Tiger! Tiger! (36 page)

`What?'

'I want to be purged,' he said in a suffocated voice. The stigmata began to appear on his bandaged face. `I want to pay for what I've done and settle the account. I want to get rid of this damnable cross I'm carrying . . . this ache that's cracking my spine. I want to go back to Gouffre Martel. I want a lobo, if I deserve it . . . and I know I do. I want -'

`You want escape,' Dagenham interrupted. `There's no escape.'

'I want release!'

`Out of the question,' Y'ang-Yeovil said. `There's too much of value locked up in your head to be lost by lobotomy.'

`We're beyond easy childish things like crime and punishment,' Dagenham added.

`No,' Robin objected. `There must always be sin and forgiveness. We're never beyond that'

`Profit and loss, sin and forgiveness, idealism and realism,' Foyle smiled.

`You're all so sure, so simple, so single-minded. I'm the only one in doubt. Let's see how sure you really are. You'll give up Olivia Presteign? To me, yes? Will you give her up to the law? She's a killer.'

Presteign tried to rise, and then fell back in his chair.

`There must be forgiveness, Robin? Will you forgive Olivia Presteign? She murdered your mother and sisters.'

Robin turned ashen. Y'ang-Yeovil tried to protest `The Outer Satellites don't have PyrE, Yeovil. Sheffield revealed that. Would you use it on them anyway? Will you turn my name into common anathema . . . like Lynch and Boycott?'

Foyle turned to Jisbella. `Will your idealism take you back to Gouffre Martel to serve out your sentence? And you, Dagenham, will you give her up? Let her go?'

He listened to the outcries and watched the confusion for a moment, bitter and constrained.

`Life is so simple,' he said. `This decision is so simple, isn't it? Am I to respect Presteign's property rights? The welfare of the planets? Jisbella's ideals? Dagenham's realism? Robin's conscience? Press the button and watch the robot jump. But I'm not a robot I'm a freak of the universe . . . a thinking animal . . . and I'm trying to see my way clear through, this morass. Am I to turn PyrE over to the world and let it destroy itself? Am I to teach the world how to space-jaunte and let us spread our freak-show from galaxy to galaxy through all the universe? What's the answer?'

The bartender robot hurled its mixing glass across the room with a resounding crash. In the amazed silence that followed, Dagenham grunted: `Damn! My radiation's disrupted your dolls again, Presteign'

'The answer is yes,' the robot said, quite distinctly.

`What?' Foyle asked, taken aback.

`The answer to your question is yes' `Thank you,' Foyle said.

'My pleasure, sir,' the robot responded. `A man is a member of society first, and an individual second. You must go along with society, whether it chooses destruction or not'

`Completely haywire,' Dagenham said impatiently. `Switch it off, Presteign.'

`Wait,' Foyle commanded. He looked at the beaming grin engraved in the steel robot face. `But society can be so stupid. So infused. You've witnessed this conference'

'Yes, sir, but you must teach, not dictate. You must teach society'

'To space-jaunte? Why? Why reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?'

`Because you're alive, sir. You might as well ask: Why is life? Don't ask about it. Live it'

`Quite mad,' Dagenham muttered.

`But fascinating,' Y'ang-Yeovil murmured.

`There's got to be more to life than just living,' Foyle said to the robot.

`Then find it for yourself, sir. Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts'

`Why can't we all move forward together?'

`Because you're all different. You're not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow.'

`Who leads?'

`The men who must . . . driven men, compelled men.'

'Freak men.'

`You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory.'

`Thank you very much.'

`My pleasure, sir.'

`You've saved the day.'

`Always a lovely day somewhere, sir,' the robot beamed. Then it fizzed, jangled and collapsed.

Foyle turned on the others. `That thing's right,' he said, `and you're wrong. Who are we, any of us, to make a decision for the world? Let the world make its own decisions. Who are we to keep secrets from the world? Let the world know and decide for itself. Come to Old St Pat's.'

He jaunted; they followed. The square block was still cordoned and by now an enormous crowd had gathered. So many of the rash and curious were jaunting into the smoking ruins that the police had set up a protective induction field to keep them out. Even so, urchins, curio-seekers and irresponsibles attempted to jaunte into the wreckage, only to be burned by the induction field and depart, squawking.

At a signal from Y'ang-Yeovil, the field was turned off: Foyle went through the hot rubble to the east wall of the cathedral, which stood to a height of fifteen feet. He felt the smoking stones, pressed and levered. There came a grinding grumble and a three by five-foot section jarred open and then stuck. Foyle gripped it and pulled. The section trembled; then the roasted hinges collapsed and the stone panel crumbled.

Two centuries before, when organized religion had been abolished and orthodox worshippers of all faiths had been driven underground, some devout souls had constructed this secret niche in Old St Pat's and turned it into an altar. The gold of the crucifix still shone with the brilliance of eternal faith. At the foot of the cross rested a small black box of Inert Lead Isomer.

`Is this a sign?' Foyle panted. `Is this the answer I want?'

