«Shut up!» he whispered. «You can't wake these dead. Now find me Lindsey Joyce.»
«They're sick. . . all sick. . . like worms in their heads. . . worms and sickness and…”
«Christ, don't I know it. Come on, let's get it over with. There's worse to come.»
They went down the twisting labyrinth of the catacombs. The stone slabs shelved the walls from floor to ceiling. The Skoptsys, white as slugs, mute as corpses, motionless as Buddhas, filled the caverns with the odor of living death. The telepathic child wept and shrieked. Foyle never relaxed his relentless grip on him; he never relaxed the hunt.
«Johnson, Wright, Keeley, Graff, Nastro, Underwood . . . God, there's thousands here.» Foyle read off the bronze identification plates attached to the slabs. «Reach out, Sigurd. Find Lindsey Joyce for me. We can't go over them name by name. Regal, Cone, Brady, Vincent…What in the…?»
Foyle started back. One of the bone-white figures had cuffed his brow. It was swaying and writhing, its face twitching. All the white slugs on their shelves were squirming and writhing. Sigurd Magsman's constant telepathic broadcast of anguish and terror was reaching them and torturing them.
«Shut up!» Foyle snapped. «Stop it. Find Lindsey Joyce and we'll get out of here. Reach out and find him.»
«Down there.» Sigurd wept. «Straight down there. Seven, eight, nine shelves down. I want to go home. I'm sick. I…”
Foyle went pell-mell down the catacombs with Sigurd, reading off identification plates until at last he came to: «LINDSEY JOYCE. BOUGAINVILLE. VENUS.»
This was his enemy, the instigator of his death and the deaths of the six hundred from Callisto. This was the enemy for whom he had planned vengeance and hunted for months. This was the enemy for whom he had prepared the agony of the port stateroom aboard his yawl. This was «Vorga.»
It was a woman.
Foyle was thunderstruck. In these days of the double standard, with women kept in purdah, there were many reported cases of women masquerading as men to enter the worlds closed to them, but he had never yet heard of a woman in the merchant marine . . . masquerading her way to top officer rank.
«This?» he exclaimed furiously. «This is Lindsey Joyce? Lindsey Joyce off the 'Vorga'? Ask her.»
«I don't know what 'Vorga' is.»
«Ask her!»
«But I don't…She was. . . She like gave orders.»
«Captain?»
«I don't like what's inside her. It's all sick and dark. It hurts. I want to go home.»
«Ask her. Was she captain of the 'Vorga'?»
«Yes. Please, please, please don't make me go inside her any more. It's twisty and hurts. I don't like her.»
«Tell her I'm the man she wouldn't pick up on September i6, 2436. Tell her it's taken a long time but I've finally come to settle the account. Tell her I'm going to pay her back.»
«I d-don't understand. Don't understand.»
«Tell her I'm going to kill her, slow and hard. Tell her I've got a stateroom aboard my yawl, fitted up just like my locker aboard 'Nomad' where I rotted for six months . . . where she ordered 'Vorga' to leave me to die. Tell her she's going to rot and die just like me. Tell her!» Foyle shook the wizened child furiously. «Make her feel it. Don't let her get away by turning Skoptsy. Tell her I kill her filthy. Read me and tell her!»
«She . . . Sir-She didn't give that order.»
«What!»
«I c-can't understand her.»
«She didn't give the order to scuttle me?»
«I'm afraid to go in.»
«Go in, you little son of a bitch, or I'll take you apart. What does she mean?»
The child wailed; the woman writhed; Foyle fumed. «Go in! Go in! Get it out of her. Jesus Christ, why does the only telepath on Mars have to be a child? Sigurd! Sigurd, listen to me. Ask her: Did she give the order to scuttle the reffs?»
«No. No!»
«No she didn't or no you won't?»
«She didn't.»
«Did she give the order to pass 'Nomad' by?»
«She's twisty and sicky. Oh please! NAN-N-I-E! I want to go home. Want to go.»
