Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (139 page)

Aton seemed perturbed. His faded eyes were troubled.

“Really, Sheerin, locking him—”

“Please!” Sheerin motioned him impatiently to silence. “I don’t think for a moment things will go that far. Latimer has just tried a clever little bluff, but I’m not a psychologist just because I like the sound of the word.” He grinned at the Cultist. “Come now, you don’t really think I’m trying anything as crude as slow starvation. My dear Latimer, if I lock you in the closet, you are not going to see the Darkness, and you are not going to see the Stars. It does not take much knowledge of the fundamental creed of the Cult to realize that for you to be hidden from the Stars when they appear means the loss of your immortal soul. Now, I believe you to be an honorable man. I’ll accept your word of honor to make no further effort to disrupt proceedings, if you’ll offer it.”

A vein throbbed in Latimer’s temple, and he seemed to shrink within himself as he said thickly, “You have it!” And then he added with swift fury. “But it is my consolation that you will all be damned for your deeds of today.” He turned on his heel and stalked to the high three-legged stool by the door.

Sheerin nodded to the columnist. “Take a seat next to him, Theremon—just as a formality. Hey, Theremon!”

But the newspaperman didn’t move. He had gone pale to the lips. “Look at that!” The finger he pointed toward the sky shook, and his voice was dry and cracked.

* * * *

There was one simultaneous gasp as every eye followed the pointing finger and, for one breathless moment, stared frozenly.

Beta was chipped on one side!

The tiny bit of encroaching blackness was perhaps the width of a fingernail, but to the staring watchers it magnified itself into the crack of doom.

Only for a moment they watched, and after that there was a shrieking confusion that was even shorter of duration and which gave way to an orderly scurry of activity—each man at his prescribed job. At the crucial moment there was no time for emotion. The men were merely scientists with work to do. Even Aton had melted away.

Sheerin said prosaically. “First contact must have been made fifteen minutes ago. A little early, but pretty good considering the uncertainties involved in the calculation.” He looked about him and then tiptoed to Theremon, who still remained staring out the window, and dragged him away gently.

“Aton is furious,” he whispered, “so stay away. He missed first contact on account of this fuss with Latimer, and if you get in his way he’ll have you thrown out the window.”

Theremon nodded shortly and sat down. Sheerin stared in surprise at him.

“The devil, man,” he exclaimed, “you’re shaking.”

“Eh?” Theremon licked dry lips and then tried to smile. “I don’t feel very well, and that’s a fact.”

The psychologist’s eyes hardened. “You’re not losing your nerve?”

“No!” cried Theremon in a flash of indignation. “Give me a chance, will you? I haven’t really believed this rigmarole—not way down beneath, anyway—till just this minute. Give me a chance to get used to the idea. You’ve been preparing yourself for two months or more.”

“You’re right, at that,” replied Sheerin thoughtfully. “Listen! Have you got a family—parents, wife, children?”

Theremon shook his head. “You mean the Hideout, I suppose. No, you don’t have to worry about that. I have a sister, but she’s two thousand miles away. I don’t even know her exact address.”

“Well, then, what about yourself? You’ve got time to get there, and they’re one short anyway, since I left. After all, you’re not needed here, and you’d make a darned fine addition—”

Theremon looked at the other wearily. “You think I’m scared stiff, don’t you? Well, get this, mister. I’m a newspaperman and I’ve been assigned to cover a story. I intend covering it.”

There was a faint smile on the psychologist’s face. “I see. Professional honor, is that it?”

“You might call it that. But, man. I’d give my right arm for another bottle of that sockeroo juice even half the size of the one you bogged. If ever a fellow needed a drink, I do.”

He broke off. Sheerin was nudging him violently. “Do you hear that? Listen!”

Theremon followed the motion of the other’s chin and stared at the Cultist, who, oblivious to all about him, faced the window, a look of wild elation on his face, droning to himself the while in singsong fashion.

“What’s he saying?” whispered the columnist.

“He’s quoting
Book of Revelations
, fifth chapter,” replied Sheerin. Then, urgently, “Keep quiet and listen, I tell you.”

