American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (50 page)

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 kalei doscopic 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 spacetime lines back into the dreadful pit of Now.

His senses uncrossed in the ivory-and-gold star chamber of Castle Presteign. Sight became sight and he saw the high mirrors and stained glass windows, the gold tooled library with android librarian on library ladder. Sound became sound and he heard the android secretary tapping the manual beadrecorder at the Louis Quinze desk. Taste became taste as he sipped the cognac that the robot bartender handed him.

He knew he was at bay, faced with the decision of his life. He ignored his enemies and examined the perpetual beam carved in the robot face of the bartender, the classic Irish grin.

“Thank you,” Foyle said.

“My pleasure, sir,” the robot replied and awaited its next cue. “Nice day,” Foyle remarked.

“Always a lovely day somewhere, sir,” the robot beamed. “Awful day,” Foyle said.

“Always a lovely day somewhere, sir,” the robot responded. “Day,” Foyle said.

“Always a lovely day somewhere, sir,” the robot said.

Foyle turned to the others. “That’s me,” he said, motioning to the robot. “That’s all of us. We prattle about free will, but we’re nothing but response . . . mechanical reaction in prescribed grooves. So . . . here I am, here I am, waiting to respond. Press the buttons and I’ll jump.” He aped the canned voice of the robot. “My pleasure to serve, sir.” Suddenly his tone lashed them. “What do you want?”

They stirred with uneasy purpose. Foyle was burned, beaten, chastened . . . and yet he was taking control of all of them.

“We’ll stipulate the threats,” Foyle said. “I’m to be hung, drawn, and quartered, tortured in hell if I don’t . . . What? What do you want?”

“I want my property,” Presteign said, smiling coldly.

“Eighteen and some odd pounds of PyrE. Yes. What do you offer?”

“I make no offer, sir. I demand what is mine.”

Y’ang-Yeovil and Dagenham began to speak. Foyle silenced them. “One button at a time, gentlemen. Presteign is trying to make me jump at present.” He turned to Presteign. “Press harder, blood and money, or find another button. Who are you to make demands at this moment?”

Presteign tightened his lips. “The law . . .” he began.

“What? Threats?” Foyle laughed. “Am I to be frightened into anything? Don’t be imbecile. Speak to me the way you did New Year’s Eve, Presteign . . . without mercy, without forgiveness, without hypocrisy.”

Presteign bowed, took a breath, and ceased to smile. “I offer you power,” he said. “Adoption as my heir, partnership in Presteign Enterprises, the chieftainship of clan and sept. Together we can own the world.”

“With PyrE?”

“Yes.”

“Your proposal is noted and declined. Will you offer your daughter?”

“Olivia?” Presteign choked and clenched his fists.

“Yes, Olivia. Where is she?”

“You scum!” Presteign cried. “Filth . . . Common thief . . . You dare to . . .”

“Will you offer your daughter for the PyrE?”

“Yes,” Presteign answered, barely audible.

Foyle turned to Dagenham. “Press your button, death’s-head,” he said.

“If the discussion’s to be conducted on this level . . .” Dagenham snapped.

“It is. Without mercy, without forgiveness, without hypocrisy. What do you offer?”

“Glory.”

“Ah?”

“We can’t offer money or power. We can offer honor. Gully Foyle, the man who saved the Inner Planets from annihilation. We can offer security. We’ll wipe out your criminal record, give you an honored name, guarantee a niche in the hall of fame.”

“No,” Jisbella McQueen cut in sharply. “Don’t accept. If you want to be a savior, destroy the secret. Don’t give PyrE to anyone.”

“What is PyrE?”

“Quiet!” Dagenham snapped.

“It’s a thermonuclear explosive that’s detonated by thought alone . . . by psychokinesis,” Jisbella said.

“What thought?”

“The desire of anyone to detonate it, directed at it. That brings it to critical mass if it’s not insulated by Inert Lead Isotope.”

“I told you to be quiet,” Dagenham growled.

“If we’re all to have a chance at him, I want mine.”

“This is bigger than idealism.”

“Nothing’s bigger than idealism.”

“Foyle’s secret is,” Y’ang-Yeovil murmured. “I know how relatively unimportant PyrE is just now.” He smiled at Foyle. “Sheffield’s law assistant overheard part of your little discussion in Old St. Pat’s. We know about the space-jaunting.”

There was a sudden hush.

“Space-jaunting,” Dagenham exclaimed. “Impossible. You don’t mean it.”

“I do mean it. Foyle’s demonstrated that space-jaunting is not impossible. He jaunted six hundred thousand miles from an O.S. raider to the wreck of the ‘Nomad.’ As I said, this is far bigger than PyrE. I should like to discuss that matter first.”

“Everyone’s been telling what they want,” Robin Wednesbury said slowly. “What do you want, Gully Foyle?”

