Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

“Sorry,” she said sharply. “I didn’t realize you’d be so touchy.”

“Siferra—”

“Forget it,” she said. “Maybe I’m the touchy one.”

“It’ll all work out,” said Theremon. “Beenay and Raissta aren’t going to be harmed. We’ll get down to Amgando in plenty of time to give the warning. The Apostles of Flame won’t conquer the world.”

“And all the dead people will rise up and walk again, too. Oh, Theremon, Theremon—” Her voice broke.

“I know.”

“What will we do ?”

“We’ll walk fast, is what we’ll do. And we won’t look back. Looking back doesn’t do any good at all.”

“No. None at all,” said Siferra. And smiled, and took his hand. And they walked quickly onward in silence.

It was amazing, Theremon thought, how swiftly they were going, now that they had hit their stride. The first few days, when they were coming down out of Saro City and picking their way through the wreckage-strewn upper end of the highway, progress had been slow and their bodies had protested bitterly against the strains that they were imposing on them. But now they were moving like two machines, perfectly attuned to their task. Siferra’s legs were nearly as long as his own, and they walked along side by side, muscles working efficiently, hearts pumping steadily, lungs expanding and contracting in flawless rhythm. Stride stride stride. Stride stride stride. Stride stride stride —

Hundreds of miles yet to go, sure. But it wouldn’t take long, not at this pace. Another month, perhaps. Perhaps even less.

The road was almost completely clear, down here in the rural regions beyond the farthest edge of the city. There hadn’t been nearly as much traffic here in the first place as there had been to the north, and it looked as though many of the drivers had been able to get off the highway safely even while the Stars were shining, since they were in less danger of being struck by the cars of other drivers who had lost control.

There were fewer checkpoints, too. The new provinces in these sparsely populated areas covered much greater areas than those up north, and their people seemed less concerned with such things as Search. Theremon and Siferra underwent serious interrogation only twice in the next five days. At the other border points they were simply waved on through without even having to show the papers Beenay had provided for them.

Even the weather was on their side. It was fair and mild almost every day: a few little rain-showers now and then but nothing that caused serious inconvenience. They would walk for four hours, pause for a light meal, walk another four, eat again, walk, stop for six hours or so of sleep—taking turns, one sitting up and watching for a few hours, then the other—and then get up and march onward. Like machines. The suns came and went in the sky in their age-old rhythm, now Patru and Trey and Dovim up above, now Onos and Sitha and Tano, now Onos and Dovim, now Trey and Patru, now four suns at once—the unending succession, the great pageant of the skies. Theremon had no idea how many days had passed since they had left the Sanctuary. The whole idea of dates, calendars, days, weeks, months—it all seemed quaint and archaic and cumbersome to him, something out of a former world.

Siferra, after her spell of brooding and apprehensiveness, became cheerful again.

This was going to be a breeze. They would make it down to Amgando with no trouble at all.

They were passing through a district known as Spring Glen now—or perhaps it was called Garden Grove; they had heard several different names from the people they encountered along the road. It was farm country, open and rolling, and there was little sign here of the hellish devastation that had blighted the urbanized regions: an occasional fire-damaged barn, or a herd of farm animals that seemed to be roaming unattended, and that was about the worst of it. The air was sweet and fresh, the light of the suns was bright and strong. But for the eerie absence of vehicular traffic on the highway, it was possible here to think that nothing extraordinary had happened at all.

“Are we halfway to Amgando yet?” Siferra asked.

“Not quite. I haven’t seen a road-sign for a while, but my guess is that—”

He stopped abruptly.

“What is it, Theremon?”

“Look. Look there, to the right. Along that secondary road coming in from the west.”

They peered over the edge of the highway. Down below, a few hundred yards away, a long row of trucks was drawn up at the side of the secondary road, where it fed into an approach to the main one. There was a large, bustling camp there: tents, a big campfire burning, some men chopping logs.

Two or three hundred people, perhaps. All of them in black hooded robes.

Theremon and Siferra exchanged astounded glances.

“Apostles!” she whispered.

“Yes. Get down. Hands and knees. Hide yourself against the railing here.”

“But how did they manage to get this far south so fast? The highway’s upper end is completely blocked!”

Theremon shook his head. “They didn’t take the highway at all. Look there—they’ve got trucks that work. Here’s another one, coming right now. Gods, that looks strange, doesn’t it, an actual moving vehicle! And hearing the sound of an engine again after all this time.” He felt himself beginning to shiver. “They were able to keep a fleet of trucks undamaged, and a supply of fuel. And obviously they’ve come down from Saro around through the west, on little country roads. Now they’re joining up with the main highway, which I suppose is open from here to Amgando. They could be there by this evening.”

“This evening! Theremon, what are we going to do?”

“I’m not sure. There’s only one wild chance, I guess.—What if we went down there and tried to seize one of those trucks? And drove it to Amgando ourselves. Even if we got there only two hours ahead of the Apostles, there’d be time for most of the Amgando people to escape. Right?”

Siferra said, “Perhaps. It sounds crazy, though. How could we steal a truck? The moment they see us, they’ll know we aren’t Apostles, and they’ll grab us.”

“I know. I know. Let me think.” After a moment he said, “If we could catch a couple of them at a distance from the others, and take their robes away from them—shoot them with our needlers, if we have to—and then, when we’re robed, just walk up to one of the trucks as though we have every right to be doing that, and jump on board and drive off toward the highway—”

“They’d follow after us in two minutes.”

“Maybe. Or maybe if we were calm and cool about it they’d think it was something perfectly ordinary, part of their plan—and by the time they realized it wasn’t, we’d be fifty miles down the road.” He looked at her eagerly. “What do you say, Siferra? What other hope do we have? Continue toward Amgando on foot, when for us it’ll be a journey of weeks and weeks, and they can drive past us in a couple of hours?”

She was staring at him as though he had lost his mind.

“Overpower a couple of Apostles—hijack one of their trucks—go zooming off toward Amgando—oh, Theremon, it’ll never work. You know that.”

“All right,” he said abruptly. “You stay here. I’ll try to do it alone. It’s the only hope there is, Siferra.”

He rose to a half-crouch, and began to scuttle along the side of the highway toward the exit ramp a few hundred yards ahead.

“No—wait, Theremon—”

He looked back at her and grinned. “Coming?”

“Yes. Oh, this is crazy!”

“Yes,” he said. “I know. But what else can we do?”

She was right, of course. The scheme was crazy. Yet he saw no alternative. Evidently the report Beenay had received had been garbled: the Apostles had never intended to move down the Great Southern Highway province by province, but instead had set out directly for Amgando in a huge armed convoy, taking minor roads which, though not very direct, were at least still open to vehicular transport.