Let the Fire Fall Read online

  Obie spoke in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and then was threatened by a mob that overran the MM’s who surrounded him in his public appearances. The mob was made up of middle-class, middle-aged people for the most part, but sprinkled with youths. “Anti-Christ!” they screamed. “Satan!” An MM rocket-boosted hovercraft appeared over them spraying them with gas, and the panic that had been there already was increased geometrically. The hallucinogenic gas was illegal, of course, and it turned the mob of seven hundred thousand maddened citizens into a mob of that many schizophrenics. When the dead, of fright, heart attacks, suicides, assaults, etc., were counted the total came to 1,074. The MM’s were accused of the gas attack, which they didn’t deny, but no arrests were made. Although sixteen of the dead were policemen, authority continued to avoid, trembling, a direct confrontation with religion. Obie’s tour was not slowed by even one day.

  At Mount Laurel, where the laurel woods were dense and deeply shadowed, a seldom-used path led down a steep slope where a creek plunged over rocks in a frenzy of white water, fell over ledges, formed a deep, green pool, surface still but busy underneath, and continued to splash and fall down the mountain to the piedmont country below. The path was an old deer trail that had almost been overgrown when it was rediscovered by Lorna on her first visit to the camp. She picked her way along it carefully, conscious of the loose rocks, and of the dark woods where she knew snakes lurked.

  It was worth the risk once the pool was reached and the falls that formed the pool drowned out the rest of the world with a roar. No one had ever told her not to wander off alone, but it was implied that a true believer didn’t need solitude, didn’t seek out the lonely places, didn’t feel the call of the unspoiled spots like the falls and the pool. Group participation, team games, controlled hikes through the woods, the scheduled S&S (stimulation by drugs and sex) nights, those were the accepted means of working off the energies of the young. She felt vaguely that she should resist the desire to seek out the unfrequented places, but decided that it was harmless if she yielded only occasionally. So she picked her way on the trail that the laurel and grapevines were reclaiming, and she was totally unprepared for the voice that broke the silence of the woods.

  “My God! Lorna Daniels.”

  Lorna jumped. A woman stepped out of the shadows staring at her. The roar of the falls was too loud to hear what she said next, something muttered in a low voice. Lorna recognized her: Dr. Harvey. They stood looking at each other for several seconds, Winifred taking in the flowing hair, the look of stunned surprise on the girl’s face, the hesitation. Lorna didn’t know how to evaluate her, Winifred decided. Lorna didn’t know if she should be greeted as another believer, or as an enemy in the camp. She laughed shortly and started down the trail after motioning for Lorna to follow.

  Lorna hung back, strangely excited, yet frightened. Dr. Harvey might know about her parents, and Derek. She must be all right, or she wouldn’t be here.

  Winifred led the way to the pool, then halfway around it to a spot where there was a great slab of granite. She Sat down and stared at the water. When Lorna approached, she said, “You’re a camp counselor? Is that the reason for the uniform?” The uniform was gray, the soft gray of the MM’s; slim pants, belted with a black leather belt, short-sleeved shirt gray like the pants, and an insignia on the sleeve, a ring with a sword sticking through it, and under that a narrow black crescent.

  Lorna nodded and sat down also.

  “Your mother told me you had become an active member, but somehow it was hard to believe.” She smiled gently at Lorna. “Lisa showed me a copy of your essay on your conversion.”

  Lorna blushed. “I was younger then,” she said. “I said a lot of things that must have sounded silly.”

  Winifred shook her head. “No. It made sense for an eighteen-year-old.” She lighted a cigarette and smoked silently, no longer looking at Lorna.

  “Where are they. Dr. Harvey? My parents. Are they all right? I know they don’t want to have anything to do with me any more, but—”

  “Honey pot, they are fine. I put them to sleep personally….”

  “Why? That’s… that’s monstrous….”

  “At their request.” Winifred finished the sentence matter-of-factly.

  “My father wouldn’t request something like that.”

  “He did. So did your mother. It was her idea.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Lorna stood up and started to walk away angrily.

  “Why don’t you ask me why they requested it?” Winifred said musingly. “Or do you know why?”

  Lorna stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I don’t know why. I don’t believe they did.”

  “Lorna, listen a minute, then stamp away mad. I don’t believe in Obie Cox. He’s the world’s biggest phony. I don’t believe in his mission. I don’t believe in his miracles. I don’t believe in the Star Child’s miracles. I think Obie is going to set up a theocratic society where he, or Merton more likely, will be dictator. I know he would have had your parents picked up and tortured to get from them what he wanted. They knew it too. I know he wants to kill Blake on sight. I know he is using a hypnotic gas to influence his audiences. I know he uses the Listening Booths as his feedback, so that there are no secrets any longer. He echoes what he hears from the booths, and the people think he is a prophet. He has used you in this way, and probably hopes to use you to guide him to your brother, whom he will have killed, and to Blake, who is his mortal enemy. I know that Obie… ”

  But Lorna was gone. Winifred sat smoking quietly; Lorna didn’t come back. Four days later she did come back. There were dark circles “under her eyes, and she looked angrier than she had when she had fled with her hands over her ears.

