanking behind him.

            "You go in the other direction,"
Lafayette said over his shoulder. "That way we can cover it in half the
time, assuming the ledge goes all the way around." Bother complied without
comment. Feeling his way, Lafayette soon encountered a barrier of surprisingly
regular iron bars. Investigating, he found that it was a thirty-inch-high
railing, over which he climbed to find himself on a somewhat wider balcony.

            Just then, the duke's hoarse voice spoke near at
hand, and approaching. "No good, lad; this parlous ledge doth end abrupt
but a few spans yonder. Twere a near thing, but by the help of the saints I
retained my place, and—" His account ended with a dull clunk as his helm
collided with the railing.

            "Climb over," Lafayette urged.
"It's wider here." His hands groping along the wall encountered
glass, small panes set neatly in a mullioned door. "Hey," he called
in a low but excited tone to Bother, now hulking at his elbow, "it's a
regular door! No garbage here ..." He investigated, found an ornate
wrought-iron latch, lifted it, and the door swung inward into darkness and the
shriek of a female voice.

-

            Lafayette blundered forward, uttering soothing
words:

            "There, there, take it easy, please, ma'am.
No need for alarm. We're simply calling on the Lady Henriette in the Hill.
Sorry to burst in on you, but it's dark out there, and we just sort of stumbled
on the door."

            After the first scream, the unseen female's
response to the invasion of her lair was a barrage of small objects, thrown
with surprising force and accuracy. Then a small and feminine voice said
contritely:

            "You startled me, sirrah, bursting in here
in the dark into Her Ladyship's private withdrawing room, where even I, her
faithful maid-of-all-work, am scarce allowed to dust. Forgive my fusillade if I
did indeed score a hit upon thy persons. What manner of men be ye? One of ye,
it seems, is made of metal, or so I judge by the clatter when my candlestick
struck him."

            "We're just ordinary fellows,"
Lafayette protested. "Of course the duke has his armor on, but that's only
in case he has to do battle or something."

            "Thou'lt find no battle here, sir
knight," the now ladylike voice returned. "We be but two women,
meaning harm to none." As she spoke, Lafayette could hear the sounds of
flint on iron; then a spark glared, igniting a wick, and a bright flame glowed,
flickering on a table-model cigarette lighter. It illuminated a shapely arm
clad in gray cloth, leading up past a delightfully formed, though modest, bosum
to a piquant face framed in golden-blond braid topped by a lacy cap.

            "Adoranne!" O'Leary yelled. "That
is, I mean, Your Highness! What in the world are you doing here" —he broke
off as his gaze took in the spacious room behind her—"in Nicodaeus' old
lab? And how did
it
get here? I had it figured the penthouse Frumpkin
escaped into back in town was the lab!"

            "Are you kidding, mister?" the girl
returned. "Calling me 'Highness' ... hmmp! Why make ye sport of a poor
serving-wench? You look disreputable, sir, for all your finery, mud-splattered
as you are. Is this a proper fashion in which to call on milady?"

            "Sorry," Lafayette said hastily.
"I guess you're not really Adoranne, just her analog in this locus. Still,
it's a good sign that such a close analog exists here: it proves we're not
really far from Artesia. You're as like Adoranne as Swinehild was, and Melange
was practically next door to Artesia—"

            "Don't get excited, feller," the girl
said. 'Til see if she'll see you at this unholy hour. Don't hold your
breath." She put the lighter on a handy tabletop and turned toward the
door.

            "Wait!" O'Leary blurted. "Before
you go, tell us about yourself—and Lady Henriette. How you happen to be here,
where you came from—everything. By the way, what's your name?"

            "I'm known here as Betty Brassbraid, though
that be not my true name. And I'll leave it to my mistress to tell you what she
deems well to relate." She left the room with a swish of woolen skirts,
her feet quick and light even in the heavy wooden clogs she wore. As the door
closed behind her, Bother spoke up:

            "Zounds, Sir Lafayette, what fell den of
the Black Arts be this, in sooth?" He was looking around suspiciously at
the black crackle-finish wall panels set with a bewildering array of dials,
oscilloscopes and idiot lights, the arcane astrological symbols scribed on
framed posters, the alembics and retorts on the marble-topped benches.

            "Stap me!" the duke continued his
plaint, "this be no canny place for Christian men. Mayhap, Sir Lafayette,
twere best we repair to yon balcony, there to await Her Ladyship."

            "It's just Nicodaeus' old lab, as I
said," Lafayette reminded the knight. "It's a pretty weird mixture of
science and superstition, I'll agree. See those little jars over there beside
the electron microscope? Eye of newt and best mummy dust. But Nicodaeus was an
Inspector of Continua, First Class. He'd been in some strange loci, and he
picked up a lot of mutually exclusive ideas along the way." Lafayette was
idly eyeing the gilded skeleton dangling from a wire suspended from a rafter
lost in the shadows above.

            "Funny thing," he mused, "back in
Aphasia, the bones were gone. Here, they're still in place. That probably has
some heavy significance, if I were just sharp enough to figure it out. But
every time I think I'm beginning to see a pattern, something like that pops up
and proves I'm on the wrong track. If this room had been the one at the top of
the scaffold back in town, as it should have been, I'd feel a lot better."

