Beenay looked at him. “So you have come to believe the Apostles’ teachings, sir?”
To Athor, Beenay’s statement seemed almost like a blunt accusation of madness. It was a moment before he could reply.
But then he said, as calmly as he could, “Believe them? No. No, not quite. But they interest me, Beenay. I’m horrified at the need even to pose this question: but what if the Apostles are right? We have clear indications now that Darkness does come at just the two-thousand-and-forty-nine-year interval that they’ve mentioned in their Book of Revelations. Sheerin here says that the world would go mad if that happened, and we have Siferra’s evidence that one small section of the world, at least, did go mad, again and again, its houses swept by fire at that two-thousand-and-forty-nine-year interval that we keep coming upon.”
“What are you suggesting, then?” Beenay asked. “That we join the Apostles?”
Again Athor had to fight off anger. “No, Beenay. Simply that we look into their beliefs and see what sort of use we can make of them!”
“Use?” cried Sheerin and Siferra, almost at the same moment.
“Yes! Use!” Athor knotted his great gaunt hands together and swung around to face them all. “Don’t you see that the survival of human civilization may depend entirely on the four of us? It comes down to just that, doesn’t it? Melodramatic as it sounds, we four are in possession of what is beginning to look like incontrovertible proof that the end of the world is sweeping down on us. Universal Darkness—bringing universal madness—a worldwide conflagration—our cities in flames, our society shattered. But there is already in existence another group that has been predicting, on the basis of who knows what evidence, the very same calamity—to the year, to the day.”
“Theptar nineteenth,” Beenay murmured.
“Theptar nineteenth, yes. The day when only Dovim will shine in the sky—and, if we are right, Kalgash Two will arrive, rising out of its invisibility to fill our sky and blot out all light. That day, the Apostles tell us, fire will engulf our cities. How do they know? A lucky guess? Mere myth-spinning?”
“Some of what they say makes no sense at all,” Beenay pointed out. “For example, they say Stars will appear in the heavens. What are Stars? Where are they going to come from?”
Athor shrugged. “I have no idea. That part of the Apostles’ teachings may very well be a fable. But they seem to have some sort of record of past eclipses, out of which they’ve built their current dire predictions. We need to know more about those records.”
“Why us?” Beenay asked.
“Because we—as scientists—can serve as leaders, figures of authority, in the struggle to save civilization that lies ahead,” said Athor. “Only if the nature of the danger is made known right here and now does society stand any chance of protecting itself against what’s going to happen. But as it is, only the gullible and ignorant pay any heed to the Apostles. Most intelligent, rational folk look upon them the same way we do—as cranks, as fools, as madmen, perhaps as swindlers. What we need to do is persuade the Apostles to share their astronomical and archaelogical data, if they have any, with us. And then we go public. We reveal our findings, and we back them up with the material we receive, if we do, from the Apostles. In essence we form an alliance with them against the chaos that both we and they think is coming. That way we can gain the attention of all strata of society, from the most credulous to the most critical.”
“So you want us to stop being scientists and enter the world of politics?” Siferra asked. “I don’t like that. This isn’t our job at all. I vote for turning our material over to the government, and letting them—”
“The government!” Beenay snorted.
“Beenay’s right,” said Sheerin. “I know what government people are like. They’ll form a committee, and issue a report—eventually—and file the report away, and then later on they’ll form another committee to dig out whatever it was that the first committee discovered, and then take a vote, and—No, we don’t have the time for all that. It’s our duty to speak out ourselves. I know at first hand what Darkness does to people’s minds. Athor and Beenay, you have mathematical proof that Darkness is coming soon. You, Siferra, you’ve seen what Darkness has done to past civilizations.”
“But do we dare seek out the Apostles?” Beenay asked. “Won’t we be endangering our own reputations for scientific responsibility if we have anything to do with them?”
“Good point,” Siferra said. “We have to keep away from them!”
Athor frowned. “Perhaps you’re right. It may have been naive of me to suggest that we could form any sort of working partnership with those people. I withdraw the suggestion.”
“Wait,” said Beenay. “I have a friend—you know him, Sheerin, he’s the newspaperman Theremon—who’s already been in touch with some high official of the Apostles. He might be able to arrange a secret meeting between Athor and that High Apostle. You could sound the Apostles out, sir, and see if they know anything worth our having—just by way of obtaining even more confirming evidence for ourselves—and we can always deny the meeting took place, if it turns out they don’t.”
“That’s a possibility,” Athor said. “Distasteful as it would be, I’d be willing to meet with them.—I assume, then, that none of you has any fundamental dispute now with my basic suggestion? You agree with me that it’s essential that we four take some action in response to what we’ve discovered?”
“I do now,” Beenay said, glancing at Sheerin. “I still intend to survive the Darkness myself. But everything that’s been said here today leads me to realize that a lot of others won’t. Nor will civilization itself—unless we do something.”
Athor nodded. “Very well. Talk to your friend Theremon. Cautiously, though. You know how I feel about the press. Journalists aren’t much more to my liking than the Apostles are. But very carefully let your Theremon understand that I’d like to meet privately with this Apostle he knows.”
“I will, sir.”
“You, Sheerin: get together all the literature you can find concerning the effects of exposure to prolonged Darkness, and let me have it.”
“No problem there, Doctor.”
“And you, Siferra—may I have a report, suitable for the understanding of laymen, on your Thombo excavation? With every scrap of evidence you are able to supply concerning this repetitive-conflagration business.”
“Some of it’s not ready yet, Dr. Athor. Material I didn’t discuss today.”
Athor’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Inscribed clay tablets,” she said. “Found in the third and fifth levels from the top. Dr. Mudrin is attempting the very difficult task of translating them. His preliminary opinion is that they’re some kind of priestly warning of the coming fire.”
“The first edition of the Book of Revelations!” Beenay shouted.
“Well, yes, perhaps that is what they are,” Siferra said, laughing without much sign of amusement. “At any rate, I hope to have the tablet texts soon. And then I’ll get all the material together for you, Dr. Athor.”
“Good,” Athor said. “We’ll need everything we can get. This is going to be the job of our lives.” He glanced once more at each of the others in turn. “One important thing to remember, though: my willingness to engage in an approach to the Apostles does not mean that I intend in any way to provide a blanket of respectability for them. I merely hope to find out what they have that will help us to convince the world of what’s about to happen, period. Otherwise I’ll do what I can to distance myself from them. I want no mysticism involved here. I don’t believe a shred of their mumbo-jumbo—I simply want to know how they’ve arrived at their conclusions of catastrophe. And I want the rest of you to be similarly on your guard in any dealings with them. Understood?”