American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (34 page)

No answer.

“Could he have missed anywhere?”

The stripping continued.

“It stopped hurting two days ago.”

No answer.

“For God’s sake, Jiz! Is it still war between us?”

Jisbella’s hands stopped. She looked at Foyle’s bandaged face with hatred. “What do you think?”

“I asked you.”

“The answer is yes.”

“Why?”

“You’ll never understand.”

“Make me understand.”

“Shut up.”

“If it’s war, why’d you come with me?”

“To get what’s coming to Sam and me.”

“Money?”

“Shut up.”

“You didn’t have to. You could have trusted me.”

“Trusted you? You?” Jisbella laughed without mirth and recommenced the peeling. Foyle struck her hands away.

“I’ll do it myself.”

She lashed him across his bandaged face. “You’ll do what I tell you. Be still, Ghoul!”

She continued unwinding the bandage. A strip came away revealing Foyle’s eyes. They stared at Jisbella, dark and brooding. The eyelids were clean; the bridge of the nose was clean. A strip came away from Foyle’s chin. It was blue-black. Foyle, watching intently in the mirror, gasped.

“He missed the chin!” he exclaimed. “Baker goofed—”

“Shut up,” Jiz answered shortly. “That’s beard.”

The innermost strips came away quickly, revealing cheeks, mouth, and brow. The brow was clean. The cheeks under the eyes were clean. The rest was covered with a blue-black seven day beard.

“Shave,” Jiz commanded.

Foyle ran water, soaked his face, rubbed in shave ointment, and washed the beard off. Then he leaned close to the mirror and inspected himself, unaware that Jisbella’s head was close to his as she too stared into the mirror. Not a mark of tattooing remained. Both sighed.

“It’s clean,” Foyle said. “Clean. He did the job.” Suddenly he leaned further forward and inspected himself more closely. His face looked new to him, as new as it looked to Jisbella. “I’m changed. I don’t remember looking like this. Did he do surgery on me too?”

“No,” Jisbella said. “What’s inside you changed it. That’s the ghoul you’re seeing, along with the liar and the cheat.”

“For God’s sake! Lay off. Let me alone!”

“Ghoul,” Jisbella repeated, staring at Foyle’s face with glowing eyes. “Liar. Cheat.”

He took her shoulders and shoved her out into the companionway. She went sailing down into the main lounge, caught a guide bar and spun herself around. “Ghoul!” she cried. “Liar! Cheat! Ghoul! Lecher! Beast!”

Foyle pursued her, seized her again and shook her violently. Her red hair burst out of the clip that gathered it at the nape of her neck and floated out like a mermaid’s tresses. The burning expression on her face transformed Foyle’s anger into passion. He enveloped her and buried his new face in her breast.

“Lecher,” Jiz murmured. “Animal . . .”

“Oh, Jiz . . .”

“The light,” Jisbella whispered. Foyle reached out blindly toward the wall switches and pressed buttons, and the Saturn Weekender drove on toward the asteroids with darkened portholes.

They floated together in the cabin, drowsing, murmuring, touching tenderly for hours.

“Poor Gully,” Jisbella whispered. “Poor darling Gully . . .”

“Not poor,” he said. “Rich . . . soon.”

“Yes, rich and empty. You’ve got nothing inside you, Gully dear . . . Nothing but hatred and revenge.”

“It’s enough.”

“Enough for now. But later?”

“Later? That depends.”

“It depends on your inside, Gully; what you get hold of.”

“No. My future depends on what I get rid of.”

“Gully . . . why did you hold out on me in Gouffre Martel? Why didn’t you tell me you knew there was a fortune aboard ‘Nomad’?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Didn’t you trust me?”

“It wasn’t that. I couldn’t help myself. That’s what’s inside me . . . what I have to get rid of.”

“Control again, eh Gully? You’re driven.”

“Yes, I’m driven. I can’t learn control, Jiz. I want to, but I can’t.”

“Do you try?”

“I do. God knows, I do. But then something happens, and—”

“And then you pounce like a tiger.”

“If I could carry you in my pocket, Jiz . . . to warn me . . stick a pin in me . . .”

“Nobody can do it for you, Gully. You have to learn yourself.”

He digested that for a long moment. Then he spoke hesitantly: “Jiz . . . about the money . . . ?”

“To hell with the money.”

“Can I hold you to that?”

“Oh, Gully.”

