Cold Fire

did reside within him, but it was mental rather than physical.

A breeze wafted through the open car windows, and it seemed to wash new hope into Holly.

That buoyant feeling was short-lived, however, because new words suddenly appeared on the tablet in Jim's hands: YOU DIE.

“This isn't me,” he told her earnestly, in spite of the subtle admission he had made a moment ago. “Holly, this can't be me.”

On the tablet, more words appeared: I AM COMING. YOU DIE.

Holly felt as if the world had become a carnival fun-house, full of ghouls and ghosts. Every turn, any moment, without warning, something might spring at her from out of a shadow — or from broad daylight, for that matter. But unlike a carnival monster, this one would inflict real pain, draw blood, kill her if it could.

In hopes that The Enemy, like The Friend, would respond well to firmness, Holly grabbed the tablet from Jim's hand and threw it out the window. “To hell with that. I won't read that crap. Listen to me, Jim. If I'm right, The Enemy is the embodiment of your rage over the deaths of your parents. Your fury was so great, at ten, it terrified you, so you pushed it outside yourself, into this other identity. But you're a unique victim of multiple- personality syndrome because your power allows you to create physical existences for your other identities.”

Though acceptance had a toehold in him, he was still struggling to deny the truth. 'What're we saying here? That I'm insane, that I'm some sort of socially functional lunatic, for Christ's sake?'

“Not insane,” she said quickly. “Let's say disturbed, troubled. You're locked in a psychological box that you built for yourself, and you want out, but you can't find the key to the lock.”

He shook his head. Fine beads of sweat had broken out along his hairline, and he was into whiter shades of pale. “No, that's putting too good a face on it. If what you think is true, then I'm all the way off the deep end, Holly, I should be in some damned rubber room, pumped full of Thorazine.”

She took both of his hands again, held them tight. “No. Stop that. You can find your way out of this, you can do it, you can make yourself whole again, I know you can.”

“How can you know? Jesus, Holly, I—”

“Because you're not an ordinary man, you're special,” she said sharply. “You have this power, this incredible force inside you, and you can do such good with it if you want. The power is something you can draw on that ordinary people don't have, it can be a healing power. Don't you see? If you can cause ringing bells and alien heartbeats and voices to come out of thin air, if you can turn walls into flesh, project images into my dreams, see into the future to save lives, then you can make yourself whole and right again.”

Determined disbelief lined his face. “How could any man have the power you're talking about?”

“I don't know, but you've got it.”

“It has to come from a higher being. For God's sake, I'm not Superman.”

Holly pounded a fist against the horn ring and said, “You're telepathic, telekinetic, tele-fucking-everything! All right, you can't fly, you don't have X-ray vision, you can't bend steel with your bare hands, and you can't race faster than a speeding bullet. But you're as close to Superman as any man's likely to get. In fact, in some ways you've got him beat because you can see into the future. Maybe you see only bits and pieces of it, and only random visions when you aren't trying for them, but you can see the future.”

He was shaken by her conviction. “So where'd I get all this magic?”

“I don't know.”

“That's where it falls apart.”

“It doesn't fall apart just because I don't know,” she said frustratedly. “Yellow doesn't stop being yellow just because I don't know anything about why the eye sees different colors. You have the power. You are the power, not God or some alien under the millpond.”

He pulled his hands from hers and looked out the windshield toward the county road and the dry fields beyond. He seemed afraid to face up to the tremendous power he possessed — maybe because it carried with it responsibilities that he was not sure he could shoulder.

She sensed that he was also shamed by the prospect of his own mental illness, and unable to meet her eyes any longer. He was so stoic, so strong, so proud of his strength that he could not accept this suggested weakness in himself. He had built a life that placed a high value on self-control and self-reliance, that made a singular virtue out of self-imposed solitude, in the manner of a monk who needed no one but himself and God. Now she was telling him that his decision to become an iron man and a loner was not a well-considered choice, that it was a desperate attempt to deal with emotional turmoil that had threatened to destroy him, and that his need for self-control had carried him over the line of rational behavior.

She thought of the words on the tablet: I AM COMING. YOU DIE.

She switched on the engine.

He said, “Where are we going?”

As she put the car in gear, pulled out onto the county road, and turned right toward New Svenborg, she did not answer him. Instead, “Was there anything special about you as a boy?”

“No,” he said a little too quickly, too sharply.

“Never any indication that you were gifted or—”

“No, hell, nothing like that.”

Jim's sudden nervous agitation, betrayed by his restless movement and his trembling hands, convinced Holly that she had touched on a truth. He had been special in some way, a gifted child. Now that she had reminded him of it, he saw in that early gift the seeds of the powers that had grown in him. But he didn't want to face it. Denial was his shield.

“What have you just remembered?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Jim.”

“Nothing, really.”

She didn't know where to go with that line of questioning, so she could only say, “It's true. You're gifted. No aliens, only you.”

Because of whatever he had just remembered and was not willing to share with her, his adamancy had begun to dissolve. “I don't know.”

“It's true.”

“Maybe.”

“It's true. Remember last night when The Friend told us it was a child by the standards of its species? Well, that's because it is a child, a perpetual child, forever the age at which you created it — ten years old. Which explains its childlike behavior, its need to brag, its poutiness. Jim, The Friend didn't behave like a ten-thousand-year-old alien child, it just behaved like a ten-year-old human being.”

He closed his eyes and leaned back, as if it was exhausting to consider what she was telling him. But his inner tension remained at a peak, revealed by his hands, which were fisted in his lap.

“Where are we going, Holly?”

“For a little ride.” As they passed through the golden fields and hills, she kept up a gentle attack: “That's why the manifestation of The Enemy is like a combination of every movie monster that ever frightened a ten-year- old boy. The thing I caught a glimpse of in my motel-room doorway wasn't a real creature, I see that now. It didn't have a biological structure that made sense, it wasn't even alien. It was too familiar, a ten-year-old boy's hodgepodge of boogeymen.” He did not respond. She glanced at him. “Jim?” His eyes were still closed. Her heart began to pound. “Jim!” At the note of alarm in her voice, he sat up straighter and opened his eyes. “What?”

“For God's sake, don't close your eyes that long. You might've been asleep, and I wouldn't have realized it until—”

“You think I can sleep with this on my mind?”

“I don't know. I don't want to take the chance. Keep your eyes open, okay? You obviously suppress The Enemy when you're awake, it only comes through all the way when you're asleep.”

In the windshield glass, like a computer readout in a fighter-plane cockpit, words began to appear from left to right, in letters about one inch high: DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD.

Scared but unwilling to show it, she said, “To hell with that,” and switched on the windshield wipers, as if the threat was dirt that could be scrubbed away. But the words remained, and Jim stared at them with evident