Let the Fire Fall

by Kate Wilhelm

  “God gave us this boy so that His power could be shown here on Earth. And God said, ‘I shall reveal many things through this boy, and when the time comes, I shall take him to My bosom that man might know that I have put My Mark on him.’ And to this boy God revealed many things: how to restore sight to eyes grown dim; how to put strength in limbs twisted and weak; how to bring well-being to bodies suffering and pained; how to bring peace of mind to man. And when this house, Earth, is in order, then will God return this boy to his home in heaven and man will be ready to meet the strangers and to overcome them….”

  The trouble with charisma, one of the problems of making it understandable, is that on paper it is so flat, while in the flesh it sings and dances and draws and compels. Obie Cox had that charisma. He was insincere, he was crafty, he was a cheat, a liar, a clown according to some of those who had seen through him, but he had charisma. He could say A-B-C and make his audience love it. He could recite nursery rhymes and they would go away thinking they had heard great poetry. He had the gift. He held the audience of two hundred thousand.

  Obie fed them, nourished them, structured their fears and their anxieties for them; he buoyed them to the heavens and then took away the props and replaced them with conditions, First they had to eradicate the menace to mankind: the forces of evil among them, the short hairs who threatened mankind by not believing in the message of the Voice of God. There would then be room enough, food enough, hope enough. But only after Armageddon.

  When Obie ordered them to come forward and declare themselves on the side of The Voice of God and what it stood for, they came in droves. They pushed and fought to get to the stage where each convert was presented with a plastic glass which he filled with water by himself, and which then gave him wine. The miracle of the wine drew more converts. But the first batch started to act strangely. They stared at the wine, looked about as if awakening, and when the time came for them to withdraw backstage to sign up for instructions and for a place in the Listener’s Booths, they edged away, and gradually resumed their seats, or tried to leave the auditorium. They were quiet and well behaved for the most part; unless an eager MM tried to force them backstage, they simply acted bewildered by it all.

  Obie hurriedly started his final prayer, calling on God to manifest Himself through Blake.

  “And God said, ‘Rise ye who would seek delivery from pain and from hurts, and look on him, My Son.’” Obie motioned to the boy, who stared at him dully, half asleep, forgetful of his role for the moment. Obie motioned again and the boy remembered. He stood up and turned to his left and stared at the masses of faces turned toward him. Somewhere behind them a small scuffle broke out when a newly awakened wine sipper woke up and demanded back his credit of ten dollars, his donation to the Church. The boy stared and slowly people in that section of the audience started to gasp and some of them stood up weeping and crying out. The healing was taking place.

  In the dressing room Merton was sipping Scotch and water, a satisfied smile on his face. Like clockwork. there was something with the wine routine that needed looking into, but they could fix that. The rest was as sweet as honey. He dropped his glass suddenly and leaned forward. A figure was floating over Obie’s head. Merton swore long and fluently and watched.

  Blake Daniels sat on air cross-legged and nodded to people in the audience. He looked down at the double standing on the stage with his arms outstretched, and he laughed. Everyone heard him laugh. Obie heard. Obie’s head snapped back. and he stared, turned white, looked like he might faint, but stood there, unable to move, unable to speak. Blake waved to him casually, pointed again to the boy and laughed once more. He floated easily over the heads of the audience, looked down on them, and made several gestures. Some of those in the audience rose from their seats, with looks of astonishment and pleasure on their faces, and joined him in the air. One was a frail white-haired woman who left a wheelchair behind to float. Blake laughed joyously at her and she laughed also. There had been a total silence at first, but now people were starting to react. There were screams and cries: “Take me, too.” “Pick me up.” “Show me how to do it.” “Who are you?” and so on. Some fainted. Blake looked down again and made another motion; more joined him, a youngster of ten or eleven, another white-haired woman, a young man of twenty-five or so, two teen-aged girls. A Militant Millenniumist pulled his stun gun and aimed it. Blake turned toward him shaking his head. The man said later that he felt a flashing pain in his hand, heat, electricity, something that he couldn’t describe, and he dropped the gun. Other guns were dropped. Blake led his floaters from the auditorium then, and they all vanished upward into the sky.

