The Galaxy Builder (5 page)

            "I didn't notice 'em," O'Leary said.
"Where are they? Must be so well camouflaged they're invisible as well as
ineffective."

            "What of the Guards regiment, then? Do you
claim to have slipped past the alert sentries of the most highly honored
organization in the entire Service?"

            "If you mean Trog and his boys, they're
overrated," Lafayette said carelessly. "And I didn't
see
any
keep-out signs."

            "Clearly, Frumpkin," Belarius said to
his partner, "the fellow has employed some highly sophisticated
counter-security equipment thus to make mockery of my best efforts."

            "Just used my head," O'Leary said
bluntly.

            "It's clear the rascal is even more
dangerous than we had suspected," Frumpkin said. "Perhaps we'd best
apply full Class One measures at once, after all. HQ would understand if we
brought in a corpse under the circumstances."

            "Seems rather drastic for such an
insignificant-appearing young fellow as this," Belarius responded.
"Just a few more points to clear up. What about it, fellow-me-lad?"
he addressed Lafayette directly. "Will you cooperate in this inquiry or
shall I be forced to invoke full Class One rigor? I leave it to you. Start with
your motivation for your first disruption bombing at Nuclear City."

            "Never heard of it," O'Leary said
wearily. "Either Nuke City
or
a disruption bomb. Sorry."

            "Glibness will avail you naught,
fellow," Frumpkin said, wiping a hand across his face as one sore beset
with frustration. He turned to Belarius V. "We've wasted enough time
trying to reason with him," he said tiredly. "I suggest we simply stasis-file
him and get on with the rest of it."

            "I've got an idea," Lafayette offered.
"Why not tell me, in simple nontechnical language, just what's going on?
Maybe I could even shed some light on it if I knew what it was all about."

            "So you think you're in a position to
bargain, eh?" Frumpkin snorted. "You'll come clean in return for ...
what was your price?"

            "Just tell me what happened to get you boys
so upset," Lafayette said, feeling the futility of his request even as he
spoke. "And save the jargon. Pretend I don't know anything about whatever
it is you're so worried about."

            "On October eight last," Belarius V
said solemnly, "an attempt was made to destroy the Prime metering vault.
An explosion of force seven on the TRAN scale. Inside the vault. You can see
what that means. So could we all."

            "I hate to sound like a dumdum,"
O'Leary said, "but I
can't
see what that means. Anyway, what does
it have to do with me?"

            "He's a resourceful devil, eh,
Belarius?" Frumpkin commented. "No matter what one says, he has a
disclaimer ready."

            "But it seems it's always the same
disclaimer," Belarius replied dryly. "See here, fellow," he said
more briskly to Lafayette, "Just what excuse do you offer for your
presence here in defiance of the Code?"

            "None at all," Lafayette answered
sharply. "I have a perfect right—or almost perfect—to be here. It's you
two characters who have some explaining to do."

            "I think that's quite enough,"
Belarius put in abruptly. He turned to a shabby steamer trunk or large suitcase
beside him. Lifting the lid, he took out a complicated-looking apparatus and
turned to O'Leary.

            "Put out your hands, left palm up, right
palm down," he ordered curtly, while Frumpkin fiddled with his gun.
Lafayette complied warily, eyeing the gadget Belarius was holding. With a quick
movement Belarius draped the thing across O'Leary's hands. He felt icy metal
bands extrude, encircle his wrists, and tighten gently. There was a sensation
of questing tendrils growing rapidly downward, searching over his body. He
yelled once, tugged; there was no give in the complex shackle. When he tried to
take a step toward Frumpkin, he found his legs were equally immobilized.
"Hey!" he yelled again.

            Belarius and Frumpkin were busy over the
suitcase.

            "Look at that, Frumpy," Belarius said
grimly. Over Belarius' shoulder, Lafayette could barely glimpse a round glass
screen like a cathode-ray tube, set in the trunk lid, on which glowed in pink a
set of concentric arcs.

