He could remember that much: the struggle to look at the Stars, his failure, his defeat.
After that, everything was murky. A day or two, he guessed, of wandering in the forest. Voices in the distance, cackling laughter, harsh discordant singing. Fires crackling on the horizon; the bitter smell of smoke everywhere. Kneeling to plunge his face in a brook, cool swift water sweeping along his cheek. A pack of small animals surrounding him—not wild ones, Beenay decided afterward, but household pets that had escaped—and baying at him as though they meant to rip him apart.
Pulling berries off a vine. Climbing a tree to strip it of tender golden fruit, and falling off, landing with a disastrous thud. The long hours of pain before he could pick himself up and move onward.
A sudden furious fight in the deepest, darkest part of the woods—fists flailing, elbows jabbing into ribs, wild kicks, then stone-throwing, bestial screeching, a man’s face pushed close up against his own, eyes red as flame, fierce wrestling, the two of them rolling over and over—reaching for a massive rock, bringing it down in a single decisive motion—
Hours. Days. A feverish daze.
Then, on the morning of the third day, remembering finally who he was, what had happened. Thinking of Raissta, his contract-mate. Remembering that he had promised to go to her at the Sanctuary when his work at the Observatory was done.
The Sanctuary—now where was that?
Beenay’s mind had healed enough for him to recall that the place of refuge that the university people had established for themselves was midway between the campus and Saro City, in an open, rural area of rolling plains and grassy meadows. The Physics Department’s old particle accelerator was there, a vast underground chamber, abandoned a few years back when they had built the new research center at Saro Heights. It hadn’t been difficult to equip the echoing concrete rooms for short-term occupation by several hundred people, and, since the accelerator site had always been sealed off from easy access for security reasons, it was no problem to make the site safe against any sort of invasion by townsfolk who might be driven insane during the eclipse.
But in order to find the Sanctuary, Beenay first had to find out where he was. And he had been wandering randomly in a dismal stupor for at least two days, perhaps more. He could be anywhere.
In the early morning hours he found his way out of the forest, almost by accident, stepping forth unexpectedly into what had once been a neatly laid out residential district. It was deserted now, and in frightening disarray, with cars piled up every which way in the streets where their owners had left them when they no longer were capable of driving, and the occasional body lying in the street under a black cluster of flies. There was no sign that anyone was alive here.
He spent a long morning trudging along a suburban highway lined by blackened, abandoned homes, without recognizing a single familiar landmark. At midday, as Trey and Patru rose into the sky, he entered a house through its open door and helped himself to whatever food he could find that had not spoiled. No water came out of the kitchen tap; but he found a cache of bottled water in the basement and drank as much of that as he could hold. He bathed himself in the rest.
Afterward he proceeded up a winding road to a hilltop cul-de-sac of spacious, imposing dwellings, every one of them burned to a shell. Nothing at all was left of the uppermost house except a hillside patio decorated with pink and blue tiles, no doubt very handsome once, but marred now by thick black lumps of clotted debris scattered along its gleaming surface. With difficulty he made his way out onto it and looked out into the valley beyond.
The air was very still. No planes were aloft, there was no sound of ground traffic, a weird silence resounded from every direction.
Suddenly Beenay knew where he was, and everything fell into place.
The university was visible off to his left, a handsome cluster of brick buildings, many of them now streaked with black smoke-stains and some seeming to be altogether destroyed. Beyond, on its high promontory, was the Observatory. Beenay glanced at it quickly and looked away, glad that at this distance he was unable to make out its condition very clearly.
Far away to his right was Saro City, gleaming in the bright sunlight. To his eyes it seemed almost untouched. But he knew that if he had a pair of field glasses he would surely see shattered windows, fallen buildings, still-glowing embers, rising wisps of smoke, all the scars of the conflagration that had broken out at Nightfall.
Straight below him, between the city and the campus, was the forest in which he had been wandering during the time of his delirium. The Sanctuary would be just on the far side of that; he might well have passed within a few hundred yards of its entrance a day or so ago, all unknowing.
The thought of crossing that forest again did not appeal to him. Surely it was still full of madmen, cutthroats, irate escaped pets, all manner of troublesome things. But from his vantage point on the hilltop he could see the road that cut across the forest, and the pattern of streets that led to the road. Stick to paved routes, he told himself, and you’ll be all right.
And so he was. Onos was still in the sky when he completed the traversal of the forest highway and turned onto the small rural road that he knew led to the Sanctuary. Afternoon shadows had barely begun to lengthen when he came to the outer gate. Once past that, Beenay knew, he had to go down a long unpaved road that would take him to the second gate, and thence around a couple of outbuildings to the sunken entrance to the Sanctuary itself.
The outer gate, a high metal-mesh screen, was standing open when he reached it. That was an unexpected and ominous sight. Had the mob come roaring in here too?
But there was no sign of mob destruction. Everything was as it should be, except that the gate was open. He went on in, puzzled, and made his way down the unpaved road.
The inner gate, at least, was closed.
“I am Beenay 25,” he said to it, and gave his university identification-code number. Moments passed, and lengthened into minutes, and nothing happened. The green scanner eye overhead seemed to be working—he saw its lens sliding from side to side—but perhaps the computers that operated it had lost their power, or had been smashed altogether. He waited. He waited some more. “I am Beenay 25,” he said again, finally, and gave his number a second time. “I am authorized to enter here.” Then he remembered that mere name and number were not enough: there was a password to say, also.
But what was it? Panic churned his soul. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember. How absurd, finally to have found his way here and then be stranded at the outer gate by his own stupidity!
The password—the password—
Something to do with the catastrophe, that was it. “Eclipse?” No, not that. He wracked his aching brain. “Kalgash Two?” Didn’t seem right. “Dovim?” “Onos?” “Stars?”
That was closer.
Then it came to him.
“Nightfall,” he said triumphantly.
Still nothing happened, at least not for a long while.
But then, what seemed like a thousand years later, the gate opened to admit him.
He zigzagged past the outbuildings and confronted the oval metal door of the Sanctuary itself, set at a forty-five-degree angle into the ground. Another green eye studied him here. Did he have to identify himself all over? Evidently he did. “I am Beenay 25,” he said, preparing for another long wait.
But the gate began immediately to roll back. He stared down into the Sanctuary’s concrete-floored vestibule.