Let the Fire Fall

Chapter Fourteen

HIGH on a mountain in Pennsylvania Blake inspected the hunter’s shack that he had appropriated for his own use. He didn’t want it to look inhabited. Not that it mattered. There hadn’t been any game in this area for twenty years or longer, and the shack hadn’t been used for fifteen. Once a dirt road had wound up the mountain to the rough building, but it was covered now with new growth and fallen trees and shale slides so that the only way up was on foot, horse, or by air. Blake used all three on occasion. The gray frame three-room house leaned crazily against the stone of the mountain behind it, dependent on the stone for support apparently, but only apparently. Blake had done things to the shack. Still unpainted splintery wood on the outside, there was a thin layer of insulation on the inside that served as a practical building material, conserving heat in the winter, keeping it out in the summer, and was in itself very nice to look at, soft, with a deep finish that changed from blue to a warm rosy yellow depending on the temperature. Too, the view through the windows of the shack was deceptive. All one could see from outside was shadowy interior filled with cobwebs and dirt, and no one ever suspected that the view was in the window only. Actually the inside was a quite large, very neat and well-stocked laboratory-house. Blake lived in one of the rooms and worked in the other two. For his work he needed quantities of electricity and running water, and he provided both from the land beyond his doors. There was a small brook that fell through a mountain gorge twenty feet away and it served admirably as a power source, even though nothing showed to a casual observer.

For a year and a half Blake had been working in the shack sporadically. He had come across it accidentally, and he had returned with equipment in his copter, some of it stolen, some bought and paid for, all of it necessary. That year he had invented a filter that would pass only pure H20 through a permeable membrane, regardless of the source of the water. Equally interesting to him had been the idea of the direct manufacture of electricity from the molecular excitation of various alloys spun out into wires. He had accomplished this also. At the bottom of the swift brook there were half a dozen long wires being whipped continually. Anchored upstream the loose ends danced against a plate with a feeder line that vanished into art insulated cable in a tree trunk that housed a storage battery; the wires shimmied and twisted and made electricity. But he hadn’t finished with this yet. The wires wore out too fast.

There had been other things that he had tried, some he had been able to bring off, some would take more hard work, some probably never could be done. His work was taking him into all fields of science, and he had many ideas drawn up ready for patenting. He had been biding his time until he knew Obie Cox couldn’t touch him again, but when that time had come around, he had been busy, and had forgotten to pack up until he realized that the leaves had fallen and the air had the bite of frost and the smell of snow. So he packed his copter with notebooks and sketches and schematics of those things that he knew were ready for a patent search, and he locked up all else in the shack. He knew that barring a landslide that would bury the shack completely, it was impervious to any outside interference. The material he had lined it with would withstand flames and heat up to four thousand degrees, and would deflect any kind of explosives. The snows would come and cover it for him, hiding it until his return. He left in his single-seater copter and headed south.

Blake was a fugitive on several accounts. His copter was stolen. In a credit card economy anyone without a proper credit card is automatically suspect, and it is illegal to sell a copter or plane, or hovercraft, or underwater craft, or spacecraft or the atomic engine, or turbine motor, or jet pack, or rocket cluster to run any of the foregoing to a minor. Although Blake had several different sets of papers, all forged, none of them would have stood up for the sort of investigation that buying a copter entailed. So he had stolen one several years ago. Too, most of the big equipment he had in the shack was stolen, for much the same reasons. He could have paid cash for anything he had wanted or needed, had tried hard to buy equipment with cash, but it had drawn unwanted attention to him, so he had been forced to steal. Also, there were a lot of policemen scattered from city to city who remembered the golden-haired boy who could jump a General, or goose a vehicle of any make into running. He was something of a legend in those cities. Never booked, never picked up for anything, never identified in any way, except as the well-built blond boy with the books, he was suspected of being the gang leader in any town where he showed up. None of those who got to know him ever put the finger on him, but there were others, the ones on the fringes who knew him by sight only, and they were the ones who added to the myth of the boy with the golden hair. He could leap from building to building; he could outrun a cop car; he could make people do things they didn’t want to do, and he could do things to them from a distance; he could heal….

This last was the elusive spoor that Merton’s men kept running across and following. Those who got fixed up by him never talked about it, so that it was hard to track them down. But there were the rumors that were like ripples on a pond; everyone knew someone who knew someone who had been taken care of by the kid.

Blake grinned at the reports and never denied anything or admitted anything. He flew low over the mountain, under the Air Patrol radar. He didn’t want to be challenged. It always upset the Air Patrol to challenge his craft and see it elude them. The copter he had stolen over two years ago had undergone radical changes, so that although it looked much the same, it was not. Near Harrisburg the challenge came. Blake sighed. He hadn’t really expected to be allowed to fly from upper Pennsylvania all the way to Cincinnati without being hailed. Any unauthorized craft was a menace to air traffic, theoretically, and there could be no exceptions.