            "This," Frumpkin said hoarsely,
putting a well-groomed finger on a short segment of a curve looking squeezed
between longer arcs. "Is this ... our baseline here?"

            Instead of answering, Belarius turned to
O'Leary, stepping back to give him a clear view of the screen. He pointed.

            "You can see for yourself what you've
done," he grated. "You've trapped yourself in an abort. How you
imagined you'd escape to make good your plot is, I confess, obscure to
me."

            "Me, too," Lafayette said.
"What's an abort?"

            "As the term suggests, an abort is a
nonviable stem. As you see, this one ends in some seventy-two hours."

            "How do you mean, 'ends'?" Lafayette
asked. "All I see is some kind of radar screen."

            "Ends, terminates, discontinues, ceases to
exist," Frumpkin spoke up. "That's a simple enough concept. And if we
were still here then, we'd end with it. Accordingly, Belarius, I suggest we
phase-shift at once, just in case your calibration is off a hair's
breadth."

            "What about this fellow, then?"
Belarius inquired indifferently, indicating O'Leary. "Finish him off, and
so report?"

            "As you command, my lord," Frumpkin
replied in an oily tone, disassociating himself from the murder.

            "Why don't you just go home and leave me to
my own devices?" Lafayette suggested. "Nobody would know the
difference."

            "No?" Belarius came back coolly.
"You underestimate the subtlety of our Prime surveillance net. Nothing
escapes the notice of YAC-19."

            "Why bandy words with him, sir?"
Frumpkin put in. "If we should simply shunt him into a holding locus, he'd
keep until we could deal with him to best advantage. YAC-19
will
want to
interrogate him."

            "True," Belarius conceded. "Set
up coordinates for the nearest holding locus, then—"

            "Wait," Lafayette cut in. "I
can't
leave this locus-Daphne's here, somewhere. And if I leave, I may never find
it again!"

            "The point is well taken," Belarius
said. "Not that your petty concerns are of any merit, but there
is
YAC-19's
policy to consider."

            "Who is this yak you keep talking
about?" Lafayette demanded. "Who's he to sit in judgment on a total
stranger, and one close to the throne of Artesia, by the way!"

            "YAC-19 is a computer," Belarius
stated grandly, "and Postulate One at Nuclear City, of course."

            "And
our
immediate supervisor,"
Frumpkin put in loftily.

            "Its policy is to hold phase violations to
a minimum," Belarius contributed. "To remove you from this your
native locus would occasion a mild phase displacement; ergo, you'll stay here."

            "It's not my native locus," Lafayette
protested. "At least, I don't think it is—or maybe it's just the three
hundred years. It doesn't look anything like Artesia— except for the Tower,
that is." He glared sullenly at Belarius. "Artesia's my home,"
he stated, "not this dump ... Aphasia, Trog called it."

            "Locus designation?" Frumpkin
inquired. "Of this Artesia, I mean."

            "Alpha Nine-Three, Plane V-87, Fox
221-b," O'Leary replied promptly. Frumpkin looked grave and twiddled
control knobs on the apparatus inside the suitcase.

            "Doesn't check out, Belarius," he said
tonelessly. "Something a trifle out of sync there." He shot O'Leary a
hard look. "Why lie about it?" he demanded.

            "I was born there," O'Leary said.
"When I was a few months old, a renegade inspector from Central kidnapped
me and took me to Colby Corners, U.S.A. I grew up there, and then I focused my
psychical energies one evening, and was back in Artesia, where I belonged."

            "Better change that story," Belarius
put in after consulting a small handbook. "Artesia's listed, all right,
but as a dead locus. What we call a traumatic abort. Ceased to exist nearly
three hundred years ago."

            "Nonsense!" O'Leary said, and after a
thoughtful pause went on, "I was there half an hour ago—or three hundred
years and a half hour ago ... I'm not quite sure about that. Anyway, Artesia is
just as real as Melange, or Colby Corners, or Thallathlone, or any of those
other crazy places I've been—and realer than
this
crazy locus,
Aphasia."

