Universe Twister - Keith Laumer [105]
"That's all I ask," he murmured, squeezing his eyes shut. "Just a chance." But I've got to be specific, he reminded himself. Focusing the psychic energies isn't magic, after all. It's just a matter of drawing on the entropic energy of the universe to manipulate things into a configuration nearer to my heart's desire. Like, for example, if the ropes were to be loose . . .
"But they aren't loose," he told himself sternly. "You can't change any known element of the situation. At best, you can influence what happens next, that's all. And probably not even that."
Well, then—if there was a knife lying here on deck—an old rusty scaling knife, say, just carelessly tossed aside. I could get my hands on it, and—
"Lay down and sleep it off, landlubber," a voice boomed, accompanying the suggestion with a kick on the ear that produced a shower of small ringed planets whirling in a mad dance. Lafayette blinked them away, snorted a sharp aroma of aged cheese and garlic from his nostrils. Something with the texture of barbed wire was rasping the side of his neck. He twisted away from it, felt something round rolling under him. An apple, he realized as it crunched, releasing a fresh fruity odor. And the cheese and the sausage . . .
He held his breath. It was the lunch basket. The pirates had tossed it aboard along with the prisoners. And in the basket there had been a knife.
Lafayette opened one eye and checked the positions of his captors. Four of them stood heads together, intently studying the array of fishheads offered by the fifth. The sixth man lay snoring at their feet. Swinehild was huddled on the deck—knocked there by one of her would-be swains, no doubt.
Cautiously, O'Leary fingered the deck under him with his bound hands; inching sideways, he encountered the loaf of bread, reduced by soaking to a sodden paste, then a second apple, flattened by a boot. He reached the basket, felt over it, found it empty. The sausage lay half under it. Lafayette hitched himself forward another six inches, grinding the cheese under his shoulderblades. As the waves thumped the hull under him, his numb fingers closed over the haft of the knife.
It was small, the blade no more than four inches long—but it was big enough for his purpose. The crewmen were still busy with their lottery. Lafayette rolled over, struggled to his knees, maneuvered into position with his back against the tiller. Gripping the knife, he felt for the lashings, began sawing through the twisted rope.
It was an agonizing two minutes before a sharp musical thong! sounded; the suddenly freed tiller gouged Lafayette painfully in the ribs as it slammed around to a full starboard position. Instantly the boat heeled sharply, falling away downwind. The crewmen, caught by surprise, reeled against the rail, grabbing for support. The boat gave a wild plunge, the sail slatting as the breeze struck it dead astern. Cordage creaked; the sail bulged, then, with a report like a pistol shot, filled. The boom swept across the deck—precisely at head height, Lafayette noted, as it gathered in the four sailors and sent them flying over the side, where they struck with a tremendous quadruple splash as the pilotless craft went leaping ahead across the dark water.
Four
"Your poor head," Swinehild said, applying a cool compress made from a section of her skirt to one of the knots on O'Leary's skull. "Them boys throwed you around like a sack o' turnips."
"My ear feels the size of a baked potato, and about the same temperature," Lafayette said. "Not that I suppose it actually gleams in the dark." He peered across toward the misty glow in the middle distance toward which he was steering.
"In a way those hijackers did us a favor," he commented. "We'd never have made such good time rowing."
"You got kind of a irritating