The Stars My Destination ( Tiger! Tiger! )

CHAPTER SIX

HARLEY BAKER, M.D., had a small general practice in Montana-Oregon which was legitimate and barely paid for the diesel oil he consumed each weekend participating in the rallies for vintage tractors which were the vogue in Sahara. His real income was earned in his Freak Factory in Trenton to which Baker jaunted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night. There, for enormous fees and no questions asked, Baker created monstrosities for the entertainment business and refashioned skin, muscle, and bone for the underworld.

Looking like a male midwife, Baker sat on the cool veranda of his Spokane mansion listening to Jiz McQueen finish the story of her escape.

«Once we hit the open country outside Gouffre Martel it was easy. We found a shooting lodge, broke in, and got some clothes. There were guns there too. . . lovely old steel things for killing with explosives. We took them and sold them to some locals. Then we bought rides to the nearest jaunte stage we had memorized.»

«Which?»

«Biarritz.»

«Traveled by night, eh?»

«Naturally.»

«Do anything about Foyle's face?»

«We tried makeup but that didn't work. The damned tattooing showed through. Then I bought a dark skin-surrogate and sprayed it on.»

«Did that do it?»

«No,» Jiz said angrily. «You have to keep your face quiet or else the surrogate cracks and peels. Foyle couldn't control himself. He never can. It was hell.»

«Where is he now?»

«Sam Quatt's got him in tow.»

«I thought Sam retired from the rackets.»

«He did,» Jisbella said grimly, «But he owes me a favor. He's minding Foyle. They're circulating on the jaunte to stay ahead of the cops.»

«Interesting,» Baker murmured. «Haven't seen a tattoo case in all my life. Thought it was a dead art. I'd like to add him to my collection. You know I collect curios, Jiz?»

«Everybody knows that zoo of yours in Trenton, Baker. It's ghastly.»

«I picked up a genuine fraternal cyst last month,» Baker began enthusiastically.

«I don't want to hear about it,» Jiz snapped. «And I don't want Foyle in your zoo. Can you get the muck off his face? Clean it up? He says they were stymied at General Hospital.»

«They haven't had my experience, dear. Hmm. I seem to remember reading something once . . . somewhere . . . Now where did I…? Wait a minute.» Baker stood up and disappeared with a faint pop. Jisbella paced the veranda furiously until he reappeared twenty minutes later with a tattered book in his hands and a triumphant expression on his face.

«Got it,» Baker said. «Saw it in the Caltech stacks three years ago. You may admire my memory.»

«To hell with your memory. What about his face?»

«It can be done.» Baker flipped the fragile pages and meditated. «Yes, it can be done. Indigotin disulphonic acid. I may have to synthesize the acid but. . .» Baker closed the text and nodded emphatically. «I can do it. Only it seems a pity to tamper with that face if it's as unique as you describe.»

«Will you get off your hobby,» Jisbella exclaimed in exasperation. «We're hot, understand? The first that ever broke out of Gouffre Martel. The cops won't rest until they've got us back. This is extra-special for them.»

«But…”

«How long d'you think we can stay out of Gouffro Martel with Foyle running around with that tattooed face?»

«What are you so angry about?»

«I'm not angry. I'm explaining.»

«He'd be happy in the zoo,» Baker said persuasively. «And he'd be under cover there. I'd put him in the room next to the cyclops girl…”

«The zoo is out. That's definite.»

«All right, dear. But why are you worried about Foyle being recaptured? It won't have anything to do with you.»

«Why should you worry about me worrying? I'm asking you to do a job. I'm paying for the job.»

«It'll be expensive, dear, and I'm fond of you. I'm trying to save you money.»

«No you're not.»

«Then I'm curious.»

«Then let's say I'm grateful. He helped me; now I'm helping him.» Baker smiled cynically. «Then let's help him by giving him a brand new face.»

«I thought so. You want his face cleaned up because you're interested in his face.»

«Damn you, Baker, will you do the job or not?»

«It'll cost five thousand.»

«Break that down.»

«A thousand to synthesize the acid. Three thousand for the surgery. And one thousand for…”

«Your curiosity?»

«No, dear.» Baker smiled again. «A thousand for the anesthetist.»

«Why anesthesia?»

