Chapter Thirteen

 

            For the next quarter hour, while Bother hallooed in the distance and villagers roamed at random carrying dim yellowish lanterns, the two fugitives waded as silently as possible in a wide arc around the right end, coming up to the fringe of huts on the outskirts of the settlement without raising a halloo.

 

            "Wait," O'Leary said, as they paused in the lee of the first shack. "It's time for me to make another try at focusing the Psychical Energies. This is just like the time I had to take refuge in the slums of Artesia City: I found an unprepossessing shed and sort of rearranged things to make it cosier. Just a minute." Marv assented silently. Lafayette cleared his mind of preconceptions and pictured the interior of the little structure as it would be revealed when he opened the door—a rudely nailed-up affair slung on rotted leather hinges.

                

            Nothing fancy, he specified. Just your standard Holiday Inn room, but with a counter-top fridge, well-stocked, and a hot plate. As he held the image confidently in mind, Marv nudged him impatiently ... Or did the world jiggle ever so slightly? He brushed aside Marv's importunities, unsure.

 

            Where was he? He seemed to have lost his place, thanks to Marv's interruption. Oh, yes, it was the room: a first-class USA-style motel. He envisioned it clearly and in detail; then the image faded, became misty and gray, and Frumpkin was there, working frantically at his oversize control panel. Without pausing to consider, O'Leary leaped, knocking the Man in Black away from the array of switches and instrument faces.

 

            FLIP! The grand ballroom at Artesia, crowded with gorgeously gowned or uniformed people, among whom Lafayette recognized Lord Archie, an old ally. He called out to him and, FLIP! he was watching haggard people in gray rags, picking objects out of rubble.

 

            FLIP! A star exploded in blackness. As the shock wave struck he was thrown back, back, tumbling end-over-end. He grabbed for support, felt a soft squishy surface underfoot. He concentrated on deducing which way was up.

 

            "Hey, Al!" Marv's voice boomed out. "Where ya got to? You was going to fix us up with a flop, remember?"

 

            "Don't bother me when I'm concentrating, Marv!" O'Leary hissed in annoyance, still dizzy from his wild ride through delirium. "Well, here goes." He tugged at the leather strap which served as door-handle, and a blackened slat fell away to flop into the ankle-deep mud. Through the slit thus opened light gleamed. Squinting, Lafayette peered through, saw wall-to-wall carpeting, the corners of two double beds, and a table-lamp which shed its warm glow on the flowered wallpaper.

 

            "We're in, Marv," he said exultantly, and tugged at the door. This time it yielded. Pausing only to kick off his mud-laden boots, O'Leary stepped inside.

 

            "Hold it right there, feller!" the familiar hoarse voice of Sheriff "Hoppy" Tode growled. "Been settin' up ever night fer a week, waitin' on you, boy. What taken you so long?"

 

            " 'What took you so long', O'Leary corrected at once.

 

            "Me?" Tode yelled indignantly. "Didn't I get on the job jest as soon's I got things straight with that Clyde feller? Been right here ever since they carried me here and told me how you'd be showin' up soon—and yer sidekick, too," he finished as Marv poked a wondering expression through the doorway. "Said to keep a eye on him; tricky, they said."

 

            "Whom, I?" Marv said in a tone of wonder, edging away.

 

            "Inside, you," Tode barked. "Got the both of ye; old Cease'll be glad o' that, I betcha." The sheriff motioned with the nickle-plated frontier-model hog-leg he carried.

 

            After the two adventurers had placed their hands behind their heads as ordered, Tode frowned at their muddy footprints.

 

            "Dern shame to mess up these here rugs," he said. "Strip whur you're at, and get in yonder and take a bath," he ordered. Marv complied at once, disappearing into the tiled bathroom.

 

            "Fine," O'Leary agreed. "And while we're cleaning up, perhaps you could rustle up some bacon and eggs, or whatever's in the icebox. By the way, Sheriff, how did you get in here without getting muddy?" He dropped his clothes on top of the black mound of Marv's discarded garments.

 

            "Tole you they carried me here. Some kind of seat on wheels it was, only it, like, flew or sumpin'. Beats me. One minute I was back at Headquarters, the next one here I was."

 

            At the door, Lafayette paused to say, "By the way, Marv here is an agent of Central, Sheriff. If you're working for Prime now, that makes you colleagues of a sort, doesn't it?"

