Nightfall

Chapter Thirteen

"I'll do more than look him in the eye, if it turns out that his dire predictions were on the mark. I'll go down on both knees before him and humbly beg his pardon."
"And if his predictions turn out not to have been on the mark?"
"Then he'll need me," Theremon said. "You all will. This is the right place for me to be, this evening."
Siferra gave the newspaperman a startled glance. He was always saying the unexpected thing. She hadn't managed to figure him out yet. She disliked him, of course-that went without saying. Everything about him-his profession, his manner of speaking, the flashy clothes he usually wore-struck her as tawdry and commonplace. His entire persona was a symbol, to her, of the crude, crass, dreary, ordinary, repellent world beyond the university walls that she had always detested.
And yet, and yet, and yet- There were aspects of this Theremon that had managed to win her grudging admiration, despite everything. He was tough, for one thing, absolutely unswervable in his pursuit of whatever he might be after. She could appreciate that. He was straightforward, even blunt: quite a contrast to the slippery, manipulative, power-chasing academic types who swarmed all around her on the campus. He was intelligent, too, no question about that, even though he had chosen to devote his particular brand of sinewy, probing intelligence to a trivial, meaningless field like newspaper journalism. And she respected his robust physical vigor: he was tall and sturdy-looking and in obvious good health. Siferra had never had much esteem for weaklings. She had taken good care not to be one herself.
In truth she realized-improbable as it was, uhcomfortable as it made her feel-that in some way she was attracted to him. An attraction of opposites? she thought. Yes, yes, that was an accurate way of putting it. But not entirely. Beneath the surface dissimilarities, Siferra knew, she had more in common with Theremon than she was willing to admit.
She looked uneasily toward the window. "Getting dark out there," she said. "Darker than I've ever seen it before."
"Frightened?" Theremon asked.
"Of the Darkness? No, not really. But I'm frightened of what's going to come after it. You should be too."
"What's going to come after it," he said, "is Onos-rise, and I suppose some of the other suns will be shining too, and everything's going to be.as it was before."
"You sound very confident of that."
Theremon laughed. "Onos has risen every morning of my life. Why shouldn't I be confident it'll rise tomorrow?"
Siferra shook her head. He was beginning to annoy her again with his pigheadedness. Hard to believe that she had been telling herself only moments before that she found him attractive.
She said coolly, "Onos will rise tomorrow. And will look down on such a scene of devastation as a person of your limited imagination is evidently incapable of anticipating."
"Everything on fire, you mean? And everyone walking around drooling and gibbering while the city burns?"
"The archaeological evidence indicates-"
"Fires, yes. Repeated holocausts. But only in one small site, thousands of miles from here and thousands of years ago." Theremon's eyes flashed with sudden vitality. "And where's your archaeological evidence for outbreaks of mass insanity? Are you extrapolating from all those fires? How can you be sure that those weren't purely ritual fires, lit by perfectly sane men and women in the hope that they would bring back the suns and banish the Darkness? Fire which got out of hand each time and caused widespread damage, sure, but which were in no way related to any mental impairment on the part of the population?"
She gazed at him levelly. "There's archaeological evidence of that too. The widespread mental impairment, I mean."
"There is?"
"The tablet texts. Which only this morning we just finished keying in against the philological data provided by the Apostles of Flame-"
Theremon guffawed. "The Apostles of Flame! Wonderful! So you're an Apostle too! What a shame, Siferra. A woman with a figure like yours, and from now on you'll have to muffle yourself up in one of those terrible shapeless bulky robes of theirs-"
"Oh!" she cried, stifling a red burst of anger and loathing. "You don't know how to do anything but mock, do you? You're so convinced of your own righteousness that even when you're staring right at the truth all you can do is make' some pitiful joke! Oh-you-you impossible man-"
She swung around and headed swiftly across the room.
"Siferra-Siferra, wait-"
She ignored him. Her heart was pounding in rage. She saw now that it had been a terrible mistake to invite someone like Theremon to be here on the evening of the eclipse. A mistake, in fact, ever to have had anything to do with him.
It was Beenay's fault, she thought. Everything was Beenay's fault.
It was Beenay, after all, who had introduced her to Theremon, one day at the Faculty Club many months before. Apparently the newspaperman and the young astronomer had known each other a long time and Theremon regularly consulted Beenay on scientific matters that were making news.