Baker reopened the ancient text. «It looks like a painful operation. You know how they tattoo? They take a needle, dip it in dye, and hammer it into the skin. To bleach that dye out I'll have to go over his face with a needle, pore by pore, and hammer in the indigotin disulphonic. It'll hurt.»

Jisbella's eyes flashed. «Can you do it without the dope?»

«I can, dear, but Foyle…”

«To hell with Foyle. I'm paying four thousand. No dope, Baker. Let Foyle suffer.»

«Jiz! You don't know what you're letting him in for.»

«I know. Let him suffer.» She laughed so furiously that she startled Baker. «Let his face make him suffer too.»

Baker's Freak Factory occupied a round brick three-story building that had once been the roundhouse in a suburban railway yard before jaunting ended the need for suburban railroads. The ancient ivy-covered roundhouse was alongside the Trenton rocket pits, and the rear windows looked out on the mouths of the pits thrusting their anti-gray beams upward, and Baker's patients could amuse themselves watching the spaceships riding silently up and down the beams, their portholes blazing, recognition signals blinking, their hulls rippling with St. Elmo's fire as the atmosphere carried off the electrostatic charges built up in outer space.

The basement floor of the factory contained Baker's zoo of anatomical curiosities, natural freaks and monsters bought, and/or abducted. Baker, like the rest of his world, was passionately devoted to these creatures and spent long hours with them, drinking in the spectacle of their distortions the way other men saturated themselves with the beauty of art. The middle floor of the roundhouse contained bedrooms for post-operative patients, laboratories, staff rooms, and kitchens. The top floor contained the operating theaters.

In one of the latter, a small room usually used for retinal experiments, Baker was at work on Foyle's face. Under a harsh battery of lamps, he bent over the operating table working meticulously with a small steel hammer and a platinum needle. Baker was following the pattern of the old tattooing on Foyle's face, searching out each minute scar in the skin, and driving the needle into it. Foyle's head was gripped in a clamp, but his body was unstrapped. His muscles writhed at each tap of the hammer, but he never moved his body. He gripped the sides of the operating table.

«Control,» he said through his teeth. «You wanted me to learn control, Jiz. I'm practicing.» He winced.

«Don't move,» Baker ordered.

«I'm playing it for laughs.»

«You're doing all right, son,» Sam Quatt said, looking sick. He glanced sidelong at Jisbella's furious face. «What do you say, Jiz?»

«He's learning.»

Baker continued dipping and hammering the needle.

«Listen, Sam,» Foyle mumbled, barely audible. «Jiz told me you own a private ship. Crime pays, huh?»

«Yeah. Crime pays. I got a little four-man job. Twin-jet. Kind they call a Saturn Weekender.»

«Why Saturn Weekender?»

«Because a weekend on Saturn would last ninety days. She can carry food and fuel for three months.»

«Just right for me,» Foyle muttered. He writhed and controlled himself. «Sam, I want to rent your ship.»

«What for?»

«Something hot.»

«Legitimate?»

«Then it's not for me, son. I've lost my nerve. Jaunting the circuit with you, one step ahead of the cops, showed me that. I've retired for keeps. All I want is peace.»

«I'll pay fifty thousand. Don't you want fifty thousand? You could spend Sundays counting it.»

The needle hammered remorselessly. Foyle's body was twitching at each impact.

«I already got fifty thousand. I got ten times that in cash in a bank in Vienna.» Quatt reached into his pocket and took out a ring of glittering radioactive keys. «Here's the key for the bank. This is the key to my place in Joburg. Twenty rooms; twenty acres. This here's the key to my Weekender in Montauk. You ain't temptin' me, son. I quit while I was ahead. I'm jaunting back to Joburg and live happy for the rest of my life.»

«Let me have the Weekender. You can sit safe in Joburg and collect.»

«Collect when?»

«When I get back.»

«You want my ship on trust and a promise to pay?»

«A guarantee.»

Quatt snorted. «What guarantee?»

«It's a salvage job in the asteroids. Ship named 'Nomad.'»

«What's on the 'Nomad'? What makes the salvage pay off?»

«I don't know.»

«You're lying.»

«I don't know,» Foyle mumbled stubbornly. «But there has to be something valuable. Ask Jiz.»

«Listen,» Quatt said, «I'm going to teach you something. We do business legitimate, see? We don't slash and scalp. We don't hold out. I know what's on your mind. You got something juicy but you don't want to cut anybody else in on it. That's why you're begging for favors . .