 

            "Ain't been tole nothing about no jailbird bein' my boss," Tode replied shortly.

 

            "I was really surprised to see you here, Sheriff," O'Leary said. "The last I saw you, Clyde's boy Archie was pulling your arms off. Then I heard your voice in the fog, wherever that was."

 

            "When you taken and slipped out," Tode explained, "they forgot me and run after you. I started to ast the gal back o' the desk whereat I was and what the heck was going down; but she taken to yellin' her fool head off, so I taken a quick powder out the side door, and my-oh-my, wasn't them fellers excited! Taken me for somebody named Alligator or like that. Started offerin' me bribes if n I'd let up. Couldn't figger it out. Then some other big officials come in and told 'em something, and next thing I knew I was on the way here. Thought that part about the fog and all was jest dreamin'. After a while they come for me, and here I am. Told me to nab you and I'd get a big ree-ward, and a gold medal and a stay of execution. So I'm holdin' you until somebody comes to take you off'n my hands."

 

            "That sounds so dreary," Lafayette said sympathetically. "Why not put the revolver away and sit down? We're as innocent as yourself—and we have one advantage."

 

            "Oh, yeah? What would that be?" Tode inquired cautiously.

 

            "Would you like to go home?" O'Leary asked.

 

            "Who, me?" the sheriff demanded, surprised. "Tell you the truth, I don't even know whereat Colby City is. Don't know nothin' about no mudflats noplace in the county. Sure, I'd like to go home. How?"

 

            Steaming gently, Marv tugged at O'Leary's sleeve. "Next man," he said.

 

            "Not now, Marv." Lafayette shook him off. "All we have to do," he told the sheriff, "is find my old pal the duke. He's from back home, or almost. We'll find out what he knows, and then I've got a couple of other ideas, too. Remember when I walked right through your jail wall?"

 

            "I been kinda wonderin' about that," Tode conceded. "You tellin' me you sure-nuff done that? Wasn't no trick?"

 

            "Right," Lafayette confirmed. "Now, put up the gun and we'll stick together and break out of this."

 

            In the taut silence that followed his proposal, there was a quick tap at the door. Before anyone could respond, it opened and a mud-blackened figure stepped through.

 

            "Hi, fellas," Mickey Jo's voice said. "Say, you got a shower-bath in here?" she cried in a delighted tone, looking past Lafayette into the pale-green tiled cubicle.

 

            "Come on, I'll race ya." Her sodden garments fell to the floor with a heavy thump, revealing a slim but well-rounded girlbody with muddy face, hands, and ankles. She thrust past O'Leary and Marv, who tried in vain to preserve the conventions by wrapping himself in the shower curtain.

 

            "Don't bother, honey," Mickey Jo said. "I reckon I seen it all before." She stepped into the stall and disappeared in a deluge of hot water and soapsuds.

 

            "Who's the gal?" Sheriff Tode asked weakly.

 

            "Mickey Jo," O'Leary told him. "She's a Prime agent, like you."

 

            "Jest part-time, is all," Tode reminded Lafayette. He holstered his weapon. "Reckon we better get started," he added. "You got any clothes to put on?" he inquired vaguely.

 

            "In the closet," O'Leary improvised, mentally picturing a row of natty outfits in both his size and Marv's, plus an assortment of Western costumes for Mickey Jo. There was a faint bump, he thought—or was it a distant explosion?

 

            There was a moment of disorientation; then the gray room was back. This time, O'Leary told himself, crouching behind the nearest chair, he'd play it a little smarter. No jumping out and yelling BOO! If he just laid low and listened ... there were faint voices. Lafayette peeked out from behind the chair and saw Frumpkin clad in a wine-colored bathrope, deep in conversation with Special Ed and a paunchy, sly-faced fellow in a dowdy alpaca suit and worn cowboy boots.

 

            "... no danger of that; he's a simpleton," Frumpkin was saying.

 

            "I dunno, Chief," Ed countered. "He made the takeout slicker'n owl-do, and I tole you he had them pitchers."

 

            "He couldn't have," Frumpkin snapped. "You'd been sampling your stock again, Ed." He scribbled a note in a small pad and turned to the other man.

 

            "Now, Chuck, I don't like your coming here like this without specific instructions," Frumpkin said in a sharp tone. The paunchy man threw up his hands.

 

            "Don't go getting riled, boss. I cun't help it. I and the missus had just went out for a bite, and"—he paused to gulp—"and it jest happened. Makes me nervous." He looked around, failing to note O'Leary as he ducked back.