  “Why are you here if you are so skeptical? What are you doing here?”

  Winifred shrugged. “I was kidnapped and brought here,” she said. Lorna snorted in disbelief. “That is very unbecoming, young lady,” Winifred said mildly. “The rest of the statement should read: I was brought here to treat the Star Child, who is as mad as a hatter.”

  “That’s a lie!” Lorna stood up again and started to turn. “I saw his laboratory, saw the things he has done already, and you call him mad.” She looked vastly relieved.

  “Do you remember one night at the temple where there was a big hoopla with the short hairs and the long hairs mixing it up. A real brannigan. And young Lochinvar came from out of the west, or east, as it happened to be actually, and rescued the maiden fair?” Lorna blushed. Winifred continued to talk for the next forty-five minutes, and during that time Lorna sat down again and made no further motions to leave. At the end she shook her head.

  “I have to go back. I only have a couple of hours every day…. Dr. Harvey… ”

  “Call me Winifred, honey. Everybody does.”

  “I think you. believe all this, about my mother and father, and Derek being in danger, and Blake, but I can’t accept it. Why Blake? He helped Obie Cox back in the beginning. Why Derek? He’s never done anything to anyone. You see? There’s no reason for any of this kind of plotting and counter-plotting. It’s all too comic-bookish.”

  “I’ve told you only the facts, Lorna. Only the facts. You have to mull them over for reasons and conclusions. But what I have told you is true.” Winifred stood up also. “I have to get back too. Time for Johnny’s afternoon session. He probably won’t know me. But we go through the motions. His is a delusional system that has been built up over a long period; Obie wants instant results, but it’s going to take time. A shot in the arm to wake him up, talk, another shot in the arm to put him back to sleep to assimilate the talk. Eventually we’ll come up with results, but not this week.”

  Lorna was smiling slightly, patronizingly. She shrugged, not believing a word of it. “I guess we shouldn’t appear together,” she said.

  Winifred smiled also and said nothing, and much later that night Lorna realized that she had given tacit agreement to the conspiracy that now seemed to link her with Wi
nifred Harvey. She had agreed to say nothing about their meeting and their talk. She lay quietly on her narrow bed, knowing that a restless person was reported and interviewed as a potential source of trouble for others. And as she lay unmoving, fighting off impulses to jerk her legs, which developed itches and aches suddenly, she remembered that night at the temple, and Blake’s sudden appearance out of nowhere. She had little to remember of the fight. It was all hazy, but she did remember the sudden clip to her neck. She put her hand on the spot, and as she thought about it, she realized that she should have more memories of what had gone up to the time that she was actually unconscious. But it seemed that she had very few memories of the past few years. There was so little of any of her life from the time she had left the university until now…. She stared at the black above her, listening to the breathing of the other counselors, and tried desperately to reconstruct her life since joining the Church. It all seemed so dreamlike, so distant, as if she were an old, old woman trying to recall her childhood. Misty and unreal images swam, refused to be resolved, faded, or merged with other just as hard-to-focus images. Nothing lasted; it all dissolved when she tried to bring it closer, to make it realer, She fell asleep toward dawn, and was wakened by the bells promptly at six-thirty, very tired and very depressed. She didn’t return to the glen and the pool that week, but late Saturday night she wrote herself a note. It said, in part: “Tomorrow I have my turn in the Listener’s Booth. If Winifred Harvey is right, I have been conditioned by now to withhold nothing. I will betray her, and our talks. I don’t believe it. I won’t mention it at all.” But she did. For ten minutes she sat silent, twisting her fingers together nervously. The Booth was cool and dim and the perpetual taper wavered and held her attention. She tore her gaze from it again and again. Her tension increased until suddenly she blurted out the details of the meetings at the pools and the nonsense Winifred had told her. Immediately she felt relieved and comforted, the way it always happened when one told the truth. She wept as suddenly as she had blabbed, and felt better than before. When she left the Booth she was glowing with new resolve. She had been tested and found not wanting. Obie had said there would be many such tests, all of them difficult, but once mastered, worth experiencing. She wouldn’t tell anyone, of course, but she felt that she had accomplished a major feat, all alone.

  They knew.

  Wanda called for a meeting that night, and it was attended by Merton and Dee Dee and Everett, the only members of the higher echelons present at Mount Laurel that weekend.

  Fat Wanda, as the new girls called her, showed the film with the sound track and they listened intently. Merton grinned afterward. “Some chick,” he said.

  “She’s just a green kid,” Dee Dee said.

  “Could have fooled me. She’s ready. You start the ball, Wanda.”

  “I thought so. We’ll give her the buildup, then put her down in New York and wait. Okay? You have your men ready?”

  He nodded. He had started the film again and was watching her silently this time.

  On Monday Lorna was summoned to Wanda’s office, where she was told that accusations had been made by three different girls charging her with heresy. Lorna looked blankly at Wanda, who sat back and regarded her.

  “But… what do they say I did, or said? Who made the charges?”

