The Stars My Destination ( Tiger! Tiger! )

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ALL PERSONS KNOWN TO BE N TEE EMPLOY OF FOURMYLE OF CERES OR ASSOCIATED WITH HIM IN ANY CAPACITY TO BE HELD FOR QUESTIONING.

–Y-Y: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE.

ALL EMPLOYEES OP THIS COMPANY TO MAINTAIN STRICT WATCH FOR ONE FOURMYLE OF CERES, AND REPORT AT ONCE TO LOCAL MR. PRESTO.

–PRESTEIGN.

ALL COURIERS WILL ABANDON PRESENT ASSIGNMENTS AND REPORT FOR REASSIGNMENT TO FOYLE CASH.

–DAGENHAM.

A BANK HOLIDAY WILL BE DECLARED IMMEDIATELY IN TEE NAME OF THE WAR CRISIS TO CUT FOURMYLE OFF FROM ALL FUNDS.

–Y-Y: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE.

ANYONE MAKING INQUIRIES RE: S.S. «VORGA» TO BE TAKEN TO CASTLE PRESTEIGN FOR EXAMINATION.

–PRESTEIGN.

ALL PORTS AND FIELDS IN INNER PLANETS TO BE ALERTED FOR ARRIVAL OF FOURMYLE. QUARANTINE AND CUSTOMS TO CHACK ALL LANDINGS.

–Y-Y; CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE.

OLD ST. PATRICK'S TO BE SEARCHED AND WATCHED.

–DAGENHAM.

THE FILES OF BO'NESS amp; UIG TO BE CHECKED FOR NAMES OF OFFICERS AND MEN OF VORGA TO ANTICIPATE. IF POSSIBLE. FOYLE'S NEXT MOVE.

–PRESTEIGN.

WAR CRIMES COMMISSION TO MAKE UP LIST OP PUBLIC ENEMIES GIVING FOYLE NUMBER ONE SPOT,

–Y-Y: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE.

~r 1,000,000 REWARD OFFERED FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO APPREHENSION OF FOURMYLE OF CERES. ALIAS GULLIVER FOYLE. ALIAS GULLEY FOYLE, NOW AT LARGE IN THE INNER PLANETS. PRIORITY 1

After two centuries of colonization, the air struggle on Mars was still so critical that the V-L Law, the Vegetative-Lynch Law, was still in effect. It was a killing offense to endanger or destroy any plant vital to the transformation of Mars' carbon dioxide atmosphere into an oxygen atmosphere. Even blades of grass were sacred. There was no need to erect KEEP OFF THE GRASS neons. The man who wandered off a path onto a lawn would be instantly shot. The woman who picked a flower would be killed without mercy. Two centuries of sudden death had inspired a reverence for green growing things that almost amounted to a religion.

Foyle remembered this as he raced up the center of the causeway leading to Mars St. Michele. He had jaunted direct from the Syrtis airport to the St. Michele stage at the foot of the causeway which stretched for a quarter of a mile through green fields to Mars St. Michele. The rest of the distance had to be traversed on foot.

Like the original Mont St. Michele on the French coast, Mars St. Michele was a majestic Gothic cathedral of spires and buttresses looming on a hill and yearning toward the sky. Ocean tides surrounded Mont St. Michele on earth. Green tides of grass surrounded Mars St. Michele. Both were fortresses. Mont St. Michele had been a fortress of faith before organized religion was abolished. Mars St. Michele was a fortress of telepathy. Within it lived Mars's sole full telepath, Sigurd Magsman.

«Now these are the defenses protecting Sigurd Magsman,» Foyle chanted, halfway between hysteria and litany. «Firstly, the Solar System; secondly, martial law; thirdly, Dagenham-Presteign amp; Co.; fourthly, the fortress itself; fifthly, the uniformed guards, attendants, servants, and admirers of the bearded sage we all know so well, Sigurd Magsman, selling his awesome powers for awesome prices. . . .»

Foyle laughed immoderately: «But there's a Sixthly that I know: Sigurd Magsman's Achilles' Heel . . . For I've paid ~r 1,000,000 to Sigurd III or was he IV?»

He passed through the outer labyrinth of Mars St. Michele with his forged credentials and was tempted to bluff or proceed directly by commando action to an audience with the Great Man himself, but time was pressing and his enemies were closing in and he could not afford to satisfy his curiosity. Instead, he accelerated, blurred, and found a humble cottage set in a walled garden within the Mars St. Michele home farm. It had drab windows and a thatched roof and might have been mistaken for a stable. Foyle slipped inside.

