Nightfall (21 page)

“Did you invite him to be here? When you knew I had expressly forbidden—”

“Sir, I—”

“It was Dr. Siferra,” Theremon said. “She urged me very vigorously to come. I’m here at her invitation.”

“Siferra? Siferra? I doubt that very much. She told me only a few weeks ago that she thinks you’re an irresponsible fool. She spoke of you in the harshest possible manner.” Athor looked around. “Where is she, by the way? She was supposed to be here, wasn’t she?” No answer came. Turning to Beenay, Athor said, “You’re the one who brought this newspaperman in, Beenay. I’m utterly amazed that you’d do such a thing. This isn’t the moment for insubordination. The Observatory is closed to journalists this evening. And it’s been closed to this particular journalist for a long time now. Show him out at once.”

“Director Athor,” Theremon said, “if you’ll only let me explain what my reason for—”

“I don’t believe, young man, that anything you could say now would do much to outweigh your insufferable daily columns of these last two months. You have led a vast newspaper campaign against the efforts of my colleagues and myself to organize the world against the menace that is about to overwhelm us. You have done your best with your highly personal attacks to make the staff of this Observatory objects of ridicule.”

He lifted the copy of the Saro City
Chronicle
on the table and shook it at Theremon furiously. “Even a person of your well-known impudence should have hesitated before coming to me with a request that he be allowed to cover today’s events for this paper. Of all newsmen—
you!
”

Athor dashed the newspaper to the floor, strode to the window, and clasped his arms behind his back.

“You are to leave immediately,” he snapped over his shoulder. “Beenay, get him out of here.”

Athor’s head was throbbing. It was important, he knew, to get his anger under control. He could not afford to allow anything to distract him from the vast and cataclysmic event that was about to occur.

Moodily he stared out at the Saro City skyline and forced himself back toward calmness, as much calmness as he was likely to be able to attain this evening.

Onos was beginning now to sink toward the horizon. In a little while it would fade and vanish into the distant mists. Athor watched it as it descended.

He knew he would never see it again as a sane man.

The cold white gleam of Sitha also was visible, low in the sky, far across the city at the other end of the horizon. Sitha’s twin, Tano, was nowhere to be seen—already set, gliding now through the skies of the opposite hemisphere, which soon would be enjoying the extraordinary phenomenon of a five-sun day—and Sitha itself was also swiftly vanishing from view. In another moment it too would disappear.

Behind him he heard Beenay and Theremon whispering.

“Is that man still here?” Athor asked ominously.

Beenay said, “Sir, I think you ought to listen to what he has to tell you.”

“You do? You think I ought to listen to him?” Athor whirled, his eyes gleaming fiercely. “Oh, no, Beenay. No, he’ll be the one to listen to me!” He beckoned peremptorily to the newspaperman, who had made no motion at all to leave. “Come here, young man! I’ll give you your story.”

Theremon walked slowly toward him.

Athor gestured outward. “Sitha is about to set—no, it already has. Onos will be gone also, in another moment or two. Of all the six suns, only Dovim will be left in the sky. Do you see it?”

The question was scarcely necessary to ask. The red dwarf sun looked even smaller than usual this evening, smaller than it had appeared in decades. But it was almost at zenith, and its ruddy light streamed down awesomely, flooding the landscape with an extraordinary blood-red illumination as the brilliant rays of setting Onos died.

Athor’s upturned face flushed redly in the Dovim-light. “In just under four hours,” he said, “civilization, as we have known it, will come to an end. It will do so because, as you see, Dovim will be the only sun in the sky.” He narrowed his eyes, stared toward the horizon. The last yellow blink of Onos now was gone. “There. Dovim is alone! We have four hours, now, until the finish of everything. Print that! But there’ll be no one to read it.”

“But if it turns out that four hours pass—and another four—and nothing happens?” asked Theremon softly.

“Don’t let that worry you. Plenty will happen, I assure you.”

“Perhaps. But if it doesn’t?”

Athor fought against his rising rage. “If you don’t leave, sir, and Beenay refuses to conduct you out, then I’ll call the university guards, and—No. On civilization’s last evening, I’ll allow no discourtesies here. You have five minutes, young man, to say what you have come here to say. At the end of that time, I will either agree to allow you to stay to view the eclipse, or you will leave of your own accord. Is that understood?”

Theremon hesitated only a moment. “Fair enough.”

Athor took out his pocket watch. “Five minutes, then.”

“Good! All right, first thing: what difference would it make
if you allowed me to take down an eyewitness account of what’s to come? If your prediction comes true, my presence won’t matter at all—the world will end, there’ll be no newspaper tomorrow, I won’t be able to hurt you in any way. On the other hand, what if there
isn’t
any eclipse? You people will be the subject of such ridicule as the world has never known. Don’t you think it would be wise to leave that ridicule to friendly hands?”

Athor snorted. “Do you mean
your
hands?”

