The Universe Twister (18 page)

O'Leary straightened his shoulders, set his jaw and crept cautiously around to the side. The giant head swung, following him. He paused at a leg like the warty trunk of a tree. Not much chance of climbing that. He went on, reached the tail, thick as a fifty-gallon molasses drum, tapering away across the sand. He ought to be able to make it up that route. O'Leary followed the tail out to a point where he could swing aboard, then walked up its length. As he passed the juncture with the hind legs, he found it necessary to lean forward and use his hands, but it was easy going; the fissured hide offered excellent footholds. The saurian waited patiently while he scaled the stretch from haunch to shoulder; then it lowered its head. O'Leary straddled the neck behind the head and the monster straightened, lifting him up to ride fifteen feet clear of the floor of the pass. There was a magnificent view from up here, he noted; far away across the sands to the west he fancied he saw a smudge of vegetation, a tiny glint of light on windows. That would be Lod's hangout. He clacked his heels against the horny hide.

"Let's go, boy," he commanded. At once, the dinosaur set off at an easy canter—in the wrong direction. O'Leary yelled, kicked with one heel; the mighty mount veered, came about on the port tack and headed back up the pass. In five minutes, they were clear of the ravine, striding out across the parched plain at a mile-eating pace. The sun was gone now; deep twilight was settling across the desert. "Steady as she goes, boy," O'Leary commented aloud. "In about an hour we'll be giving this Lod character the surprise of his life."

It was dark night with no moon as O'Leary sat his mighty steed behind a dimly seen screen of tall eucalyptus that marked the edge of the grounds surrounding the great building that towered up against the stars—fifteen stories at least, O'Leary estimated. Faint starlight glinted on hundreds of windows; there was dim illumination behind three of them. Blazoned across a strip of what looked like dark plastic twelve-foot-high lavender neon letters spelled out
LAS VEGAS HILTON
. Between him and the nearest corner of a projecting flank of the structure, a ten-foot iron fence ornamented with spearheads thrust up.

"This isn't quite what I expected, fellow," O'Leary muttered. "I pictured a collection of tin shacks, or maybe some wooden huts we could walk right through. Wouldn't do to slam into that; it might fall on us. And Adoranne might get hurt."

The dinosaur stretched its neck across the fence. O'Leary looked down at the sharp points below.

"Wouldn't do to fall on those, Dinny," he said nervously. The iguanodon leaned against the bars; they creaked, bent like soda straws, went down.

"Nice going, boy. Hope nobody heard the clatter . . ."

The monster lowered its head to ground level. O'Leary jumped off onto a carpet of knee-deep grass which the reptile sniffed and began peacefully cropping.

"All right, boy," he whispered. "The place is big, all right, but it seems sparsely manned. Wait here while I reconnoiter—and keep out of sight."

There was a soft snort from the great head, now lifted far above him, investigating the lower branches of a big oak. O'Leary moved off silently, skirted a waterless fountain in the shape of an abstract female, crossed a stretch of pavement marked with faint white lines at ten-foot intervals, hopped a strung chain and entered the rustling, leaf-strewn shadow of a stand of poplars.

From here he had an excellent view of the building. Nothing stirred. He emerged from the trees, made his way around to the front. There was a broad, paved drive—concrete, by the feel of it—which swept past a flight of wide steps leading up to a rank of glass doors, above which a cantilevered marquee thrust out fifty feet. Great, unpruned gardenia bushes bunched up from planters set along the terrace; the warm night air wafted the heavy fragrance of their blossoms to O'Leary.

Inside, beyond the doors, he could see a plushly carpeted foyer, dimly lit, its pale fawn walls decorated by framed pictures and gilt and white lamp brackets. Large soft-looking divans and easy chairs were placed in conversational groups around low coffee tables.

The peaceful order of the scene was marred only by a scattering of papers, bones, empty tin cans and the charred ring of a small camp fire beside a potted yucca. Someone, it appeared, had desired more informal cooking arrangements than the hotel kitchens afforded.

O'Leary went up the steps, approached the doors and jumped as the one before him swung in with a whoosh of compressed air. Magic, after all? He felt the untrimmed hair at the nape of his neck rising. But then, maybe it was just electronics—magic rationalized. He edged through the door and looked around the two-acre lobby.

