The message was interrupted as a hand grabbed Lafayette's wrist just as something swept his feet from under him. The flat-walker was wrenched away, and as Lafayette fought his way back to his feet, Frumpkin was saying:
"—my own inspection!" He was holding the Ajax device close to his face, studying it. Marv was at his side, looking anxious.
"Hmmm, yes," Frumpkin muttered. "One of the fiendish devices of Ajax, I see." He glanced up at O'Leary. "Oh, yes, Sir Lafayette," he commented. I'm well aware of the warped ingenuity of those little beasts. You'll recall that I retain in my employ one Troglouse III, a renegado, who has briefed me thoroughly on the Ajax bag of tricks. I can't tell you the trouble they've caused me. Seem to have links to high orders of reality. One day I shall deal with them as they deserve."
"In that case," a hearty voice spoke from low and behind Frumpkin, who jumped as if prodded with a pin, "you can gimme the medal now—quick, before you find out you been fired off the job." It was Sprawnroyal's bass tones. O'Leary thrust Frumpkin aside to grab the small man's calloused hand and greet him enthusiastically.
"Roy! You got through! This Frumpkin is even nuttier than I thought! Now he's talking about switching the basic planes around so that I—and Artesia, and you, and Daphne, and everything worthwhile—never existed!"
"Easy, Slim," Roy replied soberly. "It's not all bluff," he admitted. "What he's talking about is possible, theoretically. If he can reweave the lines so as to render Plane V-87 less likely than some alternate he's cooked up—then the rest follows naturally."
"Take him!" Frumpkin yelled, making a grab for Roy, who stepped aside and casually tripped the taller man as he lunged. Marv popped up from a deep chair nearby to seize Frumpkin's arm and haul him to his feet.
"I heard all that," Marv blurted. "And I, for one, got no intention o' being relegated to a unrealized status like Shorty here says. So how about it, sir?" Marv was making ineffectual efforts to assist Frumpkin to rearrange his satin dressing gown.
"Leave me alone, you cretin!" Frumpkin snarled and thrust the clumsy Marv from him. He assumed as menacing an expression as his shattered dignity allowed.
"Whose side is the big bum on, Slim?" Roy asked Lafayette in a stage whisper. "I thought he was a pal of yours—"
"He is," O'Leary confirmed, watching Marv hovering at Frumpkin's elbow. "Or I thought he was. Frankly, Marv has had me puzzled; he's stuck with me through thick and thin, I'll give him that—but once I overheard him throwing me to the dogs. Of course, he had a logical explanation."
"Sure," Marv said eagerly, giving Roy a sour look. "At the time, like I said, I hadda tell 'em sumpin. Why, Al, they were planning on stringing me up!"
"What's this 'Al' business, Slim?" Roy asked.
"He pretends to think I'm some mythical character named Allegorus," O'Leary explained. "Or maybe he's not so mythical; I met him once ..." Lafayette broke off, looking thoughtful. "It was right back at the beginning of this farce, just after I ran into Frumpkin here for the first time, in the tower. He had some errand or something he wanted me to do, but before we got around to it, things started coming apart, literally."
"Enough of this idle chatter," Frumpkin barked. "Allegorus, indeed! It's well enough known that he's a figment—a demi-corporeal pseudobeing evoked as a totem by petty minds in moments of stress—a mere superstition, nothing more."
"I still talked to him," Lafayette said quietly. Glancing past Frumpkin across the low, now nearly dark and almost deserted room, he realized that the guests had been quietly departing, switching off bridge lamps as they went. But from the shadowy corners others were emerging: small, gnarly men in pink uniforms, carrying in their hands complex apparatuses which O'Leary felt sure were weapons. Noting Lafayette's expression, Frumpkin turned to follow his gaze.
"Oh, good enough, Trog," he called brightly. "Just deploy your troops loosely here and stand fast. I expect to transfer this interview to the technical installation in a moment. Here, you!" he yelped at one stubby figure, forging in advance of the main body. "Keep back there! I told you I'm about to effect a transfer. Can't have any interference; it's a delicate technique."
"Hard lines, Bub," the Ajax man replied jauntily. "Maybe you better lay down, face-first, hands out wide, flat on the rug."
"You're not Troglouse!" Frumpkin yelled, backing a step, only to recoil when Roy jabbed him sharply in the seat with a hard thumb.
"Better do like Casper says," the Ajax rep suggested mildly, "before he forgets his training about destroying evidence and gives you a jolt with the nothing-gun." Roy turned to wink up at O'Leary. "Now we'll get a few answers out o' the sucker," he said. "Old Casper's a real curious fellow, when I tell him to be."
Chapter Twenty
As Lafayette opened his mouth to congratulate his diminutive ally, he noticed that the grayish fog had reappeared, which made even Roy's homely, good-natured face appear blurred, though he was only a yard distant. Lafayette took a step—or tried to: His feet seemed stuck to the floor by a gluey substance. He pulled harder, and realized that he was firmly trapped. He yelled, felt the glue flow into his mouth, immobilizing his tongue, and down his throat. He couldn't breathe.
Roy's mouth was moving, but no sound emerged. The light grew dimmer. Only Frumpkin's face seemed to glow through the opaque air, his eyes glittering like highlights on polished gem stones.
As Lafayette fought to draw breath, he saw dimly that no one was moving. Marv stood over Frumpkin, his arms folded as if he noticed nothing unusual. Casper was nowhere to be seen.
"As you see, Lafayette," Frumpkin's voice seemed to echo from an immense distance, "I still have a few resources on which to call. Don't panic; the difficulty with your breathing will clear up in a moment, just as soon as we've completed our transit across extra-time, a matrix with which perhaps you are unfamiliar. Only another, oh, perhaps ten seconds subjective, then we shall correct a number of inequities. Take a final look at your former companions, my boy, since you'll not be seeing them again. They will remain suspended in the Eternal Now forever, neither realized nor totally dissubstantiated, conscious and able to reflect at length on their treasonous folly in attempting to foil me."
Still straining desperately to draw breath, O'Leary watched Marv, Casper, and a total stranger of Chinese appearance standing nearby, arrested in mid-motion, looking like waxworks. All but Sprawnroyal, Lafayette saw with a sudden access of hope. The little man was in the act of turning toward Marv. As Lafayette watched, he saw him languidly complete the movement, reach out deftly to pluck something from Marv's pocket, then turn to give O'Leary a slow wink. There was no one else in sight; the big room, looking like a deserted warehouse now, was deep in shadow. The silence was total. Roy took a slow step around Frumpkin, still supine, toward O'Leary who, striving mightily to draw breath, felt the resistance collapse and revivifying air rush into his lungs.
"Roy!" he gasped. "What happened?"
"The sucker was a little trickier than I gave him credit for," Roy said without apology. "But of course, his tricks only work in his own jurisdiction. I'm outside, because I'm not really here, Slim. You see, at Ajax we worked out what we call the counter-grid, a complete set of alternates to the natural grid, and to this bozo's own personal construct too. You might say nature and Frumpkin's setup lie at right angles, so to speak, in overspace. Well, we engineered the counter-grid vertical to that plane. So, we can operate anywhere we like—as long as we're within range, natch. After old Frumpkin here cut off our power-tap we were drawing from the natural entropic potential; gave us all the juice we needed and gave us a little edge in some of our more unlikely gadgets, too. We set up a jury-rig, drawing on Frumpkin's own pseudo-entropic energy, and that was just barely enough to let me punch through to this semi-half-phase layout here."