Nightfall (12 page)

“Of all the miserable days to pick for coming home—” he said, as he slipped in beside her and reached across to give her a quick friendly kiss.

“It’s been like this for three days. And they say we’re in for three more of it, until next Onos Day. We’ll all be drowned by then, I suppose. —You look as if you’ve lost some weight up there in Jonglor, Sheerin!”

“Have I? Well, you know, northern food—not really to my taste—”

He hadn’t expected that it would be so apparent. A man of his girth ought to be able to drop ten or fifteen pounds without its being noticeable at all. But Liliath had always had sharp eyes. And perhaps he had dropped more than ten or fifteen pounds. Ever since the Tunnel, he had simply pecked at his food. Him! It was hard for him to believe how little he had eaten.

“You look good,” she said. “Healthy. Vigorous.”

“Do I?”

“Not that I think you need to be skinny, not at this late date. But it can’t hurt to take a little off. So you enjoyed yourself in Jonglor?”

“Well—”

“Get to see the Exposition?”

“Yes. Fabulous.” He couldn’t muster much enthusiasm. “My God, this rain, Liliath!”

“It wasn’t raining in Jonglor?”

“Clear and dry all the time. The way it was when I left Saro.”

“Well, seasons change, Sheerin. You can’t hope to have the same weather for six months at a stretch, you know. With a different set of suns in the ascendant every day, we can’t expect the patterns of climate to hold still very long.”

“I can’t tell whether you sound more like a meteorologist or an astrologer,” Sheerin said.

“Neither. I sound like a psychologist. —Aren’t you going to tell me anything about your trip, Sheerin?”

He hesitated. “The Exposition was very fine. I’m sorry you missed it. But most of the time I was hard at work. They’ve got a real mess on their hands up north, this Tunnel of Mystery thing.”

“Is it really true that people have been dying in it?”

“A few. But mainly they’ve been coming out traumatized, disoriented. Claustrophobic. I spoke with some of the victims. They’ll be months recovering. For some it’ll be permanent disability. And even so the Tunnel stayed open for weeks.”

“After the problems began?”

“Nobody seemed to care. Least of all the people who run the Exposition. They were just interested in selling tickets. And the fairgoers were curious about Darkness. Curious about Darkness, can you imagine that, Liliath? They lined up eagerly to put their minds in jeopardy! Of course, they were all convinced that nothing bad was going to happen to
them.
And nothing bad did, to a lot of them. But not all. —I took a ride in the Tunnel myself.”

“You did?” she said, sounding astonished. “What was it like?”

“A nasty business. I’d pay a good deal not to have to do it again.”

“But obviously you came out all right.”

“Obviously,” he said carefully. “I might come out all right if I swallowed half a dozen live fish, too. But it’s not something I’d be likely to want to repeat. I told them to shut their damned Tunnel down. That was my professional opinion, and I think they’re going to abide by it. We simply weren’t designed to withstand that much Darkness, Liliath. A minute, two minutes, maybe—then we start to snap. It’s an innate thing, I’m convinced of it, millions of years of evolution shaping us to be
what we are. Darkness is the most unnatural thing in the world. And the idea of selling it to people as
entertainment
—” He shuddered. “Well, I’ve had my trip to Jonglor, and now I’m back. What’s been going on at the university?”

“Nothing much,” Liliath replied. “The usual stupid little squabbles, the usual faculty meetings, lofty declarations of outrage over this and that burning social issue—
you
know.” She fell silent for a moment, both hands clinging to the steering stick as she guided the car through deep pools of water that flooded the highway. “There’s apparently some sort of fuss over at the Observatory, by the way. Your friend Beenay 25 came around looking for you. He didn’t tell me very much, but it seems they’re having a big reevaluation of one of their key theories. Everybody’s in an uproar. Old Athor himself is leading the research, can you imagine it? I thought his mind had ossified a century ago. —Beenay had some newspaperman with him, somebody who writes a popular column. Theremon, I think that was his name. Theremon 762. I didn’t care for him much.”

“He’s very well known. Something of a firebrand, I think, though I’m not exactly sure what kind of causes he fulminates about. He and Beenay spend a lot of time together.”

