Firechild

by Jack Williamson

  He felt her fear before he began to understand the words. Trembling with it, he tumbled out of bed. A sleepy sanity tried to call him back. He’s been under too much stress too long. Overtired from the long drive home, his mind was playing games. The smoke alarms weren’t shrieking. All the shocks of Enfield left far behind, he was safe at last in his own house.

  But her terror overwhelmed that voice of sanity. Certain that the house was somehow about to burn, he was already running for the back door. In pajamas, he dashed out across the porch and into the backyard, where Midge, with no green thumb, had tried with small success to start new roses.

  Lit by a high half moon and the first gray glow of dawn, the yard was clotted with weeds from months of neglect, but he caught the scent of a few blooms somehow surviving. A cricket, chirping too cheerily, recalled that night the highway cop had kept him out of Enfield.

  The cool air revived his sanity. He caught no scent of smoke. There was no fire. Perhaps the old house itself had gotten on his nerves. Too many tormented memories of Midge had risen beside all the haunting riddles of the pink thing. This had to be nothing more than his own private case of what the media people had begun to call genetic shock.

  He shrugged and started back inside. Whatever had awakened him, he still felt too jittery to go back to bed. He wanted another shot of Cutty Sark, but this was no time for a drink. Not with another long day ahead, paying what bills he could cover, pleading with the banker, trying to pick up his practice.

  For now, what he needed was coffee to steady his nerves, but he couldn’t help dreading the empty kitchen and all its reminders of Midge. He would get his clothes on and drive out to the truck stop for coffee and some human company and maybe ham and—

  A heavy crash shook the ground beneath his bare feet.

  He had time to see yellow fire exploding out of doors and windows before a hot fist smashed him back into Midge’s roses. Dimly, he felt blistering heat. He heard roaring flames and sirens shrieking. Men were shouting, somewhere far away. Cold water splashed him. A stretcher slid beneath him. The ambulance was soon swaying under him. He closed his eyes again, feeling a dazed satisfaction that the dream of Alphamega had to be something more than just a dream. Somehow, though nobody was going to believe anything he tried to say about it, she had saved his life.

  “Dr. Belcraft!” A bright new voice, prodding at him in the emergency room. “Dr. Belcraft! Can you speak?”

  A new doctor, here perhaps to replace him on the hospital staff. He roused himself to answer clinical queries and ask groggy questions of his own.

  “You’re a lucky man, sir!” More booming good cheer than he was in the mood for. “The blast knocked you out, but we’ve found nothing that looks permanent. A few blisters and contusions, but no bones broken. No actual burns. We’re admitting you for observation, but I don’t think you inhaled any smoke. We’ll have you out in a day or so.”

  “What happened?”

  “A gas explosion, the firemen think. Gas trapped in your basement, if you hadn’t got out of the house—”

  That afternoon he still felt weak and shaky, but the nurses raised the head of his bed and let visitors in to see him. Miss Hearn, first, looking pale and strained with more emotion than he had expected. Trying not to sob, she told him not to worry about his office rent or his note past due at the bank or even her back pay.

  “Just get well! Thank God that you’re alive. Just put your trust in Him, and everything will be okay.”

  Reminded of General Clegg and the hard fist of God, he felt more thankful to Alphamega.

  Police detectives came in to stand by the bed, asking questions. What had taken him out of town, with no notice at all? Why had he stayed so long? Why hadn’t he called home? Had he exposed himself to the Enfield plague? What about his medical practice? Hadn’t his unexplained absence put it in danger?

  He tried to answer reasonably, but they seemed hard to satisfy.

  About the explosion, had he smelled gas or noticed anything unusual when he entered the house? Had he used any gas appliance after he came in? Had he touched a switch that might have made a spark? Or struck a match, perhaps to light a cigarette?

  “I didn’t smell gas,” he told him. “I hadn’t turned anything on. I don’t smoke. I didn’t strike a match. I’d been in bed for hours. Something woke me—I don’t know what. I just had run out of the house before the blast knocked me out. I can’t explain anything.”

