The Universe Twister (36 page)

Lafayette came awake with a start as his chin bumped his chest.

"Why, you're sleepy, poor lad. And no wonder, the hours you've been keeping. Oh, I almost forgot: your friends were here." She gave him a sharp sideways smile.

"Friends?" Lafayette yawned. How long had it been since he had slept? A week? Or only three days . . . or . . . was it possible it was only last night, curled up in the big bed with the silken sheets . . .

" . . . said not to bother telling you, they wanted to surprise you. But I thought you'd rather know." Her tone had a sharp edge, penetrating his drowsiness.

Lafayette forced his mind to focus on what the old lady was saying. Her voice seemed vaguely familiar. Had he met her before? Or . . .

"Rather know, ah, what?" He forced his thoughts back to the conversation.

"About them coming back."

"Er, who?"

"The nice gentlemen with the lovely horses."

Suddenly Lafayette was wide awake. "When were they here?"

"Why, you just missed them, Lorenzo—by about thirty minutes." Dim old eyes bored into him through thick glasses. Or were they dim and old? On second look, they were remarkably sharp. Where, Lafayette wondered, had he seen that gimlet gaze before? . . .

"Ma'am—you've been very kind, but I really must rush. And I think you ought to know: I'm not Lorenzo."

"Not Lorenzo? Whatever do you mean?" She peered over her lenses at him.

"I came here looking for a fellow named Lorenzo, or possibly Lothario or Lancelot. When you welcomed me so nicely, and offered me food and warmth, I, well—I was starving and freezing and I simply took advantage of your kindness. But now I'll be going—"

"Why, I wouldn't hear of it! A body could catch his death on a night like this—"

"I'm not sure you understand," Lafayette protested, sidling toward the door. "I'm a total stranger. I just wandered in here, and—"

"But surely you're the same charming young man who rented the spare bedroom?" The old lady peered nearsightedly at him.

Lafayette shook his head. "Afraid not. I came here looking for the Lady Andragorre—"

"Why, you're a friend of my niece! How delightful! Why didn't you tell me! Now you really must give up this silly idea of going back out in that icy wind. Oh, by the way, ah, where
is
dear Andi? I had a foolish notion you might be bringing her along?"

"You're Daph—I mean Lady Andragorre's aunt?"

"Why, yes, didn't you know? But you haven't said where she is . . ."

Lafayette was looking around the room. It was clean and comfortable enough, but decidedly on the primitive side. "I got the impression the Lady Andragorre is very well of," he said. "Is this the best she can do for you?"

"Why, foolish boy, I adore living here among the birds and flowers. So quaint and picturesque."

"Who chops the wood?"

"Why, ah, I have a man who comes in on Tuesdays. But you were saying about Lady Andragorre . . .?"

"I wasn't saying. But I don't know where she is; I came alone. Well, thanks for the goodies—"

"You're not leaving," the old lady said sharply. She smiled. "I won't think of it."

Lafayette pulled on his cloak, went to the door. "I'm afraid I have to decline your hospitality—" He broke off at a sudden sound, turned in time to see the old lady behind him, her hand swinging down edge-on in a murderous chop at his temple. He ducked, took the blow on a forearm, yelled at the pain, countered a second vicious swing, aimed a stiff-fingered punch at his hostess's ribs, took a jab to the solar plexus, and fell backward over the rocker.

"Double-crosser!" the old lady yelled. "Selling out to that long-nosed Rodolpho, after all I've promised to do for you! Of all the cast-iron stitch-welded gall, to come waltzing in here pretending you never saw me before!" Lafayette rolled aside as the old lady bounded across the chair, barely fending her off with a kick to the short ribs as he scrambled to his feet.

"Where is she, curse you? Oh, I should have left you tending swine back in that bog I picked you out of—"

Abruptly the old girl halted in mid-swing, cupped an ear. Faintly, O'Leary heard the thud of approaching hooves.

"Blast!" The old woman bounded to the door, snatched a cloak from the peg, whirled it about herself.

"I'll get you for this, Lorenzo!" she keened in a voice that had dropped from a wheezy soprano to a ragged tenor. "Just you wait, my boy! I'll extract a vengeance from you that will make you curse the day you ever saw the Glass Tree!" She yanked the door open and was gone into the night.

Belatedly, O'Leary sprang after her. Ten feet from the door, she stood fiddling with her buttons. As O'Leary leaped, she emitted a loud buzzing hum, bounded into the air, and shot away toward the forest, rapidly gaining altitude, her cloak streaming behind her.