  The auditorium was in a shambles by then. People forgot Obie Cox and his son and tried to clamber out over and under other people for another glimpse of the floaters. The MM’s were pushed aside, as were ushers, and the plainclothesmen. The noise was intolerable. The choir was ordered to sing, but they couldn’t be heard. Backstage a band of youths dressed in black staged a robbery and the entire take was lifted and vanished while the attention of the guards was on the bedlam of the auditorium. The boys floated away with the loot afterward.

  When Obie got back to his dressing room Merton was there. Obie said nothing. He was as white as the robe he wore; his eyes were quite mad. He hit Merton on the side of his face with his fist and his ring cut deeply into the flesh, baring the cheekbone. Merton was staggered and dazed, but he wasn’t out. He lashed back with a knife. Obie kicked him in the groin, and this time Merton fell screaming in pain.

  Obie sat down then and drank Scotch from the bottle. He got very drunk very fast. When Merton could move, Obie kicked him again, and this time Merton lay unmoving for a long time. Obie left him on the floor and returned to Mount Laurel. Merton would have joined the opposition when he got in condition to join anything once more, but he never found them. He went back to the F.B.I. and became their chief informer concerning the Church.

  INTERLUDE THIRTEEN

  A composition found among Winifred Harvey’s clippings, etc., reproduced as it was written

  Chapter Twenty-five

  LORNA said to herself, as she often did, “This is New Hampshire, United States of America. I am sane. I am not hallucinating, not having nightmares, not right now at any rate. There really is an announcer reading from a news card….”

  “‘…manic phase. Electro-shock used to be the specific treatment for this condition, but, of course, one cannot administer to an entire population an electric charge sufficient to jar the brains and restore normalcy.’ That ends the quote from Dr. Teodor Dyerman. Tonight in the following cities riots and fighting go on: St. Augustine, Florida; Miami, Jacksonville, St. Petersburg. In Georgia the cities suffering from pitched battles are Atlanta, Waycross…”

  Lorna stopped watching and listening. She searched the group before the 3D for Blake, but he had wandered outside. Derek and the others were engrossed in the newscast. This was the resistance, Lorna thought scornfully, a bunch of kids with close-cropped hair and sharp scissors. They were all members of the Barbers, all waiting for the latest word from Obie Cox. She knew everything Obie Cox might say. Another miracle for the people, courtesy of the Cox Foundation Laboratories and the Star Child. Only the Star Child was not the Star Child, and he was mad, and the miracles were those of Blake Daniels’ agile mind, and he was alien. She got up presently and wandered outside where Blake was sitting under a tree. It was late spring, 1998, and the weather was hot and dry. It was always dry.

  “The world’s going to hell, isn’t it?” Lorna said joining him.

  “Year 2000 might see few left to predict the new century,” he said. His eyes were distant, however, as if he had been deep in thought, and would return as soon as she left him. The Barbers and Blake told her little because they knew that she would talk again if the Church got her back. She hadn’t realized that during their long trek through the mountains up from North Carolina, but it had become obvious as soon as Blake had joined the Barbers and ha
d become their tactical leader. No one called him that, least of all Blake, but there it was. He had brought them the anti-gravity belts and the disks that powered them and had instructed them in the use of the things. He had planned the fiasco that had retired Obie Cox from public. He was planning something now.

  Once a millionaire, he had depleted his fortunes in the purchase of factories all over the country. He had bought machinery, designed some of it, had Derek and his friends design other components, and he was turning out water converters by the millions, power units, and now the anti-gravity belts and disks. Lorna didn’t know how he meant to use them, or why. If Derek knew he wasn’t talking about it. She suspected that Derek knew. He was haunted-looking, with deep violet circles under his eyes, and the restlessness of one who isn’t sleeping enough.

