by Isaac Asimov
“The Sanctuary is just a little way down this road,” Siferra said. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m all right,” said Theremon sourly. “They didn’t cripple me, you know.”
But it was a considerable struggle to force his sore, throbbing legs to carry him along. He was intensely gladdened and relieved when at last he found himself at the cave-like entrance to the underground domain that was the Sanctuary.
The place was like a maze. Caverns and corridors led off in all directions. Vaguely in the distance he saw the intricate loops and coils of scientific-looking gear, mysterious and unfathomable, running along the walls and ceiling. This place, he remembered now, had been the site of the university’s atom smasher until the big new experimental lab at Saro Heights opened. Apparently the physicists had left a good deal of obsolete equipment behind.
A tall man appeared, radiating authority.
Siferra said, “This is Altinol 111. Altinol, I want you to meet Theremon 762.”
“Of the Chronicle?” Altinol said. He didn’t sound awed or in any way impressed: he seemed merely to be registering the fact out loud.
“Formerly,” said Theremon.
They eyed each other without warmth. Altinol, Theremon thought, looked to be a very tough cookie indeed: a man in early middle age, obviously trim and in prime condition. He was well dressed in sturdy clothing and carried himself with the air of someone who was accustomed to being obeyed. Theremon, studying him, riffled quickly through the well-stocked files of his memory and after a moment was pleased to strike a chord of recognition.
He said, “Morthaine Industries? That Altinol?”
A momentary flicker of—amusement? Or was it annoyance?—appeared in Altinol’s eyes. “That one, yes.”
“They always said you wanted to be Prime Executive. Well, it looks like you are, now. Of what’s left of Saro City, at least, if not the whole Federal Republic.”
“One thing at a time,” Altinol said. His voice was measured. “First we try to stumble back out of anarchy. Then we think about putting the country together again and worry about who’s going to be Prime Executive. We have the problem of the Apostles, for example, who have seized control of the entire north side of the city and the territory beyond, and placed it under religious authority. They won’t be easy to displace.” Altinol smiled coolly. “First things first, my friend.”
“And for Theremon,” Siferra said, “the first thing is a bath, and then a meal. He’s been living in the forest since Nightfall. —Come with me,” she said to him.
Partitions had been set up all along the old particle-accelerator track, carving it up into a long series of little rooms. Siferra showed him to one in which copper pipes mounted overhead carried water to a porcelain tank. “It won’t be really warm,” she warned him. “We only run the boilers a couple of hours a day, because the fuel supply is so low. But it’s bound to be better than bathing in a chilly forest stream. —You knew something about Altinol?”
“Chairman of Morthaine Industries, the big shipping combine. He was in the news a year or two back, something about wangling a contract by possibly irregular means to develop a huge real-estate tract on government land in Nibro Province.”
“What does a shipping combine have to do with real-estate development?” Siferra asked.
“That’s exactly the point. Nothing at all. He was accused of using improper government influence—something about offering lifetime passes on his cruise line to senators, I think—” Theremon shrugged. “Makes no difference now, really. There’s no more Morthaine Industries, no more real-estate developing to be done, no Federal senators to bribe. He probably didn’t like my recognizing him.”
“He probably didn’t care. Running the Fire Patrol is all that matters to him now.”
“For the time being,” said Theremon. “Today the Saro City Fire Patrol, tomorrow the world. You heard him talking about displacing the Apostles who’ve grabbed the far side of the city. Well, someone’s got to do it. And he’s the kind who enjoys running things.”
Siferra went out. Theremon lowered himself into the porcelain tank.
Not exactly sybaritic. But pretty wonderful, after all he had been through lately. He leaned back and closed his eyes and relaxed. And luxuriated.
Siferra took him to the Sanctuary dining hall, a simple tin-roofed chamber, when he was finished with his bath, and left him there by himself, telling him she had to make her day’s report to Altinol. A meal was waiting for him there—one of the packaged dinners that had been stockpiled here in the months that the Sanctuary was being set up. Lukewarm vegetables, tepid meat of some unknown kind, a pale green non-alcoholic drink of nondescript flavor.
