The Stars My Destination ( Tiger! Tiger! )

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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 currents 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 southwest 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 disk of filter paper long since discarded, forgotten, rounded up in a waste paper drive and at last pulped into a mold 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 decimilligram of PyrE, still adhering to a former evaporation crystal now in use as an ash tray, 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 plowed in the earth, exploded in the earth, vomited forth from the earth.

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 Isotope 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 crumbled. 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 mold 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 hysteric 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 lo jam of wood, stone, and metal. Through every interstice crawled tongues of molten copper, slowly working downward, igniting wood, crumbling ston; shattering glass. Where the copper flowed it merely glowed, but where i poured it spattered dazzling droplets of white hot metal.

Beneath the log jam yawned a black crater where formerly the floor o the cathedral had been. The explosion had split the flagstone asunder, revealing the cellars, subcellars, 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 cop dripped down into the crater and illuminated it with a brilliant molte splash.

Dagenham pounded Y'ang-Yeovil's shoulder to attract his attention an pointed. Halfway down the crater, in the midst of the tangle, lay the body. Regis Sheffield, drawn and quartered by the explosion. Y'ang-Yeovil pound Dagenham's shoulder and pointed. Almost at the bottom of the crater la 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's 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 ILI safe, yes. That stuff is inert to anything. Never ruin 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 collapse., «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 RCA buildings across the street are as deep as~ St. Pat's.»

«And?»

'Well go down and try to hole through. Maybe we can pull Foyle out from the bottom.»

A squad broke into the ancient RCA buildings, abandoned and sealed up for two generations. They went down into the cellar arcades, qiimbling museums of the retail stores of centuries past. They located the ancient elevator shafts and dropped through them into the subcellars filled with electric installations, heat plants and refrigeration systems. They went down into the sump cellars, waist deep in water from the streams of prehistoric 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 subcellars of St. Pat's had split the septum between its vaults and those of the RCA 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 there.»

«No, he can climb. Look. He goes left, then up, reverses, makes a him 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 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 be 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:

FOYLEFOYLEFOYLE

FOYLEFOYLEFOYLE

FOYLEFOYLEPOYLE

FOYLEFOYLEFOYLE

FOYLEFOYLEFOYLE

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. Mba, 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. «MANTERCEISTMANN!» 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 short-circuited 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 spacetime 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 then 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.

The Burning Man winced. «Stop!» he called, blinded by the noise. Again came the dazzling pattern of the echo:

A distant clatter of steps came to his eyes in soft patterns of vertical borealis streamers:

It was the search party from the Couffre 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 WAS ON THE BRAWLING SPANISH

STAIRS. RE WAS ON THE BRAWLING

SPANISH STAIRS. HE WAS ON THE

BRAWLING SPANISH STAIRS. HE WAS

ON THE BRAWLING SPANISH STAIRS.

HE WAS ON TIE BRAWLING SPANISH

STAIRS. HE WAS ON THE BRAWLING

SPANISH STAIRS. HE WAS ON THE

BRAWLING SPANISH STAIRS. HE WAS

ON THE BRAWLING SPANISH STAIRS.

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 CROTEHAyEN!»

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 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. . .»

The Burning Man opened his tiger mouth and laughed. «She hurts,» he said. The sound of his voice burned his eyes.

«Who are you?» Foyle whispered.

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 kaleidoscopic 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 space-time lines back into the dreadful pit of Now.