Let the Fire Fall

by Kate Wilhelm

  O’Brien: Please remember, Joe, that Dr. Bevins said theories. None of this has been proven, and his own tests have been almost completely invalidated by the revelation that some of the subjects he used in the experiments were either at the time of the experiments, or shortly afterward, members of the Voice of God Church. One wonders about their observations, how much objectivity they showed, and so on.

  Joe: Is that right, Dr. Bevins?

  Bevins: Not just like that, Joe. That’s coloring it a bit. Now the theories—

  O’Brien: What do you mean, I colored it. Were some of the subjects members?

  Bevins: Let me get on with—

  Joe: Why not answer the question first? Were they?

  Bevins: In any sample of the population you will find that a certain percent of those being tested belong to certain religious organizations….

  Joe: Were they members of the Voice of God Church?

  Bevins: Some of them later joined. Now about the—

  Joe: When did they join? How many of them joined?

  Bevins: Are you more interested in the conversion of a few students or in the theories proposed by eminent scientists to account for the curious effects of the listener’s Booths on those who visit them?

  Joe: Were the theories advanced on the basis of information garnered from any of the students who were members of the Voice of God Church? Just yes or no, if you will, Doctor. It’s a simple question.

  Bevins: Well, yes, but to explain—

  Joe: Wouldn’t you say that that fact invalidates whatever theories you might—

  Bevins: (Crackle, crackle) it! There’s no other way to investigate the (crackle crackle) Booths! A certain number of the investigators always become converted!

  O’Brien: You see, Joe, it all goes back to the innate need of man to unburden himself and then to crone for his transgressions. Unfortunately, with listener’s Booths only the first half of that need is satisfied….

  Bevins: Wait a minute! Have you gone to one of the booths, Bishop O’Brien?

  O’Brien: Of course not!

  Bevins: Well, I have, and I know that some sort of gas is used there, or some subliminal suggestion to return that is almost too strong to resist….

  Joe: You want to go bock, Dr. Bevins?

  Bevins: (Crackle, crackle, crackle) I do! But I’m able to resist it because I can understand….

  Joe: I see, Dr. Bevins. Wouldn’t you say, Bishop O’Brien, that a new look should be given to the work that has been done by the doctor and his students….

  Chapter Seventeen

  BLAKE-TEAGUE arrived in Covington by special Church plane in October. The countryside was dull brown. The leaves had fallen, brittle and lifeless, ahead of season for lack of water. Only at the temple was the grass still green, the ornamental trees still luxurious-looking, and chrysanthemums in full bloom. The grounds with the precisely measured terraces, the geometry of hundreds of white marble steps, the shrubs, bushes, flowers arranged mathematically to perfection looked like a postcard. The plane came straight down so that the temple grew from a tiny glare of white to a structure that filled the horizon when the plane finally touched ground. There were seventy-five initiates aboard, some of them Teague’s age, some younger, some much older. All of them were awed. The initiates were lined up and led to the dorm where the new arrivals were kept until the lengthy testing program was concluded.

  Blake-Teague knew that this would be the tricky part of it. As the weeding-out process advanced and the numbers were lessened, the chances of successfuly maintaining his masquerade diminished. He had very carefully established James Teague as a registered person with the data bank; he would pass a routine retina check, but not a fingerprint check, so if they went too far back, Blake Daniels would fall out in their laps. He muttered and mumbled and hoped they wouldn’t get that thorough with anyone as subordinate as he was. He counted on their being less suspicious here in the inner sanctum than they were at the ship entrance. He knew that he came highly recommended. He passed their IQ tests, no higher than 100, and the aptitude tests that proved he was fit to farm and run machinery but had no aptitude for any of the arts or sciences. His personality profile would show a man ready to bully or to submit to bullying. And throughout it all, he showed a streak now and then of a psychopathic personality that was ready to emerge at any time. At the end of the testing period he was given an assignment, and there was no time for him to escape and visit the ship before he was sent from the temple. As an accepted member now, he would be allowed to make the pilgrimage back whenever he was free to do so.

  The day that James Teague-Blake Daniels left the temple to fulfill his first task for the Church, Winifred Harvey was taken to the headquarters building on Mount Laurel. Winifred looked about curiously as she deplaned. There was the airstrip, and the control building at the side of it, completely encircled by magnificent hardwood trees: brick red and brown oaks, blazing maples, yellow birches. The plateau on the side of the mountain had one road leading from it, a narrow unpaved road that forked with one branch leading downward through the forest, the other part winding upward toward the summit. Along the road scarlet sassafras trees and shiny green honeysuckle and mountain laurel made a dense mass that appeared impenetrable. It was very lovely, and very lonely-looking.

  Obie met her personally. “Dr. Harvey, it is nice to see you again. It’s many, many years since our first meeting.”