"Hey," Lafayette called weakly. Suddenly he was aware of the rising thunder of hooves. He dashed back inside, across the room, out the back door, and keeping the house between himself and the arriving cavalry, he sprinted for the shelter of the woods.

Dawn came, gray and blustery, hardly lessening the darkness. Lafayette sat in deep gloom under a tree big enough to cut a tunnel through, shivering. His head ached; his stomach had a slow fire in it; his eyeballs felt as if they had been taken out, rolled in corn meal, and Southern-fried. The taste in his mouth resembled pickled onions—spoiled ones. In the branches overhead, a bird squawked mournfully.

"This is it," Lafayette muttered, "the low point of my career. I'm sick, freezing, starving, hung-over, and dyspeptic. I've lost my horse, Lady Andragorre's trail—everything. I don't know where I'm going, or what to do when I get there. Also, I'm hallucinating. Flying old ladies, ha! I probably imagined the whole business about the cottage. A dying delirium, maybe I was actually shot by those bumbling incompetents in the yellow coats. Maybe I'm dead!"

He felt himself over, failed to find any bullet holes.

"But this is ridiculous. If I were dead, I wouldn't have a headache." He hitched up his sword belt, tottered a few feet to a small stream, knelt, and sluiced ice water over his face, scrubbed at it with the edge of his cloak, drank a few swallows.

"O.K.," he told himself sternly. "No use standing around talking to myself. This is a time for action.

"Swell," he replied. "What action?

"I could start walking," he suggested. "It's only about twenty miles back to Port Miasma.

"Rodolpho isn't likely to be overjoyed to see me coming back empty-handed," he countered. "But I'll probably have a chance to explain my reasons—to Groanwelt. Anyway, I don't know which direction it is." Lafayette peered upward through the canopy of high foliage. Not even a faint glow against the visible patches of gray sky indicated the position of the sun.

"Besides which, I can't run off and leave the Lady Andragorre to her fate.

"All right, I'm convinced: I press on. Which way is on?"

He turned around three times, with his eyes shut, stopped, and pointed.

"That way."

"You know," O'Leary confided in himself as he started off in the indicated direction, "this talking to myself isn't such a bad idea. It opens up whole new vistas.

"And it certainly cuts down on the shilly-shally factor.

"Of course, it
is
a sign of insanity.

"Poof—what's a little touch of schizophrenia, among all my other ailments?"

He pushed on, limping alternately on the left and right ankles, both of which he had twisted during his several sprints, leaps, and falls of the night before. Gradually the trees thinned; the tangled vines and undergrowth thickened. Patches of bare rock showed through the greenery. As he emerged on a bare, wind-swept slope dotted with stunted, wind-twisted cedars, it began to rain, a needle-sharp spray that stung his eyes, numbed his face. Fifty feet farther, the slope ended in a sheer drop. O'Leary crept close to the edge, looked down a vertical face that disappeared into mistiness.

"Splendid," he commented to the airy abyss. "Perfect. Fits right in with everything else that's happened. No wonder the old lady flew off on a broomless broom. Not even a fly could climb down that.

"So—I simply continue along the edge until I come to a road, path, or stairway leading down," he advised.

"You left out a rope ladder or a funicular railway.

"A regrettable omission. Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo . . . that way." He set off, following the cliff line. Another hour passed, the monotony of fatigue, pain, and frostbite broken only by two or three slips that almost pitched him over the edge.

"You're losing your stuff, O'Leary," he panted, struggling back to his feet after the last spill. "Just a few years ago, a little hike like this would have been child's play.

"Well, I can't expect to live in luxury, with every whim attended, and stay as hard as I was when I lived by my wits.

"There must be a lesson in that for me, but I hate to admit it."

The wind had increased; a driving downpour sluiced across the rock. O'Leary staggered on. His fingers and toes and lips were numb. He covered another half-mile before he paused for another conference.

"Something's bound to turn up soon," he told himself in tones of false confidence, rubbing his stiff fingers against his aching ears. "A footprint, or a dropped hanky, say . . ."

BEE-beep, BEE-beep, BEE-beep
 . . . The tiny sound seemed to be right beside him. Lafayette looked all around, saw nothing.

"Look here," he said aloud. "Talking to myself is bad enough, but in Morse code?"

