Siferra said, “We’re on an urgent mission to the people at Amgando National Park. It’s vital that we get there safely.” She touched her green neckerchief. “You know what this means? What we do is to keep fires from starting, not to start them. And if we don’t get to Amgando on time, the Apostles of Flame will come marching down this highway and destroy everything you people are trying to create.”
It didn’t make a lot of sense, Theremon thought. Their getting to Amgando, far to the south, wasn’t going to save the little republics at the northern end of the highway from the Apostles. But Siferra had put just the right note of conviction and passion into her speech to make it all sound very significant, in a jumbled sort of way.
The response was silence, for a moment, while the border patrolman tried to figure out what she was talking about. Then an irritated frown and a perplexed glare. And then, suddenly, almost impetuously: “All right. Go on through. Get the hell out of here, and don’t let me see you anywhere inside Six Suns Province again, or we’ll make you regret it.—Apostles! Amgando!”
“Thank you very much,” said Theremon, with a graciousness bordering so closely on sarcasm that Siferra took him by the arm and steered him quickly through the checkpoint before he could get them into real trouble.
They were able to move quickly in this stretch of the highway, covering a dozen or more miles a day, sometimes even more. The citizens of the provinces that called themselves Six Suns and Godland and Daylight were hard at work, clearing the debris that had littered the Great Southern Highway since Nightfall. Barricades of rubble were set up at regular intervals—nobody was going to be driving the Great Southern Highway again for a long, long time, Theremon thought—but between checkpoints it was possible now to walk at a steady clip, without having to crawl and creep around mounds of hideous wreckage.
And the dead were being taken from the highway and buried, too. Bit by bit, things were beginning to seem almost civilized again. But not normal. Not even remotely normal.
There were few fires now to be seen still burning in the hinterlands flanking the highway, but burned-out towns were visible all along the route. Refugee camps had been set up every mile or two, and as they walked briskly along the elevated road Theremon and Siferra could look down and see the sad, bewildered people of the camps moving slowly and purposelessly about in them as if they had all aged fifty years in that one single terrible night.
The new provinces, Theremon realized, were simply strings of such camps linked together by the straight line of the Great Southern Highway. In each district local strongmen had emerged who had been able to put together a little realm, a petty kingdom that covered six or eight or ten miles of the highway and spread out for perhaps a mile on either side of the roadbed. What lay beyond the eastern and western borders of the new provinces was anybody’s guess. No radio or television communications seemed to be in existence.
“Wasn’t there any kind of emergency planning at all?” Theremon asked, speaking more to the air than to Siferra.
But it was Siferra who answered him. “What Athor was predicting was altogether too fantastic for the government to take seriously. And it would have been playing into Mondior’s hands to admit that anything like the collapse of civilization could happen in just one short period of Darkness, especially a period of Darkness that could be predicted so specifically.”
“But the eclipse—”
“Yes, maybe some people in high office were capable of looking at the diagrams and really did believe that there was going to be an eclipse. And a period of Darkness as a result. But how could they anticipate the Stars? The Stars were simply the fantasy of the Apostles of Flame, remember? Even if the government knew that something like the Stars was going to happen, no one could predict the impact the Stars would have.”
“Sheerin could,” Theremon said.
“Not even Sheerin. He didn’t have an inkling. It was Darkness that was Sheerin’s specialty—not sudden unthinkable light filling the whole sky.”
“Still,” Theremon said. “To look around at all this devastation, all this chaos—you want to think that it was unnecessary, that it could have been avoided, somehow.”
“It wasn’t avoided, though.”
“It better be, the next time.”
Siferra laughed. “Next time is two thousand and forty-nine years away. Let’s hope we can leave our descendants some kind of warning that seems more plausible to them than the Book of Revelations seemed to most of us.”
Turning, she stared back over her shoulder, peering apprehensively at the long span of highway they had covered in the past few days of hard marching.
Theremon said, “Afraid you’ll see the Apostles thundering down the road behind us?”
“Aren’t you? We’re still hundreds of miles from Amgando, even at the pace we’ve been going lately. What if they catch up with us, Theremon?”
“They won’t. A whole army can’t possibly move as quickly as two healthy and determined people. Their transport isn’t any better than ours—one pair of feet per soldier, period. And there are all sorts of logistic considerations that are bound to slow them down.”
“I suppose.”
“Besides, that message said that the Apostles are planning to stop at each new province along the way to establish their authority. It’s going to take them plenty of time to obliterate all those stubborn little petty kingdoms. If we don’t run into any unexpected complications ourselves, we’ll be at Amgando weeks ahead of them.”
“What do you think will happen to Beenay and Raissta?” Siferra asked, after a time.
“Beenay’s a pretty clever boy. I suspect he’ll work out some way of making himself useful to Mondior.”
“And if he can’t?”
“Siferra, do we really need to burn up our energies worrying ourselves over horrible possibilities that we can’t do a damned thing about?”
“Sorry,” she said sharply. “I didn’t realize you’d be so touchy.”
“Siferra—”
“Forget it,” she said. “Maybe I’m the touchy one.”
“It’ll all work out,” said Theremon. “Beenay and Raissta aren’t going to be harmed. We’ll get down to Amgando in plenty of time to give the warning. The Apostles of Flame won’t conquer the world.”
“And all the dead people will rise up and walk again, too. Oh, Theremon, Theremon—” Her voice broke.
“I know.”
“What will we do?”
“We’ll walk fast, is what we’ll do. And we won’t look back. Looking back doesn’t do any good at all.”
“No. None at all,” said Siferra. And smiled, and took his hand. And they walked quickly onward in silence.
It was amazing, Theremon thought, how swiftly they were going, now that they had hit their stride. The first few days, when they were coming down out of Saro City and picking their way through the wreckage-strewn upper end of the highway, progress had been slow and their bodies had protested bitterly against the strains that they were imposing on them. But now they were moving like two machines, perfectly attuned to their task. Siferra’s legs were nearly as long as his own, and they walked along side by side, muscles working efficiently, hearts pumping steadily, lungs expanding and contracting in flawless rhythm. Stride stride stride. Stride stride stride. Stride stride stride—
Hundreds of miles yet to go, sure. But it wouldn’t take long, not at this pace. Another month, perhaps. Perhaps even less.
The road was almost completely clear, down here in the rural regions beyond the farthest edge of the city. There hadn’t been nearly as much traffic here in the first place as there had been to the north, and it looked as though many of the drivers had been able to get off the highway safely even while the Stars were shining, since they were in less danger of being struck by the cars of other drivers who had lost control.