Let the Fire Fall

Chapter Twenty

NEW Year’s Eve in Times Square. Twenty million people within an area of no more then ten city blocks. Snow that comes down black, and falls like bits of metal, straight down, no swirling about, just down. Cold people, miserable people, looking for something from the New Year, something that had been absent in the old one, in the old ones of all the years gone by.

Blake has found Lorna. He has spotted the watchers, all but one of them anyway, and he is being careful, knowing that there may be others. Tonight there will be real trouble in Times Square. Everyone gathered knows this. They have come anyway. For the trouble perhaps. Obie has said that tonight the short hairs will be driven from the city, that the city will greet the new year cleansed of the filth of the non-believers. At least some say that Obie has predicted this. No one knows any longer when he has made a prediction, or when others have made it for him, in his name. False prophets, the long hairs call those others, trying to belittle the accomplishments of the leader. Hedging his bets, the skeptics say with as much certainty. If it pans out, he said it sho-nuff, and if it doesn’t happen, then he never even said it would. No one knows where the truth is any longer. No one really cares: They have come to Times Square in spite of the rumors, or because of the rumors. Lorna has come. Looking for something that she lost. She won’t find it again, and she knows this, too. But she has to look, or give up everything. She has a job of sorts. In a bar where short-hair Irishmen gather and talk about what they will do to the long hairs when the time comes. She serves their drinks—they don’t trust the automated bars, believe they get cheaper booze there, watered down more than in the bars where they can watch the mixing. They may be right. Everyone knows the automatic places of all sorts are programmed to cheat the customer, less food per serving, less alcohol per drink, less time per book, less everything. Lorna is in Times Square, hugging a coat that is too thin to her shoulders, which are also too thin. She is hungry. Most of the time she is hungry, and always cold. She can remember being warm enough, that is more than most of the people she is pushing and pushed by can remember. Few of them have ever been warm in the winter. Lorna’s hair is growing out again, curling about her ears. She doesn’t suspect that she has not had a moment alone since being put out of the hovercraft three months ago. She has felt alone. Loneliness has matured her in a way that age couldn’t, and her eyes are patient now and the look of hurt has been replaced by a look of sadness. She doesn’t like most of the people in the square, but she sympathizes with them. They all, long hairs and short hairs, share the hunger and the cold, and the hopes that the new year will be different. No one really knows how to specify what sort of difference he wants, but everyone knows it has to be different or he doesn’t want to stay around for the next New Year’s Eve. Most of them thought this way last year, and the year before that, and on backward in time to a distant past that is so faded in the memory that perhaps it is only a dream. Lorna never felt this before. She doesn’t know that people can live with this hopelessness for a normal life span. She wouldn’t believe it if she were told repeatedly that it is so.

It is nearing twelve. There is excitement, anticipation, and hands in pockets clutch rocks and bottles, and bricks and clubs, and even guns. Cocktails have been lovingly prepared, for the celebration. There is booze, God only knows from what source, from what ingredients. Probably lethal. There are the pills and the needles and the bits of sugared gum that can be chewed, stored, or shared, and chewed again, each time guaranteed to remove one from reality for a while.

Blake doesn’t let the crowds separate him from Lorna now. Tonight he and Derek plan to pick her up and take her to the mountain cabin. Derek is waiting for his signal. Derek is nearby with the ship that is as much at home under the bay as in the air. Nearby and waiting for the signal. Blake moves closer to the girl. Hell’s door bursts open at midnight, and Blake moves toward Lorna. There is a pitched battle going on all at once. Bricks are thrown, bottles, jagged and mean, are flashing, there are explosions here and there, and tramplings. Why frail people are always in such a crowd is a mystery that should be investigated. Suicides lacking the imagination to work out details? They are there, and they are trampled. Blake swings Lorna around and she recognizes him immediately in spite of the black hair and the clothes that are of the slums. The watchers pay little attention to the dark young man. They have been instructed to leave her strictly alone, not reveal that they were watching regardless of what happens, unless she is threatened with death. So they would have paid no attention at all to him, had not a pipe flashed out and laid open the side of his head. Blake is not immune to a pipe on the side of the head. He falls heavily bleeding, unconscious. Lorna drops to her knees instantly and it is this action that draws the attention of the watchers. She knows him! She is pushed back as they move in, and seconds later they know him also. Lorna and Blake are lifted, she is also unconscious now, her head swelling from a fistful of coins brought down just so, Blake still bleeding, very dead-looking.

Derek, waiting, hears nothing, and continues to wait. An hour later he does hear a voice, not Blake’s voice, and he knows Blake has been taken. The voice says, jubilantly, “My God, finally! Now we finish everything!” The voice belongs to Obie Cox.