Nightfall

Theremon, facing her across the middle of Folimun's tent, thought that she had never looked more beautiful than she did right then. Her eyes were luminous with anger. Her skin seemed to glisten. There was an aura of intensely focused energy about her that he found irresistible.

But this was hardly the moment to tell her anything like that.

Folimun said, "For stealing your tablets, Dr. Siferra, I can only offer my apologies. It was a shameless act of theft, which I assure you I never would have authorized except that you made it necessary."

"I made it-"

"You did. You insisted on keeping them in your possession- on placing those irreplaceable relics of the previous cycle in jeopardy at a time when chaos was about to break loose and, for all you knew, the university buildings were going to be destroyed down to the last brick. We saw it as essential that they be placed in safekeeping, that is to say, in our own hands, and since you would not authorize that we found it necessary to take them from you."

"I found those tablets. You'd never have known they existed if I hadn't dug them up."

"Which is beside the point," Folimun said smoothly. "Once the tablets were discovered, they became vital to our needs-to humanity's needs. We felt that the future of Kalgash was more important than your personal proprietary interest in your artifacts. As you will see, we have translated the tablets fully now, making use of the ancient textual material already available to us, and they have added greatly to our understanding of the extraordinary challenges that civilized life on Kalgash must periodically confront. Dr. Mudrin's translations were, unfortunately, extremely superficial. But the tablets provide an accurate and convincing version, uncorrupted by centuries of textual alteration and error, of the chronicles that have come down to us under the name of the Book of Revelations. The Book of Revelations, I must confess, is full of mysticism and metaphor, adopted for propagandistic purposes. The Thombo tablets are straightforward historical accounts of two separate advents of the Stars thousands of years ago, and of the attempts made by the priesthoods of the time to warn the populace of what was about to happen. We can demonstrate now that throughout history and prehistory on Kalgash, small groups of dedicated people have struggled again and again to prepare the world for the disruption that repeatedly falls upon it. The methods they used, obviously, were insufficient to the problem. Now at last, aided as we are by a knowledge of past mistakes, we will be able to spare Kalgash from another devastating upheaval when the present Year of Godliness comes to its end two thousand years from now."

Siferra turned to Theremon. "How smug he sounds! Justifying his own burglary of my tablets by telling me that they'll enable him to set up an even more efficient theocratic dictatorship than they had hoped! Theremon, Theremon, why did you sell me out like this? Why did you sell us out? We could have been halfway to Amgando by this time, if only-"

Folimun said, "You'll be in Amgando tomorrow afternoon, Dr. Siferra, I assure you. All of us will be in Amgando by tomorrow afternoon."

"What will you do?" she asked hotly. "March me in chains at the rear of your conquering army? Tie me up and make me walk in the dust behind Mondior's chariot?"

The Apostle sighed. "Theremon, explain things to her, if you please."

"No," she said. Her eyes were blazing. "You poor brainwashed ninny, I don't want to hear the gibberish this maniac has poured into your mind! I don't want to hear anything from any of you! Let me alone. Lock me up, if you like. Or turn me loose, if you can bring yourself to do it. I can't possibly harm you, can I? One woman against a whole army? I can't even cross a field without having someone come up and surprise me from behind!"

Theremon, dismayed, reached toward her.

"No! Keep away from me! You disgust me! -But it isn't your fault, is it? They've done something to your mind.  -You'll do it to me too, won't you, Folimun? You'll make me into an obliging little puppet. Well, let me ask just this one favor. Don't force me to wear an Apostle's robe. I can't stand the idea of walking around inside one of those ridiculous things. Take my soul away, if you have to, but let me dress as I please, all right? All right, Folimun?"

The Apostle laughed faintly. "Perhaps it would be best if I left the two of you alone. I see that nothing's going to be accomplished so long as I'm part of the conversation."

Siferra cried, "No, damn you, I don't want to be left alone with-"

But Folimun had already risen and walked quickly from the tent.

Theremon turned toward Siferra, who backed away from him as though he were carrying some plague.

Softly he said, "I wasn't hypnotized, Siferra. They haven't done anything to my mind."

"Of course you'd say that."

"It's true. I'll prove it to you."

She stared at him bleakly, coldly, making no response.

Very quietly he said, after a moment, "Siferra, I love you."

"How long did it take the Apostles to program that line into you?" she asked.

