Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

They were virtually the only living people using the road. Now and then they caught sight of someone moving southward on foot far ahead of them, or even coming up out of the south heading toward the Saro City end of the road, but there were never any encounters. The other wayfarers would hastily duck down out of sight and lose themselves in the wreckage, or, if they were up ahead, would begin frantically to scramble forward at a pace that spoke of terrible fear, disappearing quickly in the distance.

What are they afraid of? Theremon wondered. That we’ll attack them. Is everyone’s hand lifted against everyone else, now?

Once, an hour or so from their starting point, they saw a bedraggled-looking man going from car to car, reaching in to fumble in the pockets of the dead, despoiling the bodies of their possessions. There was a great sack of loot on his back, so heavy that he was staggering under the weight of it.

Theremon cursed angrily and pulled out his needle-gun.

“ Look at the filthy ghoul! Look at him!”

“No, Theremon!”

Siferra deflected his arm just as Theremon fired a bolt at the looter. The shot struck a nearby car, and for a moment set up a glittering sunburst of reflected energy.

“Why did you do that?” Theremon asked. “I was only trying to scare him.”

“I thought—that you—”

Bleakly Theremon shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not yet, anyway. There—look at him run!”

The looter had swung around at the sound of the shot, staring in berserk manic astonishment at Theremon and Siferra. His eyes were blank; a trail of spittle dribbled from his lips. He gaped at them for a long moment. Then, dropping his sack of booty, he went scrabbling away in a wild, desperate flight over the tops of the cars and soon was lost from view.

They went onward.

It was slow, dreadful going. The road-signs that rose high above them on shining stanchions mocked their pitiful progress by telling them what a very small distance from the beginning of the highway they had succeeded in traversing so far. By Onos-set they had gone only a mile and a half.

“At this rate,” Theremon said somberly, “it’ll take us close to a year to reach Amgando.”

“We’ll move faster as we get the knack of it,” said Siferra, without much conviction.

If only they could have followed along some street parallel to the highway, instead of having to walk on the roadbed itself, it would all have been much simpler for them. But that was impossible. Much of the Great Southern Highway was an elevated road, rising on lofty pillars above wooded tracts, areas of marsh, and the occasional industrial zone. There were places where the highway became a bridge across long open patches of mining scars, or over lakes and streams. For most of the distance they would have no choice but to stick to what had once been the central traffic lanes of the highway itself, difficult as it was to get around the unending array of wreckage.

They kept to the edge of the roadbed as much as they could, since the density of wrecked cars was lower there. Looking over into the districts below, they saw signs of continuing chaos everywhere.

Burned houses. Fires still raging after all this time, stretching to the horizon. Occasional little bands of forlorn refugees, looking stunned and dazed, straggling bewilderedly through the debris-choked streets bound on some hopeless, desperate migration. Sometimes a larger group, a thousand people or more, camped together in some open place, everyone huddled in a desolate, paralyzed-looking way, scarcely moving, their wills and energies shattered.

Siferra pointed to a burned-out church at the crest of a hill just across from the highway. A small group of ragged-looking people were scrambling over its tumbled walls, prying at the remaining blocks of gray stone with crowbars, pulling them loose and hurling them into the courtyard.

“It looks as though they’re demolishing it,” she said. “Why would they do that?”

Theremon said, “Because they hate the gods. They blame them for everything that happened.—Do you know the Pantheon, the big Cathedral of All the Gods just at the edge of the forest, with the famous Thamilandi murals? I saw it a couple of days after Nightfall. It had been burned down—just rubble, everything destroyed, and one half-conscious priest sticking out of a pile of bricks. Now I realize that it was no accident that it burned. That fire was deliberately set. And the priest—I saw a crazy kill him right before my eyes, and I thought it was to steal his vestments. Maybe not. Maybe it was out of mere hatred.”

“But the priests didn’t cause—”

“Have you forgotten the Apostles so soon? Mondior, telling us for months that what was going to happen was the vengeance of the gods? The priests are the voice of the gods, isn’t that so, Siferra? And if they led us into evil, so that we needed to be punished this way, why, the priests themselves must be responsible for the coming of the Stars. Or so people would think.”

“The Apostles!” Siferra said darkly. “I wish I could forget them. What do you think they’re doing now?”

“Came through the eclipse safe and sound in their tower, I suppose.”

“Yes. They must have made it through the night in good shape, prepared for it as they were. What was it Altinol said? That they were already operating a government on the north side of Saro City?”

Theremon stared gloomily at the devastated church across the way. Tonelessly he said, “I just can imagine what sort of government that will be. Virtue by decree. Mondior issuing new commandments of morality every Onos Day. All forms of pleasure prohibited by law. Weekly public executions of the sinful.” He spat into the wind. “By Darkness! To think I had Folimun right within my reach that evening and let him go, when I could so easily have throttled him—”

“Theremon!”

“I know. What good would it have done? One Apostle, more or less? Let him live. Let them set up their government, and tell everyone who’s unlucky enough to live north of Saro City what to do and what to think. Why should we care? We’re heading south, aren’t we? What the Apostles do won’t affect us. They’ll be just one of fifty rival squabbling governments, when things have a chance to settle down. One of five thousand, maybe. Every district will have its own dictator, its own emperor.” Theremon’s voice darkened suddenly. “Oh, Siferra, Siferra—”

She took his hand. Quietly she said, “You’re accusing yourself again, aren’t you?”

“How did you know that?”

“When you get yourself so worked up.—Theremon, I tell you you’re not guilty of anything! This would have happened no matter what you wrote in the paper, can’t you see? One man alone couldn’t have made any difference. This is something the world was destined to go through, something that couldn’t have been prevented, something—”

“ Destined? ” he said sharply. “What a weird word for you to use! The vengeance of the gods, is that what you mean?”

“I didn’t say anything about gods. I mean only that Kalgash Two was destined to come, not by the gods but simply by the laws of astronomy, and the eclipse was destined to happen, and Nightfall, and the Stars—”

“Yes,” Theremon said indifferently. “I suppose.”

They walked onward, through a stretch of road where very few cars had come to rest. Onos was down now, and the evening suns were out, Sitha and Tano and Dovim. A chilly wind blew from the west. Theremon felt the dull ache of hunger rising in him. They had not taken time to eat all day. Now they halted, camping between two crumpled cars, and unpacked some of the packages of dried food they had brought with them from the Sanctuary.