Tiger! Tiger! (37 page)

`You pigs, you. You rot like pigs, is all. You got the most in you and you use the least. You hear me, You? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All of you. Every you....'

He was jeered. He continued with the hysterical passion of the possessed.

`Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you! All right, God damn you! I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come to me and I make you great. Die, damn you, or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you great. I give you the stars. I make you men!'

He jaunted up the geodesic lines of space-time to an Elsewhere and an Elsewhen. He arrived in chaos. He hung in a precarious para-Now for a moment and then tumbled back into chaos.

`It can be done,' he thought. `It must be done.'

He jaunted again, a burning spear flung from unknown into unknown, and again he tumbled back into a chaos of Paraspace and Paratime. He was lost in Nowhere.

`I believe,' he thought. `I have faith.'

He jaunted again and failed again.

`Faith in what?' he asked himself, adrift in limbo.

`Faith in faith,' he answered himself. `It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief.'

He jaunted for the last time and the power of his willingness to believe transformed the para-Now of his random destination into a real ....

Now: Rigel in Orion, burning blue-white, five hundred and forty light years from earth, ten thousand times more luminous than the sun, a cauldron of energy circled by thirty-seven massive planets . . . Foyle hung, freezing and suffocating in space, face to face with the incredible destiny in which he believed, but which was still inconceivable. He hung in space for a blinding moment, as helpless, as amazed, and yet as inevitable as the first gilled creature to come out of the sea and hang gulping on a primeval beach in the dawn-history of life on earth.

He space-jaunted, turning para-Now into . . .

Now: Vega in Lyra, an AO star twenty-six light years from earth, burning bluer than Rigel, planet-less, but encircled by swarms of blazing comets whose gaseous tails scintillated across the blue-black firmament ....

And again he turned now into

Now: Canopus, yellow as the sun, gigantic, thunderous in the silent wastes of space at last invaded by a creature that once was gilled. The creature hung, gulping on the beach of the universe, nearer death than life, nearer the future than the past, ten leagues beyond the wide world's end. It wondered at the masses of dust, meteors and motes that girdled Canopus in a broad flat ring like the rings of Saturn and of the breadth of Saturn's orbit ....

Now: Aldebaran in Taurus, a monstrous red star of a pair of stars whose sixteen planets wove high velocity ellipses around their gyrating parents. He was hurling himself through space-time with growing assurance.-. . .

Now: Antares, an MI red giant, paired like Aldebaran' two hundred and fifty light years from earth, encircled by two hundred and fifty planetoids of the size of Mercury, of the climate of Eden . . . .

And lastly . . .

NOW: He was back aboard Nomad.

The girl, Moira, found him in his tool locker aboard Nomad, curled into a tight fetal ball, his face hollow his eyes burning with divine revelation. Although the asteroid had long since been repaired and made airtight, Foyle still went through the motions of the perilous existence that had given birth to him years before.

But now he slept and meditated, digesting and encompassing the magnificence he had learned. He awoke from reverie to trance and drifted out of the locker, passing Moira with blind eyes, brushing past the awed girl who stepped aside and sank to her knees. He wandered through the empty passages and returned to the womb of the locker. He curled up again and was lost.

She touched him once; he made no move. She spoke the name that had been emblazoned on his face. He made no answer. She turned and fled to the interior of the asteroid, to the holy of holies in which Joseph reigned.

`My husband has returned to us,' Moira said.

`Your husband?'

`The God-man who destroyed us.' Joseph's face darkened with anger.

`Where is he? Show me!'

'You will not hurt him?'

`All debts must be paid. Show me.'

Joseph followed her to the locker aboard Nomad and gazed intently at Foyle. The anger in his face was replaced by wonder. He touched Foyle and spoke to him; there was still no response.

`You cannot punish him,' Moira said. `He is dying.'

`No,' Joseph answered quietly. `He is dreaming. I, a priest, know these dreams. Presently he will awaken and read to us, his people, his thoughts.'

`And then you will punish him.'

`He has found it already in himself,' Joseph said.

He settled down outside the locker, prepared to await the awakening. The girl, Moira, ran up the twisting corridors and returned a few moments later with a silver basin of warm water and a silver tray of food. She bathed Foyle gently and then set the tray before him as an offering. Then she settled down alongside Joseph . . . alongside the world . . . prepared to await the awakening.

The next FatBastard release will be next Saturday 17th March 2001. Unfortunately those who promised to let me have back my copies of both Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs and Captain Corellis' Mandolin, let me down. I am promised that Capt Corelli will be back before Nick Cage takes him into a wider audience so look out for him. 'Silence' though may well have gone the way of my full set of Donaldsons' Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and Hellers' Catch 22 and others - Shouldn't lend them out - at least not till I've made a backup! Next week should be another 'double header' - two of Ross McDonalds 'Lew Archer' books.

Some experimentation last week revealed that I now cannot post anything bigger than about 100 lines through my usual ISP and their News-server. I managed to get The Green Mile out through another account. Whether this is as a result of the activities of 'Harlan' and his truly delightful solicitor is something I am hopefully not paranoid enough to worry too much about. I don't have the luxury of broadband (or even free calls) and am neither rich enough nor technically adept enough to set up foreign accounts or servers, so I have decided that I will try to get the new releases to ABEB only once for each week. If this doesnt work I'll have to release that weeks by simply passing the book onto a few selected ftp archives, and letting 'natural propagation' take place. If you are an archive and you want to help (or you would rather I didn't) let me know. Otherwise, comments (and requests) welcome at my e-mail address below. (I may not respond very quickly though, apologies in advance!) ....Algernon.

A FatBastard production. Scanned with Omnipage Pro 10. Completed and Posted 10th March 2001. Proofed (in US English!) in Word 97. Some formatting may be altered slightly. If you find any other errors, either let me know at [email protected] or update the version no and repost. Not to be reposted without the FatBastard 'Logo' below.

FATBASTARD PRODUCTIONS 2001 - Quality as well as Quantity. Good Books, Properly Scanned, Carefully Proofed, Simply Formatted, Available to all! For personal use only. Not to be sold or used for personal profit.