IV

Chandler yelled hoarsely, jerking his hand away.

She dropped the match and jumped up, stepping on the flame and watching

him. She had a butcher knife that had been caught between her elbow

and her body while she burned him. Now she put her hand on the knife,

waiting. "Does it hurt?" she demanded tautly.

Chandler howled, with incredulity and rage: "God damn it, yes! What did

you expect?"

"I expected it to hurt," she agreed. She watched him for a moment more

and then, for the first time since he had seen her, she smiled. It was

a small smile, but a beginning. A fusillade of shots from outside

wiped it away at once. "Sorry," she said. "I had to do that. Please

trust me."

"_Why_ did you have to burn my hand?"

"House rules," she said. "Keeps the flame-spirits out, you know. They

can't stand pain." She took her hand off the knife warily, "it still

hurts, doesn't it?"

"It still does, yes," nodded Chandler bitterly, and she lost interest

in him and got up, looking about the room. Three of the Orphalese were

dead, or seemed to be from the casual poses in which they lay draped

across a chair on the floor. Some of the others might have been freshly

wounded, though it was hard to tell the casualties from the others in

view of the Orphalese custom of self-inflicted pain. There was still

firing going on outside and overhead, and a shooting-gallery smell of

burnt powder in the air. The girl, Ellen Braisted, limped back with

the butcher knife held carelessly in one hand. She was followed by the

teen-ager, who wore a smile of triumph--and, Chandler noticed for the

first time, a sort of tourniquet of barbed-wire on her left forearm,

the flesh puffy red around it "Whopped 'em," she said with glee, and

pointed a .22 rifle at Chandler.

Ellen Braisted said, "Oh, he--_Meggie_, I mean, he's all right." She

pointed at his burned palm. Meg approached him with competent care,

the rifle resting on her good right forearm and aimed at him as she

examined his burn. She pursed her lips and looked at his face. "All

right, Ellen, I guess he's clean. But you want to burn 'em deeper'n

that. Never pays to go easy, just means we'll have to do something else

to 'im tomorrow."

"The hell you will," thought Chandler, and all but said it; but reason

stopped him. In Rome he would have to do Roman deeds. Besides, maybe

their ideas worked. Besides, he had until tomorrow to make up his mind

about what he wanted to do.

"Ellen, show him around," ordered the teen-ager. "I got no time myself.

Shoosh! Almost got us that time, Ellen. Got to be more careful, cause

the white-handed aren't clean, you know." She strutted away, the rifle

at trail. She seemed to be enjoying herself very much.

* * * * *

The name of the girl in the barbed-wire bracelet was Ellen Braisted.

She came from Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, and Chandler's first wonder

was what she was doing nearly three thousand miles from home.

Nobody liked to travel much these days. One place was as bad as

another, except that in the place where you were known you could

perhaps count on friends and as a stranger you were probable fair game

anywhere else. Of course, there was one likely reason for travel.

She didn't like to talk about it, that was clear, but that was the

reason. She had been possessed. When the teen-ager trapped her car the

day before she had been the tool of another's will. She had had a dozen

sub-machine guns in the trunk and she had meant to deliver them to a

party of hunters in a valley just south of McGuire's Mountain. Chandler

said, with some effort, "I must have been----"

"_Ellen_, I must have been," she corrected.

"Ellen, I must have been possessed too, just now. When I grabbed the

gun."

"Of course. First time?"

He shook his head. For some reason the brand on his forehead began to

throb.

"Well, then you know. Look out here, now."

They were at the great pier windows that looked out over the valley.

Down below was the river, an arc of the railroad tracks, the wooded

mountainside he had scaled. "Over there, Chandler." She was pointing to

the railroad bridge.

Wispy gray smoke drifted off southward toward the stream. The freight

train Chandler had ridden on had been stopped, all that time, in the

middle of the bridge. The explosion that blew out their windows had

occurred when another train plowed into it--evidently at high speed. It

seemed that one of the trains had carried some sort of chemicals. The

bridge was a twisted mess.

"A diversion, Chandler," said Ellen Braisted. "They wanted us looking

that way. Then they attacked from up the mountain."

"Who?"

Ellen looked surprised. "The men that crashed the trains ... if they

_are_ men. The ones who possessed me--and you--and the hunters. They

don't like these Orphalese, I think. Maybe they're a little afraid of

them. I think the Orphalese have a pretty good idea of how to fight

them."

