Kate Wilhelm: Let the Fire Fall

He didn’t tell anyone then, or later, that high up on the ship, almost a hundred feet above the ground the first alien had stepped out, waving at him. The alien had stepped out on the air and had stood there, smiling and waving. When Matt had started to climb the fence, the alien had vanished into the ship, and the next time any of them appeared, it had been at ground level.

And so it came about that the area was sealed off, and no one was permitted in or out, except the officials, who took several days to get there, and who turned out to be U.N. personnel, and F.B.I. and C.I.A., and medical teams, and translators. And the people of the area, the part of Covington included in the security area, and Elmwood Heights, and the surrounding farms and subdivisions, the people came and blocked the roads, and lined the woods at the periphery of the field, and they experienced the expected feelings of panic and fear and exhilaration and disbelief, and some of them fainted, and one suffered a minor heart flutter that he thought was It. And because Matt was the only doctor within the sealed area, he was swamped by patients, and his house was filled with them. Two women in labor came and were delivered. Florence came and labored for twelve hours, stopped and slept for twelve, then started again. And Winifred Harvey came to Matt’s house with her suitcase in hand and asked for a room.

“No room at the inn,” she said.

Matt knew of her. Everyone knew of her. Winifred was forty, gray-haired, and beautiful, with poise, grace, charm, and understanding. Three times married, now single again, she was one of the world’s foremost champions of causes and probably the best child psychiatrist living. Why she was included in the first batch of personnel to be sent to the scene was mysterious, except that experts in many fields were being sent, and she qualified. As it turned out, her presence was fortunate. She provided the link between Matt and the ship, and gave him news when there was no news being released at all.

Then the aliens started to die. Before official contact could be made. Winifred wept bitterly at the stupidity of man, and she railed at Matt for not taking advantage of the opportunity he had had in the beginning to get to know them, possibly help them. Four of them died, then three more the next day, and panic swelled among the people still clogging the roads and nearly got out of control several times, and more soldiers were sent in to handle them.

Obie sat with his rifle across his knees the afternoon he learned they were dying, and most of that night, hoping to get a shot at one of the monsters if they tried to run away from the ship and the plague they had brought with them. He came to realize during that time that what he had been taking for a catastrophe was in actuality the opportunity of a lifetime for someone like him. His voyeuristic tendencies had taken him to the Daniels’ windows hoping to see something between the lady doctor and Doc Daniels. Instead he had learned that the aliens were dying. Worth ten bucks as a news leak. But there had to be more than that in it for him. There had to be. A lousy ten bucks! The U.N. people would take everything away and the guys would stand around Midtown Drugs and talk about it, and then it would be all over. Obie listened to the tree frogs and the big bullfrogs in the Busby pond and it seemed to him that the frogs were jeering at him. “jer-rk, jer-rk, jer-rk.” Suddenly he smiled. He had received his inspiration. And this is the event that really changed the course of history, not the landing at all.

Obie preached his first sermon the next Sunday. Obie had been the school’s best student in public speaking. He would have failed school entirely during his senior year if it hadn’t been for basketball and public speaking, but he had excelled in both and had graduated.

Winifred was aboard the alien ship, along with two other doctors, when Obie preached. Matt was at home soothing Florence, who had become frightened at the off-again-on-again labor. Her parents were in the church, praying for her, but not confiding in one another that such was the case. Dee Dee, looking virginal in white robe, was in the choir, hoping that her father wouldn’t fall asleep before it was time for him to stand up and introduce Obie, hoping that be wouldn’t forget that he had promised her that he would introduce Obie. She kept her eyes off Obie, afraid the lurch in the depths of her stomach would be reflected on her face where others might see it and guess about her. She sang in a sweet soprano: “I will follow, follow all the way.” She opened her mouth for the high notes, but didn’t try to reach them. Only the choirmaster suspected, and he never had been able to pin down the exact source of the reduced volume when the notes got up there.

There were half a dozen reporters among the congregation. They had got into the sealed area somehow, and found, with dismay, that they really were not being allowed back out. In lieu of any news from the officials, they attended church, hoping to pick up something there.

Obie’s sermon is recorded elsewhere, but a few of his remarks follow. “Fear the stranger,” was his text. The lectern had a Simple flower arrangement of baby’s breath and pink roses and the inevitable glass of water, and the crumbling Bible belonging to the Reverend MacLeish. Obie used no notes, but he had plugged in a tape recorder himself on his way to the dais. One of the visiting reporters had grinned cynically at that gesture of egoism, but his grin changed during the talk, and he knew he was seeing the birth of something big. He didn’t know yet what it would lead to, but he made a note to follow it up from time to time.

“Brothers and sisters,” Obie started, after looking them all over very deliberately, “I have sinned against the Lord and against my fellowman. I have broken all of the sacred commandments except the fifth, and I would have broken that one had not the Lord spoken to my heart in time.” He was looking over their heads now, his eyes fastened on a point that no one else could see. The light coming through stained glass made his hair look more silver than blond, and some swore later that there had been a halo about his head during part of his sermon.

“I went to the woods hoping to kill the aliens,” Obie went on. “I carried a rifle and I desired to murder. Then the Lord come unto me where I sat on the ground and I heard Him. And the Lord said to me: ‘Look upon the stranger with fear, for he will come again. Look upon the stranger with fear, for he will come again.’”

There was more, and it all spun off from that phrase, “for he will come again.” One of the reporters wrote: “There was fear here, of course, but it had not been voiced until this new evangelist voiced it. He voiced it and gave it direction and gave it substance.”

Another reporter compared him to a microwave relay station, mysteriously able to gather myriad weak, dying signals and weave them to form a powerful, directional beam.

Obie finished his sermon with a note of triumph, and a gamble. “And the Lord said unto me, ‘I will slay the stranger among you that you may prepare your house.’” Since the strangers were being slain, Obie was something of a prophet overnight.

Winifred called Matt from the Busby house. “Do you have extra slides, and test tubes?” she asked. “We are going to run out before our supplies get here, and we have to keep trying to isolate this thing, whatever it is.”

He said he did, and he would bring them himself, on his bike. Mrs. Murray was caring for Lorna, and would be on hand for Florence, if she needed anything. Florence was sleeping again. Matt collected all that he had in his lab, and took them to the Busby farm. The ship hadn’t Changed, big and silver still, awkward-looking compared to the sleek projectiles one had grown to expect from the covers of science fiction magazines, Everywhere along the edge of the woods, along the roads on two sides of the field, people stood silently and watched and waited.