Nemesis (55 page)

No. No. No. No. Idiocy! Claptrap! Hysterical folly!

There was more.
“Again and again, when the Year of Godliness has ended, the gods have discovered that we’re still wicked and sinful, and so they have destroyed the world by sending down heavenly
flame …
So say the Apostles, anyway.”

No! No!

“Beenay?” Siferra said. “Are you all right?”

“Just thinking,” he told her. “By Darkness, it’s true! You’d give the Apostles complete confirmation!”

“Not necessarily. It would still be possible for people who are capable of thinking clearly to reject Mondior’s ideas. The destruction of Thombo by fire—even the
repeated
destruction of Thombo at apparently regular intervals of approximately two thousand years—doesn’t in any way prove that the whole world was destroyed by fire. Or that some such great fire must inevitably come again. Why should the past necessarily be recapitulated in the future? But people who are capable of thinking clearly are in a minority, of course. The rest of them will be swayed by Mondior’s use of my findings and go into an immediate panic. You know, don’t you, that the Apostles claim the next great world-destroying fire is due to strike us next year?”

“Yes,” Beenay said hoarsely. “Theremon tells me that they’ve pinpointed the exact day. It’s a 2,049-year cycle, actually, and this is the 2,048th year, and in something like eleven or twelve more months, if you believe Mondior, the sky will turn black and fire will descend on us. I think the nineteenth of Theptar is when it’s supposed to happen.”

“Theremon? The newspaperman?”

“Yes. He’s a friend of mine, actually. He’s interested in the whole Apostles thing and he’s been interviewing
one of their high priests, or whatever. Theremon told me—”

Siferra’s hand shot out and caught Beenay’s arm, her fingers digging in with astonishing force.

“You’ve got to promise me you won’t say a word about any of this to him, Beenay!”

“To Theremon? No, of course not! You haven’t published your findings yet. It wouldn’t be proper for me to say anything to anybody! —But of course he’s a very honorable man.”

Her iron grip relaxed, but only a little.

“Sometimes things get said between friends, off the record—but you know, Beenay, there’s no such thing as ‘off the record’ when you’re talking to someone like Theremon. If he sees a reason to use it, he’ll use it, no matter what he may have promised you. Or however ‘honorable’ you like to think he is.”

“Well—perhaps—”

“Trust me. And if Theremon were to find out what I’ve come up with here, you can bet your ears it’ll be all over the
Chronicle
half a day later. That would ruin me professionally, Beenay. It would be all I need, to become known as the scientist who provided the Apostles with proof of their absurd claims. The Apostles are totally repugnant to me, Beenay. I don’t want to offer them any sort of aid and comfort, and I certainly don’t want to seem to be publicly espousing their crackpot ideas.”

“Don’t worry,” Beenay said. “I won’t breathe a word.”

“You mustn’t. As I say, it would wreck me. I’ve come back to the university to have my research grant renewed. My Thombo findings are already stirring up controversy in the department, because they challenge the established view of Beklimot as the oldest urban center. But if Theremon somehow manages to wrap the Apostles of Flame around my neck on top of everything else—”

But Beenay barely was listening. He was sympathetic
to Siferra’s problem, and certainly he would do nothing to cause difficulties for her. Theremon would hear not one word about her research from him.

His mind had moved on, though, to other things, vastly troublesome things. Phrases out of Theremon’s account of the teachings of the Apostles continued to churn in his memory.

“—In something like fourteen months, the suns will all disappear—”

“—the Stars will shoot flame down out of a black sky—”

—“the exact time of the catastrophe can be calculated scientifically—”

“—a black sky—”

“—the suns will all disappear—”

“Darkness!” Beenay muttered harshly. “Can it be possible?”

Siferra had gone on talking. At his outburst she halted in mid-sentence.

“You aren’t paying attention to me, Beenay!”

“I—what? Oh. Oh. Yes, of course I’m paying attention! You were saying that I mustn’t let Theremon know anything about this, because it would harm your reputation, and—and—Listen, Siferra, do you think we could continue discussing this some other time? This evening, or tomorrow afternoon, or whenever? I’ve got to get over to the observatory right away.”

“Don’t let me detain you, then,” she said coldly.

“No. I don’t mean it that way. What you’ve been telling me is of the most colossal interest to me—and importance, tremendous importance, more than I can even say at this point. But I’ve got to check something. Something with a direct bearing on everything we’ve been discussing.”

