American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58
Page 39
The pool of molten copper crept up toward 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. You can get out if you’ll listen to me. 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 trap.
“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 patterns. He saw the sound of his shouted name in vivid rhythms:
F O Y L E F O Y L E F O Y L E
F O Y L E F O Y L E F O Y L E
F O Y L E F O Y L E F O Y L E
F O Y L E F O Y L E F O Y L E
F O Y L E F O Y L E F O Y L E
Motion came as sound to him. He heard the writhing of the flames, he heard the swirls of smoke, he heard the flickering, jeering shadows . . . all speaking deafeningly in strange tongues:
“BURUU GYARR?” the steam asked.
“Asha. Asha, rit-kit-dit-zit m’gid,” the quick shadows answered.
“Ohhh. Ahhh. Heee. Teee,” the heat ripples clamored.
Even the flames smoldering on his own clothes roared gibberish in his ears. “MANTERGEISTMANN!” they bellowed.
Color was pain to him . . . heat, cold, pressure; sensations of intolerable heights and plunging depths, of tremendous accelerations and crushing compressions:
Touch was taste to him . . . the feel of wood was acrid and chalky in his mouth, metal was salt, stone tasted sour-sweet to the touch of his fingers, and the feel of glass cloyed his palate like over-rich pastry.
Smell was touch . . . Hot stone smelled like velvet caressing his cheek. Smoke and ash were harsh tweeds rasping his skin, almost the feel of wet canvas. Molten metal smelled like blow hammering his heart, and the ionization of the PyrE explosion filled the air with ozone that smelled like water trickling through his fingers.
He was not blind, not deaf, not senseless. Sensation came to him, but filtered through a nervous system twisted and shortcircuited by the shock of the PyrE concussion. He was suffering from Synaesthesia, that rare condition in which perception receives messages from the objective world and relays these messages to the brain, but there in the brain the sensory perceptions are confused with one another. So, in Foyle, sound registered as sight, motion registered as sound, colors became pain sensations, touch became taste, and smell became touch. He was not only trapped within the labyrinth of the inferno under Old St. Pat’s; he was trapped in the kaleidoscope of his own cross-senses.
Again desperate, on the ghastly verge of extinction, he abandoned all disciplines and habits of living; or, perhaps, they were stripped from him. He reverted from a conditioned product of environment and experience to an inchoate creature craving escape and survival and exercising every power it possessed. And again the miracle of two years ago took place. The undivided energy of an entire human organism, of every cell, fiber, nerve, and muscle empowered that craving, and again Foyle space-jaunted.
He went hurtling along the geodesical space lines of the curving universe at the speed of thought, far exceeding that of light. His spatial velocity was so frightful that his time axis was twisted from the vertical line drawn from the Past through Now to the Future. He went flickering along the new nearhorizontal axis, this new space-time geodesic, driven by the miracle of a human mind no longer inhibited by concepts of the impossible.
Again he achieved what Helmut Grant and Enzio Dandridge and scores of other experimenters had failed to do, because his blind panic forced him to abandon the spatio-temporal inhibitions that had defeated previous attempts. He did not jaunte to Elsewhere, but to Elsewhen. But most important, the fourth dimensional awareness, the complete picture of the Arrow of Time and his position on it which is born in every man but deeply submerged by the trivia of living, was in Foyle close to the surface. He jaunted along the space-time geodesics to Elsewheres and Elsewhens, translating “i,” the square root of minus one, from an imaginary number into reality by a magnificent act of imagination.
He jaunted.
He jaunted back through time to his past. He became the Burning Man who had inspired himself with terror and perplexity on the beach in Australia, in a quack’s office in Shanghai, on the Spanish Stairs in Rome, on the Moon, in the Skoptsy Colony on Mars. He jaunted back through time, revisiting the savage battles that he himself had fought in Gully Foyle’s tiger hunt for vengeance. His flaming appearances were sometimes noted; other times not.
He jaunted.
He was aboard “Nomad,” drifting in the empty frost of space.
He stood in the door to nowhere.
The cold was the taste of lemons and the vacuum was a rake of talons on his skin. The sun and the stars were a shaking ague that racked his bones.
“GLOMMHA FREDNIS!” motion roared in his ears.
It was a figure with its back to him vanishing down the corridor; a figure with a copper cauldron of provisions over its shoulder; a figure darting, floating, squirming through free fall. It was Gully Foyle.
“MEEHAT JESSROT,” the sight of his motion bellowed.
“Aha! Oh-ho! M’git not to kak,” the flicker of light and shade answered.
“Oooooooh? Soooooo?” the whirling raffle of debris in his wake murmured.
The lemon taste in his mouth became unbearable. The rake of talons on his skin was torture.
He jaunted.
He reappeared in the furnace beneath Old St. Pat’s less than a second after he had disappeared from there. He was drawn, as the seabird is drawn, again and again to the flames from which it is struggling to escape. He endured the roaring torture for only another moment.
