Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

Break the door down? Just break it down?

It went against everything that he thought was right and proper.

Sheerin looked at the hatchet as though it had turned to a serpent in his hand. Breaking in—why, that was burglary! How could he, Sheerin 501, Professor of Psychology at Saro University, simply smash down the door of some law-abiding citizen’s house and casually help himself to whatever he found there?

Easily, he told himself, laughing even harder at his own foolishness. This is how you do it.

He swung the hatchet.

But it wasn’t all that easy. His starvation-weakened muscles rebelled at the effort. He could lift the hatchet, all right, and he could swing it, but the blow seemed pathetically weak, and a line of fire shot through his arms and back as the blade made contact with the stout wooden door. Had he split the door? No. Cracked it a little? Maybe. Maybe a little chip. He swung again. Again. Harder. There you go, Sheerin. You’re getting the hang of it now. Swing! Swing!

He scarcely felt the pain, after the first few swings. He closed his eyes, pulled breath deep into his lungs, and swung. And swung again. The door was cracking now. There was a perceptible crevice. Another swing—another—maybe five or six more good blows and it would break in half—

Food. Bath. Bed.

Swing. And swing. And—

And the door opened in his face. He was so astonished that he nearly fell through. He staggered and lurched, braced himself with the haft of the ax against the door-frame, and looked up.

Half a dozen fierce wild-eyed faces looked back at him.

“You knocked, sir?” a man said, and everyone howled in manic glee.

Then they reached out for him, caught him by his arms, pulled him inside.

“You won’t be needing this,” someone said, and effortlessly twisted the hatchet from Sheerin’s grasp. “You can only hurt yourself with a thing like that, don’t you know?”

More laughter—a crazed howling. They pushed him into the center of the room and formed a ring around him.

There were seven, eight, maybe nine of them. Men and women both, and one half-grown boy. Sheerin could see at a glance that they weren’t the rightful residents of this house, which must have been neat and well maintained before they moved into it. Now there were stains on the wall, half the furniture was overturned, there was a sodden puddle of something—wine?—on the carpet.

He knew what these people were. These were squatters, rough and ragged-looking, unshaven, unwashed. They had come drifting in, had taken possession of the place after its owners fled. One of the men was wearing only a shirt. One of the women, hardly more than a girl, was clad just in a pair of shorts. They all had an acrid, repellent odor. Their eyes had that intense, rigid, off-center look that he had seen a thousand times in recent days. You didn’t need any clinical experience to know that those were the eyes of the insane.

Cutting through the stink of the squatters’ bodies, though, was another odor, a much more pleasing one, one that almost drove Sheerin out of his mind too: the aroma of cooking food. They were preparing a meal in the next room. Soup? Stew? Something was boiling in there. He swayed, dizzied by his own hunger and the sudden hope of soothing it at last.

Mildly he said, “I didn’t know the house was occupied. But I hope you’ll let me stay with you this evening, and then I’ll be moving along.”

“You from the Patrol?” a big, heavily bearded man asked suspiciously. He seemed to be the leader.

Sheerin said uncertainly, “The Patrol? No, I don’t know anything about them. My name is Sheerin 501, and I’m a member of the faculty of—”

“Patrol! Patrol! Patrol!” they were chanting suddenly, moving in a circle around him.

“—Saro University,” he finished.

It was as though he had uttered a magic spell. They halted in their tracks as his quiet voice cut through their shrill screaming, and they fell silent, staring at him in a terrifying way.

“You say you’re from the university?” the leader asked in a strange tone.

“That’s right. Department of Psychology. I’m a teacher and I do a little hospital work on the side.—Look, I don’t intend to make any trouble for you at all. I just need a place to rest for a few hours, and a little food, if you can spare it. Just a little. I haven’t eaten since—”

“ University! ” a woman cried. The way she said it, it sounded like something filthy, something blasphemous. Sheerin had heard that tone before, from Folimun 66 the night of the eclipse, referring to scientists. It was a frightening thing to hear.

“ University! University! University! ”

They began to circle around him again, chanting again, pointing at him, making bizarre signs with their hooked fingers. He could no longer understand their words. It was a raucous nightmare chant, nonsense syllables.

Were these people some subchapter of the Apostles of Flame, convening here to practice an arcane rite? No, he doubted that. They had a different look, too ragged, too shabby, too demented. The Apostles, such few of them as he had seen, had always appeared crisp, self-contained, almost frighteningly controlled. Besides, the Apostles hadn’t been in evidence since the eclipse. Sheerin supposed that they had all withdrawn to some sanctuary of their own to enjoy the vindication of their beliefs in private.

These people, he thought, were simply unaffiliated wandering crazies.

And it seemed to Sheerin that he saw murder in their eyes.

“Listen,” he said, “if I’ve disturbed some ceremony of yours in any way, I apologize, and I’m perfectly willing to leave right now. I only tried to come in here because I thought the house was empty and I was so hungry. I didn’t mean to—”

“ University! University! ”

He had never seen a look of such intense hatred as these people were giving him. But there was fear there too. They kept back from him, tense, trembling, as if in dread of some terrible power that he might unexpectedly unleash.

Sheerin held his hands out to them imploringly. If only they’d stop prancing and chanting for a moment! The smell of the food cooking in the next room was making him wild. He caught one of the women by the arm, hoping to halt her long enough to appeal to her for a crust, a bowl of broth, anything. But she jumped away, hissing as though Sheerin had burned her with his touch, and rubbed frantically at the place on her arm where his fingers had briefly rested.

“Please,” he said. “I don’t intend any harm. I’m as harmless as anyone there is, believe me.”

“Harmless!” the leader cried, spitting the word out. “You? You, university? You’re worse than the Patrol. The Patrol just makes a little trouble for people. But you, you destroyed the world.”

“I what? ”

“Be careful, Tasibar,” a woman said. “Get him out of here before he makes a magic on us.”

“A magic?” Sheerin said. “Me?”

They were pointing at him again, stabbing the air vehemently, terrifyingly. Some had begun to chant under their breaths, a low, fierce chant that had the rhythms of a motor steadily gaining speed and soon to spin out of control.

The girl who wore only a pair of shorts said, “It was the university that called down the Darkness on us.”

“And the Stars,” said the man who wore just a shirt. “They brought the Stars.”

“And this one might bring them back,” said the woman who had spoken before. “Get him out of here! Get him out of here!”

Sheerin stared incredulously. He told himself that he should have been able to predict this. It was an all too likely development: pathological suspicion of all scientists, all educated people, an unreasoning phobia that must be raging now like a virus among the survivors of the night of terror.