Let the Fire Fall

Chapter Twenty-five

LORNA said to herself, as she often did, “This is New Hampshire, United States of America. I am sane. I am not hallucinating, not having nightmares, not right now at any rate. There really is an announcer reading from a news card….”

“‘…manic phase. Electro-shock used to be the specific treatment for this condition, but, of course, one cannot administer to an entire population an electric charge sufficient to jar the brains and restore normalcy.’ That ends the quote from Dr. Teodor Dyerman. Tonight in the following cities riots and fighting go on: St. Augustine, Florida; Miami, Jacksonville, St. Petersburg. In Georgia the cities suffering from pitched battles are Atlanta, Waycross…”

Lorna stopped watching and listening. She searched the group before the 3D for Blake, but he had wandered outside. Derek and the others were engrossed in the newscast. This was the resistance, Lorna thought scornfully, a bunch of kids with close-cropped hair and sharp scissors. They were all members of the Barbers, all waiting for the latest word from Obie Cox. She knew everything Obie Cox might say. Another miracle for the people, courtesy of the Cox Foundation Laboratories and the Star Child. Only the Star Child was not the Star Child, and he was mad, and the miracles were those of Blake Daniels’ agile mind, and he was alien. She got up presently and wandered outside where Blake was sitting under a tree. It was late spring, 1998, and the weather was hot and dry. It was always dry.

“The world’s going to hell, isn’t it?” Lorna said joining him.

“Year 2000 might see few left to predict the new century,” he said. His eyes were distant, however, as if he had been deep in thought, and would return as soon as she left him. The Barbers and Blake told her little because they knew that she would talk again if the Church got her back. She hadn’t realized that during their long trek through the mountains up from North Carolina, but it had become obvious as soon as Blake had joined the Barbers and had become their tactical leader. No one called him that, least of all Blake, but there it was. He had brought them the anti-gravity belts and the disks that powered them and had instructed them in the use of the things. He had planned the fiasco that had retired Obie Cox from public. He was planning something now.

Once a millionaire, he had depleted his fortunes in the purchase of factories all over the country. He had bought machinery, designed some of it, had Derek and his friends design other components, and he was turning out water converters by the millions, power units, and now the anti-gravity belts and disks. Lorna didn’t know how he meant to use them, or why. If Derek knew he wasn’t talking about it. She suspected that Derek knew. He was haunted-looking, with deep violet circles under his eyes, and the restlessness of one who isn’t sleeping enough.

“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….”