"No, I tell you he"s here!" He sat up, flung away the cloth. "That little city, Coldstream-" He pointed through the wall. "-I was there just a week ago. I know the place!"
"You have had a dream-"
"Wet your Flame! But I"ve not! I held his heart in these hands and saw it!"
The Lynx winced at the profanity, but considered the possibility.
54."Then come with us to the library and see if you can sad it again."
"You better believe I can!"
At that moment Corgo was drinking a cup of coffee and waiting for the town to wake up. He was consider- ing his First Mate"s resignation: "I never wanted to b.u.m anyone, Cap. Least of all, the Guard. I"m sorry, but that"s it. No more for me. Leave me here and give me pa.s.sage home to Phillip"s-^-that"s all I want. I know you didn"t want it the way it hap- pened, but if I keep shipping with you it might happen again some day. Probably will. They got your number somehow, and I couldn"t ever do that again. I"ll help you fix the Wallaby, then I"m out. Sorry."
Corgo sighed and ordered a second coffee. He glanced at the clock on the diner wall. Soon, soon . . .
"That clock, that wall, that window! It"s the diner where I had lunch last week, in Coldstream!" said Bene- d.i.c.k, blinking moistly.
"Do you think all that continuum-impact. . . . ?"-the Lynx.
"I don"t know"-Sandor.
"How can we check?"
38 "Call the flamin" diner and ask them to describe their only customer!"-Bened.i.c.k.
"That is a very good idea"-the Lynx.
The Lynx moved to the phone-unit on Sander"s desk.
Sudden, as everything concerning the case had been, was the Lynx"s final decision: "Your flyer, brother Sandor. May I borrow it?"
"Why, yes. Surely . . ."
"I will now call the local ICI office and requisition a laser-cannon. They have been ordered to cooperate with us without question, and the ciders are still in effect. My executioner"s rating has never been suspended. It ap- pears that if we ever want to see this job completed we 55.must do it ourselves. It won"t taice long to mount the gun on your flyer.-Bened.i.c.k, stay with him every minute now. He still has to buy the equipment, take it back, and install it. Therefore, we should have sufficient time.
Just stay with him and advise me as to his movements,"
"Check."
"Are you sure it"s the right way to go about it?"-San- dor.
"I"m sure. . . ."
As the cannon was being delivered, Corgo made his purchases. As it was being installed, he loaded the light- boat and departed. As it was tested, on a tree stump Aunt Faye had wanted removed for a long while, he was aloft and heading toward the desert.
As he crossed the desert. Bened.i.c.k watched the roll- ing dunes, scrub-shrubs and darting rabbophers through his eyes.
He also watched the instrument-panel.
As the Lynx began his journey, Mala and Dilk were walking about the hull of the Wallaby. Mala wondered if the killing was over. She was not sure she liked th"
new Corgo so much as she did the avenger. She won- dered whether the change would be permanent. Sh*"
hoped not. . . .
The Lynx maintained radio contact with Bened.i.c.k.
Sandor drank xmili and smiled.
After a time, Corgo landed.
The Lynx was racing across the sands from the oppo- site direction.
39 They began unloading the light-boat.
The Lynx sped on.
"I am near it now. Five minutes," he radioed back.
"Then I"m out?"-Bened.i.c.k.
"Not yet"-the reply.
56."Sorry, but you know what I said. I won"t be there when he dies."
"All right, I can take it from here"-the Lynx.
Which is how, when the Lynx came upon the scene, he saw a dog and a man and an ugly but intelligent quadraped beside the Wallaby.
His first blast hit the ship. The man fell.
The quadraped ran, and he burnt it.
The dog thrashed through the port into the ship.
The Lynx brought the flyer about for another pa.s.s.
There was another man, circling around from the other side of the ship, where he had been working.
The man raised his hand and there was a flash of light Corgo"s death-ring discharged its single laser beam.
It crossed the distance between them, penetrated the hull of the flyer, pa.s.sed through the Lynx"s left arm above the elbow, and confined on through the roof of the vehicle.
The Lynx cried out, fought the controls, as Corgo dashed into the Wallaby.
Then he triggered the cannon, and again, and again and again, circling, until the Wallaby was a smoldering ruin in the middle of a sea of fused sand.
Still did he b.u.m that ruin, finally calling back to Bene- d.i.c.k Benedict and asking his one question.
"Nothing"-the reply.
Then he turned and headed back, setting the autopilot and opening the first-aid kit.
". . . Then he went in to hit the Wallaby"s guns, but I hit him first"-Lynx.
"No"-Bened.i.c.k.