Foyle writhed under the needle, but, still gripped in the vice of his possession, was forced to repeat: «I don't know, Sam. Ask Jiz.»

«If you've got an honest deal, make an honest proposition,» Quatt said angrily. «Don't come prowling around like a damned tattooed tiger figuring how to pounce. We're the only friends you got. Don't try to slash and scalp-.»

Quatt was interrupted by a cry torn from Foyle's lips.

«Don't move,» Baker said in an abstracted voice. «When you twitch your face I can't control the needle.» He looked hard and long at Jisbella. Her lips trembled. Suddenly she opened her purse and took out two ~r 500 banknotes. She dropped them alongside the beaker of acid.

«We'll wait outside,» she said.

She fainted in the hall. Quatt dragged her to a chair, and found a nurse who revived her with aromatic ammonia. She began to cry so violently that Quatt was frightened. He dismissed the nurse and hovered until the sobbing subsided.

«What the hell has been going on?» he demanded. «What was that money supposed to mean?»

«It was blood money.»

«For what?»

«I don't want to talk about it.»

«Are you all right?»

«Anything I can do?»

There was a long pause. Then Jisbella asked in a weary voice: «Are you going to make that deal with Gully?»

«Me? No. It sounds like a thousand-to-one shot.»

«There has to be something valuable on the 'Nomad.' Otherwise Dagenham wouldn't have hounded Gully.»

«I'm still not interested. What about you?»

«Me? Not interested either. I don't want any part of Gully Foyle again.»

After another pause, Quatt asked: «Can I go home now?»

«You've had a rough time, haven't you, Sam?»

«I think I died about a thousand times nurse-maidin' that tiger around the circuit.»

«I'm sorry, Sam.»

«I had it coming to me after what I did to you when you were copped in Memphis.»

«Running out on me was only natural, Sam.»

«We always do what's natural, only sometimes we shouldn't do it.»

«I know, Sam. I know.»

«And you spend the rest of your life trying to make up for it. I figure I'm lucky, Jiz. I was able to square it tonight. Can I go home now?»

«Back to Joburg and the happy life?»

«Uh-huh.»

«Don't leave me alone, yet, Sam. I'm ashamed of myself.»

«What for?»

«Cruelty to dumb animals.»

«What's that supposed to mean?»

«Never mind. Hang around a little. Tell me about the happy life. What's so happy about it?»

«Well,» Quatt said reflectively. «It's having everything you wanted when you were a kid. If you can have everything at fifty that you wanted when you were fifteen, you're happy. Now when I was fifteen . . .» And Quart went on and on describing the symbols, ambitions, and frustrations of his boyhood which he was now satisfying until Baker came out of the operating theater.

«Finished?» Jisbella asked eagerly.

«Finished. After I put him under I was able to work faster. They're bandaging his face now. He'll be out in a few minutes.»

«Weak?»

«Naturally.»

«How long before the bandages come off?»

«Six or seven days.»

«His face'll be clean?»

«I thought you weren't interested in his face, dear. It ought to be clean.

I don't think I missed a spot of pigment. You may admire my skill, Jisbella also my sagacity. I'm going to back Foyle's salvage trip.»

«What?» Quatt laughed. «You taking a thousand-to-one gamble, Baker? I thought you were smart.»

«I am. The pain was too much for him and he talked under the anesthesia. There's twenty million in platinum bullion aboard the 'Nomad.'»

«Twenty million!» Sam Quatt's face darkened and he turned on Jisbella. But she was furious too.

«Don't look at me, Sam. I didn't know. He held out on me too. Swore he never knew why Dagenham was hounding him.»

«It was Dagenham who told him,» Baker said. «He let that slip too.»

«I'll kill him,» Jisbella said. «I'll tear him apart with my own two hands and you won't find anything inside his carcass but black rot. He'll be a curio for your zoo, Baker; I wish to God I'd let you have him!»

The door of the operating theater opened and two orderlies wheeled out a trolley on which Foyle lay, twitching slightly. His entire head was one white globe of bandage.

«Is he conscious?» Quatt asked Baker.

«I'll handle this,» Jisbella burst out. «I'll talk to the son of a…Foyle!» Foyle answered faintly through the mask of bandage. As Jisbella drew a furious breath for her onslaught, one wall of the hospital disappeared and there was a clap of thunder that knocked them to their feet. The entire building rocked from repeated explosions, and through the gaps in the walls uniformed men began jaunting in from the streets outside, like rooks swooping into the gut of a battlefield.

