The Galaxy Builder (32 page)

            "Maybe," Marv replied, "and maybe
not." He turned his attention to Sprawnroyal.

            "How about it, pal? Anything to it?"
he inquired genially, thrusting Frumpkin aside to take a position beside the
control console of the boxy apparatus. He glanced at the dials there.

            "According to this readout," he said
tonelessly, "this here whole set-up is going to go insubstantial in about
ten seconds. So long, fellows. And Sir Lafayette, I knew all along you weren't
Allegorus. Hang loose." With a wave, Marv turned and walked away into deep
shadow.

            Roy was frowning quizzically up at O'Leary.
"Slim, how well you know this Marv?"

-

            "Pretty well," O'Leary replied.
"At first, he was just my jailer, then we got to be fellow-sufferers, and
we stuck together pretty well. You remember when we met in the woods in Aphasia
I, he stood by loyally. He helped me out a couple of times, and somehow he
seemed to be able to stick to me even when I had a wild ride in half-phase when
I was totally lost. Once I caught him siccing the crowd on me, but he had an
explanation: he was cornered, and it was the only way to save his own neck.
Anyway, the mob didn't know me, so no harm was done."

            "Unless maybe he was fingering you for
someone," Roy suggested. "I don't like his sticking to you so close,
Slim. How'd he do it? That would take all the Ajax equipment Frumpy here had,
and then some."

            "—like that last time," Lafayette
continued thinking aloud. "He was washed away by the big wave, just like I
was, and we fetched up on the same mud-flat."

            "Slim, I checked out this Aphasia III,"
Roy said. "Funny, according to all readings the boys took on it, it's
right outside space-time. Sort of scraps left over when reality itself, as we
know it, was derealized."

            "Why listen to this sawed-off
intellectual?" Marv queried in an indifferent tone, as he came out of the
shadows. "What we got to do now—we got to get outa here, before Frumpkin's
boys arrive to finish the job."

            "Any ideas how we should do that,
Marv?" O'Leary asked, equally coolly.

            "Sure, Al, just focus the old PEs,"
Marv recommended promptly.

            "Wait a minute. Slim," Roy put in.
"We better think about this. I don't know if you know it, but every time
you pull that trick, you put out a signal that gives anybody that's interested
a handle on you they can use any way they like—which is how old Frumpy here has
been tailing you, I bet."

            "Right," O'Leary confirmed. "He
admitted it, even bragged about it—and he said the next time I do it, he'll be
able to home in on the pattern and finish me off—and the whole pseudo-volume of
probability I've ever occupied."

            "Haw. ProIIy could do it, too, Slim,"
Roy mused.

            "All he'd hafta do is put a vitality tap on
the anomaly flux and drain off all the entropic energy. That'd be the end of
Artesia and all the nearby loci out to prolly a hundred parameters. Too risky,
Slim. We need some kind of tangle-field to work behind. Lemme think."

            "I just happened to think, Marv,"
O'Leary said. "Ever since I met you, you've been urging me to focus my
Psychical Energies. I don't know how you so much as knew I knew how. Now it
seems you might have had an angle of your own."

            "Who, me?" Marv inquired in a
raised-eyebrows tone. "Hey, Al, this is your old pal, Marv, remember? How
about the old days, back when we were lodged in durance vile together and all, hah?"

            "You waste your final breaths, poor
fools," Frumpkin spoke up with renewed vigor. "All your petty
problems will be solved very soon now, with no effort whatever on your part.
Look about you."

            "Holy Moishe," Roy muttered. O'Leary
looked around and saw featureless gray walls which now were closing them in on
all sides. It was as if they were at the center of an immense bubble of
concrete. Frumpkin snickered. Marv growled.

            "While you nattered of trivialities,"
Frumpkin said contentedly, "I busied myself by draining the vacuole of all
energies; and thus, of course, I cut it off from all possible communication
with the Greater Universe—except, naturally, for my own lifeline."

            "You think you can get away with
this?" Marv demanded, taking a threatening step toward Frumpkin, who waved
him away casually.