Adoranne was here—somewhere. It was going to be a long search through fifteen floors of rooms to find her, but he had to make a start somewhere. He picked a corridor at random, went along it in the eerie light to the first door, tried the knob . . .

An hour and a half later O'Leary was working his way through the southwest wing of the ninth floor. So far he had encountered nothing but empty rooms, most of them immaculately made up, with dusty dresser tops and vases of withered flowers the only signs of neglect, but a few with rumpled beds and muddy bootprints on the pastel carpets—like the one he was in. Some careless occupant had plucked a chicken in the bathroom, leaving a clot of feathers in the toilet bowl. A chair had been disassembled for some reason not clear; its component parts lay about the room. A smashed wastebasket was on its side half under the bed. Something bright showed among the rubbish—a key, attached to a turquoise plastic disc with the number 1281 impressed on it in gilt. O'Leary picked it up. Maybe this was a clue. It was worth checking out, anyway. So far he'd seen nothing to indicate that Adoranne was here. Perhaps Lod and his merry men were off on a raid; maybe they'd be back at any moment. He'd better hurry.

As he emerged from the stairwell at the twelfth floor, the sounds of voices came to his ears. He felt his heart thump in unpleasant excitement. He was getting warm, it seemed. He went along the hall in the direction indicated by a glowing arrow. When he rounded a corner the sounds were louder. Room 1281 would be at the end of the hall—beyond the room from which the loud conversation was coming. O'Leary approached the door standing half ajar with a stripe of light falling across the carpet from inside the room.

" . . . seen him in the palace, two days ago," a rusty voice was complaining. "An' I says to him, look, I says, if you got some kind of idear we're doing all the dirty work while you grab the loot, your aggies is scrambled."

"But he give the boss a promise he'd get the broad—" a second voice started, cut off with a sound like a croquet mallet striking a side of beef. "It ain't perlite to call a dame a broad," the rusty voice cawed. "And I know what he promised. But it's up to us to collect. Don't worry. The boss's got his plans all doped out. He's got a couple surprises up his sleeve fer his high-and-mightiness."

"Chee, you can't buck
him
!" a third voice said. "Wit' his power—"

O'Leary, straining to catch every word, was suddenly aware of footsteps approaching along the corridor. He looked, dived for a door across the hall, slid inside and flattened himself against the wall.

"Hey!" a voice yelled. "Who ast you in?" A large man with lather on his face stood in the open door to the bathroom, glowering. "Go find yer own flop." His tone changed. "Who're you? I ain't seen you before."

"Ah—I'm a new man, just signed up," O'Leary improvised. "The lure of adventure, you know, the companionship of kindred spirits. Now, about the, ah, girl. What room's she in?"

"Huh?"

"I just wanted to nip up and make sure the door's locked. Our boss, Lod, wouldn't appreciate it if she flew the coop, eh?"

"What are ya, nuts or sumpthin'?" The big man was frowning darkly, working with a forefinger in a cauliflowered ear. "She—"

The door banged open. "Hey, Iron-bender," a peglegged John Silver type in a torn undershirt growled out. "Could I borry yer second-best brass knucks?" The newcomer's gaze fell on O'Leary. "Who's this?" he demanded.

"A new guy; some kind of a ladies' maid. How's come yer always on the scrounge, Bones? You ain't give me back my thumbscrew yet, the one Ma give me."

"A
what
kind of a maid?" Bones was eyeing O'Leary.

"I dunno; he was asting about where the dame was. The dummy don't even know—"

"Never mind what he don't know. He's prob'ly one o' the new reinforcements. That right, bub?"

"Absolutely," O'Leary nodded. "But about the, er, prisoner. Just tell me her room number, and I'll be off. I don't want to trouble you gentlemen further."

"This dope thinks—" Iron-bender started.

"The room, huh?" Bones gave Iron-bender a look. "It's kind of hard to find. Me and him better show ya the way. Right, Iron-bender?"

The thug wrinkled his broad, flat face. "Look, I got things to do."

"You can spare a few minutes to take care o' the demands o' hospitality. Let's go."

"Oh, you needn't bother, fellows," O'Leary protested. "Just give me the room number."

"Not a chanct, matey; we got to do this right. Come on. It ain't far."