«Raid!» Baker shouted. «Raid!»

«Christ Jesus!» Quatt shook.

The uniformed men were swarming all over the building, shouting:

«Foyle! Foyle! Foyle! Foyle!» Baker disappeared with a pop. The attendants jaunted too, deserting the trolley on which Foyle waved his arms and legs feebly, making faint sounds.

«It's a goddamn raid!» Quatt shook Jisbella. «Go, girl! Go!»

«We can't leave Foyle!» Jisbella cried.

«Wake up, girl! Go!»

«We can't run out on him.»

Jisbella seized the trolley and ran it down the corridor. Quatt pounded alongside her. The roaring in the hospital grew louder: «Foyle! Foyle! Foyle!»

«Leave him, for God's sake!» Quart urged. «Let them have him.»

«It's a lobo for us, girl, if they get us.»

«We can't run out on him.»

They skidded around a corner into a shrieking mob of post-operative patients, bird men with fluttering wings, mermaids dragging themselves along the floor like seals, hermaphrodites, giants, pygmies, two-headed twins, centaurs, and a mewling sphinx. They clawed at Jisbella and Quatt in terror.

«Get him off the trolley,» Jisbella yelled.

Quail yanked Foyle off the trolley. Foyle came to his feet and sagged. Jisbella took his arm, and between them Sam and Jiz hauled him through a door into a ward filled with Baker's temporal freaks . . .subjects with accelerated time sense, darting about the ward with the lightning rapidity of humming birds and emitting piercing batlike squeals.

«Jaunte him out, Sam.»

«After the way he tried to cross and scalp us?»

«We can't run out on him, Sam. You ought to know that by now. Jaunte him out. Caister's place!»

Jisbella helped Quatt haul Foyle to his shoulder. The temporal freaks seemed to fill the ward with shrieking streaks. The ward doors burst open. A dozen bolts from pneumatic guns whined through the ward, dropping the temporal patients in their gyrations. Quatt was slammed back against a wall, dropping Foyle. A black and blue bruise appeared on his temple.

«Get to hell out of here,» Quatt roared. «I'm done.»

«Sam!»

«I'm done. Can't jaunte. Go, girl!»

Trying to shake off the concussion that prevented him from jaunting, Quatt straightened and charged forward, meeting the uniformed men who poured into the ward. Jisbella took Foyle's arm and dragged him out the back of the ward, through a pantry, a clinic, a laundry supply, and down flights of ancient stairs that buckled and threw up clouds of termite dust.

They came into a victual cellar. Baker's zoo had broken out of their cells in the chaos and were raiding the cellar like bees glutting themselves with honey in an attacked hive. A Cyclops girl was cramming her mouth with handfuls of butter scooped from a tub. Her single eye above the bridge of her nose leered at them.

Jisbella dragged Foyle through the victual cellar, found a bolted wooden door and kicked it open. They stumbled down a flight of crumbling steps and found themselves in what once had been a coal cellar. The concussions and roarings overhead sounded deeper and hollow. A chute slot on one side of the cellar was barred with an iron door held by iron clamps. Jisbella placed Foyle's hands on the clamps. Together they opened them and climbed out of the cellar through the coal chute.

They were outside the Freak Factory, huddled against the rear wall. Before them were the Trenton rocket pits, and as they gasped for breath, Jiz saw a freighter come sliding down an anti-gray beam into a waiting pit. Its portholes blazed and its recognition signals blinked like a lurid neon sign, illuminating the back wall of the hospital.

A figure leaped from the roof of the hospital. It was Sam Quart, attempting a desperate flight. He sailed out into space, arms and legs flailing, trying to reach the up-thrusting anti-gray beam of the nearest pit which might catch him in midflight and cushion his fall. His aim was perfect. Seventy feet above ground he dropped squarely into the shaft of the beam. It was not in operation. He fell and was smashed on the edge of the pit.

Jisbella sobbed. Still automatically retaining her grip on Foyle's arm, she ran across the seamed concrete to Sam Quatt's body. There she let go of Foyle and touched Quail's head tenderly. Her fingers were stained with blood. Foyle tore at the bandage before his eyes, working eye holes through the gauze. He muttered to himself, listening to Jisbella weep and hearing the shouts behind him from Baker's factory. His hands fumbled at Quatt's body, then' he arose and tried to pull Jisbella up.

