Kate Wilhelm - Let the Fire Fall

But Lorna was gone. Winifred sat smoking quietly; Lorna didn’t come back. Four days later she did come back. There were dark circles “under her eyes, and she looked angrier than she had when she had fled with her hands over her ears.

“Why are you here if you are so skeptical? What are you doing here?”

Winifred shrugged. “I was kidnapped and brought here,” she said. Lorna snorted in disbelief. “That is very unbecoming, young lady,” Winifred said mildly. “The rest of the statement should read: I was brought here to treat the Star Child, who is as mad as a hatter.”

“That’s a lie!” Lorna stood up again and started to turn. “I saw his laboratory, saw the things he has done already, and you call him mad.” She looked vastly relieved.

“Do you remember one night at the temple where there was a big hoopla with the short hairs and the long hairs mixing it up. A real brannigan. And young Lochinvar came from out of the west, or east, as it happened to be actually, and rescued the maiden fair?” Lorna blushed. Winifred continued to talk for the next forty-five minutes, and during that time Lorna sat down again and made no further motions to leave. At the end she shook her head.

“I have to go back. I only have a couple of hours every day…. Dr. Harvey… ”

“Call me Winifred, honey. Everybody does.”

“I think you. believe all this, about my mother and father, and Derek being in danger, and Blake, but I can’t accept it. Why Blake? He helped Obie Cox back in the beginning. Why Derek? He’s never done anything to anyone. You see? There’s no reason for any of this kind of plotting and counter-plotting. It’s all too comic-bookish.”

“I’ve told you only the facts, Lorna. Only the facts. You have to mull them over for reasons and conclusions. But what I have told you is true.” Winifred stood up also. “I have to get back too. Time for Johnny’s afternoon session. He probably won’t know me. But we go through the motions. His is a delusional system that has been built up over a long period; Obie wants instant results, but it’s going to take time. A shot in the arm to wake him up, talk, another shot in the arm to put him back to sleep to assimilate the talk. Eventually we’ll come up with results, but not this week.”

Lorna was smiling slightly, patronizingly. She shrugged, not believing a word of it. “I guess we shouldn’t appear together,” she said.

Winifred smiled also and said nothing, and much later that night Lorna realized that she had given tacit agreement to the conspiracy that now seemed to link her with Winifred Harvey. She had agreed to say nothing about their meeting and their talk. She lay quietly on her narrow bed, knowing that a restless person was reported and interviewed as a potential source of trouble for others. And as she lay unmoving, fighting off impulses to jerk her legs, which developed itches and aches suddenly, she remembered that night at the temple, and Blake’s sudden appearance out of nowhere. She had little to remember of the fight. It was all hazy, but she did remember the sudden clip to her neck. She put her hand on the spot, and as she thought about it, she realized that she should have more memories of what had gone up to the time that she was actually unconscious. But it seemed that she had very few memories of the past few years. There was so little of any of her life from the time she had left the university until now…. She stared at the black above her, listening to the breathing of the other counselors, and tried desperately to reconstruct her life since joining the Church. It all seemed so dreamlike, so distant, as if she were an old, old woman trying to recall her childhood. Misty and unreal images swam, refused to be resolved, faded, or merged with other just as hard-to-focus images. Nothing lasted; it all dissolved when she tried to bring it closer, to make it realer, She fell asleep toward dawn, and was wakened by the bells promptly at six-thirty, very tired and very depressed. She didn’t return to the glen and the pool that week, but late Saturday night she wrote herself a note. It said, in part: “Tomorrow I have my turn in the Listener’s Booth. If Winifred Harvey is right, I have been conditioned by now to withhold nothing. I will betray her, and our talks. I don’t believe it. I won’t mention it at all.” But she did. For ten minutes she sat silent, twisting her fingers together nervously. The Booth was cool and dim and the perpetual taper wavered and held her attention. She tore her gaze from it again and again. Her tension increased until suddenly she blurted out the details of the meetings at the pools and the nonsense Winifred had told her. Immediately she felt relieved and comforted, the way it always happened when one told the truth. She wept as suddenly as she had blabbed, and felt better than before. When she left the Booth she was glowing with new resolve. She had been tested and found not wanting. Obie had said there would be many such tests, all of them difficult, but once mastered, worth experiencing. She wouldn’t tell anyone, of course, but she felt that she had accomplished a major feat, all alone.

They knew.

Wanda called for a meeting that night, and it was attended by Merton and Dee Dee and Everett, the only members of the higher echelons present at Mount Laurel that weekend.

Fat Wanda, as the new girls called her, showed the film with the sound track and they listened intently. Merton grinned afterward. “Some chick,” he said.

“She’s just a green kid,” Dee Dee said.

“Could have fooled me. She’s ready. You start the ball, Wanda.”

“I thought so. We’ll give her the buildup, then put her down in New York and wait. Okay? You have your men ready?”

He nodded. He had started the film again and was watching her silently this time.

On Monday Lorna was summoned to Wanda’s office, where she was told that accusations had been made by three different girls charging her with heresy. Lorna looked blankly at Wanda, who sat back and regarded her.

“But… what do they say I did, or said? Who made the charges?”

“You will be suspended from all duties while an investigation is being made of the charges brought against you.”

“How can I prove that I didn’t do or say anything…?” She stopped in confusion, “I don’t even know what the charges are!”

“Have you ever questioned Brother Obie’s call?”

“No!”

“Have you ever said that Brother Obie doesn’t speak with God?”

“Never!”

“Have you anything else to say?”

“If I knew who had told such a monstrous story…. Maybe I hurt one of the girls, maybe I criticized when I should have tried harder to understand a mistake…. I don’t know why anyone would have said such a thing!”

“Very well. Dismissed. You will remain in your dormitory, speaking to no one, until a decision has been reached. You will be notified.”

“But… is that all? Isn’t there any way I can find out who said those things, find out why they said them? They must need help. Have you questioned them thoroughly?”

“That is all, Lorna. Dismissed.” Wanda was reading through one of the papers on her desk, and didn’t look up again. Lorna turned and went to the door. She felt very near tears, and there was a tightening in her throat that made her afraid that if she tried to speak again, she would sob. She left with her head bowed, hurt and humiliated and bewildered.

She waited the rest of the day, and all of the next, and on Wednesday morning she was again called. This time she was led to the larger office in the main building, and Merton was there with Wanda. There was a high-backed chair there also, and she was directed to it. She sat down gratefully. She had not slept much for the past week, and the strain of waiting had her shaky. She pressed her legs tightly to hide the quiver in her knees that betrayed her.