What was making news just then was the prediction of Mondior 71 that the world would end on Theptar nineteenth- which at that time was something close to a year in the future. Of course nobody at the university held Mondior and his Apostles in any sort of regard, but it was just about at the same moment that Beenay had come up with his observations of the apparent irregularities in Kalgash's orbit, and Siferra had reported her findings of fires at two-thousand-year intervals at the Hill of Thombo. Both of which discoveries, of course, had the dismaying quality of reinforcing the plausibility of the Apostles' beliefs.
Theremon had seemed to know all about Siferra's work at Thombo. When the newspaperman entered the Faculty Club- Siferra and Beenay were already there, though not by any prearranged appointment-Beenay merely had to say, "Theremon, this is my friend Dr. Siferra of the Archaeology Department." And Theremon replied instantly, "Oh, yes. The burned villages piled up on that ancient hill."
Siferra smiled coolly. "You've heard of that, have you?"
Beenay said quickly, "I told him. I know I promised not to say a word about it to him, but after you revealed everything to Athor and Sheerin and the rest, I figured that it wouldn't matter any more if I let him know-so long as I swore him to secrecy-I mean, Siferra, I trust this man, I really do, and I was absolutely confident that-"
"It's all right, Beenay," Siferra said, making an effort not to seem as annoyed as in fact she was. "You really shouldn't have said anything. But I forgive you."
Theremon said, "No harm's been done. Beenay swore me to a terrible oath that I wouldn't print anything about it. But it's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating! How old is the one at the bottom, would you say? Fifty thousand years, is it?"
"More like fourteen or sixteen," Siferra said. "Which is quite immensely old enough, when you consider that Beklimot-you know of Beklimot, don't you?-is only about twenty centuries old, and we used to think that was the earliest settlement on Kalgash. -You aren't planning to write a story about my discoveries, are you?"
"I wasn't, actually. I told you, I gave Beenay my word. Besides, it seemed a little abstract for the Chronicle's readers, a little remote from their daily concerns. But I think now there's a real story there. If you'd be willing to meet with me and give me the details-"
"I'd rather not," Siferra said quickly.
"Which? Meet with me? Or give me the details?"
His quick flip reply suddenly cast the entire conversation in a new light for her. She saw, to her mild annoyance and slight surprise, that the newspaperman was in fact attracted to her. She realized now, thinking back over the past few minutes, that
Theremon must have been wondering, all the while, whether there might be something romantic going on between her and Beenay, since he had found them sitting here in the club together. And had decided at last that there wasn't, and so had chosen to offer that first lightly flirtatious line.
Well, that was his problem, Siferra thought.
She said in a deliberately neutral way, "I haven't published my Thombo work in the scientific journals yet. It would be best if nothing about it gets into the public press until I have."
"I quite understand that. But if I promise that I'll abide by your release date, would you be willing to go over your material with me ahead of time?"
"Well-"
She looked at Beenay. What was a newspaperman's promise worth, anyway?
Beenay said, "You can trust Theremon. I've told you already: he's as honorable as they get, in his line of work."
"Which isn't saying much," Theremon put in, laughing. "But I know better than to break my word on an issue of scientific publication priority. If I jumped the gun on your story, Beenay here would see that my name was mud all over the university. And I depend on my university contacts for some of my most interesting stories. -So can I count on an interview with you? Say, the day after next?"
And that was how it began.
Theremon was very persuasive. She agreed finally to have lunch with him, and slowly, cunningly, he pried the details of the Thombo dig out of her. Afterward she regretted it-she expected to see a stupid, sensational piece in the Chronicle the very next day-but Theremon kept his word and published nothing about her. He did ask to see her laboratory, though. Again she yielded, and he inspected the charts, the photographs, the ash samples. He asked some intelligent questions.
"You aren't going to write me up, are you?" she asked nervously. "Now that you've seen all this?"
"I promised that I wouldn't. I meant it. Although the moment you tell me that you've arranged to publish your findings in one of the scientific journals, I'll regard myself as free to tell the whole thing. What would you say to dinner at the Six Suns Club tomorrow evening?"
"Well-"
"Or the evening after that?"
Siferra rarely went to places like the Six Suns. She hated to give anyone the false impression that she was interested in getting into social entanglements.
But Theremon wasn't easy to turn down. Gently, cheerfully, skillfully, he maneuvered her into a position where she couldn't avoid a date with him-for ten days hence. Well, what of it? she thought. He was personable enough. She could use a change of pace from the steady grind of her work. She met him at the Six Suns, where everyone seemed to know him. They had drinks, dinner, a fine wine from Thamian Province. He moved the conversation this way and that, very adroitly: a little bit about her life, her fascination with archaeology, her excavations at Beklimot. He found out that she'd never been married and had never been interested in marrying. He spoke of the Apostles with her, their wild prophecies, the surprising relationship of her Thombo finds to Mondior's claims. Everything he said was tactful, perceptive, interesting. He was very charming-and also very manipulative, she thought.
