The Galaxy Builder

Chapter Twenty-Two

Another black-clad man came through the door behind Frumpkin. He took a grip on the latter's shoulder and spun him around.

"You didn't listen to this defector's lies, I hope, Belarius!" Frumpkin blurted, attempting to pull free of the slightly larger man's grasp. "Why, I was planning to turn back for you just as soon as I'd dealt with this saboteur." He jerked a thumb at O'Leary, who came up behind him.

"Where's Daphne?" Lafayette demanded. "You got out and left her there to be crushed, I suppose."

"Never mind, Lafayette," Belarius said smoothly. "All his fell deeds are about to be relegated to the realm of might-have-been. Help me now: Focus your Psychical Energies as you've never focused them before!"

O'Leary paused only to cast an imploring look at Nicodaeus; then he closed his eyes and concentrated:

"Daphne's all right," he told himself firmly. "And Roy, too. In fact, Roy got her out and they're in the Yggdrasil Room at Ajax, having a nice lunch. Come to think of it, that's where I am." He visualized the cheery dining room at the novelty works, the rose-cheeked diminutive waitresses, the view from the wide window, the heavenly aroma of bacon-and-eggs. It was all there pictured in his mind, clear in every detail. The clock on the wall said one-thirty. Daphne was smiling at him. He monitored the passing moment, remembering Nicodaeus' dictum that now is nonexistent. "But this is real," he told himself, believing it. There was a gentle tremor, as from a distant explosion. He opened his eyes and blinked against the glare. Nicodaeus was just coming through a door across the room, surrounded by waist-high Ajax personnel, all vying to be foremost to welcome him. He came across to Lafayette.

"So far, so good, my lad," he said briskly. "Can you keep it up under stress?"

"What stress?" Lafayette demanded genially. "I guess everything's just about perfect. Sit down, have a cold beer—"

"Lafayette," Nicodaeus said gently. "Look behind you."

Puzzled, O'Leary turned, saw the Man in Black, Marv at his side, guns in hand, both weapons aimed at his head.

"Here, now," Allegorus/Nicodaeus expostulated, rising. "There's no need for any show of primitive violence."

"Not so primitive," Frumpkin grated. "This nothing-gun will annihilate the wretch's ego-gestalt over an entire manifold. Tell me one good reason I shouldn't use it—and put an end to this nuisance."

"That's an easy one," Lafayette said with a show of nonchalance. "You can't." He concentrated on the appearance of the part of the weapon which was out of sight in Frumpkin's fist. The firing stud was almost concealed under a mound of crudely applied brass welding rod, he assured himself.

"Never mind, Frumpy," Marv spoke up. "There's other ways." He looked past O'Leary to the table.

"All right, sister, Lady H, or whatever," he snarled. "On yer feet. Get over here and put the cuffs on yer ex-boyfriend, and put some snap in it!"

"Aroint thee, sirrah!" Duke Bother-Be-Damned's voice cut in. Coming around from behind Marv, he struck the gun from his hand, then knocked Frumpkin down with a backhanded swipe. "I took no oath to treat ungently with a lady." Bother executed a courtly bow and extended a hand to Daphne, who stepped forward to Lafayette's side.

"Oh, Lafayette," she cried. "Can't we go home now? I'm so tired of struggling." As Lafayette took her tenderly in his arms, Roy's hoarse voice spoke in the silence:

"OK, Slim, better late than never, eh, kid? I guess I and the boys can try the old transfer box now. We got it remoted, you know, so we don't have to fetch it back from the lab to use it. Good thing, too: with our power cut, the lab's direct line to the Primary Event is the only reliable power source around. Ready to go?"

While O'Leary was rather dazedly framing his reply, an intangible force gripped him, ripped Daphne from his embrace, sent him tumbling head over heels. He yelled and grabbed, feeling fine fibers like spiderwebs that broke as he clutched them.

"Easy, Slim," Roy's voice spoke in his ear. "Get out the flat-walker, and orient it ninety degrees out of phase —quick." Lafayette complied hurriedly. At once, with a shriek like a silk tent ripping open, the blackness which had folded around Lafayette split to reveal bright sunlight on pink rubble. Rose bushes, trampled flat, still bore fat pink blooms which raised their fragrant heads above the mowed grass stems.

