The Searing

by John Coyne

  “It’s getting closer,” Sara said softly, “that’s why the assaults are much more violent. This probe is like cannon fire; it’s finding the range.”

  “It’s the autumnal equinox, of course!” Neil exclaimed, breaking into the conversation. “That’s why the twenty-second of September was programmed in her mind.”

  The others stared at him, waited for an explanation.

  “This morning—at the equinox—the earth, this valley, must be in a direct line with Bel. For a few moments, at sunrise, it will have an open window to the Village. The probe will be able to lock in on Cindy’s databank directly; it won’t have to sweep the valley searching for her. It will be able to destroy the databank directly.”

  Sara went to Cindy, wanting to protect her. But the child did not seem alarmed; as usual, she sat vacantly scanning the room. Then Sara realized what was happening. Cindy’s beautiful black eyes were recording all their movements. Everything they said and did was being relayed to the rising sun, the eye of Bel, and from there 3,666 million miles to the edge of the universe.

  Their lives and Cindy’s, she now realized, depended on how long it took for the information to reach outer space, be comprehended by this intelligent life, and their violent reply sent back to earth and the Village.

  “Hurry!” Sara directed. “We have to take her back to my house. All my drugs are at home. We have to break this link, destroy her databank, before sunrise.” She moved quickly to Cindy and gently lifted the tall girl, speaking to the others as she did. “It will have to be a massive assault of psychotropic drugs if we’re going to have a chance of saving her.”

  They had made it up the stairs and outside into the backyard of the Volt house when the first pulse struck the Village. Tom looked down across the Village, and in the thin first light of day saw the ball of blazing red light appearing like a lost meteorite in the eastern sky. He did not even have time to shout a warning before the blazing ball hit the house like summer lightning, breaking glass as the roaring burst of energy ripped a twelve-inch hole in the ceiling and roof, then soared back into the empty sky.

  Another followed, tearing more holes in the frame house as it swept out of the cloudless sky, cut a bright swatch of light through the house, and disappeared into the atmosphere. Already the Volt home was on fire.

  “They know what we are going to do,” Sara shouted, hugging the child closer. From where she stood high up in the Village, she could see more brilliant flashes of light striking the Village, sweeping out of the vast sky, cutting like colored scythes through the streets, hitting the houses around the cul-de-sac. Farther down the hillside other homes were on fire. The blazing lights that flashed from out of the early morning light were changing colors, from deep blues to oranges and violets. Each light was a long, thin knife of color cutting through the sky, hitting the houses one at a time, slicing through the rooms, then soaring up again into the empty sky and disappearing from sight.

  Sara could see her neighbors in their bedclothes rushing into the streets, herding their children before them, then falling to the ground as a beam of light tore out of the heavens and swooped across the valley, striking whatever crossed its path.

  “I have to find Benjy,” Marcia shouted, seeing how the fire was spreading, from one cul-de-sac to the next.

  “Go with her, Neil,” Tom said. “We’ll meet you at Sara’s.” He grabbed Cindy’s other arm and the three of them raced across the Village as all around them the locomotive roar of the bright beams of light sped through the sky.

  In her own kitchen, Sara hurriedly filled several syringes with the liquefied chemicals from the laboratory, setting them in a row on the butcher block table.

  “You’re going to have to help me, Tom,” Sara ordered. “We haven’t time for me to do it all.” She handed him two small syringes, saying, “Just jab her thigh. You’re less likely to do damage and the muscles will absorb the medication.”

  Sara bent over the child and speaking softly, reassuringly, lifted Cindy’s arm. The child followed her motion without interest as Sara swabbed her forearm and easily jabbed the skin. Tom held one syringe ready in his hand, but Sara could see he was unable to use it.

  “Never mind,” she said, pulling the syringe from his unsteady fingers. Then, turning back to Cindy, she found a second vein in the girl’s thin arm. She had filled the syringe with 50CC of chlorpromazine and haloperidol, drugs that were known to relieve hallucinations and chronic psychosis, and to block the neurotransmitter dopamine, one of the primary transmitters of nerve impulses.

