American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (26 page)

“Then you are malingering.”

“How much do you know?”

“That you’re a fool. Stop making a scene.”

“Did they hear you?”

“
I don’t know. Let go of me.
” Robin turned away from Foyle. “All right, class. We’re finished for the day. All back to school for the hospital bus. You jaunte first, Sgt. Logan. Remember: L-E-S. Location. Elevation. Situation . . .”

“What do you want?” Foyle growled. “A pay-off, you?”

“
Be quiet. Stop making a scene.
Now don’t hesitate, Chief Harris. Step up and jaunte off.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“
Certainly not
. Wait your turn, Mr. Peters. Don’t be in such a hurry.”

“You going to report me in the hospital?”

“Naturally.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“No.”

“They gone now, all. We got time. I’ll meet you in your apartment.”

“My apartment?” Robin was genuinely frightened.

“In Green Bay, Wisconsin.”

“This is absurd. I’ve got nothing to discuss with this—”

“You got plenty, Miss Robin. You got a family to discuss.”

Foyle grinned at the terror she radiated. “Meet you in your apartment,” he repeated.

“You can’t possibly know where it is,” she faltered.

“Just told you, didn’t I?”

“Y-You couldn’t possibly jaunte that far. You—”

“No?” The mask grinned. “You just told me I was mal— that word. You told the truth, you. We got half an hour. Meet you there.”

Robin Wednesbury’s apartment was in a massive building set alone on the shore of Green Bay. The apartment house looked as though a magician had removed it from a city residential area and abandoned it amidst the Wisconsin pines. Buildings like this were a commonplace in the jaunting world. With selfcontained heat and light plants, and jaunting to solve the transportation problem, single and multiple dwellings were built in desert, forest, and wilderness.

The apartment itself was a four-room flat, heavily insulated to protect neighbors from Robin’s telesending. It was crammed with books, music, paintings, and prints . . . all evidence of the cultured and lonely life of this unfortunate wrong-way telepath.

Robin jaunted into the living room of the apartment a few seconds after Foyle who was waiting for her with ferocious impatience.

“So now you know for sure,” he began without preamble. He seized her arm in a painful grip. “But you ain’t gonna tell nobody in the hospital about me, Miss Robin. Nobody.”

“Let go of me!” Robin lashed him across his face.
“Beast! Savage! Don’t you dare touch me!”

Foyle released her and stepped back. The impact of her revulsion made him turn away angrily to conceal his face.

“So you’ve been malingering. You knew how to jaunte. You’ve been jaunting all the while you’ve been pretending to learn in the primer class . . . taking big jumps around the country; around the world, for all I know.”

“Yeah. I go from Times Square to Columbus Circle by way of . . . most anywhere, Miss Robin.”

“And that’s why you’re always missing. But why? Why? What are you up to?”

An expression of possessed cunning appeared on the hideous face. “I’m holed up in General Hospital, me. It’s my base of operations, see? I’m settling something, Miss Robin. I got a debt to pay off, me. I had to find out where a certain ship is. Now I got to pay her back. Now I rot you, ‘Vorga.’ I kill you, ‘Vorga.’ I kill you filthy!”

He stopped shouting and glared at her in wild triumph. Robin backed away in alarm.

“For God’s sake, what are you talking about?”

“ ‘Vorga.’ ‘Vorga-T:1339.’ Ever hear of her, Miss Robin? I found out where she is from Bo’ness & Uig’s ship registry. Bo’ness & Uig are out in SanFran. I went there, me, the time when you was learning us the crosstown jaunte stages. Went out to SanFran, me. Found ‘Vorga,’ me. She’s in Vancouver shipyards. She’s owned by Presteign of Presteign. Heard of him, Miss Robin? Presteign’s the biggest man on Terra, is all. But he won’t stop me. I’ll kill ‘Vorga’ filthy. And you won’t stop me neither, Miss Robin.”

Foyle thrust his face close to hers. “Because I cover myself, Miss Robin. I cover every weak spot down the line. I got something on everybody who could stop me before I kill ‘Vorga’ . . including you, Miss Robin.”

“No.”

“Yeah. I found out where you live. They know up at the hospital. I come here and looked around. I read your diary, Miss Robin. You got a family on Callisto, mother and two sisters.”

“For God’s sake!”

