Cold Fire

"Okay, all right, maybe it's incapable of lying, maybe it's noble and pure, maybe everything it's told us is the gospel truth. But listen, Jim, this is not an epiphany. The Friend set the rules by influencing you to buy the tablets and pen. It established the question-and-answer format. If it didn't want us to make the best of that format, it would've just told you to shut up and would've blabbered at you from a burning bush!" He stared at her. He chewed his lip thoughtfully.

He shifted his gaze to the walls where the creature of light had swum in the stone.

Pressing her point, Holly said, "You never even asked it why it wants you to save people's lives, or why some people and not others.”

He looked at her again, obviously surprised to realize that he had not pursued the answer to the most important question of all. In the lactescent glow of the softly hissing gas lantern, his eyes were blue again, not green as the amber light had temporarily made them. And troubled.

"Okay," he said. "You're right. I guess I was just swept away by it all. I mean, Holly, whatever the hell it is-it's astounding.”

"It's astounding," she acknowledged.

"We'll do what you want, make up a list of carefully thought-out questions. And when it comes back, you should be the one to ask all of them, 'cause you'll be better at ad-libbing other questions if it says anything that needs follow-up.”

"I agree," she said, relieved that he had suggested it without being pressured.

She was better schooled at interviewing than he was, but she was also more trustworthy in this particular situation than Jim could ever be.

The Friend had a long past relationship with him and had, admittedly, already messed with his memory by making him forget about the encounters they'd had twenty-five years ago. Holly had to assume that Jim was coopted, to one degree or another corrupted, though he could not realize it.

The Friend had been in his mind perhaps on scores or hundreds of occasions, when he had been at a formative age, and when he had been particularly vulnerable due to the loss of his parents, therefore even more susceptible to manipulation and control than most ten-year-old boys. On a subconscious level, Jim Ironheart might be programmed to protect The Friend's secrets rather than help to reveal them.

Holly knew she was walking a thread-thin line between judicious precaution and paranoia, might even be treading more on the side of the latter than the former. Under the circumstances, a little paranoia was a prescription for survival.

When he said he was going outside to relieve himself, however, she much preferred to be with him than alone in the high room. She followed him downstairs and stood by the Ford with her back to him while he peed against the split-rail fence beside the cornfield.

She stared out at the deep black pond.

She listened to the toads, which were singing again. So were the cicadas.

The events of the day had rattled her. Now even the sounds of nature seemed malevolent.

She wondered if they had come up against something too strange and too powerful to be dealt with by just a failed reporter and an ex-schoolteacher. She wondered if they ought to leave the farm right away. She wondered if they would be allowed to leave.

Since the departure of The Friend, Holly's fear had not abated. If anything, it had increased. She felt as if they were living under a thousand-ton weight that was magically suspended by a single human hair, but the magic was weakening and the hair was stretched as taut and brittle as a filament of glass.

By midnight, they had eaten six chocolate doughnuts and composed seven pages of questions for The Friend. Sugar was an energizer and a consolation in times of trouble, but it was no help to already-frayed nerves.

Holly's anxiety had a sharp refined-sugar edge to it now, like a wellstropped razor.

Pacing with the tablet in her hand, Holly said, "And we're not going to let it get away with written answers this time. That just slows down the give and take between interviewer and interviewee. We're going to insist that it talk to us.”

Jim was lying on his back, his hands folded behind his head. "It can't talk.”

"How do you know that?" "Well, I'm assuming it can't, or otherwise it would've talked right from the start.”

"Don't assume anything," she said. "If it can mix its molecules with the wall, swim through stone-through anything, if it's to be believed-and if it can assume any form it wishes, then it can sure as hell form a mouth and vocal cords and talk like any self respecting higher power.”

"I guess you're right," he said uneasily.

"It already said that it could appear to us as a man or woman if it wanted, didn't it?" "Well, yeah.”

"I'm not even asking for a flashy materialization. Just a voice, a disembodied voice, a little sound with the old lightshow.”