  “You will be suspended from all duties while an investigation is being made of the charges brought against you.”

  “How can I prove that I didn’t do or say anything…?” She stopped in confusion, “I don’t even know what the charges are!”

  “Have you ever questioned Brother Obie’s call?”

  “No!”

  “Have you ever said that Brother Obie doesn’t speak with God?”

  “Never!”

  “Have you anything else to say?”

  “If I knew who had told such a monstrous story…. Maybe I hurt one of the girls, maybe I criticized when I should have tried harder to understand a mistake…. I don’t know why anyone would have said such a thing!”

  “Very well. Dismissed. You will remain in your dormitory, speaking to no one, until a decision has been reached. You will be notified.”

  “But… is that all? Isn’t there any way I can find out who said those things, find out why they said them? They must need help. Have you questioned them thoroughly?”

  “That is all, Lorna. Dismissed.” Wanda was reading through one of the papers on her desk, and didn’t look up again. Lorna turned and went to the door. She felt very near tears, and there was a tightening in her throat that made her afraid that if she tried to speak again, she would sob. She left with her head bowed, hurt and humiliated and bewildered.

  She waited the rest of the day, and all of the next, and on Wednesday morning she was again called. This time she was led to the larger office in the main building, and Merton was there with Wanda. There was a high-backed chair there also, and she was directed to it. She sat down gratefully. She had not slept much for the past week, and the strain of waiting had her shaky. She pressed her legs tightly to hide the quiver in her knees that betrayed her.

  Merton went to Wanda’s desk and pressed a button. In a moment the outer office door opened and a woman entered carrying a covered tray. She put it down behind Lorna. The girl sat stiffly, looking ahead. No one said anything. She could hear movements behind her, and she jerked when a cloth was whipped out before her and fastened around her neck.

  “No!” She screamed then and tried to rise. Merton slapped her hard and she knew the reason for the high-back chair. She was pressed back to it, and the cloth about her was fastened, pinioning her arms, clamping her to the chair. She closed her eyes and tears squeezed through her eyelids and ran down her cheeks. The woman cutting her hair was fast; it was not a glamor cut, was not meant to be such, but Lorna’s hair was curly, like her mother’s, and she really looked better with the very short, curly mass of gold than she had with it hanging free. Wanda said angrily to the woman with the scissors, “Shorter, you fool!” More was taken off and by then Lorna had a very boyish haircut. Her cheekbones were high and wide, her nose very straight and fine, and her mouth firm and beautifully shaped. She looked like an idealized Joan when they finished with her. She felt the cloth being removed and she sat without moving while the sounds indicated that the woman was gathering her equipment.

  “Stand up.” Merton’s voice, very tight, cold.

  “Strip.” Wanda’s voice, angry, vengeful, petulant. She didn’t like the way Lorna kept improving under their punishment.

  Lorna began fumbling with the buttons and the belt. She removed the shirt, then her shoes, the pants, and stood before them in her bra and underpants. “All of it,” Merton said, still very cold.

  Lorna finished. She didn’t open her eyes until she was naked. She looked then at fat Wanda, and from her to cold Merton, and she shivered under their eyes. She made no motion to cover herself, but stood straight, with dignity. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. “You know I didn’t, both of you.” She was told to turn around and march. They took her out the wide double doors of the mansion, and lining the walk, stretching out of sight between trees, were the campers, boys and girls alike, each holding a small handmade broom of wire grass. When they saw her the youngsters started shouting and screaming: “Blasphemer! Heretic! Betrayer! Nonbeliever! Short hair!”

  They whipped her. The same afternoon they took her away from Mount Laurel, dressed in a sack made of unbleached muslin, and flew her to the edge of the many towns and villages that made up metropolitan New York. The Militant Millenniumist who put her off the hovercraft handed her a credit and ID card. “Not that you have any credit,” he said coolly and spat on her,spun around, and got back on the craft and left her.

  That night she made the 3D newscast. The entire sequence had been filmed, and it “Was shown, all of it. In the mountain cabin in Pennsylvania Derek saw it, and in Louisiana where Blake-Teague had his assignment, he watched it. Blake understood at once why it had been done
, what they meant to accomplish, but Derek was slower. He was shutting down the cabin before he realized that Blake was trying to get through to him.

  “But, goddamn it, Blake, she’s my sister! What do you think will happen to her in the city now?”

  “She’s a tough cookie. She’ll survive. I tell you, she’s a plant. They want us. You and me.”

  “I don’t believe that. They would use her, but not like that. Not with the whipping and all that. That’s no plant.”

  “Sit tight, Derek. Let me handle it. I can get in and out without anyone’s knowing it. You stand out like a slumming playboy.”

  That night crazy Teague mumbled and muttered until his partner kicked him out of their apartment. They were assigned Basin Street sector, where Catholicism was putting up a strong fight against the Church, and where nightly there were riots and vandalism that was slowly destroying that section of the city. There was no Catholic Church for forty miles that was still a complete edifice. Blake-Teague was a good man for the cause. He was devious and loved his work. He had had only good marks so far in his career as a believer.