«Got to go,» he croaked. «Got to get out. They've seen us.»

Jisbella never moved. Foyle mustered all his strength and pulled her upright.

«Times Square,» he muttered. «Jaunte, Jiz!»

Uniformed figures appeared around them. Foyle shook Jisbella's arm and jaunted to Times Square where masses of jaunters on the gigantic stage stared in amazement at the huge man with the white bandaged globe for a head. The stage was the size of two football fields. Foyle stared around dimly through the bandages. There was no sign of Jisbella but she might be anywhere. He lifted his voice to a shout.

«Montauk, Jiz! Montauk! The Folly Stage!»

Foyle jaunted with a last thrust of energy and a prayer. An icy nor'easter was blowing in from Block Island and sweeping brittle ice crystals across the stage on the site of a medieval ruin known as Fisher's folly. There was another figure on the stage. Foyle tottered to it through the wind and the snow. It was Jisbella, looking frozen and lost.

«Thank God,» Foyle muttered. «Thank God. Where does Sam keep his Weekender?» He shook Jisbella's elbow. «Where does Sam keep his Weekender?»

«Sam's dead.»

«Where does he keep that Saturn Weekender?»

«He's retired, Sam is. He's not scared any more.»

«Where's the ship, Jiz?»

«In the yards down at the lighthouse.»

«Come on.»

«Where?»

«To Sam's ship.» Foyle thrust his big hand before Jisbella's eyes; a bunch of radiant keys lay in his palm. «I took his keys. Come on.»

«He gave them to you?»

«I took them off his body.»

«Ghoul!» She began to laugh. «Liar . . . Lecher . . . Tiger . . . Ghoul. The walking cancer. . .Gully Foyle.»

Nevertheless she followed him through the snowstorm to Montauk Light.

To three acrobats wearing powdered wigs, four flamboyant women carrying pythons, a child with golden curls and a cynical mouth, a professional duellist in medieval armor, and a man wearing a hollow glass leg in which goldfish swam, Saul Dagenham said: «All right, the operation's finished. Call the rest off and tell them to report back to Courier headquarters.»

The side show jaunted and disappeared. Regis Sheffield rubbed his eyes and asked: «What was that lunacy supposed to be, Dagenham?»

«Disturbs your legal mind, eh? That was part of the cast of our FFCC operation. Fun, fantasy, confusion, and catastrophe.» Dagenham turned to Presteign and smiled his death's-head smile. «I'll return your fee if you like, Presteign.»

«You're not quitting?»

«No, I'm enjoying myself. I'll work for nothing. I've never tangled with a man of Foyle's caliber before. He's unique.»

«How?» Sheffield demanded.

«I arranged for him to escape from Goufire Martel. He escaped, all right, but not my way. I tried to keep him out of police hands with confusion and catastrophe. He ducked the police, but not my way . . . his own way. I tried to keep him out of Central Intelligence's hands with fun and fantasy. He stayed clear . . . again his own way. I tried to detour him into a ship so he could make his try for 'Nomad.' He wouldn't detour, but he got his ship. He's on his way out now.»

«You're following?»

«Naturally.» Dagenham hesitated. «But what was he doing in Baker's factory?»

«Plastic surgery?» Sheffield suggested. «A new face?»

«Not possible. Baker's good, but he can't do a plastic that quick. It was minor surgery. Foyle was on his feet with his head bandaged.»

«The tattoo,» Presteign said.

Dagenham nodded and the smile left his lips. «That's what's worrying me. You realize, Presteign, that if Baker removed the tattooing we'll never recognize Foyle?»

«My dear Dagenham, his face won't be changed.»

«We've never seen his face . . . only the mask.»

«I haven't met the man at all,» Sheffield said. «What's the mask like?»

«Like a tiger. I was with Foyle for two long sessions. I ought to know his face by heart, but I don't. All I know is the tattooing.»

«Ridiculous,» Sheffield said bluntly.

«No. Foyle has to be seen to be believed. However, it doesn't matter. He'll lead us out to 'Nomad.' He'll lead us to your bullion and PyrE~ Presteign. I'm almost sorry it's all over. Or nearly. As I said, I've been enjoying myself. He really is unique.»