American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (32 page)

They supported each other in the water, gasping for breath, filling their lungs. Foyle nudged Jisbella toward the underwater tunnel. “You go first. I’ll be right behind. . . . Help you if you get into trouble.”

“Trouble!” Jisbella cried in a shaking voice. She submerged and permitted the current to suck her into the tunnel mouth. Foyle followed. The fierce waters drew them down, down, down, caroming from side to side of a tunnel that had been worn glass-smooth. Foyle swam close behind Jisbella, feeling her thrashing legs beat his head and shoulders.

They shot through the tunnel until their lungs burst and their blind eyes started. Then there was a roaring again and a surface, and they could breathe. The glassy tunnel sides were replaced by jagged rocks. Foyle caught Jisbella’s leg and seized a stone projection at the side of the river.

“Got to climb out here,” he shouted.

“What?”

“Got to climb out. You hear that roaring up ahead? Cataracts. Rapids. Be torn to pieces. Out, Jiz.”

She was too weak to climb out of the water. He thrust her body up onto the rocks and followed. They lay on the dripping stones, too exhausted to speak. At last Foyle got wearily to his feet.

“Have to keep on,” he said. “Follow the river. Ready?”

She could not answer; she could not protest. He pulled her up and they went stumbling through the darkness, trying to follow the bank of the torrent. The boulders they traversed were gigantic, standing like dolmens, heaped, jumbled, scattered into a labyrinth. They staggered and twisted through them and lost the river. They could hear it in the darkness; they could not get back to it. They could get nowhere.

“Lost . . .” Foyle grunted in disgust. “We’re lost again. Really lost this time. What are we going to do?”

Jisbella began to cry. She made helpless yet furious sounds. Foyle lurched to a stop and sat down, drawing her down with him.

“Maybe you’re right, girl,” he said wearily. “Maybe I am a damned fool. I got us trapped into this no-jaunte jam, and we’re licked.”

She didn’t answer.

“So much for brainwork. Hell of an education you gave me.” He hesitated. “You think we ought to try backtracking to the hospital?”

“We’ll never make it.”

“Guess not. Was just practicing m’brain. Should we start a racket? Make a noise so they can track us by G-phone?”

“They’d never hear us . . . Never find us in time.”

“We could make enough noise. You could knock me around a little. Be a pleasure for both of us.”

“Shut up.”

“What a mess!” He sagged back, cushioning his head on a tuft of soft grass. “At least I had a chance aboard ‘Nomad.’ There was food and I could see where I was trying to go. I could—” He broke off and sat bolt upright. “Jiz!”

“Don’t talk so much.”

He felt the ground under him and clawed up sods of earth and tufts of grass. He thrust them into her face.

“Smell this,” he laughed. “Taste it. It’s grass, Jiz. Earth and grass. We must be out of Gouffre Martel.”

“What?”

“It’s night outside. Pitch-black. Overcast. We came out of the caves and never knew it. We’re out, Jiz! We made it.”

They leaped to their feet, peering, listening, sniffing. The night was impenetrable, but they heard the soft sigh of night winds, and the sweet scent of green growing things came to their nostrils. Far in the distance a dog barked.

“My God, Gully,” Jisbella whispered incredulously. “You’re right. We’re out of Gouffre Martel. All we have to do is wait for dawn.”

She laughed. She flung her arms about him and kissed him, and he returned the embrace. They babbled excitedly. They sank down on the soft grass again, weary, but unable to rest, eager, impatient, all life before them.

“Hello, Gully, darling Gully. Hello Gully, after all this time.” “Hello, Jiz.”

“I told you we’d meet some day . . . some day soon. I told you, darling. And this is the day.”

“The night.”

“The night, so it is. But no more murmuring in the night along the Whisper Line. No more night for us, Gully, dear.”

Suddenly they became aware that they were nude, lying close, no longer separated. Jisbella fell silent but did not move. He clasped her, almost angrily, and enveloped her with a desire that was no less than hers.

When dawn came, he saw that she was lovely: long and lean with smoky red hair and a generous mouth.

But when dawn came, she saw his face.

Harley Baker, m.d., had a small general practice in MontanaOregon 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 Gouffre 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.”

“No.”

“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-grav 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 postoperative 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?”

“No.”

“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—”