And that was how Derek Daniels joined Blake and became his partner.
Half expecting to feel jealousy, he felt only admiration and loyalty to this unschooled boy-man changeling. Blake read Matt’s note twice, then handed it to Derek and walked outside the cabin high in the Pennsylvania hills handling the black disk that was his heritage.
The note was as follows:
“Dear Blake, I should have found time to talk to you when you were with us the last time, when you brought Lorna home to us. I didn’t realize how short the visit was to be, I thought there was time. We always think there is enough time, and there never is. I can only hope that this will reach you soon, I can’t know for certain that it will. I have to gamble on it and say here what I didn’t say before.
“When the ship came, I was the first one to see the aliens. I have to start with that. Obie has lied about it and the lie is believed now, but I was there first. I stood at the side of the road and looked down on the ship, feeling awe, unlimited excitement, joy…. High on the ship a panel, or door, opened, and one of the aliens stepped out. He had no platform there, nothing. He simply stepped out on air and stood there. I started to climb over the fence and when I looked again, the panel was closed, and the door-hatch that we ill got to know was opening at ground level.
“That is the first thing.
“When the alien woman arrived at the office some days later, Florence was already in labor. I was not there when they both delivered. I believe the alien delivered Florence, then herself.
“One baby was dying, the other was well and healthy. I knew how it would be with the alien child, the suspicion, fear, extraordinary precautions that would imprison him. I don’t think I made a conscious decision. The alien had made the switch, if a switch had indeed been made. I let it stick. One dead baby to add to the many dead aliens, one live and healthy baby to be raised in a normal family as an Earth child, as my child.
“I had only that first minute in which to decide. After that it was out of my hands. No one would have believed me later even if I had decided to voice my suspicions. I didn’t decide to do that, of course, but later, when Obie took you, I was tempted. If Winifred hadn’t told us about the prison conditions surrounding Johnny I probably would have talked.: But I couldn’t risk exposing you to that.
“I don’t know what the disc is, what it does, why she gave it to me. When I took her tunic, the disc fell from it. She indicated that I should keep it. I can only hand it on and say, this may be from your mother. Love, Matt.”
Derek, like Blake, read it twice, the second time very slowly, stopping often, gazing into space, thinking furiously. He put it down numbly and paced in the cabin, not seeing anything there. It all fell into place now. And Obie knew. They had found out somehow. He remembered reading of the proposed visit by Obie Cox to the estate where the Star Child was kept. He shuddered; that might have been Blake, locked up on an estate somewhere all his life. So, Obie saw the Star Child and guessed that he was the father. If the Star Child was that much like him, why didn’t anyone else see it? And what of the stories of his great powers, which were only now being manifested? All lies? The longer he thought of it, the more confused Derek became. Hours passed before Blake returned.
He had washed the black from his hair, and it was the blond that Derek remembered. He was tall and broad-shouldered, very handsomely built, with the self-assurance that had been part of him ever since Derek could remember. There was a new thoughtfulness, a new maturity perhaps, a more distant attitude, a new curiosity…. Derek couldn’t put a finger on it, couldn’t put the concept into words at all, but felt it nonetheless.
Blake handed the black disk to him wordlessly. Derek turned it over and over, and could find nothing to it that suggested what it was. A black disk, shiny on one side, dull on the other. It fit his palm nicely, was slightly warm, but then Blake had been handling it and could have warmed it. Finally he handed it back with a shrug.
“I have to go to the ship,” Blake said. “This has to be a key of some sort.” He flipped the disk into the air and caught it a couple of times, and when he turned again to look at Derek there was an unholy gleam in his eyes. “It’s a damn shame the ship is In the shadow of the temple,” he said, grinning. “I just may have to be converted in order to get close enough to it to get inside.”
They knew that Obie had a round-the-clock guard at the ship, complementing the UNEF there already, who were mystified at this new development. Everyone who went into the ship was scrutinized, photographed, had his retinas checked. Weekly there were incidents in which men were summarily seized and taken to the temple, put inside a room there and left for five minutes, only to be released without a word about what had been done, why they had been taken, or what was expected. Many of them were believers and didn’t complain, but the non-believers complained bitterly to the authorities. Each time this happened the official temple security chief apologized and promised that it wouldn’t happen again.
The same thing was going on at the airports, and at the docks where the exodus was the most pronounced.
For the next several weeks Derek and Blake worked together in the cabin, and Derek was happier than he had been for a long time. During this period of time Blake changed. Before Derek’s eyes he changed. His hair became mud-colored, and his eyes adapted to contacts that made them brown and smaller-looking. His cheeks became sunken, and his chin seemed to recede slightly, the result of the way he held his head, half ducked so that he peered up from lowered eyes. A new expression of obsequious servility intermixed with repressed brutality changed him even more. He shuffled his left foot when he walked now, not enough to bring a close study, but enough to change his walk from that of a young man to that of a man in his mid years, tired and despairing. Very carefully he planted hair in his ears, and in the midst of the dirt and earwax was a transmitter and a receiver. He and Derek would be in touch.
As soon as it all was in place he started to mutter. He left the cabin muttering to himself, and Derek turned on his receiver and listened to the snatches of filthy verse, strings of curses, bits of… so I says and he says… narratives, ruminations about the good old days, and so on. Derek burst out laughing. The shuffling man looked about wildly and muttered darkly about voices from the sky.
His role was finished with that touch. His name would be James Teague until further nonce, And he left Derek alone in the mountain cabin, alone, but not lonely.
Several days later, in the middle of a spring that was cold and dry, promising another year of drought to a land already worn out with dryness and the despair of no crops worth harvesting, there appeared in Des Moines a derelict muttering about the weather, about the lack of work, about the rottenness of the system, about the old days when a man could get a drink…. He shuffled about the city for weeks, getting in the way here and there, sleeping in doorways, getting rolled once or twice, but left undamaged; aimless, harmless, penniless, hungry, he quickly became a fixture, recognized by the cops and the inhabitants alike, accepted by them all. He wasn’t in the way any more than the thousands like him were in the way, and if his muttering became wearisome after a time, the listener could leave him without another thought. Eventually he turned up in a Listener’s .Booth and stood fumbling a shapeless hat for several minutes saying nothing, but muttering furiously, until he turned and left without confessing anything. The following week he was back, and this time he talked haltingly. “M’name’s Teague,” he said. “James Teague, that’s it.” This time also, he raised his gaze from the filthy hat and looked about him in darting, suspicious glances. There was little enough to see. The room was small, ten by ten feet, heavily draperied and comfortable at 72 degrees. The air was clean and fresh-smelling, regardless of the condition of the confessors who appeared there. And there was the voice there. It whispered and murmured encouragement to the confessor, and welcomed him to return when he was ready. It understood, no matter what he said, the listener understood. On his fourth visit Teague confessed to murder, of his wife and their three children. In a trembling voice, with much hesitation, many pauses, in a fashion of almost total incoherency he confessed to having chopped them to pieces with an ax and having buried them in a common grave in the Missouri Hills. He said that she had mocked him for the voice he heard.