A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Vol 2 Part 67

"What the h.e.l.l?" Foyle muttered. "On New Year's Eve? Friendly fella. Let's try the back."

They walked around the chalet, pursued by the skull and crossbones flashing at intervals, and the canned warning. At one side, they saw the top of a cellar window brightly illuminated and heard the m.u.f.fled chant of voices: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want..."

"Cellar Christians!" Foyle exclaimed. He and Robin peered through the window. Thirty worshippers of a.s.sorted faiths were celebrating the New Year with a combined and highly illegal service. The twenty-fourth century had not yet abolished G.o.d, but it had abolished organized religion.

"No wonder the house is man-trapped," Foyle said. "Filthy practices like that. Look, they've got a priest and a rabbi, and that thing behind them is a crucifix."

"Did you ever stop to think what swearing is?" Robin asked quietly. "You say 'Jesus' and 'Jesus Christ.'

Do you know what that is?"

"Just swearing, that's all. Like 'ouch' or 'd.a.m.n.'"

"No, it's religion. You don't know it, but there are two thousand years of meaning behind words like that."

"This is no time for dirty talk," Foyle said impatiently. "Save it for later. Come on."

The rear of the chalet was a solid wall of gla.s.s, the picture window of a dimly lit, empty living room.

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

Robin lay p.r.o.ne on the marble patio. Foyle triggered his body, accelerated into a lightning blur, and smashed a hole in the gla.s.s wall. Far down on the sound spectrum he heard dull concussions. They were shots. Quick projectiles laced toward him. Foyle dropped to the floor and tuned his ears, sweeping from low ba.s.s 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.

"a.n.a.logue!" 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 and slithered down the rope, emitting a mewling sound and a musky odor.

"Python," Foyle said. "That's a break. Don't go near 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 h.e.l.l'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 burst 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. Sting ampule. Let him have it any-wh-" His voice was choked off.

Robin opened the pocket, found a packet of gla.s.s beads and took them out. Each bead had a bee-sting end. She thrust the sting of an ampule into the writhing man's neck. He collapsed. Foyle shook him off and arose from the sand.

"Christ!" he muttered, ma.s.saging his throat. He took a deep breath. "Blood and bowels. Control," he said, resuming his air of detached cairn. The scarlet tattooing faded from his face.

"What was all that horror?" Robin asked.

"a.n.a.logue. 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 a.n.a.logue."

Foyle opened another pocket in his battle overalls 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?"

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"You're Ben Forrest, leading s.p.a.ceman. Formerly aboard the Presteign 'Vorga.'"

Forrest cried out in terror.

"You were aboard the 'Vorga' on September 16, 2436."

The man sobbed and shook his head.

"On September sixteen you pa.s.sed a wreck. Out near the asteroid belt. Wreck of the 'Nomad,' your sister ship. She signalled for help. 'Vorga' pa.s.sed her by. Left her to drift and die. Why did 'Vorga' pa.s.s her by?"

Forrest began to scream hysterically.

"Who gave the order to pa.s.s her by?"

"Jesus, no! No! No!"

"The records are all gone from the Bo'ness & 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 bank notes before the hysterical man's face. "Ill pay for the information. Fifty thousand. a.n.a.logue for the rest of your life. Who gave the order to let me die, Forrest? Who?"

The man smote the bank notes 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 b.i.t.c.h, or you die slow and hard." The tattooing appeared on Foyle's face. He forced Forrest'shead 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, b.i.t.c.h! 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 G.o.d! My G.o.dl"

"One lead shot to h.e.l.l. Just when he was opening up. What a d.a.m.ned 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. This is only the beginning. 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 toward 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d's name was it?"

"It was Gully Foyle," Robin said, "burning in h.e.l.l."

"All right," Foyle burst out angrily. "It was me in h.e.l.l, but I'm still going through with it. If I burn in h.e.l.l, 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 G.o.dl Shanghai next. Jauntel"

CHAPTER TEN.

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 blonde creature clad in transparent veils. A Victorian society which stifled its women in purdah, and which regarded the 1920 gowns of the Peene-munde clan as excessively daring, was shocked, despite the fact that Robin Wednesbury was chaperoning the pair.

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 s.e.xless 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: "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 pa.s.sing under a sign that read: "DOUBLE YOUR JAUNTING OR DOUBLE YOUR MONEY BACK" in seven languages, and entering the emporium of "DR.

SERGEI OREL, CELESTIAL ENLARGER OF CRANIAL CAPABILITIES.".

The waiting room was decorated with lurid brain charts demonstrating how Dr. Orel poulticed, cupped, balsamed, and electrolyzed the brain into double its capacity or double your money back. He also doubled your memory with antifebrile purgatives, magnified your morals with tonic robor-ants, 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 a long hospital ward. Foyle grunted in disgust.

"A Snow Joint. Might have known he'd be running a dive for sick heads too."

This den 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-junkey, it's a disease-bird.""Good evening," a voice spoke behind them.