Kate Wilhelm - Let the Fire Fall

Derek looked about quickly. The wind coming off the fetid water was cold and evil-smelling and constant. There was a black warehouse looming behind them, on both sides of them, and the river before them. Nothing else. They had lost the mobs, and might have been alone in the city.

Derek was bitterly cold. The mist here at the river was freezing, coating everything with dirty ice. Blake left him, felt around one of the lower boards of the warehouse, withdrew a thin pencil-shaped object. He put it to his lips and blew once, then put it in his pocket. He motioned to Derek to follow him and went down to the edge of the pier and waited. After a moment there was a stir in the black water. A homing device, Derek realized. He had an ultra-sonic homing device to bring his boat to him when he whistled. The craft broke through the water and floated easily alongside the pier. It was shaped generally like a ground effect car, circular, disklike, but it was black and featureless. Blake ran his hand over the thing and a hatch opened. He went inside with Derek following. A few seconds later they were sinking down into the water again.

“We’ll take off from the bay,” Blake said. “Less risky there.”

Derek was warming up now and he studied the interior of the craft with interest. Blake had modified it until all traces of the original vehicle had been erased. It was roomy inside, and warm, with a simple-looking dash-control board that housed a four-inch-square screen which now was showing the river and its banks in a continuous sweep. The strangeness Derek felt for this Blake persisted and he remained silent. Blake also was silent, giving his attention to the screen and the controls he operated. They were in the bay. There were National Guards craft, and some navy ships, several tugs, a pleasure cruise ship at anchor.

“Wouldn’t it be safer to wait until dark?” Derek asked.

“Don’t think so. They’ll rely on instruments after dark, but now they’ll sight us visually. Much easier to fool their eyes than their instruments.” Blake grinned then; and all at once the stranger was gone, and they were kids playing together in a tree house again. Derek grinned back.

They shot up from the water like a flying fish, climbing straight up through the cloud cover to three thousand feet before Blake leveled their flight and headed west. Below them there was excitement as instruments and men clashed over what had happened. Radar was turned to scan the sky, but by then Blake had dropped to skim over the treetops and so escaped the magic eye.

And that was how Derek Daniels joined Blake and became his partner.

Half expecting to feel jealousy, he felt only admiration and loyalty to this unschooled boy-man changeling. Blake read Matt’s note twice, then handed it to Derek and walked outside the cabin high in the Pennsylvania hills handling the black disk that was his heritage.

The note was as follows:

“Dear Blake, I should have found time to talk to you when you were with us the last time, when you brought Lorna home to us. I didn’t realize how short the visit was to be, I thought there was time. We always think there is enough time, and there never is. I can only hope that this will reach you soon, I can’t know for certain that it will. I have to gamble on it and say here what I didn’t say before.

“When the ship came, I was the first one to see the aliens. I have to start with that. Obie has lied about it and the lie is believed now, but I was there first. I stood at the side of the road and looked down on the ship, feeling awe, unlimited excitement, joy…. High on the ship a panel, or door, opened, and one of the aliens stepped out. He had no platform there, nothing. He simply stepped out on air and stood there. I started to climb over the fence and when I looked again, the panel was closed, and the door-hatch that we ill got to know was opening at ground level.

“That is the first thing.

“When the alien woman arrived at the office some days later, Florence was already in labor. I was not there when they both delivered. I believe the alien delivered Florence, then herself.

“One baby was dying, the other was well and healthy. I knew how it would be with the alien child, the suspicion, fear, extraordinary precautions that would imprison him. I don’t think I made a conscious decision. The alien had made the switch, if a switch had indeed been made. I let it stick. One dead baby to add to the many dead aliens, one live and healthy baby to be raised in a normal family as an Earth child, as my child.

“I had only that first minute in which to decide. After that it was out of my hands. No one would have believed me later even if I had decided to voice my suspicions. I didn’t decide to do that, of course, but later, when Obie took you, I was tempted. If Winifred hadn’t told us about the prison conditions surrounding Johnny I probably would have talked.: But I couldn’t risk exposing you to that.

“I don’t know what the disc is, what it does, why she gave it to me. When I took her tunic, the disc fell from it. She indicated that I should keep it. I can only hand it on and say, this may be from your mother. Love, Matt.”

Derek, like Blake, read it twice, the second time very slowly, stopping often, gazing into space, thinking furiously. He put it down numbly and paced in the cabin, not seeing anything there. It all fell into place now. And Obie knew. They had found out somehow. He remembered reading of the proposed visit by Obie Cox to the estate where the Star Child was kept. He shuddered; that might have been Blake, locked up on an estate somewhere all his life. So, Obie saw the Star Child and guessed that he was the father. If the Star Child was that much like him, why didn’t anyone else see it? And what of the stories of his great powers, which were only now being manifested? All lies? The longer he thought of it, the more confused Derek became. Hours passed before Blake returned.

He had washed the black from his hair, and it was the blond that Derek remembered. He was tall and broad-shouldered, very handsomely built, with the self-assurance that had been part of him ever since Derek could remember. There was a new thoughtfulness, a new maturity perhaps, a more distant attitude, a new curiosity…. Derek couldn’t put a finger on it, couldn’t put the concept into words at all, but felt it nonetheless.

Blake handed the black disk to him wordlessly. Derek turned it over and over, and could find nothing to it that suggested what it was. A black disk, shiny on one side, dull on the other. It fit his palm nicely, was slightly warm, but then Blake had been handling it and could have warmed it. Finally he handed it back with a shrug.

“I have to go to the ship,” Blake said. “This has to be a key of some sort.” He flipped the disk into the air and caught it a couple of times, and when he turned again to look at Derek there was an unholy gleam in his eyes. “It’s a damn shame the ship is In the shadow of the temple,” he said, grinning. “I just may have to be converted in order to get close enough to it to get inside.”

They knew that Obie had a round-the-clock guard at the ship, complementing the UNEF there already, who were mystified at this new development. Everyone who went into the ship was scrutinized, photographed, had his retinas checked. Weekly there were incidents in which men were summarily seized and taken to the temple, put inside a room there and left for five minutes, only to be released without a word about what had been done, why they had been taken, or what was expected. Many of them were believers and didn’t complain, but the non-believers complained bitterly to the authorities. Each time this happened the official temple security chief apologized and promised that it wouldn’t happen again.