"If you mean Trog and his boys, they're overrated," Lafayette said carelessly. "And I didn't see any keep-out signs."
"Clearly, Frumpkin," Belarius said to his partner, "the fellow has employed some highly sophisticated counter-security equipment thus to make mockery of my best efforts."
"Just used my head," O'Leary said bluntly.
"It's clear the rascal is even more dangerous than we had suspected," Frumpkin said. "Perhaps we'd best apply full Class One measures at once, after all. HQ would understand if we brought in a corpse under the circumstances."
"Seems rather drastic for such an insignificant-appearing young fellow as this," Belarius responded. "Just a few more points to clear up. What about it, fellow-me-lad?" he addressed Lafayette directly. "Will you cooperate in this inquiry or shall I be forced to invoke full Class One rigor? I leave it to you. Start with your motivation for your first disruption bombing at Nuclear City."
"Never heard of it," O'Leary said wearily. "Either Nuke City or a disruption bomb. Sorry."
"Glibness will avail you naught, fellow," Frumpkin said, wiping a hand across his face as one sore beset with frustration. He turned to Belarius V. "We've wasted enough time trying to reason with him," he said tiredly. "I suggest we simply stasis-file him and get on with the rest of it."
"I've got an idea," Lafayette offered. "Why not tell me, in simple nontechnical language, just what's going on? Maybe I could even shed some light on it if I knew what it was all about."
"So you think you're in a position to bargain, eh?" Frumpkin snorted. "You'll come clean in return for ... what was your price?"
"Just tell me what happened to get you boys so upset," Lafayette said, feeling the futility of his request even as he spoke. "And save the jargon. Pretend I don't know anything about whatever it is you're so worried about."
"On October eight last," Belarius V said solemnly, "an attempt was made to destroy the Prime metering vault. An explosion of force seven on the TRAN scale. Inside the vault. You can see what that means. So could we all."
"I hate to sound like a dumdum," O'Leary said, "but I can't see what that means. Anyway, what does it have to do with me?"
"He's a resourceful devil, eh, Belarius?" Frumpkin commented. "No matter what one says, he has a disclaimer ready."
"But it seems it's always the same disclaimer," Belarius replied dryly. "See here, fellow," he said more briskly to Lafayette, "Just what excuse do you offer for your presence here in defiance of the Code?"
"None at all," Lafayette answered sharply. "I have a perfect right—or almost perfect—to be here. It's you two characters who have some explaining to do."
"I think that's quite enough," Belarius put in abruptly. He turned to a shabby steamer trunk or large suitcase beside him. Lifting the lid, he took out a complicated-looking apparatus and turned to O'Leary.
"Put out your hands, left palm up, right palm down," he ordered curtly, while Frumpkin fiddled with his gun. Lafayette complied warily, eyeing the gadget Belarius was holding. With a quick movement Belarius draped the thing across O'Leary's hands. He felt icy metal bands extrude, encircle his wrists, and tighten gently. There was a sensation of questing tendrils growing rapidly downward, searching over his body. He yelled once, tugged; there was no give in the complex shackle. When he tried to take a step toward Frumpkin, he found his legs were equally immobilized. "Hey!" he yelled again.
Belarius and Frumpkin were busy over the suitcase.
"Look at that, Frumpy," Belarius said grimly. Over Belarius' shoulder, Lafayette could barely glimpse a round glass screen like a cathode-ray tube, set in the trunk lid, on which glowed in pink a set of concentric arcs.
"This," Frumpkin said hoarsely, putting a well-groomed finger on a short segment of a curve looking squeezed between longer arcs. "Is this ... our baseline here?"
Instead of answering, Belarius turned to O'Leary, stepping back to give him a clear view of the screen. He pointed.
"You can see for yourself what you've done," he grated. "You've trapped yourself in an abort. How you imagined you'd escape to make good your plot is, I confess, obscure to me."
"Me, too," Lafayette said. "What's an abort?"
"As the term suggests, an abort is a nonviable stem. As you see, this one ends in some seventy-two hours."
"How do you mean, 'ends'?" Lafayette asked. "All I see is some kind of radar screen."
"Ends, terminates, discontinues, ceases to exist," Frumpkin spoke up. "That's a simple enough concept. And if we were still here then, we'd end with it. Accordingly, Belarius, I suggest we phase-shift at once, just in case your calibration is off a hair's breadth."
"What about this fellow, then?" Belarius inquired indifferently, indicating O'Leary. "Finish him off, and so report?"
"As you command, my lord," Frumpkin replied in an oily tone, disassociating himself from the murder.
"Why don't you just go home and leave me to my own devices?" Lafayette suggested. "Nobody would know the difference."
"No?" Belarius came back coolly. "You underestimate the subtlety of our Prime surveillance net. Nothing escapes the notice of YAC-19."
"Why bandy words with him, sir?" Frumpkin put in. "If we should simply shunt him into a holding locus, he'd keep until we could deal with him to best advantage. YAC-19 will want to interrogate him."
"True," Belarius conceded. "Set up coordinates for the nearest holding locus, then—"
"Wait," Lafayette cut in. "I can't leave this locus-Daphne's here, somewhere. And if I leave, I may never find it again!"
"The point is well taken," Belarius said. "Not that your petty concerns are of any merit, but there is YAC-19's policy to consider."
"Who is this yak you keep talking about?" Lafayette demanded. "Who's he to sit in judgment on a total stranger, and one close to the throne of Artesia, by the way!"
"YAC-19 is a computer," Belarius stated grandly, "and Postulate One at Nuclear City, of course."
"And our immediate supervisor," Frumpkin put in loftily.
"Its policy is to hold phase violations to a minimum," Belarius contributed. "To remove you from this your native locus would occasion a mild phase displacement; ergo, you'll stay here."
"It's not my native locus," Lafayette protested. "At least, I don't think it is—or maybe it's just the three hundred years. It doesn't look anything like Artesia— except for the Tower, that is." He glared sullenly at Belarius. "Artesia's my home," he stated, "not this dump ... Aphasia, Trog called it."
"Locus designation?" Frumpkin inquired. "Of this Artesia, I mean."
"Alpha Nine-Three, Plane V-87, Fox 221-b," O'Leary replied promptly. Frumpkin looked grave and twiddled control knobs on the apparatus inside the suitcase.
"Doesn't check out, Belarius," he said tonelessly. "Something a trifle out of sync there." He shot O'Leary a hard look. "Why lie about it?" he demanded.
"I was born there," O'Leary said. "When I was a few months old, a renegade inspector from Central kidnapped me and took me to Colby Corners, U.S.A. I grew up there, and then I focused my psychical energies one evening, and was back in Artesia, where I belonged."
"Better change that story," Belarius put in after consulting a small handbook. "Artesia's listed, all right, but as a dead locus. What we call a traumatic abort. Ceased to exist nearly three hundred years ago."
"Nonsense!" O'Leary said, and after a thoughtful pause went on, "I was there half an hour ago—or three hundred years and a half hour ago ... I'm not quite sure about that. Anyway, Artesia is just as real as Melange, or Colby Corners, or Thallathlone, or any of those other crazy places I've been—and realer than this crazy locus, Aphasia."