  “We never met, Obie Cox, and you know it. You simply eavesdropped on me and Matt when you had the chance.”

  Obie smiled genially and led her inside the colonial house. “I think you’ll find our accommodations adequate, Doctor. If you desire anything, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We wish you to be entirely comfortable during your visit.”

  “You realize that I plan to charge you with kidnapping,” Winifred said pleasantly, following Obie into a long, dim, cool room that had couches and comfortable chairs in it. There were two men in the room. They both stood when she entered.

  “Dr. Harvey, may I present my colleagues, Mr. Merton and Dr. Mueller.”

  “Robbie Mueller!” Winifred ignored the outstretched hand of the other psychiatrist. She looked him up and down. “So this is what happened to you? I wondered. Deacon in charge of the brainwashing division?”

  Rober Mueller had been her pupil twenty years ago, a brilliant, exciting, original intellect, mixed with emotional immaturity that had been a constant source of irritation. He was forty, good-looking now, and poised, where he had been rawboned and gauche, fresh from the back country of Minnesota, awkward and unsure of his manners, ignorant of the niceties of what to order in restaurants, what the different drinks contained, what to wear, how to comb his hair. None of that showed now.

  “Dr. Harvey, a pleasure,” he murmured at her. She grinned at him suddenly, and laughed aloud when a flush spread across his ,cheeks and his face suddenly looked heavy, and he was very out of place in the expensively furnished room of antiques.

  Winifred turned to Obie and said, “Okay, you can get from me what you want, but you’ll be disappointed. I don’t know from nothing.”

  “We’ll see,” the third man said then. Merton, he’d been introduced as Mr. Merton. Winifred studied him briefly. He was the organizer here, she decided quickly. This was his baby.

  “Winifred…. May I?” Robbie Mueller looked at her and waited for her shrug before he continued. “You do know certain things that we need to know. I won’t harm you. I think you know that I can find out what we want without doing you any damage at all, but if you are recalcitrant, then there are things I can do to you…. We really do want your cooperation.”

  She simply waited.

  “One, Blake Daniels. We want to find him. And Derek too. We know about Matt and Lisa, that you put them to sleep, but we’d like to know for how long and what their official numbers are so that we can check what you tell us.”

  “One,” she said, “I don’t know. Two, I don’t know. Three, ten years. Four, I
don’t know. Okay? Now I can go?”

  So they took her to the hospital on the grounds and Robbie Mueller apologized as he administered the injection personally, and after several days, or weeks, she never did find out how long it was, she woke up is a wide, luxuriant bed, to see soft cream-colored drapes rippling in the breeze dimming the sunlight, and a slender girl sitting by the bed watching her anxiously. The girl had large brown eyes that were like the eyes of a fawn, Winifred thought as she struggled to wake up completely. The girl arose and came to her. “Would you like to get up now?” she asked. “May I help you?”

  Winifred found that she needed help. A tray was brought in and she had coffee, the first she’d had in months, and a cigarette with good tobacco, and when she finished with both, there was food, and a bath and fresh clothing. The girl smiled charmingly when she asked what day it was. When Winifred was dressed once more the girl led her from the room to an office where Mueller was waiting for her.

  He looked tired, Winifred thought, and she smiled. It was harder on the one doing it than the one to whom it was done. “And so?” she prompted when he hesitated.

  “You know,” he said. “You know what you had to tell us. So we keep looking.” He toyed with a pen. “We can’t let you go, you know.”

  “I suspected,” she said dryly.

  “We would like to enlist your help,” Robbie said after another pause. “You talked about Johnny, the Star Child, you know. I was curious about how you felt about him. About your relationship with him.”

  “Robbie, come out with it. What do you want?”

  “You have a choice. You can voluntarily help us with Johnny. Or you can enter the hospital as a patient.” He said it fast, glanced about guiltily, and put a finger to his lips. “I know from what you told me that you are very fond of him, and that he trusts you implicitly. Probably you are the only person he does trust. He’s coming here soon, and I believe it would be good for him to find you here ready to greet him, make him feel at home.”

  Winifred remained silent thinking furiously. Robbie was feeling pangs of guilt. Why? What had he done? Or was this it? Did they know that it was she who had told Johnny, falsely, that he was the Star Child, the alien? Did it matter? She put a hand to her forehead and Robbie leaned forward.

  “Are you ill? Put your head down….”

  She took the out he offered and in a few moments was being led from the office by the solicitous girl, and was taken back to her room where she lay down and tried to decide what she should do. Not that, she had much choice actually, and wasn’t this what she had counted on when she realized Obie’s men were closing in on her? But why was Robbie Mueller looking guilty as hell about it? What was the catch? She was tired then, but sleep eluded her, and as she drifted half awake, half asleep, she knew the answer. This was a reprieve only. As soon as they had Johnny ensconced and feeling safe through her efforts, then she would be… sent to the hospital, whatever it was that they planned for her. The thought resolved her indecision and she fell asleep. The next day she accepted the offer and started to plot her escape.