            "You know better than to contest me now, my
dear fellow," he said. "At any move inimical to my best interests,
the diameter of our little universe will shrink; and you will at all costs
preserve the integrity of my lifeline, since it is your sole possible link with
outside."

            "Maybe so," Sprawnroyal grunted.
"But we can make it mighty uncomfortable for you in the meantime. Slim,
take his arms; Marv, you get on his head. I'll go for his legs." So saying,
he launched himself, tackling the self-styled Lord of All, toppling him as
O'Leary moved in and grabbed his arms. Marv flopped down across the fallen
dictator's upper quarters. Beneath, Frumpkin kicked and flailed, uttering
muffled cries.

            "Just hang on to him a second,
fellows," Roy suggested as he got to his stubby legs and dusted himself
off. Marv rolled over Frumpkin's face.

            "You won't get away with this,"
Frumpkin predicted, coldly furious now as he sat up, tugging in vain against
O'Leary's grip while blood ran from his nose.

            "Maybe not," Roy came back eagerly,
"but it will be fun trying—for us, not you." He put his gnarled
forearm in the angle of Frumpkin's elbow, and with his right arm forced the
fallen man's wrist and forearm upward. Frumpkin rolled his eyes and yelled.

            "Smarts some, don't it?" Roy remarked
as he released the taller man's arm. "Want me to try the other arm?"

            Frumpkin's reply was an inarticulate yell as he
renewed his thrashing efforts to escape O'Leary's grip. Marv bent over and took
a firm grip on a lock of Frumpkin's thin, well-oiled hair, and yanked gently.

            "You can't really spare this, Frumpy,"
he said gently. "But it won't really matter much: you'll be bald soon
anyway." With a sudden jerk, he pulled the tuft of hair out by its roots
and held it before Frumpkin's wild eyes.

            "Stop!" the tormented Frumpkin croaked
as O'Leary manipulated his skinny arms behind his back. "All right, I
confess I've no stomach for torture! I'll let you go—but only on your solemn
promise to do nothing furthur to interfere with my great Plan!"

            "You're in no spot to talk deal," Roy
pointed out casually as he dug a knuckle into the muscle at the angle of
Frumpkin's jaw, eliciting a roar of pain.

            "Agreed!" Frumpkin yelled. "I'll
release you unconditionally—and you'd best hurry; time is running out!"

-

            O'Leary looked up: The domed 'ceiling' of the
spherical chamber was noticeably closer. Even as he watched, it shrank in
furthur as Frumpkin uttered a long drawn-out howl. O'Leary glanced toward him.
Marv was now sitting at ease on the formerly arrogant Frumpkin's face. He
caught O'Leary's look and rose. "It ain't comfortable anyways," he
explained. "That sharp nose'd be hell on a feller if he's to sit there any
length o' time."

            Roy bustled forward and bent over the supine
Frumpkin. "You ready to be reasonable?" he inquired solicitously.
Frumpkin grumbled, which Roy took as assent. He hunkered down beside the fallen
dictator. "Go ahead, spill it," he ordered.

            Frumpkin sat up, wiped blood from his nose
across his lower face, and gulped.

            "Very well, you inhuman beasts," he
started. Marv promptly knocked him flat.

            "Just the facts, big shot; skip the
insults," he prescribed. Frumpkin nodded and cautiously sat up again.

            "Started with a little accident," he
blurted. "I was on duty in the probability lab, and I noticed some
anomalous readings on the main monitor panel, and I, well, I did a little
investigating, and made a curious discovery." Frumpkin paused as if to
savor the moment.

            "Something was playing hell with the energy
equipoise in a minor locus out on Plane V-87. Looked like every few years
there'd been a drain that shuffled the loci like playing cards. No
repercussions had showed up outside the manifold, but that didn't mean it would
never happen. I should have reported it to YAC-19 at once, I know—but all of a
sudden I saw it! If I could deduce just what was happening, I could use it
myself, to shape this sorry scheme of things entire closer to my heart's
desire, as the poet hath said. Ahem!" Frumpkin cleared his throat and
fussed with the lapels of his rumpled dressing gown.