He winced. "Don't. Don't. I mean it, Siferra. I won't try to tell you that I've never said those words to anyone before. But this is the first time I've meant them."

"Oldest line in the book," said Siferra derisively.

"I suppose I deserve that. Theremon the ladies' man. Theremon the seducer-about-town. Well, all right. Forget I said it. -No. No. I'm serious, Siferra. Traveling with you these past weeks-being with you morning and afternoon and evening- there hasn't been a moment when I haven't looked at you and thought to myself, This is the woman I was waiting for all these years. This is the woman I never dared to imagine I would find."

"Very touching, Theremon. And the best way you could find to show your love was to grab me from behind, practically breaking my arm in the process, and turn me over to Mondior. Right?"

"Mondior doesn't exist, Siferra. There's no such person."

For an instant he saw a flicker of surprise and curiosity cut through her hostility.

"What?"

"He's a convenient mythical construct, put together by electronic synthesis to make speeches on television. No one's ever had an audience with him, have they? He's never been seen in public. Folimun invented him to be a public spokesman. Since Mondior never appears in person, he can be on television in five different countries at once, all over the world-nobody could ever be sure where he really was, and so he could be displayed simultaneously. Fohimun's the real boss of the Apostles of Flame. He simply masquerades as a public-relations officer. In fact he calls all the shots, and has for the past ten years. Before that there was someone named Bazret, who's dead now. Bazret was the one who invented Mondior, but Fohimun's brought him to his present eminence."

"Folimun told you all this?"

"He told me some. I guessed the rest, and he confirmed it. He'll show me the Mondior apparatus when we're back in Saro City. The Apostles plan to restore television transmissions in another few weeks."

"All right," Siferra said harshly. "The discovery that Mondior's a fake so overwhelmed you with its slimy cleverness that you decided on the spot that you absolutely had to join up with Folimun's outfit. And your first assignment was to turn me in. So you skulked around looking for me, and took me by surprise, and thereby made certain that the people down in Amgando would fall into Folimun's clutches. Nicely done, Theremon."

"Folimun's heading for Amgando, yes," Theremon said. "But he doesn't intend to harm those who have gathered there. He wants to offer them posts in the new government."

"Gods almighty, Theremon, do you believe-"

"Yes. Yes, Siferra!" Theremon held his hands out, fingers spread wide in an agitated gesture. "I may be a mere coarse journalist, but at least grant me that I'm no fool. Twenty years in the newspaper business has made me an excellent judge of character, at the very least. Folimun impressed me in a strange way from the first time I met him. He seemed very much the opposite of crazy, very complex, very sly, very sharp. And I've been talking with him for the past eight hours. Nobody's been sleeping here this evening. He's laid his whole plan bare. He's shown me his entire scheme. Would you grant, for the sake of argument, that it's possible for me to get an accurate psychological reading on someone during the course of an eight-hour conversation?"

"Well-" she said grudgingly.

"Either he's completely sincere, Siferra, or he's the best actor in the world."

"He could be both. That still doesn't make him someone we'd want to trust."

"Maybe not. But I do. Now."

"Go on."

"Folimun is a totally ruthless, almost monstrously rational man who believes that the only thing that's of any real importance is the survival of civilization. Because he's had access, through his age-old religious cult, to historical records of previous cycles, he's known for many years what we've all just learned in the hardest possible way: that Kalgash is doomed to be shown a view of the Stars once every two thousand years and that the sight of them is so overwhelming that it'll shatter ordinary minds and give even the strongest ones a bad time for days or weeks. -He's willing to let you see all their ancient documents, by the way, when we're back in Saro City."

"Saro City has been destroyed."

"Not the part of it controlled by the Apostles. They made damned well sure nobody would be setting any fires within a mile of their tower on all sides."

"Very efficient of them," Siferra said.

"They're efficient people. All right: Folimun knows that in a time of total madness the best hope of pulling things together is a religious totalitarianism. You and I may think the gods are just old fables, Siferra, but there are millions and millions of people out there, believe it or not, who have a different view of things. They've always been uneasy about doing things that they consider sinful, for fear the gods will punish them. And now they have an absolute dread of the gods. They think the Stars might come back tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, and finish off the job. -Well, here are the Apostles, who claim a direct pipeline to the gods and have all sorts of scriptural passages to prove it. They're in a better position to set up a world government than Altinol, or the little provincial overlords, or the fugitive remnants of the former governments, or anyone else. They're the best hope we have."

