Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

“Driving people out of their minds?” Beenay said. He glanced meaningfully toward the calendar-plate high in the wall of the corridor. In gleaming green letters it announced the date: 19 THEPTAR. The day of days, the one that had been blazing in everyone’s mind, here at the Observatory, month after month. The last day of sanity that many, perhaps most, of the people of Kalgash would ever know. “Not the best choice of words this evening, wouldn’t you say?”

Theremon smiled. “Maybe you’re right. We’ll see.” He pointed toward the closed door of Athor’s office. “Who’s in there right now?”

“Athor, of course. And Thilanda—she’s one of the astronomers. Davnit, Simbron, Hikkinan, all Observatory staffers. That’s about it.”

“What about Siferra? She said she’d be here.”

“Well, she isn’t, not yet.”

A look of surprise appeared on Theremon’s face. “Really? When I asked her the other day if she would opt for the Sanctuary she practically laughed in my face. She was dead set on watching the eclipse from here. I can’t believe she’s changed her mind. That woman isn’t afraid of anything, Beenay. Well, maybe she’s tidying up a few last-minute things over at her office.”

“Very likely.”

“And our chubby friend Sheerin? He’s not here either?”

“No, not Sheerin. He’s in the Sanctuary.”

“Not the bravest of men, is he, our Sheerin?”

“At least he’s got the good sense to admit it. Raissta’s at the Sanctuary too, and Athor’s wife Nyilda, and just about everybody else I know, except us few Observatory people. If you were smart you’d be there yourself, Theremon. When the Darkness gets here this evening you’ll wish that you were.”

“The Apostle Folimun 66 said more or less the same thing to me over a year ago, only it was his Sanctuary he was inviting me into, not yours. But I’m fully prepared to face the worst terrors the gods can throw at me, my friend. There’s a story to cover this evening, and I won’t be able to cover it if I’m holed up in some snug little underground hideout, will I?”

“There won’t be any newspaper tomorrow for you to write that story for, Theremon.”

“You think so?” Theremon caught Beenay by the arm and drew close to him, almost nose to nose. In a low, intense tone he said, “Tell me this, Beenay. Just between friends. Do you actually and truly think that any such incredible thing as Nightfall is going to happen this evening?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Gods! Are you serious, man?”

“As serious as I’ve ever been in my life, Theremon.”

“I can’t believe it. You seem so steady, Beenay. So solid, so responsible. And yet you’ve taken a bunch of admittedly speculative astronomical calculations, and some bits of charcoal dug up in a desert thousands of miles from here, and some wild frothings out of the mouths of a crew of wild-eyed cultists, and rolled them up together into the craziest damned mess of apocalyptic nonsense I ever—”

“It isn’t crazy,” Beenay insisted quietly. “It isn’t nonsense.”

“So the world is really coming to an end this evening.”

“The world we know and love, yes.”

Theremon released his grip on Beenay’s arm and threw his hands up in exasperation. “Gods! Even you! By Darkness, Beenay, I’ve been trying for better than a year to put some faith in all this stuff, and I can’t, I absolutely can’t. No matter what you say, or Athor, or Siferra, or Folimun 66, or Mondior, or—”

“Just wait,” Beenay said. “Only another few hours.”

“You really are sincere!” Theremon said wonderingly. “By all the gods, you’re as big a crackpot as Mondior himself. Bah! That’s what I say, Beenay. Bab! —Take me in to see Athor, will you?”

“I warn you, he doesn’t want to see you.”

“You said that already. Take me in there anyway.”

Theremon had never really expected to find himself taking a stance hostile to the Observatory scientists. Things had simply worked out that way, very gradually, in the months leading up to the nineteenth of Theptar.

It was basically a matter of journalistic integrity, he told himself. Beenay was his longtime friend, yes; Dr. Athor was unquestionably a great astronomer, Sheerin was genial and straightforward and likable; and Siferra was—well, an attractive and interesting woman and an important archaeologist. He had no desire at all to position himself as an enemy of such people.

But he had to write what he believed. And what he believed, to the depths of his soul, was that the Observatory group was every bit as loopy as the Apostles of Flame, and just as dangerous to the stability of society.

There was no way he could make himself take what they said seriously. The more time he spent around the Observatory, the nuttier it all seemed to him.

An invisible and apparently undetectable planet soaring through the sky on an orbit that brought it close to Kalgash every few decades? A combination of solar positions that would leave only Dovim overhead when the invisible planet arrived this time? Dovim’s light thereby blotted out, throwing the world into Darkness? And everyone going insane as a result? No, no, he couldn’t buy it.

To Theremon, all of it seemed just as wild as the stuff the Apostles of Flame had been peddling for so many years. The only extra thing that the Apostles threw in was the mysterious advent of the phenomenon known as Stars. Even the Observatory people had the good grace to admit that they couldn’t imagine what Stars were. Some other sort of invisible heavenly bodies, apparently, which suddenly came into view when the Year of Godliness ended and the wrath of the gods descended on Kalgash—so the Apostles indicated.

“It can’t be,” Beenay had told him, one evening at the Six Suns Club. It was still six months before the date of the eclipse. “The eclipse and the Darkness, yes. The Stars, no. There’s nothing in the universe except our world and the six suns and some insignificant asteroids—and Kalgash Two. If there are Stars also, why can’t we measure their presence? Why can’t we detect them by orbital perturbations, the way we’ve detected Kalgash Two? No, Theremon, if there are Stars out there, then something’s got to be wrong with the Theory of Universal Gravitation. And we know the theory’s all right.”

“We know the theory’s all right,” that was what Beenay had said. But wasn’t that just like Folimun saying, “We know that the Book of Revelations is a book of truth”?

In the beginning, when Beenay and Sheerin first told him of their emerging awareness that there was going to be a devastating period of Darkness upon all the world, Theremon, half skeptical and half awed and impressed by their apocalyptic visions, had indeed done his best to be helpful. “Athor wants to meet with Folimun,” Beenay said. “He’s trying to find out if the Apostles have any sort of ancient astronomical records that might confirm what we’ve found. Can you do anything to arrange it?”

“A funny notion,” Theremon said. “The irascible old man of science asking to see the spokesman of the forces of anti-science, of non-science. But I’ll see what I can do.”

That meeting had turned out to be surprisingly easy to arrange. Theremon had been intending to interview Folimun again anyway. The sharp-faced Apostle granted Theremon an audience for the following day.

“Athor?” Folimun said, when the newspaperman had passed Beenay’s message along. “Why would he want to see me? ”

“Perhaps he’s planning to become an Apostle,” Theremon suggested playfully.

Folimun laughed. “Not very likely. From what I know of him, he’d sooner paint himself purple and go for a stroll in the nude down Saro Boulevard.”