Kate Wilhelm - Let the Fire Fall

The next night Blake-Teague and Thomlinson slept in the temple dorm. They both lined up for tattooing the morning after that, and during the day the population at the temple swelled as pilgrims came from all parts of the country to celebrate the ceremony of the arrival of the alien ship and Obie’s subsequent meeting with God.

Teague was avoided by everyone who spent a minute in his presence. He didn’t stink, but he looked as if he might, and his constant muttering and mumbling was maddening. He was permitted to wander the grounds alone, and he would be seen first here then there, all the while holding his endless monologues, all the while alone. He roamed at night also, and presently no one noticed him at all. He was another figure among many: who were accepted and no longer seen.

The ship was guarded heavily, a large contingent of UNEF was on duty on the grounds at all times, reinforced by security guards of various dignitaries who arrived unannounced from time to time. The rigorous inspection made by the Militant Millenniumists continued now that Blake was at large again. They still expected him to turn up at the ship sooner or later, and they were right. What they didn’t expect was that he would go through the temple grounds and get to the ship from the rear.

On the night of the final ceremony of the unveiling of the initiates Teague was among the audience when the crackers were handed out with the invisible drop of XPT on them. He didn’t take his, but resumed his seat and kept his eyes on the source of the crackers. Presently he left the auditorium, his eyes half closed, a wide smile on his face. The MM at the door grinned and moved aside for him. He wandered about outside for a minute, then went straight to the back of the auditorium, where a passage led to the rooms used for serving meals. Here three MM’s were preparing the crackers, which were taken from cartons, spread out on the table, and dosed by one of the MM’s using an eyedropper. It all seemed very mundane now. Teague-Blake watched for a moment. There was a flask of clear liquid that was a duplicate of the flask being used by the MM with the eyedropper. Teague began to sing, the hallelujah song of Obie that was so stirring. The MM’s looked up in annoyance and one of them approached him and grabbed his arm.

“Come on, old man. Out. You’re not permitted in here.”

“I heard the Voice, brother. The Voice….” Teague clutched him and forced him back, behind the table, looking into his face earnestly, babbling nonsense, but with a grip that was viselike. The MM was taken by surprise He knew the stuff could affect them in strange ways, but this was too much to put up with. He pulled back his fist to strike and another of the three MM’s carne up and tried to pull Teague away.

“Leave him alone. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” The second one pulled Teague hard, and he let himself be turned and started for the door. In his pocket there was an eyedropper filled with the drug. He started to sing again and he kissed the MM on both cheeks, tried to envelop him with both arms and was finally put out and the door closed and locked. He could hear laughter in the room, and he walked away singing in a cracked hideous voice.

He collected a sack of provisions he had stolen, added a drop of XPT to each of ten pieces of candied fruit in a box, and then went to the back gates where guards were on duty, singing as he walked, staggering and falling and rising again, but always singing. The guards waved him back and paid little more attention to him. He sat down on the grass and pulled the box of sweets from the sack. He pretended to eat one of them.

“What do you have, old man?”

“A present,” he said, cackling. “A present from God. He took me by the hand and said, James, behind that door you will find the sweetness of the Earth that I have saved for you, and I looked and there was this here box of goodies and I knowed it was meant for me to take them because God Himself told me so and I brought them out and they are good, like He said they would be, and if that was stealing may He send lightning down right this minute….”

He went on and one of the guards whistled and said laughingly, “Boy, wait ’til he wakes up in the morning and knows what’s been happening. They’ll have his hide.”

“We might as well have some too,” the other guard said. He turned off the current in the fence and came over to Teague and picked up a candied cherry. Teague snatched the box back and covered it with his arm. “One’s enough,” he said. “It’s mine. God said it’s mine.” The other guard came up and Teague allowed him to take one of the sweets. The guards laughed and one of them feinted an attack while the other one tried to snatch away the box. Teague called, “Help, help, robbers!” And the guards left him alone.

He waited ten minutes then called them. He called them in a voice they hadn’t heard before, and they came obediently. He told them there was a fountain of fire off to the left, that they were to go and watch it so that it would not bum down the temple, which they were to guard with their lives, if necessary. They both saw the fountain of fire and they left him, running in order to watch and prevent the fire’s spread to the temple. Teague-Blake went through the gate, across the strip of grass that separated the temple grounds from the U.N. grounds, and followed it to the rear gate of the U.N. land, a gate used only by the military personnel. It was guarded also.

He fed the U.N. men pieces of the fruit and then sent them to inspect the open temple gate, through which, he said, long hairs were streaming by the thousands. They trotted off. He approached the ship from the rear, and he changed as he neared it. His limp vanished. He pulled a dark green tunic from his pack and put it on, discarding the shabby coat he had worn. He smoothed the pack and folded it so that at a casual glance it looked more like a case than like a cloth bag. He tucked it under his arm. But most of the change came about In his manner of walking and the way he held his head. He looked like one of the bright young scientists who prowled about in the ship day and night.

He walked in front of small clusters of men talking, past a man at a desk who didn’t even look up, past men dressed in UNEF uniforms, with sidearms. No one paid any attention to him . As he went up the ramp to the ship he turned for one last look about, still no one was looking at him questioningly, and he boarded the alien vessel, prepared to stay at least a week, or longer if he had to. No one knew he was there; he had food with him; the men he had duped at the two gates would have no memories of him, he had stressed that. He was probably the first man to board the ship with a key of any sort; perhaps, he thought, he would be the first one to come off it with some of the answers they had all sought for so many years.

What he didn’t know was that three cameras worked night and day, photographing the ship and its entrance. The cameras were known to exist only by three people: Merton, who had ordered them, the expert who had installed them (one in the temple itself, high in the tower that afforded a view of the ship over the treetops), and Dee Dee, to whom Merton had confided. “Obie’s scared shitless by the kid,” he had said that night, “but I’m not. He’ll turn up at the ship one’ day and I’ll get him again. And the next time, I handle it my own way, right down the line.” An hour after Blake had entered the ship, his presence there was revealed to Merton, who examined the film carefully.

“How in hell did he get that far without anyone’s seeing him?” He ran through the film that was taken of the main gate and it showed no Blake Daniels. There were other approaches to the ship, but only through temple grounds, and he didn’t believe even Blake would have tried to get through that way. He had the guards questioned the next morning and they reported that no one had gone through the temple exits. Besides there would have been U.N. men to buy or bribe or force, and that had been tried too many times by his own men to permit him to believe anyone else could do it.