Let the Fire Fall Read online

  “I’m sure he was following us again. I really don’t think we should let Blake out at all for the next week. This is the third time.

  Blake crept back to bed and stared at the ceiling until the lights in the house were out and the sisters were quiet. Then he wrote a very brief good-by letter, and he took his suitcase and left the house. It was July, and he was nine years old…

  Blake pedaled north, keeping to back roads again, and by the time the sun was up, he was miles from the Laidley sisters’ house. Two days later the sisters had a visitor, a gray-haired man with a briefcase and an official air about him. He demanded the boy they were harboring and was met with blank stares and an offer of tea. He returned with a search warrant, found no trace of a child in the house. He called the report in to Billy Warren Smith.

  Billy hung up frowning. That damn kid, he thought. Everything was okay until the brat showed up. He stared at his secretary, a misshapen woman of indeterminate age who wore a brace on one leg and walked with a sideways slant, dragging the useless leg slightly, making a scruff-scruff sound everywhere she went. He motioned for her to leave and watched her slow progress across the spacious office; she left a trail of scuffed carpet behind her. Sometimes she left a trail that went to the picture of Obie and Blake and stopped there, then led back to the outer office. Billy was certain she prayed before the picture on the wall. He pushed the call button for Dee Dee’s office and waited until her face showed on the interoffice comset. “It’s another bitch,” he said then. “If it was the kid, he’s slipped out again.”

  Dee Dee shrugged. “You know the orders. Keep looking.”

  “Yeah, I know. Dee-Dee, have lunch with me. I want to talk to you.”

  Dee Dee looked at him more intently then, paused, smiled slightly and said no. “Sorry, Billy. Obie doesn’t like it when you bad mouth the kid. Besides I have a date for lunch already.”

  “Stay there. I have to talk to you. I’ll be right in,” Billy said.

  He passed through the busy outer office where a staff of twelve was kept occupied all day. No one in the outer office was whole, healthy, and normally shaped. Mac-Kee, the treasurer was a hunchback; Miss Llewelyn, his secretary, had suffered from a birth defect that had left her partially shriveled; Betty Odets, the bookkeeper, had a club foot, and so on. Billy walked among them feeling well and content with himself. They loved him, loved Dee Dee, loved Obie with a blind loyalty, loved each other. They were all convinced that when the time came Obie, or his miracle-working child, would heal them, and so they could smile and be happy waiting.

  Dee Dee’s office was no larger than his, but she had had a decorator fix it up for her, and it was like a page out of a travelogue extolling the beauty of a Polynesian paradise. There were plants with blooms and plants without, a jade fountain, and a pool with cool ivory steps leading to it. There was bamboo and wicker furniture. Dee Dee had learned about clothes during the past few years also, and she wore expensive, deceptively simple Asian-type silk dresses, high at the throat, sleeveless now in the summer, beltless, forever stylish, and eminently suitable for her slender figure. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a velvet band, and swung loosely down her back. Obie preached that women should not cut their hair,’ and Dee Dee advertised this point beautifully.

  “Dee Dee, do you know where he is? They let the kid slip through. Who’s going to tell him?”

  “He’s at Mount Laurel.”

  “No, he isn’t. I tried there. What’s he up to, Dee Dee?” Billy paced for a moment as Dee Dee studied her nails minutely. “Okay, you don’t know either, do you?”

  “Billy, calm down, okay? Obie needs a rest, that’s all. He isn’t ‘up to’ anything. He’s resting and praying and trying to decide what to do about Merton’s suggestions. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Merton!” Billy said the name bitterly. “Why’s that crook suddenly holing up with Obie and issuing statements?”

  “He’s not a crook. He’s converted, born again,” Dee Dee murmured. Billy laughed. He sat down abruptly. “I don’t like ten-year plans,” he said sullenly. “And even less twenty-year plans. It’s crazy. Merton is crazy and Obie listens to him. Why?”

