Tiger! Tiger! (21 page)

`Down on your face,' Foyle ordered. `I'm going in.'

Robin lay prone on the marble patio. Foyle triggered his body, accelerated into a lightning blur, and smashed a hole in the glass wall. Far down on the sound spectrum he heard dull concussions. They were shots. Quick projectiles laced towards him. Foyle dropped to the floor and tuned his ears, sweeping from low bass to supersonic until at last he picked up the hum of the Man-Trap control mechanism. He turned his head gently, pin-pointed the location by binaural D/F, wove in through the stream of shots and demolished the mechanism. He decelerated.

`Come in, quick!'

Robin joined him in the living-room, trembling. The Cellar-Christians were pouring up into the house somewhere, emitting the sounds of martyrs.

`Wait here,' Foyle grunted. He accelerated, blurred through the house, located the Cellar-Christians in poses of frozen flight, and sorted through them. He returned to Robin and decelerated.

`None of them is Forrest,' he reported. `Maybe he's upstairs.

The back way, while they're going out the front. Come on!'

They raced up the back stairs. On the landing they paused to take bearings.

`Have to work fast,' Foyle muttered. `Between the shots and the religion riot, the world and his wife'll be jaunting around asking questions -' He broke off. A low mewling sound came from a door at the head of the stairs. Foyle sniffed.

`Analogue!' he exclaimed. `Must be Forrest. How about that? Religion in the cellar and dope upstairs.'

`What are you talking about?'

'I'll explain later. In here. I only hope he isn't on a gorilla kick.'

Foyle went through the door like a diesel tractor. They were in a large, bare room. A heavy rope was suspended from the ceiling. A naked man was entwined with the rope midway in the air. He squirmed up and down the rope, emitting a mewling sound and a musky odor.

`Python,' Foyle said. `That's a break. Don't go neat him. He'll mash your bones if he touches you.'

Voices below began to call: 'Forrest! What's all the shooting? Happy New Year, Forrest! Where in hell's the celebration?'

`Here they come,' Foyle grunted. `Have to jaunte him out of here. Meet you back at the beach. Go.'

He whipped a knife out of his pocket, cut the rope, swung the squirming man to his back and jaunted. Robin was on the empty Jervis beach a moment before him. Foyle arrived with the squirming man oozing over his neck and shoulders like a python, crushing him in a terrifying embrace. The red stigmata suddenly bursts out on Foyle's face.

`Sinbad,' he said in a strangled voice. `Old Man of the Sea. Quick, girl! Right pockets. Three over. Two down. Stingampoule. Let him have it anywh -'

His voice was choked off.

Robin opened the pocket, found a packet of glass beads and took them out. Each bead had a bee-sting end. She thrust the sting of an ampoule into the writhing man's neck. He collapsed.

Foyle shook him off and arose from the sand. `Christ!' he muttered, massaging his throat. He took a deep breath. `Blood and bowels. Control,' he said, resuming his air of detached calm. The scarlet tattooing faded from his face.

`What was all that horror?' Robin asked.

`Analogue. Psychiatric dope for psychotics. Illegal. A twitch has to release himself somehow; revert back to the primitive. He identifies with a particular kind of animal; gorilla, grizzly, brood bull, wolf . . . Takes the dope and turns into the animal he admires. Forrest was queer for snakes, seems as if.'

'How do you know all this? 'Told you I've been studying . . . preparing for Vorga. This is one of the things I learned Show you something else I've learned, if you're not chicken-livered. How to bring a twitch out of Analogue.'

Foyle opened another pocket in his battle coveralls and got to work on Forrest. Robin watched for a moment, then uttered a horrified cry, turned and walked to the edge of the water. She stood, staring blindly at the surf and the stars, until the mewling and the twisting ceased and Foyle called to her.

`You can come back now.'

Robin returned to find a shattered creature seated upright on the beach gazing at Foyle with dull, sober eyes.

`You're Forrest? I 'Who the hell are you? 'You're Ben Forrest, Leading Spaceman. Formerly aboard the Presteign Vorga.'

Forrest cried out in terror.

`You were aboard the Vorga on September 16th, 2336.'

The man sobbed and shook his head.

`On September sixteen you passed a wreck. Out near the asteroid belt. Wreck of the Nomad, your sister ship. She signaled for help. Vorga passed her by. Left her to drift and die. Why did Vorga pass her by?'

Forrest began to scream hysterically.

`Who gave the order to pass her by?'

`Jesus, no! No! No!'

'The records are all gone from the Bo'ness and Uig files. Someone got to them before me. Who was that? Who was aboard Vorga? Who shipped with you? I want officers and crew. Who was in command?'

`No,' Forrest screamed. `No!'

Foyle held a sheaf of banknotes before the hysterical man's face. `I'll pay for the information. Fifty thousand. Analogue for the rest of your life. Who gave the order to let me die, Forrest? Who?'

The man smote the banknotes from Foyle's hand, leaped up and ran down the beach. Foyle tackled him at the edge of the surf. Forrest fell headlong, his face in the water. Foyle held him there.

`Who commanded Vorga, Forrest? Who gave the order?'

`You're drowning him!' Robin cried.

`Let him suffer a little. Water's easier than vacuum. I suffered for six months. Who gave the order, Forrest?'