“Not that I . . . that I’m trying to hold out on you. If it wasn’t for ‘Vorga,’ I’d give you all you wanted. All! I’ll give you every cent left over when I’m finished. But I’m scared, Jiz. ‘Vorga’ is tough . . . what with Presteign and Dagenham and that lawyer, Sheffield. I’ve got to hold on to every cent, Jiz. I’m afraid if I let you take one credit, that could make the difference between ‘Vorga’ and I.”

“Me.”

“Me.” He waited. “Well?”

“You’re all possessed,” she said wearily. “Not just a part of you, but all of you.”

“No.”

“Yes, Gully. All of you. It’s just your skin making love to me. The rest is feeding on ‘Vorga.’ ”

At that moment the radar alarm in the forward control cabin burst upon them, unwelcome and warning.

“Destination zero,” Foyle muttered, no longer relaxed, once more possessed. He shot forward into the control cabin.

So he returned to the freak planetoid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the Sargasso planet manufactured of rock and wreckage and the spoils of space disaster salvaged by the Scientific People. He returned to the home of Jóseph and his People who had tattooed N MAD across his face and scientifically mated him to the girl named MỌira.

Foyle overran the asteroid with the sudden fury of a Vandal raid. He came blasting out of space, braked with a spume of flame from the forward jets, and kicked the Weekender into a tight spin around the junkheap. They whirled around, passing the blackened ports, the big hatch from which Jóseph and his Scientific People emerged to collect the drifting debris of space, the new crater Foyle had torn out of the side of the asteroid in his first plunge back to Terra. They whipped past the giant patchwork windows of the asteroid greenhouse and saw hundreds of faces peering out at them, tiny white dots mottled with tattooing.

“So I didn’t murder them,” Foyle grunted. “They’ve pulled back into the asteroid . . . Probably living deep inside while they get the rest repaired.”

“Will you help them, Gully?”

“Why?”

“You did the damage.”

“To hell with them. I’ve got my own problems. But it’s a relief. They won’t be bothering us.”

He circled the asteroid once more and brought the Weekender down in the mouth of the new crater.

“We’ll work from here,” he said. “Get into a suit, Jiz. Let’s go! Let’s go!”

He drove her, mad with impatience; he drove himself. They corked up in their spacesuits, left the Weekender, and went sprawling through the debris in the crater into the bleak bowels of the asteroid. It was like squirming through the crawling tunnels of giant worm-holes. Foyle switched on his micro-wave suit set and spoke to Jiz.

“Be easy to get lost in here. Stay with me. Stay close.”

“Where are we going, Gully?”

“After ‘Nomad.’ I remember they were cementing her into the asteroid when I left. Don’t remember where. Have to find her.”

The passages were airless, and their progress was soundless, but the vibrations carried through metal and rock. They paused once for breath alongside the pitted hull of an ancient warship. As they leaned against it they felt the vibrations of signals from within, a rhythmic knocking.

Foyle smiled grimly. “That’s Joseph and The Scientific People inside,” he said. “Requesting a few words. I’ll give ’em an evasive answer.” He pounded twice on the hull. “And now a personal message for my wife.” His face darkened. He smote the hull angrily and turned away. “Come on. Let’s go.”

But as they continued the search, the signals followed them. It became apparent that the outer periphery of the asteroid had been abandoned; the tribe had withdrawn to the center. Then, far down a shaft wrought of beaten aluminium, a hatch opened, light blazed forth, and Jóseph appeared in an ancient spacesuit fashioned of glass cloth. He stood in the clumsy sack, his devil face staring, his hands clutched in supplication, his devil mouth making motions.

Foyle stared at the old man, took a step toward him, and then stopped, fists clenched, throat working as fury arose within him. And Jisbella, looking at Foyle, cried out in horror. The old tattooing had returned to his face, blood red against the pallor of the skin, scarlet instead of black, truly a tiger mask in color as well as design.

“Gully!” she cried. “My God! Your face!”

Foyle ignored her and stood glaring at Jóseph while the old man made beseeching gestures, motioned to them to enter the interior of the asteroid, and then disappeared. Only then did Foyle turn to Jisbella and ask: “What? What did you say?”

Through the clear globe of the helmet she could see his face distinctly. And as the rage within Foyle died away, Jisbella saw the blood-red tattooing fade and disappear.

“Did you see that joker?” Foyle demanded. “That was Joseph. Did you see him begging and pleading after what he did to me . . . ? What did you say?”