Sheerin made a mental note to call the young astronomer after he had unpacked. For close to a year now Beenay had been living with Sheerin’s sister’s girl, Raissta 717, and Sheerin had struck up a close friendship with him, as close as was possible considering the difference of twenty-odd years in their ages. Sheerin had an amateur’s interest in astronomy: that was one of the bonds that drew them together.

Athor back doing theoretical work! Imagine that! What could it all be about? Had some upstart published a paper attacking the Law of Universal Gravitation? No, Sheerin thought—nobody would dare.

“And you?” Sheerin asked. “You haven’t said a word about what you did all the time I was away.”

“What do you think I did, Sheerin? Go power-soaring in the mountains? Attend meetings of the Apostles of Flame? Take a course in political science? I read books. I taught my classes. I ran my experiments. I waited for you to come home. I planned
the dinner I’d cook when you
did
come home. —You’re sure you aren’t on a diet, now?”

“Of course not.” He let his hand rest fondly on hers for a moment. “I thought about you all the time, Liliath.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“And I can hardly wait for dinnertime.”

“At least that much sounds plausible.”

The rain suddenly grew even more dense. A great swolloping mass of it struck the windshield and it was all Liliath could do to keep the car on the road, though she managed it. They were going past the Pantheon, the magnificent Cathedral of All the Gods. It didn’t seem quite so magnificent now, with rivers of rain sluicing down its brick facade.

The sky darkened another degree or two in the worsening storm. Sheerin cringed away from the blackness outside and looked toward the brightly lit controls of the car’s dashboard for comfort.

He didn’t want to be in the enclosed space of the car any more. He wanted to be outside in the open fields, storm or no storm. But that was crazy. He’d be soaked in an instant out there. He might even drown, the puddles were so deep.

Think happy thoughts, he told himself. Think warm bright thoughts. Think about sunshine, the golden sunshine of Onos, the warm light of Patru and Trey, even the chilly light of Sitha and Tano, the faint red light of Dovim. Think about this evening’s dinner. Liliath has made a feast for you to welcome you back. She’s such a good cook, Liliath is.

He realized that he still wasn’t hungry at all. Not on a miserable gray day like this—so dark—so dark—

But Liliath was very sensitive about her cooking. Especially when she cooked for him. He’d eat everything she put before him, he resolved, even if he had to force himself. A funny notion, he thought: he, Sheerin, the great gourmand, thinking about
forcing
himself to eat!

Liliath glanced toward him at the sound of his laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

“I—ah—that Athor should be back doing research again,” he said hastily. “After having been content so long with being the
Lord High Emperor of Astronomy and doing purely administrative stuff. I’ll have to call Beenay right away. What in the world can be going on over at the Observatory?”

This was Siferra 89’s third day back at Saro University, and it hadn’t stopped raining yet. Quite a refreshing contrast to the bone-dry desert environment of the Sagikan Peninsula. She hadn’t seen rain in so long that she found herself wonderstruck at the whole idea that water could fall from the skies.

In Sagikan, every drop of water was enormously precious. You calculated its use with the greatest precision and recycled whatever was recyclable. Now here it was, pouring down out of the heavens as though from a gigantic reservoir that could never run dry. Siferra felt a powerful urge to strip her clothes off and sprint across the great green lawns of the campus, letting the rainfall flow down her body in an unending delicious stream to wash her clean at last of the infernal desert dust.

That was all they’d need to see. That cool, aloof, unromantic professor of archaeology, Siferra 89, running naked in the rain! It would be worth doing if only to enjoy the sight of their astounded faces peering out of every window of the university as she went flying past.

Not very likely, though, Siferra thought.

Not my style at all.

And there was too much to do, really. She hadn’t wasted any time getting down to work. Most of the artifacts she had excavated at the Beklimot site were following along by cargo ship and wouldn’t be here for many weeks. But there were charts to arrange, sketches to finish, Balik’s stratigraphic photographs to analyze, the soil samples to prepare for the radiography lab, a million and one things to do. —And then, too, there were the Thombo tablets to discuss with Mudrin 505 of the Department of Paleography.