«Did she give the order to pass 'Nomad' by?»
''No.»
«She didn't?»
«No. Take me home.»
«Ask her who did.»
«I want my Nannie.»
«Ask her who could give her an order. She was captain aboard her own ship. Who could command her? Ask her!»
«I want my Nannie.»
«Ask her!»
«No. No. No. I'm afraid. She's sick. She's dark and black. She's bad. I don't understand her. I want my Nannie. I want to go home.»
The child was shrieking and shaking; Foyle was shouting. The echoes thundered. As Foyle reached for the child in a rage, his eyes were blinded by brilliant light. The entire catacomb was illuminated by the Burning Man. Foyle's image stood before him, face hideous, clothes on fire, the blazing eyes fixed on the convulsing Skoptsy that had been Lindsey Joyce.
The Burning Man opened his tiger mouth. A grating sound emerged. It was like flaming laughter.
«She hurts,» he said.
«Who are you?» Foyle whispered.
The Burning Man winced. «Too bright,» he said. «Less light.»
Foyle took a step forward. The Burning Man clapped hands over his ears in agony. «Too loud,» he cried. «Don't move so loud.»
«Are you my guardian angel?»
«You're blinding me. Shhh!» Suddenly he laughed again «Listen to her. She's screaming. Begging. She doesn't want to die. She doesn't want to be hurt. Listen to her.»
Foyle trembled.
«She's telling us who gave the order. Can't you hear? Listen with your eyes.» The Burning Man pointed a talon finger at the writhing Skoptsy. «She says Olivia.»
«What!»
«She says Olivia. Olivia Presteign. Olivia Presteign. Olivia Presteign.»
The Burning Man vanished.
The catacombs were dark again.
Colored lights and cacophonies whirled around Foyle. He gasped and staggered. «Blue jaunte,» he muttered. «Olivia. No. Not. Never. Olivia. I…”
He felt a hand reach for his. «Jiz?» he croaked.
He became aware that Sigurd Magsman was holding on to his hand and weeping. He picked the boy up.
«I hurt,» Sigurd whimpered.
«I hurt too, son.»
«Want to go home.»
«I'll take you home.»
Still holding the boy in his arms, he blundered through the catacombs.
«The living dead,» he mumbled.
And then: «I've joined them.»
He found the stone steps that led up from the depths to the monastery cloister above ground. He trudged up the steps, tasting death and desolation. There was bright light above him, and for a moment he imagined that dawn had come already. Then he realized that the cloister was brilliantly lit with artificial light. There was the tramp of shod feet and the low growl of commands. Halfway up the steps, Foyle stopped and mustered himself.
«Sigurd,» he whispered. «Who's above us? Find out.»
«Sogers,» the child answered.
«Soldiers? What soldiers?»
«Commando sogers.» Sigurd's crumpled face brightened. «They come for me. To take me home to Nannie. HERE I AM! HERE I AM!»
The telepathic clamor brought a shout from overhead. Foyle accelerated and blurred up the rest of the steps to the cloister. It was a square of Romanesque arches surrounding a green lawn. In the center of the lawn was a giant cedar of Lebanon. The flagged walks swarmed with Commando search parties, and Foyle came face to face with his match; for an instant after they saw his blur whip up from the catacombs they accelerated too, and all were on even terms.
But Foyle had the boy. Shooting was impossible. Cradling Sigurd in his arms, he wove through the cloister like a broken-field runner hurtling toward a goal. No one dared block him, for at plus-five acceleration a head-on collision between two bodies would be instantly fatal to both. Objectively, this break-neck skirmish looked like a five second zigzag of lightning.
Foyle broke out of the cloister, went through the main hail of the monastery, passed through the labyrinth, and reached the public jaunte stage outside the main gate. There he stopped, decelerated and jaunted to the monastery airfield, half a mile distant. The field, too, was ablaze with lights and swarming with Commandos. Every anti-gray pit was occupied by a Brigade ship. His own yawl was under guard.