  Cindy’s arm flinched and she jerked from Sara’s grasp. She glanced up at Cindy as she readied the third syringe. The girl’s eyes had begun to focus, to concentrate on Sara.

  “Tom, grab her!” Sara ordered and, lifting Cindy’s dirty skirt, jabbed another needle into Cindy’s right thigh.

  Cindy swung wildly at Sara, caught her on the side of the head, then seized her by the neck, digging her nails deep into Sara’s throat and drawing blood.

  Sara dropped her syringes and grabbed Cindy’s wrists, tried to pull the powerful hands from her throat. She could see Cindy’s startled eyes, see the bright zigzagging lines shoot across her retinas. The girl would kill her, she realized.

  Then Tom grabbed Cindy. He pulled her hands from Sara’s throat and wrestled Cindy to the floor, using his size and weight to pin her down.

  For a full fifteen seconds they lay locked in that position. Then Sara said, “All right, Tom, let her go.” It would be only moments, she knew, before the full impact of the chemicals reached the child’s muscles, nerves, and brain.

  Tom rolled off the sprawled girl and Cindy scrambled to her feet, stumbling awkwardly around the room.

  “She’ll kill us,” Tom yelled.

  “No, we’re all right. The scopolamine causes partial paralysis. Whatever she is being signaled can’t be carried out. She won’t have any control over her muscles.” Sara did not take her eyes from the child as Cindy tried to move forward, to come after them, the need to kill still programmed in her databank brain.

  She fell against the kitchen chair, swayed precariously, stumbled forward in hesitant steps. They kept backing away, giving the child room to maneuver.

  It hurt Sara to watch the drugged child, to know she had injected Cindy as she might one of the white mice in her laboratory. Now she began to fear she had made a mistake, that the massive dose of untested psychotropic drug compounds would kill the child.

  In the middle of the kitchen floor Cindy stopped. Her feet apart, keeping her unsteady balance, she raised her hands and gripped her head. She tried to speak and a thin screech escaped her lips.

  Oh, God, Sara thought, her strength leaving her. I’ve failed again, another child I could not save.

  A fireball hit the house. A roaring locomotive noise of bright light ripped through the house, smashing a round hole from one wall through the next, then crashing into the kitchen and out the back, spraying glass and wood and plaster over them all.

  Sara screamed and reached for Cindy, pulling the frightened child to her arms, then fell quickly to the floor as another blazing beam struck the house, ripping the walls apart and soaring off through the ceiling and roof. She rolled over with Cindy in her arms and slid beneath the butcher block table as the second floor of the building gave way and crashed into the kitchen.

  Cindy was crying hysterically, but it took Sara only a moment to realize she was all right, that neither one of them were injured, and then she thought of Tom and cried out for him.

  He was only a few feet from her, trapped beneath part of the kitchen ceiling, and Sara tore loose from Cindy and crawled to his side. Another ball of bright-colored energy swooped through the wrecked house, destroying more of the structure, but Sara disregarded it and cleared some of the loose debris from Tom’s face.

  He was bleeding and unconscious, but he was alive. She had to get help; she could not move the heavy wood off his body.

  Again, the soaring ball of
light roared into the house, smashing a path of flaming destruction, still seeking Cindy.

  She could not keep the child here, Sara thought quickly. She had to get Cindy away from the Village. That was the only way she could save Tom and the others. Once Cindy was gone, they would leave the Village alone.

  Quickly she kissed Tom on his lips, then crawled back and pulled Cindy out from beneath the table, and led the child out of the wrecked house.

  “You have to run, Cindy,” she instructed. Taking her by the hand and crossing the backyard, Sara climbed the hillside towards the ridge of the Village and the stone temple of Bel. Drugged and disoriented, Cindy stumbled as she ran, and Sara had to half drag, half carry the girl up the hill.

