Isaac Asimov: Nightfall (novel)

Apostles. Half a dozen of them.

She glared accusingly at Theremon. He seemed calm, and very pleased with himself. Her dazed mind could barely begin to accept the awareness that he had betrayed her.

When she tried to speak, nothing but blurted monosyllables would emerge. “But—why?—what?—”

Theremon smiled. “Come on, Siferra. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Folimun said, “There’s not really any need to glower at me like that, Dr. Siferra. You may have trouble believing it, but you are among friends here.”

“ Friends ? You must think I’m a very gullible woman.”

“Not at all. Quite the contrary.”

“You invade my laboratory and steal priceless research materials. You order your horde of berserk superstitious followers to invade the Observatory and wreck the equipment with which the university astronomers are trying to perform unique, essential research. Now you hypnotize Theremon into doing your bidding, and send him out to capture me and turn me over to you as a prisoner. And then you tell me that I’m among friends?”

Theremon said quietly, “I haven’t been hypnotized, Siferra. And you aren’t a prisoner.”

“Of course not. And this is all just a very bad dream, too: Nightfall, the fires, the collapse of civilization, the whole thing. An hour from now I’ll wake up in my apartment in Saro City and everything will be just the way it was when I went to sleep.”

Theremon, facing her across the middle of Folimun’s tent, thought that she had never looked more beautiful than she did right then. Her eyes were luminous with anger. Her skin seemed to glisten. There was an aura of intensely focused energy about her that he found irresistible.

But this was hardly the moment to tell her anything like that.

Folimun said, “For stealing your tablets, Dr. Siferra, I can only offer my apologies. It was a shameless act of theft, which I assure you I never would have authorized except that you made it necessary.”

“ I made it—”

“You did. You insisted on keeping them in your possession—on placing those irreplaceable relics of the previous cycle in jeopardy at a time when chaos was about to break loose and, for all you knew, the university buildings were going to be destroyed down to the last brick. We saw it as essential that they be placed in safekeeping, that is to say, in our own hands, and since you would not authorize that we found it necessary to take them from you.”

“I found those tablets. You’d never have known they existed if I hadn’t dug them up.”

“Which is beside the point,” Folimun said smoothly. “Once the tablets were discovered, they became vital to our needs—to humanity’s needs. We felt that the future of Kalgash was more important than your personal proprietary interest in your artifacts. As you will see, we have translated the tablets fully now, making use of the ancient textual material already available to us, and they have added greatly to our understanding of the extraordinary challenges that civilized life on Kalgash must periodically confront. Dr. Mudrin’s translations were, unfortunately, extremely superficial. But the tablets provide an accurate and convincing version, uncorrupted by centuries of textual alteration and error, of the chronicles that have come down to us under the name of the Book of Revelations. The Book of Revelations, I must confess, is full of mysticism and metaphor, adopted for propagandistic purposes. The Thombo tablets are straightforward historical accounts of two separate advents of the Stars thousands of years ago, and of the attempts made by the priesthoods of the time to warn the populace of what was about to happen. We can demonstrate now that throughout history and prehistory on Kalgash, small groups of dedicated people have struggled again and again to prepare the world for the disruption that repeatedly falls upon it. The methods they used, obviously, were insufficient to the problem. Now at last, aided as we are by a knowledge of past mistakes, we will be able to spare Kalgash from another devastating upheaval when the present Year of Godliness comes to its end two thousand years from now.”

Siferra turned to Theremon. “How smug he sounds! Justifying his own burglary of my tablets by telling me that they’ll enable him to set up an even more efficient theocratic dictatorship than they had hoped! Theremon, Theremon, why did you sell me out like this? Why did you sell us out? We could have been halfway to Amgando by this time, if only—”

Folimun said, “You’ll be in Amgando tomorrow afternoon, Dr. Siferra, I assure you. All of us will be in Amgando by tomorrow afternoon.”

“What will you do?” she asked hotly. “March me in chains at the rear of your conquering army? Tie me up and make me walk in the dust behind Mondior’s chariot?”

The Apostle sighed. “Theremon, explain things to her, if you please.”

“No,” she said. Her eyes were blazing. “You poor brainwashed ninny, I don’t want to hear the gibberish this maniac has poured into your mind! I don’t want to hear anything from any of you! Let me alone. Lock me up, if you like. Or turn me loose, if you can bring yourself to do it. I can’t possibly harm you, can I? One woman against a whole army? I can’t even cross a field without having someone come up and surprise me from behind!”

Theremon, dismayed, reached toward her.

“No! Keep away from me! You disgust me!—But it isn’t your fault, is it? They’ve done something to your mind.—You’ll do it to me too, won’t you, Folimun? You’ll make me into an obliging little puppet. Well, let me ask just this one favor. Don’t force me to wear an Apostle’s robe. I can’t stand the idea of walking around inside one of those ridiculous things. Take my soul away, if you have to, but let me dress as I please, all right? All right, Folimun?”

The Apostle laughed faintly. “Perhaps it would be best if I left the two of you alone. I see that nothing’s going to be accomplished so long as I’m part of the conversation.”

Siferra cried, “No, damn you, I don’t want to be left alone with—”

But Folimun had already risen and walked quickly from the tent.

Theremon turned toward Siferra, who backed away from him as though he were carrying some plague.

Softly he said, “I wasn’t hypnotized, Siferra. They haven’t done anything to my mind.”

“Of course you’d say that.”

“It’s true. I’ll prove it to you.”

She stared at him bleakly, coldly, making no response. Very quietly he said, after a moment, “Siferra, I love you.”

“How long did it take the Apostles to program that line into you?” she asked.

He winced. “Don’t. Don’t. I mean it, Siferra. I won’t try to tell you that I’ve never said those words to anyone before. But this is the first time I’ve meant them.”

“Oldest line in the book,” said Siferra derisively.

“I suppose I deserve that. Theremon the ladies’ man. There-mon the seducer-about-town. Well, all right. Forget I said it.—No. No. I’m serious, Siferra. Traveling with you these past weeks—being with you morning and afternoon and evening—there hasn’t been a moment when I haven’t looked at you and thought to myself, This is the woman I was waiting for all these years. This is the woman I never dared to imagine I would find.”

“Very touching, Theremon. And the best way you could find to show your love was to grab me from behind, practically breaking my arm in the process, and turn me over to Mondior. Right?”

“Mondior doesn’t exist, Siferra. There’s no such person.”

For an instant he saw a flicker of surprise and curiosity cut through her hostility.