Dean Koontz - Cold Fire

I AM STILL A CHILD.

Jim said, "Then is your species very long-lived?" WE ARE IMMORTAL.

"Wow.”

"It's lying," Holly told him.

Appalled by her effrontery, he said, "Jesus, Holly!" "Well, it is.”

And that was the source of her renewed fear-the fact that it was not being straight with them, was playing games, deceiving. She had a sense that it regarded them with enormous contempt. In which case, she probably should have shut up, been meekly adoring before its power, and tried not to anger it.

Instead she said, "If it were really immortal, it wouldn't think of itself as a child. It couldn 't think that way about itself Infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood-those are age categories a species concerns itself with if it has a finite lifespan. If you're immortal, you might be born innocent, ignorant, uneducated, but you aren't born young because you're never really going to get old.”

"Aren't you splitting hairs?" Jim asked almost petulantly.

"I don't think so. It's lying to us.”

"Maybe its use of the word child' was just another way it was trying to make its alien nature more understandable.”

YES.

"Bullshit," Holly said.

"Damn it, Holly!" As Jim removed another page from the tablet, detaching it neatly along its edge, Holly moved to the wall and studied the patterns of light churning through it. Seen close up, they were quite beautiful and strange, not like a smooth-flowing phosphorescent fluid or fiery streams of lava, but like scintillant swarms of fireflies, millions of spangled points not unlike her analogy of luminous, schooling fish.

Holly half expected the wall in front of her to bulge suddenly.

Split open. Give birth to a monstrous form.

She wanted to step back. Instead she moved closer. Her nose was only an inch from the transmuted stone. Viewed this intimately, the surge and flux and whirl of the millions of bright cells was dizzying.

There was no beat from it, but she imagined she could feel the flicker of light and shadow across her face.

"Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?" she asked.

After a few seconds, Jim spoke from behind her: "No answer.”

The question seemed innocent enough, and one that they should logically be expected to ask. The entity's unwillingness to answer alerted her that the ringing must be somehow vitally important.

Understanding the bells might be the first step toward learning something real and true about this creature.

"Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?" Jim reported: "No answer. I don't think you should ask that question again, Holly. It obviously doesn't want to answer, and there's nothing to be gained by aggravating it. This isn't The Enemy, this is-" "Yeah, I know. It's The Friend.”

She remained at the wall and felt herself to be face-to-face with an alien presence, though it had nothing that corresponded to a face.

It was focused on her now. It was right there.

Again she said, "Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?" Instinctively she knew that her innocent question and her not-so-innocent repetition of it had put her in great danger. Her heart was thudding so loud that she wondered if Jim could hear it. She figured The Friend, with all its powers, could not only hear her hammering heart but see it jumping like a panicked rabbit within the cage of her chest. It knew she was afraid, all right. Hell, it might even be able to read her mind. She had to show it that she would not allow fear to deter her.

She put one hand on the light-filled stone. If those luminous clouds wert not merely a projection of the creature's consciousness, not just an illusion or representation for their benefit, if the thing was, as it claimed, actually alive in the wall, then the stone was now its flesh.

Her hand was upon its body.

Faint vibrations passed across the wall in distinctive, whirling vortexes That was all she felt. No heat. The fire within the stone was evidently cold.

"Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?" "Holly, don't," Jim said. Worry tainted his voice for the first time.

Perhaps he, too, had begun to sense that The Friend was not entirely a friend.

But she was driven by a suspicion that willpower mattered in this confrontation, and that a demonstration of unflinching will would set a ne tone in their relationship with The Friend. She could not have explained why she felt so strongly about it. Just instinct-not a woman's but an exreporter's.

"Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?" She thought she detected a slight change in the vibrations that tingled across her palm, but she might have imagined it, for they were barely perceptible in the first place. Through her mind flickered an image of the stone cracking open in a jagged mouth and biting off her hand, blood spurting, white bone bristling from the ragged stump of her wrist.

Though she was shaking uncontrollably, she did not step back or lift her hand off the wall.

She wondered if The Friend had sent her that horrifying image.

"Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?" "Holly, for Christ's sake-" Jim broke off, then said, "Wait, an answer's coming.”

Willpower did matter. But for God's sake, why? Why should an all-powerful alien force from another galaxy be intimidated by her unwavering resolution? Jim reported the response: "It says. For drama?'" "For drama?" she repeated.

"Yeah. F-O-R, then D-R-A-M-A, then a question mark." To the thing in the wall, she said, "Are you telling me the bells are just a bit of theater to dramatize your apparitions?" After a few seconds, Jim said, "No answer.”

"And why the question mark?" she asked The Friend. "Don't you know what the bells mean yourself, where the sound comes from, what makes it, why? Are you only guessing when you say for drama'? How can you not know what it is if it always accompanies you?" "Nothing," Jim told her.

She stared into the wall. The churning, schooling cells of light were increasingly disorienting her, but she did not close her eyes.

"A new message," Jim said." I am going.'" "Chicken," Holly said softly into the amorphous face of the thing in the wall. But she was sheathed in cold sweat now.

The amber light began to darken, turn orange.

Stepping away from the wall at last, Holly swayed and almost fell.

She moved back to her bedroll and dropped to her knees.

New words appeared on the tablet: I WILL BE BACK.

"When?" Jim asked.

WHEN THE TIDE IS MINE.

"What tide?" THERE IS A TIDE IN THE VESSEL, AN EBB AND FLOW, DARKNESS AND LIGHT. I RISE WITH THE LIGHT TIDE, BUT HE RISES WITH THE DARK.

"He?" Holly asked.

THE ENEMY.

The light in the walls was red-orange now, dimmer, but still ceaselessly changing patterns around them.

Jim said, "Two of you share the starship?" YES. TWO FORCES. TWO ENTITIES.

It's lying, Holly thought. This, like all the rest of its story, is just like the bells: good theater.

WAIT FOR MY RETURN.

"We'll wait," Jim said.

DO NOT SLEEP.

"Why can't we sleep?" Holly asked, playing along.

YOU MIGHT DREAM.

The page was full. Jim ripped it off and stacked it with the others.

The light in the walls was blood-red now, steadily fading.

DREAMS ARE DOORWAYS.

"What are you telling us?" The same three words again: DREAMS ARE DOORWAYS.

"It's a warning," Jim said.

DREAMS ARE DOORWAYS.

No, Holly thought, it's a threat.

The windmill was just a windmill again. Stones and timbers.

Mortar and nails. Dust sifting, wood rotting, iron rusting, spiders spinning in secret lairs.

Holly sat directly in front of Jim, in powwow position, their knees touching. She held both his hands, partly because she drew strength from his touch, and partly because she wanted to reassure him and take the sting out of what she was about to say.