  They were more vulnerable now, Sara knew, but she saw also that the streaking balls of light were still attacking the Village. From the crest of the hill, she saw that the roaring jets of brilliant light were not random and irregular, but instead they were systematically destroying the new houses of the subdivision, moving in a deliberate pattern up the farm road and into the new cul-de-sacs.

  Already they had set on fire the homes on Chaucer Drive and Montesi Court, and the flames from the burning frame houses had spread to the long dry grass in the open field beyond the construction. Encouraged by the roaring winds of the extraterrestrial attacks, the fire had moved quickly up the hillside toward the top of the ridge.

  The flames had built up a wall of fire across the open field, and from where Sara stood at the site of the mound, she saw that all of Renaissance Village was aflame, from the crest of the hill to the shore of the Potomac.

  Still, the bright pulsing beams from space continued to zigzag across the Village. Sara spotted in the distance a cluster of her neighbors on Petrarch Court, all huddled together in the center of the cul-de-sac with their houses in flames around them. She saw a single, looping orange beam rip out of the sky, drop down in a long, graceful swoop and drive through the huddle of people, scattering their bodies like trash.

  “Oh, God!” she cried, and grabbing the child, pushed her down and into the tunnel of the ancient temple. The first beam struck the top of the mound, burning a hole through the grass and dirt that for centuries had concealed and encased the stone temple. Sara felt the quiver of the ground, then the blast of after-shock. She pushed the child forward and into the large chamber.

  Another streak of careening light burst from the sky and hit the temple mound, boring a hole through the dirt and striking the slabs of granite that formed the roof of the long, rectangular building. Inside, Sara attempted to stand, but the second wave of after-shock toppled her once more.

  Cindy screamed and Sara went to her, pulled the child closer. It was a mistake, she now realized, to hide in the temple. It would be destroyed, too, and the heavy slabs of granite would crush them to death. And then she heard Cindy whisper, “Sara, take the pain away.”

  Sara pushed the child away and looked into the blank, black eyes of the autistic child. The drugs had helped some, cured Cindy of her speech problem, but the databank memory was still programmed, otherwise Cindy would not remember who Sara was. It hadn’t worked; she had not been able to wipe the child’s mind clean.

  And, millions of miles in space, a final fireball of energy zeroed in on the Village, locked itself to the fading signal of the databank, and sped through the galaxies until it hit the thick, heavy atmosphere, crashed the ionosphere, and broke into dazzling colors as it raced on, now less than seventy-five miles from earth.

  Sara crawled out of the temple, still holding tightly to the child. The fire had swept past the ridge, leaving the dirt charred and the ground hot. Below her the Village was a bonfire of destruction. It was all over, she thought, in a moment it would be all over.

  She saw the last blazing pulse speed towards earth like a shooting star, flying straight forward on its final programmed mission. It would destroy them both, Sara realized, but still she clung to the child.

  She watched the hurling bright red light as it swooped to ground level and swept along the Potomac, as the first thin slip of sunrise broke the flat horizon. The autumn equinox, she thought, and closed her eyes to wait.

  “Oh, look!” the child cried out with delight.

  Sara opened her eyes to catch a flash of the blazing pulse sail harmlessly over their heads.

  “Isn’t it pretty?” Cindy asked, smiling gleefully at Sara, her dark eyes bright with excitement.

  Sara turned to follow the disappearing ball of light. The drugs had worked in time. Cindy was free and the window for the eye of Bel closed.

  “Yes, darling, it is pretty,” Sara whispered, and with the child watched the beautiful ball of colored light roar across the high ridge of the ancient valley, and disappear into the first bright day of autumn.

  EPILOGUE

  Spring, 1981

  Sara crossed Mount Auburn Street against traffic and hurried into Ferdinand’s for lunch. She was early on purpose, but Sam was already waiting at the table, and she smiled wryly, thinking, she could never anticipate him. Punctual to a fault, he had taken away her advantage.

