Tiger! Tiger! (34 page)

Motion came as sound to him. He heard the writhing of the flames, he heard the swirls of smoke, he heard the flickering, jeering shadows . . . all speaking deafeningly in strange tongues:

`BURUU GYARR RWAWW JERRMAKING?' the steam asked, `Asha. Asha, rit-kit-dit-Zit. m'gid,' the quick shadows answered.

`Ohhh. Ahhh. Heee. Teee. Oooo. Ahhh,' the heat ripples clamored. `Ahhh. Maaa. Paaa. Laaaaaaaasasa!'

Even the flames smoldering on his own clothes roared gibberish 1n his ears.

`MANTERGEISTMANN !' they bellowed,

`UNVERTRACKINSTEIGN GAN ZELSSFURSTINLASTENBRUGG!'

Color was pain to him . . . heat, cold, pressure; sensations of intolerable heights and plunging depths, of tremendous accelerations and crushing compressions:

RED RECEDED FROM HIM.

GREEN LIGHT ATTACKED.

INDIGO UNDULATED WITH SICKENING SPEED LIKE SHUDDERING SNAKE.

Touch was taste to him . . . the feel of wood was acrid and chalky in his mouth, metal was salt, stone tasted sour-sweet to the touch of his fingers, and the feel of glass cloyed his palate like over-rich pastry.

Smell was touch. .
 
Hot stone smelled like velvet caressing his cheek. Smoke and ash were harsh tweeds rasping his skin, almost the feel of wet canvas. Molten metal smelled like blows hammering his heart, and the ionization of the PyrE explosion filled the air with ozone that smelled like water trickling through his fingers.

He was not blind, not deaf, not senseless. Sensation came to him, but filtered through a nervous system twisted and short-circuited by the shock of the PyrE concussion. He was suffering from Synaesthesia, that rare condition in which perception receives messages from the objective world and relays these messages to the brain, but there in the brain the sensory perceptions are confused with one another. So, in Foyle, sound registered as sight, motion registered as sound, colors became pain sensations, touch became taste and smell became touch. He was not only trapped within the labyrinth of the inferno under Old St Pat's; he was trapped in the kaleidoscope of his own cross-senses.

Again desperate, on the ghastly verge of extinction, he abandoned all disciplines and habits of living; or perhaps, they were stripped from him. He reverted from a conditioned product of environment and experience to an inchoate creature craving escape and survival and exercising every power it possessed. And again the miracle of two years ago took place.

The undivided energy of an entire human organism, of every cell, fiber, nerve and muscle empowered that craving, and again Foyle space-jaunted.

He went hurtling along the geodesical space-lines of the curving universe at the speed of thought, which far exceeds that of light. His spatial velocity was so frightful that his time-axis was twisted from the vertical line drawn from the Past through Now to the Future. He went flickering along the new near-horizontal axis, this new space-time geodesic, driven by the miracle of a human mind no longer inhibited by concepts of the impossible.

Again he achieved what Helmut Grant and Enzio Dandridge and scores of other experimenters had failed to do, because his blind panic forced him to abandon the spatio-temporal inhibitions that had defeated previous attempts. He did not jaunte to Elsewhere, but to Elsewhen. But most important, the fourth dimensional awareness, the complete picture of the Arrow of Time and his position on it which is born in every man but deeply submerged by the trivia of living, was in Foyle close to the surface. He jaunted along the space-time goedesics to Elsewheres and Elsewhens, translating `i', the square root of minus one, from an imaginary number into reality by a magnificent act of imagination.

He jaunted.

He was aboard Nomad, drifting in the empty frost of space.

He stood in the door to nowhere.

The cold was the taste of lemons and the vacuum was a rake of talons on his skin. The sun and the stars were a shaking ague that racked his bones.

`GLOMMHA FREDNIS THE CLOMOHAMAGENSIN!' motion roared in his ears.

It was a figure with its back to him vanishing down the corridor; a figure with a copper cauldron of provisions over its shoulder; a figure darting, floating, squirming through free fall. It was Gully Foyle.

-'MEEHAT JESSROT TO CRONAGAN BUT FLIMMCORK,' the sight of his motion bellowed.

`Aha! Oh-ho! M'git not to kak,' the flicker of light and shade answered.

`Oooooooh? Soooooo? Noooooo. Ahhhhhh!' the whirling rake of debris in his wake murmured.

The lemon taste in his mouth became unbearable. The rake of talons on his skin was torture.

He jaunted.

He reappeared in the furnace beneath Old St Pat's less that a second after he had disappeared from there. He was drawn, as the seabird is drawn again and again to the flames from which it is struggling to escape. He endured the roaring furnace for only another moment.

He jaunted.

He was in the depths of Gouffre Martel.

