Tiger! Tiger! (33 page)

And then their ears were bruised by the bellow of thunder.

15

Like widening rings in a pond, the Will and the Idea spread, searching out, touching and tripping the delicate subatomic trigger of PyrE. The thought found particles, dust, smoke, vapor, motes, molecules. The Will and the Idea transformed them all.

In Sicily, where Dott. Franco Torre had worked for an exhausting month attempting to unlock the secret of one slug of PyrE, the residues and the precipitates had been dumped down a drain which led to the sea. For many months the Mediterranean current had drifted these residues across the sea-bottom. In an instant a hump-backed mound of water towering fifty feet high traced the courses, northeast to Sardinia and south-west to Tripoli. In a micro-second the surface of the Mediterranean was raised into the twisted casting of a giant earthworm that wound around the islands of Pantelleria, Lampedusa, Linosa and Malta.

Some of the residues had been burned off; had gone up the chimney with smoke and vapor to drift for hundreds of miles before settling. These minute particles showed where they had finally settled in Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Greece with blinding pin-point explosions of incredible minuteness and intensity. And some motes, still drifting in the stratosphere, revealed their presence with brilliant gleams like daylight stars.

In Texas, where Prof John Mantley had had the same baffling experience with PyrE, most of the residues had gone down the shaft of an exhausted oil well, which was also used to accommodate radioactive wastes. A deep water table had absorbed much of the matter and spread it slowly over an area of some ten square miles. Ten square miles of Texas flats shook themselves into corduroy. A vast untapped deposit of natural gas at last found a vent and came shrieking up to the surface where sparks from flying stones ignited it into a roaring torch, two hundred feet high.

A milligram of PyrE deposited on a disc of filter paper long since discarded, forgotten, rounded up in a waste paper drive and at last pulped into a mould for type-metal, destroyed the entire late-night edition of the Glasgow Observer. A fragment of PyrE spattered on a lab smock long since converted into rag paper destroyed a Thank-You note written by Lady Shrapnel, and destroyed an additional ton of first-class mail in the process.

A shirt cuff, inadvertently dipped into an acid solution of PyrE, long abandoned along with the shirt, and now worn under his mink suit by a Jack-Jaunter, blasted off the wrist and hand of the Jack-Jaunter in one fiery amputation. A deci-milligram of PyrE, still adhering to a former evaporation crystal now in use as an ashtray, kindled a fire that scorched the office of one Baker, dealer in freaks and purveyor of monsters.

Across the length and breadth of the planet were isolated explosions, chains of explosions, traceries of fire, pin-points of fire, meteor flares in the sky, great craters and narrow channels, ploughed in the earth, exploded in the earth, vomited forth from the earth. It was as though an angry God had again visited His people with fire and brimstone.

In Old St Pat's nearly a tenth of a gram of PyrE was exposed in Fourmyle's laboratory. The rest was sealed in its Inert Lead Isomer safe, protected from accidental and intentional psychokinetic ignition. The blinding blast of energy generated from that tenth of a gram blew out the walls and split the floors as though an internal earthquake had convulsed the building. The buttresses held the pillars for a split-second and then rumbled. Down came towers, spires, pillars, buttresses and roof in a thundering avalanche to hesitate above the yawning crater of the floor in a tangled, precarious equilibrium. A breath of wind, a distant vibration, and the collapse would continue until the crater was filled solid with pulverized rubble. The star-like heat of the explosion ignited a hundred fires and melted the ancient thick copper of the collapsed roof. If a milligram more of PyrE had been exposed to detonation, the heat would have been intense enough to vaporize the metal immediately. Instead, it glowed white and began to flow. It streamed off the wreckage of the crumbled roof and began searching its way downward through the jumbled stone, iron, wood and glass, like some monstrous molten mould creeping through a tangled web.

Dagenham and Y'ang-Yeovil arrived almost simultaneously. A moment later Robin Wednesbury appeared and then Jisbella McQueen. A dozen Intelligence operatives and six Dagenham couriers arrived along with Presteign's Jaunte-Watch and the police. They formed a cordon around the blazing block, but there were very few spectators. After the shock of the New Year's Eve raid, that single explosion had frightened half New York into another wild jaunte for safety.

The uproar of the fire was frightful, and the massive grind of tons of wreckage in uneasy balance was ominous. Everyone was forced to shout and yet was fearful of the vibrations. Y'ang-Yeovil bawled the news about Foyle and Sheffield into Dagenham's ear.

Dagenham nodded and displayed his deadly smile. `We'll have to go in,' he shouted.

`Fire suits,' Y'ang Yeovil shouted.

He disappeared and reappeared with a pair of white Disaster Crew fire suits. At the sight of these, Robin and Jisbella began shouting hysterical objections. The two men ignored them, wriggled into the Inert Isomer armor and inched into the inferno.

Within Old St Pat's it was as though a monstrous hand had churned a log-jam of wood, stone and metal. Through every interstice crawled tongues of molten copper, slowly working downward, igniting wood, crumbling stone, shattering glass. Where the copper flowed it merely glowed, but where it poured it spattered dazzling droplets of white hot metal.

Beneath the log-jam yawned a black crater where formerly the floor of the cathedral had been. The explosion had split the flagstones asunder, revealing the cellars, sub-cellars and vaults deep below the building. These too were filled with a snarl of stones, beams, pipes, wire, the remnants of the Four Mile Circus tents; all fitfully lit small fires. Then the first of the copper dripped down into the crater and illuminated it with a brilliant molten splash.