 

            "No matter," Frumpkin dismissed the subject. "All can yet be retrieved. These aberrant inputs have kept me a bit off-balance, I'll admit. It's time to recalibrate. Just follow along, gentlemen."

 

            Lafayette poked his head out to watch, and it struck a large gong which someone had put there while he wasn't looking. The clang echoed and reechoed, louder and softer, on and on ...

 

            Sheriff Tode's meaty face seemed to be hanging disembodied before him. "Easy, Shurf," Lafayette said soothingly. "As soon as I can get the world slowed down to a slow whirl—or whirled slowed down to a world, I'll explain everything—except possibly the moose in the bedroom."

 

            "You're a-foolin' me," Tode accused, but he turned and watched as O'Leary went to the closet door and opened it on precisely the gaudy wardrobe he had envisioned, plus a row of well-shined boots on a rack below.

 

            "I can see somebody's been a-funnin' me," Tode remarked. O'Leary ignored the comment and invited Marv, now pink from a vigorous toweling, to pick out a suitable outfit for himself.

 

            "Oh, boy," Marv purred appreciatively as he looked over a scarlet doorman's uniform with gold epaulets, but passed it up in favor of a powder-blue confection with silver braid and buttons. A drawer at one end of the closet supplied socks and undergarments.

 

            The roar of the shower ceased, and Mickey Jo, a towel around her hair and another held carelessly before her, emerged and uttered a yelp of joy at sight of the closet.

 

            "I always wanted one o' them cowgirl getups," she cried, "just like Dale used to wear." She hurried over and suited up while Marv struggled with his tie, lingering before the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door.

 

            "Marv," Mickey Jo cooed, "I never dreamed you were so handsome! But how about a shave to go with it? Or do you want me to just shape it a little?"

 

-

 

            O'Leary finished dressing in a well-fitted hussar's tunic and breeches, complete with nickle-plated helmet and sword-hilt, a costume selected for him by Mickey Jo, who had transferred the contents of his pockets to his new finery; there came a peremptory knock at the door, followed at once by a pounding as with a pistol-butt; then an authoritative voice yelled:

 

            "Open up, you in there! Police business!"

 

            "Why, fur as that goes, I'm a police orfiser myself," Sheriff Tode began as he opened the door, only to be thrust aside by a bulky fellow in greasy rags which may have been the remains of a regulation dark-blue city-cop suit. He looked from Mickey Jo to Marv to O'Leary, then planted his feet solidly before the latter and barked:

 

            "You'd be the boy I want, I don't doubt. Are you coming quiet, or do I hafta cuff ya up?" He jingled a set of rusty bracelets at his belt and shifted his cigar butt to the other corner of his mouth.

 

            "No need for force, Chief," Lafayette assured the intruder. "I'll come quietly. And perhaps you can tell me something about just what it is that's going on here."

 

            "Don't count on it, rube," the cop snarled, whacking his palm with his billy club. "The rest o' you riffraff stay here," he added, eyeing Tode without approval. "I'll get to you later."

 

            "Sir," Tode stated firmly. "I myself am Shurf Tode of Colby County. You may depend on my cooperation in any police matter."

 

            "Happens the shire reeve's a close acquaintance o' mine," the cop growled, "and he's over to the ducal quarters right now tryna splain to His Grace how he happen to be in that lynch mob."

 

            Trailed by Marv with Tode at his side while Mickey Jo disappeared into the bathroom, O'Leary followed the cop out into moonlit darkness along a catwalk improvised from debris. The catwalk protected his mirror-polished boots from the mud, from which at irregular intervals the ruins of former masonry buildings projected, vaguely visible by moonlight. The moon itself, Lafayette noted, had resumed its normal size. Studying the ragged rows of huts, Lafayette was struck by a thought: "Marv," he said quietly to the gaudily dressed Prime agent, "this used to be a city, and the shacks are lined up along the old streets. Do you think it could be Colby Corners? If it is, it means the Chantspell Mountains ought to be over there, to the west, but there's nothing there but those low hillocks. Somehow we're close to home, but an awful long way off, too."

 

            "Beats me," Marv muttered. O'Leary now noticed up ahead a curiously rickety structure some fifty feet tall, with a solid-looking room at the top. He pointed it out to Marv. "As I figure it," he said, "That's just about where the Y is back in Colby Corners—and the palace, in Artesia."