“So that makes you alien-belligerent. When the war started you and all the rest was given one month to get out of the Inner Planets and go home. Any which didn’t became spies by law.” Foyle opened his hand. “I got you right here, girl.” He clenched his hand.

“My mother and sisters have been trying to leave Callisto for a year and a half. We belong here. We—”

“Got you right here,” Foyle repeated. “You know what they do to spies? They cut information out of them. They cut you apart, Miss Robin. They take you apart, piece by piece—”

The Negro girl screamed. Foyle nodded happily and took her shaking shoulders in his hands. “I got you, is all, girl. You can’t even run from me because all I got to do is tip Intelligence and where are you? There ain’t nothing nobody can do to stop me; not the hospital or even Mr. Holy Mighty Presteign of Presteign.”

“Get out, you filthy, hideous . . . thing. Get out!”

“You don’t like my face, Miss Robin? There ain’t nothing you can do about that either.”

Suddenly he picked her up and carried her to a deep couch. He threw her down on the couch.

“Nothing,” he repeated.

Devoted to the principle of conspicuous waste, on which all society is based, Presteign of Presteign had fitted his Victorian mansion in Central Park with elevators, house phones, dumbwaiters and all the other labor-saving devices which jaunting had made obsolete. The servants in that giant gingerbread castle walked dutifully from room to room, opening and closing doors, and climbing stairs.

Presteign of Presteign arose, dressed with the aid of his valet and barber, descended to the morning room with the aid of an elevator, and breakfasted, assisted by a butler, footman, and waitresses. He left the morning room and entered his study. In an age when communication systems were virtually extinct—when it was far easier to jaunte directly to a man’s office for a discussion than to telephone or telegraph—Presteign still maintained an antique telephone switchboard with an operator in his study.

“Get me Dagenham,” he said.

The operator struggled and at last put a call through to Dagenham Couriers, Inc. This was a hundred million credit organization of bonded jaunters guaranteed to perform any public or confidential service for any principal. Their fee was Cr 1 per mile. Dagenham guaranteed to get a courier around the world in eighty minutes.

Eighty seconds after Presteign’s call was put through, a Dagenham courier appeared on the private jaunte stage outside Presteign’s home, was identified and admitted through the jaunte-proof labyrinth behind the entrance. Like every member of the Dagenham staff, he was an M class jaunter, capable of teleporting a thousand miles a jump indefinitely, and familiar with thousands of jaunte co-ordinates. He was a senior specialist in chicanery and cajolery, trained to the incisive efficiency and boldness that characterized Dagenham Couriers and reflected the ruthlessness of its founder.

“Presteign?” he said, wasting no time on protocol. “I want to hire Dagenham.”

“Ready, Presteign.”

“Not you. I want Saul Dagenham himself.”

“Mr. Dagenham no longer gives personal service for less than Cr 100,000.”

“The amount will be five times that.”

“Fee or percentage?”

“Both. Quarter of a million fee, and a quarter of a million guaranteed against 10 per cent of the total amount at risk.” 

“Agreed. The matter?”

“PyrE.”

“Spell it, please.”

“The name means nothing to you?”

“No.”

“Good. It will to Dagenham. PyrE. Capital P-y-r Capital E.

Pronounced “pyre” as in funeral pyre. Tell Dagenham we’ve located the PyrE. He’s engaged to get it . . . at all costs . . . through a man named Foyle. Gulliver Foyle.”

The courier produced a tiny silver pearl, a memo-bead, repeated Presteign’s instructions into it, and left without another word. Presteign turned to his telephone operator. “Get me Regis Sheffield,” he directed.

Ten minutes after the call went through to Regis Sheffield’s law office, a young law clerk appeared on Presteign’s private jaunte stage, was vetted and admitted through the maze. He was a bright young man with a scrubbed face and the expression of a delighted rabbit.

“Excuse the delay, Presteign,” he said. “We got your call in Chicago and I’m still only a D class five hundred miler. Took me a while getting here.”

“Is your chief trying a case in Chicago?”

“Chicago, New York
and
Washington. He’s been on the jaunte from court to court all morning. We fill in for him when he’s in another court.”

“I want to retain him.”

“Honored, Presteign, but Mr. Sheffield’s pretty busy.”

“Not too busy for PyrE.”

“Sorry, sir; I don’t quite—”

“No, you don’t, but Sheffield will. Just tell him: PyrE as in funeral pyre, and the amount of his fee.”

“Which is?”

