The World Shuffler Read Free

windows were missing. His shout echoed emptily. No one answered.
    “Nicodaeus!” he gulped. “I’ll have to telephone Nicodaeus at Central! He’ll know what to do ...” He darted along to the tower door, raced up the narrow, winding stone steps leading to the former Court Magician’s laboratory. Nicodaeus was long gone, of course, recalled by Central for duty elsewhere; but there was still the telephone, locked in the cabinet on the wall; if only he could get there before ... before ... O’Leary thrust the thought aside. He didn’t even want to think of the possibility that the cabinet might be empty.
    Puffing hard, he reached the final landing and pushed through into the narrow, granite-walled chamber. There were the work benches, the shelves piled high with stuffed owls, alarm clocks, bottles, bits of wire, odd-shaped assemblies of copper and brass and crystal. Under the high, cobwebbed ceiling, the gilded skeleton, now mantled with dust, dangled on its wire before the long, black, crackle-finished panel set with dials and gauges, now dark and silent. Lafayette turned to the locked cabinet beside the door, fumbled out a small golden key, fitted it into the keyhole; he held his breath, and opened the door. With a hiss of relief, he grabbed up the old-fashioned brass-mounted telephone inside. Faint and far away came a wavering dial tone.
    O’Leary moistened dry lips, frowning in concentration: “Nine, five, three, four, nine, oh, oh, two, one, one,” he dialed, mouthing the numbers.
    There were cracklings on the wire. Lafayette felt the floor stir under him. He looked down; the rough stone slabs had been replaced by equally rough-hewn wood planks.
    “Ring, blast it,” he groaned. He jiggled the hook, was rewarded by soft electrical poppings.
    “Somebody answer!” he yelped. “You’re my last hope!”
    A draft of cool air riffled his hair. He whirled, saw that he now stood in a roofless chamber, empty of everything but scattered leaves and bird droppings. Even as he watched, the quality of the light changed; he whirled back; the wall against which the cabinet had been mounted was gone, replaced by a single post. There was a tug at his hand, and he continued the spin, made a frantic grab for the telephone, now resting precariously on one arm of a rickety windmill, at the top of which he seemed to be perched. Grabbing for support as the structure swayed in the chill wind, creaking, he looked down at what appeared to be a carelessly tended cabbage patch.
    “Central!” he yelled through a throat suddenly as tight as though a hand had closed about it. “You can’t leave me here like this!” He rattled the instrument frantically. Nothing happened.
    After three more tries he hung the phone up with dazed care, as if it were made of eggshells. Clinging to his high perch, he stared out across the landscape of bramble-covered hillside toward a dilapidated town a quarter of a mile distant, no more than a sprawl of ramshackle buildings around the lake. The topography, he noted, was the same as that of Artesia—or of Colby Corners, for that matter—but gone were the towers and avenues and parks.
    “Vanished!” he whispered. “Everything I was complaining about ...” He stopped to swallow. “And everything I wasn’t complaining about along with it. Daphne—our apartment—the palace—and it was almost dinnertime ...”
    The thought was accompanied by a sharp pang just below the middle button of the handsomely cut coat he had donned less than half an hour ago. He shivered. It was cold now, with night falling fast. He couldn’t just perch here beside the dead phone. The first trick would be to get down to the ground, and then ...
    That was as far as his numbed mind cared to go for the moment. First I’ll think about the immediate problem, he told himself. Then, later, I’ll think about what to do next.
    He tried putting a foot on the open-work vane beside him; it seemed remarkably limber, his knees remarkably