Universe Twister - Keith Laumer [124]
From somewhere, a giant baseball bat swung, knocked him over the fence for a home run amid a vast display of Roman candles, while thousands cheered.
Seven
Someone had used his back as a diving board; or possibly they had mistaken it for a Persian rug and given it a good flailing with steel rods. His stomach had been employed by a gang of road menders for brewing up a batch of hot tar; he could distinctly feel the bubbles swelling and popping. His head had been dribbled up and down a basketball court for several close-fought quarters; and his eyes—apparently they'd been extracted, used in a Ping-Pong tournament, and rudely jammed back into their sockets.
"Hey—I think he's coming around," a frog-deep voice said. "That last groan was a lot healthier-sounding."
"He's all yours, Roy. Let me know if he relapses." Footsteps clunked; a door opened and closed. Lafayette pried an eye open, looked up at a perforated acoustical ceiling with flush-mounted fluorescents. Ignoring the fish spear someone had carelessly left embedded in his neck, he turned his head, saw a stubby little man with a cheerful, big-nosed face peering at him anxiously.
"How are ya, pal?" the watcher inquired.
"Yokabump," O'Leary chirped feebly, and lay back to watch the lights whirl.
"Cripes, a foreigner," the froggy voice said. "Sorry, Slim—me no spikka Hungarisha, you savvy?"
"But I guess you're not really Yokabump," O'Leary managed a thin whisper. "You just look like him, like everybody else in this nightmare looks like somebody they aren't."
"Hey, you can talk after all! Boy, you had me worried. I never lost a customer yet, but I came close today. You were in some rush, Slim—couldn't even wait for the elevator." The little man mopped at his face with a green-monogrammed red bandanna.
Lafayette's eyes roved around the room. It was ivory-walled, tile-floored. The soft susurrus of air-conditioning whispered from a grille above the door.
"What happened?" He tried to sit up, flopped back.
"Don't worry, Slim," the little man said. "The doc says you're O.K., just shook up."
"I . . . I seem to have a sort of confused memory," O'Leary said, "of stepping down an elevator shaft—out in the wilderness?"
"Yeah. Fell two floors. Lucky at that, no busted bones."
"Isn't that a rather peculiar location for an elevator shaft?"
The little man looked surprised. "How else you figure we're gonna get up and down? Hey, you ain't got in mind filing no claim against the company, I hope? I mean, I picked up your beep, and was coming as fast as I could, right? You should of just held your horses."
"No doubt you're right. By the way—who are you?"
The little man thrust out a square, callused hand. "Sprawnroyal is the handle, Slim; Customer Service. Glad to make your acquaintance. You're a day early, you know. The order's not quite ready."
"Oh . . . the order," Lafayette temporized. "Frankly, I'm a little confused. By the fall, you know. Ah . . . what order was that?"
"Yeah, I guess you got a little concussion. Affects the memory." Sprawnroyal shook his heavy head sympathetically. "Your boss, Prince Krupkin, gave us a down payment on a two-passenger rug, a blackout cloak, and a dozen illusions, the number-seventy-eight assortment."
"Oh, a two-passenger assortment and a dozen rugs," O'Leary mumbled. "Splendid. Ready tomorrow, you say?"
"You better lay here awhile and get it together, kid," Sprawnroyal advised. "Your brains is still a little scrambled."
"No—no, I'm fine." O'Leary sat up shakily. He had been bathed, he saw, and shaved and bandaged here and there and dressed in baggy pajamas—yellow with purple dots.