Kate Wilhelm - Let the Fire Fall

Winifred remained silent thinking furiously. Robbie was feeling pangs of guilt. Why? What had he done? Or was this it? Did they know that it was she who had told Johnny, falsely, that he was the Star Child, the alien? Did it matter? She put a hand to her forehead and Robbie leaned forward.

“Are you ill? Put your head down….”

She took the out he offered and in a few moments was being led from the office by the solicitous girl, and was taken back to her room where she lay down and tried to decide what she should do. Not that, she had much choice actually, and wasn’t this what she had counted on when she realized Obie’s men were closing in on her? But why was Robbie Mueller looking guilty as hell about it? What was the catch? She was tired then, but sleep eluded her, and as she drifted half awake, half asleep, she knew the answer. This was a reprieve only. As soon as they had Johnny ensconced and feeling safe through her efforts, then she would be… sent to the hospital, whatever it was that they planned for her. The thought resolved her indecision and she fell asleep. The next day she accepted the offer and started to plot her escape.

No one could make it down the mountain through the forests, this was accepted as true, perhaps was true. No one lived in the forests, and there was wild life there: bears, snakes, wild boars. There were bogs of quicksand, but more than that, there was no food, no trail, no way to find civilization once more if one became lost in the gloomy depths. They all believed it, and acted on their belief. There were no men posted to keep anyone out of the forests. The road that wound back down the mountain was heavily guarded, with electronic monitoring equipment spaced along its entire length. Winifred didn’t press the point but she did wonder how they knew that no one could make it out through the woods. Or was it a myth, like the myth told to children that the floor around the bed was covered with monsters that would grab them if they didn’t stay under the covers. That one usually worked too. Were the monsters now in the woods? She found it a curious thought, one that she reflected on at length.

Or, and it seemed more probable that this was the real reason for the lack of concern about the forests, were all the towns on the edges of the forest in the hands of the faithful? If that were so, then there was no escape possible. It made her angry to think of the smirks on their faces: after pushing through the woods for weeks, sore, muddy, gaunt, to be picked up in the first town and brought back, exhibited as proof of the simple words: no escape.

Her duties were light. She was not allowed inside the hospital at all, but occasionally she was consulted by Robbie Mueller, and it was he who passed on the instructions to her from Obie, or more likely, Merton. Winifred got the impression more and more strongly that it was Merton who was running the show, and another curious fact that she stored for future consideration was that none of the people around her seemed to realize this.

Her instructions were simple. She was to write a full report of the years she had spent with the Star Child. Period. Busy work? She wasn’t sure. Silently she started it.

In his office in the same building where Winifred labored over the long account of her daily life with Johnny, Obie was kicking his desk. “God damn it! We’ve gotta get him through a miracle!”

Merton slouched lazily, contemplating his fingers. “You have any idea of the security precautions they have set up there?”

“Okay, okay. I believe you. So what? Think, dammit, think!”

Billy was there also, panting, perspiring in the middle of January, uneasy as usual about anything that threatened to shake the boat that he thought of as eternally on the verge of sinking. He puffed and said, “Obie, be reasonable. He can make his own demands, and if they turn him down, we can send in a squadron for him. Like we planned in the beginning.”

“In the beginning that seemed good enough,” Obie said. He was growing thick around the middle, and his face was getting heavy in the jowls. His neck had grown an inch in the past two years. He was forty, and feeling depressed about it, wanting things to come to a head now, while he was still in command. He looked on the years ahead as going downhill only; after forty there was nothing but old age to look forward to, and he wanted this to be finished, this year. He didn’t want to have to keep fighting for the Church until he was a tottering old fool like Everett. He kept Everett around in order to look at him from time to time, firming his resolve each time he studied the senile fool. Not to him. That wasn’t going to happen to him!

He paced for several minutes in the silence of the room, then he turned to Merton and said, “We’ve got almost six months to get something organized. You got the men with brains, let them come up with something. I want to lift him with such a blaze of glory that it will set the whole world on fire. You get that for me.”

Merton pushed himself up from the chair. “Sure, Obie, I see the point, and I think it’s a good one, but the execution? I just don’t know.”

In upper New York State Johnny stared at Lenny Mallard. Lenny said, for the third time, “You are going to address them, Johnny. We are going to put a stop to all the rumors now.” Lenny was smiling.

Johnny hadn’t been afraid of anyone for a long time, not since his shining man in the sky first nodded and smiled at him, but he felt a chill then. Lenny didn’t believe in him. “I won’t do it, Mr. Mallard,” Johnny said stubbornly, for the third time also.

They were in Lenny’s office, where he had turned off the recorder for this interview. Lenny smiled more broadly and stood up. He came around his desk and put his arm about Johnny’s shoulder companionably. “Son, you know and I know that all this is a frost. Right? If you could kill, I’d be dead now. Let me tell you something, Johnny. Ever since man began to talk, he’s been at war with other men. Fact, They fought over land, over trade routes, over insults, over game…. You name it, it’s been fought for. But none of the wars ever fought for all these things was half as bloody as war over religion. If it got to be a religious war, there was nothing either side could do that was so bad it gave anyone insomnia.

“As soon as you convince yourself that you’re fighting God’s war, anything goes. Follow me, so far?” Johnny nodded. “Good. Now, religion’s a funny thing, Johnny. It’s an idea in the head of men. That’s all. If you’re fighting a war for a river, once you defeat the enemy you can seize control of the river and the war’s over. Not with ideas. The only way that sort of a war can be ended really is through the eradication of the idea wherever it exists and that means the eradication of the enemy, and the complete destruction of all the writings that include the idea. Simple?” Again Johnny nodded.

“Now, as soon as a man, any man, comes along with a full-blown idea of what God is and what His purpose is, other men start to pick it to pieces. They find the inevitable contradictions and errors and point them out in a reasonable manner. They become the enemy of that particular religion. Every religion ever born has its enemies. Every last one. By the very nature of the subject matter there is no room for more than one religion in any given area. If the God of the Catholic Church is the real God, then the others are false, see? And those who worship false gods are a menace. If Buddha is God, then the other gods are false gods. And so on. Historically the gods have been warlike. but not in more recent years. Through the spread of Christianity the gods became loving and forgiving and although a few people have raised the cry of Anti-Christ from time to time during war, there hasn’t been a truly religious war for almost a thousand years. But one is brewing.