 

            "That don't look safe," Marv said, eyeing the fragile underpinnings of the top-heavy building. Ignoring the curious edifice, their guide turned in at a tumble-down affair he referred to grandly as the Palace of Justice, a collapsed building with one brick wall and two more of packing crates and tarpaper, roofed with a rotted tarpaulin. Only the top step of a wide flight projected above the mud level.

 

            "Had a flood here, eh?" O'Leary hazarded.

 

            "You could say that, wise guy," Lafayette's escort grunted. "Now, you ack nice in front of the Inspector, and I'll try to make it easy on you."

 

            O'Leary looked around at the squatter's village of mean hovels linked, he could now see, by a network of catwalks of an extent that indicated more than a brief occupation of the site. A few drably clad people were in sight, apparently engaged in routine tasks.

 

            "C'mon, feller," the cop urged from the step. "Ain't got no backlog in the courts anyways. Jedge's waitin' on ye." Tode hurried up the steps; Lafayette followed. Marv was nowhere to be seen. Tode forged ahead confidently.

 

            They pushed through heavy oak doors with pieces of billboard nailed over the broken plate-glass panels. Inside, Lafayette detected the stale odor of boredom, incompetence, bribery, treachery, and poor sanitation common to all such institutions of law-without-justice. He trailed Tode and the arresting officer to an inner pair of swinging oak doors and inside into a small theatrelike room where a middle-aged man with a plump and half-familiar face sat hunched in a black robe behind a lectern on a raised platform. The smack of the gavel made O'Leary jump.

 

            "All right, Agent X-9," the presumed judge muttered, not quite looking at O'Leary's guard. "Case of the Supreme Authority versus O'Leary. Court is now in session." He looked vaguely at O'Leary. "Do you have anything to say before I pronounce sentence?"

 

            After a moment of appalled silence, O'Leary burst out, "Damn right I do!" He stopped short as the gavel banged again.

 

            "Looky here, boy," the judge said without heat. "No profanity in the court."

 

            "Sorry about that," Lafayette said contritely. "But this is no trial! I don't even know what I'm accused of!"

 

            "No matter; the rest of us do."

 

            "Not me," Tode spoke up from behind O'Leary. "Him and me both, we're innercent is what we are."

 

            "And," the judge went on, "you're not 'accused', O'Leary; you're convicted."

 

            "Of what?" O'Leary and Tode said together.

 

            "Can you deny ..." the judge said sternly, at the same time beckoning to a gaudily attired couple sitting in the front row of the sparse audience. They rose and bustled forward eagerly, skirting O'Leary to take up proprietary positions flanking the podium. "Uh, can you deny, as I was saying," the jurist continued, peering sharply at Lafayette, "that on the fourteenth instant— that would be yesterday—at approximately nine pee em, you did willfully disposess the plaintiffs, Chuck and Chick, of the motel accommodations which they had reserved, engaged, and paid for in advance, at a time they were briefly absent therefrom?"

 

            "Well, not exactly," O'Leary responded dubiously.

 

            "We're the Chick and Chuck of 'Chuckles with Chick and Chuck', a clean family act which we're playing the Twilight Room of the Holiday Inn right here in Duluth," the male member of the duo of variety artists volunteered in the silence which followed O'Leary's statement. O'Leary recognized him as the paunchy man he had seen in the gray room. "Which we stepped out for a bite after we unpacked," Chuck went on, "and when we come back we couldn't find our room no place. Seemed like there was just a kinda open space where it shoulda been. Checked the number, too: skipped right from one thirteen to one seventeen. We didn't hardly know what to do. Then this cop feller came along, and here we are."

 

            "... and all our brand-new costumes in there, too," Chick mourned. "Most of 'em not even wore yet—and he's wearing one of 'em right now!" She pointed an indignant finger at Lafayette.

 

            "So's he," Chuck added, aiming an accusatory digit at Marv, who had retired to a position behind Tode.

 

            "Well," the judge growled, scowling at O'Leary. "I'm waiting. Can you make such denial? Remember, you're under oath."

 

            "I am not!" Lafayette declared. "I just got here, and I don't know what's going on. I'm sorry about Chuck and Chick, but I can explain."

 

            "Very well," the judge said agreeably. "Explain."

 

            "I guess I can't exactly explain," Lafayette confessed. "But I didn't mean any harm. I mean, we were cold and wet and hungry, and I just thought it would be nice if we had a first-class motel room waiting for us."