The man bubbled and choked. Foyle lifted his head out of the water. `What are you? Loyal? Crazy? Scared? Your kind would sell out for five thousand. I'm offering fifty. Fifty thousand for information, you son of a bitch, or you die slow and hard.'

The tattooing appeared on Foyle's face. He forced Forrest's head back into the water and held the struggling man. Robin tried to pull him off.

`You're murdering him!'

Foyle turned his terrifying face on Robin. `Get your hands off me, bitch! Who was aboard with you, Forrest? Who gave the order? Why?'

Forrest twisted his head out of the water. `Twelve of us on Vorga,' he screamed. `Christ save me! There was me and Kemp-' He jerked spasmodically and sagged. Foyle pulled his body out of the surf `Go on. You and who? Kemp? Who else? Talk.'

There was no response. Foyle examined the body. `Dead,' he growled.

`Oh my God! My God!'

'One lead shot to hell. Just when he was opening up. What a damned break.'

He took a deep breath and drew calm about him like an iron cloak. The tattooing disappeared from his face. He adjusted his watch for 120 degrees east longitude.

`Almost midnight in Shanghai. Let's go. Maybe we'll have better luck with Sergei Orel, pharmacist's mate off the Vorga. Don't look so scared. It was only murder. Go girl. Jaunte! ' Robin gasped. He saw that she was staring over his shoulder with an expression of incredulity. Foyle turned: A flaming figure loomed on the beach, a huge man with burning clothes and a hideously tattooed face. It was himself.

`Christ!' Foyle exclaimed. He took a step towards his burning image, and abruptly it was gone.

He turned to Robin, ashen and trembling. `Did you see that?'

'Yes, `What was it?'

`You.'

'For God's sake! Me? How's that possible? How -'

'It was you.'

`But ' he faltered, the strength and furious possession drained out of him. `Was it illusion? Hallucination?'

`I don't know. I saw it too.'

`Christ Almighty! To see yourself... face to face.,. The clothes were on fire. Did you see that? What in God's name was it?'

`It was Gully Foyle,' Robin said, `burning in hell.'

`All right,' Foyle burst out angrily. `It was me in hell, but I'm still going through with it. If I burn in hell Vorga'll burn with me.'

He pounded his palms together, stinging himself back to strength and purpose.

`I'm still going through with it, by God! Shanghai next. Jaunte'

'At the Costume Ball in Shanghai, Fourmyle of Ceres electrified society by appearing as Death in Durer's `Death And The Maiden' with a dazzling creature clad in transparent veils. A Victorian society which stifled its women in purdah, and which regarded the 1920 gowns of the Peenemunde clan as excessively daring, was shocked. But when Fourmyle revealed that the female was a magnificent android, there was an instant reversal of opinion in his favor. Society was delighted with the deception. The naked body, shameful in humans, was merely a sexless curiosity in androids.

At midnight, Fourmyle auctioned off the android to the gentlemen of the ball.

`The money to go to charity, Fourmyle?'

`Certainly not. You know my slogan: Not one cent for entropy. Do I hear a hundred credits for this expensive and lovely creature? One hundred, gentlemen? She's all beauty and highly adaptable. Two? Thank you. Three and a half? Thank you. I'm bid - Five? Eight? Thank you. Any more bids for this remarkable product of the resident genius of the Four-Mile Circus? She walks. She talks. She adapts. She has been conditioned to respond to the highest bidder. Nine? Do I hear any more bids? Are you all done? Are you all through? Sold, to Lord Yale for nine hundred credits.'

Tumultuous applause and appalled ciphering: `Good God! An android like that must have cost ninety thousand! How can he afford it?'

`Will you turn the money over to the android, Lord Yale? She will respond suitably. Until we meet again in Rome, ladies and gentlemen . . . The Borghese Palace at midnight. Happy New Year.'

Fourmyle had already departed when Lord Yale discovered, to the delight of himself and the other bachelors, that a double deception had been perpetrated. The android was, in fact, a living, human creature, all beauty and highly adaptable. She responded magnificently to nine hundred credits. The trick was the smoking-room story of the year. The stags waited eagerly to congratulate Fourmyle.

But Foyle and Robin Wednesbury were passing under a sign that read: DOUBLE YOUR JAUNTING OR DOUBLE YOUR MONEY BACK in seven languages, and entering the emporium Of DR SERGI OREL, CELESTIAL ENLARGER OF CRANIAL CAPABILITIES.

The waiting-room was decorated with lurid brain charts demonstrating how Dr Orel poulticed, cupped, balsamed and electrolysed the brain into double its capacity or double your money back. He also doubled your memory with anti-febrile purgatives, magnified your morals with tonic roborants, and adjusted all anguished psyches with Orel's Epulotic Vulnerary.

The waiting-room was empty. Foyle opened a door at a venture. He and Robin had a glimpse of along hospital ward: Foyle grunted in disgust.

`A Snow Joint. Might have known he'd be running a dive for hop-heads too.'

This joint catered to Disease Collectors, the most hopeless of neurotic-addicts. They lay in their hospital beds, suffering mildly from illegally induced para-measles, para-flu, para-malaria; devotedly attended by nurses in starched white uniforms, and avidly enjoying their illegal illness and the attention it brought.

`Look at them,' Foyle said contemptuously. `Disgusting. If there's anything filthier than a religion-junkie, it's a disease-bird.'

`Good evening,' a voice spoke behind them.