Let the Fire Fall Read online

  Derek was bitterly cold. The mist here at the river was freezing, coating everything with dirty ice. Blake left him, felt around one of the lower boards of the warehouse, withdrew a thin pencil-shaped object. He put it to his lips and blew once, then put it in his pocket. He motioned to Derek to follow him and went down to the edge of the pier and waited. After a moment there was a stir in the black water. A homing device, Derek realized. He had an ultra-sonic homing device to bring his boat to him when he whistled. The craft broke through the water and floated easily alongside the pier. It was shaped generally like a ground effect car, circular, disklike, but it was black and featureless. Blake ran his hand over the thing and a hatch opened. He went inside with Derek following. A few seconds later they were sinking down into the water again.

  “We’ll take off from the bay,” Blake said. “Less risky there.”

  Derek was warming up now and he studied the interior of the craft with interest. Blake had modified it until all traces of the original vehicle had been erased. It was roomy inside, and warm, with a simple-looking dash-control board that housed a four-inch-square screen which now was showing the river and its banks in a continuous sweep. The strangeness Derek felt for this Blake persisted and he remained silent. Blake also was silent, giving his attention to the screen and the controls he operated. They were in the bay. There were National Guards craft, and some navy ships, several tugs, a pleasure cruise ship at anchor.

  “Wouldn’t it be safer to wait until dark?” Derek asked.

  “Don’t think so. They’ll rely on instruments after dark, but now they’ll sight us visually. Much easier to fool their eyes than their instruments.” Blake grinned then; and all at once the stranger was gone, and they were kids playing together in a tree house again. Derek grinned back.

  They shot up from the water like a flying fish, climbing straight up through the cloud cover to three thousand feet before Blake leveled their flight and headed west. Below them there was excitement as instruments and men clashed over what had happened. Radar was turned to scan the sky, but by then Blake had dropped to skim over the treetops and so escaped the magic eye.

  And that was how Derek Daniels joined Blake and became his partner.

  Half expecting to feel jealousy, he felt only admiration and loyalty to this unschooled boy-man changeling. Blake read Matt’s note twice, then handed it to Derek and walked outside the cabin high in the Pennsylvania hills handling the black disk that was his heritage.

  The note was as follows:

  “Dear Blake, I should have found time to talk to you when you were with us the last time, when you brought Lorna home to us. I didn’t realize how short the visit was to be, I thought there was time. We always think there is enough time, and there never is. I can only hope that this will reach you soon, I can’t know for certain that it will. I have to gamble on it and say here what I didn’t say before.

  “When the ship came, I was the first one to see the aliens. I have to start with that. Obie has lied about it and the lie is believed now, but I was there first. I stood at the side of the road and looked down on the ship, feeling awe, unlimited excitement, joy…. High on the ship a panel, or door, opened, and one of the aliens stepped out. He had no platform there, nothing. He simply stepped out on air and stood there. I started to climb over the fence and when I looked again, the panel was closed, and the door-hatch that we ill got to know was opening at ground level.

  “That is the first thing.

  “When the alien woman arrived at the office some days later, Florence was already in labor. I was not there when they both delivered. I believe the alien delivered Florence, then herself.

  “One baby was dying, the other was well and healthy. I knew how it would be with the alien child, the suspicion, fear, extraordinary precautions that would imprison him. I don’t think I made a conscious decision. The alien had made the switch, if a switch had indeed been made. I let it stick. One dead baby to add to the many dead aliens, one live and healthy baby to be raised in a normal family as an Earth child, as my child.

  “I had only that first minute in which to decide. After that it was out of my hands. No one would have believed me later even if I had decided to voice my suspicions. I didn’t decide to do that, of course, but later, when Obie took you, I was tempted. If Winifred hadn’t told us about the prison conditions surrounding Johnny I probably would have talked.: But I couldn’t risk exposing you to that.

  “I don’t know what the disc is, what it does, why she gave it to me. When I took her tunic, the disc fell from it. She indicated that I should keep it. I can only hand it on and say, this may be from your mother. Love, Matt.”