“Aircraft of E designation, heading west, number 927-083, proceed immediately to Air Patrol strip A-27. You will be escorted by an Air Patrol craft.”

Blake looked at his instruments, setting his course, then looked for the A.P. craft. It was a hovercraft outfitted with a booster jet. It dipped at him, turned slightly to the left, slowing down somewhat for him to follow. He maintained his course. They were passing north of Harrisburg, well out of the traffic lanes. The voice repeated the message, this time more stridently. They were now west of Harrisburg. The designated field was changed from A-27, to C-33. The hovercraft drew in closer and Blake could see the cop making a hand signal for him to turn to. He thumbed his nose and pressed his acceleration stud. The copter lifted vertically, shooting up like a rocket. At two thousand feet he leveled and, still accelerating, streaked westward. There was a moment of leeway while the cop got over his stunned surprise, then he used his booster and came after Blake. The copter dropped as suddenly as it had risen, dropped and reduced speed so that the hovercraft overshot it and lost it before the pilot could make a turn. Blake hugged the ground and headed for the nearest wooded area, half a mile away, folding his blades all he went. When he entered the woods the craft was a ground effect vehicle. The cop searched the area for half an hour before giving up.

When Blake got near Cincinnati, he crossed the river to approach from the Kentucky side. It was less heavily populated here, and the hills that lined the river made better cover than the myriad subdivisions where the houses stood window to window, matched up like dominoes over the flatter Ohio land. It was a dark, frosty night, no moon, no stars either, hidden as they were by the dense layers of smoke, smog, and airborne wastes of all sorts. The copter made the only noise, and not wanting to attract more attention, Blake converted it again to a ground effect vehicle and skimmed over the black earth. Excitement and anticipation were rising in him.

He took a wide detour around the U.N. area of the spaceship, and his new direction took him within two blocks of the Voice of God Memorial Temple erected as near the spot as had been possible where Obie first communicated with God. Blake saw the roadblocks in time to turn again; every road leading to the river was blocked off. He stopped at the side of the woods and considered his next move. He didn’t know what was happening in the area, but he’ did know that he didn’t want to get mixed up in anything at all, not now, not when home was within hailing distance practically. The sky was being patrolled by police copters and hovercraft, so he didn’t even consider taking to the air. He knew his little craft would get through the woods without any trouble, but there was the river after that, and he was certain that if there was an official net out, the river would be heavily patrolled. While he was sitting there quietly trying to decide what to do, he heard a distant rumble as indistinct and rolling as summer thunder. He cocked his head. He knew the sound. Here? Out in the middle of the woods?

He lifted the craft from the roadbed so he could get a better view and he saw them coming. People, thousands of people, carrying electric torches, kerosene torches, flares. Over them the police craft hovered, spotlights blazing down on the masses. Blake couldn’t hear the message being directed at them, but he suspected that they were being ordered to turn back. The police craft dipped and swayed, and others joined it. A line of ground cars was across the road, and there were more police manning that barricade. Blake shook his head. There were thousands of marchers. And four, five hovercraft. Where were the National Guards? Why didn’t the cops release anti-mob gas? His eyes narrowed. They wanted them to get through. The cops were going through the motions only. He watched the oncoming mob for another moment, then turned into the woods, keeping high enough to see them. They stretched across the road, coming in like a tidal wave, chanting, yelling, screaming, roaring. The hovercraft over them simply lighted their way, and now and again Blake could catch snatches of the messages being sent down: “…turn back… arrest… anti-mob gas…”

It meant nothing. If they had wanted to stop the mob they would have done so already. If they made a move now, with so many people packed along the road, there would be a stampede. Thousands would be trampled. Blake had thought at first that they were heading toward the U.N. area and the spaceship; now he realized that they should have turned left. They were still coming directly toward him. The temple! They were attacking the Voice of God temple.

Very cautiously he retreated, keeping in the woods, invisible against the black of the trees, until he had a view of the temple. The long hairs were there. Not as many as the gang marching down the road, but ready for them. He nodded then. It was as predictable as a slum war when the short hairs and long hairs mixed it up on Saturday night. Predictable if bigger than any slum war he had seen. He was too far from either group to see what their weapons were. He knew he should leave before the battle started. He had no desire to enter into it on either side. He retreated the way he had come, was stopped again by the instruments on his control panel. Interference ahead. He directed his scanners to probe the source and his mouth tightened. The defenders had set up ambushes, probably throughout the woods to pick off those that decided to run. He crept cautiously to his left until he spotted another patrol. They were taking up positions up and down the woods paralleling the road.