Chandler felt a sudden flash of sensation along his nerves. For a

moment he thought he had been possessed again, and then he knew it for

what it was. It was hope. "Ellen, I never thought of fighting them. I

thought that was given up two years ago."

"So maybe you agree with me? Maybe you think it's worth while sticking

with the Orphalese?"

Chandler allowed himself the contemplation of what hope meant. To find

someone in this world who had a _plan_! Whatever the plan was. Even if

it was a bad plan. He didn't think specifically of himself, or the

brand on his forehead or the memory of the body of his wife. What he

thought of was the prospect of thwarting--not even defeating, merely

hampering or annoying was enough!--the imps, the "flame creatures,"

the pythons, devils, incubi or demons who had destroyed a world he had

thought very fair.

"If they'll have me," he said, "I'll stick with them, all right! Where

do I go to join?"

* * * * *

It was not hard to join at all. Meg chattily informed him that he was

already practically a member. "Chandler, we got to watch everybody

strange, you know. See why, don't you? Might have a flame spirit in

'em, no fault of theirs, but look how they could mess us up. But now we

know you don't, so--What do you mean, how do we know? Cause you _did_

have one when you busted loose in there. Can't have two at a time, you

know. Think we couldn't tell the difference?"

The interrupted meeting was resumed after the place had been tidied

up and the dead buried. There had been four of the hunters, and even

without their sub-machine guns they had succeeded in killing eight

Orphalese. But it was not all loss to the Orphalese, because two of the

hunters were still alive, though wounded, and under the rules of this

chessboard the captured enemy became a friend.

Guy had suffered a broken jaw in the scuffle and another man presided,

a fat youth who favored a bandaged leg. He limped to his feet,

grimacing and patting his leg. "O Orphalese and brothers," he said, "we

have lost friends, but we have won a test. Praise the Prophet, we will

be spared to win again, and to drive the imps of fire out of our world.

Meggie, you going to tie these folks up?" The girl proudly ordered

one of the hunters into the spotlighted dentist's chair, another

into a wing chair that was hastily moved onto the platform. The men

were bleeding and hurt, but they had clearly been abandoned by their

possessors. They watched with puzzlement and fear.

"Walter, they're okay now," Meg reported as others finished tying up

the hunters. "Oh, wait a minute." She advanced on Chandler. "Chandler,

I'm sorry. You sit down there, hear?"

Chandler suffered himself to be bound to a camp chair on the platform

and Walter took a drink of wine and opened the ornate book that was

before him on the rostrum.

"Meg, thanks. Guy, I hope I do this as good as you do. Let me read you

a little. Let's see." He put on his steel-rimmed glasses and read:

"Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man, but a

shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own

awakening."

He closed the book, looked with satisfaction at Guy and said: "Do you

understand that, new friends? They are the words of the Prophet, who

men call Kahlil Gibran. For the benefit of the new folks I ought to say

that he died this fleshly life quite a good number of years ago, but

his vision was unclouded. Like we say, we are the sinews that batter

the flame spirits but he is our soul." There was an antiphonal murmur

from the audience and Walter flipped the pages again rapidly, obviously

looking for a familiar passage. "People of Orphalese, here we are now.

This's what he says. What is this that has torn our world apart? The

Prophet says: 'It is life in quest of life, in bodies that fear the

grave.' Now, honestly, nothing could be clearer than that, people of

Orphalese and friends! We got something taking possession of us, see?

What is it? Well, he says here, people of Orphalese and friends, 'It

is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself.' Now, what the

heck! Nobody can blame _us_ for what a flame spirit _in_ us does! So

the first thing we got to learn, friends--and people of Orphalese--is,

we aren't to blame. And the second thing is, we _are_ to blame!"

He turned and grinned at Chandler kindly, while the chorus of

responses came from the room, "Like here," he said, "people of

Orphalese, the Prophet says _everybody_ is guilty. 'The murdered is

not unaccountable for his own murder, and the robbed is not blameless

in being robbed. The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the

wicked, and the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.'

You see what he's getting at? We all got to take the responsibility

for _everything_--and that means we got to suffer--but we don't have

to worry about any special things we did when some flame spirit or

wanderer, like, took us over.

"But we do have to suffer, people of Orphalese." His expression became

grim. "Our beloved founder, Guy, who's sitting there doing a little

extra suffering now, was favored enough to understand these things in

the very beginning, when he himself was seized by these imps. And it is

all in this book! Like it says, 'Your pain is self-chosen. It is the

bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.'

Ponder on that, people of Orphalese--and friends. No, I mean really

ponder," he explained, glancing at the bound "friends" on the platform.

