Cold Fire

Whatever he learned by plunging into the unknown should at least leave him with a greater understanding of his sacred life-saving mission and the supernatural forces behind it. But now he was more confused than before he'd come. Some developments had filled him with the wonder and joy for which he longed: the ringing in the stone, for one; and the beautiful, almost divine, light that was the essence of The Friend. He had been moved to rapture by the revelation that he was not merely saving lives but saving people so special that their survival would improve the fate of the entire human race.

But that spiritual bliss had been snatched away from him by the growing realization that The Friend was either not telling them the whole truth or, worst case, was not telling them anything true at all. 'The childish petulance of the creature was unnerving in the extreme, and now Jim was not sure that anything he had done since saving the Newsomes last May was in the service of good rather than evil.

Yet his fear was still tempered by hope. Though a splinter of despair had lodged in his heart and begun to fester, that spiritual infection was held in check by the core of optimism, however fragile, that had always been at the center of him.

Holly switched off the flashlight, returned from the open door, and s down on her mattress. "I don't know, maybe it was an empty threat, but there's no way of telling till we try to leave.”

"You want to?" She shook her head. "What's the point in getting off the farm anyway? From everything we know, it can reach out to us anywhere we go.

Right? I mean it reached you in Laguna Niguel, sent you on these missions, reached you out there in Nevada and sent you on to Boston to rescue Nicholas O'Conner.”

"I've felt it with me, at times, no matter where I've gone. In Houston, in Florida, in France, in England-it guided me, let me know what was coming, so I could do the job it wanted done.”

Holly looked exhausted. She was drawn and paler than the eerie glow af the gas lantern could account for, and her eyes were shadowed with rings of weariness. She closed her eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger, a strained look on her face, as if she was trying to suppress a headache.

With all his heart, Jim regretted that she had been drawn into this. But like his fear and despair, his regret was impure, tempered by the deep pleasure he took in her very presence. Though it was a selfish attitude, he was glad that she was with him, no matter where this strange night lead them. He was no longer alone.

Still pinching the bridge of her nose, the lines in her forehead carved deep by her scowl, Holly said, "This creature isn't restricted to the area near the pond, or just to psychic contact across great distances.

It can manifest itself anywhere, judging by the scratches it left in my sides and the way it entered the ceiling of your bedroom this morning.”

"Well, now wait," he said, "we know The Enemy can materialize over a considerable distance, yes, but we don't know that The Friend has that ability. It was The Enemy that came out of your dream and The Enemy that tried to reach us this morning.”

Holly opened her eyes and lowered her hand from her face. Her expression was bleak. "I think they're one and the same.”

"What?" "The Enemy and The Friend. I don't believe two entities are living under the pond, in that starship, if there is a starship, which I guess there is. I think there's only a single entity. The Friend and The Enemy are nothing more than different aspects of it.”

Holly's implication was clear, but it was too frightening for Jim to accept immediately. He said, "You can't be serious? You might as well be saying. it's insane.”

"That is what I'm saying. It's suffering the alien equivalent of a split personality. It's acting out both personalities, but isn't consciously aware of what it's doing." Jim's almost desperate need to believe in The Friend as a separate and purely benign creature must have been evident in his face, for Holly took his right hand, held it in both hers, and hurried on before he could interrupt: "The childish petulance, the grandiosity of its claim to be reshaping the entire destiny of our species, the flamboyance of its apparitions, its sudden fluctuations between an attitude of syrupy goodwill and sullen anger, the way it lies so damned transparently yet deludes itself into believing it's clever, its secretiveness about some issues when there is no apparent reason to be secretive-all of that makes sense if you figure we're dealing with an unbalanced mind.”

He looked for flaws in her reasoning, and found one. "But you can't believe an insane person, an insane alien individual, could pilot an unimaginably complex spacecraft across lightyears through countless dangers, while completely out of its mind.”