Cold Fire

Listening to herself as she talked, Holly realized that she was using her edginess to pump herself, to establish an aggressive tone that would serve her well when The Friend returned. It was an old trick she had learned when she had interviewed people whom she found imposing or intimidating.

Jim sat up. "Okay, it could talk if it wanted to, but maybe it doesn't want to.”

"We already decided we can't let it set all the rules, Jim.”

"But I don't understand why we have to antagonize it.”

"I'm not antagonizing it.”

"I think we should be at least a little respectful.”

"Oh, I respect the hell out of it.”

"You don't seem to.”

"I'm convinced it could squash us like bugs if it wanted to, and that gives me tremendous respect for it.”

"That's not the kind of respect I mean.”

"That's the only kind of respect it's earned from me so far," she said, pacing around him now instead of back and forth. "When it stops trying to manipulate me, stops trying to scare the crap out of me, starts giving me answers that ring true, then maybe I'll respect it for other reasons.”

"You're getting a little spooky," he said.

"Me?" "You're so hostile.”

"I am not.”

He was frowning at her. "Looks like blind hostility to me.”

"It's adversarial journalism. It's the modern reporter's tone and theme.

You don't question your subject and later explain him to readers, you attack him. You have an agenda, a version of the truth you want to report regardless of the full truth, and you fulfill it. I never approved of it, never indulged in it, which is why I was always losing out on stories and promotions to other reporters. Now, here, tonight, I'm all for the attack part.

The big difference is, I do care about getting to the truth, not shaping it, and I just want to twist and yank some real facts out of this alien of ours.”

"Maybe he won't show up.”

"He said he would.”

Jim shook his head. "But why should he if you're going to be like this?" "You're saying he might be afraid of me? What kind of higher power is that?" The bells rang, and she jumped in alarm.

Jim got to his feet. "Just take it easy.”

The bells fell silent, rang again, fell silent. When they rang a third time, a sullen red light appeared at one point in the wall. It grew more intense, assumed a brighter shade, then suddenly burst across the domed room like a blazing fireworks display, after which the bells stopped ringing and the multitude of sparks coalesced into the pulsing, constantly moving amoebalike forms that they had seen before.

"Very dramatic," Holly said. As the light swiftly progressed from red through orange to amber, she seized the initiative. "We would like you to dispense with the cumbersome way you answered our questions previously and simply speak to us directly.”

The Friend did not reply.

"Will you speak to us directly?" No response.

Consulting the tablet that she held in one hand, she read the first question. "Are you the higher power that has been sending Jim on life-saving missions?" She waited.

Silence.

She tried again.

Silence.

Stubbornly, she repeated the question.

The Friend did not speak, but Jim said, "Holly, look at this.”

She turned and saw him examining the other tablet. He held it toward her, flipping through the first ten or twelve pages. The eerie and inconstant light from the stone was bright enough to show her that the pages were filled with The Friend's familiar printing.

Taking the tablet from him, she looked at the first line on the top page: YES. I AM THAT POWER.

Jim said, "He's already answered every one of the questions we've pre pared.”

Holly threw the tablet across the room. It hit the far window without breaking the glass, and clattered to the floor.

"Holly, you can't" She cut him off with a sharp look.

The light moved through the transmuted limestone with greater agitation than before.

To The Friend, Holly said, "God gave Moses the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone, yeah, but He also had the courtesy to talk to him.

If God can humble Himself to speak directly with human beings, then so can you.”

She did not look to see how Jim was reacting to her adversarial tactics.

All she cared about was that he not interrupt her.

When The Friend remained silent, she repeated the first question on her list. "Are you the higher power that has been sending Jim on life-saving missions?" "Yes. I am that power" The voice was a soft, mellifluous baritone. Like the ringing of the bells, it seemed to come from all sides of them. The Friend did not materialize out of the wall in human form, did not sculpt a face from the limestone, but merely produced its voice out of thin air.

She asked the second question on her list. "How can you know these people are about to die?" "I am an entity that lives in all aspects of time. " "What do you mean by that?" "Past present, and future.”

"You can foresee the future?" "I live in the future as well as in the past and present" The light was coruscating through the walls with less agitation now, as if the alien presence had accepted her conditions and was mellow again.