"'_Meggie_, my name is Ellen Braisted,'" corrected the teen-ager.
"Always say the name of the person you're talkin' to in Orph'lese, that
way we know it's you talkin', not a flame spirit or wanderer. Okay, go
sit down." Ellen limped wordlessly down into the audience. "Oh, and
people of Orph'lese," said Meggie, "the car's still there if we need it
for anything. It didn't burn. Guy, you go on with this other fellow."
Guy stroked his beard and assessed Chandler, looking him over
carefully. "Okay," he said. "People of Orphalese, the _third_ order of
business is to _welcome_ or reject this _other_ brand saved from the
imps, as may be your _pleasure_." Chandler sat up straighter now that
all of them were looking at him again; but it wasn't quite his turn, at
that, because there was an interruption. Guy never finished. From the
valley, far below, there was a sudden mighty thunder, rolling among the
mountains. The windows blew in with a crystalline crash.
* * * * *
The room erupted into confusion, the audience leaping from their seats,
running to the broad windows, Guy and the teen-age girl seizing rifles,
everyone in motion at once.
Chandler straightened, then sat down again. The red-headed man guarding
him was looking away. It would be quite possible to grab his gun, run,
get away from these maniacs. Yet he had nowhere to go. They might be
crazy, but they seemed to have organization.
They seemed, in fact, to have worked out, on whatever crazed foundation
of philosophy, some practical methods for coping with possession. He
decided to stay, wait and see.
And at once he found himself leaping for the gun.
No. Chandler didn't find himself attacking the red-headed man. He
found his _body_ doing it; Chandler had nothing to do with it. It was
the helpless compulsion he had felt before, that had nearly cost him
his life; his body active and urgent and his mind completely cut off
from it. He felt his own muscles move in ways he had not planned,
observed himself leap forward, felt his own fist strike at the back of
the red-headed man's ear. The man went spinning, the gun went flying,
Chandler's body leaped after it, with Chandler a prisoner in his own
brain, watching, horrified and helpless. And he had the gun!
He caught it in the hand that was his own hand, though someone else
was moving it; he raised it and half-turned. He was suddenly conscious
of a fusillade of gunfire from the roof, and a scattered echo of guns
all round the outside of the house. Part of him was surprised, another
alien part was not. He started to shoot the teen-aged girl in the back
of the head, silently shouting _No!_
His fingers never pulled the trigger.
He caught a second's glimpse of someone just beside him, whirled and
saw the girl, Ellen Braisted, limping swiftly toward him with her
barbed-wire amulet loose and catching at her feet. In her hands was
an axe-handle club caught up from somewhere. She struck at Chandler's
head, with a face like an eagle's, impersonal and determined. The blow
caught him and dazed him, and from behind someone else struck him with
something else. He went down.
He heard shouts and firing, but he was stunned. He felt himself dragged
and dropped. He saw a cloudy, misty girl's face hanging over him; it
receded and returned. Then a frightful blistering pain in his hand
startled him back into full consciousness.
It was the girl, Ellen, still there, leaning over him and, oddly,
weeping. And the pain in his hand was the burning flame of a kitchen
match. Ellen was doing it, his wrist in one hand, a burning match held
to it with the other.