The Galaxy Builder Read Online Free PDF Page B

three centuries to resume your mischievous ways,
is that it?" the imposter demanded sarcastically.
     
                "That's not what I said!" O'Leary
yelled. "Don't start trying to put me in one of those dumb false positions
again! I'm Sir Lafayette O'Leary, and I know you're not Belarius!"
     
                "Am I not?" the fellow replied coolly.
"That would come as a great shock to my lady mother, who reared me as the
fifth of that ilk."
     
                "Oh, I forgot this is three hundred years
later," O'Leary gobbled, his sarcasm lost on his impassive captor.
"You can let go my arm now; I won't fall down. But that was quite a
shock, having you creep up on me in this spooky place. How did you fellows get
in here?"
     
                "Rather tell me how you gained
ingress to the Sealed Chamber," Belarius demanded, releasing O'Leary.
     
                "And why, as well," his partner chimed
in from behind. "What sought you here which was worth the forfeit of your
existence out to eight parameters from your native locus?"
     
                "Locus? You know about loci?"
Lafayette babbled in relief. "So you must be from Central, right? You
discovered something awful had happened to Artesia, and they sent you out to
investigate, right? Boy oh boy, am I glad to see you!"
     
                "A defense of insanity will avail you
naught, wit-told!" Belarius snorted. "As for Central, be assured that
it is four levels of command inferior to Reality Prime, and that regardless of
what chicaneries with which you may have deluded petty Central, your career of
crimes against reality has now come to an end!"
     
    -
     
                "I didn't do anything, fellows,"
O'Leary protested wearily. "For once, I'm really innocent. I was just
sitting in the garden admiring the stars with Mrs. O'Leary—I mean, Countess
O'Leary, Daphne, my wife, you know, and all of a sudden—"
     
                "Yes?" Belarius prompted, "go
on."
     
                "All of a sudden it was raining; and that's
strange because I had just been reflecting that, from locus to locus, the
weather never changes, even when everything else does."
     
                "You may as well confess all, Mr.
'O'Leary', as you have the effrontery to style yourself."
     
                "I didn't style myself," Lafayette
objected. "That's the name they gave me at the orphanage. In honor of Mrs.
Beldame O'Leary, the founder, you know. And there's nothing to confess,"
he added. "What is it you think I've done, anyway?"
     
                "The primary charge," Belarius said
coldly, "is that you did willfully and with malice aforethought commit an
act or acts of the third level of malfeasance, thereby creating an anomaly of
Category Ultimate, the full repercussions of which act or acts having not yet
been manifested. Shall I go on?"
     
                "No. Go back," O'Leary suggested.
"What's the third level of whateveritis, and what does Category Ultimate
mean?"
     
                "It means, quite simply," Belarius
said harshly, "that you have forfeited whatever claim to continued
existence you may have had. You're under arrest, and will be taken at once to a
designated holding locus and there terminated."
     
                "He means killed," the other man
contributed, "all in compliance with the Code, of course. It's quite a
coup for His Lordship: he deduced you'd be here—and we've caught you
red-handed."
     
                "I never heard of this code of yours,"
Lafayette stated flatly.
     
                "Ignorance of the law is no excuse,"
Belarius quoted. "But you could hardly have failed to notice the class-AA security
barrier around the Chamber, or the crack regiment of guards patroling the area,
or the prominently posted notices reading 'NO ENTRY', to say nothing of the
type-Z combination lock on the door itself, all