"Keith Laumer - The World Shuffler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

which Daphne had saved him with a carefully placed chamber pot dropped at the
psychological moment from an upper window of the palace; then King Goruble's
insistence that he hunt down a dragonтАФin return for his neck. And after that, a whole
series of threats to life and limb, ending with his dispatch of Lod, the two-headed giant.
And then the discovery that Lod had been transported into Artesia from another plane,
along with his pet allosaurтАФ the dragon with which he had terrorized the countrysideтАФ
all at the order of the false King Goruble.
It had been more luck than wisdom, Lafayette conceded privately, that had enabled
him to prove that the usurper had murdered the former king and transported his infant
heir to another continuum by use of the unauthorized Traveler he had brought along when
defecting from his post as an agent of CentralтАФthe supreme authority in interdimensional
matters. And he had been just in time to thwart Goruble's last-ditch attempt to secure his
position by ridding himself of Princess Adoranne. It had been pure accident that Goruble,
thinking himself mortally wounded, had confessed to Lafayette that heтАФO'LearyтАФwas
the true king of Artesia.
For a few moments there, the situation had been awkward indeedтАФand then Goruble
had solved the problem of his own disposition by stumbling into the TravelerтАФwhich
had instantly whisked him out of their lives, after which Lafayette had abdicated in favor
of the princess, and settled down to a life of bliss with the sweet and faithful Daphne.
Lafayette sighed and rose, stood gazing out the window. Down in the palace gardens,
some sort of afternoon tea party was under way. At least it had been under way; now that
he thought of it, he hadn't heard the chattering and laughter for several minutes; and the
paths and lawns were almost empty. A few last-departing guests strolled toward the
gates; a lone butler was hurrying toward the kitchen with a tray of empty cups and plates
and crumpled napkins. A maid in a short skirt that revealed a neat pair of legs was
whisking cake crumbs from a marble table beside the fountain. The sight of her saucy
costume gave Lafayette a pang of nostalgia. If he squinted his eyes a little, he could
almost imagine it was Daphne as he had first known her. Somehow, he thought with a
touch of melancholy, it had all been gayer then, brighter, simpler. Of course, there had
been a few drawbacks: Old King Goruble had been pretty intent on cutting his head Off,
and Lod the Giant had had similar ideas; and there had been the business of disposing of
the dragon, to say nothing of the complicated problems of Count Alain and the Red Bull.
 But now Lod and the dragon were deadтАФthe bad dragon, that is. Lafayette's own pet
iguanodon was still happily stabled in an abandoned powder house nearby, eating his
usual twelve bales of fresh hay daily. Alain was married to Adoranne, and quite affable,
now that there was nothing to be jealous about. And the Red Bull had published his
memoirs and settled down to tavern-keeping in a quaint little inn called the One-Eyed
Man at the edge of the capital. As for Goruble, there was no telling where he had ended
up, since he had been so abruptly transported out of the dimension by his own Traveler.
Daphne was still as cute and charming as ever, of courseтАФwhat he saw of her. Her
promotion from upstairs maid to countess hadn't gone to her head, preciselyтАФbut
somehow these days it seemed that most of her time was taken up with the gay social
whirl. It wasn't as if he actually wished he were a hunted fugitive again, and Daphne a
palace servant with an unselfish passion for him, but...
Well, it did seem that nothing much ever happened these daysтАФnothing except the
usual schedule of gaiety, such as the formal dinner this evening. Lafayette sighed again.
How nice it would be to just dine t├кte-├а-t├кte with Daphne in some cozy hamburger joint,
with a jukebox blaring comfortingly in the background, shutting out the world. . . .
He shook off the daydream. There were no hamburger joints in Artesia, no neon, no
jukeboxes. But there were cozy little taverns with sooty beams and copper-bound ale