from another galaxy? Because you believe what it told you. How do you
know there’s a spaceship under the pond? Because you believe what it
told you.”
Jim was getting impatient now. “Why would it lie to us, what would it
have to gain from lies?”
“I don’t know. But we can’t be sure that it isn’t manipulating us.
And when it comes back, like it promised, I want to be ready for it. I
want to spend the next hour or two or three-however long we’ve
got-making a list of questions, so we can put it through a carefully
planned inquisition.
We’ve got to have a strategy for squeezing real information from it,
facts not fantasies, and our questions have to support that strategy.”
When he frowned, she hastened on before he could interrupt.
“Okay, all right, maybe it’s incapable of lying, maybe it’s noble and
pure, maybe everything it’s told us is the gospel truth. But listen,
Jim, this is not an epiphany. The Friend set the rules by influencing
you to buy the tablets and pen. It established the question-and-answer
format. If it didn’t want us to make the best of that format, it
would’ve just told you to shut up and would’ve blabbered at you from a
burning bush!”
He stared at her. He chewed his lip thoughtfully.
He shifted his gaze to the walls where the creature of light had swum in
the stone.
Pressing her point, Holly said, “You never even asked it why it wants
you to save people’s lives, or why some people and not others.”
He looked at her again, obviously surprised to realize that he had not
pursued the answer to the most important question of all. In the
lactescent glow of the softly hissing gas lantern, his eyes were blue
again, not green as the amber light had temporarily made them. And
troubled.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re right. I guess I was just swept away by it
all. I mean, Holly, whatever the hell it is-it’s astounding.”
“It’s astounding,” she acknowledged.
“We’ll do what you want, make up a list of carefully thought-out
questions. And when it comes back, you should be the one to ask all of
them, ’cause you’ll be better at ad-libbing other questions if it says
anything that needs follow-up.”
“I agree,” she said, relieved that he had suggested it without being
pressured.
She was better schooled at interviewing than he was, but she was also
more trustworthy in this particular situation than Jim could ever be.
The Friend had a long past relationship with him and had, admittedly,
already messed with his memory by making him forget about the encounters
they’d had twenty-five years ago. Holly had to assume that Jim was
coopted, to one degree or another corrupted, though he could not realize
it.
The Friend had been in his mind perhaps on scores or hundreds of
occasions, when he had been at a formative age, and when he had been
particularly vulnerable due to the loss of his parents, therefore even
more susceptible to manipulation and control than most ten-year-old
boys. On a subconscious level, Jim Ironheart might be programmed to
protect The Friend’s secrets rather than help to reveal them.
Holly knew she was walking a thread-thin line between judicious
precaution and paranoia, might even be treading more on the side of the
latter than the former. Under the circumstances, a little paranoia was
a prescription for survival.
When he said he was going outside to relieve himself, however, she much
preferred to be with him than alone in the high room. She followed him
downstairs and stood by the Ford with her back to him while he peed
against the split-rail fence beside the cornfield.
She stared out at the deep black pond.
She listened to the toads, which were singing again. So were the
cicadas.
The events of the day had rattled her. Now even the sounds of nature
seemed malevolent.
She wondered if they had come up against something too strange and too
powerful to be dealt with by just a failed reporter and an
ex-schoolteacher. She wondered if they ought to leave the farm right
away. She wondered if they would be allowed to leave.