"What meanest thou "no? I was there."
"So was I, for awhile. I had to see how he felt."
40 "And?"
"He went in for the puppy, Dilk, held it in his arms, and said to it, *I am sorry.""
57."Whatever, he is dead now and we have finished. It is over"-Sandor.
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Let us then drink to a job well done, before we part for good."
"Yes."
"Yes."
And they did.
While there wasn"t much left of the Wallaby or its Captain, ICI positively identified a synthetic heart found still beating, erratically, amidst the hot wreckage.
Corgo was dead, and that was it.
He should have known what he was up against, and turned himself in to the proper authorities. How can you hope to beat a man who can pick the lock to your mind, a man who dispatched forty-eight men and seventeen malicious alien life-forms, and a man who knows every d.a.m.n street in the galaxy.
He should have known better than to go up against Sandor Sandor, Bened.i.c.k Benedict and Lynx Links. He should, he should have known.
For their real names, of course, are Tisiphone, Alecto and Maegaera. They are the ^Furies. They arise from chaos and deliver revenge; they convey confusion and disaster to those who abandon the law and forsake the way, who offend against the light and violate the life, who take the power of flame, like a lightning-rod in their two too mortal hands.
THE GRAVEYARD HEART.
They were dancing, -at the party of the century, the party of the millenium, and the Party of Parties, -really, as well as calendar-wise, -and he wanted to crush her, to tear her to pieces. . . .
Moore did not really see the pavilion through which they moved, nor regard the hundred faceless shadows that glided about them. He did not take particular note of the swimming globes of colored light that followed above and behind them.
41 He felt these things, but he did not necessarily sniff wilderness in that ever-green relic of Christmas past turning on its bright pedestal in the center of the room -shedding its fireproofed needles and traditions these six days after the fact.
All of these were abstracted and dismissed, inhaled and filed away. . . .
In a few more moments it would be Two Thousand.
Leotanee Lilith) rested in the bow of his arm like a quivering arrow, until he wanted to break her or send her flyinghe knew not where), to crush her into limp- ness, to make that samadhi, myopia, or whatever, go away from her graygreen eyes. At about that time, each time, she would lean against him and whisper some- 59.thing into his ear, something in French, a language he did not yet speak. She followed his inept lead so per- fectly though, that it was not unwarranted that he should feel she could read his mind by pure kinesthesia.
Which made it all the worse then, whenever her breath collared his neck with a moist warmness that spread down under his jacket Jike an invisible infection.
Then he would mutter "C"est vrai" or "d.a.m.n" or both and try to crush her bridal whitenessoverlaid with black webbing), and she would become an arrow once more. But she was dancing with him, which was a de- cided improvement over his last year/her yesterday.
It was almost Two Thousand.
Now . . .
The music broke itself apart and grew back together again as the globes blared daylight. Auld acquaintance, he was reminded, was not a thing to be trifled with.
He almost chuckled then, but the lights went out a moment later and he found himself occupied.
A voice speaking right beside him, beside everyone, stated: "It is now Two Thousand. Happy New Yearl"
He crushed her.
No one cared about Times Square. The crowds in the Square had been watching a relay of the Party on a jerry-screen the size of a football field. Even now the onlookers were being amused by blacklight close-ups of the couples on the dance floor. Perhaps at that very moment, Moore decided, they themselves were the sub- ject of a hilarious sequence being served up before that overflowing Petri dish across the ocean. It was quite likely, considering his partner.
He did not fare if they laughed at him, though. He had come too far to care.
42 "I love you," he said silently.He used mental dittos to presume an answer, and this made him feel some- 60.what happier.) Then the lights fireflied once more and auld acquaintance was remembered. A buzzard com- pounded of a hundred smashed rainbows began falling about the couples; slow-melting spirals of confetti drifted through the lights, dissolving as they descended upon the dancers; furry-edged projections of Chinese dragon Idtes swam overhead, grinning their way through the storm.
They resumed dancing and he asked her the same question he had asked her the year before.
"Can"t we be alone, together, somewhere, just for a moment?"
She smothered a yawn.
"No, I"m bored. I"m going to leave in half an hour."
If voices can be throaty and rich, hers was an opulent neckful. Her throat was golden, to a well-sunned turn.
"Then let"s spend it talking-in one of the little dining rooms."
"Thank you, but I"m not hungry. I must be seen for the next half hour."
Primitive Moore, who had spent most of his life dozing at the back of Civilized Moore"s brain, rose to his haunches then, with a growL Civilized Moore muzzled him though, because he did not wish to spoil things.
"When can I see you again?" he asked grimly.