  “There are circumstances that have to be cleared up.” Both men moved closer, more intent. “What was it that got you out of the house? Before daybreak?”

  “I can’t explain.” Which was very true. “I did have a crazy dream. Call it a nightmare. It left me trembling with panic. I ran outside before I was really awake.”

  “You heard nothing? No prowler?”

  He shook his head.

  “Thank you, Doctor.” They frowned at each other and looked sharply back at him. “We’ll want to talk to you again.”

  Another visitor came that evening. Billy Higgs, the lawyer-friend who had advised him on the office lease and tried to persuade Midge to let him have another chance and agreed to handle the divorce when she stood fast. He came in grinning.

  “Hiya, Doc. I tried to smuggle in a beer, but the nurses took it away. They say you’ll likely get out in the morning.”

  “I hope.”

  “Listen, Doc.” Leaning over the bed, Billy forgot the grin and dropped his voice. “I came out to warn you. Better watch what you say to the cops or the insurance people or anybody else. Doc, I’m afraid you’re going to need legal help.”

  “Huh?” He felt as if another blast had struck him. “Why?”

  “Awkward-looking circumstances.” Billy looked at the door. “Whatever happened, Doc, I’m afraid you’re going to be in trouble.”

  “I’ve been in trouble,” he muttered. “Trouble enough.”

  “I don’t want to know about that. Not any more than you want to tell me. Or more than I may need in your defense. But listen, Doc. The firemen and the cops have turned up bad news for you.”

  “I wondered why they had so many questions.”

  Billy waited, listening to heels tapping down the corridor. The room seemed suddenly too hot, and he hated its faint antiseptic odors. When the heels were gone, Billy continued.

  “Doc, here’s your problem.” A searching squint into his face. “The fire marshal found an open gas tap in your basement, and what was left of what he says was an ignition device. The cops believe the explosion was deliberately triggered.”

  “You mean—you mean somebody tried to kill me?”

  “That could be our case.” Billy shook his head. “But up to now, their only suspect is you.”

  “Me?” A breathtaken gasp. “Billy, I didn’t—”

  “I know you didn’t, Doc. But we may have to prove it. It looks odd to the cops that you just happened to be out of the house when it just happened to blow up, at that time of night. You’re going to need a pretty solid reason.”

  “I had a reason.” He lay back against the pillows, feeling sick. “But it’s one no cop would believe. Or even you—”

  “Sorry, Doc.” Billy stepped back with an apologetic grin. “A hell of a thing to be telling you here, but I thought I ought to warn you. Get some sleep. If you can. But think about it. I’ll drop by in the morning.”

  Billy left. He thought about it half the night, till the nurse made him submit to a shot.

  Asleep at last, he dreamed again of Alphamega.

  24

  The Badness

  She hadn’t cried when she knew the dear Vic must leave her, because that was before she had learned to grow eyes that could cry. She felt the hot tears now when that old sadness came again. Lying under the hot iron shell of the old carretilla, she went on remembering. Afraid to move, because the danger-feel still as thick around her now as it had been that night in the lab, she had nothing else to do.

  She had been all alone
in the EnGene lab when daylight came. The crimson mist still stained everything around her, and she shivered when she heard a security man coming through the corridors, hard heels clicking on the floor. He brought her no security. Even through the walls, she felt the redness like a cloud around him. She lay trembling till his heels clicked away.

  The dear Vic came back at last, but even his tired-eyed smile failed to clear the danger haze. He slipped quietly through the door and stopped to lock it before he came in to take her in his hand.

  “Baby, it’s now.” His voice was hushed and tight. “Now or never. We’ve got to say good-bye.”

  She wanted to beg him not to die, but she had no words.

  “A bad time for both of us.” He held her to his beard-stubbled face. “I’ve had hard choices. Now they’re made. The staff will soon be coming in. I’ve got things ready for them. All that’s left is to do my best for you.”

  She wrapped herself around his finger.

