Dean Koontz - Cold Fire

Jim quickly wrote another question and showed it to Holly: Where do you come from? ANOTHER WORLD.

Which could mean anything from heaven to Mars.

Do you mean another planet? YES.

"My God," Holly said, awed in spite of herself So much for the great hereafter.

She looked up from the tablet and met Jim's eyes. They seemed to shine brighter than ever, although the chrome-yellow light had imparted to them an exceptional green tint.

Restless with excitement, she rose onto her knees, then eased back again, sitting on her calves. The top tablet page was filled with the entity's responses. Holly equivocated only briefly, then tore it off and set it aside, so they could see the second page. She glanced back and forth between Jim's questions and the rapidly appearing answers.

From another solar sy.stern? YES.

From another galaxy? YES.

Is it your vessel we've seen in the pond? YES.

How long have you been here?000 YEARS.

As she stared at that figure, it seemed to Holly that this moment was more like a dream than some of the actual dreams she'd been having lately.

After so much mystery, there were answers-but they seemed to be coming too easily. She did not know what she had expected, but she had not imagined that the murkiness in which they had been operating would clear as quickly as if a drop of a magical universal detergent had been dropped into it.

"Ask her why she's here," Holly said, tearing off the second sheet and putting it with the first.

Jim was surprised. "She?" "Why not?" He brightened. "Why not?" he agreed.

He turned to a new page in his own tablet and wrote her question: Why are you here? Floating up through the paper to the surface: TO OBSERVE, TO STUDY, TO HELP MANKIND.

"You know what this is like?" Holly said.

"What's it like?" "An episode of Outer Limits" "The old TV show?" "Yeah.”

"Wasn't that before your time?" "It's on cable.”

"But what do you mean it's like an episode of Outer Limits?" She frowned at TO OBSERVE, TO STUDY, TO HELP MANKIND and said, "Don't you think it's a little. trite?" "Trite?" He was irritated. "No, I don't. Because I haven't any idea what alien contact should be like. I haven't had a whole lot of experience with it, certainly not enough to have expectations or be jaded.”

"I'm sorry. I don't know. it's just. okay, let's see where this leads.”

She had to admit that she was no less awed than she had been when the light had first appeared in the walls. Her heart continued to thud hard and fast, and she was still unable to draw a really deep breath.

She still felt that they were in the presence of something superhuman, maybe even a higher power by one definition or another, and she was humbled by it. Considering what she had seen in the pond, the pulsing luminescence even now swimming through the wall, and the words that kept shimmering into view on the tablet, she would have been hopelessly stupid if she had not been awed.

Undeniably, however, her sense of wonder was dulled by the feeling that this entity was structuring the encounter like an old movie or TV script.

With a sarcastic note in his voice, Jim had said that he had too little experience with alien contact to have developed any expectations that could be disappointed. But that was not true. Having grown up in the sixties and seventies, he had been as media-saturated as she had been.

They'd been exposed to the same TV shows and movies, magazines and books; science fiction had been a major influence in popular culture all their lives. He had acquired plenty of detailed expectations about what alien contact would be like-and the entity in the wall was playing to all of them. Holly's only conscious expectation had been that a real close encounter of the third kind would be like nothing the novelists and screenwriters imagined in all their wildest flights of fantasy, because when referring to life from another world, alien meant alien, different, beyond easy comparison or comprehension.

"Okay," she said, "maybe familiarity is the point. I mean, maybe it's using our modern myths as a convenient way to present itself to us, a way to make itself comprehensible to us. Because it's probably so radically different from us that we could never understand its true nature or appearance.”

"Exactly," Jim said. He wrote another question: What is the light we see in the walls? THE LIGHT IS ME.

Holly didn't wait for Jim to write the next question. She addressed the entity directly: "How can you move through a wall?" Because the alien seemed such a stickler about form, she was somewhat surprised when it did not insist on hewing to the written question-reply format. It answered her at once: I CAN BECOME PART OF ANYTHING, MOVE WITHIN IT, TAKE SHAPE FROM IT WHENEVER I CHOOSE.

"Sounds a little like bragging," she said.

"I can't believe you can be sarcastic at a time like this," Jim said impatiently.

"I'm not being sarcastic," she explained. "I'm just trying to understand.”

He looked doubtful.

To the alien presence, she said, "You understand the problems I'm having with this, don't you?" On the tablet: YES.

She ripped away that page, revealing a fresh one. Increasingly restless and nervous, but not entirely sure why, Holly got to her feet and turned in a circle, looking at the play of light in the walls as she formulated her next question. "Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?" No answer appeared on the tablet.

She repeated the question.

The tablet remained blank.

Holly said, "Trade secret, I guess.”

She felt a bead of cold sweat trickle out of her right armpit and down her side, under her blouse. A childlike wonder still worked in her, but fear was on the rise again. Something was wrong. Something more than the disjointed nature of the story the entity was giving them.

She couldn't quite put her finger on what spooked her.

On his own tablet, Jim quickly wrote another question, and Holly leaned down to read it: Did you appear to me in this room when I was ten years old? YES. OFTEN.

Did you make me forget it? YES.

"Don't bother writing your questions," Holly said. "Just ask them like I do.”

Jim was clearly startled by her suggestion, and she was surprised that he had persisted with his pen and tablet even after seeing that the questions she asked aloud were answered. He seemed reluctant to put aside the felttip and the paper, but at last he did. "Why did you make me forget?" Even standing, Holly could easily read the bold words that appeared on the yellow tablet: YOU WERE NOT READY TO REMEMBER.

"Unnecessarily cryptic," she muttered. "You're right. It must be male.”

Jim tore off the used page, put it with the others, and paused, chewing his lip, evidently not sure what to ask next. Finally he said, "Are you male or female?" I AM MALE.

"More likely," Holly said, "it's neither. It's alien, after all, and it's as likely to reproduce by parthenogenesis.”

I AM MALE, it repeated.

Jim remained seated, legs folded, an undiminished look of wonder on his face, more boylike now than ever.

Holly did not understand why her anxiety level was soaring while Jim continued to bounce up and down-well, virtually-with enthusiasm and delight.

He said, "What do you look like?" WHATEVER I CHOOSE TO LOOK LIKE.

"Could you appear to us as a man or woman?" Jim asked.

YES.

"As a dog?" YES.

"As a cat?" YES.

"As a beetle?" YES.

Without the security of his pen and tablet, Jim seemed to have been reduced to inane questions. Holly half expected him to ask the entity what its favorite color was, whether it preferred Coke or Pepsi, and if it liked Barry Manilow music.

But he said, "How old are you?" I AM A CHILD.

"A child?" Jim responded. "But you told us you've been on our world for ten thousand years.”