"You're serious," Siferra said in wonder. "Folimun hasn't hypnotized you, Theremon. You've managed to do it to yourself!"

"Look," he said. "Folimun's been working all his life toward this moment, knowing that his is the generation of Apostles on whom the responsibility for ensuring survival will fall. He's got all sorts of plans. He's well on his way to establishing control over enormous territories north and west of Saro City, and next he's going to take charge of the new provinces along the line of the Great Southern Highway."

"And establish a theocratic dictatorship that will begin its rule by executing all the atheistic, cynical, materialistic university people like Beenay and Sheerin and me."

"Sheerin's already dead. Folimun told me his people found his body in a ruined house. He was apparently killed some weeks back by a band of anti-intellectual crazies."

Siferra looked away, unable for a moment to meet Theremon's eyes. Then she stared at him more angrily than before and said, "There you are. First Folimun sends his goons crashing into the Observatory-Athor was killed too, wasn't he?- and then he eliminates poor harmless Sheerin. And then all the rest of us will be-"

"He was trying to protect the Observatory people, Siferra."

"He didn't go about it very well, did he?"

"Things got out of hand. What he wanted to do was rescue all the scientists before the rioting started-but because he was operating under the guise of a wild-eyed fanatic, he had no way of persuading them to hear what he was offering, which was to give them safe-conduct to the Apostles' Sanctuary."

"After the Observatory was wrecked."

"That wasn't his first choice either. The world was crazy that night. Things didn't always follow his scheme."

"You're very good at making excuses for him, Theremon."

"Maybe so. Hear me out, anyway. He wants to work with the surviving university people, and the other sane and intelligent ones who have gathered at Amgando, to rebuild humanity's pool of knowledge. He-or the supposed Mondior, rather -will be in charge of the government. The Apostles will keep the unstable and superstition-ridden populace pacified by religious domination, at least for a generation or two. Meanwhile the university people will help the Apostles assemble and codify the knowledge they've managed to save, and together they'll guide the world back to a rational state-as has happened so many times before. But this time, perhaps, they'll be able to begin the preparations for the next eclipse a hundred years or so in advance, and head off the worst of the upheaval, the mass insanity, the torchings, the universal devastation."

"And you believe all this?" Siferra asked. There was the bite of acid in her voice. "That it makes sense to stand back and applaud while the Apostles of Flame spread their poisonous irrational totalitarian creed throughout the world? Or what's even worse-that we should join forces with them?"

"I hate the idea," Theremon said suddenly.

Siferra's eyes widened. "Then why-?"

"Let's go outside," he said. "It's almost dawn. Give me your hand?"

"Well-"

"It wasn't just a line, when I told you I love you."

She shrugged. "One thing has nothing to do with another. The personal and the political, Theremon-you're using one to muddle the other."

"Come," he said.

They stepped from the tent. The early light of Onos was a pink glow on the eastern horizon. High overhead, Tano and Sitha had emerged from the clouds, and the twin suns, now at their zenith, had a radiance that was strange and wonderful to behold.

There was one more. Far off in the north the small hard red sphere that was the little sun Dovim was shining like a tiny ruby set in the forehead of the sky.

"Four suns," Theremon said. "A sign of luck."

All about them in the Apostles' camp there was the bustle of activity. The trucks were being loaded, the tents were coming down. Theremon caught sight of Folimun far across the other side, directing a team of workers. The Apostle leader waved to Theremon, who nodded in return.

"You hate the idea that the Apostles will rule the world," Siferra said, "and yet you're still willing to give your allegiance to Folimun? Why? What sense does that make?"

Quietly Theremon said, "Because there's no other hope."

"Is that what you think?"

He nodded. "It began to sink in, after Folimun had been talking with me for a couple of hours. Every rational instinct in me tells me not to trust Folimun and his crew of fanatics. Whatever else he may be, there's no doubt that Folimun's a power-hungry manipulator, very ruthless, very dangerous. But what other chance is there? Altinol? All the petty little bosses along the highway? It could take a million years to weld all the new provinces into a global economy. Folimun's got the authority to make the whole world kneel to him-or to Mondior, rather. -Listen, Siferra, most of mankind is lost in madness. There are millions of crazies loose out there now. Only strongminded ones like you and me and Beenay have been able to recover, or very stupid ones; but for the others, the mass of humanity, it'll be months or years or never before they can think straight again. A charismatic prophet like Mondior, much as I loathe the idea, may be the only answer."