  Dee Dee looked up then and there was a look of pity and dislike on her face. “You don’t learn anything, do you, Billy? None of this is for Obie, you fool. It’s all for the kid, for Blake. When he comes back there will be an organization that’ll make the Catholic Church look like a practice exercise. Blake will step into it a general, pope, king, commander, leader, what have you. It’ll be his, complete with churches in every city and town, with lieutenants in every church, all of them just waiting for his return to finish the job that Christ couldn’t do, make a heaven on earth.” Dee Dee’s voice was dispassionate, coolly distant, and she returned to her nails, twisting her hands to catch the light on the pale ivory gleam. “And, Billy, a little piece of advice, for old time’s sake. Layoff Merton. He’s what Obie wants now. He’s in. You try slipping it to him, and that’s all, friend.”

  “Yeah, Obie’s gone nuts.” Billy stared at the girl. She would stick, he knew. Hate-love would hold her, ready to jump in the sack with Obie, and equally ready to stick a knife between his ribs. Too, Dee Dee had somehow learned about financial advisers, and she relied on them to manage her private income and gifts, so that, although he didn’t know, he felt certain that if Dee Dee should walk out that day, she would be a wealthy woman for the rest of her life. Not so with him. Wanda’s fault, not his. Wanda was a glutton, for food, for clothes, for houses, cars, jewels, furnishings. They had a bank account of less than five figures, and it didn’t matter how he tried to manipulate their accounts so he could stash some of it away in stocks and bonds, she found out and bang they were in debt and he had to dip into the extra and bail them out.

  “He’s gone nuts,” Billy repeated and heaved himself up from the chair. He started for the door, paused to say, “If you hear from him before I do, will you tell him I have to talk with him. Not Merton, but Obie.” She nodded and he left her. Dee Dee waited a moment, then called Obie on the view phone; He was in the city that week talking with foreign emissaries.

  She reported Billy’s talk verbatim practically and Obie smiled gently and nodded. “Billy can’t stand any confusion,” he said simply. He closed his eyes when she told about the agent’s report on the elusive boy, and when he opened them again, there was the sad smile on his face. “God’s will,” he murmured. “Come to lunch at noon. You’ll want to meet some of these people.”

  Merton met her at the door of the apartment where Obie was living. It was a large, very plain apartment, rich, but simple. Merton briefed her on the guests: holy men from India, Taiwan, Hiroshima, Hanoi…. The conference was to discuss the affiliated Voice of God Church in their areas.

  INTERLUDE FOUR

  Pages from Diane MacLeish’s Scrapbook

  Tokyo, UPI, Sept. 3

  HUNDREDS KILLED IN RIOTS

  Riots continued over this Labor Day weekend as strikers from the Panmin Labor Association clashed with pollee in numbers estimated in the tens of thousands.

  Labor Secretary Hideke Kurusu called out the military to control the strikers. Anti-riot foam was dispersed by helicopters.

  Hachiro Nomura, Secretary of the Panmin Labor Association issued a statement which said in part: “We protest this mammoth expenditure in a venture that is doomed to fail. Only when the house of Earth is in order will the children of Earth be permitted to enter God’s space. We predict a series of accidents at those places where such work is commencing….”

  Tokyo, UPI, Sept. 30

  HEARINGS HELD IN TOKYO

  Hearings started today to determine the causes of the recent tragic accidents that continue to plague the Panmin Corp. Charges made by the government that the Voice of God Church affiliate in Tokyo is directly to blame for the fires that have all but destroyed the Panmin Corp. here have been vigorously denied by Hachiro Nomura, Secretary of the Panmin Labor Association. He admit
ted readily that the Voice of God Church has initiated a program to feed and clothe the striking workers and their families. He refused to comment on the report of a 3 percent membership increase in the church among the strikers. He denied angrily the charges that the church has inaugurated training schools in acts of sabotage….