Dagenham pounded Y'ang-Yeovil's shoulder to attract his attention and pointed. Half-way down the crater, in the midst of the tangle lay the body of Regis Sheffield, drawn and quartered by the explosion. Y'ang-Yeovil pounded Dagenham's shoulder and pointed. Almost at the bottom of the crater lay Gully Foyle, and as the blazing spatter of molten copper illuminated him, they saw him move. The two men at once turned and crawled out of the cathedral for a conference.

`He's alive.'

`How is it possible?'

`I can guess. Did you see the shreds of tent wadded near him? It must have been a freak explosion up at the other end of the cathedral and the tents in between cushioned Foyle. Then he dropped through the floor before anything else could hit him.'

`I'll buy that. We've got to get him out. He's the only man who knows where the PyrE is.'

`Could it still be here . . . unexploded?'

`If it's in the I.L.I. safe, yes. That stuff is inert to anything. Never mind that now. How are we going to get him out?'

`Well we can't work down from above.'

`Why not?'

`Isn't it obvious? One false step and the whole mess will `Did you see that copper flowing down?'

`God yes!'

`Well if we don't get him out in ten minutes, he'll be at the bottom of a pool of molten copper.'

`What can we do?'

`I've got a long-shot.'

`What?'

`The cellars of the old R.C.A. buildings across the street are as deep as St Pat's.'

`And?'

`We'll go down and try to hole through. Maybe we can pull Foyle out from the bottom.'

A squad broke into the old R.C.A. buildings, abandoned and sealed up for two generations. They went down into the cellar arcades, crumbling museums of the retail stores of centuries past. They located the ancient elevator shafts and dropped through them into the sub-cellars filled with electric installations, heat plants and refrigeration systems. They went down into the sump-cellars, waist deep in water from the streams of pre-historic Manhattan Island, streams that still flowed beneath the streets that covered them.

As they waded through the sump-cellars, bearing east-northeast to bring up opposite the St Pat's vaults, they suddenly discovered that the pitch-dark was illuminated by a fiery flickering up ahead. Dagenham shouted and flung himself forward. The explosion that had opened the sub-cellars of St Pat's had split the septum between its vaults and those of the R.C.A. buildings. Through a jagged rent in stone and earth they could peer into the bottom of the inferno.

Fifty feet inside was Foyle, trapped in a labyrinth of twisted beams, stones, pipe, metal and wire. He was illuminated by a roaring glow from above him and fitful flames around him. His clothes were on fire and the tattooing was livid on his face. He moved feebly, like a bewildered animal in a maze.

`My God!'

Y'ang-Yeovil exclaimed. `The burning man!'

`What?'

'The burning man I saw on the Spanish Stairs. Never mind that now. What can we do?'

`Go in, of course.'

A brilliant white gob of copper suddenly oozed down close to Foyle and splashed ten feet below him. It was followed by a second, a third, a slow steady stream. A pool began to form. Dagenham and Y'ang-Yeovil sealed the face-plates of their armor and crawled through the break in the septum. After three minutes of agonized struggling they realized that they could not get through the labyrinth to Foyle. It was locked to the outside but not from the inside. Dagenham and Y'ang Yeovil backed up to confer.

`We can't get to him,' Dagenham shouted, `but he can get out.' 'How? He can't jaunte, obviously, or he wouldn't be here.'

`No. He can climb. Look. He goes left, then up, reverses, makes a turn along that beam, slides under it and pushes through that tangle of wire. The wire can't be pushed in, which is why we can't get to him, but it can push out, which is how he can get out. It's a one-way door.'

The pool of molten copper crept up towards Foyle.

`If he doesn't get out soon he'll be roasted alive.'

`We'll have to talk him out . . . Tell him what to do.'

The men began shouting: `Foyle! Foyle! Foyle!'

The burning man in the maze continued to move feebly. The downpour of sizzling copper increased.

`Foyle! Turn left. Can you hear me? Foyle! Turn left and climb up. Then - Foyle!'

'He's not listening. Foyle! Gully Foyle! Can you hear us?'

`Send for Jiz. Maybe he'll listen to her.'

`No, Robin. She'll telesend. He'll have to listen.'

`But will she do it? Save him of all people?'

'She'll have to. This is bigger than hatred. It's the biggest damned thing the world's ever encountered. I'll get her.'

'Y'ang-Yeovil started to crawl out. Dagenham stopped him.

`Wait, Yeo. Look at him. He's flickering.'

`Flickering?'

`Look! He's . . . blinking like a glow-worm. Watch! Now you see him and now you don't.'

The figure of Foyle was appearing, disappearing and reappearing in rapid succession, like a firefly caught in a flaming gyp, `What's he doing now? What's he trying to do? What's happening?'

He was trying to escape. Like a trapped firefly or some seabird caught in the blazing brazier of a naked beacon fire, he was beating about in a frenzy ... a blackened, burning creature, dashing himself against the unknown.

Sound came as sight to him, as light in strange pattern. He saw the sound of his shouted name in vivid rhythms

F OYL E F OYL E F OYL E

F OYL E F OYL E F OYL E

F OYL E F OYL E F OYL E

F OYL E F OYL E F OYL B

F OYL B F OYL E F OYL E