"No other option, then?"

"Not for us, Siferra."

"Why not?"

"Look, Siferra: I believe that what matters is healing. Everything else is secondary to that. The world has suffered a terrible wound, and-"

"Has inflicted a terrible wound on itself."

"That's not how I see it. The fires were a response to a vast change of circumstances. They never would have happened if the eclipse hadn't yanked our curtain away and shown us the Stars. -But the wounds go on and on. One leads to another, now. Altinol is a wound. These new little independent provinces are wounds. The crazies killing each other in the forest- or hunting down fugitive university professors-are wounds."

"And Folimun? He's the biggest wound of all!"

"Yes and no. Of course he's peddling fanaticism and mysticism. But there's discipline there. People believe in what he's selling, even the crazies, even the ones with sick minds. He's a wound so big he can swallow all the others. He can heal the world, Siferra. And then-from within-we can try to heal what be has done. But only from within. If we join him, we stand a chance. If we set ourselves up in opposition, we'll be swept aside like fleas."

"What are you saying, then?"

"We have our choice between rallying behind him and becoming part of the ruling elite that will bring the world back from insanity, or becoming wanderers and outlaws. Which do you want, Siferra?"

"I want a third choice."

"There isn't any. The Amgando bunch doesn't have the force of will to form a workable government. People like Altinol don't have the scruples. Folimun already controls half of what used to be the Federal Republic of Saro. He's certain to prevail over the rest. It'll be centuries before the reign of reason returns, Siferra, regardless of what you and I do."

"So you say it's better to join him, and try to control the direction in which the new society goes, than to oppose him simply because we don't like the kind of fanaticism he represents?"

"Exactly. Exactly."

"But to cooperate in handing the world over to religious fanaticism-"

"The world has made its way up from religious fanaticism before, hasn't it? The important thing now is to find some way out of the chaos. Folimun and his crew offer the only visible hope of that. Think of their faith as a machine that'll drive civilization, at a time when all the other machinery is broken. That's the only thing that counts now. First fix the world; then hope our descendants will get tired of the mystical fellows in the robes and hoods. Do you see what I'm saying, Siferra? Do you?"

She nodded in a strange, vague way, as though she were responding in her sleep. Theremon watched as she walked slowly away from him, toward the clearing where they had been surprised by the sentries of the Apostles the evening before. It seemed like years ago.

She stood a long while by herself there, in the light of the four suns.

How beautiful she looks, Theremon thought.

How I love her!

How strange this all has turned out to be.

He waited. All about him the breakup of the Apostles' camp was reaching a pitch of activity, robed and hooded figures running back and forth past him.

Folimun came over. "Well?"

"We're thinking it over," Theremon said.

"We? I had the impression you were with us, no matter what."

Theremon eyed him steadily. "I'm with you if Siferra is. Otherwise no."

"Whatever you say. We'd hate to lose a man with your skills at communication, though. Not to mention Dr. Siferra's expertise with the artifacts of the past."

Theremon smiled. "Let's see how skillful I've been at communicating just now, eh?"

Folimun nodded and walked away, back to the trucks that were being loaded. Theremon looked toward Siferra. She was facing the east, toward Onos, while the light of Sitha and Tano descended on her in a dazzling stream from above, and out of the north came the slender red spear of Dovim's beam.

Four suns. The best of omens.

Siferra was coming back, now, trotting across the field. Her eyes were shining, and she seemed to be laughing. She came running up to him.

"Well?" Theremon asked. "What do you say?"

She took his hand in hers. "All right, Theremon. So be it. Almighty Folimun is our leader, and I will follow him withersoever he telleth me to go. With one condition."

"Go on. What is it?"

"The same one I mentioned when we were in his tent. I won't wear the robe. I absolutely will not. If he insists on the robe, the deal is off!"

Theremon nodded happily. It was going to be all right. After Nightfall came daybreak, and rebirth. Out of the devastation a new Kalgash would rise, and he and Siferra would have a voice, a powerful voice, in creating it. "I think that can be arranged," he replied. "Let's go talk to Folimun and see what he says."