Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

She stared at him, startled. “What did you say?”

“Strip. Remove your clothes. Demonstrate that you have no concealed illegal devices anywhere on your person.”

Siferra hefted her club, rubbing her hand uneasily along its shaft. Blinking in astonishment, she said, “Hold on, here. You can’t be serious.”

“Article Two of the Emergency Code, Fire Patrol may take any precaution deemed necessary to prevent unauthorized fire-starting. Article Three, this may include immediate and summary execution of those who resist Fire Patrol authority. Strip, Professor, and do it quickly.”

He gestured with the needle-gun. It was a very serious-looking gesture.

But still she stared at him, still she made no move to remove her garments. “Who are you? What’s this Fire Patrol stuff all about?”

“Citizen vigilantes, Professor. We’re attempting to restore law and order in Saro after the Breakdown. The city’s been pretty much destroyed, you know. Or maybe you don’t. The fires are continuing to spread, and there’s no functioning fire department to do anything about it any more. And maybe you haven’t noticed, but the whole province is full of crazy people who think we haven’t quite had enough fires yet as it is, so they’re starting even more. That can’t go on. We intend to stop the starters by any means available. You are under suspicion of possessing combustibles. The accusation has been placed and you have sixty seconds to clear yourself of the charge. If I were you, I’d start getting my clothes off, Professor.”

Siferra could see him silently counting off the seconds.

Strip , in front of a dozen strangers? A red haze of fury surged through her at the thought of the indignity. Most of these people were men. They weren’t even bothering to hide their impatience. This wasn’t any sort of security precaution, despite Altinol’s solemn citing of an Emergency Code. They just wanted to see what her body looked like, and they had the power to make her submit. It was intolerable.

But then, after a moment, she found her indignation beginning to slip away.

What did it matter? Siferra asked herself wearily. The world had ended. Modesty was a luxury that only civilized people indulged in, and civilization was an obsolete concept.

In any case this was a blunt order, at gunpoint. She had wandered into a remote, isolated place far down a country road. No one was going to come to her rescue here. The clock was ticking. And Altinol didn’t seem to be bluffing.

It wasn’t worth dying just for the sake of concealing her body from them.

She tossed her club to the ground.

Then, in cold anger but without permitting herself to make any outward show of rage, she began methodically to peel away her garments and drop them down beside it.

“My underwear too?” she asked sardonically.

“Everything.”

“Does it look as if I’ve got a lighter hidden in here?”

“You’ve got twenty seconds left, Professor.”

Siferra glowered at him and finished undressing without another word.

It was surprisingly easy, now that she had done it, to stand naked in front of these strangers. She didn’t care. That was the essential thing that came with the end of the world, she realized. She didn’t care. She pulled herself up to her full imposing height and stood there, almost defiantly revealed, waiting to see what they’d do next. Altinol’s eyes traveled over her body in an easy, self-assured way. Somehow she found herself not even caring about that. A kind of burned-out indifference had come over her.

“Very nice, Professor,” he said finally.

“Thank you.” Her tone was icy. “May I cover myself now?”

He waved grandly. “Of course. Sorry for the inconvenience. But we had to be absolutely sure.” He slipped the needle-gun into a band at his waist and stood with his arms folded, casually watching her as she dressed. Then he said, “You must think you’ve fallen in among savages, isn’t that so, Professor?”

“Does what I think really interest you?”

“You’ll notice that we didn’t leer or drool or wet our clothes while you were—ah—demonstrating that you had no concealed fire-making apparatus. Nor did anyone attempt to molest you in any way.”

“That was extremely kind.”

Altinol said, “I point these things out, even though I realize it’s not likely to make much difference to you while you’re still this angry at us, because I want you to know that what you’ve stumbled across here may in fact be the last remaining bastion of civilization in this godforsaken world. I don’t know where our beloved governmental leaders have disappeared to, and I certainly don’t consider our cherished brethren of the Apostles of Flame to be in any way civilized, and your university friends who used to be hidden out here have picked up and gone away. Just about everybody else seems to be clear out of his mind. Except, that is, for you and us, Professor.”

“How flattering of you to include me.”

“I never flatter anybody. You give an appearance of having withstood the Darkness and the Stars and the Breakdown better than most. What I want to know is whether you’re interested in staying here and becoming part of our group. We need people like you, Professor.”

“What does that mean? Scrub floors for you? Cook soup?”

Altinol seemed impervious to her sarcasms. “I mean helping in the struggle to keep civilization alive, Professor. Not to sound too high-pitched about it, but we see ourselves as having a holy mission. Day after day we are making our way through that madhouse out there, disarming the crazies, taking the fire-making apparatus away from them, reserving to ourselves exclusively the right to light fires. We can’t put out the fires that are already burning, at least not yet, but we can do our best to keep new ones from being lit. That’s our mission, Professor. We are taking control of the concept of fire. It’s the first step toward making the world fit to live in again. You seem sane enough to join us and therefore I invite you in. What do you say, Professor? Do you want to be part of the Fire Patrol? Or would you rather try your luck back there in the forest?”

The morning was misty and cool. Thick swirls of fog blew through the ruined streets, fog so heavy that Sheerin was unable to tell which suns were in the sky. Onos, certainly—somewhere. But its golden light was diffused and almost completely concealed by the fog. And that patch of slightly brighter sky off to the southwest very likely indicated the presence of one of the pairs of twin suns, but whether they were Sitha and Tano or Patru and Trey he had no way of discerning.

He was very tired It was already abundantly clear to him that his notion of making his way alone and on foot across the hundreds of miles between Saro City and Amgando National Park was an absurd fantasy.

Damn Theremon! Together, at least, they might have stood a chance. But the newspaperman had been unshakable in his confidence that he would somehow find Siferra in the forest. Talk about fantasy! Talk about absurdity!

Sheerin stared ahead, peering through the fog. He needed a place to rest for a while. He needed to find something fit to eat, and perhaps a change of clothing, or at least a way of bathing himself. He had never been this filthy in his life. Or as hungry. Or as weary. Or as despondent.

Through the whole long episode of the coming of the Darkness, from the first moment that he had heard from Beenay and Athor that such a thing was likely, Sheerin had bounced around from one end of the psychological spectrum to the other, from pessimism to optimism and back again, from hope to despair to hope. His intelligence and experience told him one thing, his naturally resilient personality told him another.