            "Meseems twere passing strange, Sir
Lafayette," Bother commented, "that ye be not all of a-maze to find
such a chamber here in a rubble-heap. But instead, ye talk calmly of stranger
riddles still. Still, I'm but a simple man of war, knowing naught of these
matters."

            "Don't kid me, Mobius, your groom told me
you're an inspector yourself. It's time to drop the local persona and help me
figure out what's happening before it happens."

            "As to that," Bother said in a stiff
tone, "doubtless you're aware that for me to divulge anything of a
classified nature would be an LRC violation punishable by exile to uncontrolled
space-time. Still, I shall do what I can to riddle me this curious
circumstance. And a certain stable boy will rue the day he blabbed."

            "Sure," Lafayette said soothingly,
"I don't want you to tell me any secrets. And go easy on the horse-boy; he
was trying to do his job—looking for some master criminal." Lafayette
paused to look interrogatively at Duke Bother-Be-Damned. "Do you have any
leads?"

            "Not I," Bother replied impatiently.
"I'm no gumshoe, my vital energies to expend in pursuit of fugitives from
justice who are in all probability no more criminal than the beadles who so
assiduously persecute them. Bah! What interests me just now is the woman of
mystery, yclept Henriette in the Hill." The duke took a few clanking steps
as if about to begin pacing the floor, but he halted as the lighter flame
sputtered and went out, leaving the spooky room in darkness.

            "How now?" the duke muttered, the
words accompanied by the familiar
swoosh
of his sword being drawn from
its sheath. Lafayette heard grunts and whistling sounds of the blade cutting
air as the duke executed a few precautionary swipes at the surrounding
emptiness. "I mislike me this," the warrior grated. "What fell
influence snuffed yon candle without human hand nearby?"

            "It's probably just out of fluid,"
Lafayette said, and groped his way to the table. He found the lighter, tried it
without any effect other than a colorful shower of sparks, then dropped it to
reassure the duke, who had responded to the unexpected display with a selection
of colorful oaths and more swipes of the sword. Then a crack of light gleamed
as a side door opened and the slim silhouette of a young woman appeared in the
opening. She came in, followed closely by Betty, carrying a lantern which
showed the deep-blue cloak about Lady Henriette's slim shoulders, then her
piquant face and her glossy black hair.

-

            "Daphne!" O'Leary yelled and started
around the table toward her. Then, as the brunette beauty looked at him
wide-eyed, he checked himself. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean
to startle you, milady; for a moment I assumed you were my wife, Daphne, but I
suppose you're just her analog in this locus, like the Lady Androgorre back in
Melange, and for that matter Beverly and Cynthia. But it's wonderful to see you
anyway, even if you aren't really Daphne."

            "You speak strangely, sir," the
Daphne-like woman said stiffly, and was abruptly thrust aside by the Man in
Black, who had pushed past Betty and now stood blocking the doorway. He looked
casually around and nodded in satisfaction.

            "Well done, my dear," he said silkily.
"And now I think the time has come for an end to meddling." He looked
sharply at O'Leary.

            "As for you, sir, I've already indulged
your pretence of ignorance. Now let us down to business. What is it you really
want?"

           
"Raf trass spoit, "
Lafayette
said casually, watching Frumpkin for his reaction, which was to stagger back a
step as if he had been struck. Then his look of amusement was replaced by one
of determination.

            "You wouldn't dare," he hissed.

            "Would I not?" Lafayette countered in
an indifferent tone. He moved casually around the central table, and across
toward Frumpkin, who stood his ground, though looking nervous. Behind him,
Lafayette could hear sounds of feminine weeping.

            "You promised!" Betty Brassbraid's
tearful voice charged, and Frumpkin half-turned to shake off her clutch at his
arm. At that moment, O'Leary stepped in and administered a knuckle-first blow
to Frumpkin's solar plexus, which caused him to double over, presenting to
O'Leary an unimpeded access to his head and neck. Lafayette carefully took a
stranglehold, his forearm locked across Frumpkin's throat and levering upward,
causing the Man in Black to utter croaking sounds which prompted Betty to
shriek:

            "Don't do it
here,
sir! The
blackguard deserves to die, I don't doubt, but—I can't watch." She fled
into gray shadows.

            With his left hand, Lafayette found the
flat-walker in his jacket pocket where Mickey Jo had placed it only a few hours
before, though, Lafayette reflected
en passant,
it seemed like days.
Steadying himself against Frumpkin's frantic efforts to break the hold,
Lafayette oriented the Ajax device properly and, for some reason closing his
eyes, he stepped back against the stone partition and pressed his body against
the wall. He felt the familiar sensation as of wet cardboard parting before
him. He was aware of Frumpkin's frenzied efforts to escape, and applied enough
pressure to lift the Man in Black to tiptoe. As Lafayette stepped back,
Frumpkin's weight became a heavy drag. He wondered briefly if he were doing any
irreversible damage to his captive's internal arrangements, but he thrust
onward, eyes open now to the expected vista of utter blackness broken by only a
few randomly darting points of varicolored light. Then the syrupy resistance
was gone.

            A dim gray light infiltrated the darkness. He
had only a moment in which to see two large fellows coming toward him before,
with a sudden lunge, Frumpkin broke from his grip. There was an explosion that
hurled O'Leary down into hot blackness. He came to rest lying with his cheek
against a carpet. He opened one eye and saw faded red-and-purple curlicues;
then hard hands were hauling him to his feet.