He jaunted.
He was in the depths of Gouffre Martel.
The velvet black darkness was bliss, paradise, euphoria.
“Ah!” he cried in relief.
“AH!” came the echo of his voice, and the sound was translated into a blinding pattern of light.
A HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA A HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA H HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA A HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA H HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
The Burning Man winced. “Stop!” he called, blinded by the noise. Again came the dazzling pattern of the echo:
StOpStOpStOp OpStOpStOpStOp StOpStOpStOpStOp OpStOpStOpStOpStOp OpStOpStOpStOpSt OpStOpStOpStOp OpStOpStOpSt
A distant clatter of steps came to his eyes in soft patterns of vertical borealis streamers:
c c c c c c
l l l l l l
a a a a a a
t t t t t t
t t t t t t
e e e e e e
r r r r r r
It was the search party from the Gouffre Martel hospital, tracking Foyle and Jisbella McQueen by geophone. The Burning Man disappeared
, but not before he had unwittingly decoyed the searchers from the trail of the vanished fugitives.
He was back under Old St. Pat’s, reappearing only an instant after his last disappearance. His wild beatings into the unknown sent him stumbling up geodesic space-time lines that inevitably brought him back to the Now he was trying to escape, for in the inverted saddle curve of space-time, his Now was the deepest depression in the curve.
He could drive himself up, up, up the geodesic lines into the past or future, but inevitably he must fall back into his own Now, like a thrown ball hurled up the sloping walls of an infinite pit, to land, hang poised for a moment, and then roll back into the depths.
But still he beat into the unknown in his desperation. Again he jaunted.
He was on Jervis beach on the Australian coast.
The motion of the surf was bawling: “LOGGERMIST CROTEHAVEN!”
The churning of the surf blinded him with the lights of batteries of footlights:
Gully Foyle and Robin Wednesbury stood before him. The body of a man lay on the sand which felt like vinegar in the Burning Man’s mouth. The wind brushing his face tasted like brown paper.
Foyle opened his mouth and exclaimed. The sound came out in burning star-bubbles.
Foyle took a step. “GRASH?” the motion blared.
The Burning Man jaunted.
He was in the office of Dr. Sergei Orel in Shanghai.
Foyle was again before him, speaking in light patterns:
He flickered back to the agony of Old St. Pat’s and jaunted again.
The Burning Man jaunted.
It was cold again, with the taste of lemons, and vacuum raked his skin with unspeakable talons. He was peering through the porthole of a silvery yawl. The jagged mountains of the Moon towered in the background. Through the porthole he could see the jangling racket of blood pumps and oxygen pumps and hear the uproar of the motion Gully Foyle made toward him. The clawing of the vacuum caught his throat in an agonizing grip.
The geodesic lines of space-time rolled him back to Now under Old St. Pat’s, where less than two seconds had elapsed since he first began his frenzied struggle. Once more, like a burning spear, he hurled himself into the unknown.
He was in the Skoptsy Catacomb on Mars. The white slug that was Lindsey Joyce was writhing before him.
“NO! NO! NO!” her motion screamed. “DON’T HURT ME. DON’T KILL ME. NO PLEASE . . . PLEASE . . . PLEASE . . .”
The Burning Man opened his tiger mouth and laughed. “She hurts,” he said. The sound of his voice burned his eyes.
S S S S S S
H H H H H H
E E E E E E
H H H H H H
U U U U U U
R R R R R R
T T T T T T
S S S S S S
“Who are you?” Foyle whispered.
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
AREAREAREAREAREARE
AREAREAREAREAREARE
AREAREAREAREAREARE
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
The Burning Man winced. “Too bright,” he said. “Less light.”
Foyle took a step forward. “BLAA-GAA-DAA-MAWW!” the motion roared.
The Burning Man clapped his hands over his ears in agony. “Too loud,” he cried. “Don’t move so loud.”
The writhing Skoptsy’s motion was still screaming, beseeching: “DON’T HURT ME. DON’T HURT ME.”
The Burning Man laughed again. She was mute to normal men, but to his freak-crossed senses her meaning was clear. “Listen to her. She’s screaming. Begging. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to be hurt. Listen to her.”
“IT WAS OLIVIA PRESTEIGN GAVE THE ORDER. OLIVIA PRESTEIGN. NOT ME. DON’T HURT ME. OLIVIA PRESTEIGN.”
“She’s telling who gave the order. Can’t you hear? Listen with your eyes. She says Olivia.”
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
The checkerboard glitter of Foyle’s question was too much for him. The Burning Man interpreted the Skoptsy’s agony again.
“She says Olivia. Olivia Presteign. Olivia Presteign. Olivia Presteign.”
He jaunted.
He fell back into the pit under Old St. Pat’s, and suddenly his confusion and despair told him he was dead. This was the finish of Gully Foyle. This was eternity, and hell was real. What he had seen was the past passing before his crumbling senses in the final moment of death. What he was enduring he must endure through all time. He was dead. He knew he was dead.
