A Torrent of Faces by James Blish & Norman L. Knight

Author:James Blish & Norman L. Knight [Blish, James & Knight, Norman L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1967-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

It was, in fact, the main reason why Fongaváro was at the moment hiding in one of the deepest service tunnels of Gitler, feeling like a hunted man. He was not exactly hunted, yet, though he was looking forward to it. Instead, he was stalking a Rest Stop, just for the practice, since again he did not expect that there would be anyone in it, yet.

Fongaváro was classified by UNOC as a communications system specialist, and hence, like Jothen, was one of those most fortunate of all citizens, a man with a job. But there the resemblance ended. He looked rather more like an orang-utan, a stocky, muscular man with long arms and large hands. In his native city—Tananarive, in Madagascar—he probably would have attracted no attention; but in these dim, empty corridors he was a startling, perhaps even a fearsome, figure.

Of this he was well aware. More—he was counting upon it.

If the usual Jones was as crazy as Jothen took them all to be—which was doubtful—then in this, too, Fongaváro was a specialist. A gr£at part of his life had been spent in the labyrinthine service tunnels between the walls and under the floors of Tananarive, and he was thoroughly suited for it; in an earlier age he might have been a spelunker. Beyond the average UNOC citizen’s natural mild case of agoraphobia, he actively enjoyed living at the bottom of a hole. The pleasure had been completely unconscious, simply because until very recently nothing had ever suggested any other way of living to him; he had been as adjusted as a mole…

Then had come the journey to the Jones Convention—his first venture outside his own city, his first sight of the Whole blue void of the sky, his first projection into nothingness on a jet plane, his first direct encounter with the boundless expanses of the sea and of the World Forest. Until it happened he had thought of the trip only as a sort of longer, duller version of a tubeways jaunt from one Madagascan village to another. He had, of course, known that he would have to fly part of the way to Gitler, but he had never dreamed that it would be like that.

He spent the whole air trip falling, falling helplessly out of his chair, desperately nauseated, struggling not to look out the window, feeling stifled and trapped by his harness, fighting against the pills and injections they tried (successfully once or twice) to give him—and, above all, raging at how his own body, his own ignorance, his own gullibility, his own manhood had betrayed him.

The ordeal had been terrifying beyond belief—but worse than that, it had been humiliating…totally humiliating. He had no intention of ever facing it again.

The early recall of the Joneses startled him a little, but did not dismay him. He had already known precisely what he was going to do, as soon as he had found that there was no official place in Gitler for him (which he had also expected).

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