A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Vol 2

Chapter 73

"I can"t with a war on."

"To h.e.l.l with the war. You sacrificed enough up at Tycho Sands. They can"t ask any more of you."

"I"ve got one job to finish."

"I"ll help you finish it."

"No. You"d best keep out of this, Jisbella."

"You don"t trust me."

"I don"t want you hurt."

"Nothing can hurt us."

"Foyle can."

"W-What?"

"Fourmyle is Foyle. You know that. I know you know."

"But I never-"

"No, you never told me. You"re magnificent. Keep faith with me the same way, Jisbella.""Then how did you find out?"

"Foyle slipped."

"How?"

"The name."

"Fourmyle of Ceres? He bought the Ceres company."

"But Geoffrey Fourmyle?"

"He invented it."

"He thinks he invented it. He remembered it. Geoffrey Fourmyle is the name they use in the megalomania test down in Combined Hospital in Mexico City. I used the Megal Mood on Foyle when I tried to open him up. The name must have stayed buried in his memory. He dredged it up and thought it was original.

That tipped me."

"Poor Gully."

Dagenham smiled. "Yes, no matter how we defend ourselves against the outside we"re always licked by something from the inside. There"s no defense against betrayal, and we all betray ourselves."

"What are you going to do, Saul?"

"Do? Finish him, of course."

"For twenty pounds of PyrE?"

"No. To win a lost war."

"What?" Jisbella came to the gla.s.s wall separating the rooms. "You, Saul? Patriotic?"

He nodded, almost guiltily. "It"s ridiculous. Grotesque. But I am. You"ve changed me completely. I"m a sane man again."

He pressed his face to the wall too, and they kissed through three inches of lead gla.s.s.

Mare Nubium was ideally suited to the growth of anaerobic bacteria, soil organisms, phage, rare moulds, and all those microscopic life forms, essential to medicine and industry, which required airless culture.

Bacteria, Inc. was a huge mosaic of culture fields traversed by catwalks spread around a central clump of barracks, offices, and plant. Each field was a giant gla.s.s vat, one hundred feet in diameter, twelve inches high and no more than two molecules thick.

A day before the sunrise line, creeping across the face of the moon, reached Mare Nubium, the vats were filled with culture medium. At sunrise, abrupt and blinding on the airless moon, the vats were seeded, and for the next fourteen days of continuous sun they were tended, shielded, regulated, nurtured... the field workers trudging up and down the catwalks in s.p.a.ce-suits. As the sunset line crept toward Mare Nubium, the vats were harvested and then left to freeze and sterilize in the two week frost of the lunar night.

Jaunting was of no use in this tedious step-by-step cultivation. Hence Bacteria, Inc. hired unfortunates incapable of jaunting and paid them slave wages. This was the lowest form of labor, the dregs and sc.u.m of the Solar System; and the barracks of Bacteria, Inc. resembled an inferno during the two week lay-offperiod. Foyle discovered this when he entered Barrack 3.

He was met by an appalling spectacle. There were two hundred men in the giant room; there were wh.o.r.es and their hard-eyed pimps, professional gamblers and their portable tables, dope peddlers, money lenders. There was a haze of acrid smoke and the stench of alcohol and a.n.a.logue. Furniture, bedding, clothes, unconscious bodies, empty bottles, rotting food were scattered on the floor.

A roar challenged Foyle"s appearance, but he was equipped to handle this situation. He spoke to the first hairy face thrust into his.

"Kempsey?" he asked quietly. He was answered outrageously. Nevertheless he grinned and handed the man a < p="">

"Kempsey?" Foyle asked in the old gutter tongue. "I"m diggin" Rodger Kempsey."

"I"m diggin" you for broke," the man answered, thrusting out a huge paw for Foyle"s money. "Gimmie."

There was a delighted howl from the crowd. Foyle smiled and spat in his eye. There was an abject hush.

The hairless man dumped the bawds and surged up to annihilate Foyle. Five seconds later he was groveling on the floor with Foyle"s foot planted on his neck.

"Still diggin" Kempsey," Foyle said gently. "Diggin" hard, man. You better finger him, man, or you"re gone, is all."

"Washroom!" the hairless man howled. "Holed up. Washroom."

"Now you broke me," Foyle said. He dumped the rest of his money on the floor before the hairless man and walked quickly to the washroom.

Kempsey was cowering in the corner of a shower, face pressed to the wall, moaning in a dull rhythm that showed he had been at it for hours.

"Kempsey?"

The moaning answered him.

"What"s a matter, you?"

"Clothes," Kempsey wept. "Clothes. All over, clothes. Like filth, like sick, like dirt. Clothes. All over, clothes."

