Robert Silverberg: A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple

The day was bright, warm, springlike, a splendid day, a day to cherish. But there were ugly dissonances. The Warder heard shouts to his right, to his left—harsh voices everywhere, angry outcries.

“There they are! Get them! Get them!”

Three slender grotesque figures came into view, half again as tall as a man, big-eyed, long-limbed, strange of shape, moving swiftly but with somber dignity, as though they were floating rather than striding, keeping just ahead of their pursuers. The Warder understood that these were the Three in their final moments, that they have been harried and hunted all this lovely day across the sweet meadows of this lush green valley. Now there was nowhere further for them to go, they are trapped in a cul-de-sac against the flank of the mountain, the army of their enemies is closing in and all hope of escape is impossible.

Now the Warder heard savage triumphant screams. Saw reddened, swollen, wrathful faces. Weapons bristling in the air, clubs, truncheons, pitchforks, hatchets. Wild eyes, distended lips, clenched fists furiously shaken.

And on a little mound facing their attackers are the Three, standing close together, offering no resistance, seemingly at peace. They appear perplexed by what is happening, perhaps, or perhaps not—how can he tell? What do their alien expressions mean? But almost certainly they are not angry. Anger is not an emotion that can pertain to them in any way. They have a look about them that seems to indicate that they had expected this. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. A moment of hesitation: the mob suddenly uneasy at the last, frightened, even, uncertain of the risks in what they are doing. Then the hesitation overcome, the people surging forward like a single berserk creature, the flash of steel in the sunlight—

The vision abruptly ended. He was within the stone chamber again. The light was gone. The air about him was dry and stale, not sweet and mild. The tomb was dark and empty.

The Warder felt stunned by what he had seen, and shamed. A sense of almost suicidal guilt overwhelmed him. Blindly he rushed back and forth across the dark room, frenzied, manic, buffeting himself against the unseen walls. Then, exhausted, he paused for a moment to gasp for breath and stared into the darkness at the place where he thought the coffers were situated. He would break through those transparent coverings, he told himself, and snatch up the three strange skulls and carry them out into the bright light of day, and he would call the people together and show them what he had brought forth from the depths of the Earth, brandishing the skulls in their faces, and he would cry out to them, “Here are your gods. This is what you did to them. All your beliefs were founded on a lie.” And then he would hurl himself from the mountain.

No.

He will not. How can he crush their hopes that way? And having done it, what good would his death achieve?

And yet—to allow the lie to endure and persist—

“What am I going to do about you?” the Warder asked the skeletons in their coffers. “What am I going to tell the people?” His voice rose to a wild screech. It echoed and reechoed from the stone walls of the room, reverberating in his throbbing skull. “The people ! The people ! The people !”

“Speak to me!” the Warder cried. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do!”

Silence. Silence. Silence. They would give him no answers.

He laughed at his own helplessness. Then he wept for a time, until his eyes were raw and his throat ached from his sobbing. He fell to his knees once more beside one of the coffers. “Who are you?” he asked, in nothing more than a whisper. “Can you really be Vonubius?”

And this time imagines that he hears a mocking answer: I am who I am. Go in peace, my son.

Peace? Where? How?

At last, a long while later, he began to grow calm once more, and thought that this time he might be able to remain that way. He saw that he was being ridiculous—the old Warder, running to and fro in a stone chamber underground, crying out like a lunatic, praying to gods in whom he didn’t believe, holding conversations with skeletons. Gradually his churning soul moved away from the desperate turbulence into which it had fallen, the manic frenzy, the childish anger. There was no reddish glow, no. His overwrought mind had conjured up some tormented fantasy for him. Darkness still prevailed in the chamber. He was unable to see a thing. Before him, he knew, were three ancient stone boxes containing age-old dry bones, the earthly remains of unearthly creatures long dead.

He was calm, yes. But there seemed no way even now to hide from his despair. These relics, he knew, called his whole life into question. The whole ugly truth of it stood unanswerably revealed. He had served a false creed, knowingly offering people the empty hope that they would be redeemed by benevolent gods. Night after night standing up there on the portico, invoking the Three, praying for their swift return to this troubled planet. Whereas in truth they had never left Earth at all. Had perished, in fact, at the hands of the very people they had come here—so he supposed—to redeem.

What now? the Warder asked himself. Reveal the truth? Display the bodies of the Three to the dismayed, astounded faithful, as he had imagined himself doing just a short time ago? Would he do any such thing? Could he? Your beliefs were founded on a lie , he pictured himself telling them. How could he do that? But it was the truth. Small wonder that I lost my own faith long ago, he thought. He had known the truth before he ever knew he knew it. It was the truth that he had sworn to serve, first and always. Was that not so? But there was so much that he did not understand—could not understand, perhaps.

He looked in the direction of the skeletons, and a host of new questions formed in his mind.

“Why did you want to come to us?” he asked, not angrily now, but in a curious tranquility of spirit. “Why did you choose to serve us as you did? Why did you allow us to destroy you, since surely it was in your power to prevent it?”

Powerful questions. The Warder had no answers to them. But yet who knew what miracles might grow from the asking of them. Yes. Yes. Miracles! True faiths can arise from the ruined fragments of false ones, was that not so?

He was so very tired. It had been such a long night.

Gradually he slipped downward until he was lying completely prone, face pillowed in his arms. It seemed to him that the gentle light of morning was entering the chamber, that the long vigil was over at last. How could that be, light reaching him underground? He chose not to pursue the question. He lay quietly, waiting. And then he heard footsteps. Mericalis was returning. The night was over indeed.

“Diriente? Diriente, are you all right?”

“Help me up,” the Warder says. “I’m not accustomed to spending my nights lying on stone floors.”

The custodian flashes his torch around the room as if he expects it to have changed in some fashion since he last saw it.

“Well?” he says, finally.

“Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

“You’re all right?”

“Yes, yes, I’m all right!”

“I was very worried. I know you said you wanted to be alone, but I couldn’t help thinking—”

“Thinking can be very dangerous,” says the Warder coolly. “I don’t recommend it.”

“I want to tell you, Diriente, that I’ve decided that what I suggested last night is the best idea. The evidence in this room could blow the Church to pieces. We ought to seal the place up and forget we ever were in here.”

“No,” says the Warder.

“We aren’t required to reveal what we’ve found to anybody. My job is simply to keep the temple building from falling down. Yours is to perform the rituals of the faith.”