The cottage was a nursery. Three pleasant nannies sat motionless in rocking chairs, knitting poised in their frozen hands. The blur that was Foyle came up behind them and quietly stung them with ampules. Then he decelerated. He looked at the ancient, ancient child; the wizened, shriveled boy who was seated on the floor playing with electronic trains.

«Hello, Sigurd,» Foyle said.

The child began to cry.

«Crybaby! What are you afraid of? I'm not going to hurt you.»

«You're a bad man with a bad face.»

«I'm your friend, Sigurd.»

«No, you're not. You want me to do b-bad things.»

«I'm your friend. Look, I know all about those big hairy men who pretend to be you, but I won't tell. Read me and see.»

«You're going to hurt him and y-you want me to tell him.»

«Who?»

«The captain-man. The Ski…Skot…” The child fumbled with the word, wailing louder. «Go away; You're bad. Badness in your head and burning mens and…”

«Come here, Sigurd.»

«No. NANNIE! NAN-N-I-E!»

«Shut up, you little bastard!»

Foyle grabbed the seventy-year-old child and shook it. «This is going to be a brand new experience for you, Sigurd. The first time you've ever been walloped into anything. Understand?»

The ancient child read him and howled.

«Shut up! We're going on a trip to the Skoptsy Colony. If you behave yourself and do what you're told, I'll bring you back safe and give you a lolly or whatever the hell they bribe you with. If you don't behave, I'll beat the living daylights out of you.»

«No, you won't. . . . You won't. I'm Sigurd Magsman. I'm Sigurd the telepath. You wouldn't dare.»

«Sonny, I'm Gully Foyle, Solar Enemy Number One. I'm just a step away from the finish of a year-long hunt . . . I'm risking my neck because I need you to settle accounts with a son of a bitch who…Sonny, I'm Gully Foyle. There isn't anything I wouldn't dare.»

The telepath began broadcasting terror with such an uproar the alarms sounded all over Mars St. Michele. Foyle took a firm grip on the ancient child, accelerated and carried him out of the fortress. Then he jaunted.

URGENT. SIGURD MAGSMAN KIDNAPPED BY MAN

TENTATIVELY IDENTIFIED AS GULLIVER FOYLE, ALIAS

FOURMYLE OF CERES, SOLAR ENEMY NUMBER ONE.

DESTINATION TENTATIVELY FIXED. ALERT COMMANDO

BRIGADE. INFORM CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE. URGENT!

The ancient Skoptsy sect of White Russia, believing that sex was the root of all evil, practiced an atrocious self-castration to extirpate the root. The modern Skoptsys, believing that sensation was the root of all evil, practiced an even more barbaric custom. Having entered the Skoptsy Colony and paid a fortune for the privilege, the initiates submitted joyously to an operation that severed the sensory nervous system, and lived out their days without sight, sound, speech, smell, taste, or touch.

When they first entered the monastery, the initiates were shown elegant ivory cells in which it was intimated they would spend the remainder of their lives in rapt contemplation, lovingly tended. In actuality, the senseless creatures were packed in catacombs where they sat on rough stone slabs and were fed and exercised once a day. For twenty-three out of twenty-four hours they sat alone in the dark, untended, unguarded, unloved.

«The living dead,» Foyle muttered. He decelerated, put Sigurd Magsman down, and switched on the retinal light in his eyes, trying to pierce the wombgloom. It was midnight above ground. It was permanent midnight down in the catacombs. Sigurd Magsman was broadcasting terror and anguish with such a telepathic bray that Foyle was forced to shake the child again.

«Shut up!» he whispered. «You can't wake these dead. Now find me Lindsey Joyce.»

«They're sick. . . all sick. . . like worms in their heads. . . worms and sickness and…”

«Christ, don't I know it. Come on, let's get it over with. There's worse to come.»

They went down the twisting labyrinth of the catacombs. The stone slabs shelved the walls from floor to ceiling. The Skoptsys, white as slugs, mute as corpses, motionless as Buddhas, filled the caverns with the odor of living death. The telepathic child wept and shrieked. Foyle never relaxed his relentless grip on him; he never relaxed the hunt.

«Johnson, Wright, Keeley, Graff, Nastro, Underwood . . . God, there's thousands here.» Foyle read off the bronze identification plates attached to the slabs. «Reach out, Sigurd. Find Lindsey Joyce for me. We can't go over them name by name. Regal, Cone, Brady, Vincent…What in the…?»

Foyle started back. One of the bone-white figures had cuffed his brow. It was swaying and writhing, its face twitching. All the white slugs on their shelves were squirming and writhing. Sigurd Magsman's constant telepathic broadcast of anguish and terror was reaching them and torturing them.