The advancing mob was much louder. when he realized that he was not going to be allowed to leave. He began to search for a place to sit it out, and brought his craft to a stop high in a gigantic spruce tree that was thick and black all the way to its peak, over one hundred feet above the ground. The short hairs coming up the road made such a din now that the trees trembled. Blake sealed off his craft and opened his oxygen supply to escape the noise. He trained his receiver toward the park where the temple stood, adjusted the volume so that the oncoming roar was bearable, then waited.

When the mob got within a hundred feet of the park, brilliant lights suddenly came on on both sides of the road. The scraggly hordes were illuminated and blinded. There were screams and a milling about as of hens terrorized in an enclosed barnyard by the unexpected incursion of a drooling fox. From his position high over it all Blake could see clearly the panic on the faces, the fear of instant death. He expected to hear the soft stutter of stun guns, but there was nothing. Only the glare of spotlights. Those farther back on the road were pushing on, an irresistible force that would have overrun those who had halted had they not moved ahead. The mob became tighter, body against body, flares and torches and electric lights now hanging down unused, unusable. The noise lessened. Those approaching the park were silent and very afraid. From off to the right there came three quick explosions, not very loud, leaving a deeper stillness afterward. There was one more explosion, then silence. Blake turned his gaze to the park and studied the encircling woods. A movement had caught his eye. He saw it again. The short hairs had split off from the main crowd and were gathering at the edge of the clearing. He couldn’t tell how many of them there were. The masses below him were being pushed reluctantly toward the clearing and the approach to the temple grounds now.

Suddenly there was singing, a chorus of children’s voices, incredibly sweet and compelling. The mob stopped again in confusion. The chorus was singing a paean to their leader, calling on all to adore him, to hear his words, to obey his commands. The hymn ended on a high note, a note of hallelujah, and after a silence of no more than five seconds, Obie’s voice was in the air, everywhere:

“And the Lord spake unto me, and the Lord said, ‘This ground shall evermore be sacred. Let no man desecrate this ground whereon I walk. Build here a temple that all men might come and worship and see the glory of the Lord.’ Come, come. Come see the glory of the temple of the Lord. Feel the presence of the Most Holy. I shall show you the power. and the might of the Lord. Walk forward, drop your weapons on the side of the road. Walk forward and approach the temple of the Lord. ‘Come unto Me,’ saith the Lord. Walk forward, drop your weapons and walk forward. Come forward slowly, with downcast eyes that you may not be blinded by the Radiant Light of the Lord. Fall on your knees and open your hearts to the presence of the Lord….”

Blake watched as the mob surged into the clearing, dropping clubs, knives, guns, torches, everything. They were obeying the voice that was everywhere. He turned his gaze to the smaller group at the edge of the woods across the park. He couldn’t make out any details of that group yet. There was a flash and a phut, and the light that had been directed generally toward that area went out. The men rushed forward at the same instant. Then he could see them, perhaps fifty or sixty of them. They were met in the park by long hairs armed with stun guns. The battle started among the trees and shrubbery of the park, but slowly worked its way toward the temple. More long hairs emerged from the temple, circling the fighting men, trying to get behind the attackers. Another dozen or more short hairs ran out from the woods and engaged them. Blake nodded. The cleared area, carefully planted with specimen trees and shrubbery was being filled with the now kneeling short hairs who were being stumbled over by the newcomers to the temple park. And those on the road, beyond the lights and the voice were shouting and roaring and pushing to get to the temple.

In the frosty air Blake could see vapor where the lights were focused on the road; it also hung like mist over the park, settling very slowly while new layers formed, hung, then sank. On the side where the fighting was taking place then; was no such effect. .

“Form a line and come to the temple,” the voice said, everywhere. “Come to the temple with downcast eyes, and feel the presence of the Lord. Let the Voice of God soothe you and comfort you. Form a line and come to the temple.”

Again, as before, there was the repetition, the strong voice that was everywhere and sourceless. There was an incredible scene below Blake then. On the road the people were being told to drop their arms and enter the park where they were to kneel. In the park they were being told to make a line and come into the temple. The voice carried over the choir, which continued to sing. And still around the side of the parka fierce battle was being waged, with stuttering stun guns, and blue arcing electric clubs that could deliver a range of hits from mild shock to electrocution. There was hand to hand fighting with no weapons, and this was the most brutal of all. The people in the park, and those on the road still appeared oblivious to the fighting.