            "As even you are doubtless aware, all of
existence rests on the principle of entropic equipoise. For each ordering
force, there is a balancing force of disorder; and all this vast matrix of
interpenetrating forces is modulated by the universal-probability field. To
tamper at any one point with the probability flux is to cause the matrix itself
to readjust so as to bring all forces back into balance. When you, Sir
Lafayette, fecklessly employed the gigantic forces at your command, the nature
of which still escapes me, to make certain minor local realignments in defiance
of the pressures of local probability, you occasioned readjustments which
resonated at vast distances. These caused realignments of reality on a scope
unthinkable. But I soon saw that, at bottom, your method was simple enough; and
used systematically, one could realign the natural forces so as to produce
results specified by oneself—or myself, that is." Frumpkin paused again.
"At first, I envisioned only local readjustments which would place me in a
position of total authority, and provide such trifling comforts as the disposal
of all the wealth in existence, my choice of all the world's delicacies of food
and drink and luxury goods, plus the unselfish devotion of the Lady Xanthippe,
the only person beside myself whom I considered deserving of the fruits of
reality. Speaking of which—" Frumpkin snapped his fingers. There was a
stir in the shadowy distance, and a lone figure came slowly forward into the
light: then two more people appeared, one tall and broad, the other slim and
graceful.

            "... somehow unsatisfying," Frumpkin
was droning on. "So, I asked myself why. The answer was simple enough:
While there remained planes of probability outside my sway, what joy could I
take in my petty rule of a portion of All That Is?"

            "I've heard enough," Marv said
roughly. He stepped close to Frumpkin and spoke quietly to him.

            "It's far too late for that, Marv, old
boy," Frumpkin cut him off curtly. "You erred in not acting at once,
while my path was still unclear."

            Marv replied to this by taking a firm grip on
Frumpkin's neck, causing his victim to squirm ineffectively, while his face
became purplish. Then Frumpkin's cold eyes met O'Leary's.

            "Sir Lafayette!" he cried, "I
call on you to intercede in the interest of justice. Don't you see? I lied just
now, I admit, but only in a desperate effort to save what I have built—and that
includes Artesia and all that outlying area—from utter dissolution. I did all I
claimed, but not as a free agent. I made the error of telling of my discovery
to the janitor who mopped up in the Prime Vault—a cretin, but I was bursting
with the knowledge! So I told him. And rather than merely gaping at me in
incomprehension, the low fellow began to behave most strangely. He went to
certain controls and manipulated them with surprising deftness, then stood
aside and dared me to look at the results. Unless, he said, I agreed to do as
he dictated, he'd bring about a cataclysm which would set all of reality at
Entropic Maximum—a state of which you have a sample here, in this vacuole—an
eternity of absolute stasis. So I had to do as he said. He himself, he told me,
was now far above such petty tasks. I was but a slave, but he—he was Lord
Marvelous!" Frumpkin's trembling finger pointed at Marv, who backed a
step, almost colliding with the foremost of the three advancing from the
dimness: Duke Bother-Be-Damned. Even as the armored hands of the big man
clamped on Marv's arms, Lafayette's eyes went past him to those behind him.

            "Daphne!" he yelled and started toward
her, then checked as he recognized Betty Brassbraid at her mistress's side.
"But you're Henriette in the Hill," he groaned. "And you don't
know me from Adam's pet mongoose."

            "Fie, Lafayette!" the pretty brunette
replied after a moment's hesitation. "Do you not know me, your own true
love? Of course I'm Daphne, silly," she added more gently. "And
Lafayette—if it really
is
you, my love, and not another beguiling
dream—oh, how I've longed for this moment, and somehow knew that, in spite of
all, at last it would come—someday." She broke off and began to cry
silently. Lafayette stumbled to her and took her in his arms. Now Betty was
sniffling behind her mistress, while Bother hurrumphed and fiddled with his
sword-hilt. Marv stood to one side, looking sullen.