  “No one sleeps enough any more,” she said.

  “Insomnia is certainly part of it,” Blake said absently, She looked at him suspiciously, afraid he was mocking her, but he wasn’t even noticing her now.

  Lorna sat there only a minute; when Blake didn’t say anything else, she pushed herself from the ground, a thin figure in pants and boy’s shirt, with her hair close to her head. “Is this all we do about it, Blake? Harass them now and then? Annoy the long hairs a bit when we think we can get away with it, then hide again? Is that all? There is civil war going on now. Can’t we do something?”

  Blake smiled at her. He was no longer distant, but was there, close and warm. He reached. up for her hand and pulled her down to his side again. “Lorna, if we can get through the next year and a half, more or less whole, then all this will ease off. Don’t you see that? People have been afraid for so long that if they get past the mystical number 2000, they will breathe again, and be able to look at the sky again, and at each other again, and automatically Obie Cox and his religion will be swept aside. Get past 2000 A.D., spread them out, hold the population….”

  “But can we get through the next eighteen months? How many will be left? You know what it’s like now in the cities. I saw on the 3D news that another twenty-five square miles of winter wheat had burned down last night. Fires were started every five miles, and the army was fought off when they tried to put it out. Why things like that, Blake? What can they hope to gain? They’ll be hungry too.”

  “I don’t think so. In most states they have the legislatures tied up tight; they’ll get their rations, and if the others go hungry… sooner or later they’ll be forced to join the Church and then they’ll eat again.”

  “And you’re willing for that to happen? To have everyone become a member of the Church and worship his god of hate? Is that it? You think salvation for Earth lies with Obie Cox and his Church!”

  “I think it does. I really think it does.”

  “I just don’t understand you at all!” Lorna jumped up again, and this time Blake merely watched her. “You knew what Obie is like, you better than most of us, and yet you sit there and say you think he can save mankind. Why? It’s mad. But of course, you’re not even human so how can you know what I feel, what most of us feel about this!” Blake laughed and was still laughing when she turned and fled back to the house.

  That night he told the Barbers that he was going back to Obie Cox and that he planned to stay with him through to the end.

  “He needs one last miracle,” Blake said slowly, “and I’m afraid that I’m it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lorna asked. She looked to Derek for support, but he nodded at Blake in agreement.

  “There has to be a crucifixion and a resurrection,” Blake said simply. “And that will tie all the loose ends, make a package of it.”

  Late that night when she finally gave up on trying to get to sleep, Lorna walked under the trees where Blake had sat earlier. Derek was there.

  “Why did he go back, Dek? Why?”

  “Would you believe,” he said, but his voice was heavy and only the words were facetious, “that he has to close a circle. That no one else will fit?”

  “But he doesn’t have to! Don’t you think it’s useless?”

  “I think it’s useless. Now quit bugging me, Lorna.”

  “Okay. He’s gone back. Obie will have his sacrifice and he’ll stage the resurrection.” She was silent for several minutes and then said quietly, “We couldn’t have had children. Alien and human….”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  OBIE dreamed that Blake drifted in through his bedroom window, riding moonbeams down from the sky to land very gently on a leather chair near the bed.

  Obie dreamed that Blake said, “I’ve come home, Brer Cox. The prodigal son is home again.”

  Obie dreamed that he tried to rise, tried to shout for help, tried to reach the gun that he kept on the bedside table. All he could do, in his dream, was stare terrified at the blond monster bathed in moonlight. His terror grew, and it was a crushing weight on his chest; it paralyzed him completely. He had to close his eyes, had to, had to… They closed. In a minute or two he awakened completely, sat straight up, clammy and shivering, and looked about wildly. No one was in the room with him. Of course.