  “Welcome home,” he said, standing quickly and kissing her on the cheek. She knew by the sound of his voice that he was tense, that this first meeting wasn’t going to be easy on him, either.

  “You’ve lost weight,” she commented as she sat down. She took a long look, staring openly as if to evaluate him, to make a decision about how well he had fared since she left him.

  “And … and you.” He smiled. “You look as always—beautiful.”

  Embarrassed, Sara glanced away from his steady gaze. It wasn’t like Sam to be complimentary. It cost him something, and she wondered what he expected in return.

  “I read about what happened,” Sam started, not knowing where to begin. “There was a long article in the Globe, and I saw some T.V. reports. How many people were actually killed?”

  “Over a hundred.”

  “It seems incredible that there could be that much destruction. A total housing project. A village!” Sam kept shaking his head. He looked worried, as if he were somehow responsible. “The Globe called it some kind of meteorological phenomenon.”

  “Well, the brush fire caused most of the damage. The houses all had shingled roofs and the flames swept from one cul-de-sac to the next. Also, the Village was five miles from the closest town and it took over thirty minutes for the firemen to reach us.” Sara sighed, weary of the silent deception. She knew she could not yet reveal what had really happened at Renaissance Village, but she did not like concealing the truth, especially from Sam.

  “Thank God, at least you’re okay.” He reached out and, as if spontaneously, seized her hand, then watched her face, waited for some response, some slight signal that his concern meant something to her.

  “Yes, I’m all right.” She slowly withdrew her hand and reached immediately for the menu. “And how are you, Sam?” she asked. “How is the book?”

  “Oh, as good as I can expect. I’ve been slowed by the usual research problems. You know, experiments that end up going nowhere. In December I lost a solid month tracking down the wrong enzymes.”

  She looked at him then. He seemed exhausted and she could see traces of gray hair at his temples that hadn’t been there when she left him.

  “What about NIH?” he said.

  “Oh, I’ve left—I resigned just before the first of the year. I moved to a little farm outside Culpeper, Virginia, and went into practice with an older doctor in town.”

  She looked up at Sam and saw that the news had surprised him.

  “It sounds pretty remote,” he said carefully. “Aren’t you lonely?”

  “Well, I’m living with someone, a writer who used to be with The Washington Post. He’s working on a book now, about what happened to us in the Village.”

  “Is this serious, this relationship?”

  “Yes,” she said, “it is serious,” and just saying it made her feel good, and she realized there were no emotio
nal ghosts waiting for her here at Harvard. On that wave of security, she continued to talk, to explain how she had first met Tom, and what had actually happened at Renaissance Village. She talked in a rush, while Sam’s eyes widened in astonishment.

  “Cindy’s parents were killed in the attack, and the state granted me legal custody of her. It was then I decided Cindy was more important than my work at NIH. Most of all, she needed a safe, secure environment.” Sara shrugged, then admitted, “And I think that’s what I needed, too. So, I went looking for a place near the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  “Cindy is doing fine. I spend as much time as possible with her, and so does Tom. We’ve arranged for a student from the local community college to tutor her. She’s not able to handle public school yet. The gaps in her education are tremendous.”

  “And there’s no residual evidence of what happened to her?” he asked, still skeptical, still the same devil’s advocate he had always been.

  “I thought at first she had been freed—and she is, really; she isn’t in any danger—but occasionally I’ll see her solve a math problem, for example, with phenomenal ease. Some sort of memory, perhaps, is still lodged in her brain cells. Or maybe she simply is gifted. It’s too soon to tell.”

  “Incredible, Sara! If this crazy story is true, you have to do more research on this girl.” Sam leaned forward across the small table, his voice rising with excitement.

  “No! Cindy is going to be left alone. She’s suffered enough. It was like a long nightmare for her, and I’m not going to drag back to her consciousness all the terror she experienced.”

  Sara’s outburst silenced and surprised Sam. She had never been this forceful when they had lived together. He saw there was a sureness about her, a confidence that had been lacking. He saw it in her eyes, in the way her mouth was set.