  “Sorry, baby.” He held her away to look at her, and she saw the shine of his eyes. “An ugly time for you. People will be dying. Maybe fighting one another as long as they can move. Wooden things will be crumbling into dust. I guess there’ll be explosions. Likely fire. Bombs, I imagine, dropped out of the sky. The building probably wrecked. You’ll have to scramble to keep yourself alive, but I think you have a sense for trouble. You’ve got—”

  His voice was gone, and he held her back to his face.

  “I think—I hope you’ve got a chance.”

  He carried her outside, across a yard where big machines made strange dark shapes. Kneeling beside a row of low-blooming, rich-scented plants that grew inside a tall steel fence, he looked quickly behind him and leaned to put her down among them. She hung tighter to his finger.

  “A bad time, baby.” He raised her back to his lips, and she felt them tremble to his whisper. “But it just has to be. Hide yourself well. Stay alive—stay alive for me!”

  She wanted to promise, but still she had no voice. He pushed her gently off his finger and left her there. The redness seemed fainter, and she wanted to believe no badness could come. Vic was surely strong enough to stop it.

  The sun had risen. The air was warm and very still, sweet from the blooms. She saw small, quick things moving in the air above her, making sweet, bright sounds. She knew they must be the birds she had never seen. When more machines came into the yard, she crept farther among them into the plants and lay there hoping for goodness.

  No bombs fell out of the sky, but very suddenly the badness came. Red danger hazed everything around her. Men ran out of the lab, yelling ugly words. Some of them fell to the ground. A few scrambled into machines that roared and crashed into walls. One machine struck the fence near where she was. It stopped moving, the man in it dead. She crawled under it for a safer hiding place.

  The air quivered to a great hooting signal she had never heard. Police cars came screeching outside the fence. Men yelled with great metal voices. The bodies on the ground began to shine with a pale gray light. Garments crumbled and then the gray flesh and slowly the bones, falling into shining dust. The strange shine spread, dissolving even the plants where she was trying to hide.

  It tingled when it touched her skin, but she knew it couldn’t really hurt her because Vic had made her different from anything else alive. Knowing that, knowing she was not like anything, not even like the dear Vic, she felt terribly small, terribly alone. Nothing else anywhere was shaped like her, nothing was kin to her.

  In her sad remembrance, the ground shook again. Hot yellow fire lifted the roof of the lab and pushed out walls and stung her skin. Torn metal and broken concrete came crashing down around her. The dead machine above her rocked when something struck it, and she crawled deeper under it, hiding from the heat.

  More explosions began shaking everything. Fire snapped and crackled and roared in the ruin of the lab. Heavier machines rumbled around her. Men kept screaming. Guns thundered. Great jets of water hissed above her, but they didn’t stop the fire. The wrecked machine over her began to burn above her. She crawled away from it, along the bottom of the fence. The machine boomed behind her, exploding into a great ball of hungry fire.

  The heat grew very bad, until she learned to burrow under the dust. Squirming deep enough to escape it, she had to wait a long time. Night was near before the surface dust was cool enough to let her emerge.

  The fire was gone. Broken walls were black from it. Dark ash and gray dust lay over wreckage all around her, and the sun was setting upon a dreadful stillness. She heard loud machines hammering the air far away, but no sound was near. No voice spoke. No birds sang. The lab was dead.

  And Vic.

  Vic was dead. Without him, crawling through the hot dust in that dead stillness, she felt weak and empty and helpless. If he were gone, nobody in all the world would ever love her. Nobody anywhere could ever know what she knew, or feel what she felt, or think what she thought. Nothing would ever be like her, even near enough to care whether she lived or died. There was nobody to listen, even if she had been able to speak.

  All that night she lay alone in the dust, longing for Vic. When the sun rose again, she crept back into the lab, searching for anything left of him, hoping to find why he had to die and why he wanted her to stay alive. All she found was dismal ruin. Ashes. Dust. A sad tangle of burned iron and broken masonry. Nothing to make her want to live—till she heard a car-machine and felt the man who drove it.

  Vic!