"We always do that for a minute. Ada there will play us some music so

we can ponder."

* * * * *

Chandler shifted uncomfortably, while an old woman crippled by

arthritis began fumbling a tune out of an electric organ. The burn

Ellen Braisted had given him was beginning to hurt badly. If only these

people were not such obvious _nuts_, he thought, he would feel a lot

better about casting his lot in with them. But maybe it took lunatics

to do the job. Sane people hadn't accomplished much.

And anyway he had very little choice....

"Ada, that's enough," ordered the fat youth. "Meg, come on up here.

People of Orphalese, now you can listen again while Meg explains to the

new folks how all this got started, seeing Guy's in no condition to do

it."

The teen-ager marched up to the platform and took the parade-rest

position learned in some high-school debating society--in the days when

there were debating societies and high schools. "Ladies and gentlemen,

well, let's start at the beginning. Guy tells this better'n I do,

of course, but I guess I remember it all pretty well too. I ought

to. I was in on it and all." She grimaced and said, "Well, anyway,

ladies and gentlemen--people of Orph'lese--the way Guy organized

this Orphalese self-protection society was, like Walter says, he was

possessed. The only difference between Guy and you and me was that he

knew what to do about it, because he read the book, you see. Not that

that helped him at first, when he was took over. He was really seized.

Yes, people of Orph'lese, he was taken and while his whole soul and

brain and body was under the influence of some foul wanderer fiend

from hell he did things that, ladies and gentlemen of Orph'lese, I

wouldn't want to tell you. He was a harp in the hand of the mighty, as

it says. Couldn't help it, not however much he tried. Only while he

was doing--the things--he happened to catch his hand in a gas flame

and, well, you can see it was pretty bad." With a deprecatory smile Guy

held up a twisted hand. "And, do you know, he was free of his imp right

then and there! Now, Guy is a scientist, people of Orph'lese, he worked

for the telephone company, and he not only had that training in the

company school but he had read the book, you see, and he put two and

two together. Oh, and he's my uncle, of course. I'm proud of him. I've

always loved him, and even when he--when he was not one with himself,

you know, when he was doing those terrible things to me, I knew it

wasn't Uncle Guy that was doing them, but something else. I didn't know

what, though. And when he told me he had figured out the Basic Rule,

I went along with him every bit. I knew Guy wasn't wrong, and what he

said was from Scripture. Imps fear pain! So we got to love it. That one

I know by heart, all right: 'Could you keep your heart from wonder at

the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous

than your joy.' That's what it says, right? So that's why we got to

hurt ourselves, people of Orph'lese--and new brothers--because the

wanderers don't like it when we hurt and they leave us alone. Simple's

that.

"Well--" the girl's face stiffened momentarily--"I knew _I_ wasn't

going to be seized. So Guy and I got Else, that's the other girl he'd

been doing things to, and we knew she wasn't going to be taken either.

Not if the imps feared pain like Guy said, because," she said solemnly,

"I want to tell you Guy hurt us pretty bad.

"And then we came out here, and found this place, and ever since then

we've been adding brothers and sisters. It's been slow, of course,

because not many people come this way any more, and we've had to kill

a lot. Yes, we have. Sometimes the possessed just can't be saved, but--"

Abruptly her face changed.

Suddenly alert, her face years older, she glanced around the room. Then

she relaxed....

And screamed.

* * * * *

Guy leaped up. Hoarsely, his voice almost inarticulate as he tried to

talk with his broken jaw, he cried, "Wha ... Wha's ... _matter_, Meg?

"Uncle Guy!" she wailed. She plunged off the platform and flung herself

into his arms, crying hysterically.

"_Wha?_"

She sobbed, "I could feel it! They _took_ me. Guy, you promised me they

couldn't!"

He shook his head, dazed, staring at her as though she were indeed

possessed--still possessed, and telling him some fearful great lie to

destroy his hopes. He seemed unable to comprehend what she had said.

One of the hunters bellowed in stark fear: "For God's sake, untie

us! Give us a chance, anyway!" Chandler yelled agreement. In one

split second everyone in the room had been transmuted by terror into

something less than human. No one seemed capable of any action. Slowly

the plump youth who had presided moved over to the hunter bound in

the dentist's chair and began to fumble blindly at the knots. Ellen

Braisted dropped her head into her hands and began to shake.

The cruelty of the moment was that they had all tasted hope. Chandler

writhed wildly against his ropes, his mind racing out of control. The

world had become a hell for everyone, but a bearable hell until the

promise of a chance to end it gave them a full sight of what their

lives had been. Now that that was dashed they were far worse off than

before.

