"Speaking of crimes," Lafayette came back hotly. "What about kidnapping?"
"You wish to confess to a kidnapping?" Grossfarb put in gingerly.
"No. He's the kidnapper," O'Leary corrected, pointing at Frumpkin. "He's holding Daphne in a ... place."
"What place?" Grossfarb demanded.
"Sort of a vague place," Lafayette explained. "A big, misty-gray room, full of easy chairs and a big control console."
"Where is this curious installation?" the judge asked patiently.
"That's what I want to know!" Lafayette yelled. "Look, make him tell you, and we can go there and free poor Daphne—or Dame Edith, or whatever name she goes by here!"
"This person employs an alias?" Grossfarb asked coldly.
"No—it's not really Daphne, maybe, just her alter ego in this locus."
The gavel banged like a pistol shot. "It is my duty to caution you, O'Leary, that what you say will be used against you," the judge stated implacably. "Tampering with interlocal weather is a serious violation of the GRC, as you doubtless know."
"Ask the prisoner," Frumpkin put in lazily, "if he has ever visited this curious place he speaks of, and if he has indeed seen evidence of any crime there."
"Not exactly," Lafayette conceded. "It's just that sometimes things go all wivery, and then I'm there-only sometimes I'm not really there; it's just sort of a vision."
"That's enough, O'Leary," Grossfarb said coldly. "You may step down."
"Don't forget the charge I brought, Your Honor," Frumpkin spoke up, intercepting O'Leary. "Perhaps you'd best throw yourself on the mercy of the court."
"For what?" Lafayette demanded.
"Look about you," Frumpkin suggested with a wave of his hand. "The entire landscape stands as mute testimony to your infamy. Look upon a dead world, Mr., er, that is, Sir Lafayette. Look and know that you are responsible."
"Why me?" Lafayette countered. "All I did was try to stay alive, while one disaster after another hit me. If you ask me, it's some of those sharpies at Prime who got things all messed up."
"Those sharpies at Prime," Frumpkin muttered, jotting a note. "I think you'll find perfect candor your best and only hope, Sir Lafayette."
"All right—but tell me one thing first: Is Daphne all right? Did she get away from Aphasia before it dissolved? I tried to find her, but I'd barely started when someone shanghied me off to some mixed-up locus where a phony sheriff locked me up for nothing!"
"But you didn't stay locked up, did you, my boy?" Frumpkin asked rhetorically. "You departed the locus by some means as yet unknown, causing an additional temporal anomaly of Class Three. Explain your innocence of that, sir, if you can." Frumpkin looked triumphant.
"I don't know anything about any temporal anomaly," O'Leary replied doggedly. "I did what I had to do to protect myself and my partner from a work-over with the rubber hoses. Anyway, what harm did it do? All it did was put me in another batch of trouble somewhere else."
"What harm?" Frumpkin echoed musingly. "Look about you, sir. You perceive a world in its deaththroes, its mountains eroded to mere hillocks, its seas distributed evenly over its leveled surface to an average depth of three inches. This"—he made a sweeping gesture— "is one of the few habitable patches. Arid it was the blue-green jewel in the crown of the Supreme!"
"That's ridiculous," Lafayette countered. "How could using an ordinary flat-walker one time cause all that?"
"Flat-walker, eh?" Frumpkin turned to look intently at Lafayette as if to detect any deviation from strict veracity. "Used it only once, you claim?"
"Oh, I may have used it a few times before that," O'Leary conceded vaguely. "But I haven't used it since. I had an idea it was having bad side effects."
"You call the abortion of the destiny of a galaxy a side effect?" Frumpkin barked. "Remember the folk wisdom which tells us that for lack of a valve core, a tire was lost; for want of a tire, a ground-car was lost; for want of a ground-car, an order was lost; for want of orders, an army was lost; for want of an army a war was lost; for want of a victory an empire was lost; for want of a government, a culture was lost; for lack of a culture, a planet was lost, etcetera, etcetera; a system, a galaxy with a great destiny—and at last that destiny was lost—and all for want of a valve core! From trivial causes mighty repercussions result!"
"Oh, you're talking about my little slip with the Great Bear—or the Great Unicorn, as it is now."
"Tell me all about it, my lad," Frumpkin said silkily. "And perhaps a way may yet be found to obtain a reprieve for you."
"It was unintentional," Lafayette protested. "I was only thinking 'what if; I didn't really try to do anything."
"So, you destroy a great galactic destiny without even trying," Frumpkin paraphrased in a sardonic tone. He took O'Leary's arm and led him aside a few feet, out of hearing of Marv and Tode who waited uncomfortably by the door, peering out along the shadowy corridor of the half-ruined building.
"Clearly," Frumpkin whispered hoarsely, "we've underestimated you, Sir Lafayette, with tragic results. However, it's not too late to salvage something from the wreckage. Work with me, my boy, and we shall yet stand alone together. I'm no glutton; I'll share with a worthy confederate—together, I say, on the pinnacle of the reconstituted Temple of Glory at Nuclear City, with all the worlds at our feet! With your mind alone, you said? Coupled with the entropic equipment at my disposal, nothing can stand against us!" He thrust out a calloused but well-manicured hand, which O'Leary avoided.
"I have no ambition to rule any galaxies," he replied. "I just want to find Daphne and go home. Where is the gray room?"
"Greedy, eh? All or nothing at all for you, is it? But it won't do, O'Leary. Without my help, you haven't a chance; and I admit freely that without your native powers, my own victory is uncertain. But as reasonable men, surely we can resolve any points of contention to our mutual advantage. After all, the manifold is so unimaginably immense, no one can so much as conceive it, much less exploit all its potentialities for pleasure. I shall be content to be ostensibly the junior partner, unobtrusive to a fault. To you alone shall go the glory, the triumphal processions, the booze, the broads, the luxury goods, the great estates. I myself am a humble chap at heart. Give me one or two outlying galaxies of my own, and I'll be content to retire there in obscurity. I give you my word! The solemn word of a Council Member!"
"You've got me wrong," Lafayette persisted. "I'm not interested in parades or real estate: I want Daphne."
"And you shall have her, sir, be she never so cold to your attractions. She shall be placed at your feet—or in your bed, bound hand and foot, or however you desire her. She shall be your willing slave!"
"Who do you think you are?" O'Leary demanded hotly, "to be offering a countess who also happens to be my wife as a sort of door prize, as if she belonged to you?"
"She does, my lad, she does," Frumpkin returned coolly. "She and all else in this entire manifold of loci. You see, I invented her and all the rest. I, and I alone, evoked this reality phase from the infinity of the potential into realization! Who am I, you ask? Know, then, intrusive flea in the pelt of my high and mightiness, that I am the Supreme, creator and owner of this All! As such, I honor you by engaging you in personal converse."