Cutting through the stink of the squatters’ bodies, though, was another odor, a much more pleasing one, one that almost drove Sheerin out of his mind too: the aroma of cooking food. They were preparing a meal in the next room. Soup? Stew? Something was boiling in there. He swayed, dizzied by his own hunger and the sudden hope of soothing it at last.
Mildly he said, “I didn’t know the house was occupied. But I hope you’ll let me stay with you this evening, and then I’ll be moving along.”
“You from the Patrol?” a big, heavily bearded man asked suspiciously. He seemed to be the leader.
Sheerin said uncertainly, “The Patrol? No, I don’t know anything about them. My name is Sheerin 501, and I’m a member of the faculty of—”
“Patrol! Patrol! Patrol!” they were chanting suddenly, moving in a circle around him.
“—Saro University,” he finished.
It was as though he had uttered a magic spell. They halted in their tracks as his quiet voice cut through their shrill screaming, and they fell silent, staring at him in a terrifying way.
“You say you’re from the university?” the leader asked in a strange tone.
“That’s right. Department of Psychology. I’m a teacher and I do a little hospital work on the side.—Look, I don’t intend to make any trouble for you at all. I just need a place to rest for a few hours, and a little food, if you can spare it. Just a little. I haven’t eaten since—”
“University!” a woman cried. The way she said it, it sounded like something filthy, something blasphemous. Sheerin had heard that tone before, from Folimun 66 the night of the eclipse, referring to scientists. It was a frightening thing to hear.
“University! University! University!”
They began to circle around him again, chanting again, pointing at him, making bizarre signs with their hooked fingers. He could no longer understand their words. It was a raucous nightmare chant, nonsense syllables.
Were these people some subchapter of the Apostles of Flame, convening here to practice an arcane rite? No, he doubted that. They had a different look, too ragged, too shabby, too demented. The Apostles, such few of them as he had seen, had always appeared crisp, self-contained, almost frighteningly controlled. Besides, the Apostles hadn’t been in evidence since the eclipse. Sheerin supposed that they had all withdrawn to some sanctuary of their own to enjoy the vindication of their beliefs in private.
These people, he thought, were simply unaffiliated wandering crazies.
And it seemed to Sheerin that he saw murder in their eyes.
“Listen,” he said, “if I’ve disturbed some ceremony of yours in any way, I apologize, and I’m perfectly willing to leave right now. I only tried to come in here because I thought the house was empty and I was so hungry. I didn’t mean to—”
“University! University!”
He had never seen a look of such intense hatred as these people were giving him. But there was fear there too. They kept back from him, tense, trembling, as if in dread of some terrible power that he might unexpectedly unleash.
Sheerin held his hands out to them imploringly. If only they’d stop prancing and chanting for a moment! The smell of the food cooking in the next room was making him wild. He caught one of the women by the arm, hoping to halt her long enough to appeal to her for a crust, a bowl of broth, anything. But she jumped away, hissing as though Sheerin had burned her with his touch, and rubbed frantically at the place on her arm where his fingers had briefly rested.
“Please,” he said. “I don’t intend any harm. I’m as harmless as anyone there is, believe me.”
“Harmless!” the leader cried, spitting the word out. “You? You, university? You’re worse than the Patrol. The Patrol just makes a little trouble for people. But you, you destroyed the world.”
“I what?”
“Be careful, Tasibar,” a woman said. “Get him out of here before he makes a magic on us.”
“A magic?” Sheerin said. “Me?”
They were pointing at him again, stabbing the air vehemently, terrifyingly. Some had begun to chant under their breaths, a low, fierce chant that had the rhythms of a motor steadily gaining speed and soon to spin out of control.
The girl who wore only a pair of shorts said, “It was the university that called down the Darkness on us.”
“And the Stars,” said the man who wore just a shirt. “They brought the Stars.”
“And this one might bring them back,” said the woman who had spoken before. “Get him out of here! Get him out of here!”
Sheerin stared incredulously. He told himself that he should have been able to predict this. It was an all too likely development: pathological suspicion of all scientists, all educated people, an unreasoning phobia that must be raging now like a virus among the survivors of the night of terror.
“Do you think I can bring back the Stars with a snap of my fingers? Is that what’s frightening you?”
“You are university,” the man called Tasibar said. “You knew the secrets. University brought the Darkness, yes. University brought the Stars. University brought doom.”
It was too much.
Bad enough to be dragged in here and forced to inhale the maddening flavor of that food without being allowed to have any of it. But to be blamed for the catastrophe—to be looked upon as some sort of malevolent witch by these people—
Something snapped in Sheerin.
Derisively he cried, “Is that what you believe? You idiots! You deranged superstitious fools! Blaming the university? We brought the Darkness? By all the gods, what stupidity! We were the very ones who tried to warn you!”
He gestured angrily, clenching his fists, clashing them furiously together.
“He’s going to bring them again, Tasibar! He’ll make it go dark on us! Stop him! Stop him!”
Suddenly they were clustering all about him, closing in, reaching for him.
Sheerin, standing in their midst, held out his hands helplessly, apologetically, toward them and did not try to move. He regretted having insulted them just now, not because it had endangered his life—they probably hadn’t even paid attention to the names he was calling them—but because he knew that the way they were was not their fault. If anything it was his fault, for not having tried harder to help them protect themselves against what he knew was coming. Those articles of Theremon’s—if only he had spoken with the newspaperman, if only he had urged him in time to change his mocking tack—
Yes, he regretted that now.
He regretted all sorts of things, things both done and undone. But it was much too late.
Someone punched him. He gasped in surprise and pain.
“Liliath—” he managed to cry.
Then they swarmed all over him.
36
There were four suns in the sky: Onos, Dovim, Patru, Trey. Four-sun days were supposed to be lucky ones, Theremon remembered. And certainly this one was.
Meat! Actual meat at last!
What a glorious sight!
It was food that he had obtained strictly by accident. But that was all right. The novel charms of outdoor life had been wearing thinner and thinner for him, the hungrier he got. By now he’d gladly take his meat any way it came, thank you very much.
The forest was full of all sorts of wild animals, most of them small, very few of them dangerous, and all of them impossible to catch—at least with your bare hands. And Theremon knew nothing about making traps, nor did he have anything out of which he might have fashioned one.