“A diversion, Chandler,” said Ellen Braisted. “They wanted us looking that way. Then they attacked from up the mountain.”
“Who?”
Ellen looked surprised. “The men that crashed the trains … if they are men. The ones who possessed me—and you—and the hunters. They don’t like these Orphalese, I think. Maybe they’re a little afraid of them. I think the Orphalese have a pretty good idea of how to fight them.”
Chandler felt a sudden flash of sensation along his nerves. For a moment he thought he had been possessed again, and then he knew it for what it was. It was hope. “Ellen, I never thought of fighting them. I thought that was given up two years ago.”
“So maybe you agree with me? Maybe you think it’s worth while sticking with the Orphalese?”
Chandler allowed himself the contemplation of what hope meant. To find someone in this world who had a plan! Whatever the plan was. Even if it was a bad plan. He didn’t think specifically of himself, or the brand on his forehead or the memory of the body of his wife. What he thought of was the prospect of thwarting—not even defeating, merely hampering or annoying was enough!—the imps, the “flame creatures,” the pythons, devils, incubi or demons who had destroyed a world he had thought very fair.
“If they’ll have me,” he said, “I’ll stick with them, all right! Where do I go to join?”
It was not hard to join at all. Meg chattily informed him that he was already practically a member. “Chandler, we got to watch everybody strange, you know. See why, don’t you? Might have a flame spirit in ’em, no fault of theirs, but look how they could mess us up. But now we know you don’t, so—What do you mean, how do we know? Cause you did have one when you busted loose in there. Can’t have two at a time, you know. Think we couldn’t tell the difference?”
The interrupted meeting was resumed after the place had been tidied up and the dead buried. There had been four of the hunters, and even without their sub-machine guns they had succeeded in killing eight Orphalese. But it was not all loss to the Orphalese, because two of the hunters were still alive, though wounded, and under the rules of this chessboard the captured enemy became a friend.
Guy had suffered a broken jaw in the scuffle and another man presided, a fat youth who favored a bandaged leg. He limped to his feet, grimacing and patting his leg. “O Orphalese and brothers,” he said, “we have lost friends, but we have won a test. Praise the Prophet, we will be spared to win again, and to drive the imps of fire out of our world. Meggie, you going to tie these folks up?” The girl proudly ordered one of the hunters into the spotlighted dentist’s chair, another into a wing chair that was hastily moved onto the platform. The men were bleeding and hurt, but they had clearly been abandoned by their possessors. They watched with puzzlement and fear.
“Walter, they’re okay now,” Meg reported as others finished tying up the hunters. “Oh, wait a minute.” She advanced on Chandler. “Chandler, I’m sorry. You sit down there, hear?”
Chandler suffered himself to be bound to a camp chair on the platform and Walter took a drink of wine and opened the ornate book that was before him on the rostrum.
“Meg, thanks. Guy, I hope I do this as good as you do. Let me read you a little. Let’s see.” He put on his steel-rimmed glasses and read:
“Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man, but a shapeless pygmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening.”
He closed the book, looked with satisfaction at Guy and said: “Do you understand that, new friends? They are the words of the Prophet, who men call Kahlil Gibran. For the benefit of the new folks I ought to say that he died this fleshly life quite a good number of years ago, but his vision was unclouded. Like we say, we are the sinews that batter the flame spirits but he is our soul.” There was an antiphonal murmur from the audience and Walter flipped the pages again rapidly, obviously looking for a familiar passage. “People of Orphalese, here we are now. This’s what he says. What is this that has torn our world apart? The Prophet says: ‘It is life in quest of life, in bodies that fear the grave.’ Now, honestly, nothing could be clearer than that, people of Orphalese and friends! We got something taking possession of us, see? What is it? Well, he says here, people of Orphalese and friends, ‘It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself.’ Now, what the heck! Nobody can blame us for what a flame spirit in us does! So the first thing we got to learn, friends—and people of Orphalese—is, we aren’t to blame. And the second thing is, we are to blame!”
He turned and grinned at Chandler kindly, while the chorus of responses came from the room, “Like here,” he said, “people of Orphalese, the Prophet says everybody is guilty. ‘The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder, and the robbed is not blameless in being robbed. The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked, and the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.’ You see what he’s getting at? We all got to take the responsibility for everything—and that means we got to suffer—but we don’t have to worry about any
