Let the Fire Fall

Chapter Twenty-six

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.

“Merton,” Billy said, more than once, “would have had him killed on sight, put in deep freeze until the right time, then brought him out for the climax,”

“Yeah, I know that,” Obie said.

He dropped it there. They knew that he wouldn’t have Blake killed, yet, and that no one else in the room would have him killed. No one said this, however.

“Have you asked him if he’d take money and just get lost?” Wanda asked in the silence that followed.

Obie stared malevolently at her without bothering to answer.

“How do you know he won’t if you don’t ask?” she said peevishly. Blake’s presence was more upsetting than his disappearance ever had been. “If only he wouldn’t look at me like he does,” she muttered, more peevishly.

“What I want to know is why he came back,” Billy said angrily. “He didn’t have to. He managed to stay hidden well enough when that was what he wanted.”

“Knock it off, for chrissakes!” Dee Dee said. “I am so tired of listening to all of you. Why the hell don’t you ask him why he came back? Have you thought of that?”

Obie looked at her as if she had suggested that he walk into a nest of rattlers to see if they had fangs. But Billy said, “Have you, Obie? Not through me you haven’t.”

So Blake was sent for, and he entered the room with a faint smile on his face. “Reunion,” he said. “Old home week, and all that.”

“What do you want?” Obie said.

Blake laughed. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m your prisoner. How could I have demands?”

“Why did you come back?” Dee Dee was as lovely as ever, although skill and technique now replaced what had been natural. She studied Blake appraisingly, noting the broad shoulders, the long, smooth muscles, the way his gaze had gone over the room just once, but with an intensity that suggested that he had noted every object there.

“To finish Obie’s jigsaw puzzle for him. It can’t be left with the last few pieces missing. That drives people mad, is driving them mad now. There was only so much that Obie could do, and he has done it, all of it. The rest depends on me.” He bowed slightly toward Obie as he said this. Obie continued to watch him with narrowed eyes. His hand was in his pocket tight about a stun gun.

“What are you talking about?” Wanda asked. Her voice, like the rest of her, was big. It filled the room and reverberated.

“There has to be the finale. Ask Obie, he understands these things. Not in words maybe, but he feels how it has to be. Those millions of people out there understand it, too. They don’t believe Obie can deliver, so the tension grows. I have to die, publicly, isn’t that right, Brother Cox? Then a waiting period while Obie prays to his god, and a miraculous resurrection, again public, and my physical ascension to heaven.” Wanda grew steadily paler as he spoke. He smiled gently at her. “You never did like to have it out where everyone could look at it at the same time, did you? But that’s how it has to be. The tide is coming in and there’s no way now to stop it. You can’t start things of this magnitude, then step to one side and say, I didn’t mean that. You have to ride it out, right to the end, or get smashed by it.”

Wanda continued to stare at him as if hypnotized. “You’re planning a trick of some sort. You won’t let yourself be killed like that….”

“Is this being taped?” At her sudden start he nodded. “I thought so. Okay, then you can have this for future study. I’ll outline it for you. By fall the curtain will go up on the last act. Mobs storming the citadel here, after my blood. The government will have to come to grips with the legislation that is being pushed through, things like teaching the Voice of God Church dogma in schools, like tax allowances for .members,…. You know all that. It will come to the fore by the start of the fall session. Many things will come to light all at once, bribery, perjury, forged documents, phony election returns…. The army will be sent for Brother Cox, and me, because by then I will have become the rallying point. It will all come to pass,” he said very quietly, as Billy started to wrestle himself from the oversized chair that had been built specially for him. “You have this on tape. You can check it point for point. So the Army will come, followed by many thousands of persons, short hairs mostly, but also long hairs who will want in on the excitement. There will be 3D cameras to catch it all. Obie will escape, using my flying trick, but I’ll be shot down. And later, after the crowds realize that they have killed me, a reaction will set in: they will come to mourn where they had come to mock and kill. Obie will return. There will be a resurrection. The body will rise from the coffin on display, and it will keep rising until it has vanished into the clouds.”

Obie was as pale as death when Blake turned from Wanda to face him.

“You’re making all of this up. All of it,” Obie said. “It’s a cheap trick….”

Blake jiggled some coins in his pocket and said nothing.

“We had you searched. You haven’t got anything with you to use to fly with. Whatever that trick was back in Miami, you can’t pull it again without equipment.”

“I’m not going to pull it at all, Brother Cox. You are. When the time gets near, you will come to me and demand to know how I did it, and at that time, I’ll tell you.”

“Get out!” Obie said. He looked very frightened. “Get out of here!”

It came to pass almost exactly as Blake said it would. By the end of summer he was the chief attraction in the Voice of God Church. Obie was the prophet, but Blake was the mystical son of God with the powers of God in him. In Congress speeches were made denouncing the Voice of God Church as an anarchist plot to seize the government and the country. The fear of anarchy pushed harder than anything ever had in the past. By November the call went out to arrest Obie Cox and Blake Daniels Cox and try them as revolutionists and traitors, and more specifically to charge them with attempts to bribe law officers and government officials, and with exerting undue, even criminal, influence over elections, with tax frauds, etc., etc. Obie grew more and more frightened. To no avail did Billy Warren Smith point out that other people had made the same predictions that Blake had made. Hysteria over the coming new year and new century was being manifested in many ways. Obie listened and did not hear. He was afraid of Blake Daniels.

In December he walked into Blake’s room, dismissing the guard posted at the door as he entered. “Where is it?” he demanded.

Blake stood up. He was not smiling now. “You have it in your safe among the goodies you had taken from me when I arrived.”

“Come on,” Obie said. He led the way toward the main house. The guard fell into place. It was a cold, clear night: December 27, 1999.

Obie opened the safe and Blake took out the box that held the few belongings that he had brought with him. There was the opal-like stone, the coins that he liked, the black disc. He took them all. Obie watched him suspiciously. He kept one hand in his pocket. He waved Blake back and examined the objects carefully. “It’s just junk,” he said finally. Blake made a motion toward the stone with fire in the middle of it, and Obie’s hand closed over it. “Get back,” he said. “Way back.” He watched until Blake had crossed the room to sit in one of the contour chairs near the desk. Then he examined the stone again, this time turning it over and over and over and over and over…. Blake smiled.