            "Not listed," Belarius said after a
glance at his book. He turned to Frumpkin. "That's it, let's report back,
and we'll just put this fellow on hold. Later, a brain-scrape will soon have
the facts out of him."

            "Wait!" Lafayette demanded. "You
can't just go off and. leave Aphasia to dissolve back into entropic
energy—"

            "Aha! So you
do
know
something!"

            "You told me," O'Leary said hastily.
"Sure, I know about planes of reality and all that; I've been in enough of
'em. But this time I didn't meddle. I was just sitting in the garden with
Daphne, and all of a sudden—"

            "Get him over here, Belarius," Frumpkin
cut him off. "The shift zone on this portable rig is pretty small, you
know. We wouldn't want to leave even this poor boob stranded in
half-phase." Belarius manhandled O'Leary into the indicated spot.

            "Daphne's around here, somewhere!"
O'Leary blurted. "If you leave her—"

            "This Daphne is also a native of Colby
Corners?" Belarius asked without interest.

            "No—and neither am I—I just grew up there,
in the orphanage, you know. Daphne's an Artesian, born and bred ... You can't
go off and leave her stranded here!"

            "What about it, Frumpkin?" Belarius
queried his colleague. "Hadn't we best check this out?"

            "Damn right!" O'Leary yelled.
"You can't go creating a phase violation, remember, even if you
are
inhumane
enough to strand a helpless girl in this dismal place. YAC-19 wouldn't like
it," he added.

            "I suppose we'll have to fetch her
along," Frumpkin conceded. "Where is she, fellow, hiding in a dark
corner?" He looked about the shadowy room in a show of confusion.

            "How do I know, Flapkin, or whatever your
dumb name is?" O'Leary demanded. "Release me, and I'll try to find
her. I thought she must have come this way, but I was wrong—unless you two
sharpies grabbed her and sent her off somewhere with that suitcase of yours."

            "By no means, Mr. O'Leary. By the way,
Frumpkin," Belarius shifted his attention to his associate. "-Since
he's had the effrontery to preempt the honored name of Lancelot O'Leary—"

            "Not Lancelot!" Lafayette cut in.
"Lafayette! And not Ladislaw, or Lohengrin, or Lafcadio, or any of those
other nerds from other loci. That's L-A-F-A-Y-E-T-T-E!"

            "To be sure," Frumpkin murmured,
ruffling the pages of his handbook.
"The
O'Leary. Of course. Why
claim descent from any lesser O'Leary?"

            "Descent my elbow!" O'Leary snorted.
"I
am
Lafayette O'Leary! The same one who got your great-grandpap
or whatever out of the soup the time Quelius made his play. Except for me, old
B-I would still be fending off Jemimah in the royal swine-pen!"

            Frumpkin was eyeing O'Leary intently. "I
suppose a grand delusion is no more trouble than a petty one," he mused
aloud, with a glance at Belarius.

            "Just for the record," the latter
suggested, "why not take a few Zeta readings on him? His mention of
Quelius suggests he may know something. The Quelius file is top SBR
classification, you'll recall: the hush order came from the top. So this chap
can't be as insignificant as he appears."

            "Very well," Frumpkin agreed,
"but frankly, I think he's bluffing. A quick scan at about D-level?"

            "A full class-A Zeta," Belarius
corrected in a solemn tone. "If there's anything here at all, it's likely
to be a major fault."

            "A fault? Not in
our
records, I
should hope," Frumpkin replied as he turned to Lafayette, extending what
looked like an electrified acupuncture needle. "Just hold still, won't
take a moment," he said soothingly, reaching for Lafayette's arm.

            "How could I do otherwise, trussed up in
this magic hair-net of yours?" O'Leary demanded. "You're not going to
stick that thing in me, are you?" he inquired in a less-than-optimistic
tone.