It all tasted wondrously delicious to Theremon.
He forced himself to eat slowly, carefully, knowing that his body was unaccustomed to real food after his time in the forest; every mouthful had to be thoroughly chewed or he’d get sick, he knew, though his instinct was to bolt it as fast as he could and ask for a second helping.
After he had eaten Theremon sat back, staring dully at the ugly tin wall. He wasn’t hungry any more. And his frame of mind was beginning to change for the worse. Despite the bath, despite the meal, despite the comfort of knowing he was safe in this well-defended Sanctuary, he found himself slipping into a mood of the deepest desolation.
He felt very weary. And dispirited, and full of gloom.
It had been a pretty good world, he thought. Not perfect, far from it, but good enough. Most people had been reasonably happy, most were prosperous, there was progress being made on all fronts—toward deeper scientific understanding, toward greater economic expansion, toward stronger global cooperation. The concept of war had come to seem quaintly medieval and the age-old religious bigotries were mostly obsolete, or so it had seemed to him.
And now it was all gone, in one short span of hours, in a single burst of horrifying Darkness.
A new world would be born from the ashes of the old, of course. It was always that way: Siferra’s excavations at Thombo testified to that.
But what sort of world would it be? Theremon wondered. The answer to that was already at hand. It would be a world in which people killed other people for a scrap of meat, or because they had violated a superstition about fire, or simply because killing seemed like a diverting thing to do. A world in which the Altinols came forward to take advantage of the chaos and gain power for themselves. A world in which the Folimuns and Mondiors, no doubt, were scheming to emerge as the dictators of thought—probably working hand in hand with the Altinols, Theremon thought morbidly. A world in which—
No. He shook his head. What was the point of all this dark, brooding lamentation?
Siferra had the right notion, he told himself. There was no sense in speculating about what might have been. What we have to deal with is what is. At least he was alive, and his mind was pretty much whole again, and he had come through his ordeal in the forest more or less intact, aside from a few bruises and cuts that would heal in a couple of days. Despair was a useless emotion now: it was a luxury that he couldn’t allow himself, any more than Siferra would allow herself the luxury of still being angry at him over the newspaper pieces he had written.
What was done was done. Now it was time to pick up and move onward, regroup, rebuild, make a fresh start. To look back was folly. To look forward in dismay or despondency was mere cowardice.
“Finished?” Siferra said, returning to the dining hall. “I know, not magnificent food. But it beats eating graben.”
“I couldn’t say. I never actually got to eat any graben.”
“You probably didn’t miss much. Come: I’ll show you to your room.”
It was a low-ceilinged cubicle of no great elegance: a bed with a godlight on the floor beside it, a washstand, a single dangling light fixture. Scattered in one corner were some books and newspapers that must have been left behind by those who had occupied this room on the evening of the eclipse. Theremon saw a copy of the
Chronicle opened to the page of his column, and winced: it was one of his last pieces, a particularly intemperate onslaught on Athor and his group. He reddened and pushed it out of sight with his foot.
Siferra said, “What are you going to do now, Theremon?”
“Do?”
“I mean, once you’ve had a chance to rest up a little.”
“I haven’t given it much thought. Why?”
“Altinol wants to know if you’re planning to join the Fire Patrol,” she said.
“Is that an invitation?”
“He’s willing to take you aboard. You’re the kind of person that he needs, someone strong, someone capable of dealing with people.”
“Yes,” Theremon said. “I’d be good here, wouldn’t I?”
“But he’s uneasy about one thing. There’s room for only one boss in the Patrol, and that’s Altinol. If you joined up, he’d want you to understand right from the beginning that what Altinol says goes, without any argument. He’s not sure how good you are at taking orders.”
“I’m not so sure how good I am at that either,” Theremon said. “But I can see Altinol’s point of view.”