  Editorial from the Washington Star, June 12, 1982

  The Voice of God Church is ten years old this month. There are few on the outside of its threshold who will wish it a happy birthday. Government gets no smaller, its classification system no less complex, and with the advent of universal credit cards taking cash almost completely out of the hands of the people and forcing registration and corrections in registrations as a weekly routine practically, the central data bank has become an actual necessity, no longer the gleam in the eyes of a few wild men. Chance is being replaced by computerized logic in every aspect of daily life, and there is no rebellion possible against these inevitable changes, because each is born of necessity created by earlier changes. The steps that follow like night the day are good in themselves.

  But man’s thoughts and imagination transcend his daily environment. In the most pious society man turns from the crucifix on the wall to mechanization, war, satanism. In the technological society now realized man doesn’t want to see the technology, the computer banks, the array of circuitry in his electronic world. He turns to the mystical. Not the establishment churches that have became social organizations, but to those that exist to voice his hidden desires and fears, which the state mistakenly believes it has quieted with housing programs and poverty programs and training schools and mass planned vocations. The growth of the Voice of God Church is proof that those programs have foiled the basic needs of the people. The church offers nothing, no social welfare, no aid for widows and orphans, no salvation through good works. It voices hatred and fear and despair in a country where the existence of those things has been denied. That is its success.

  Kansas City Enquirer, August 16

  Dr. Leo Marckland, President of the Congress of Christian Churches of America, today resigned his post in that organization. The Reverend Dr. Marckland denied that his resignation resulted from pressure brought by members who are dissatisfied with his firm stand opposing the Voice of God Church.

  …Crandall M. Jennings, long a Cox supporter, accepted the position of pro-tem president following a heated debate during which one-third of the members of the congress walked out….

  Editorial by John Lester Soupe, Jr., in Monologue, December 1984:

  There is a story about two blind men who met an elephant in the jungle. One felt the elephant’s leg and said, “It’s a tree.” The other felt the trunk and said, “It’s a vine.” Neither would listen to the other, so one sat around waiting for the coconuts to fall, and the other sat around waiting for the berries to ripen, until the elephant got tired of the whole thing and stepped on them both.

  We, today, the people of Modern America, are blind men. In the valley where the first Ship from Space still stands, there is a temple devoted to the hatred of the race that crossed space only to die. The Priests of Religion won’t look across the valley and see the ship. The Priests of Science, in the ship, won’t look across the valley and see the temple.

  When was the last time you read a science article in a notional magazine? Two years ago? Three? Hmm… hard to remember, isn’t it? Can you tell when the first space station was orbited and manned—or who manned it? Ask ten people about that, and you’ll get nine blank looks. The news was in the daily fox-two inches, one column, right under the daily astrology forecast. It was announced on 3D—a spot announcement in between commercials for BOW ZOW GOODIES, and TOE JOY FOR YOUR CORNS. Twenty-one seconds It took to bring the greatest news of the decade to the public!

  Remember when there were 37 magazines devoted to science fiction and science fact? Know how many there are today? One. You’re reading it. Monologue. And we wouldn’t exist, even in this mimeographed format, if our readers were not 94 and 99/100ths percent engineers and scientists.

  Where are the thousands of fans who used to wait eagerly for the next serial by Doc Smith or Bob Heinlein? Gone—lost to philately, or numismatics, or the Voice of God Church. The Public never did care much about Science or Extrapolation, and they are being brainwashed today into believing that Science is Bad. Science brought the aliens, and the crash programs to compete with alien technology, which caused shortages of luxury items the public has come to expect and demand. Blame it on BAD SCIENCE!

  I know a historian who has specialized so thoroughly that all he knows is the week of November 20, 1963. Period. He suspects something was going on in the world before then, and maybe afterward, but he isn’t sure. Then there’s a doctor in the newest medical building in Westchester who specializes also.

  He treats the right eye. Go in there with an ailment in the left eye, and he’ll say he’s sorry, but he can refer you to a good man….

  What if you have something wrong with BOTH EYES? Do they consult? Or just exchange memoes?

  What we need today is a man who can stand and look at the Temple of Religion and the Temple of Science, and see them BOTH! Science isn’t Bad; Religion isn’t Bad. But when each denies the existence of the other, they can both be made BAD!