At the end of the evening he asked her-gently, cheerfully, skillfully-if he could accompany her home. But she drew the line at that.
He didn't seem troubled. He simply asked her out again.
They had gone out two or three more times altogether after that, over a period of perhaps two months. The format was the same each time: dinner at some elegant place, well-managed conversation, ultimately a delicately constructed invitation for her to spend the sleep-period with him. Siferra deflected him just as delicately each time. It was becoming a pleasant game, this lighthearted pursuit. She wondered how long it would go on. She still had no particular wish to go to bed with him, but the odd thing was that she had no particular wish any longer not to go to bed with him, either. It was a long time since she had felt that way about any man.
Then came the first of the series of columns in which he denounced the Observatory theories, questioned Athor's sanity, compared the scientists' prediction of the eclipse to the mad ravings of the Apostles of Flame.
Siferra didn't believe it, at first. Was this some sort of joke?
Beenay's friend-her friend now, for that matter-attacking them so viciously?
A couple of months went by. The attacks continued. She didn't hear from Theremon.
Finally she couldn't remain silent any longer.
She called him at the newspaper office.
"Siferra! What a delight! Believe it or not, I was going to call you later this afternoon, to ask if you'd be interested in going to-,,
"I wouldn't," she said. "Theremon, what are you doing?"
"Doing?"
"These columns about Athor and the Observatory."
There was silence at the other end of the line for a long while.
Then he said, "Ah. You're upset."
"Upset? I'm livid!"
"You think I've been a little too harsh. Look, Siferra, when you write for a large audience of ordinary folks, some of them very ordinary, you've got to put things in black and white terms or run the risk of being misunderstood. I can't simply say that I think Athor and Beenay are wrong. I've got to say that they're nuts. Do you follow me?"
"Since when do you think they're wrong? Does Beenay know how you feel?"
"Well-"
"You've been covering the story for months. Now you've turned around a hundred eighty degrees. To listen to you, one would think that everyone at the campus is a disciple of Mondior and that we're all out of our minds besides. If you needed to find somebody to be the butt of your jokes, couldn't you have looked somewhere else than the university?"
"These aren't just jokes, Siferra," Theremon said quietly.
"You believe what you're writing?"
"I do. I honestly do. There isn't going to be any cataclysm, that's what I think. And here's Athor pulling on the fire alarm in a crowded theater. By my jokes, my poking a little good natured fun here and there, I'm trying to tell people that they don't necessarily have to take him seriously-not to panic, not to get into an uproar-"
"What?" she cried. "But there is going to be a fire, Theremon! And you're playing a dangerous game with everyone's welfare by your mockery. Listen to me: I've seen the ashes of past fires, fires thousands of years old. I know what's going to happen. The Flames will come. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. You've seen the evidence too. And for you to take the position you're taking now is the most destructive imaginable thing you could do, Theremon. It's cruel and foolish and hateful. And utterly irresponsible."
"Siferra-"
"I thought you were an intelligent man. I see now that you're exactly like all the rest of them out there."
"Sifer-"
She broke the contact.
And kept it broken, refusing to return any of his calls, until just a few weeks before the fateful day itself.
Early in the month of Theptar, Theremon called once more, and Siferra found herself on the line with him before she knew who it was.
"Don't hang up," he said quickly. "Just give me a minute."
"I'd rather not."
"Listen, Siferra. You can hate me all you like, but I want you to know this: I'm not cruel and I'm not foolish."
"Whoever said you were?"
"You did, months ago, the last time we spoke. But it isn't so. Everything I've written in my column about the eclipse has been there because I believe it."
"Then you are foolish. Or stupid, at any rate. Which may be slightly different, but not any better."
"I've looked at the evidence. I think you people have all been jumping to conclusions."
She said coldly, "Well, we'll all know whether that's so on the nineteenth, won't we?"
"I wish I could believe you, because you and Beenay and the rest of you are all such fine people, so obviously dedicated and brilliant and all. But I can't. I'm a skeptic by nature. I have been all my life. I can't accept any kind of dogma that other people want to sell me. It's a serious flaw in my character, I suppose-it makes me seem frivolous. Maybe I am frivolous. But at least I'm honest. I simply don't think there'll be an eclipse, or madness, or fires."
"It's no dogma, Theremon. It's a hypothesis."
"That's playing with words. I'm sorry if what I've written has offended you, but I can't help it, Siferra."