«Shut up!» Foyle snapped. «Stop it. Find Lindsey Joyce and we'll get out of here. Reach out and find him.»

«Down there.» Sigurd wept. «Straight down there. Seven, eight, nine shelves down. I want to go home. I'm sick. I…”

Foyle went pell-mell down the catacombs with Sigurd, reading off identification plates until at last he came to: «LINDSEY JOYCE. BOUGAINVILLE. VENUS.»

This was his enemy, the instigator of his death and the deaths of the six hundred from Callisto. This was the enemy for whom he had planned vengeance and hunted for months. This was the enemy for whom he had prepared the agony of the port stateroom aboard his yawl. This was «Vorga.»

It was a woman.

Foyle was thunderstruck. In these days of the double standard, with women kept in purdah, there were many reported cases of women masquerading as men to enter the worlds closed to them, but he had never yet heard of a woman in the merchant marine . . . masquerading her way to top officer rank.

«This?» he exclaimed furiously. «This is Lindsey Joyce? Lindsey Joyce off the 'Vorga'? Ask her.»

«I don't know what 'Vorga' is.»

«Ask her!»

«But I don't…She was. . . She like gave orders.»

«Captain?»

«I don't like what's inside her. It's all sick and dark. It hurts. I want to go home.»

«Ask her. Was she captain of the 'Vorga'?»

«Yes. Please, please, please don't make me go inside her any more. It's twisty and hurts. I don't like her.»

«Tell her I'm the man she wouldn't pick up on September i6, 2436. Tell her it's taken a long time but I've finally come to settle the account. Tell her I'm going to pay her back.»

«I d-don't understand. Don't understand.»

«Tell her I'm going to kill her, slow and hard. Tell her I've got a stateroom aboard my yawl, fitted up just like my locker aboard 'Nomad' where I rotted for six months . . . where she ordered 'Vorga' to leave me to die. Tell her she's going to rot and die just like me. Tell her!» Foyle shook the wizened child furiously. «Make her feel it. Don't let her get away by turning Skoptsy. Tell her I kill her filthy. Read me and tell her!»

«She . . . Sir-She didn't give that order.»

«What!»

«I c-can't understand her.»

«She didn't give the order to scuttle me?»

«I'm afraid to go in.»

«Go in, you little son of a bitch, or I'll take you apart. What does she mean?»

The child wailed; the woman writhed; Foyle fumed. «Go in! Go in! Get it out of her. Jesus Christ, why does the only telepath on Mars have to be a child? Sigurd! Sigurd, listen to me. Ask her: Did she give the order to scuttle the reffs?»

«No. No!»

«No she didn't or no you won't?»

«She didn't.»

«Did she give the order to pass 'Nomad' by?»

«She's twisty and sicky. Oh please! NAN-N-I-E! I want to go home. Want to go.»

«Did she give the order to pass 'Nomad' by?»

''No.»

«She didn't?»

«No. Take me home.»

«Ask her who did.»

«I want my Nannie.»

«Ask her who could give her an order. She was captain aboard her own ship. Who could command her? Ask her!»

«I want my Nannie.»

«Ask her!»

«No. No. No. I'm afraid. She's sick. She's dark and black. She's bad. I don't understand her. I want my Nannie. I want to go home.»

The child was shrieking and shaking; Foyle was shouting. The echoes thundered. As Foyle reached for the child in a rage, his eyes were blinded by brilliant light. The entire catacomb was illuminated by the Burning Man. Foyle's image stood before him, face hideous, clothes on fire, the blazing eyes fixed on the convulsing Skoptsy that had been Lindsey Joyce.

The Burning Man opened his tiger mouth. A grating sound emerged. It was like flaming laughter.

«She hurts,» he said.

«Who are you?» Foyle whispered.

The Burning Man winced. «Too bright,» he said. «Less light.»

Foyle took a step forward. The Burning Man clapped hands over his ears in agony. «Too loud,» he cried. «Don't move so loud.»

«Are you my guardian angel?»

«You're blinding me. Shhh!» Suddenly he laughed again «Listen to her. She's screaming. Begging. She doesn't want to die. She doesn't want to be hurt. Listen to her.»

Foyle trembled.

«She's telling us who gave the order. Can't you hear? Listen with your eyes.» The Burning Man pointed a talon finger at the writhing Skoptsy. «She says Olivia.»

«What!»

«She says Olivia. Olivia Presteign. Olivia Presteign. Olivia Presteign.»