“Quarter of a million retainer and a quarter of a million guaranteed against 10 per cent of the total amount at risk.”

“And what performance is required of Mr. Sheffield?”

“To prepare every known legal device for kidnaping a man and holding him against the army, the navy and the police.”

“Quite. And the man?”

“Gulliver Foyle.”

The law clerk muttered quick notes into a memo-bead, thrust the bead into his ear, listened, nodded and departed. Presteign left the study and ascended the plush stairs to his daughter’s suite to pay his morning respects.

In the homes of the wealthy, the rooms of the female members were blind, without windows or doors, open only to the jaunting of intimate members of the family. Thus was morality maintained and chastity defended. But since Olivia Presteign was herself blind to normal sight, she could not jaunte. Consequently her suite was entered through doors closely guarded by ancient retainers in the Presteign clan livery.

Olivia Presteign was a glorious albino. Her hair was white silk, her skin was white satin, her nails, her lips, and her eyes were coral. She was beautiful and blind in a wonderful way, for she could see in the infrared only, from 7,500 angstroms to one millimeter wavelengths. She saw heat waves, magnetic fields, radio waves, radar, sonar, and electromagnetic fields.

She was holding her Grand Levee in the drawing room of the suite. She sat in a brocaded wing chair, sipping tea, guarded by her duenna, holding court, chatting with a dozen men and women standing about the room. She looked like an exquisite statue of marble and coral, her blind eyes flashing as she saw and yet did not see.

She saw the drawing room as a pulsating flow of heat emanations ranging from hot highlights to cool shadows. She saw the dazzling magnetic patterns of clocks, phones, lights, and locks. She saw and recognized people by the characteristic heat patterns radiated by their faces and bodies. She saw, around each head, an aura of the faint electromagnetic brain pattern, and sparkling through the heat radiation of each body, the everchanging tone of muscle and nerve.

Presteign did not care for the artists, musicians, and fops Olivia kept about her, but he was pleased to see a scattering of society notables this morning. There was a Sears-Roebuck, a Gillette, young Sidney Kodak who would one day be Kodak of Kodak, a Houbigant, Buick of Buick, and R. H. Macy XVI, head of the powerful Saks-Gimbel clan.

Presteign paid his respects to his daughter and left the house. He set off for his clan headquarters at 99 Wall Street in a coach and four driven by a coachman assisted by a groom, both wearing the Presteign trademark of red, black, and blue. That black “P” on a field of scarlet and cobalt was one of the most ancient and distinguished trademarks in the social register, rivaling the “57” of the Heinz clan and the “RR” of the RollsRoyce dynasty in antiquity.

The head of the Presteign clan was a familiar sight to New York jaunters. Iron gray, handsome, powerful, impeccably dressed and mannered in the old-fashioned style, Presteign of Presteign was the epitome of the socially elect, for he was so exalted in station that he employed coachmen, grooms, hostlers, stableboys, and horses to perform a function for him which ordinary mortals performed by jaunting.

As men climbed the social ladder, they displayed their position by their refusal to jaunte. The newly adopted into a great commercial clan rode an expensive bicycle. A rising clansman drove a small sports car. The captain of a sept was transported in a chauffeur-driven antique from the old days, a vintage Bentley or Cadillac or a towering Lagonda. An heir presumptive in direct line of succession to the clan chieftainship staffed a yacht or a plane. Presteign of Presteign, head of the clan Presteign, owned carriages, cars, yachts, planes, and trains. His position in society was so lofty that he had not jaunted in forty years. Secretly he scorned the bustling new-rich like the Dagenhams and Sheffields who still jaunted and were unashamed.

Presteign entered the crenelated keep at 99 Wall Street that was Castle Presteign. It was staffed and guarded by his famous Jaunte-Watch, all in clan livery. Presteign walked with the stately gait of a chieftain as they piped him to his office. Indeed he was grander than a chieftain, as an importunate government official awaiting audience discovered to his dismay. That unfortunate man leaped forward from the waiting crowd of petitioners as Presteign passed.

“Mr. Presteign,” he began. “I’m from the Internal Revenue Department, I must see you this morn—” Presteign cut him short with an icy stare.

“There are thousands of Presteigns,” he pronounced. “All are addressed as Mister. But I am Presteign of Presteign, head of house and sept, first of the family, chieftain of the clan. I am addressed as Presteign. Not ‘Mister’ Presteign. Presteign.”