“This is all like a dream,” Beenay said softly.
“A very bad one,” said Athor. “Every atom in my soul cries out that this isn’t happening, that it’s utter fantasy, that the world will keep right on going past next Theptar nineteenth without any harm coming to it. Unfortunately, the figures tell the story.” He looked out the window. Onos now was gone from the sky, and Dovim was only a dot against the horizon. Twilight had descended, and the only real illumination that was visible was the ghostly, uncomforting light of Patru and Trey. “There’s no longer any way for us to doubt it. Darkness will come. Perhaps the Stars, whatever they may be, really will shine forth. Fires will blaze. The end of the world as we know it is at hand. The end of the world!”
Two
Nightfall
18
“You’d better be careful,” Beenay said. He was beginning to feel tense. Evening was coming on—the evening of the eclipse, so long awaited by him with fear and trembling. “Athor’s furious with you, Theremon. I can’t believe you came here now. You know you’re not supposed to be anywhere on the premises. Especially not this evening, of all times to show up. You ought to be able to understand that, when you consider the sort of things you’ve been writing about him lately—”
The journalist chuckled. “I told you. I can calm him down.”
“Don’t be too sure of that, Theremon. You basically called him a superannuated crackbrain in your column, remember? The old man’s calm and steely most of the time, but when he’s pushed too far he’s got an amazing temper.”
Theremon said, with a shrug, “Look, Beenay, before I was a big-shot columnist I was a kid reporter who specialized in doing all sorts of impossible interviews, and I mean impossible. I’d come home every evening with bruises, black eyes, sometimes a broken bone or two, but I always got my story. You develop a certain degree of confidence in yourself after you’ve spent a few years routinely driving people out of their minds for the sake of getting a story. I’ll be able to take care of Athor.”
“Driving people out of their minds?” Beenay said. He glanced meaningfully toward the calendar-plate high in the wall of the corridor. In gleaming green letters it announced the date: 19 THEPTAR. The day of days, the one that had been blazing in everyone’s mind, here at the Observatory, month after month. The last day of sanity that many, perhaps most, of the people of Kalgash would ever know. “Not the best choice of words this evening, wouldn’t you say?”
Theremon smiled. “Maybe you’re right. We’ll see.” He pointed toward the closed door of Athor’s office. “Who’s in there right now?”
“Athor, of course. And Thilanda—she’s one of the astronomers. Davnit, Simbron, Hikkinan, all Observatory staffers. That’s about it.”
“What about Siferra? She said she’d be here.”
“Well, she isn’t, not yet.”
A look of surprise appeared on Theremon’s face. “Really? When I asked her the other day if she would opt for the Sanctuary she practically laughed in my face. She was dead set on watching the eclipse from here. I can’t believe she’s changed her mind. That woman isn’t afraid of anything, Beenay. Well, maybe she’s tidying up a few last-minute things over at her office.”
“Very likely.”
“And our chubby friend Sheerin? He’s not here either?”
“No, not Sheerin. He’s in the Sanctuary.”
“Not the bravest of men, is he, our Sheerin?”
“At least he’s got the good sense to admit it. Raissta’s at the Sanctuary too, and Athor’s wife Nyilda, and just about everybody else I know, except us few Observatory people. If you were smart you’d be there yourself, Theremon. When the Darkness gets here this evening you’ll wish that you were.”
“The Apostle Folimun 66 said more or less the same thing to me over a year ago, only it was his Sanctuary he was inviting me into, not yours. But I’m fully prepared to face the worst terrors the gods can throw at me, my friend. There’s a story to cover this evening, and I won’t be able to cover it if I’m holed up in some snug little underground hideout, will I?”
“There won’t be any newspaper tomorrow for you to write that story for, Theremon.”
“You think so?” Theremon caught Beenay by the arm and drew close to him, almost nose to nose. In a low, intense tone he said, “Tell me this, Beenay. Just between friends. Do you actually and truly think that any such incredible thing as Nightfall is going to happen this evening?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Gods! Are you serious, man?”
“As serious as I’ve ever been in my life, Theremon.”
“I can’t believe it. You seem so steady, Beenay. So solid, so responsible. And yet you’ve taken a bunch of admittedly speculative astronomical calculations, and some bits of charcoal dug up in a desert thousands of miles from here, and some wild frothings out of the mouths of a crew of wild-eyed cultists, and rolled them up together into the craziest damned mess of apocalyptic nonsense I ever—”
“It isn’t crazy,” Beenay insisted quietly. “It isn’t nonsense.”
“So the world is really coming to an end this evening.”
“The world we know and love, yes.”
Theremon released his grip on Beenay’s arm and threw his hands up in exasperation. “Gods! Even you! By Darkness, Beenay, I’ve been trying for better than a year to put some faith in all this stuff, and I can’t, I absolutely can’t. No matter what you say, or Athor, or Siferra, or Folimun 66, or Mondior, or—”
“Just wait,” Beenay said. “Only another few hours.”
“You really are sincere!” Theremon said wonderingly. “By all the gods, you’re as big a crackpot as Mondior himself. Bah! That’s what I say, Beenay. Bab!—Take me in to see Athor, will you?”
“I warn you, he doesn’t want to see you.”
“You said that already. Take me in there anyway.”
19
Theremon had never really expected to find himself taking a stance hostile to the Observatory scientists. Things had simply worked out that way, very gradually, in the months leading up to the nineteenth of Theptar.
It was basically a matter of journalistic integrity, he told himself. Beenay was his longtime friend, yes; Dr. Athor was unquestionably a great astronomer, Sheerin was genial and straightforward and likable; and Siferra was—well, an attractive and interesting woman and an important archaeologist. He had no desire at all to position himself as an enemy of such people.
But he had to write what he believed. And what he believed, to the depths of his soul, was that the Observatory group was every bit as loopy as the Apostles of Flame, and just as dangerous to the stability of society.
There was no way he could make himself take what they said seriously. The more time he spent around the Observatory, the nuttier it all seemed to him.
An invisible and apparently undetectable planet soaring through the sky on an orbit that brought it close to Kalgash every few decades? A combination of solar positions that would leave only Dovim overhead when the invisible planet arrived this time? Dovim’s light thereby blotted out, throwing the world into Darkness? And everyone going insane as a result? No, no, he couldn’t buy it.
To Theremon, all of it seemed just as wild as the stuff the Apostles of Flame had been peddling for so many years. The only extra thing that the Apostles threw in was the mysterious advent of the phenomenon known as Stars. Even the Observatory people had the good grace to admit that they couldn’t imagine what Stars were. Some other sort of invisible heavenly bodies, apparently, which suddenly came into view when the Year of Godliness ended and the wrath of the gods descended on Kalgash—so the Apostles indicated.