The Burning Man vanished.

The catacombs were dark again.

Colored lights and cacophonies whirled around Foyle. He gasped and staggered. «Blue jaunte,» he muttered. «Olivia. No. Not. Never. Olivia. I…”

He felt a hand reach for his. «Jiz?» he croaked.

He became aware that Sigurd Magsman was holding on to his hand and weeping. He picked the boy up.

«I hurt,» Sigurd whimpered.

«I hurt too, son.»

«Want to go home.»

«I'll take you home.»

Still holding the boy in his arms, he blundered through the catacombs.

«The living dead,» he mumbled.

And then: «I've joined them.»

He found the stone steps that led up from the depths to the monastery cloister above ground. He trudged up the steps, tasting death and desolation. There was bright light above him, and for a moment he imagined that dawn had come already. Then he realized that the cloister was brilliantly lit with artificial light. There was the tramp of shod feet and the low growl of commands. Halfway up the steps, Foyle stopped and mustered himself.

«Sigurd,» he whispered. «Who's above us? Find out.»

«Sogers,» the child answered.

«Soldiers? What soldiers?»

«Commando sogers.» Sigurd's crumpled face brightened. «They come for me. To take me home to Nannie. HERE I AM! HERE I AM!»

The telepathic clamor brought a shout from overhead. Foyle accelerated and blurred up the rest of the steps to the cloister. It was a square of Romanesque arches surrounding a green lawn. In the center of the lawn was a giant cedar of Lebanon. The flagged walks swarmed with Commando search parties, and Foyle came face to face with his match; for an instant after they saw his blur whip up from the catacombs they accelerated too, and all were on even terms.

But Foyle had the boy. Shooting was impossible. Cradling Sigurd in his arms, he wove through the cloister like a broken-field runner hurtling toward a goal. No one dared block him, for at plus-five acceleration a head-on collision between two bodies would be instantly fatal to both. Objectively, this break-neck skirmish looked like a five second zigzag of lightning.

Foyle broke out of the cloister, went through the main hail of the monastery, passed through the labyrinth, and reached the public jaunte stage outside the main gate. There he stopped, decelerated and jaunted to the monastery airfield, half a mile distant. The field, too, was ablaze with lights and swarming with Commandos. Every anti-gray pit was occupied by a Brigade ship. His own yawl was under guard.

A fifth of a second after Foyle arrived at the field, the pursuers from the monastery jaunted in. He looked around desperately. He was surrounded by half a regiment of Commandos, all under acceleration, all geared for lethal-action, all his equal or better. The odds were impossible.

And then the Outer Satellites altered the odds. Exactly one week after the saturation raid on Terra, they struck at Mars.

Again the missiles came down on the midnight to dawn quadrant. Again the heavens twinkled with interceptions and detonations, and the horizon exploded great puffs of light while the ground shook. But this time there was a ghastly variation, for a brilliant nova burst overhead, flooding the nightside of the planet with garish light. A swarm of fission heads had struck Mars's tiny satellite, Phobos, instantly vaporizing it into a sunlet.

The recognition lag of the Commandos to this appalling attack gave Foyle his opportunity. He accelerated again and burst through them to his yawl. He stopped before the main hatch and saw the stunned guard party hesitate between a continuance of the old action and a response to the new. Foyle hurled Sigurd Magsman up into the air like an ancient Scotsman tossing the caber. As the guard party rushed to catch the boy, Foyle dove through them into his yawl, slammed the hatch, and dogged it.

Still under acceleration, never pausing to see if anyone was inside the yawl, he shot forward to controls, tripped the release lever, and as the yawl started to float up the anti-gray beam, threw on full jo-C propulsion. He was not strapped into the pilot chair. The effect of the 10-G drive on his accelerated and unprotected body was monstrous.

A creeping force took hold of him and spilled him out of the chair. He inched back toward the rear wall of the control chamber like a sleepwalker. The wall appeared, to his accelerated senses, to approach him. He thrust out both arms, palms flat against the wall to brace himself. The sluggish power thrusting him back split his arms apart and forced him against the wall, gently at first, then harder and harder until face, jaw, chest, and body were crushed against the metal.

The mounting pressure became agonizing. He tried to trip the switchboard in his mouth with his tongue, but the propulsion crushing him against the wall made it impossible for him to move his distorted mouth. A burst of explosions, so far down the sound spectrum that they sounded like sodden rock slides, told him that the Commando Brigade was bombarding him with shots from below. As the yawl tore up into the blue-black of outer space, he began to scream in a bat screech before he mercifully lost consciousness.