The Cultist’s voice had risen in a sudden increase of fervor: “‘And it came to pass that in those days the Sun, Beta, held lone vigil in the sky for ever longer periods asthe revolutions passed; until such time as for full half a revolution, it alone, shrunken and cold, shone down upon Lagash.

“‘And men did assemble in the public squares and in the highways, there to debate and to marvel at the sight, for a strange depression had seized them. Their minds were troubled and their speech confused, for the souls of men awaited the coming of the Stars.

“‘And in the city of Trigon, at high noon, Vendret 2 came forth and said unto the men of Trigon, “Lo, ye sinners! Though ye scorn the ways of righteousness, yet will the time of reckoning come. Even now the Cave approaches to swallow Lagash; yea, and all it contains.”

“‘And even as he spoke the lip of the Cave of Darkness passed the edge of Beta so that to all Lagash it was hidden from sight. Loud were the cries of men as it vanished, and great the fear of soul that fell upon them.

“‘It came to pass that the Darkness of the Cave fell upon Lagash, and there was no light on all the surface of Lagash. Men were even as blinded, nor could one man see his neighbor, though he felt his breath upon his face.

“‘And in this blackness there appeared the Stars, in countless numbers, and to the strains of music of such beauty that the very leaves of the trees cried out in wonder.

“‘And in that moment the souls of men departed from them, and their abandoned bodies became even as beasts; yea, even as brutes of the wild; so that through the blackened streets of the cities of Lagash they prowled with wild cries.

“‘From the Stars there then reached down the Heavenly Flame, and where it touched, the cities of Lagash flamed to utter destruction, so that of man and of the works of man nought remained.

“‘Even then—’”

There was a subtle change in Latimer’s tone. His eyes had not shifted, but somehow he had become aware of the absorbed attention of the other two. Easily, without pausing for breath, the timbre of his voice shifted and the syllables became more liquid.

Theremon, caught by surprise, stared. The words seemed on the border of familiarity. There was an elusive shift in the accent, a tiny change in the vowel stress; nothing more—yet Latimer had become thoroughly unintelligible.

Sheerin smiled slyly. “He shifted to some old-cycle tongue, probably their traditional second cycle. That was the language in which the
Book of Revelations
was originally written, you know.”

“It doesn’t matter; I’ve heard enough.” Theremon shoved his chair back and brushed his hair back with hands that no longer shook. “I feel much better now.”

“You do?” Sheerin seemed mildly surprised.

“I’ll say I do. I had a bad case of jitters just a while back. Listening to you and your gravitation and seeing that eclipse start almost finished me. But this”—he jerked a contemptuous thumb at the yellow-bearded Cultist—“
this
is the sort of thing my nurse used to tell me. I’ve been laughing at that sort of thing all my life. I’m not going to let it scare me
now
.”

He drew a deep breath and said with a hectic gaiety, “But if I expect to keep on the good side of myself. I’m going to turn my chair away from the window.”

Sheerin said, “Yes, but you’d better talk lower. Aton just lifted his head out of that box he’s got it stuck into and gave you a look that should have killed you.”

Theremon made a mouth. “I forgot about the old fellow.” With elaborate care he turned the chair from the window, cast one distasteful look over his shoulder, and said, “It has occurred to me that there must be considerable immunity against this Star madness.”

The psychologist did not answer immediately. Beta was past its zenith now, and the square of bloody sunlight that outlined the window upon the floor had lifted into Sheerin’s lap. He stared at its dusky color thoughtfully and then bent and squinted into the sun itself.

The chip in its side had grown to a black encroachment that covered a third of Beta. He shuddered, and when he straightened once more his florid cheeks did not contain quite as much color as they had had previously.

With a smile that was almost apologetic, he reversed his chair also. “There are probably two million people in Saro City that are all trying to join the Cult at once in one gigantic revival.” Then, ironically. “The Cult is in for an hour of unexampled prosperity. I trust they’ll make the most of it. Now, what was it you said?”

“Just this. How did the Cultists manage to keep the
Book of Revelations
going from cycle to cycle, and how on Lagash did it get written in the first place? There must have been some sort of immunity, for if everyone had gone mad, who would be left to write the book?”