"Up, man. Get up."

"Clothes. All over, clothes. Like filth, like sick, like dirt..."

"Kempsey, mind me, man. Orel sent me."

Kempsey stopped weeping and turned his sodden countenance to Foyle. "Who? Who?"

"Sergei Orel sent me. I"ve bought your release. You"re free. We"ll blow."

"When?""Now."

"Oh G.o.d! G.o.d bless him. Bless him!" Kempsey began to caper in weary exultation. The bruised and bloated face split into a facsimile of laughter. He laughed and capered and Foyle led him out of the washroom. But in the barracks he screamed and wept again, and as Foyle led him down the long room, the naked bawds swept up armfuls of dirty clothes and shook them before his eyes. Kempsey foamed and gibbered.

"What"s a matter, him?" Foyle inquired of the hairless man in the gutter patois.

The hairless man was now a respectful neutral if not a friend. "Guesses for grabs," he answered. "Always like that, him. Show old clothes and he twitch. Man!"

"For why, already?"

"For why? Crazy, is all."

At the main-office airlock, Foyle got Kempsey and himself corked in suits and then led him out to the rocket field where a score of anti-grav beams pointed their pale fingers upward from pits to the gibbous earth hanging in the night sky. They entered a pit, entered Foyle"s yawl and uncorked. Foyle took a bottle and a sting ampule from a cabinet. He poured a drink and handed it to Kempsey. He hefted the ampule in his palm, smiling.

Kempsey drank the whiskey, still dazed, still exulting. "Free," he muttered. "G.o.d bless him! Free. You don"t know what I"ve been through." He drank again. "I still can"t believe it. It"s like a dream. Why don"t you take off, man? I-" Kempsey choked and dropped the gla.s.s, staring at Foyle in horror. "Your face!" he exclaimed. "My G.o.d, your face! What happened to it?"

"You happened to it, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Foyle cried. He leaped up, his tiger face burning, and flung the ampule like a knife. It pierced Kempsey"s neck and hung quivering. Kempsey toppled.

Foyle accelerated, blurred to the body, picked it up in mid-fall and carried it aft to the starboard stateroom. There were two main staterooms in the yawl, and Foyle had prepared both of them in advance. The starboard room had been stripped and turned into a surgery. Foyle strapped the body on the operating table, opened a case of surgical instruments, and began the delicate operation he had learned by hypno-training that morning... an operation made possible only by his five-to-one acceleration.

He cut through skin and fascia, sawed through the rib cage, exposed the heart, dissected it out and connected veins and arteries to the intricate blood pump alongside the table. He started the pump.

Twenty seconds, objective time, had elapsed. He placed an oxygen mask over Kempsey"s face and switched on the alternating suction and nictation of the oxygen pump.

Foyle decelerated, checked Kempsey"s temperature, shot an anti-shock series into his veins and waited.

Blood gurgled through the pump and Kempsey"s body. After five minutes, Foyle removed the oxygen mask. The respiration reflex continued. Kempsey was without a heart, yet alive. Foyle sat down alongside the operating table and waited. The stigmata still showed on his face.

Kempsey remained unconscious.

Foyle waited.

Kempsey awoke, screaming.Foyle leaped up, tightened the straps and leaned over the heartless man.

"Hallo, Kempsey," he said.

Kempsey screamed.

"Look at yourself, Kempsey. You"re dead."

Kempsey fainted. Foyle brought him to with the oxygen mask.

"Let me die, for G.o.d"s sake!"

"What"s the matter? Does it hurt? I died for six months, and I didn"t whine."

"Let me die."

"In time, Kempsey. Your sympathetic block"s been bypa.s.sed, but I"ll let you die in time, if you behave.

You were aboard "Vorga" on September 16, 2436?"

"For Christ"s sake, let me die."

"You were aboard "Vorga"?"

"Yes."

"You pa.s.sed a wreck out in s.p.a.ce. Wreck of the "Nomad." She signalled for help and you pa.s.sed her by. Yes?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Christ! Oh Christ help me!"

"Why?"

"Oh Jesus!"

"I was aboard "Nomad," Kempsey. Why did you leave me to rot?"

"Sweet Jesus help me! Christ, deliver me!" , "I"ll deliver you, Kempsey, if you answer questions. Why did you leave me to rot?"

"Couldn"t pick you up."

"Why not?"

"Reffs aboard."

"Oh? I guessed right, then. You were running refugees in from Callisto?"

"Yes."

"How many?"

"Six hundred.""That"s a lot, but you could have made room for one more. Why didn"t you pick me up?"

"We were scuttling the reffs."

"What!" Foyle cried.
Prev List Next