Since the departure of The Friend, Holly’s fear had not abated. If
anything, it had increased. She felt as if they were living under a
thousand-ton weight that was magically suspended by a single human hair,
but the magic was weakening and the hair was stretched as taut and
brittle as a filament of glass.
By midnight, they had eaten six chocolate doughnuts and composed seven
pages of questions for The Friend. Sugar was an energizer and a
consolation in times of trouble, but it was no help to already-frayed
nerves.
Holly’s anxiety had a sharp refined-sugar edge to it now, like a
wellstropped razor.
Pacing with the tablet in her hand, Holly said, “And we’re not going to
let it get away with written answers this time. That just slows down
the give and take between interviewer and interviewee. We’re going to
insist that it talk to us.”
Jim was lying on his back, his hands folded behind his head. “It can’t
talk.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, I’m assuming it can’t, or otherwise it would’ve talked right from
the start.”
“Don’t assume anything,” she said. “If it can mix its molecules with
the wall, swim through stone-through anything, if it’s to be
believed-and if it can assume any form it wishes, then it can sure as
hell form a mouth and vocal cords and talk like any self respecting
higher power.”
“I guess you’re right,” he said uneasily.
“It already said that it could appear to us as a man or woman if it
wanted, didn’t it?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I’m not even asking for a flashy materialization. Just a voice, a
disembodied voice, a little sound with the old lightshow.”
Listening to herself as she talked, Holly realized that she was using
her edginess to pump herself, to establish an aggressive tone that would
serve her well when The Friend returned. It was an old trick she had
learned when she had interviewed people whom she found imposing or
intimidating.
Jim sat up. “Okay, it could talk if it wanted to, but maybe it doesn’t
want to.”
“We already decided we can’t let it set all the rules, Jim.”
“But I don’t understand why we have to antagonize it.”
“I’m not antagonizing it.”
“I think we should be at least a little respectful.”
“Oh, I respect the hell out of it.”
“You don’t seem to.”
“I’m convinced it could squash us like bugs if it wanted to, and that
gives me tremendous respect for it.”
“That’s not the kind of respect I mean.”
“That’s the only kind of respect it’s earned from me so far,” she said,
pacing around him now instead of back and forth. “When it stops trying
to manipulate me, stops trying to scare the crap out of me, starts
giving me answers that ring true, then maybe I’ll respect it for other
reasons.”
“You’re getting a little spooky,” he said.
“Me?”
“You’re so hostile.”
“I am not.”
He was frowning at her. “Looks like blind hostility to me.”
“It’s adversarial journalism. It’s the modern reporter’s tone and
theme.
You don’t question your subject and later explain him to readers, you
attack him. You have an agenda, a version of the truth you want to
report regardless of the full truth, and you fulfill it. I never
approved of it, never indulged in it, which is why I was always losing
out on stories and promotions to other reporters. Now, here, tonight,
I’m all for the attack part.
The big difference is, I do care about getting to the truth, not shaping
it, and I just want to twist and yank some real facts out of this alien
of ours.”
“Maybe he won’t show up.”
“He said he would.”
Jim shook his head. “But why should he if you’re going to be like
this?”
“You’re saying he might be afraid of me? What kind of higher power is
that?”
The bells rang, and she jumped in alarm.
Jim got to his feet. “Just take it easy.”
The bells fell silent, rang again, fell silent. When they rang a third
time, a sullen red light appeared at one point in the wall. It grew
more intense, assumed a brighter shade, then suddenly burst across the