Sheerin stared at his questioner ruefully. “Well, now, young man, there isn’t any eyewitness answer to that, but we’ve got a few damned good notions as to what happened. You see. there are three kinds of people who might remain relatively unaffected. First, the very few who don’t see the Stars at all: the seriously retarded or those who drink themselves into a stupor at the beginning of the eclipse and remain so to the end. We leave them out—because they aren’t really witnesses.

“Then there are children below six, to whom the world as a whole is too new and strange for them to be too frightened at Stars and Darkness. They would be just another item in an already surprising world. You see that, don’t you?”

The other nodded doubtfully. “I suppose so.”

“Lastly, there are those whose minds are too coarsely grained to be entirely toppled. The very insensitive would be scarcely affected—oh, such people as some of our older, work-broken peasants. Well, the children would have fugitive memories, and that, combined with the confused, incoherent babblings of the half-mad morons, formed the basis for the
Book of Revelations
.

“Naturally, the book was based, in the first place, on the testimony of those least qualified to serve as historians; that is, children and morons; and was probably edited and re-edited through the cycles.”

“Do you suppose,” broke in Theremon, “that they carried the book through the cycles the way we’re planning on handing on the secret of gravitation?”

Sheerin shrugged. “Perhaps, but their exact method is unimportant. They do it, somehow. The point I was getting at was that the book can’t help but be a mass of distortion, even if it is based on fact. For instance, do you remember the experiment with the holes in the roof that Faro and Yimot tried—the one that didn’t work?”

“Yes.”

“You know why it didn’t w—“ He stopped and rose in alarm, for Aton was approaching, his face a twisted mask of consternation. “What’s happened?”

* * * *

Aton drew him aside and Sheerin could feel the fingers on his elbow twitching.

“Not so loud!” Aton’s voice was low and tortured. “I’ve just gotten word from the Hideout on the private line.”

Sheerin broke in anxiously. “They are in trouble?”

“Not
they
.” Aton stressed the pronoun significantly. “They sealed themselves off just a while ago, and they’re going to stay buried till day after tomorrow. They’re safe. But the
city
. Sheerin—it’s a shambles. You have no idea—“ He was having difficulty in speaking.

“Well?” snapped Sheerin impatiently. “What of it? It will get worse. What are you shaking about?” Then, suspiciously, “How do you feel?”

Aton’s eyes sparked angrily at the insinuation, and then faded to anxiety once more. “You don’t understand. The Cultists are active. They’re rousing the people to storm the Observatory—promising them immediate entrance into grace, promising them salvation, promising them anything. What are we to do, Sheerin?”

Sheerin’s head bent, and he stared in long abstraction at his toes. He tapped his chin with one knuckle, then looked up and said crisply, “Do? What is there to do? Nothing at all. Do the men know of this?”

“No, of course not!”

“Good! Keep it that way. How long till totality?”

“Not quite an hour.”

“There’s nothing to do but gamble. It will take time to organize any really formidable mob, and it will take more time to get them out here. We’re a good five miles from the city—”

He glared out the window, down the slopes to where the farmed patches gave way to clumps of white houses in the suburbs; down to where the metropolis itself was a blur on the horizon—a mist in the waning blaze of Beta.

He repeated without turning. “It will take time. Keep on working and pray that totality comes first.”

Beta was cut in half, the line of division pushing a slight concavity into the still-bright portion of the Sun. It was like a gigantic eyelid shutting slantwise over the light of a world.

The faint clatter of the room in which he stood faded into oblivion, and he sensed only the thick silence of the fields outside. The very insects seemed frightened mute. And things were dim.

He jumped at the voice in his ear. Theremon said. “Is something wrong?”

“Eh? Er—no. Get back to the chair. We’re in the way.” They slipped back to their comer, but the psychologist did not speak for a time. He lifted a finger and loosened his collar. He twisted his neck back and forth but found no relief. He looked up suddenly.

“Are you having any difficulty in breathing?”

The newspaperman opened his eyes wide and drew two or three long breaths. “No. Why?”