He refused to submit to eternity.
He beat again into the unknown.
The Burning Man jaunted.
He was in a scintillating mist a snowflake cluster of stars a shower of liquid diamonds. There was the touch of butterfly wings on his skin. There was the taste of a strand of cool pearls in his mouth. His crossed kalei doscopic senses could not tell him where he was, but he knew he wanted to remain in this Nowhere forever.
“Hello, Gully.”
“Who’s that?”
“This is Robin.”
“Robin?”
“Robin Wednesbury that was.”
“That was?”
“Robin Yeovil that is.”
“I don’t understand. Am I dead?”
“No, Gully.”
“Where am I?”
“A long, long way from Old St. Pat’s.”
“But where?”
“I can’t take the time to explain, Gully. You’ve only got a few moments here.”
“Why?”
“Because you haven’t learned how to jaunte through space-time yet. You’ve got to go back and learn.”
“But I do know. I must know. Sheffield said I space-jaunted to ‘Nomad’ . . . six hundred thousand miles.”
“That was an accident then, Gully, and you’ll do it again . . . after you teach yourself . . . But you’re not doing it now. You don’t know how to hold on yet . . . how to turn any Now into reality. You’ll tumble back into Old St. Pat’s in a moment.”
“Robin, I’ve just remembered. I have bad news for you.”
“I know, Gully.”
“Your mother and sisters are dead.”
“I’ve known for a long time, Gully.”
“How long?”
“For thirty years.”
“That’s impossible.”
“No it isn’t. This is a long, long way from Old St. Pat’s. I’ve been waiting to tell you how to save yourself from the fire, Gully. Will you listen?”
“I’m not dead?”
“No.”
“I’ll listen.”
“Your senses are all confused. It’ll pass soon, but I won’t give the directions in left and right or up and down. I’ll tell you what you can understand now.”
“Why are you helping me . . . after what I’ve done to you?”
“That’s all forgiven and forgotten, Gully. Now listen to me. When you get back to Old St. Pat’s, turn around until you’re facing the loudest shadows. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“Go toward the noise until you feel a deep prickling on your skin. Then stop.”
“Then stop.”
“Make a half turn into compression and a feeling of falling. Follow that.”
“Follow that.”
“You’ll pass through a solid sheet of light and come to the taste of quinine. That’s really a mass of wire. Push straight through the quinine until you see something that sounds like trip hammers. You’ll be safe.”
“How do you know all this, Robin?”
“I’ve been briefed by an expert, Gully.” There was the sensation of laughter. “You’ll be falling back into the past any moment now. Peter and Saul are here. They say au revoir and good luck. And Jiz Dagenham too. Good luck, Gully dear . . .”
“The past? This is the
future?”
“Yes, Gully.”
“Am I here? Is . . . Olivia—?”
And then he was tumbling down, down, down the spacetime lines back into the dreadful pit of Now.
Sixteen
His senses uncrossed in the ivory-and-gold star chamber of Castle Presteign. Sight became sight and he saw the high mirrors and stained glass windows, the gold tooled library with android librarian on library ladder. Sound became sound and he heard the android secretary tapping the manual beadrecorder at the Louis Quinze desk. Taste became taste as he sipped the cognac that the robot bartender handed him.
He knew he was at bay, faced with the decision of his life. He ignored his enemies and examined the perpetual beam carved in the robot face of the bartender, the classic Irish grin.
“Thank you,” Foyle said.
“My pleasure, sir,” the robot replied and awaited its next cue. “Nice day,” Foyle remarked.
“Always a lovely day somewhere, sir,” the robot beamed. “Awful day,” Foyle said.
“Always a lovely day somewhere, sir,” the robot responded. “Day,” Foyle said.
“Always a lovely day somewhere, sir,” the robot said.
Foyle turned to the others. “That’s me,” he said, motioning to the robot. “That’s all of us. We prattle about free will, but we’re nothing but response . . . mechanical reaction in prescribed grooves. So . . . here I am, here I am, waiting to respond. Press the buttons and I’ll jump.” He aped the canned voice of the robot. “My pleasure to serve, sir.” Suddenly his tone lashed them. “What do you want?”
They stirred with uneasy purpose. Foyle was burned, beaten, chastened . . . and yet he was taking control of all of them.
“We’ll stipulate the threats,” Foyle said. “I’m to be hung, drawn, and quartered, tortured in hell if I don’t . . . What? What do you want?”
“I want my property,” Presteign said, smiling coldly.
“Eighteen and some odd pounds of PyrE. Yes. What do you offer?”
“I make no offer, sir. I demand what is mine.”
Y’ang-Yeovil and Dagenham began to speak. Foyle silenced them. “One button at a time, gentlemen. Presteign is trying to make me jump at present.” He turned to Presteign. “Press harder, blood and money, or find another button. Who are you to make demands at this moment?”