"Agreed!" Frumpkin yelled. "I'll release you unconditionally—and you'd best hurry; time is running out!"
O'Leary looked up: The domed 'ceiling' of the spherical chamber was noticeably closer. Even as he watched, it shrank in furthur as Frumpkin uttered a long drawn-out howl. O'Leary glanced toward him. Marv was now sitting at ease on the formerly arrogant Frumpkin's face. He caught O'Leary's look and rose. "It ain't comfortable anyways," he explained. "That sharp nose'd be hell on a feller if he's to sit there any length o' time."
Roy bustled forward and bent over the supine Frumpkin. "You ready to be reasonable?" he inquired solicitously. Frumpkin grumbled, which Roy took as assent. He hunkered down beside the fallen dictator. "Go ahead, spill it," he ordered.
Frumpkin sat up, wiped blood from his nose across his lower face, and gulped.
"Very well, you inhuman beasts," he started. Marv promptly knocked him flat.
"Just the facts, big shot; skip the insults," he prescribed. Frumpkin nodded and cautiously sat up again.
"Started with a little accident," he blurted. "I was on duty in the probability lab, and I noticed some anomalous readings on the main monitor panel, and I, well, I did a little investigating, and made a curious discovery." Frumpkin paused as if to savor the moment.
"Something was playing hell with the energy equipoise in a minor locus out on Plane V-87. Looked like every few years there'd been a drain that shuffled the loci like playing cards. No repercussions had showed up outside the manifold, but that didn't mean it would never happen. I should have reported it to YAC-19 at once, I know—but all of a sudden I saw it! If I could deduce just what was happening, I could use it myself, to shape this sorry scheme of things entire closer to my heart's desire, as the poet hath said. Ahem!" Frumpkin cleared his throat and fussed with the lapels of his rumpled dressing gown.
"As even you are doubtless aware, all of existence rests on the principle of entropic equipoise. For each ordering force, there is a balancing force of disorder; and all this vast matrix of interpenetrating forces is modulated by the universal-probability field. To tamper at any one point with the probability flux is to cause the matrix itself to readjust so as to bring all forces back into balance. When you, Sir Lafayette, fecklessly employed the gigantic forces at your command, the nature of which still escapes me, to make certain minor local realignments in defiance of the pressures of local probability, you occasioned readjustments which resonated at vast distances. These caused realignments of reality on a scope unthinkable. But I soon saw that, at bottom, your method was simple enough; and used systematically, one could realign the natural forces so as to produce results specified by oneself—or myself, that is." Frumpkin paused again. "At first, I envisioned only local readjustments which would place me in a position of total authority, and provide such trifling comforts as the disposal of all the wealth in existence, my choice of all the world's delicacies of food and drink and luxury goods, plus the unselfish devotion of the Lady Xanthippe, the only person beside myself whom I considered deserving of the fruits of reality. Speaking of which—" Frumpkin snapped his fingers. There was a stir in the shadowy distance, and a lone figure came slowly forward into the light: then two more people appeared, one tall and broad, the other slim and graceful.
"... somehow unsatisfying," Frumpkin was droning on. "So, I asked myself why. The answer was simple enough: While there remained planes of probability outside my sway, what joy could I take in my petty rule of a portion of All That Is?"
"I've heard enough," Marv said roughly. He stepped close to Frumpkin and spoke quietly to him.
"It's far too late for that, Marv, old boy," Frumpkin cut him off curtly. "You erred in not acting at once, while my path was still unclear."
Marv replied to this by taking a firm grip on Frumpkin's neck, causing his victim to squirm ineffectively, while his face became purplish. Then Frumpkin's cold eyes met O'Leary's.
"Sir Lafayette!" he cried, "I call on you to intercede in the interest of justice. Don't you see? I lied just now, I admit, but only in a desperate effort to save what I have built—and that includes Artesia and all that outlying area—from utter dissolution. I did all I claimed, but not as a free agent. I made the error of telling of my discovery to the janitor who mopped up in the Prime Vault—a cretin, but I was bursting with the knowledge! So I told him. And rather than merely gaping at me in incomprehension, the low fellow began to behave most strangely. He went to certain controls and manipulated them with surprising deftness, then stood aside and dared me to look at the results. Unless, he said, I agreed to do as he dictated, he'd bring about a cataclysm which would set all of reality at Entropic Maximum—a state of which you have a sample here, in this vacuole—an eternity of absolute stasis. So I had to do as he said. He himself, he told me, was now far above such petty tasks. I was but a slave, but he—he was Lord Marvelous!" Frumpkin's trembling finger pointed at Marv, who backed a step, almost colliding with the foremost of the three advancing from the dimness: Duke Bother-Be-Damned. Even as the armored hands of the big man clamped on Marv's arms, Lafayette's eyes went past him to those behind him.
"Daphne!" he yelled and started toward her, then checked as he recognized Betty Brassbraid at her mistress's side. "But you're Henriette in the Hill," he groaned. "And you don't know me from Adam's pet mongoose."
"Fie, Lafayette!" the pretty brunette replied after a moment's hesitation. "Do you not know me, your own true love? Of course I'm Daphne, silly," she added more gently. "And Lafayette—if it really is you, my love, and not another beguiling dream—oh, how I've longed for this moment, and somehow knew that, in spite of all, at last it would come—someday." She broke off and began to cry silently. Lafayette stumbled to her and took her in his arms. Now Betty was sniffling behind her mistress, while Bother hurrumphed and fiddled with his sword-hilt. Marv stood to one side, looking sullen.
Chapter Twenty-One
"What it boils down to," Bother was saying after hours of intense discussion, "is a contest of strength between the miscreant Frumpkin or his master, Marv, and you, Sir Lafayette—they with their vast technical expertise and all the potency of the apparatus to which Frumpkin is linked, and you with your native naiveté, your simple faith in some abstraction you think of as 'right', your single-minded devotion to this fair lady, for the which I blame you not, begad!"
"What contest?" O'Leary demanded. "He's been sitting on the floor bragging about all the terrible things he's going to do, and I've been standing here wondering what I could do about it." His agonized gaze went to Daphne who, comforted by Betty, had been weeping.
"What happened, Daph?" Lafayette implored her. "How did I lose you? You were right in front of me."
"Two men," Daphne replied, calming herself. "These two villeins." She looked contemptuously at Frumpkin and at Marv, who was still protesting his innocence. "They fell upon me as I gained the terrace, threw a dirty cloth over my head, and dragged me away, then left me in a thicket. I heard you call, my Lafayette, but my own cries seemed remote, even to me. Then, later, I saw George, and together we bowled over someone called Omar, and fled to the woods. There was a flood, and we rode it here—or there—wherever it was, and then he came back one day." She indicated Frumpkin. "He demanded that I submit to him. I struck him, and he swore I'd never escape him. But I knew somehow you'd come, my Lafayette!"
"I'm sorry it's taken so long," Lafayette said, going to her to embrace her slim form again. His eye fell on the faded pale velvet rag around her shoulders.