"Roy!" O'Leary gasped. "What's wrong? It looks like Aphasia I!"

"Just a little problem of calibration, my lad," Nicodaeus supplied. "Curious; I personally guided and amplified the effect of the transfer box, drawing on my own emergency power-tap. It appears Lord Marvelous has managed to hold a bit of ground, after all. Now, let's look around." Allegorus/Nicodaeus came forward from behind Lafayette and nodded to Daphne who resumed her place hugging Lafayette. Roy trotted at the side of the First Secretary of the Prime Postulate, talking with both hands.

"—way I see it," he was exhorting Nicodaeus, "Slim's gotta get him on the carpet, eyeball to eyeball, and shrink him down to size. Otherwise, he'll have that one last-ditch hope to hang onto: that Slim can't really beat him in a showdown."

"Very well," Nicodaeus said and halted. He was muttering under his breath, his eyes closed, his face strained. Roy came over to O'Leary and Daphne.

"He's gotta try to link up with HQ," he told them seriously. "A guy like old Al, he's got connections—but only if he can punch through. What you got us to here," he added, glancing around at the ruins, "is a fair approximation of Artesia-that-would-have-been; it's all Frumpkin could hold onto when you put everything you had into shifting the energy flow from the pseudo-realized version back to the recollected aspect. You almost made it, Slim. Like looking in the rearview and putting yourself back on the road before the accident that kilt you—speaking figurative, o'course. You're still alive, but we were pretty well marooned on the other side of the Primal Front in this almost-Artesia. Uh-oh, here's Frumpy now, and Marv, too." Roy fell back and Lafayette was alone, facing the conspiratorial pair across a yard of rubble-littered turf. Daphne had slipped away.

"Ah," Lord Marvelous said comfortably. "Shot your bolt and fell short, eh, Lafayette? Pity, and all that. Here you are, separated from all you hold dear by a barrier so thin and so insubstantial as to be indetectable by the subtlest instruments of mankind. Yet you can never cross it. Look yonder ..." Marv paused to wave a hand toward the pink-spired palace gleaming rosy in the early sun. Chauncy, the assistant chamberlain, appeared briefly on the terrace, setting out the morning's wash for the laundry truck. Other familiar faces were in sight, including on the upper terrace Adoranne, slim and blond and beautiful as ever, Count Alain at her side. O'Leary made a tentative step toward them, felt himself stopped cold as by a resilient but infinitely tough film. Daphne was coming toward him along the walk, but appeared not to see him.

"It's not really there, lad," Nicodaeus' voice said at Lafayette's ear. "This is a shadow of what might have been and almost was. Something—I don't know what— is preventing our reality from shifting that microscopic distance to merge into full identity and give it all the flush of life."

"We're closer than before," O'Leary said. "The palace was in ruins at first; now it's back in place, as perfect as ever. Nicodaeus, I have to get across the barrier. What can I do?"

Daphne came closer, seemed to brush past Lafayette almost within reach; but as he turned to speak to her, he felt the impalpable membrane close in on him, stifling his breathing. He fought clear, stood breathing hard, looking after his wife's retreating image.

"She's real enough, Slim," Roy told him. "Just out of reach. Something's not meshing quite right. Wait a minute." He went to Nicodaeus, who had herded Marv and Frumpkin aside.

"Maybe we can squeeze it outa this pair," Roy said. Nicodaeus turned, shook his head. "It's nothing they're doing, Roy. It's some sort of residual resistance preventing our matchup."

"Scratch your heads in vain, petty wretches," Frumpkin said in his haughtiest tone. "As you see, in the eleventh hour my dream of glory is the master of your protégé's soulful yearnings. Let him face me if he dares!"

"I heard that," Lafayette said, regretfully taking his eyes from the ghostly Daphne retreating along the path while the real Daphne dabbed her eyes, beside him.

"Oh, Lafayette," she wailed, "I saw how you looked at her, and even though I knew it was really me you were admiring, I'm still jealous. Never mind her," she went on briskly after blowing her dainty nose on a bit of lace; she rose, and suddenly her expression was one of astonishment and alarm. "Lafayette!" she screamed. Her face went slack as she collapsed on the grass. Lafayette reached her first and knelt down at her side. Nicodaeus bent over the girl, then gave O'Leary a look of commiseration.