Cold Fire

Holly knew that time was running out. The Enemy wanted through, wanted to gut her, dismember her, leave her in a steaming heap of her own entrails before she had a chance to convince Jim of her theory-and it did not want to wait until Jim was asleep. She was not certain that he could repress that dark aspect of himself as she pushed him closer to a confrontation with the truth. His self control might crack, and his benign personalities might sink under the rising dark force.

"Holly, if I had this bizarre multiple personality, wouldn't I be cured as soon as you explained it to me, wouldn't the scales immediately fall off my eyes?" "No. You have to believe it before you can hope to deal with it.

Believing that you suffer an abnormal mental condition is the first step toward an understanding of it, and understanding is only the first painful step toward a cure.”

"Don't talk at me like a psychiatrist, you're no psychiatrist.”

He was taking refuge in anger, in that arctic glare, trying to intimidate her as he had tried on previous occasions when he'd not wanted her to get any closer. Hadn't worked then, wouldn't work now.

Sometimes men could be so dense.

She said, "I interviewed a psychiatrist once.”

"Oh, terrific, that makes you a qualified therapist.”

"Maybe it does. The psychiatrist I interviewed was crazy as a loon himself, so what does a university degree matter?" He took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. "Okay, suppose you're right and somehow we do turn up undeniable proof that I'm crazy as a loon" "You aren't crazy, you're-" "Yeah, yeah, I'm disturbed, troubled, in a psychological box. Call it whatever you want.

If we find proof somehow-and I can't imagine how then what happens to me? Maybe I just smile and say, Oh, yes, of course, I made it all up, I was living in a delusion, I'm ever so much better now, let's have lunch." But I don't think so. I think what happens is.

I blow apart, into a million pieces.”

"I can't promise you that the truth, if we find it, will be any sort of salvation, because so far I think you've found your salvation in fantasy not in truth. But we can't go on like this because The Enemy resents me, and sooner or later it'll kill me. You warned me yourself.”

He looked at the words on the windshield, and said nothing. He was running out of arguments, if not resistance.

The words quickly faded, then vanished.

Maybe that was a good sign, an indication of his subconscious accommodation to her theory. Or maybe The Enemy had decided that she could not be intimidated with threats-and was struggling to burst through and savage her.

She said, "When it's killed me, you'll realize it is part of you.

And if you love me, like you told me you did through The Friend last night, then what's that going to do to you? Isn't that going to destroy the Jim I love? Isn't that going to leave you with just one personality-the dark one, The Enemy? I think it's a damned good bet. So we're talking your survival here as well as mine. If you want to have a future, then let's dig to the bottom of this.”

"Maybe we dig and dig-but there is no bottom. Then what?" "Then we dig a little deeper.”

As they were entering town, making the abrupt transition from deadbrown land to tightly grouped pioneer settlement, Holly suddenly said aloud: "Robert Vaughn.”

Jim twitched with surprise, not because she had said something mystifying but because that name made an immediate connection for him.

"My God," he said, "that was the voice.”

"The voice of The Friend," she said, glancing at him. "So you realized it was familiar, too.”

Robert Vaughn, the wonderful actor, had been the hero of television's The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and exquisitely oily villain of countless films.

He possessed one of those voices with such a rich timbre and range that it could be as threatening, or as fatherly and reassuring, as he chose to make it.

"Robert Vaughn," Holly said. "But why? Why not Orson Welles or Paul Newman or Sean Connery or Fred Flintstone? It's too quirky a choice not to be meaningful.”

"I don't know," Jim said thoughtfully, but he had the unnerving feeling he should know. The explanation was within his grasp.

Holly said, "Do you still think it's an alien? Wouldn't an alien just manufacture a nondescript voice? Why would it imitate any one particular actor?" "I saw Robert Vaughn once," Jim said, surprised by a dim memory stirring within him. "I mean, not on TV or in the movies, but for real, up close. A long time ago.”

"Where, when?" "I can't. it won't. won't come to me.”