  Derek, like Blake, read it twice, the second time very slowly, stopping often, gazing into space, thinking furiously. He put it down numbly and paced in the cabin, not seeing anything there. It all fell into place now. And Obie knew. They had found out somehow. He remembered reading of the proposed visit by Obie Cox to the estate where the Star Child was kept. He shuddered; that might have been Blake, locked up on an estate somewhere all his life. So, Obie saw the Star Child and guessed that he was the father. If the Star Child was that much like him, why didn’t anyone else see it? And what of the stories of his great powers, which were only now being manifested? All lies? The longer he thought of it, the more confused Derek became. Hours passed before Blake returned.

  He had washed the black from his hair, and it was the blond that Derek remembered. He was tall and broad-shouldered, very handsomely built, with the self-assurance that had been part of him ever since Derek could remember. There was a new thoughtfulness, a new maturity perhaps, a more distant attitude, a new curiosity…. Derek couldn’t put a finger on it, couldn’t put the concept into words at all, but felt it nonetheless.

  Blake handed the black disk to him wordlessly. Derek turned it over and over, and could find nothing to it that suggested what it was. A black disk, shiny on one side, dull on the other. It fit his palm nicely, was slightly warm, but then Blake had been handling it and could have warmed it. Finally he handed it back with a shrug.

  “I have to go to the ship,” Blake said. “This has to be a key of some sort.” He flipped the disk into the air and caught it a couple of times, and when he turned again to look at Derek there was an unholy gleam in his eyes. “It’s a damn shame the ship is In the shadow of the temple,” he said, grinning. “I just may have to be converted in order to get close enough to it to get inside.”

  They knew that Obie had a round-the-clock guard at the ship, complementing the UNEF there already, who were mystified at this new development. Everyone who went into the ship was scrutinized, photographed, had his retinas checked. Weekly there were incidents in which men were summarily seized and taken to the temple, put inside a room there and left for five minutes, only to be released without a word about what had been done, why they had been taken, or what was expected. Many of them were believers and didn’t complain, but the non-believers complained bitterly to the authorities. Each time this happened the official temple security chief apologized and promised that it wouldn’t happen again.

  The same thing was going on at the airports, and at the docks where the exodus was the most pronounced.

  For the next several weeks Derek and Blake worked together in the cabin, and Derek was happier than he had been for a long time. During this period of time Blake changed. Before Derek’s eyes he changed. His hair became mud-colored, and his eyes adapted to contacts that made them brown and smaller-looking. His cheeks became sunken, and his chin seemed to recede slightly, the result of the way he held his head, half ducked so that he peered up from lowered eyes. A new expression of obsequious servility intermixed with repressed brutality changed him even more. He shuffled his left foot when he walked now, not enough to bring a close study, but enough to change his walk from that of a young man to that of a man in his mid years, tired and despairing. Very carefully he planted hair in his ears, and in the midst of the dirt and earwax was a transmitter a
nd a receiver. He and Derek would be in touch.

  As soon as it all was in place he started to mutter. He left the cabin muttering to himself, and Derek turned on his receiver and listened to the snatches of filthy verse, strings of curses, bits of… so I says and he says… narratives, ruminations about the good old days, and so on. Derek burst out laughing. The shuffling man looked about wildly and muttered darkly about voices from the sky.

  His role was finished with that touch. His name would be James Teague until further nonce, And he left Derek alone in the mountain cabin, alone, but not lonely.

  Several days later, in the middle of a spring that was cold and dry, promising another year of drought to a land already worn out with dryness and the despair of no crops worth harvesting, there appeared in Des Moines a derelict muttering about the weather, about the lack of work, about the rottenness of the system, about the old days when a man could get a drink…. He shuffled about the city for weeks, getting in the way here and there, sleeping in doorways, getting rolled once or twice, but left undamaged; aimless, harmless, penniless, hungry, he quickly became a fixture, recognized by the cops and the inhabitants alike, accepted by them all. He wasn’t in the way any more than the thousands like him were in the way, and if his muttering became wearisome after a time, the listener could leave him without another thought. Eventually he turned up in a Listener’s .Booth and stood fumbling a shapeless hat for several minutes saying nothing, but muttering furiously, until he turned and left without confessing anything. The following week he was back, and this time he talked haltingly. “M’name’s Teague,” he said. “James Teague, that’s it.” This time also, he raised his gaze from the filthy hat and looked about him in darting, suspicious glances. There was little enough to see. The room was small, ten by ten feet, heavily draperied and comfortable at 72 degrees. The air was clean and fresh-smelling, regardless of the condition of the confessors who appeared there. And there was the voice there. It whispered and murmured encouragement to the confessor, and welcomed him to return when he was ready. It understood, no matter what he said, the listener understood. On his fourth visit Teague confessed to murder, of his wife and their three children. In a trembling voice, with much hesitation, many pauses, in a fashion of almost total incoherency he confessed to having chopped them to pieces with an ax and having buried them in a common grave in the Missouri Hills. He said that she had mocked him for the voice he heard.