“Your face, Gully. I know what’s happened to your face.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You wanted something that would control you, Gully. Well, you’ve got it. Your face. It—” Jisbella began to laugh hysterically. “You’ll have to learn control now, Gully. You’ll never be able to give way to emotion . . . any emotion . . . because—”

But he was staring past her and suddenly he shot up the aluminium shaft with a yell. He jerked to a stop before an open door and began to whoop in triumph. The door opened into a tool locker, four by four by nine. There were shelves in the locker and a jumble of old provisions and discarded containers. It was Foyle’s coffin aboard the “Nomad.”

Jóseph and his people had succeeded in sealing the wreck into their asteroid before the holocaust of Foyle’s escape had rendered further work impossible. The interior of the ship was virtually untouched. Foyle took Jisbella’s arm and dragged her on a quick tour of the ship and finally to the purser’s locker where Foyle tore at the windrows of wreckage and debris until he disclosed a massive steel face, blank and impenetrable.

“We’ve got a choice,” he panted. “Either we tear the safe out of the hull and carry it back to Terra where we can work on it, or we open it here. I vote for here. Maybe Dagenham was lying. All depends on what tools Sam has in the Weekender anyway. Come back to the ship, Jiz.”

He never noticed her silence and preoccupation until they were back aboard the Weekender and he had finished his urgent search for tools.

“Nothing!” he exclaimed impatiently. “There isn’t a hammer or a drill aboard. Nothing but gadgets for opening bottles and rations.”

Jisbella didn’t answer. She never took her eyes off his face.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Foyle demanded.

“I’m fascinated,” Jisbella answered slowly.

“By what?”

“I’m going to show you something, Gully.”

“What?”

“How much I despise you.”

Jisbella slapped him thrice. Stung by the blows, Foyle started up furiously. Jisbella picked up a hand mirror and held it before him.

“Look at yourself, Gully,” she said quietly. “Look at your face.”

He looked. He saw the old tattoo marks flaming blood-red under the skin, turning his face into a scarlet and white tiger mask. He was so chilled by the appalling spectacle that his rage died at once, and simultaneously the mask disappeared.

“My God . . .” he whispered. “Oh my God . . .”

“I had to make you lose your temper to show you,” Jisbella said.

“What’s it mean, Jiz? Did Baker goof the job?”

“I don’t think so. I think you’ve got scars under the skin, Gully . . . from the original tattooing and then from the bleaching. Needle scars. They don’t show normally, but they do show, blood red, when your emotions take over and your heart begins pumping blood . . . when you’re furious or frightened or passionate or possessed . . . Do you understand?”

He shook his head, still staring at his face, touching it in bewilderment.

“You said you wished you could carry me in your pocket to stick pins in you when you lose control. You’ve got something better than that, Gully, or worse, poor darling. You’ve got your face.”

“No!” he said. “No!”

“You can’t ever lose control, Gully. You’ll never be able to drink too much, eat too much, love too much, hate too much . . . You’ll have to hold yourself with an iron grip.”

“No!” he insisted desperately. “It can be fixed. Baker can do it, or somebody else. I can’t walk around afraid to feel anything because it’ll turn me into a freak!”

“I don’t think this can be fixed, Gully.”

“Skin-graft . . .”

“No. The scars are too deep for graft. You’ll never get rid of this stigmata, Gully. You’ll have to learn to live with it.”

Foyle flung the mirror from him in sudden rage, and again the blood-red mask flared up under his skin. He lunged out of the main cabin to the main hatch where he pulled his spacesuit down and began to squirm into it.

“Gully! Where are you going? What are you going to do?”

“Get tools,” he shouted. “Tools for the safe.”

“Where?”

“In the asteroid. They’ve got dozens of warehouses stuffed with tools from wrecked ships. There have to be drills there, everything I need. Don’t come with me. There may be trouble. How is my God damned face now? Showing it? By Christ, I hope there
is
trouble!”

He corked his suit and went into the asteroid. He found a hatch separating the habited core from the outer void. He banged on the door. He waited and banged again and continued the imperious summons until at last the hatch was opened. Arms reached out and yanked him in, and the hatch was closed behind him. It had no air lock.

He blinked in the light and scowled at Jóseph and his innocent people gathering before him, their faces hideously decorated. And he knew that his own face must be flaming red and white for he saw Jóseph start, and he saw the devil mouth shape the syllables: NOMAD.