its edge, Holly moved to the wall and studied the patterns of light
churning through it. Seen close up, they were quite beautiful and
strange, not like a smooth-flowing phosphorescent fluid or fiery streams
of lava, but like scintillant swarms of fireflies, millions of spangled
points not unlike her analogy of luminous, schooling fish.
Holly half expected the wall in front of her to bulge suddenly.
Split open. Give birth to a monstrous form.
She wanted to step back. Instead she moved closer. Her nose was only
an inch from the transmuted stone. Viewed this intimately, the surge
and flux and whirl of the millions of bright cells was dizzying.
There was no beat from it, but she imagined she could feel the flicker
of light and shadow across her face.
“Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?” she asked.
After a few seconds, Jim spoke from behind her: “No answer.”
The question seemed innocent enough, and one that they should logically
be expected to ask. The entity’s unwillingness to answer alerted her
that the ringing must be somehow vitally important.
Understanding the bells might be the first step toward learning
something real and true about this creature.
“Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?”
Jim reported: “No answer. I don’t think you should ask that question
again, Holly. It obviously doesn’t want to answer, and there’s nothing
to be gained by aggravating it. This isn’t The Enemy, this is-”
“Yeah, I know. It’s The Friend.”
She remained at the wall and felt herself to be face-to-face with an
alien presence, though it had nothing that corresponded to a face.
It was focused on her now. It was right there.
Again she said, “Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?”
Instinctively she knew that her innocent question and her
not-so-innocent repetition of it had put her in great danger. Her heart
was thudding so loud that she wondered if Jim could hear it. She
figured The Friend, with all its powers, could not only hear her
hammering heart but see it jumping like a panicked rabbit within the
cage of her chest. It knew she was afraid, all right. Hell, it might
even be able to read her mind. She had to show it that she would not
allow fear to deter her.
She put one hand on the light-filled stone. If those luminous clouds
wert not merely a projection of the creature’s consciousness, not just
an illusion or representation for their benefit, if the thing was, as it
claimed, actually alive in the wall, then the stone was now its flesh.
Her hand was upon its body.
Faint vibrations passed across the wall in distinctive, whirling
vortexes That was all she felt. No heat. The fire within the stone was
evidently cold.
“Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?”
“Holly, don’t,” Jim said. Worry tainted his voice for the first time.
Perhaps he, too, had begun to sense that The Friend was not entirely a
friend.
But she was driven by a suspicion that willpower mattered in this
confrontation, and that a demonstration of unflinching will would set a
ne tone in their relationship with The Friend. She could not have
explained why she felt so strongly about it. Just instinct-not a
woman’s but an exreporter’s.
“Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?”
She thought she detected a slight change in the vibrations that tingled
across her palm, but she might have imagined it, for they were barely
perceptible in the first place. Through her mind flickered an image of
the stone cracking open in a jagged mouth and biting off her hand, blood
spurting, white bone bristling from the ragged stump of her wrist.
Though she was shaking uncontrollably, she did not step back or lift her
hand off the wall.
She wondered if The Friend had sent her that horrifying image.
“Why is your approach marked by the sound of bells?”
“Holly, for Christ’s sake-” Jim broke off, then said, “Wait, an answer’s
coming.”
Willpower did matter. But for God’s sake, why? Why should an
all-powerful alien force from another galaxy be intimidated by her