by Isaac Asimov
At last he was able to close his eyes. He knelt for a time, panting, murmuring to himself, fighting to regain control.
Then Theremon staggered to his feet, his throat constricting him to breathlessness, all of the muscles of his body writhing in a tensity of terror and sheer fear beyond bearing. Dimly he was aware of Siferra somewhere near him, but he had to struggle to remember who she was. He had to work at remembering who he was. From below came the sound of a terrible steady pounding, a frightful hammering against the door—some strange wild beast with a thousand heads, struggling to get in—
It didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered.
He was going mad, and knew it, and somewhere deep inside a bit of sanity was screaming, struggling to fight off the hopeless flood of black terror. It was very horrible to go mad and know that you were going mad—to know that in a little minute you would be here physically and yet all the real essence that was you would be dead and drowned in the black madness. For this was the Dark—the Dark and the Cold and the Doom. The bright walls of the universe were shattered and their awful black fragments were falling down to crush and squeeze and obliterate him.
Someone came crawling toward him on hands and knees and jostled up against him. Theremon moved aside. He put his hands to his tortured throat and limped toward the flames of the torches that filled all his mad vision.
“Light!” he screamed.
Athor, somewhere, was crying, whimpering horribly like a terribly frightened child. “Stars—all the Stars—we didn’t know at all. We didn’t know anything. We thought six stars is a universe is something the Stars didn’t notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and we didn’t know we couldn’t know and anything—”
Someone clawed at the torch, and it fell and snuffed out. In that instant the awful splendor of the indifferent Stars leaped nearer to them.
From below came the sound of screams and shouts and breaking glass. The mob, crazed and uncontrollable, had broken into the Observatory.
Theremon looked around. By the awful light of the Stars he saw the dumbstruck figures of the scientists lurching about in horror. He made his way into the corridor. A fierce blast of chilly air coming through an open window struck him, and he stood there, letting it hit his face, laughing a little at the arctic intensity of it.
“Theremon?” a voice called behind him. “Theremon?”
He went on laughing.
“Look,” he said, after a time. “Those are the Stars. This is the Flame.”
On the horizon outside the window, in the direction of Saro City, a crimson glow began growing, strengthening in brightness, that was not the glow of a sun.
The long night had come again.
THREE
DAYBREAK
[28]
The first thing of which Theremon became aware, after a long period of being aware of nothing at all, was that something huge and yellow was hanging over him in the sky.
It was an immense blazing golden ball. There was no way he could look at it for more than a fraction of a second, on account of its brilliance. Searing heat was coming from it in pulsing waves.
He huddled in a crouching position, head downward, and crossed his wrists in front of his eyes to protect himself from that great outpouring of heat and light overhead. What, he wondered, kept it up there? Why didn’t it simply fall?
If it falls, he thought, it will fall on me.
Where can I hide? How can I protect myself?
For a long moment he hunkered down where he was, hardly daring to think. Then, cautiously, he opened his eyes just a slit. The gigantic blazing thing was still there in the sky. It hadn’t moved an inch. It wasn’t going to fall on him.
He began to shiver despite the heat.
The dry, choking smell of smoke came to him. Something was burning, not very far away.
It was the sky, he thought. The sky was burning.
The golden thing is setting fire to the world.
No. No. There was another reason for the smoke. He would remember it in a moment, if only he could clear the haze out of his mind. The golden thing hadn’t caused the fires. It hadn’t even been here when the fires started. It was those other things, those cold glittering white things that filled the sky from end to end—they had done it, they had sent the Flames—
What were they called? The Stars. Yes, he thought.
The Stars.
And he began to remember, just a little, and he shivered again, a deep convulsive quiver. He remembered how it had been when the Stars came out, and his brain had turned to a marble and his lungs refused to pump air and his soul had screamed in the deepest of horror.
But the Stars were gone now. That bright golden thing was in the sky instead.
The bright golden thing?
Onos. That was its name. Onos, the sun. The main sun. One of—one of the six suns. Yes. Theremon smiled. Things were beginning to come back to him now. Onos belonged in the sky. The Stars did not. The sun, the kindly sun, good warm Onos. And Onos had returned. Therefore all was well with the world, even if some of the world seemed to be on fire.
Six suns? Then where were the other five?
He even remembered their names. Dovim, Trey, Patru, Tano, Sitha. And Onos made six. He saw Onos, all right—it was right above him, it seemed to fill half the sky. What about the rest? He stood up, a little shakily, still half afraid of the hot golden thing overhead, wondering now if perhaps he stood up too far he would touch it and be burned by it. No, no, that didn’t make any sense. Onos was good, Onos was kind. He smiled.
Looked around. Any more suns up there?
There was one. Very far off, very small. Not frightening, this one—the way the Stars had been, the way this fiery hot globe overhead was. Just a cheerful white dot in the sky, nothing more. Small enough to put in his pocket, almost, if he could only reach it.
Trey, he thought. That one is Trey. So its sister Patru ought to be somewhere nearby—
Yes. Yes, that’s it. Down there, in the corner of the sky, just to the left of Trey. Unless that one’s Trey, and the other one is Patru.