The velvet black darkness was bliss, paradise, euphoria 'Ah!' he cried in relief.

`AH!' came the echo of his voice, and the sound was translated into a blinding pattern of light.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

 
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

  
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

   
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

    
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The burning man winced. `Stop!' he called, blinded by the noise. Again came the dazzling pattern of the echo

    
StOpStOpStOp

   
OpStOpStOpStOp

  
StOpStOpStOpStOp

 
OpStOpStOpStOpStOp

  
OpStOpStOpStOpSt

   
OpStOpStOpStOp

    
OpStOpStOpSt

A distant clatter of steps came to h is eyes in soft patterns of vertical borealis streamers

c c c c c c

 
l l l l l l

a a a a a a

 
t t t t t t

t t t t t t

 
e e e e e e

r r r r r r

THERE CAME A SHOUT LIKE

A

  
Z I G Z A G

             
OF

 
L I G H T N I N G

A BEAM OF LIGHT ATTACKED

It was the search party from the Gouffre Martel hospital, tracking Foyle and Jisbella McQueen by Geophone. The burning man disappeared, but not before he had unwittingly decoyed the searchers from the trail of the vanished fugitives.

He was back under Old St Pat's, reappearing only an instant after his last disappearance. His wild beatings into the unknown sent him stumbling up geodesic space-time lines that inevitably brought him back to the Now he was trying to escape; for in the inverted saddle-curve of space-time, his Now was the deepest depression in the curve.

He could drive himself up, up, up the geodesic lines into the past or future, but inevitably he must fall back into his own Now, like a thrown ball hurled up the sloping walls of an infinite pit, to land, hang poised for a moment, and then roll back into the depths.

But still he beat into the unknown in his desperation.

Again he jaunted.

He was on Jervis beach on the Australian coast.

The motion of the surf was bawling: `LOGGER-MIST CROTEHAVEN JALL. LOOGERMISK MOTESLAVEN DOOL.'

The churning of the surf blinded him with the lights of batteries of footlights: Gully Foyle and Robin Wednesbury stood before him. The body of a man lay on the sand, which felt like vinegar in the burning man's mouth. The wind brushing his face tasted like brown paper.

Foyle opened his mouth and exclaimed. The sound came out in burning star-bubbles: Foyle took a step. `GRASH!' the motion blared.

The burning man jaunted.

He was in the office of Dr Sergei Orel in Shanghai.

Foyle was again before him, speaking in light patterns:

W A Y
    
W A Y
 
W A Y

 
H R O
  
H R O
   
H R O

 
0 E U 0 E U
     
0 E U

He flickered back to the agony of Old St Pat's and jaunted again.

  
HE WAS ON THE BRAWLING SPANISH

  
STAIRS. HE WAS ON THE BRAWLING

  
SPANISH STAIRS. HE WAS ON THE

  
BRAWLING SPANISH STAIRS. HE WAS

  
ON THE BRAWLING SPANISH STAIRS.

  
HE WAS ON THE BRAWLING SPANISH

  
STAIRS. HE WAS ON THE BRAWLING

  
SPANISH STAIRS. HE WAS ON THE

  
BRAWLING SPANISH STAIRS. HE WAS

  
ON THE BRAWLING SPANISH STAIRS.

The burning man jaunted.

It was cold again, with the taste of lemons, and vacuum raked his skin with unspeakable talons. He was peering through the porthole of a silvery yawl. The jagged mountains of the Moon towered in the background. Through the porthole he could see the jangling racket of blood pumps and oxygen pumps and hear the uproar of the motion Gully Foyle made towards him. The clawing of the vacuum caught his throat in an agonizing grip.

The geodesic lines of space-time rolled him back to Now under Old St Pat's, where less than two seconds had elapsed since he first began his frenzied struggle. Once more, like a burning spear, he hurled himself into the unknown.

He was in the Sklotsky Catacomb on Mars. The white slug that was Lindsey Joyce was writhing before him.

`NO! NO! No!' her motion screamed. `DON'T HURT ME.

DON'T KILL ME. NO PLEASE . . . PLEASE . . . PLEASE... .' The burning man opened his tiger mouth and laughed. `She hurts,' he said. The sound of his voice burned his eyes.

S
      
S
      
S

 
H
     
H
     
H

 
E
    
E
   
 
E

  
H
   
H
   
H

   
U
  
U
  
U

    
R
 
R
 
R

     
T T T

       
S

     
H H H

    
E
 
E
 
E

   
H
  
H
  
H

  
U
   
U
   
U

 
R
    
R
    
R

 
T
     
T
     
T

S
      
S
      
S

`Who are you?' Foyle whispered.

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

0000000000000000000000000

AREAREAREAREAREAREAREAREARE

AREAREAREAREAREAREAREAREARE

AREAREAREAREAREAREAREAREARE