“Will you join, then? I know there are problems with the whole Patrol setup. But at least it’s a force for order, and we need something like that now. And Altinol may be highhanded, but he’s not evil. I’m convinced of that. He simply thinks the times call for strong measures and decisive leadership. Which he’s capable of supplying.”
“I don’t doubt that he is.”
“Think it over this evening,” Siferra said. “If you want to join, talk to him tomorrow. Be frank with him. He’ll be frank with you, you can be certain of that. So long as you can assure him that you’re not going to be any direct threat to his authority, I’m certain that you and he—”
“No,” Theremon said suddenly.
“No what?”
He was silent for a time. At length he said, “I don’t need to spend the evening thinking about it. I already know what my answer will be.”
Siferra looked at him, waiting.
Theremon said, “I don’t want to butt heads with Altinol. I know the kind of man he is, and I’m very sure that I can’t get along with people like that for any length of time. And I also know that in the short run it may be necessary to have operations like the Fire Patrol, but in the long run they’re a bad thing, and once they’re established and institutionalized it’s very hard to get rid of them. The Altinols of this world don’t give up power voluntarily. Little dictators never do. And I don’t want the knowledge that I helped put him on top hanging around my neck for the rest of my life. Reinventing the feudal system doesn’t strike me as a useful solution for the problems we have now. So it’s no go, Siferra. I’m not going to wear Altinol’s green neckerchief. There isn’t any future for me here.”
Quietly Siferra said, “What are you going to do, then?”
“Sheerin told me that there’s a real provisional government being formed at Amgando Park. University people, maybe some people from the old government, representatives from all over the country coming together down there. As soon as I’m strong enough to travel, I’m going to head for Amgando.”
She regarded him steadily. She made no reply.
Theremon took a deep breath. And said, after a moment, “Come with me to Amgando Park, Siferra.” He reached a hand toward her. Softly he said, “Stay with me this evening, in this miserable little tiny room of mine. And in the morning let’s clear out of here and go down south together. You don’t belong here any more than I do. And we stand five times as much chance of getting to Amgando together than we would if either of us tried to make the journey alone.”
Siferra remained silent. He did not withdraw his hand.
“Well? What do you say?”
Theremon watched the play of conflicting emotions moving across her features. But he did not dare try to interpret them.
Clearly Siferra was struggling with herself. But then, abruptly, the struggle came to an end.
“Yes,” she said at last. “Yes. Let’s do it, Theremon.”
And moved toward him. And took his hand. And switched off the dangling overhead light, though the soft glow of the godlight beside the bed remained.
[38]
“Do you know the name of this neighborhood?” Siferra asked. She stared, numbed, dismayed, at the charred and ghastly landscape of ruined houses and abandoned vehicles that they had entered. It was a little before midday, the third day of their flight from the Sanctuary. The unsparing light of Onos mercilessly illuminated every blackened wall, every shattered window.
Theremon shook his head. “It was called something silly, you can be sure of that. Golden Acres, or Saro Estates, or something like that. But what it was called isn’t important now. This isn’t a neighborhood any more. What we have here used to be real estate, Siferra, but these days what it is is archaeology. One of the Lost Suburbs of Saro.”
They had reached a point well south of the forest, almost to the outskirts of the suburban belt that constituted the southern fringes of Saro City. Beyond lay agricultural zones, small towns, and—somewhere far in the distance, unthinkably far—their goal of Amgando National Park.
The crossing of the forest had taken them two days. They had slept the first evening at Theremon’s old lean-to, and the second one in a thicket halfway up the rugged slope leading to Onos Heights. In all this while they had had no indication that the Fire Patrol was on their trail. Altinol had apparently made no attempt to pursue them, even though they had taken weapons with them and two bulging backpacks of provisions. And surely, Siferra thought, they were beyond his reach by now.
She said, “The Great Southern Highway ought to be somewhere around here, shouldn’t it?”