He resumed rubbing his ears.

BEE-beep, BEE-beep, BEE-beep
, the tone sounded sharply. O'Leary looked at his hands. Duke Rodolpho's ring winked on his middle finger. The ruby light glowed, dimmed, glowed, dimmed . . .

"Hey," O'Leary said weakly. He put the ring cautiously to his ear. It beeped steadily on in time with the flashing light.

"It didn't do that before," he told himself suspiciously.

"Well, it's doing it now," he came back smartly. "And it must have some significance."

"Maybe—maybe it's a radio beam—a beacon, like the airlines use.

"Maybe. Let's test it." He slogged downslope, fifty feet—listened again.

Bee-BEEP, bee-BEEP, bee-BEEP
 . . .

"A-ha! That means I'm moving off course." He moved on, angling back upslope. Now the ring emitted a steady hum.

"On course," O'Leary breathed. "But on course for what?

"What does it matter? Anyplace would be better than here.

"True." Head down, his eyes squinted against the freezing rain, O'Leary plowed on, the ring held to his ear. The hum grew steadily louder. A clump of sodden stalks barred his way. He pushed through—and was teetering over empty space. For a wild instant he clutched at the sky for nonexistent support. Then the wind was blasting past him like a hurricane. The cliff face flashing upward like the shaft of an express elevator; O'Leary noticed the large 21 painted in white as it shot past; the 20, the 19, a mere blur—

From somewhere, a giant baseball bat swung, knocked him over the fence for a home run amid a vast display of Roman candles, while thousands cheered.

Someone had used his back as a diving board; or possibly they had mistaken it for a Persian rug and given it a good flailing with steel rods. His stomach had been employed by a gang of road menders for brewing up a batch of hot tar; he could distinctly feel the bubbles swelling and popping. His head had been dribbled up and down a basketball court for several close-fought quarters; and his eyes—apparently they'd been extracted, used in a Ping-Pong tournament, and rudely jammed back into their sockets.

"Hey—I think he's coming around," a frog-deep voice said. "That last groan was a lot healthier-sounding."

"He's all yours, Roy. Let me know if he relapses." Footsteps clunked; a door opened and closed. Lafayette pried an eye open, looked up at a perforated acoustical ceiling with flush-mounted fluorescents. Ignoring the fish spear someone had carelessly left embedded in his neck, he turned his head, saw a stubby little man with a cheerful, big-nosed face peering at him anxiously.

"How are ya, pal?" the watcher inquired.

"Yokabump," O'Leary chirped feebly, and lay back to watch the lights whirl.

"Cripes, a foreigner," the froggy voice said. "Sorry, Slim—me no spikka Hungarisha, you savvy?"

"But I guess you're not really Yokabump," O'Leary managed a thin whisper. "You just look like him, like everybody else in this nightmare looks like somebody they aren't."

"Hey, you can talk after all! Boy, you had me worried. I never lost a customer yet, but I came close today. You were in some rush, Slim—couldn't even wait for the elevator." The little man mopped at his face with a green-monogrammed red bandanna.

Lafayette's eyes roved around the room. It was ivory-walled, tile-floored. The soft susurrus of air-conditioning whispered from a grille above the door.

"What happened?" He tried to sit up, flopped back.

"Don't worry, Slim," the little man said. "The doc says you're O.K., just shook up."

"I . . . I seem to have a sort of confused memory," O'Leary said, "of stepping down an elevator shaft—out in the wilderness?"

"Yeah. Fell two floors. Lucky at that, no busted bones."

"Isn't that a rather peculiar location for an elevator shaft?"

The little man looked surprised. "How else you figure we're gonna get up and down? Hey, you ain't got in mind filing no claim against the company, I hope? I mean, I picked up your beep, and was coming as fast as I could, right? You should of just held your horses."

"No doubt you're right. By the way—who are you?"

The little man thrust out a square, callused hand. "Sprawnroyal is the handle, Slim; Customer Service. Glad to make your acquaintance. You're a day early, you know. The order's not quite ready."

"Oh . . . the order," Lafayette temporized. "Frankly, I'm a little confused. By the fall, you know. Ah . . . what order was that?"

"Yeah, I guess you got a little concussion. Affects the memory." Sprawnroyal shook his heavy head sympathetically. "Your boss, Prince Krupkin, gave us a down payment on a two-passenger rug, a blackout cloak, and a dozen illusions, the number-seventy-eight assortment."