"Well . . ." O'Leary followed the two out into the hall. It might help, at that, to have an escort. It would save some embarrassing questions if he encountered anyone else. He followed the two slope-shouldered heavyweights along the passage to a stairway and up two flights. They emerged in a corridor identical to all the others.

"Right this way, bud," Bones said with a smile like a benign crocodile.

They went along past silent doors and halted before one numbered 1407. Bones thumped with his knuckles.

A deep grunt sounded from inside.

"That doesn't sound like Adoranne," O'Leary said. "That sounds like—"

Bones jumped for him, missed as O'Leary spun aside and dropped a side-hand chop across the base of the thick neck. Iron-bender, slow on the uptake, watched his companion stagger past with a muffled yell before he turned on O'Leary, in time to take the latter's stiff fingers in a hard jab to the sternum. He doubled over and caught a smashing uppercut with his massive chin. He shook his head.

"Hey, what goes on?" he inquired in a pained voice, reaching for O'Leary, who caught his arm, whirled, levered it across his hip—and felt himself being lifted, tossed aside. He rolled away and saw Iron-bender rubbing his arm, a pained expression on his face.

"Ow," the heavyweight said. Bones was coming back now, a little hunched to the left, but an expression on his face which prompted O'Leary to leap to his feet, dash past Iron-bender and make for the stairwell at flank speed. He reached it, slammed through, hammered down one flight, plunged out into the corridor—and into the waiting arms of a grizzly bear.

It was impossible, O'Leary had discovered, to concentrate on escape schemes while in a position of extreme stress—such as now, for example. The man who had gathered him in—a seven-footer with hands like machinist's vises, shoulders like football armor, and a variety of muscles to match—held him in an awkward grip, his arms crossed behind him and raised until he danced along on tiptoe in an effort to relieve the pressure.

"I'll go quietly," he assured his captor. "How about just leaving my arms in the same old sockets they've been in all along; I like them that way."

The thick arm jerked him sideways, heading down along a new passage. O'Leary scrambled to keep the weight off his arms. Through open doors he glimpsed unmade beds, soiled garments on unswept floors, empty cracker boxes, sardine tins, bean cans. His captor came to a halt, struck a closed door two blows with his fist. The door slid back, revealing the interior of an elevator. O'Leary's jailor pushed him inside, worked a handle; the car rose one floor. They stepped out into the corridor where Iron-Bender and Bones stood in heated debate.

" . . . we tell him the guy pulls a knife, see, and—"

"Naw, we don't tell him nothing. I'll say you was drunk—" the conversation broke off as the two spotted O'Leary.

"Hey!" Bones said. "Crusher got him!"

"Gee, thanks ,Crusher," Iron-bender said. "We'll take him off yer hands now."

Crusher made a low rumbling sound in his throat. The two lesser thugs withdrew hastily. Crusher marched O'Leary along to the door Bones had knocked on earlier. This time the knock shook the panel in its frame.

A deep voice called, "It's open, curse you!" Crusher twisted the knob, flung the door wide, and propelled O'Leary into the room.

A man sat in an immense chair placed under the window across the room. He was taller sitting down than Crusher was standing: that was O'Leary's first startled impression. The second was that the man was wider, thicker, heavier, more massive, than any human being he had ever seen before—by far. The third was a shocked wondering whether this
was
a man.

The massive head—carried at an angle as though the neck had been broken once and badly set—was adorned by a dark leathery face, like some heroic carving of a demon. The nose was sharply chiseled, with great flaring nostrils. The mouth was wide, thin-lipped, with a long sparsely bristled upper lip, over a massive jaw with a receding chin. Small, bright eyes stared from the oversized face; deep brown eyes, with no white showing. Coarse hair, short-cropped, covered the wide, knobby skull; the leg-thick neck was muffled in a great scarf, and the ponderous body was draped in shimmering folds of a dark wine-colored stuff. The hands that rested on the arms of the chair were big enough to hold two footballs each, O'Leary estimated. Great jewels glistened on the thick, hairy fingers. The giant twitched one of the latter members, and Crusher released his grip and backed from the room.

"So you reach my citadel," a thickly accented voice near the lower level of the audible range rumbled. "I thought you might—though sage Nicodaeus think otherwise."

"You're—you're darn right," O'Leary said, trying had to control a quaver in his voice. "And if you know what's good for you, you'll turn Adoranne over to me right now and maybe I'll put in a good word for you with King Goruble."