He snatched the heavy safe before any could seize it: He jaunted a hundred yards to the remnants of the cathedral steps facing Fifth Avenue. There he opened the safe in full view of the gaping crowds. A shout of consternation went up from the Intelligence crews who knew the truth of its contents.

`Foyle!' Dagenham cried.

`For God's sake, Foyle!' Y'ang-Yeovil shouted.

Foyle withdrew a slug of PyrE, the color of iodine crystals, the size of a cigarette . . . one pound of traps-Plutonian isotopes in solid solution.

`PyrE!' he roared to the mob. `Take it! Keep it! It's your future. PyrE!'

He hurled the slug into the crowd and roared over his shoulder: ` SanFran. Russian Hill stage.'

He jaunted St Louis-Denver to San Francisco, arriving at the Russian Hill stage where it was four in the afternoon and the streets were bustling with late shopper-Jaunters.

`PyrE!'

Foyle bellowed. His devil-face glowed blood red. He was an appalling sight. 'PyrE. It's yours. Make them tell you what it is.

'Nome!' he called to his pursuit as it arrived, and jaunted.

It was lunch hour in Nome, and the lumberjacks jaunting down from-the sawmills for their beefsteak and beer were startled by the tiger-faced man who hurled a one pound slug of iodine colored alloy into their midst and shouted in the gutter tongue: 'PyrE! You hear me, man? You listen a me, you. PyrE! Grab no guesses, you. Make 'em tell you about PyrE, is all!'

To Dagenham, Y'ang-Yeovil and others jaunting in after him, as always, seconds too late, he shouted: `Tokyo. Imperial stage!'

He disappeared a split second before their shots reached him.

It was nine O'clock of a crisp, winey morning in Tokyo, and the morning rush hour crowd milling around the Imperial stage alongside the carp ponds was paralyzed by a tiger-faced Samurai who appeared and hurled a slug of curious metal and unforgettable admonitions at them.

Foyle continued to Bangkok where it was pouring rain, and Delhi where a monsoon raged . . . always pursued in his mad-dog course. In Baghdad it was three in the morning and the night-club crowd and pub-crawlers who stayed a perpetual half-hour ahead of closing time around the world, cheered him alcoholically. In Paris and again in London it was midnight and the mobs on the Champs Elysses and in Piccadilly Circus were galvanized by Foyle's appearance and passionate exhortation.

Having led his pursuers three-quarters of the way around the world in fifty minutes, Foyle permitted them to overtake him in London. He permitted them to knock him down, take the I.L.I. safe from his arms, count the remaining slugs of PyrE, and slam the safe shut.

`There's enough left for a war. Plenty left for destruction annihilation . . . if you dare.' He was laughing and sobbing in hysterical triumph. `Millions for defense, but not one cent for survival.'

'D'you realize what you've done, you damned killer?' Dagenham shouted.

`I know what I've done.'

`Nine pounds of PyrE scattered around the world! One thought and we'll - How can we get it back without telling them the truth? For God's sake, Yeo, keep that crowd back. Don't let them hear this.'

`Impossible.'

`Then let's jaunte.'

`No,' Foyle roared. `Let them hear this. Let them hear everything.'

`You're insane, man. You've handed a loaded gun to children.'

`Stop treating them like children and they'll stop behaving like children. Who the hell are you to play monitor?'

`What are you talking about?'

`Stop treating them like children. Explain the loaded gun to them. Bring it all out into the open.' Foyle laughed savagely. `I've ended the last star chamber conference in the world.

I've blown the last secret wide open. No more secrets from now on . . . No more telling the children what's best for them to knew . . . Let'em all grow up. It's about time.'

`Christ, he is insane.'

`Am I? I've handed life and death back to the people who do the living and dying. The common man's been whipped and led long enough by driven men like us ...Compulsive men . . . Tiger men who can't help lashing the world before them. We're all tigers, the three of us, but who the hell are we to make decisions for the world just because we're compulsive? Let the world make its own choice between life and death. Why should we be saddled with the responsibility?'

`We're not saddled,' Y'ang-Yeovil said quietly. `We're driven. We're forced to seize the responsibility that the average man shirks.'

`Then let him stop shirking it. Let him stop tossing his duty and guilt on to the shoulders of the first freak who comes along grabbing at it. Are we to be scapegoats for the world for ever?'

`Damn you!' Dagenham raged. `Don't you realize that you can't trust people? They don't know enough for their own good.'

'Then let them learn or die. We're all in this together. Let's live together or die together.'

'D'you want to die in their ignorance? You've got to figure out how we can get those slugs back without blowing everything wide open.'

`No. I believe in them. I was one of them before I turned tiger. They can all turn uncommon if they're kicked awake like I was.'

Foyle shook himself and abruptly jaunted to the bronze head of Eros, fifty feet above the counter of Piccadilly Circus. He perched precariously and bawled:

`Listen a me, all you! Listen, man! Gonna sermonize, me. Dig this, you!'

He was answered with a roar.