A third wave of attackers appeared from the dark woods and swarmed into the grounds, and this time their force was visibly driving the defenders back, up the incline toward the temple. At the edge of the woods three men worked over a piece of equipment, a portable mortar. They got it set up and aimed it at one of the many terraces that led to the temple. When the mortar exploded there were many screams of terror, and one of the bright lights went out. The men aimed again and scored a hit on another of the lights, and with the diminution of light, it seemed that some of the people entering the grounds were strengthened; they didn’t fall to the ground to make obeisance to the ubiquitous voice, but charged blindly over the kneeling figures to take cover within the shrubbery.

Some of them were going to make it inside the temple. The original band of fighters was now midway up the incline, fighting on the second terrace. The temple was on raised ground approached by tiers of broad steps and wide terraces with recessed lights set in them. The temple was of gleaming white marble, with black marble floors along a colonnade that ran around the entire structure. The columns were polished, snow white, and completely unadorned. It had been designed by Straton-Rubichek, and a replica of it was on display in the Museum of Modern Art. It was very beautiful. The mortar picked off another light. Suddenly appearing between the columns of the colonnade were figures, each holding a massive candle, girls, women, children. They came out of the temple singing, the same hymn that had so startled the short hairs earlier. There were hundreds of the figures, and now Blake could see that most of them were teen-aged girls; all were dressed in long white robes. The scene became a tableau, and even the mortar was quieted.

“The crazy fools!” Blake muttered, watching the descending figures. He raised binoculars and studied them; all seemed unaware of the fighting, unaware of the hordes of maddened people on the road and lurking behind bushes and trees. They sang triumphantly, looking neither to right nor left and the breeze hardly stirred the flames of the candles they carried. Each face was lighted; and all of the faces appeared entranced. Suddenly Blake gasped.

“Lisa!”

He knew almost immediately that it couldn’t be Lisa. It was Lisa as he remembered her from years ago. He was looking at Lorna. He kept the binoculars on her as she went down the steps to stop on the bottom tier. One of the damaged lights came” on again. There was frenzy among the mob not yet on the grounds. They could hear the singing and were enraged beyond endurance by it. They shoved harder and some of these in the front were knocked down and trampled.

The mortar came to life again. It was a very good shot, not hitting any of the choir members, but knocking them down by the shock in spite of that. The others continued to stand unmoving, singing.

Then the band of attackers broke through the long hairs defending the temple and raced up the steps, knocking the girls out of their way as they went. Most of the short hairs fell on the steps, not shot, not hit by anything that Blake could see. A few others made it to the top and vanished inside. Blake had grown more and more tense since the choir had appeared, and now he found himself starting the engine of his copter and leaving the branch it had rested on to hover free of the tree. He couldn’t leave Lorna standing down there unprotected like a somnambulist.

Among the invaders there must have been some who were familiar with the temple interior. In a very short time the lights went out and the area was in total darkness relieved only by the candles of the choir, and these now seemed pitiably weak. The mob coming in by road swelled and swept over those on the ground as if released by magic from magic.

Blake swooped down also. He aimed toward Lorna. At the same moment he saw the National Guard aircraft coming in finally. The fighting at the temple had increased in intensity, there were hundreds or perhaps thousands from each side engaged in hand to hand battle now, and the choir was being swept aside, their candles smashed. Blake landed left of the temple, two hundred yards from Lorna. There was very little activity here; most of it was at the front where the temple faced the road, and at the side where the attackers had launched the flanking move. The lights came on suddenly, and went off again. There was a momentary lull in the fighting when they came on. The tempo picked up as soon as darkness returned. Blake pushed and fought his way through fighting men and women, indiscriminately hitting out, or using his own stun gun on them. He finally got to the steps where he had last seen Lorna. She was not there. Her candle was flattened, as if by a heavy boot. Blake searched the grass and bushes for her and he saw a team of men setting up a portable laser, aiming it at the columns. They were going to cut through them, collapse the roof of the temple. He yelled for Lorna. He had worked his way to the top of the incline, looking at white-robed bodies, alive and dead, that littered the stairs all the way up. There were some of them going inside the temple at that moment and he raced for the group and spun the last one around.

“Lorna? Where is she?”

A glassy-eyed pre-adolescent pointed wordlessly, wrenched away from him and entered the temple.

Blake ran inside and yanked the arm of a long-haired girl. She turned and he breathed in relief. “Come on! I’m getting you out of here!”