  “I didn’t want to do it, I really didn’t want to, but the voice, it said that I had to and I couldn’t see no other way out but to go ahead and do it and get it done with. She warn’t no bad woman, but she never heard the voice like I did and she mocked at it all the time and told the children to mock at it and to laugh it outa my head, ‘James Teague, you’re a crazy old man,’ she said, and the voice said I gotta make them all stop, so I did it.”

  That week a card was given to him. It came out of nowhere to appear on the table in front of him, and the card told him to go to the Voice of God Church three blocks away and talk to the Reverend Huston Avery there. He read it aloud, like a child mastering his first primer, and then he read it again, and when he left he was muttering to himself about not going to see no Reverend Avery and it didn’t matter what the card told him to do, he wasn’t about to tell nobody about what he done, and it had been a mistake to go to the booth….

  That night he showed up at the church, still very suspicious, uncommunicative. He spoke to no one. He handled the card all the time however. He returned to the church half a dozen times before the Reverend Huston Avery approached him and took him to an interior office where he talked seriously to him about the call of God.

  “Sometimes God has us do things which would horrify our neighbors and arouse the wrath of the non-believers. It is a test for us. I see by the card that you are holding that you are one of the chosen. One of the many Hands of God, chosen to do His will, spoken to, directly by Him. Is this not true?”

  The old man nodded without speaking.

  “Yes. I suspected that it was so. And you feel that by obeying God’s call you have committed a crime for which the authorities will punish you. Is that not so?”

  “Warn’t no crime. Just done what I had to do.”

  “Yes, brother. The Voice of God spoke to you and you obeyed. That makes you one of the chosen ones.”

  Reverend Avery was in his thirties, open-faced, beaming at the derelict happily. He was a good-looking man, and very kind. “How old are you, sir?”

  “Forty-two, forty-three, don’t rightly remember exactly:”

  “Would you like a job? We have work you can do.”

  So James Teague started to work for the Voice of God Church. He did handyman labor at first, but gradually came to be trusted enough to hang out with the MM’s who stood guard during the services and who accompanied the Reverend Avery when he held rallies. James Teague didn’t join the MM’s because he was too old to be eligible, but in spirit he was one of them and recognized as such. After six months of dutiful labor, spending his wages each week on booze and women, he became converted himself. It happened spontaneously. He had a cot in the Church dorm, where many of the MM’s stayed. Nightly the Voice talked to them, praising their work, extolling them to greater efforts in the service of God. Teague never had paid much attention to the Voice before, but continued his almost inaudible monologue while the Voice spoke, but this time he cocked his head suddenly and started to listen hard, even after the Voice had stopped speaking. He nodded, listened, nodded again. He sat silently then for half an hour, again assumed his listening attitude, this time rising to his feet and leaving the room as one who walks in his sleep. The MM corporal who was on duty alerted Reverend Avery, who intercepted Teague in the hall leading to the street.

  “Where are you going, James?”

  Teague stopped, but didn’t focus his eyes on Avery. He said nothing.

  “James, can you hear me?”

  Teague saw him then. “You gotta let me go, I gotta go outside. Gotta get away from it. Keeps on and on. On and on all the time now.”

  “What is it saying to you, James? You can tell me.”

  “Says that I gotta go to the temple and go into service there. I don’t know nothing about no temple. I don’t know.”

  “James, come into the office with me.” Reverend Avery led him into the small, very private office where he seated the man and left him. After a moment Teague raised his head again and listened. This time there was a Voice there.

  “James, you must go to the temple and offer yourself for service to the Lord. The Lord is calling you, James. You must answer His call.”