She was quiet a moment. Something in his voice had oddly moved her. She said at last, "Dogma, hypothesis, whatever it is, it's going to be tested in a few weeks. I'll be at the Observatory on the evening of the nineteenth. You come there too, and we'll see which one of us is right."
"But hasn't Beenay told you? Athor's declared me persona non grata at the Observatory!"
"Has that ever stopped you?"
"He refuses even to talk to me. You know, I have a proposal for him, something that could be of great help to him after the nineteenth when all this tremendous buildup misfires into whopping anticlimax and the world comes yelling for his skin, but Beenay says there's no chance he'll talk to me at all, let alone allow me to come in that evening."
"Come as my guest. My date," she said acidly. "Athor'll be too busy to care. I want you to be in the room when the sky turns black and the fires start. I want to see the look on your face. I want to see if you're as experienced at apologizing as you are at seduction, Theremon."
That had been three weeks ago. Fleeing angrily from Theremon now, Siferra rushed to the far side of the room and caught sight of Athor, standing by himself, looking through a set of computer printouts. He was sadly turning the pages over and over and over as though he hoped to find a reprieve for the world buried somewhere in the dense columns. Then he looked up and saw her.
Color came to her face.
"Dr. Athor, I feel I ought to ask your pardon for inviting that man to be here this evening, after all he's said about us, about you, about-" She shook her head. "I genuinely thought it would be instructive for him to be among us when-when-
Well, I was wrong. He's even more shallow and foolish than I imagined. I should never have told him to come."
Wanly Athor said, "It scarcely is of any importance now, is it? So long as he keeps out of my way, I hardly care whether he's here or not. A few more hours and then nothing will make any difference." He pointed through the window, toward the sky. "So dark! So very dark! And yet not nearly as dark as it will be. -I wonder where Faro and Yimot are. You haven't seen them, have you? No? -When you came in, Dr. Siferra, you said there'd been a last-minute problem at your office. Not a serious one, I hope."
"The Thombo tablets have disappeared," she said.
"Disappeared?"
"They were in the artifact safe, of course. Just before I left to come over here, Dr. Mudrin came to see me. He was on his way to the Sanctuary, but he wanted to check one last thing in his translation, one new notion he'd had. So we opened the safe, and-nothing. Gone, all six of them. We have copies, naturally. But still-the originals, the authentic ancient objects-"
"How can this have happened?" Athor asked.
Bitterly Siferra said, "Isn't it obvious? The Apostles have stolen them. Probably to use as some kind of holy talismans, after the-the Darkness has come and done its work."
"Are there any clues?"
"I'm no detective, Dr. Athor. There's no evidence that would mean anything to me. But it had to be the Apostles. They've wanted them ever since they knew I had them. Oh, I wish I'd never said a word to them about them! I wish I'd never mentioned those tablets to anyone!"
Athor took her by the hands. "You mustn't get so upset, my girl."
My girl! She glared at him, astonished. No one had called her that in twenty-five years! But she choked back her anger. He was old, after all. And only trying to be kind.
He said, "Let them have them, Siferra. It makes no difference now. Thanks to that man over there, nothing makes any difference, does it?"
She shrugged. "I still hate the thought that some thief in an Apostle's robe was sniffing around in my office-jimmying my safe-taking things that I had uncovered with my own hands.
It's like a violation of my body, almost. Can you understand that, Dr. Athor? To have been robbed of those tablets-it's almost like a rape."
"I know how upset you are," Athor said, in a tone that indicated he didn't really understand at all. "Look-look there. How bright Dovim is this evening! And in just a little while how dark everything will be."
She managed a vague smile and turned away from him.
All about her, people were buzzing to and fro, checking this, discussing that, running to the window, pointing, murmuring. Now and then someone would come rushing in with some new data from the telescope dome. She felt like a complete outsider among these astronomers. And altogether bleak, altogether hopeless. Some of Athor's fatalism must have rubbed off on me, she thought. He seemed so depressed, so lost. It wasn't at all like him to be that way.
She wanted to remind him that it wasn't the' world that would end this evening, it was just the present cycle of civilization. They would rebuild. Those who had gone into hiding would come forth and start everything over, as had happened a dozen times before-or twenty, or a hundred-since the beginning of civilization on Kalgash.
But for her to tell Athor that would probably do no more good than for him to have told her not to worry about the loss of the tablets. He had hoped all the world would prepare itself against the catastrophe. And instead only a small fraction had paid any heed to the warning. Just those few who had gone to the university Sanctuary, and whatever other sanctuaries might have been set up elsewhere- Beenay came over to her. "What's this I hear from Athor?