Well, he told himself, the names don’t matter. Which one is which, unimportant. Together they are Trey and Patru. And the big one is Onos. And the other three suns must be somewhere else right now, because I don’t see them. And my name is—
Theremon.
Yes. That’s right. I’m Theremon.
But there’s a number, too. He stood frowning, thinking about it, his family code, that’s what it was, a number he had known all his life, but what was it? What—was—it?
762.
Yes.
I am Theremon 762.
And then another, more complex thought followed smoothly along: I am Theremon 762 of the Saro City Chronicle.
Somehow that statement made him feel a little better, though it was full of mysteries for him.
Saro City? The Chronicle?
He almost knew what those words meant. Almost. He chanted them to himself. Saro saro saro. City city city. Chronicle chronicle chronicle. Saro City Chronicle.
Perhaps if I walk a little, he decided. He took a hesitant step, another, another. His legs were a little wobbly. Looking around, he realized that he was on a hillside out in the country somewhere. He saw a road, bushes, trees, a lake off to the left. Some of the bushes and trees seemed to have been ripped and broken, with branches dangling at odd angles or lying on the ground below them, as though giants had come trampling through this countryside recently.
Behind him was a huge round-topped building with smoke rising from a hole in its roof. The outside of the building was blackened as if fires had been set all around it, though its stone walls appeared to have withstood the flames well enough. He saw a few people lying scattered on the steps of the building, sprawled like discarded dolls. There were others lying in the bushes, and still others along the path leading down the hill. Some of them were faintly moving. Most were not.
He
looked the other way. On the horizon he saw the towers of a great city. A heavy pall of smoke hung over them, and when he squinted he imagined that he could see tongues of flame coming from the windows of the tallest buildings, although something rational within his mind told him that it was impossible to make out any such detail at so great a distance. That city had to be miles away.
Saro City, he thought suddenly.
Where the Chronicle is published.
Where I work. Where I live.
And I’m Theremon. Yes. Theremon 762. Of the Saro City Chronicle.
He shook his head slowly from side to side, as some wounded animal might have done, trying to clear it of the haze and torpor that infested it. It was maddening, not being able to think properly, not being able to move around freely in the storehouse of his own memories. The brilliant light of the Stars lay like a wall across his mind, cutting him off from his own memories.
But things were beginning to get through. Colored fragments of the past, sharp-edged, shimmering with manic energy, were dancing around and around in his brain. He struggled to make them hold still long enough for him to comprehend them.
The image of a room came to him, then. His room, heaped with papers, magazines, a couple of computer terminals, a box of unanswered mail. Another room: a bed. The small kitchen that he almost never used. This, he thought, is the apartment of Theremon 762, the well-known columnist for the Saro City Chronicle. Theremon himself is not at home at this time, ladies and gentlemen. At the present moment Theremon is standing outside the ruins of the Saro University Observatory, trying to understand—
The ruins—
Saro University Observatory—
“Siferra?” he called. “Siferra, where are you?”
No answer. He wondered who Siferra was. Someone he must have known before the ruins were ruined, probably. The name had come bubbling up out of the depths of his troubled mind.
He took another few uncertain steps. There was a man lying under a bush a short distance downhill. Theremon went to him. His eyes were closed. He held a burned-out torch in his hand. His robe was torn.
Sleeping? Or was he dead? Theremon prodded him carefully with his foot. Yes, dead. That was strange, all these dead people lying around. You didn’t ordinarily see dead people everywhere like this, did you? And an overturned car over there—it looked dead, too, with its undercarriage turned pathetically toward the sky, and curls of smoke rising sluggishly from its interior.
“Siferra?” he called again.
Something terrible had happened. That seemed very clear to him, though hardly anything else did. Once again he crouched, and pressed his hands against the sides of his head. The random fragments of memory that had been jigging around in there were moving more slowly now, no longer engaged in a frantic dance: they had begun to float about in a stately fashion, like icebergs drifting in the Great Southern Ocean. If he could only get some of those drifting fragments to come together—force them into a pattern that made a little sense—
He reviewed what he had already managed to reconstruct. His name. The name of the city. The names of the six suns. The newspaper. His apartment.
Last evening—
The Stars—
Siferra—Beenay—Sheerin—Athor—names—
Abruptly things began to form connections in his mind.
The memory-fragments of his immediate past had finally started to reassemble themselves. But at first nothing yet made real sense, because each little cluster of memories was something independent unto itself, and he was unable to put them into any kind of coherent order. The harder he tried, the more confused everything became again. Once he understood that, he gave up the idea of trying to force anything.
Just relax, Theremon told himself. Let it happen naturally.
He had, he realized, suffered some great wound of the mind. Although he felt no bruises, no lumps on the back of his head, he knew that he must have been injured in some way. All his memories had been cut into a thousand pieces as though by a vengeful sword, and the pieces had been stirred and scattered like the pieces of some baffling puzzle. But he seemed to be healing, moment by moment. Moment by moment, the strength of his mind, the strength of the entity that was Theremon 762 of the Saro City Chronicle, was reasserting itself, putting him back together.