  Teague listened closely and when the voice stopped, he clutched his head hard, looked about wildly for an escape and found only the door Avery had left by. It was locked. The Voice started again in a moment, and this time while it was speaking Teague sank to his knees and put his head down low between his hands. “Yes, yes, I’ll do it. I’ll do it! What do you want?”

  When Avery returned he found Teague still on his knees, muttering incoherent prayers, promising obedience. Avery informed him that he was to be sent to the temple at Covington. Teague nodded dumbly.

  INTERLUDE TEN

  Transcript from the Joe Escrow Show, March 9, 1982

  Joe: Dr. Bevins, you say that the listener’s Booths will be the most successful part of the Church. Would you care to elaborate on that?

  Bevins: Sure, Joe. It’s simple. You see, they give new converts on appointment for the first time in the booths, and at that time there is a real listener. That’s all his job is, to listen. Not comment, not make notes, not censure, or praise. He listens. The poor guy might not soy much the first time, but he is hooked anyway because he can have the attention of another human being for a whole hour without fear of interruption. He can spill his guts and not be afraid of being arrested later. It’s a good gimmick.

  Joe: You agree, Bishop O’Brien?

  O’Brien: Of course not. It’s a fad, like the rest of
it. Besides, most of the people don’t talk for an hour, or any part of it. They go in, five minutes later they are out. Auricular confession, to be successful, must have two participants. There must be a judgment….

  Bevins: Exactly my point. After the person is hooked there is no need for a listener, and there is none after that. The booth is empty. They still go and unload, and they seem to benefit from it….

  O’Brien: Seem, my dear Dr. Bevins. You surprise me. It is well recognized that man yearns to confess his sins and atone for them. It is not enough to relate them to on inanimate object; atonement must follow.

  Bevins: The philosophy of the Voice of God Church is that man does not have this need and the success of the Listener’s Booths and the incidence of repeaters attests—

  O’Brien: Like so much that this church has done, this is a truncated version of a practice that was beneficial to man. Just what good can it do to sit in an empty room and relate your aggressions, give voice to your transgressions? Without atonement there is no forgiveness.

  Bevins: From whom? Obviously the God that Obie Cox calls upon doesn’t care if pensioners count beads or if they don’t count beads. Just as obviously the people accept this much grander concept with ease. You must admit that this bigger god is more awesome than one who watches to see that a penitent doesn’t miss a Hail Mary….

  O’Brien: Dr. Bevins, you are twisting my words….

  Bevins: I’m telling you it’s time to see why the booths work, why the people go bock week after week, what .they gain….

  O’Brien: In the end they will have gained only hell….

  Joe: Gentlemen, let me ask you another question here. Dr. Bevins, something you said earlier has been nagging at me. You said the people are hooked after a visit or two. Exactly what do you mean by that? Addicted, as with drugs?

  Bevins: Yes. I think so. let’s trace the history of the listener’s Booths a bit, shall we? At first there weren’t many of them. Cox preached that his converts should go to them and unburden themselves. Of course this was a ruse. He simply didn’t have the staff at that time to hear all the people who come forward. No doubt he was thinking it terms of what Bishop O’Brien represents. A place with a priest to hear confessions and to advise afterward. But priests are expensive. He improvised. Did you know that in the beginning he paid absolutely nothing for the services of the Listeners? Most of the booths were donated also. He. scrambled his listeners so that those from Boston heard people in southern California; people from Florida manned the Washington booths, like that. And it worked. They didn’t have to be trained, and they were free. Converts themselves, eager to serve the church. We ran some experiments in the Arlington area when the booths opened there. We sent in some of our bright young psychology majors and instructed them to relate rather bizarre behavior. No reaction on the port of the listeners. The accounts become more and more loaded, actual criminal activities were recounted, and no reaction. After the testing period ended, questioning the subjects disclosed that they had begun to look forward to the sessions, that they were reluctant to discontinue them. Several of the subjects guessed that a subtle hypnosis hod been used on them to make them want to return. One suggested a gas, but the containers we sent in with them showed nothing but plain air. Of course, this was in the early period when there were still listeners. Later, after they began to use empty booths we did the same experiment, and found that the subjects were even more drown to the confessionals. We had come up with new and better sample units to obtain air samples, but again could find nothing that could account for the effect. Several theories were advanced to explain this behavior. Very briefly I’ll sum them….