Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

“I wasn’t, actually. I told you, I gave Beenay my word. Besides, it seemed a little abstract for the Chronicle ’s readers, a little remote from their daily concerns. But I think now there’s a real story there. If you’d be willing to meet with me and give me the details—”

“I’d rather not,” Siferra said quickly.

“Which? Meet with me? Or give me the details?”

His quick flip reply suddenly cast the entire conversation in a new light for her. She saw, to her mild annoyance and slight surprise, that the newspaperman was in fact attracted to her. She realized now, thinking back over the past few minutes, that Theremon must have been wondering, all the while, whether there might be something romantic going on between her and Beenay, since he had found them sitting here in the club together. And had decided at last that there wasn’t, and so had chosen to offer that first lightly flirtatious line.

Well, that was his problem, Siferra thought.

She said in a deliberately neutral way, “I haven’t published my Thombo work in the scientific journals yet. It would be best if nothing about it gets into the public press until I have.”

“I quite understand that. But if I promise that I’ll abide by your release date, would you be willing to go over your material with me ahead of time?”

“Well—”

She looked at Beenay. What was a newspaperman’s promise worth, anyway?

Beenay said, “You can trust Theremon. I’ve told you already: he’s as honorable as they get, in his line of work.”

“Which isn’t saying much,” Theremon put in, laughing. “But I know better than to break my word on an issue of scientific publication priority. If I jumped the gun on your story, Beenay here would see that my name was mud all over the university. And I depend on my university contacts for some of my most interesting stories.—So can I count on an interview with you? Say, the day after next?”

And that was how it began.

Theremon was very persuasive. She agreed finally to have lunch with him, and slowly, cunningly, he pried the details of the Thombo dig out of her. Afterward she regretted it—she expected to see a stupid, sensational piece in the Chronicle the very next day—but Theremon kept his word and published nothing about her. He did ask to see her laboratory, though. Again she yielded, and he inspected the charts, the photographs, the ash samples. He asked some intelligent questions.

“You aren’t going to write me up, are you?” she asked nervously. “Now that you’ve seen all this?”

“I promised that I wouldn’t. I meant it. Although the moment you tell me that you’ve arranged to publish your findings in one of the scientific journals, I’ll regard myself as free to tell the whole thing. What would you say to dinner at the Six Suns Club tomorrow evening?”

“Well—”

“Or the evening after that?”

Siferra rarely went to places like the Six Suns. She hated to give anyone the false impression that she was interested in getting into social entanglements.

But Theremon wasn’t easy to turn down. Gently, cheerfully, skillfully, he maneuvered her into a position where she couldn’t avoid a date with him—for ten days hence. Well, what of it? she thought. He was personable enough. She could use a change of pace from the steady grind of her work. She met him at the Six Suns, where everyone seemed to know him. They had drinks, dinner, a fine wine from Thamian Province. He moved the conversation this way and that, very adroitly: a little bit about her life, her fascination with archaeology, her excavations at Beklimot. He found out that she’d never been married and had never been interested in marrying. He spoke of the Apostles with her, their wild prophecies, the surprising relationship of her Thombo finds to Mondior’s claims. Everything he said was tactful, perceptive, interesting. He was very charming—and also very manipulative, she thought.

At the end of the evening he asked her—gently, cheerfully, skillfully—if he could accompany her home. But she drew the line at that.

He didn’t seem troubled. He simply asked her out again.

They had gone out two or three more times altogether after that, over a period of perhaps two months. The format was the same each time: dinner at some elegant place, well-managed conversation, ultimately a delicately constructed invitation for her to spend the sleep-period with him. Siferra deflected him just as delicately each time. It was becoming a pleasant game, this lighthearted pursuit. She wondered how long it would go on. She still had no particular wish to go to bed with him, but the odd thing was that she had no particular wish any longer not to go to bed with him, either. It was a long time since she had felt that way about any man.

Then came the first of the series of columns in which he denounced the Observatory theories, questioned Athor’s sanity, compared the scientists’ prediction of the eclipse to the mad ravings of the Apostles of Flame.

Siferra didn’t believe it, at first. Was this some sort of joke? Beenay’s friend— her friend now, for that matter—attacking them so viciously?

A couple of months went by. The attacks continued. She didn’t hear from Theremon.

Finally she couldn’t remain silent any longer.

She called him at the newspaper office.

“Siferra! What a delight! Believe it or not, I was going to call you later this afternoon, to ask if you’d be interested in going to—”

“I wouldn’t,” she said. “Theremon, what are you doing? ”

“Doing?”

“These columns about Athor and the Observatory.”

There was silence at the other end of the line for a long while.

Then he said, “Ah. You’re upset.”

“Upset? I’m livid!”

“You think I’ve been a little too harsh. Look, Siferra, when you write for a large audience of ordinary folks, some of them very ordinary, you’ve got to put things in black and white terms or run the risk of being misunderstood. I can’t simply say that I think Athor and Beenay are wrong. I’ve got to say that they’re nuts . Do you follow me?”

“Since when do you think they’re wrong? Does Beenay know how you feel?”

“Well—”

“You’ve been covering the story for months. Now you’ve turned around a hundred eighty degrees. To listen to you, one would think that everyone at the campus is a disciple of Mondior and that we’re all out of our minds besides. If you needed to find somebody to be the butt of your jokes, couldn’t you have looked somewhere else than the university?”

“These aren’t just jokes, Siferra,” Theremon said quietly.

“You believe what you’re writing?”

“I do. I honestly do. There isn’t going to be any cataclysm, that’s what I think. And here’s Athor pulling on the fire alarm in a crowded theater. By my jokes, my poking a little good-natured fun here and there, I’m trying to tell people that they don’t necessarily have to take him seriously—not to panic, not to get into an uproar—”

“What?” she cried. “But there is going to be a fire, Theremon! mon! And you’re playing a dangerous game with everyone’s welfare by your mockery. Listen to me: I’ve seen the ashes of past fires, fires thousands of years old. I know what’s going to happen. The Flames will come. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. You’ve seen the evidence too. And for you to take the position you’re taking now is the most destructive imaginable thing you could do, Theremon. It’s cruel and foolish and hateful. And utterly irresponsible.”

“Siferra—”

“I thought you were an intelligent man. I see now that you’re exactly like all the rest of them out there.”