“Certainly!” Theremon flung himself down casually in the most comfortable chair in the room and crossed his legs. “My columns may have been a little rough at times, agreed, but I let you people have the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. Beenay’s a friend of mine, after all. He’s the one who first gave me an inkling of what was going on here, and you may recall that at the beginning I was quite sympathetic to your research. But—I ask you, Dr. Athor—how can you, one of the greatest of all scientists in all of history, turn your back on the awareness that the present century is a time of the triumph of reason over superstition, of fact over fantasy, of knowledge over blind fear? The Apostles of Flame are an absurd anachronism. The Book of Revelations is a muddled mass of foolishness. Everyone intelligent, everyone
modern
, knows that. And so people are annoyed, even angered, to have scientists turn about face and tell us that these cultists are preaching the truth. They—”

“No such thing, young man,” interrupted Athor. “While some of our data has been supplied us by the Apostles, our results contain none of the Apostles’ mysticism. Facts are facts, and there’s no denying that the Apostles’ so-called ‘foolishness’ does have certain facts behind it. We discovered that to our own chagrin, let me assure you. But we’ve scorned their mythologizing and done whatever we could to separate their quite genuine warnings of impending disaster from their quite preposterous and untenable program for transforming and ‘reforming’ society. I assure you that the Apostles hate us now even more than you do.”

“I don’t hate you. I’m just trying to tell you that the public is in an ugly humor. They’re angry.”

Athor twisted his mouth in derision. “Let them be angry!”

“Yes, but what about tomorrow?”

“There’ll be no tomorrow!”

“But if there is. Say that there is—just for the sake of argument. That anger might take shape as something serious. After all, you know, the whole financial world’s been in a nose-dive the last few months. The stock market has crashed three separate times, or haven’t you noticed? Sensible investors don’t really believe the world is coming to an end, but they think
other
investors might start to think so, and so the smart ones sell out before the panic begins—thus touching off the panic themselves. And then they buy back afterward, and sell again as soon as the market rallies, and begin the whole downward cycle all over again. And what do you think has happened to business? Johnny Public doesn’t believe you either, but there’s no sense buying new porch furniture just now, is there? Better to hang on to your money, just in case, or put it into canned goods and ammunition, and let the furniture wait.

“You see the point, Dr. Athor. Just as soon as this is all over, the business interests will be after your hide. They’ll say that if crackpots—begging your pardon—crackpots in the guise of serious scientists can upset the world’s entire economy any time they want simply by making some cockeyed prediction, then it’s up to the world to keep such things from happening. The sparks will fly, Doctor.”

Athor regarded the columnist indifferently. The five minutes were almost up.

“And just what were you proposing to do to help the situation?”

“Well,” Theremon said, grinning, “what I have in mind is this: starting tomorrow, I’ll serve as your unofficial public-relations representative. By which I mean that I can try to quell the anger you’re going to face, the same way that I’ve been trying to ease the tension the nation has been feeling—through humor, through ridicule, if necessary. I know—I know—it would be hard to stand, I admit, because I’d have to make you all out to be a bunch of gibbering idiots. But if I can get people laughing at you, they might just forget to be angry. In return for that, all I ask is the exclusive right to cover the scene at the Observatory this evening.”

Athor was silent. Beenay burst out, “Sir, it’s worth considering. I know that we’ve examined every possibility, but there’s
always a million-to-one chance, a
billion
-to-one chance, that there’s an error somewhere in our theory or in our calculations. And if there is—”

The others in the room were murmuring now, and it sounded to Athor like murmurs of agreement. By the gods, was the whole department turning against him? Athor’s expression became that of one who found his mouth full of something bitter and couldn’t get rid of it.

“Let you remain with us so that you’ll be better able to ridicule us tomorrow? You must think I’m far gone in senility, young man!”

Theremon said, “But I’ve explained that my being here won’t make any difference. If there is an eclipse, if Darkness does come, you can expect nothing but the most reverent treatment from me, and all the help I can give in any crisis that might follow. And if nothing unusual happens after all, I’m willing to offer my services in the hope of protecting you, Dr. Athor, against the wrath of the angry citizens who—”

“Please,” a new voice said. “Let him stay, Dr. Athor.”

Athor looked around. Siferra had come in, unnoticed by him.

“I’m sorry I’m late. We had a little last-minute problem at the Archaeology office that upset things a little, and—” She and Theremon exchanged glances. To Athor she said, “Please don’t be offended. I know how cruelly he’s mocked us. But I asked him to come here this evening, so that he could find out at first hand that we really were right. He’s—my guest, Doctor.”

Athor closed his eyes a moment. Siferra’s guest! It was too much. Why not invite Folimun too? Why not invite Mondior!

But he had lost his appetite for further dispute. Time was running short. And obviously none of the others minded having Theremon here during the eclipse.

What did it matter?

What did anything matter now?

Resignedly Athor said, “All right. Stay, if that’s what you want. But you will kindly refrain from hampering us in our duties in any fashion. Understood? You’ll keep out of the way as much as possible. You will also remember that I am in charge of all activities here, and in spite of your opinions as expressed in your columns, I will expect full cooperation and full respect—”

Siferra crossed the room to Theremon’s side and said quietly, “I didn’t seriously expect you to come here this evening.”

“Why not? The invitation was serious, wasn’t it?”

“Of course. But you were so savage in your mockery, in all those columns you wrote about us—so cruel—”

“ ‘Irresponsible’ is the word you used,” Theremon said.

She reddened. “That too. I didn’t imagine you’d be able to look Athor in the eye after all those horrid things you said about him.”

“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, uncomfortable 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.”