The Thombo tablets! The find of finds, the premier discovery of the entire year and a half! Or so she felt. Of course, it all depended on whether anyone could make any sense out of
them. At any rate, she would waste no time getting Mudrin working on them. At the least, the tablets were fascinating things; but they might be much more than that. There was the possibility that they might revolutionize the entire study of the prehistoric world. That was why she hadn’t entrusted them to the freight shippers, but had carried them back from Sagikan in her own hands.

A knock at the dour.

“Siferra? Siferra, are you there?”

“Come on in, Balik.”

The broad-shouldered stratigrapher was soaking wet. “This foul abominable rain,” he muttered, shaking himself off. “You wouldn’t believe how drenched I got just crossing the quad from Uland Library to here!”

“I love the rain,” Siferra said. “I hope it never stops. After all those months baking out in the desert—the sand in your eyes all the time, the dust in your throat, the heat, the dryness—no, let it rain, Balik!”

“But I see you’re keeping yourself indoors. It’s a whole lot easier to appreciate rain when you’re looking at it from a nice dry office. —Playing with your tablets again, are you?”

He indicated the six ragged, battered slabs of hard red clay that Siferra had arranged atop her desk in two groups of three, the square ones in one row and the oblong ones below them.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Siferra said exultantly. “I can’t leave them alone. I keep staring at them as if they’ll suddenly become intelligible if only I look at them long enough.”

Balik leaned forward and shook his head. “Chickenscratches. That’s all it looks like to me.”

“Come on! I’ve already identified distinct word-patterns,” Siferra said. “And I’m no paleographer. Here—look—you see this group of six characters here? It repeats over here. And these three, with the wedges setting them off—”

“Has Mudrin seen them yet?”

“Not yet. I’ve asked him to stop by a little later.”

“You know that word has gotten out about what we’ve found, don’t you? The successive Thombo town-sites?”

Siferra looked at him in amazement. “What? Who—?”

“One of the students,” Balik said. “I don’t know who it was
—Veloran, is my guess, though Eilis thinks it was Sten. I suppose it was unavoidable, don’t you?”

“I warned them not to say anything to—”

“Yes, but they’re kids, Siferra, only kids, nineteen years old and on their first important dig! And the expedition stumbles on something utterly astounding—seven previously unknown prehistoric cities one on top of the next, going back the gods only know how many thousands of years—”

“Nine cities, Balik.”

“Seven, nine, it’s colossal either way. And I think it’s seven.” Balik smiled.

“I know you do. You’re wrong. —But who’s been talking about it? In the department, I mean.”

“Hilliko. And Brangin. I heard them this morning, in the faculty lounge. They’re extremely skeptical, I have to tell you. Passionately skeptical. Neither one of them thinks it’s even remotely possible for there to be even one settlement older than Beklimot at that site, let alone nine, or seven, or however many there are.”

“They haven’t seen the photographs. They haven’t seen the charts. They haven’t seen the tablets. They haven’t seen anything. And already they have an opinion.” Siferra’s eyes blazed with rage. “What do they know? Have they ever so much as set foot on the Sagikan Peninsula? Have they been to Beklimot even as
tourists?
And they dare to have an opinion on a dig that hasn’t been published, that hasn’t even been informally discussed within the department—!”

“Siferra—”

“I’d like to flay them both! And Veloran and Sten also. They knew they weren’t supposed to shoot their mouths off! Where do those two come off breaking priority, even verbally? I’ll show them. I’ll get them both in here and find out which one of them’s responsible for leaking the story to Hilliko and Brangin, and if that one thinks he’s ever going to get a doctorate in this university, or she, whichever one it was—”

“Please, Siferra,” Balik said soothingly. “You’re getting all worked up over nothing.”

“Nothing! My priority blown, and—”

“Nobody’s blown anything for you. It all remains just a rumor until you make your own preliminary statement. As for
Veloran and Sten, we don’t really know that either of them is the one that let the story get out, and if one of them did, well, remember that you were young once too.”

“Yes,” Siferra said. “Three geological epochs ago.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re younger than I am, and I’m hardly ancient, you know.”

Siferra nodded indifferently. She looked toward the window. Suddenly the rain didn’t seem so pleasing. Everything was dark outside, disturbingly dark.