Walter finished with the hunter and lethargically began to pick at

Chandler's bonds. His face was slack and unseeing.

Then it, too, changed.

The plump youth stood up sharply, glanced about, and walked off the

platform.

Ellen Braisted raised her face from her hands and, her eyes streaming,

quietly stood up and followed. The old lady with the arthritis

about-faced and limped with them. Chandler stared, puzzled, and then

comprehended.

They were marching toward the corner of the room where the rifles were

stacked. "Possessed!" Chandler bellowed, the words tasting of acid as

they ripped out of his throat. "Stop them! You--Guy--look!" He flailed

wildly at his loosened bonds, lunged, tottered and toppled, chair and

all, crashingly off the platform.

The three possessed ones did not need to hurry. They had all the time

in the world. They were already reaching out for the rifles when

Chandler shouted. Economically they turned, raising the butts to

their shoulders, and began to fire at the Orphalese. It was a queerly

frightening sight to see the arthritic organist, with a face like a

relaxed executioner, take quick aim at Guy and, with a thirty-thirty

shell, blow his throat out. Three shots, and the nearest three of the

congregation were dead. Three more, and others went down, while the

remainder turned and tried to run. It was like a slaughter of vermin.

They never had a chance.

When every Orphalese except themselves was down on the floor, dead,

wounded or, like Chandler, overlooked, the arthritic lady took careful

aim at Ellen Braisted and the plump youth and shot them neatly in the

temples. They didn't try to prevent her. With expressions that seemed

almost impatient they presented their profiles to her aim.

Then the arthritic lady glanced leisurely about, fired into the

stomach of a wounded man who was trying to rise, reloaded her rifle

for insurance and began to search the bodies of the nearest dead. She

was looking for matches. When she found them, she tugged weakly at the

upholstery on a couch, swore and began methodically to rip and crumple

pages out of Kahlil Gibran. When she had a heap of loose papers piled

against the dais she pitched the remainder of the book out of the

window, knelt and ignited the crumpled heap.

She stood watching the fire, her expression angry and impatient,

tapping her foot.

The crumpled pages burned briskly. Before they died the wooden dais was

beginning to catch. Laboriously the old lady toted folding chairs to

pile on the blaze until it was roaring handsomely.

She watched it for several minutes, until it was a great orange pillar

of fire sweeping to the ceiling, until the drapes on the wall behind

were burning and the platform was a holocaust, until the noise of

crackling flame and the beginning of plaster falling from the high

ceiling proved that there was no likelihood of the fire going out

and, indeed, no way to put it out without a complete fire department

arriving on the scene at once.

The old lady's expression cleared. She nodded to herself. She then

put the muzzle of the rifle in her mouth and, with her thumb, pulled

the trigger that blew the top of her head off. The body fell into the

flames, but it was by then already dead.

* * * * *

Chandler had not been shot, but he was very near to roasting. Walter

had released one hand and, while the possessed woman's attention was

elsewhere, Chandler had worked on the other knots.

When he saw her commit suicide he redoubled his efforts. It was

incredible to him that his life had been saved, and he knew that if he

escaped the flames he still had nothing to live for--that blasted brief

hope had broken his spirit--but his fingers had a will of their own.

He lay there, struggling, while great black clouds of smoke, orange

painted from the flames, gathered under the high ceiling, while the

thunder of falling lumps of plaster sounded like a child heaving

volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica down a flight of stairs, while

the heat and shortage of oxygen made him breathe in violent spasms.

Then he cried out sharply and stumbled to his feet. It was only a

matter of moments before he was out of the house, but it was very

nearly not time enough.

Behind him was a great, sustained crash. He thought it must have been

the furniture on the upper floor toppling through the burned-out

ceiling of the hall. He turned and looked.

It was dark, and now every window on the side of the house facing him

was lighted. It was as though some mad householder had decided to equip

his rooms only with orange lights, orange lights that flickered and

moved. For a second Chandler thought there were still living people in

the rooms--shapes moved and cavorted at the windows, as though they

were gathering up possessions or waving wildly for help. But it was

only the drapes, aflame, tossed about in the fierce heat.

Chandler sighed and turned away.

Pain was not a sure defense after all. Evidently it was only an

annoyance to the possessors ... whoever, or whatever, they might be.

