Kate Wilhelm: Let the Fire Fall

“No one sleeps enough any more,” she said.

“Insomnia is certainly part of it,” Blake said absently, She looked at him suspiciously, afraid he was mocking her, but he wasn’t even noticing her now.

Lorna sat there only a minute; when Blake didn’t say anything else, she pushed herself from the ground, a thin figure in pants and boy’s shirt, with her hair close to her head. “Is this all we do about it, Blake? Harass them now and then? Annoy the long hairs a bit when we think we can get away with it, then hide again? Is that all? There is civil war going on now. Can’t we do something?”

Blake smiled at her. He was no longer distant, but was there, close and warm. He reached. up for her hand and pulled her down to his side again. “Lorna, if we can get through the next year and a half, more or less whole, then all this will ease off. Don’t you see that? People have been afraid for so long that if they get past the mystical number 2000, they will breathe again, and be able to look at the sky again, and at each other again, and automatically Obie Cox and his religion will be swept aside. Get past 2000 A.D., spread them out, hold the population….”

“But can we get through the next eighteen months? How many will be left? You know what it’s like now in the cities. I saw on the 3D news that another twenty-five square miles of winter wheat had burned down last night. Fires were started every five miles, and the army was fought off when they tried to put it out. Why things like that, Blake? What can they hope to gain? They’ll be hungry too.”

“I don’t think so. In most states they have the legislatures tied up tight; they’ll get their rations, and if the others go hungry… sooner or later they’ll be forced to join the Church and then they’ll eat again.”

“And you’re willing for that to happen? To have everyone become a member of the Church and worship his god of hate? Is that it? You think salvation for Earth lies with Obie Cox and his Church!”

“I think it does. I really think it does.”

“I just don’t understand you at all!” Lorna jumped up again, and this time Blake merely watched her. “You knew what Obie is like, you better than most of us, and yet you sit there and say you think he can save mankind. Why? It’s mad. But of course, you’re not even human so how can you know what I feel, what most of us feel about this!” Blake laughed and was still laughing when she turned and fled back to the house.

That night he told the Barbers that he was going back to Obie Cox and that he planned to stay with him through to the end.

“He needs one last miracle,” Blake said slowly, “and I’m afraid that I’m it.”

“What are you talking about?” Lorna asked. She looked to Derek for support, but he nodded at Blake in agreement.

“There has to be a crucifixion and a resurrection,” Blake said simply. “And that will tie all the loose ends, make a package of it.”

Late that night when she finally gave up on trying to get to sleep, Lorna walked under the trees where Blake had sat earlier. Derek was there.

“Why did he go back, Dek? Why?”

“Would you believe,” he said, but his voice was heavy and only the words were facetious, “that he has to close a circle. That no one else will fit?”

“But he doesn’t have to! Don’t you think it’s useless?”

“I think it’s useless. Now quit bugging me, Lorna.”

“Okay. He’s gone back. Obie will have his sacrifice and he’ll stage the resurrection.” She was silent for several minutes and then said quietly, “We couldn’t have had children. Alien and human….”

OBIE dreamed that Blake drifted in through his bedroom window, riding moonbeams down from the sky to land very gently on a leather chair near the bed.

Obie dreamed that Blake said, “I’ve come home, Brer Cox. The prodigal son is home again.”

Obie dreamed that he tried to rise, tried to shout for help, tried to reach the gun that he kept on the bedside table. All he could do, in his dream, was stare terrified at the blond monster bathed in moonlight. His terror grew, and it was a crushing weight on his chest; it paralyzed him completely. He had to close his eyes, had to, had to… They closed. In a minute or two he awakened completely, sat straight up, clammy and shivering, and looked about wildly. No one was in the room with him. Of course.

When Obie entered the sun porch where he breakfasted every day, he thought at first that Billy was there reading the morning fax, waiting for him to talk to him. He was sleepy, the sunlight was glaring, he wanted it to be Billy there waiting for him. The fax was lowered and it was Blake, smiling at him.

“I’m ready to pick up where we left off, Obie,” he said. “I want to take my place at your side again.”

Obie didn’t believe him at first, probably didn’t believe him at all ever, but gradually he came to act as if he did. The riots continued, worsened as the weather changed and winter came, and the food shortage began to be felt more and more. To add to the miseries promised by the winter weather there was a world-wide shortage of fuel Radiation leaks had forced the closing of many of the world’s reactors, and there wasn’t enough coal and oil to replace them. Rationing became tighter. Christmas arrived in a bleak season of little work, little money, long lines of unemployed and hungry men ready to burn down the city if they were refused jobs. They were refused jobs because the jobs were nonexistent, and they tried to burn down the cities. Whole neighborhoods vanished under the torch, miles of business districts became charred ruins. There were very few deaths even when the long hairs and the short hairs clashed; they all seemed more intent on burning down the material wealth of the country.

Obie was willing for Blake to be on camera with him, but he refused to be with him at other times. Billy was the emissary who delivered messages back and forth. Blake didn’t ask permission to use the lab, nor did he produce any new invention or make any discoveries. He sat on the stage with Obie and throughout the world people wrote in to say they had been cured of this and that by his presence. When Obie started to talk about the promise of God to recall his son to his bosom he doubled the guards about Blake, who smiled and said nothing. Spring came.

The Star Child, Johnny, was pronounced cured, or improved as much as was possible. Obie couldn’t stand to be with the boy, who looked at him haughtily and ordered the immediate recognition from the people of Earth that was his due. Dr. Mueller hovered in the background anxiously and seemed pleased with the product of his long labors.

“Keep him under lock and key,” Obie said and left. Johnny stared after him; he called on all the powers he knew to dwell within himself, called on his people to descend and destroy Earth. Obie continued to move away, untouched by the powers that were hurled against him, and Johnny decided that Obie was a man protected by a very powerful god. He would need more time to ponder this.

Blake was kept locked up much of the time, also, but he accepted it without comment, or even without notice, it appeared. When he was permitted to walk about the grounds, he was followed by half a dozen men, some stationed quite close to him, others overlooking the entire group from more distant vantage points. Spring was cold and windy, and without promise of a letup in the drought that was plaguing Earth.

Billy was uneasy about Blake’s presence, as were the others who had known him in the past. Often Obie, Dee Dee, Billy, and Wanda met to discuss his reappearance, and they never came to a satisfactory conclusion about why he had come back. Or why he was suddenly so docile.