 

            "So you tooken ourn!" Chuck supplied. "Dern if I can see how you done it; must be one o' them new packaged-unit buildings like I seen onta the tube."

 

            "So you admit taking the room," the judge recapped carefully, "but you plead necessity."

 

            "I didn't take it on purpose," Lafayette protested. "I mean, it was like the time I wanted a bathtub, and I got one with Daphne in it. You see, when I seem to conjure up something out of thin air by focusing the Psychical Energies, I'm not really creating it; I'm just shifting it from another, nearby locus. So there was no malicious intent."

 

            "Now we're getting somewheres," the judge said in a satisfied tone. He motioned unobtrusively, and two uniformed bailiffs moved in to flank O'Leary closely. The judge was peering sharply at him. "You confess freely and without duress, that you did willfully tamper with the entropic integrity of this locus, known and referred to hereafter as Alpha Nine-Two, Plane V-87, Fox 1-W."

 

-

 

            "Hey!" O'Leary yelled. "That's not far from Artesia, only Artesia's Fox 221-b! We're almost back! I guess we've been luckier than we thought," he added more calmly to Marv.

 

            "I assume," the judge, whose name O'Leary belatedly saw lettered on a brass plate on the lecturn, was Grossfarb, continued implacably, "that you are aware that this constitutes a gross violation of the GRC."

 

            "I never heard of it," Lafayette said. "Or maybe Belarius mentioned it."

 

            "Ignorance of the law is no excuse, Bub," the judge returned coldly.

 

            "Still, it goes to establish that my intent was innocent," Lafayette insisted.

 

            Grossfarb turned pages before him. "This whole matter is quite irregular," he grumped. "I'd be tempted to throw it out, except for the fact that I have an Emergency Directive here, specifying that you're to be detained at all costs." He looked at O'Leary. "You don't look dangerous," he conceded. "Still, we all remember the Axe-handle Killer. He was only nine years of age and had an angelic appearance. Now, before I remand you to custody, I want to clear up a few minor points, just for my own satisfaction:

 

            "Where is your probability engine hidden?"

 

            "I don't know what that is," O'Leary replied with dignity. "And I certainly don't own one."

 

            "No question of ownership," Judge Grossfarb corrected. " 'Possession' is the word. Though I confess I don't see how you could transport and hide a fifty-ton unit, which is the minimum, I am assured by my advisers, required to dislocate an entire motel suite."

 

            "It's ridiculous," O'Leary pointed out. "I arrived here on foot, not packing a Mack truck on my back."

 

            "To be sure," Grossfarb murmured. "Still, I'm given no latitude in the matter. Bailiff—" he broke off as the courtroom doors were thrust open and a man dressed in immaculate black strode in, heading directly for the bench.

 

            "Order!" Grossfarb barked weakly as the newcomer briefly flashed a bit of bright metal, then leaned on the podium and addressed the judge confidentially.

 

            "It's irregular!" the latter said in protest, at which the Man in Black took out a folded document from an inner pocket and slapped it down in front of Grossfarb, who rose, looking flustered, and addressed the room:

 

            "Jurisdiction in this case has been preempted by an overriding authority," he announced. "Bailiffs, pass custody of the prisoners"—he paused at a word from the Man in Black, then resumed—"prisoner, that is; the tall one; put the other fellow away until I've clarified the matter furthur. Turn this O'Leary over to His Excellency here. The present action is nol prossed." He sat looking frustrated.

 

            Lafayette turned to speak to Marv, who was staring, open-mouthed, at the Man in Black standing by the bench in an attitude of patience stretched to the limit.

 

            "Al, that there's the Man in Black!" he gasped. "He's as bad a spook as you are—I mean ..."

 

            "I recognize him," O'Leary said. "He's a big-shot Prime agent named Frumpkin. I wonder how he got here."

 

            "Quite simply," Frumpkin spoke up. "I followed you, Sir Lafayette, and a merry chase it's been. Your resourcefulness has quite surprised me."

 

            "What happened to Belarius?" Lafayette blurted.

 

            "Alas, he was a trifle slow in his last transfer—from the laboratory, you'll recall. He fetched up somewhere in uncontrolled space-time, no doubt, poor chap. Another crime to be laid at your feet, fellow-me-lad."

 

            "I had nothing to do with it," O'Leary rebutted.