  Alive! That was what she thought for one happy instant, till she knew it couldn’t be. The dear Vic was sadly and forever dead. Yet the man in the car shone like Vic, bright with kindness, luminous with the same gift for love. She heard the car stop. Eagerly, she crawled to meet the sound.

  The car door clunked. She heard his feet, and the scraps of torn metal clattering under them. She hurried toward him, and stopped when she saw how different he was. He was taller than Vic. His skin was darker and his hair was thicker. He wore no glasses. Yet still he felt like Vic, and suddenly she knew he must be Sax.

  Saxon. The brother Vic had told her about, one long night when they had been alone together in the lab and he was trying to tell her what he was, because he wanted to help her understand what he hoped she would be. That was back before she even knew what a brother was. He must have sensed her trouble understanding, because he stopped to explain about the life that came from nature and the life like hers that had to be engineered.

  That was hard for her to grasp, but she had understood enough to be saddened again, knowing she would never have a brother like Vic’s human brother, Sax, to teach her and help her and defend her. Vic had helped her bear the sadness while he was with her in the lab, but now—

  The dark shock of grief dazed her again, till she saw Sax coming on through the ruin. Closer, he felt more and more like Vic, and that good feeling lit a spark of hope in her. She moved on toward him. He had seen her. He stopped to speak. His voice felt as warm and kind as Vic’s. He lifted her in his hand the way Vic had done. She felt the glow of love beginning in him, reflecting her own.

  He carried her out of the burning dust and took her into his car. He sheltered her from the Dusek who stopped them at the bridge and shrank away from her with no spark of love at all. Sax gave her water and food and an echo to her love that made her want to keep on living. He kept her safe through another night, till day came again, dreadful with the redness of danger. When she knew she must leave him, he opened the door to let her escape.

  Hiding, wandering alone with nowhere to go, she went into the water because she was thirsty. Floating in it, letting it carry her farther from the dust and the danger, she found Panchito. Love had been dead in him when she came upon him lying flat to drink from the little river.

  Yet she felt no redness in the air around him, and she was not afraid. Lonely and hungry, she leaped to kiss his chin. When he saw her creeping out of the water, he had no fear of her. He took her in his hand, and a bright spark was b
orn.

  Panchito learned to love her, nearly as tenderly as Vic. He sheltered her and found food and taught her all he could, but now he, too, was gone. Once more, lying here under the sun-hot shell of the old carretilla with the redness dimming everything around her, she had been left all alone.

  Yet she must not die. For the dear Vic’s sake, she must stay alive. She must learn what he had shaped her to do. She must get it done. If Panchito had come to love her, there might be love from others. Others, too, might teach and help her. If she could only escape the hunters in the sky and stay alive to seek more good people, they might be open to her love.

  Night was a long time coming, but at last the old iron cooled and the beat of the choppers seemed farther away. She came out in the dusk to fill her lungs with fresher air, but still the warning redness hazed everything. Southward, where the city had been, it seemed thicker. Low in the north, the darkening sky looked almost clear. That was the way she must go.

  First she went back to empty house. The gringos had broken doors, but they hadn’t harmed the kitchen. Missing Panchito, she found the food he had ready for trouble, parched maiz and frijoles fritos wrapped in cold tortillas. She ate all she could and stuffed what was left into a plastic bag.

  Missing Panchito to guard her and cheer her, to teach her what he could and carry her when she needed to be carried, “she left the house in the red-dyed dark, walking north. Her sense for danger helped. It made a dull crimson glow all across the south, and it ringed the high-sailing choppers with small red halos, yet it couldn’t reveal smaller things waiting to hurt her. Though it let her see the hostility and hatred in living minds, it didn’t show the sticks that tried to trip her or the rocks that bruised and cut her naked feet.

  Many times she stumbled and fell. Most of the night was gone, and she was scratched and battered and very tired before she came to the fence. It was a tall barbed-wire barrier, just beyond a new road cut through the empty pastures inside it. The wires glowed red because they were electric and meant to kill.