domed room like a blazing fireworks display, after which the bells
stopped ringing and the multitude of sparks coalesced into the pulsing,
constantly moving amoebalike forms that they had seen before.
“Very dramatic,” Holly said. As the light swiftly progressed from red
through orange to amber, she seized the initiative. “We would like you
to dispense with the cumbersome way you answered our questions
previously and simply speak to us directly.”
The Friend did not reply.
“Will you speak to us directly?”
No response.
Consulting the tablet that she held in one hand, she read the first
question. “Are you the higher power that has been sending Jim on
life-saving missions?”
She waited.
Silence.
She tried again.
Silence.
Stubbornly, she repeated the question.
The Friend did not speak, but Jim said, “Holly, look at this.”
She turned and saw him examining the other tablet. He held it toward
her, flipping through the first ten or twelve pages. The eerie and
inconstant light from the stone was bright enough to show her that the
pages were filled with The Friend’s familiar printing.
Taking the tablet from him, she looked at the first line on the top
page: YES. I AM THAT POWER.
Jim said, “He’s already answered every one of the questions we’ve pre
pared.”
Holly threw the tablet across the room. It hit the far window without
breaking the glass, and clattered to the floor.
“Holly, you can’t” She cut him off with a sharp look.
The light moved through the transmuted limestone with greater agitation
than before.
To The Friend, Holly said, “God gave Moses the Ten Commandments on
tablets of stone, yeah, but He also had the courtesy to talk to him.
If God can humble Himself to speak directly with human beings, then so
can you.”
She did not look to see how Jim was reacting to her adversarial tactics.
All she cared about was that he not interrupt her.
When The Friend remained silent, she repeated the first question on her
list. “Are you the higher power that has been sending Jim on
life-saving missions?”
“Yes. I am that power” The voice was a soft, mellifluous baritone. Like
the ringing of the bells, it seemed to come from all sides of them. The
Friend did not materialize out of the wall in human form, did not sculpt
a face from the limestone, but merely produced its voice out of thin
air.
She asked the second question on her list. “How can you know these
people are about to die?”
“I am an entity that lives in all aspects of time. ”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Past present, and future.”
“You can foresee the future?”
“I live in the future as well as in the past and present” The light was
coruscating through the walls with less agitation now, as if the alien
presence had accepted her conditions and was mellow again.
Jim moved to her side. He put a hand on her arm and squeezed gently, as
if to say “good work.”
She decided not to ask for any more clarification on the issue of its
ability to see the future, for fear they would be off on a tangent and
never get back on track before the creature next announced that it was
depart. She returned to the prepared questions. “Why do you want these
particular people saved?”
“To help mankind” it said sonorously. There might have been a note of
pomposity in it, too, but that was hard to tell because the voice was so
evenly modulated, almost machinelike.
“But when so many people are dying every day-and most of them an
innocents-why have you singled out these particular people to be
rescued?”
“They are special people. ”
“In what way are they special?”
“If allowed to live each of them will make a major contribution to the
betterment of mankind.” Jim said, “I’ll be damned.”
Holly had not been expecting that answer. It had the virtue of being
fresh. But she was not sure she believed it. For one thing, she was
bothered that The Friend’s voice was increasingly familiar to her.
She was sure she had heard it before, and in a context that undermined