She shook her head, tried to pull free, and he clipped her once gently at the side of her neck. He caught her when she fell, swung her over his shoulder, and headed for the door through which he had entered. It was crowded now with short hairs. They tried to snatch Lorna from him, hands yanking at her hair, and her robes. He turned and ran to his left. As he ran through the temple the sounds of battle grew nearer. He darted out the first door he came to, continued to run along the colonnade until he spotted his copter and he groaned. The short hairs and long hairs were fighting over it. They had pulled out all the boxes of plans and notes. He stopped, resting Lorna’s weight against a wall, and adjusted the force of his gun. He went on then and when he got within range of the copter he sprayed a charge over everyone in the area. It was too weak to kill, but they fell back before it, those who were able to walk. He pushed Lorna inside, dumping her unceremoniously on the floor where the boxes had been. The National Guard copters were starting to spray the area With anti-mob gas. Behind them there was an explosion within the temple and a geyser of smoke and rubble climbed into the sky. A roar came from the crowd. Blake started the engine and had to pause long enough to spray the area once more. He took off, straight up. A National Guard copter came down to intercept him and he accelerated, shooting off northeast into the darkness.

In the headquarters communications room on Mount Laurel Obie watched the scene with Dee Dee and Billy Warren Smith. Six cameras covered all of the battle from different vantage points, and the engineers continually switched from one to another so that the viewers were shown more of the action than they would have been able to see on the spot. There was only one clear shot of Blake, and none of. them recognized him.

Merton returned after a lengthy view phone conversation with the governor of Kentucky. He looked grim. “The bastard couldn’t be reached in time to activate the Guards earlier,” he said. “I say the time for a showdown is now.”

Obie nodded. Now. Merton left again to contact the lieutenant governor, one of their men, and they knew that by morning there would be a new administration in Kentucky.

“Somebody talked,” Obie said then. “They knew about the lights and the gas. They went straight for it, using the mobs out front as decoys.”

Dee Dee’s face was thoughtful. “But, by God, it was effective until they got to it! I never would have believed it.”

They talked on into the night, with Merton appearing and disappearing again and again, tallying the wounded and dead, receiving reports, and finally leaving to inspect the damage personally. He returned within two hours and got Obie out of bed. He had been given the box of plans and drawings abandoned by Blake.

“Where did they come from?” Obie asked. His face was swollen and ugly with sleep and he hated Merton intensely then, as he did every so often.

“No one seems to know. Simpson gathered them up after the mob was dispersed, and he had enough sense to realize their importance.”

During the next three days the plans were analyzed and recognized as the work of genius. On the fourth day Merton had found the tape with Blake’s appearance on it, and his rescue of one of the temple girls. By the fifth day they knew that Blake had been there and was gone again. Also on the fifth day they had found the card belonging to Lorna Daniels among the computer membership cards. She had been home on vacation for Thanksgiving and a pilgrimage to the temple, but was now back at the Voice of Unity College, where she was a sophomore. Obie called for another council of war.

They studied a map of the neighborhood where the Daniels’ house was a speck in a sea of believers. Surrounded by members or supporters of the Voice of God Church, each one marked by an X so that the entire area looked like a diagonally hashed cross-stitched pattern transfer, the one very small white speck looked totally indefensible, as it was.

Billy smirked fatly. His face was all but vanishing in the folds of fat, as if his features were dwindling while everything else swelled. Looks simple enough,” he said. “How about a fire?”

Dee Dee said sharply, “Don’t be a fool! We have to have Blake alive for a year or longer, alive and under control.”

Billy looked blank and Merton said patiently, “It’s going to take time for the buildup, and then we have to stage his death very carefully. Dee Dee’s right, we’ve got to grab him. He vanished once, he can again until we’re ready to spring him.”

“In the hospital,” Obie said slowly. “I’d like that.”

The hospital was a heavily guarded building on the property on Mount Laurel, three miles from the main house. Occasionally a new minister to the Church reacted violently to the indoctrination process, and in the beginning this had caused such a stir of interest among research psychologists that Merton had suggested providing for them on the same grounds where they rounded the bend too abruptly. Some of them recovered, most did not, and the hospital did a lively business. It was every bit as secure as the estate where the Star Child, Obie’s son, was being held. And it had the added advantage of being nearby so that Obie could observe personally this stranger on Earth. They agreed that it was the place.

“Another thing,” Merton said, “I think we should patent those things in your name, Obie. And you announce that you were inspired by telepathic communication with the kid, Johnny.”

And that is what they did. They didn’t capture Blake at that time because when the special group of Savers appeared at the Daniels’ residence he was already gone again, but they did begin to apply for patents on the purification process, and the manufacture of electricity from wires in water, and several other things that threatened to revolutionize the world, all admittedly the original ideas of the alien, all controlled by Obie Cox.

And Obie preached the sermon that broke completely with the past and started a new era for the Church and for the world.