Stay calm. Wait. Let it happen naturally.
He drew in his breath, held it, slowly released it. Breathed in again. Hold, release. Breathe, hold, release. Breathe, hold, release.
In his mind’s eye he saw the interior of the Observatory. Remembering, now. It was evening. Only the little red sun was in the sky—Dovim, that was its name. That tall woman: she was Siferra. And the fat man was Sheerin, and the young slender earnest one, he was Beenay, and the fierce old man with the patriarchal mane of white hair was the great famous astronomer, the head of the Observatory—Ithor? Uthor? Athor, yes. Athor.
And the eclipse was coming. The Darkness. The Stars.
Oh, yes. Yes. It was all flowing together now. The memories returning. The mob outside the Observatory, led by fanatics in black robes: the Apostles of Flame, that’s what they were called. And one of the fanatics had been inside the Observatory. Folimun, his name was. Folimun 66.
He remembered.
The moment of totality. The sudden and complete descent of night. The world entering the Cave of Darkness.
The Stars—
The madness—the screaming—the mob—
Theremon winced at the recollection. The hordes of crazed, frightened people from Saro City breaking down the heavy doors, bursting into the Observatory, trampling each other in their rush to destroy the blasphemous scientific instruments and the blasphemous scientists who denied the reality of the gods—
Now that the memories came flooding back, he almost wished he had not recaptured them. The shock he had felt at the first moment of seeing the brilliant light of the Stars—the pain that had erupted within his skull—the strange horrific bursts of cold energy racing across his field of vision. And then the coming of the mob—that moment of frenzy—the struggle to escape—Siferra beside him, and Beenay nearby, and then the mob surging around them like a river in full spate, separating them, pulling them in opposite directions—
Into his mind came a single last glimpse of old Athor, his eyes bright and glazed with the wildness of utter madness, standing majestically on a chair, furiously ordering the intruders out of his building as though he were not merely the director of the Observatory but its king. And Beenay standing next to him, tugging at Athor’s arm, urging the old man to flee. Then the scene dissolved. He was no longer in the great room. Theremon saw himself swept down a corridor, scrambling for a staircase, looking around for Siferra, for anyone he knew—
The Apostle, the fanatic, Folimun 66, suddenly appearing before him, blocking his way in the midst of the chaos. Laughing, holding out a hand to him in a mocking gesture of false friendship. Then Folimun too had disappeared from sight, and Theremon continued frantically onward, down the spiral stairs, tumbling and stumbling, clambering over people from the city who were wedged so tightly together on the ground floor that they were unable to move. Out the door, somehow. Into the chill of night. Standing bareheaded, shivering, in the Darkness that was Darkness no longer, for everything was illuminated now by the terrible, hideous, unthinkable cold blaze of those thousands of merciless Stars that filled the sky.
There was no hiding from them. Even when you closed your eyes you saw their frightful light. Mere Darkness was nothing, compared with the implacable pressure of that heaven-spanning vault of unthinkable brilliance, a light so bright that it boomed in the sky like thunder.
Theremon remembered that he had felt as though the sky, Stars and all, was about to fall on him. He had knelt and covered his head with his hands, futile though he knew that to be. He remembered, too, the terror all about him, people rushing this way and that, the shrieking, the crying. The fires of the blazing city leaping high on the horizon. And above all e
lse those hammering waves of fear descending from the sky, from the remorseless unforgiving Stars that had invaded the world.
That was all. Everything after that was blank, utterly blank, until the moment of his awakening, when he looked up to see Onos in the sky once more, and began to put back together the shards and slivers of his mind.
I am Theremon 762, he told himself again. I used to live in Saro City and write a column for the newspaper.
There was no Saro City any longer. There was no newspaper.
The world had come to an end. But he still lived, and his sanity, he hoped, was returning.
What now? Where to go?
“Siferra?” he called.
No one answered. Slowly he began to shuffle down the hill once more, past the broken trees, past the burned and overturned cars, past the scattered bodies. If this is what it looks like out here in the country, he thought, what must it be like in the city itself?
My God, he thought again.
All you gods! What have you done to us?
[29]
Sometimes cowardice has its advantages, Sheerin told himself, as he unbolted the door of the storeroom in the Observatory basement where he had spent the time of Darkness. He still felt shaky, but he had no doubt that he was still sane. As sane as he had ever been, at any rate.
It seemed quiet out there. And although the storeroom had no windows, enough light had managed to make its way through a grating high up along one of its walls so that he was fairly confident that morning had come, that the suns were in the sky again. Perhaps the madness had passed by this time. Perhaps it was safe for him to come out.
He poked his nose out into the hallway. Cautiously he looked around.
The smell of smoke was the first thing he perceived. But it was a stale, musty, nasty, damp, acrid kind of smoke-smell, the smell of a fire that has been extinguished. The Observatory was not only a building made of stone, but it had a highly efficient sprinkler system, which must have gone into operation as soon as the mob began setting fires.