  Chapter Eight

  JOHNNY watched the conference from outside the window by closing one eye and training the open eye on the slit in the center of the draperies where the two halves failed to close tightly. He listened intently through the earplug he had stolen from a careless guard two years ago. With a tap on the window and the plug in his ear he could hear every sound in the room down to the stomach noises being made by Wakeman. Wakeman had indigestion that night.

  Johnny detested Wakeman but didn’t fear him. He did fear Lenny Mallard. He didn’t trust anyone who smiled all the time. Lenny turned toward the window and Johnny almost fell from the ledge, but of course Lenny couldn’t see him. There was also the new swim coach, Serge Dmitov, And the last man, a brand-new one, dark-haired and quick in his movements, with blue eyes and a grin that made him look very nice. Johnny decided he didn’t like the new man with his nice grin when he saw Lenny pat him on the shoulder and wink at him.

  “Cold turkey, that’s the answer,” Lenny said.

  “I’m sorry it came down to this,” Wakeman said, feeling his stomach carefully, then belching. “Sorry,” he murmured. He looked relieved. “Yes, as I was saying, it will be traumatic for him. His reaction will be to reject overtures, food, everything for a few days, then sulk for another week, have a recurrence of asthma with nightly coughing and congestion, probably fever. That’s when we’ll introduce you, Peter. You know your role?”

  Peter nodded. “Sure. Bored as hell at this assignment, bored to death with the kid and his bellyaches, full of mutinous ideas…. I know it all.”

  Wakeman nodded, patted his stomach again and waited, but this time nothing. “Now,” he said, “about this other matter. When he is twelve, we’ll have to set up a school here on the grounds….”

  Johnny left his post. He knew about the school. In his room he hid the tap carefully in a pocket he had fixed to the back of one of his drawers. Then he huddled on the bed and shivered looking at the sky that showed over the trees, very black, very distant and cold. He did what he did every night: he wished. Every child—every?—most children know sooner or later that they were found by these people masquerading as parents. Since there are so few kings any more, and none at all for the American child to revere, the fantasy father—figure dreamed of is often poorly defined, but is always someone else: a famous scientist perhaps, or a wealthy industrialist or a Roman Catholic cardinal, or for the truly grandiose fulfillment, the pope, or the president. Winifred knew, must have known, the mental processes that would follow her disclosure to Johnny about his origins: the exhilaration and joy at learning that what he knew was true, for children know many things that are not true; the pride of accomplishment achieved by his people, but claimed
by him; the fairyland life suddenly opened to him; feelings of grandeur mixed with fear and anxiety about his jailers. And the surge of superiority that made it almost impossible not to take command of the estate immediately.

  They really shouldn’t have taken Winifred away from him. Possibly she shouldn’t have been so concerned by Johnny’s lack of self-identity. She could have exaggerated the signs of disintegration she observed in him. But, in any event, having given him his heritage, she should not have been removed before he had a chance to assimilate his newly discovered self. Had she been on hand she could have unraveled the complex mechanics of what Johnny now went through. She could have educated him to the inner world where a vision can so possess a person that he emerges from it as one born again. The religious experience, drug induced, brought on by fasts, fear, fatigue, deliberately directed by hypnosis, electrodes, shocks, however it originates, can result in nearly instant transformation. As Johnny learned.

  He concentrated as hard as he could on that patch of sky and called for his people to come and get him and take him away. He stared so hard and thought so hard that presently he forgot about his shivering body, and forgot about the men talking in the room on the top floor of the house, forgot about his only friend, Dr. Harvey, forgot everything and sat without moving, without awareness for minute after minute, cross-legged, hands on his knees, floating now, beyond contact, and in the patch of dark sky a light blinked at him. He didn’t move, couldn’t move, and the light blinked again and took a form. A tall shining man in white smiled at him, and nodded. From the sky. Then was gone. Johnny stared and stared; until he fell over and slept with a smile on his face.