Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

“Of course,” Beenay said.

“Of course? Why ‘of course’?”

“Why—? But everybody sleeps with a godlight!”

“My point exactly. Tell me this: have you ever experienced Darkness, friend Beenay?”

Beenay leaned against the wall next to the big picture window and considered. “No. Can’t say I have. But I know what it is. Just—uh—” He made vague motions with his fingers, and then brightened. “Just an absence of light. Like in caves.”

“Have you ever been in a cave?”

“In a cave! Of course I haven’t been in a cave.”

“I thought not. I tried, once, long ago when I was beginning my studies of Darkness-induced disorders. But I got out in a hurry I went in until the mouth of the cave was just visible as a blur of light, with black everywhere else.” Sheerin chuckled pleasantly. “I never thought a person of my weight could run that fast.”

Almost defiantly Beenay said, “Well, if it comes to that, I guess I wouldn’t have run, if I had been there.”

The psychologist smiled gently at the young astronomer.

“Bravely said! I admire your courage, my friend.” Turning to Athor, Sheerin said, “May I have your permission, sir, to perform a little psychological experiment?”

“Whatever you wish.”

“Thank you.” Sheerin looked toward Beenay again. “Do you mind drawing the curtain next to you, friend Beenay?”

Beenay looked surprised. “What for?”

“Just draw the curtain. Then come over here and sit down next to me.”

“Well, if you insist—”

Heavy red draperies hung by the windows. Athor couldn’t remember a time when they had ever been drawn, and this room had been his office for some forty years. Beenay, with a shrug, reached for the tasseled string and jerked. The red curtain slid across the wide window, the brass rings hissing their way along the crossbar. For a moment the dusk-red light of Dovim could still be seen. Then all was in shadows, and even the shadows became indistinct.

Beenay’s footsteps sounded hollowly in the silence as he made his way to the table, and then they stopped halfway.

“I can’t see you, Sheerin,” he whispered forlornly.

“Feel your way,” Sheerin ordered in a strained voice.

“But I can’t see you!” The young astronomer was breathing harshly. “I can’t see anything!”

“What did you expect? This is Darkness.” Sheerin waited a moment. “Come on. You must know your way around this room even with your eyes closed. Just walk over here and sit down.”

The footsteps sounded again, waveringly. There was the sound of someone fumbling with a chair. Beenay’s voice came thinly: “Here I am.”

“How do you feel?”

“I’m— ulp —all right.”

“You like it, do you?”

A long pause.

“No.”

“No, Beenay?”

“Not at all. It’s awful. It’s as if the walls are—” He paused again. “They seem to be closing in on me. I keep wanting to push them away.—But I’m not going mad at all. In fact, I think I’m getting used to it.”

“All right. Siferra? What about you?”

“I can take a little Darkness. I’ve gone crawling around in some underground passages now and then. But I can’t say I care for it much.”

“Athor?”

“I’m also still surviving. But I think you’ve proved your point, Dr. Sheerin,” said the Observatory head, sharply.

“All right. Beenay, draw the curtains back again.”

There were cautious footsteps through the dark, the rustle of Beenay’s body against the curtain as he felt for the tassel, and then the relief of hearing the curtain’s ro-o-osh as it slithered open. The red light of Dovim flooded the room, and with a cry of joy Beenay looked out the window at the smallest of the six suns.

Sheerin wiped the moistness off his forehead with the back of a hand and said shakily, “And that was just a few minutes in a dark room.”

“It can be tolerated,” said Beenay lightly.

“Yes, a dark room can. At least for a short while. But you all know about the Jonglor Centennial Exposition, don’t you? The Tunnel of Mystery scandal? Beenay, I told you the story that evening last summer at the Six Suns Club, when you were with that newspaperman Theremon.”

“Yes. I remember. The people who took that ride through Darkness in the amusement park and came out insane.”

“Just a mile-long tunnel—with no lights. You got into a little open car and jolted along through Darkness for fifteen minutes. Some who took the ride died of fright. Others came out permanently deranged.”

“And why was that? What drove them crazy?”

“Essentially the same thing that was operating on you just now when we had the curtain closed and you thought the walls of the room were crushing in on you in the dark. There’s a psychological term for mankind’s instinctive fear of the absence of light. We call it ‘claustrophobia,’ because the lack of light is always tied up with enclosed places, so that the fear of one is fear of the other. You see?”

“And those people of the Tunnel who went crazy?”

“Those people of the Tunnel who went—ah—crazy, to use your word, were those unfortunate ones who didn’t have sufficient psychological resilience to overcome the claustrophobia that engulfed them in the Darkness. It was a powerful feeling. Believe me. I took the Tunnel ride myself. You had only a couple of minutes without light just now, and I believe you were fairly upset. Now imagine fifteen minutes.”

“But didn’t they recover afterward?”

“Some did. But some will suffer for years, or perhaps for the rest of their lives, from claustrophobic fixations. Their latent fear of Darkness and enclosed places has crystallized and become, so far as we can tell, permanent. And some, as I said, died of shock. No recovery for them, eh? That’s what fifteen minutes in the dark can do.”

“To some people,” Beenay said stubbornly. His forehead wrinkled slowly into a frown. “I still don’t believe it’s going to be that bad for most of us. Certainly not for me.”

Sheerin sighed in exasperation. “Imagine Darkness—everywhere. No light, as far as you can see. The houses, the trees, the fields, the earth, the sky— black! And Stars thrown in, if you listen to the preaching of the Apostles—Stars, whatever they are. Can you conceive it?”

“Yes, I can,” declared Beenay, even more truculently.

“No! No, you can’t!” Sheerin slammed his fist down upon the table in sudden passion. “You’re fooling yourself! You can’t conceive that. Your brain wasn’t built for the concept any more than—Look, Beenay, you’re a mathematician, aren’t you? Can your brain really and truly conceive of the concept of infinity? Of eternity? You can only talk about it. Reduce it to equations and pretend that the abstract numbers are the reality, when in fact they’re just marks on paper. But when you try really to encompass the idea of infinity in your mind you start getting dizzy pretty fast, I’m certain of that. A fraction of the reality upsets you. The same with the little bit of Darkness you just tasted. And when the real thing comes, your brain is going to be presented with a phenomenon outside its limits of comprehension. You’ll go insane, Beenay. Completely and permanently. I have no doubt of that whatever!”

Once again there was a sudden terrible silence in the room.

Athor said, at last. “That’s your final conclusion, Dr. Sheerin? Widespread insanity?”

“At least seventy-five percent of the population made irrational to a disabling degree. Perhaps eighty-five percent. Perhaps even a hundred percent.”

Athor shook his head. “Monstrous. Hideous. A calamity beyond belief. Though I must tell you I feel somewhat the way Beenay does—that we will get through this somehow, that the effects will be less cataclysmic than your opinion would indicate. Old as I am, I can’t help feeling a certain optimism, a certain sense of hope—”