  No one could make it down the mountain through the forests, this was accepted as true, perhaps was true. No one lived in the forests, and there was wild life there: bears, snakes, wild boars. There were bogs of quicksand, but more than that, there was no food, no trail, no way to find civilization once more if one became lost in the gloomy depths. They all believed it, and acted on their belief. There were no men posted to keep anyone out of the forests. The road that wound back down the mountain was heavily guarded, with electronic monitoring equipment spaced along its entire length. Winifred didn’t press the point but she did wonder how they knew that no one could make it out through the woods. Or was it a myth, like the myth told to children that the floor around the bed was covered with monsters that would grab them if they didn’t stay under the covers. That one usually worked too. Were the monsters now in the woods? She found it a curious thought, one that she reflected on at length.

  Or, and it seemed more probable that this was the real reason for the lack of concern about the forests, were all the towns on the edges of the forest in the hands of the faithful? If that were so, then there was no escape possible. It made her angry to think of the smirks on their faces: after pushing through the woods for weeks, sore, muddy, gaunt, to be picked up in the first town and brought back, exhibited as proof of the simple words: no escape.

  Her duties were light. She was not allowed inside the hospital at all, but occasionally she was consulted by Robbie Mueller, and it was he who passed on the instructions to her from Obie, or more likely, Merton. Winifred got the impression more and more strongly that it was Merton who was running the show, and another curious fact that she stored for future consideration was that none of the people around her seemed to realize this.

  Her instructions were simple. She was to write a full report of the years she had spent with the Star Child. Period. Busy work? She wasn’t sure. Silently she started it.

  In his office in the same building where Winifred labored over the long account of her daily life with Johnny, Obie was kicking his desk. “God damn it! We’ve gotta get him through a miracle!”

  Merton slouched lazily, contemplating his fingers. “You have any idea of the security precautions they have set up there?”

  “Okay, okay. I believe you. So what? Think, dammit, think!”

  Billy was there also, panting, perspiring in the middle of January, uneasy as usual about anything that threatened to shake the boat that he thought of as eternally on the verge of sinking. He puffed and said, “Obie, be reasonable. He can make his own demands, and if they turn him down, we can send in a squadron for him. Like we planned in the beginning.”

  “In the beginning that seemed good enough,” Obie said. He was growing thick around the middle, and his face was getting heavy in the jowls. His neck had grown an inch in the past two years. He was forty, and feeling depressed about it, wanting things to come to a head now, while he was still in command. He looked on the years ahead as going downhill only; after forty there was nothing but old age to look forward to, and he wanted this to be finished, this year. He didn’t want to have to keep fighting for the Church until he was a tottering old fool like Everett. He kept Everett around in order to look at him from time to time, firming his resolve each time he studied the senile fool. Not to him. That wasn’t going to happen to him!

  He paced for several minutes in the silence of the room, then he turned to Merton and said, “We’ve got almost six months to get something organized. You got the men with brains, let them come up with something. I want to lift him with such a blaze of glory that it will set the whole world on fire. You get that for me.”

  Merton pushed himself up from the chair. “Sure, Obie, I see the point, and I think it’s a good one, but the execution? I just don’t know.”

  In upper New York State Johnny stared at Lenny Mallard. Lenny said, for the third time, “You are going to address them, Johnny. We are going to put a stop to all the rumors now.” Lenny was smiling.

  Johnny hadn’t been afraid of anyone for a long time, not since his shining man in the sky first nodded and smiled at him, but he felt a chill then. Lenny didn’t believe in him. “I won’t do it, Mr. Mallard,” Johnny said stubbornly, for the third time also.

  They were in Lenny’s office, where he had turned off the recorder for this interview. Lenny smiled more broadly and stood up. He came around his desk and put his arm about Johnny’s shoulder companionably. “Son, you know and I know that all this is a frost. Right? If you could kill, I’d be dead now. Let me tell you something, Johnny. Ever since man began to talk, he’s been at war with other men. Fact, They fought over land, over trade routes, over insults, over game…. You name it, it’s been fought for. But none of the wars ever fought for all these things was half as bloody as war over religion. If it got to be a religious war, there was nothing either side could do that was so bad it gave anyone insomnia.

  “As
soon as you convince yourself that you’re fighting God’s war, anything goes. Follow me, so far?” Johnny nodded. “Good. Now, religion’s a funny thing, Johnny. It’s an idea in the head of men. That’s all. If you’re fighting a war for a river, once you defeat the enemy you can seize control of the river and the war’s over. Not with ideas. The only way that sort of a war can be ended really is through the eradication of the idea wherever it exists and that means the eradication of the enemy, and the complete destruction of all the writings that include the idea. Simple?” Again Johnny nodded.