  When Obie entered the sun porch where he breakfasted every day, he thought at first that Billy was there reading the morning fax, waiting for him to talk to him. He was sleepy, the sunlight was glaring, he wanted it to be Billy there waiting for him. The fax was lowered and it was Blake, smiling at him.

  “I’m ready to pick up where we left off, Obie,” he said. “I want to take my place at your side again.”

  Obie didn’t believe him at first, probably didn’t believe him at all ever, but gradually he came to act as if he did. The riots continued, worsened as the weather changed and winter came, and the food shortage began to be felt more and more. To add to the miseries promised by the winter weather there was a world-wide shortage of fuel Radiation leaks had forced the closing of many of the world’s reactors, and there wasn’t enough coal and oil to replace them. Rationing became tighter. Christmas arrived in a bleak season of little work, little money, long lines of unemployed and hungry men ready to burn down the city if they were refused jobs. They were refused jobs because the jobs were nonexistent, and they tried to burn down the cities. Whole neighborhoods vanished under the torch, miles of business districts became charred ruins. There were very few deaths even when the long hairs and the short hairs clashed; they all seemed more intent on burning down the material wealth of the country.

  Obie was willing for Blake to be on camera with him, but he refused to be with him at other times. Billy was the emissary who delivered messages back and forth. Blake didn’t ask permission to use the lab, nor did he produce any new invention or make any discoveries. He sat on the stage with Obie and throughout the world people wrote in to say they had been cured of this and that by his presence. When Obie started to talk about the promise of God to recall his son to his bosom he doubled the guards about Blake, who smiled and said nothing. Spring came.

  The Star Child, Johnny, was pronounced cured, or improved as much as was possible. Obie couldn’t stand to be with the boy, who looked at him haughtily and ordered the immediate recognition from the people of Earth that was his due. Dr. Mueller hovered in the background anxiously and seemed pleased with the product of his long labors.

  “Keep him under lock and key,” Obie said and left. Johnny stared after him; he called on all the powers he knew to dwell within himself, called on his people to descend and destroy Earth. Obie continued to move away, untouched by the powers that were hurled against him, and Johnny decided that Obie was a man protected by a very powerful god. He would need more time to ponder this.

  Blake was kept locked up much of the time, also, but he accepted it without comment, or even without notice, it appeared. When he was permitted to walk about the grounds, he was followed by half a dozen men, some stationed quite close to him, others overlooking the entire group from more distant vantage points. Spring was cold and windy, and without promise of a letup in the drought that was plaguing Ear
th.

  Billy was uneasy about Blake’s presence, as were the others who had known him in the past. Often Obie, Dee Dee, Billy, and Wanda met to discuss his reappearance, and they never came to a satisfactory conclusion about why he had come back. Or why he was suddenly so docile.

  “Merton,” Billy said, more than once, “would have had him killed on sight, put in deep freeze until the right time, then brought him out for the climax,”

  “Yeah, I know that,” Obie said.

  He dropped it there. They knew that he wouldn’t have Blake killed, yet, and that no one else in the room would have him killed. No one said this, however.

  “Have you asked him if he’d take money and just get lost?” Wanda asked in the silence that followed.

  Obie stared malevolently at her without bothering to answer.

  “How do you know he won’t if you don’t ask?” she said peevishly. Blake’s presence was more upsetting than his disappearance ever had been. “If only he wouldn’t look at me like he does,” she muttered, more peevishly.

  “What I want to know is why he came back,” Billy said angrily. “He didn’t have to. He managed to stay hidden well enough when that was what he wanted.”

  “Knock it off, for chrissakes!” Dee Dee said. “I am so tired of listening to all of you. Why the hell don’t you ask him why he came back? Have you thought of that?”

  Obie looked at her as if she had suggested that he walk into a nest of rattlers to see if they had fangs. But Billy said, “Have you, Obie? Not through me you haven’t.”

  So Blake was sent for, and he entered the room with a faint smile on his face. “Reunion,” he said. “Old home week, and all that.”