Isaac Asimov: Nightfall (novel)

“What?”

“He’s a convenient mythical construct, put together by electronic synthesis to make speeches on television. No one’s ever had an audience with him, have they? He’s never been seen in public. Folimun invented him to be a public spokesman. Since Mondior never appears in person, he can be on television in five different countries at once, all over the world—nobody could ever be sure where he really was, and so he could be displayed simultaneously. Folimun’s the real boss of the Apostles of Flame. He simply masquerades as a public-relations officer. In fact he calls all the shots, and has for the past ten years. Before that there was someone named Bazret, who’s dead now. Bazret was the one who invented Mondior, but Folimun’s brought him to his present eminence.”

“Folimun told you all this?”

“He told me some. I guessed the rest, and he confirmed it. He’ll show me the Mondior apparatus when we’re back in Saro City. The Apostles plan to restore television transmissions in another few weeks.”

“All right,” Siferra said harshly. “The discovery that Mondior’s a fake so overwhelmed you with its slimy cleverness that you decided on the spot that you absolutely had to join up with Folimun’s outfit. And your first assignment was to turn me in. So you skulked around looking for me, and took me by surprise, and thereby made certain that the people down in Amgando would fall into Folimun’s clutches. Nicely done, Theremon.”

“Folimun’s heading for Amgando, yes,” Theremon said. “But he doesn’t intend to harm those who have gathered there. He wants to offer them posts in the new government.”

“Gods almighty, Theremon, do you believe—”

“Yes. Yes, Siferra!” Theremon held his hands out, fingers spread wide in an agitated gesture. “I may be a mere coarse journalist, but at least grant me that I’m no fool. Twenty years in the newspaper business has made me an excellent judge of character, at the very least. Folimun impressed me in a strange way from the first time I met him. He seemed very much the opposite of crazy, very complex, very sly, very sharp. And I’ve been talking with him for the past eight hours. Nobody’s been sleeping here this evening. He’s laid his whole plan bare. He’s shown me his entire scheme. Would you grant, for the sake of argument, that it’s possible for me to get an accurate psychological reading on someone during the course of an eight-hour conversation?”

“Well—” she said grudgingly.

“Either he’s completely sincere, Siferra, or he’s the best actor in the world.”

“He could be both. That still doesn’t make him someone we’d want to trust.”

“Maybe not. But I do. Now.”

“Go on.”

“Folimun is a totally ruthless, almost monstrously rational man who believes that the only thing that’s of any real importance is the survival of civilization. Because he’s had access, through his age-old religious cult, to historical records of previous cycles, he’s known for many years what we’ve all just learned in the hardest possible way: that Kalgash is doomed to be shown a view of the Stars once every two thousand years and that the sight of them is so overwhelming that it’ll shatter ordinary minds and give even the strongest ones a bad time for days or weeks.—He’s willing to let you see all their ancient documents, by the way, when we’re back in Saro City.”

“Saro City has been destroyed.”

“Not the part of it controlled by the Apostles. They made damned well sure nobody would be setting any fires within a mile of their tower on all sides.”

“Very efficient of them,” Siferra said.

“They’re efficient people. All right: Folimun knows that in a time of total madness the best hope of pulling things together is a religious totalitarianism. You and I may think the gods are just old fables, Siferra, but there are millions and millions of people out there, believe it or not, who have a different view of things. They’ve always been uneasy about doing things that they consider sinful, for fear the gods will punish them. And now they have an absolute dread of the gods. They think the Stars might come back tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, and finish off the job.—Well, here are the Apostles, who claim a direct pipeline to the gods and have all sorts of scriptural passages to prove it. They’re in a better position to set up a world government than Altinol, or the little provincial overlords, or the fugitive remnants of the former governments, or anyone else. They’re the best hope we have.”

“You’re serious,” Siferra said in wonder. “Folimun hasn’t hypnotized you, Theremon. You’ve managed to do it to yourself!”

“Look,” he said. “Folimun’s been working all his life toward this moment, knowing that his is the generation of Apostles on whom the responsibility for ensuring survival will fall. He’s got all sorts of plans. He’s well on his way to establishing control over enormous territories north and west of Saro City, and next he’s going to take charge of the new provinces along the line of the Great Southern Highway.”

“And establish a theocratic dictatorship that will begin its rule by executing all the atheistic, cynical, materialistic university people like Beenay and Sheerin and me.”

“Sheerin’s already dead. Folimun told me his people found his body in a ruined house. He was apparently killed some weeks back by a band of anti-intellectual crazies.”

Siferra looked away, unable for a moment to meet Theremon’s eyes. Then she stared at him more angrily than before and said, “There you are. First Folimun sends his goons crashing into the Observatory—Athor was killed too, wasn’t he?—and then he eliminates poor harmless Sheerin. And then all the rest of us will be—”

“He was trying to protect the Observatory people, Siferra.”

“He didn’t go about it very well, did he?”

“Things got out of hand. What he wanted to do was rescue all the scientists before the rioting started—but because he was operating under the guise of a wild-eyed fanatic, he had no way of persuading them to hear what he was offering, which was to give them safe-conduct to the Apostles’ Sanctuary.”

“After the Observatory was wrecked.”

“That wasn’t his first choice either. The world was crazy that night. Things didn’t always follow his scheme.”

“You’re very good at making excuses for him, Theremon.”

“Maybe so. Hear me out, anyway. He wants to work with the surviving university people, and the other sane and intelligent ones who have gathered at Amgando, to rebuild humanity’s pool of knowledge. He—or the supposed Mondior, rather—will be in charge of the government. The Apostles will keep the unstable and superstition-ridden populace pacified by religious domination, at least for a generation or two. Meanwhile the university people will help the Apostles assemble and codify the knowledge they’ve managed to save, and together they’ll guide the world back to a rational state—as has happened so many times before. But this time, perhaps, they’ll be able to begin the preparations for the next eclipse a hundred years or so in advance, and head off the worst of the upheaval, the mass insanity, the torchings, the universal devastation.”

“And you believe all this?” Siferra asked. There was the bite of acid in her voice. “That it makes sense to stand back and applaud while the Apostles of Flame spread their poisonous irrational totalitarian creed throughout the world? Or what’s even worse—that we should join forces with them?”

“I hate the idea,” Theremon said suddenly.

Siferra’s eyes widened. “Then why—?”

“Let’s go outside,” he said. “It’s almost dawn. Give me your hand?”