“And you’re willing for that to happen? To have everyone become a member of the Church and worship his god of hate? Is that it? You think salvation for Earth lies with Obie Cox and his Church!”
“I think it does. I really think it does.”
“I just don’t understand you at all!” Lorna jumped up again, and this time Blake merely watched her. “You knew what Obie is like, you better than most of us, and yet you sit there and say you think he can save mankind. Why? It’s mad. But of course, you’re not even human so how can you know what I feel, what most of us feel about this!” Blake laughed and was still laughing when she turned and fled back to the house.
That night he told the Barbers that he was going back to Obie Cox and that he planned to stay with him through to the end.
“He needs one last miracle,” Blake said slowly, “and I’m afraid that I’m it.”
“What are you talking about?” Lorna asked. She looked to Derek for support, but he nodded at Blake in agreement.
“There has to be a crucifixion and a resurrection,” Blake said simply. “And that will tie all the loose ends, make a package of it.”
Late that night when she finally gave up on trying to get to sleep, Lorna walked under the trees where Blake had sat earlier. Derek was there.
“Why did he go back, Dek? Why?”
“Would you believe,” he said, but his voice was heavy and only the words were facetious, “that he has to close a circle. That no one else will fit?”
“But he doesn’t have to! Don’t you think it’s useless?”
“I think it’s useless. Now quit bugging me, Lorna.”
“Okay. He’s gone back. Obie will have his sacrifice and he’ll stage the resurrection.” She was silent for several minutes and then said quietly, “We couldn’t have had children. Alien and human….”
Chapter Twenty-six
OBIE dreamed that Blake drifted in through his bedroom window, riding moonbeams down from the sky to land very gently on a leather chair near the bed.
Obie dreamed that Blake said, “I’ve come home, Brer Cox. The prodigal son is home again.”
Obie dreamed that he tried to rise, tried to shout for help, tried to reach the gun that he kept on the bedside table. All he could do, in his dream, was stare terrified at the blond monster bathed in moonlight. His terror grew, and it was a crushing weight on his chest; it paralyzed him completely. He had to close his eyes, had to, had to… They closed. In a minute or two he awakened completely, sat straight up, clammy and shivering, and looked about wildly. No one was in the room with him. Of course.
When Obie entered the sun porch where he breakfasted every day, he thought at first that Billy was there reading the morning fax, waiting for him to talk to him. He was sleepy, the sunlight was glaring, he wanted it to be Billy there waiting for him. The fax was lowered and it was Blake, smiling at him.
“I’m ready to pick up where we left off, Obie,” he said. “I want to take my place at your side again.”
Obie didn’t believe him at first, probably didn’t believe him at all ever, but gradually he came to act as if he did. The riots continued, worsened as the weather changed and winter came, and the food shortage began to be felt more and more. To add to the miseries promised by the winter weather there was a world-wide shortage of fuel Radiation leaks had forced the closing of many of the world’s reactors, and there wasn’t enough coal and oil to replace them. Rationing became tighter. Christmas arrived in a bleak season of little work, little money, long lines of unemployed and hungry men ready to burn down the city if they were refused jobs. They were refused jobs because the jobs were nonexistent, and they tried to burn down the cities. Whole neighborhoods vanished under the torch, miles of business districts became charred ruins. There were very few deaths even when the long hairs and the short hairs clashed; they all seemed more intent on burning down the material wealth of the country.
Obie was willing for Blake to be on camera with him, but he refused to be with him at other times. Billy was the emissary who delivered messages back and forth. Blake didn’t ask permission to use the lab, nor did he produce any new invention or make any discoveries. He sat on the stage with Obie and throughout the world people wrote in to say they had been cured of this and that by his presence. When Obie started to talk about the promise of God to recall his son to his bosom he doubled the guards about Blake, who smiled and said nothing. Spring came.
The Star Child, Johnny, was pronounced cured, or improved as much as was possible. Obie couldn’t stand to be with the boy, who looked at him haughtily and ordered the immediate recognition from the people of Earth that was his due. Dr. Mueller hovered in the background anxiously and seemed pleased with the product of his long labors.
“Keep him under lock and key,” Obie said and left. Johnny stared after him; he called on all the powers he knew to dwell within himself, called on his people to descend and destroy Earth. Obie continued to move away, untouched by the powers that were hurled against him, and Johnny decided that Obie was a man protected by a very powerful god. He would need more time to ponder this.
Blake was kept locked up much of the time, also, but he accepted it without comment, or even without notice, it appeared. When he was permitted to walk about the grounds, he was followed by half a dozen men, some stationed quite close to him, others overlooking the entire group from more distant vantage points. Spring was cold and windy, and without promise of a letup in the drought that was plaguing Earth.
Billy was uneasy about Blake’s presence, as were the others who had known him in the past. Often Obie, Dee Dee, Billy, and Wanda met to discuss his reappearance, and they never came to a satisfactory conclusion about why he had come back. Or why he was suddenly so docile.
“Merton,” Billy said, more than once, “would have had him killed on sight, put in deep freeze until the right time, then brought him out for the climax,”
“Yeah, I know that,” Obie said.
He dropped it there. They knew that he wouldn’t have Blake killed, yet, and that no one else in the room would have him killed. No one said this, however.
“Have you asked him if he’d take money and just get lost?” Wanda asked in the silence that followed.
Obie stared malevolently at her without bothering to answer.
“How do you know he won’t if you don’t ask?” she said peevishly. Blake’s presence was more upsetting than his disappearance ever had been. “If only he wouldn’t look at me like he does,” she muttered, more peevishly.
“What I want to know is why he came back,” Billy said angrily. “He didn’t have to. He managed to stay hidden well enough when that was what he wanted.”
“Knock it off, for chrissakes!” Dee Dee said. “I am so tired of listening to all of you. Why the hell don’t you ask him why he came back? Have you thought of that?”
Obie looked at her as if she had suggested that he walk into a nest of rattlers to see if they had fangs. But Billy said, “Have you, Obie? Not through me you haven’t.”
So Blake was sent for, and he entered the room with a faint smile on his face. “Reunion,” he said. “Old home week, and all that.”
“What do you want?” Obie said.
Blake laughed. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m your prisoner. How could I have demands?”
“Why did you come back?” Dee Dee was as lovely as ever, although skill and technique now replaced what had been natural. She studied Blake appraisingly, noting the broad shoulders, the long, smooth muscles, the way his gaze had gone over the room just once, but with an intensity that suggested that he had noted every object there.