Kate Wilhelm - Let the Fire Fall

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.

The next day Winifred didn’t appear to have breakfast with him as had been the custom for the past six months. He didn’t ask for her. He ate little, and there was a distant look on his thin face. He spoke to no one all morning, had his lessons from his teaching machine, and did reasonably well. Lunchtime and still no Winifred. His face was slightly more remote-looking, and still he asked nothing. Two or three bites were all he could manage. More lessons, swimming, horseback riding. Dinner, a television show; his favorite Western, bath, and bed. Throughout the day he had spoken only half a dozen words. He was watched closely that night, and the watcher reported that he had sat up looking out the window for an hour and a half, but nothing else. No tears. Nothing else. He had slept calmly.

And so on for the rest of the week. Wakeman had a bad time with his stomach that week, and on Saturday called for the boy for a talk. Johnny looked straight into his eyes and said, “I bet you’ll die in six months.” Wakeman had an instant pain in his lower intestines and terminated the conference without speaking a word. At the door the Star Child had turned and looked at him once more and said, “And I’ll be glad. Everyone I hate will die.”

They brought Peter in without going through the preliminary stages, simply because Johnny had failed them thoroughly. He didn’t have tantrums, didn’t develop asthma, didn’t have a fever. He stayed remote and cool and unreachable, and, strangest of all, for him, thoughtful.

“How do you do,” Johnny said formally and distantly to Peter, much as a young prince might receive a new ambassador to his court. He ignored Peter after that, returning to the book he had been reading, dismissing him until further notice. Peter tried to introduce conversations, and was rebuffed with polite silence until he too fell silent. His report was dull that night. And the following nights. Wakeman was curious. With Winifred’s departure the kid changed into someone entirely new and different, and he didn’t know how to handle him. Johnny stared at and through him when they met now, and there was no trace of the dislike that Wakeman had seen on his face in the past. In his notebook Wakeman asked himself: Paranoia with delusions of grandeur? He didn’t attempt to answer as yet. They would wait and see.

Wakeman didn’t like the way Johnny was behaving; it wasn’t according to his schedule, and there was no pre-set plan to bring to bear on him. Wakeman liked his experiments to be rigidly controlled in order to prove a hypothesis already accepted as true. Action, reaction as predicted leading to new action, and so on. But always as predicted. Action: remove Winifred. Reaction: neurotic behavior and illness, depression. New action: offer acceptable substitute. Reaction: wariness, suspicion, caution, full acceptance. And no more problems. So what had gone wrong? Wakeman didn’t know and not knowing made him uneasy. It made his stomach ache and rumble and gurgle.

Johnny at eleven decided to take his schoolwork seriously, and while he had to plug away at it for hours, he mastered the lessons that had stymied him only a few weeks ago, and within a month he covered the work that he had been dragging back on for six months. He completed the lessons through methodical study for hours at a stretch, did his tests, getting high grades in every field, and asked for science courses. He was refused. It was summer, vacation time, Peter said smiling hugely. He wanted to show him how to fly fish, and scuba dive.

Johnny stared at Peter and said, slowly and deliberately, “I want to learn everything, fishing, diving, and everything in books. If I can’t have the books I want I won’t leave my room and I won’t talk to anyone.”

Wakeman patted his stomach happily. This was more like his Johnny. He went to see him in person, with Johnny’s medical chart displayed conspicuously under his arm. Johnny stared at him stonily and didn’t speak.

“What’s the problem, son?” Wakeman asked.

Johnny didn’t speak then or throughout the half hour examination. He simply stared at Wakeman, and after ten minutes let his gaze drop to contemplate Wakeman’s gurgling stomach. Wakeman felt an attack coming on and speeded up the interview.

Wakeman had been one of those who believed that the Star Child’s apparent stupidity or, more kindly, his average mentality, would be replaced by a high degree of intelligence at a postponed date, due to the delayed maturation of his kind, and he was happy now to see that his expectations were being realized. Johnny’s sudden interest in books and in studying with the subsequent high test grades was encouraging and he could overlook the accompanying reports of the time needed by Johnny to master his subjects. He failed to see the change in motivation that had occurred, and he had no idea that Johnny was preparing himself to join his own people.