As soon as they had become suspicious they had exerted themselves and

destroyed the Orphalese. He listened and looked about, but no one else

moved. He had not expected anyone. He had been sure that he was the

only survivor.

He began to walk down the hill toward the wrecked railway bridge,

turning only when a roar told him that the roof of the house had fallen

in. A tulip of flame a hundred feet tall rose above the standing walls,

and above that a shower of floating red-orange sparks, heat-borne,

drifting up and away and beginning to settle all over the mountainside.

Many were still red when they landed, a few still flaming. It was a

distinct risk that the trees would begin to burn, and then he would be

in fresh danger. So great was his stupor that he did not even hurry.

By a plowed field he flung himself to the ground.

He could go no farther because he had nowhere to go. He had had two

homes and he had been driven from both of them. He had had hope twice,

and twice he had been damned.

He lay on his back, with the burning house mumbling and crackling in

the distance, and stared up at the orange-lit tops of the trees and,

past them, the stars. Over his left shoulder Deneb chased Vega across

the sky; toward his feet something moved between the bright rosy dot

that was Antares and another, the same brightness and hue--Mars? He

spent several moments wondering if Mars were in that part of the

heavens. Then he looked again for the tiny moving point that had

crossed the claws of the Scorpion, but it was gone. A satellite, maybe.

Although there were few of them left that the naked eye could hope to

see. And there would never be any more, because the sort of accumulated

wealth of nations that threw rockets into the sky was forever spent.

It was probably an airplane, he thought drowsily, and drifted off to

sleep without realizing how remote even that possibility had become....

He woke up to find that he was getting to his feet.

Once again an interloper tenanted his brain. He tried to interfere, for

he could not help it, although he knew how useless it was, but his own

neck muscles turned his head from side to side, his own eyes looked

this way and that, his own hand reached down for a dead branch that lay

on the ground, then hesitated and withdrew. His body stood motionless

for a second, the lips moving, the larynx mumbling to itself. He could

almost hear words. Chandler felt like a fly in amber, prisoned in his

own brainbox. He was not surprised when his legs moved to carry him

back toward the destroyed building, now a fakir's bed of white-hot

coals with brush fires spattered around it. He thought he knew why. It

seemed very likely that what possessor had him was a sort of clean-up

squad, tidying up the loose ends of the slaughter; he expected that his

body's errand was to destroy itself, and thus him, as all the Orphalese

had been destroyed.

V

Chandler's body carried him rapidly toward the house. Now and then it

paused and glanced about. It seemed to be weighing some shortcut in

its errand; but always it resumed its climb.

Chandler could sympathize with it, in a way. He still felt every

pain from burn, brand and wound; as they neared the embers of the

building the heat it threw off intensified them all. He could not be a

comfortable body to inhabit for long. He was almost sympathetic because

his tenant could not find a convenient weapon with which to fulfill his

purpose.

When it seemed they could get no closer without the skin of his face

crackling and bursting into flame his body halted.

Chandler could feel his muscles gathering for what would be the final

leap into the auto-da-fe. His feet took a short step--and slipped.

His body stumbled and recovered itself; his mouth swore thickly in a

language he did not know.

Then his body hesitated, glanced at the ground, paused again and bent

down. It had tripped on a book. It picked the book up, and Chandler saw

that it was the Orphalese copy of Gibran's _The Prophet_.

Chandler's body stood poised for a moment, in an attitude of thought.

Then it sat down, in the play of heat from the coals. It was a moment

before Chandler realized he was free. He tested his legs; they worked;

he got up, turned and began to walk away.

He had traveled no more than a few yards when he stumbled slightly, as

though shifting gears, and felt the tenant in his mind again.

He continued to walk away from the building, down toward the road. Once

his arm raised the book he still carried and his eyes glanced down, as

if for reassurance that it was the same book. That was the only clue he

was given as to what had happened and it was not much. It was as though

his occupying power, whatever it was, had gone--somewhere--to think

things over, perhaps to ask a question of an unimaginable companion,

and then returned with an altered purpose. As time passed, Chandler

began to receive additional clues, but he was in little shape to fit

them together, for his body was near exhaustion.

He walked to the road, and waited, rigid, until a panel truck came

bouncing along. He hailed it, his arms making a sign he did not

understand, and when it stopped he addressed the driver in a language

he did not speak. "_Shto_," said the driver, a somber-faced Mexican in

dungarees. "_Ja nie jestem Ruska. Czego pragniesh?_"

"_Czy ty jedziesz to_ Los Angeles?" asked Chandler's mouth.

"_Nyet. Acapulco._"