Cold Fire

Then he remembered that he had asked her to play matchmaker for him.

"Good," he said. "Great. I'll be right back, we'll talk.”

He ushered Holly into row seventeen. He took the aisle seat next to her.

On the other side of Holly was a grandmotherly tub of a woman in a flower-print dress, with blue-tinted gray hair in a mass of tight curls.

She was sound asleep, snoring softly. A pair of gold-framed eyeglasses, suspended around her neck on a bead chain, rested on her matronly bosom, rising and falling with her steady breathing.

Leaning close to him, keeping her voice so low it could not even carry across the narrow aisle, but speaking with the conviction of an impassioned political orator, Holly said, "You can't let all those people die.”

"We've been through this," he said restively, matching her nearly inaudible pitch.

"It's your responsibility" "I'm just one man!" "But one very special man.”

"I'm not God," he said plaintively.

"Talk to the pilot.”

"Jesus, you're relentless.”

"Warn the pilot," she whispered.

"He won't believe me.”

"Then warn the passengers.”

"There aren't enough empty seats in this section for all of them to move here.”

She was furious with him, quiet but so intense that he could not look away from her or dismiss what she was saying. She put a hand on his arm, gripping him so tightly that it hurt. "Damn it, maybe they could do something to save themselves.”

"I'd only cause a panic.”

"If you can save more, but you let them die, it's murder," she whispered insistently, anger flashing in her eyes.

That accusation hit him hard and had something of the effect of a hammer blow to the chest. For a moment he could not draw his breath.

When he could speak, his voice broke repeatedly: "I hate death, people dying, I hate it. I want to save people, stop all the suffering, be on the side of life, but I can only do what I can do.”

"Murder," she repeated.

What she was doing to him was outrageous. He could not carry the load of responsibility she wanted to pile on his shoulders. If he could save the Dubroveks, he would be at working two miracles, mother and child spared from the early graves that had been their destinies. But Holly Thorne, in her ignorance about his abilities, was not satisfied with two miracles; she wanted three, four, five, ten, a hundred. He felt as if an enormous weight was bearing down on him, the weight of the whole damned airplane, crushing him into the ground. It was not right of her to put the blame on him; it wasn't fair. If she wanted to blame someone, she should cast her accusations at God, who worked in such mysterious ways that He had ordained the necessity of the plane crash in the first place.

"Murder." She dug her fingers into his arm even harder.

He could feel anger radiating from her like the heat of the sun reflected off a metal surface. Reflected. Suddenly, he realized that image was too apt to be anything less than Freudian.

Her anger over his unwillingness to save everyone on the plane was no greater than his own anger over his inability to do so; her rage was a reflection of his own.

"Murder," she repeated, evidently aware of the profound effect that accusation had on him.

He looked into her beautiful eyes, and he wanted to hit her, punch her in the face, smash her with all of his strength, knock her unconscious, so she wouldn't put his own thoughts into words. She was too perceptive. He hated her for being right.

Instead of hitting her, he got up.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

"To talk to a flight attendant.”

"About what?" "You win, okay? You win.”

Making his way toward the back of the plane, Jim looked at the people he passed, chilled by the knowledge that all of them would be dead soon. As his desperation intensified, so did his imagination, and he saw skulls beneath their skin, the glowing images of bones shining through their flesh, for they were the living dead. He was nauseous with fear, not for himself but for them.

The plane bucked and shimmied as if it had driven over a pothole in the sky. He grabbed at the back of a seat to steady himself But this was not the big one.

The flight attendants were gathered farther back in the plane, in their work area, preparing to serve the lunch trays that had just come up from the galley. They were a mixed group, men and women, a couple in their twenties and the others as old as fifty-something.

Jim approached the oldest of them. According to the tag she wore, her name was Evelyn.

"I've got to talk to the pilot," he said, keeping his voice low, although the nearest passengers were well forward of them.

If Evelyn was surprised by his request, she didn't show it. She smiled just as she had been trained to smile. "I'm sorry, sir, but that isn't possible.

Whatever the problem is, I'm sure I can help-" "Listen, I was in the lavatory, and I heard something, a wrong sound," he lied, "not the right kind of engine noise.”