“Thank you,” Foyle answered. “I want to be punished.” “What?”

“I want to be purged,” he said in a suffocated voice. The stigmata began to appear on his bandaged face. “I want to pay for what I’ve done and settle the account. I want to get rid of this damnable cross I’m carrying . . . this ache that’s cracking my spine. I want to go back to Gouffre Martel. I want a lobo, if I deserve it . . . and I know I do. I want—”

“You want escape,” Dagenham interrupted. “There’s no escape.”

“I want release!”

“Out of the question,” Y’ang-Yeovil said. “There’s too much of value locked up in your head to be lost by lobotomy.”

“We’re beyond easy childish things like crime and punishment,” Dagenham added.

“No,” Robin objected. “There must always be sin and forgiveness. We’re never beyond that.”

“Profit and loss, sin and forgiveness, idealism and realism,” Foyle smiled. “You’re all so sure, so simple, so single-minded. I’m the only one in doubt. Let’s see how sure you really are. You’ll give up Olivia, Presteign? To me, yes? Will you give her up to the law? She’s a killer.”

Presteign tried to rise, and then fell back in his chair.

“There must be forgiveness, Robin? Will you forgive Olivia Presteign? She murdered your mother and sisters.”

Robin turned ashen. Y’ang-Yeovil tried to protest.

“The Outer Satellites don’t have PyrE, Yeovil. Sheffield revealed that. Would you use it on them anyway? Will you turn my name into common anathema . . . like Lynch and Boycott?”

Foyle turned to Jisbella. “Will your idealism take you back to Gouffre Martel to serve out your sentence? And you, Dagenham, will you give her up? Let her go?”

He listened to the outcries and watched the confusion for a moment, bitter and constrained.

“Life is so simple,” he said. “This decision is so simple, isn’t it? Am I to respect Presteign’s property rights? The welfare of the planets? Jisbella’s ideals? Dagenham’s realism? Robin’s conscience? Press the button and watch the robot jump. But I’m not a robot. I’m a freak of the universe . . . a thinking animal . . . and I’m trying to see my way clear through this morass. Am I to turn PyrE over to the world and let it destroy itself? Am I to teach the world how to space-jaunte and let us spread our freak show from galaxy to galaxy through all the universe? What’s the answer?”

The bartender robot hurled its mixing glass across the room with a resounding crash. In the amazed silence that followed, Dagenham grunted: “Damn! My radiation’s disrupted your dolls again, Presteign.”

“The answer is yes,” the robot said, quite distinctly.

“What?” Foyle asked, taken aback.

“The answer to your question is yes.”

“Thank you,” Foyle said.

“My pleasure, sir,” the robot responded. “A man is a member of society first, and an individual second. You must go along with society, whether it chooses destruction or not.”

“Completely haywire,” Dagenham said impatiently. “Switch it off, Presteign.”

“Wait,” Foyle commanded. He looked at the beaming grin engraved in the steel robot face. “But society can be so stupid. So confused. You’ve witnessed this conference.”

“Yes, sir, but you must teach, not dictate. You must teach society.”

“To space-jaunte? Why? Why reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?”

“Because you’re alive, sir. You might as well ask: Why is life? Don’t ask about it. Live it.”

“Quite mad,” Dagenham muttered.

“But fascinating,” Y’ang-Yeovil murmured.

“There’s got to be more to life than just living,” Foyle said to the robot.

“Then find it for yourself, sir. Don’t ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.”

“Why can’t we all move forward together?”

“Because you’re all different. You’re not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow.”

“Who leads?”

“The men who must . . . driven men, compelled men.”

“Freak men.”

“You’re all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.”

“Thank you very much.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

“You’ve saved the day.”

“Always a lovely day somewhere, sir,” the robot beamed. Then it fizzed, jangled, and collapsed.

Foyle turned on the others. “That thing’s right,” he said, “and you’re wrong. Who are we, any of us, to make a decision for the world? Let the world make its own decisions. Who are we to keep secrets from the world? Let the world know and decide for itself. Come to Old St. Pat’s.”

He jaunted; they followed. The square block was still cordoned and by now an enormous crowd had gathered. So many of the rash and curious were jaunting into the smoking ruins that the police had set up a protective induction field to keep them out. Even so, urchins, curio seekers and irresponsibles attempted to jaunte into the wreckage, only to be burned by the induction field and depart, squawking.

At a signal from Y’ang-Yeovil, the field was turned off. Foyle went through the hot rubble to the east wall of the cathedral which stood to a height of fifteen feet. He felt the smoking stones, pressed, and levered. There came a grinding grumble and a three-by-five-foot section jarred open and then stuck. Foyle gripped it and pulled. The section trembled; then the roasted hinges collapsed and the stone panel crumbled.