“Another two or three miles. If we’re lucky there won’t be any fires burning to block us from going forward.”
“We’ll be lucky. Count on it.”
He laughed. “Always the optimist, eh?”
“It doesn’t cost any more than pessimism,” she said. “One way or another, we’ll get through.”
“Right. One way or another.”
They were moving steadily along. Theremon seemed to be making a quick recovery from the beating he had received in the forest, and from his days of virtual starvation. There was an amazing resilience about him. Strong as she was, Siferra had to work hard to keep up with his pace.
She was working hard, too, to keep her own spirits up. From the moment of setting out, she had consistently struck a hopeful note, always confident, always certain that they’d make it safely through to Amgando and that they would find people like themselves already hard at work there at the job of planning the reconstruction of the world.
But inwardly Siferra wasn’t so sure. And the farther she and Theremon went into these once pleasant suburban regions, the more difficult it was to fight back horror, shock, despair, a sense of total defeat.
It was a nightmare world.
There was no escaping the enormity of it. Everywhere you turned you saw destruction.
Look! she thought. Look! The desolation—the scars—the fallen buildings, the walls already overrun by the first weeds, occupied already by the early platoons of lizards. Everywhere the marks of that terrible night when the gods had once more sent their curse against the world. The awful acrid smell of black smoke rising from the remains of fires that the recent rains had extinguished—the other smoke, white and piercing, curling upward out of basements still ablaze—the stains on everything—the bodies in the streets, twisted in their final agonies—the look of madness in the eyes of those few lingering living people who now and then peered out from the remains of their homes—
All glory vanished. All greatness gone. Everything in ruins, everything—as if the ocean had risen, she thought, and swept all our achievements into oblivion.
Siferra was no stranger to ruins. She had spent her whole professional life digging in them. But the ruins she had excavated were an
cient ones, time-mellowed and mysterious and romantic. What she saw here now was all to immediate, all too painful to behold, and there was nothing at all romantic about it. She had been able readily enough to come to terms with the downfall of the lost civilizations of the past: it carried little emotional charge for her. But now it was her own epoch that had been swept into the discard-bin of history, and that was hard to bear.
Why had it happened? she asked herself. Why? Why? Why?
Were we so evil? Had we strayed so far from the path of the gods that we needed to be punished this way?
No.
No!
There are no gods; there was no punishment.
Of that much, Siferra was still certain. She had no doubt that this was simply the working of blind fate, brought about by the impersonal movements of inanimate and uncaring worlds and suns, drawing together every two thousand years in dispassionate coincidence.
That was all. An accident.
An accident that Kalgash had been forced to endure over and over again during its history.
From time to time the Stars would appear in all their frightful majesty; and in a desperate terror-kindled agony, man would unknowingly turn his hand against his own works. Driven mad by the Darkness; driven mad by the ferocious light of the Stars. It was an unending cycle. The ashes of Thombo had told the whole tale. And now it was Thombo all over again. Just as Theremon had said: This place is archaeology now. Exactly.
The world they had known was gone. But we are still here, she thought.
What shall we do? What shall we do?
The only comfort she could find amidst the bleakness was the memory of that first evening with Theremon, in the Sanctuary: so sudden, so unexpected, so wonderful. She kept going back to it in her mind, over and over. His oddly shy smile as he asked her to stay with him—no sly seductive trick, that! And the look in his eyes. And the feel of his hands against her skin—his embrace, his breath mingling with hers—
How long it had been since she had been with a man! She had almost forgotten what it was like—almost. And always, those other times, there had been the uneasy sense of making a mistake, of taking a false path, of committing herself to a journey she should not be taking. It had not been that way with Theremon: simply a dropping of barriers and pretenses and fears, a joyful yielding, an admission, finally, that in this torn and tortured world she must no longer go it alone, that it was necessary to form an alliance, and that Theremon, straightforward and blunt and even a little coarse, strong and determined and dependable, was the ally she needed and wanted.