She gave him a close look. “Your face is flushed. Your eyes are wild, Beenay. You seem so strange all of a sudden. Your mind’s a million miles away. What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he said, halfway out the door. “Later! I promise you!”

The Science Fiction Writers of America award the title Grand Master only to those very few authors whose works over time have proved to be major contributions to the literature of the field. For his vast body of work in both short story and novel form, Isaac Asimov was named a Grand Master in 1987. Now two of his finest works—
The Gods Themselves
and
The End of Eternity
—are available in Bantam Spectra editions
.

In 1972 Isaac Asimov published
The Gods Themselves,
a brilliant story of human/alien interaction that went on to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel of the year. Here is an excerpt from this classic story:

Odeen was moderately aware that Dua was off on the surface. Without really thinking about it, he could judge her direction and even something of her distance. If he had stopped to think of it, he might have felt displeasure, for this inter-awareness sense had been steadily deadening for a long time now and, without really being certain why, he had a sense of gathering fulfillment about it. It was the way things were supposed to be; the sign of the continuing development of the body with age.

Tritt’s inter-awareness sense did not decrease, but it shifted more and more toward the children. That was clearly the line of useful development, but then the role of the Parental was a simple one, in a manner of speaking, however important. The Rational was far more complex and Odeen took a bleak satisfaction in that thought.

Of course, it was Dua who was the real puzzle. She was so unlike all the other Emotionals. That puzzled and frustrated Tritt and reduced him to even more pronounced inarticulacy. It puzzled and frustrated Odeen at times, too, but he was also aware of Dua’s infinite capacity to induce satisfaction with life and it did not seem likely that one was independent of the other. The occasional exasperation she produced was a small price to pay for the intense happiness.

And maybe Dua’s odd way of life was part of what ought to be, too. The Hard Ones seemed interested in her and ordinarily they paid attention only to Rationals.
He felt pride in that; so much the better for the triad that even the Emotional was worth attention.

He grew distantly aware of Dua again, and deliberately dulled the sense. At the moment, he felt no need for her. It was not that he wanted her less, but merely that he had increasing drives elsewhere. It was part of the growing maturity of a Rational to find more and more satisfaction in the exercise of a mind that could only be practiced alone, and with the Hard Ones.

He grew constantly more accustomed to the Hard Ones; constantly more attached to them. He felt that was right and proper, too, for he was a Rational and in a way the Hard Ones were super-Rationals. (He had once said that to Losten, the friendliest of the Hard Ones and, it seemed to Odeen in some vague way, the youngest. Losten had radiated amusement but had said nothing. And that meant he had not denied it, however.) …

Tritt was conscious of his blockiness. He didn’t think it ugly. He didn’t think about it at all. If he did, he would consider it beautiful. His body was designed for a purpose and designed well.

He said, “Odeen, where is Dua?”

“Outside somewhere,” mumbled Odeen, almost as though he didn’t care. It annoyed Tritt to have the triad made so little of. Dua was so difficult and Odeen didn’t care.

“Why do you let her go?”

“How can I stop her, Tritt? And what harm does it do?”

“You know the harm. We have two babies. We need a third. It is so hard to make a little-mid these days. Dua must be well fed for it to be made. Now she is wandering about at Sunset again. How can she feed properly at Sunset?”

“She’s just not a great feeder.”

“And we just don’t have a little-mid. Odeen,” Tritt’s voice was caressing, “how can I love you properly without Dua?”

“Now, then,” mumbled Odeen, and Tritt felt himself once more puzzled by the other’s clear embarrassment at the simplest statement of fact.

Tritt knew he didn’t have the trick of talking in big, elaborate sentences. But if Parentals didn’t talk, they thought. They thought about important things. Odeen always talked about atoms and energy. Who cared about atoms and energy? Tritt thought about the triad and the babies.

Odeen had once told him that the numbers of Soft Ones were gradually growing fewer. Didn’t he care? Didn’t the Hard Ones care? Did anyone care but the Parentals?

Only two forms of life on all the world, the Soft Ones and the Hard Ones. And food shining down on them.

Odeen had once told him the Sun was cooling off. There was less food, he said, so there were less people. Tritt didn’t believe it. The Sun felt no cooler than it had when he was a baby. It was just that people weren’t worrying about the triads any more. Too many absorbed Rationals; too many silly Emotionals.

What the Soft Ones must do was concentrate on the important things of life. Tritt did. He tended to the business of the triad. The baby-left came, then the baby-right. They were growing and flourishing. They had to have a baby-mid, though. That was the hardest to get started and without a baby-mid there would be no new triad.

What made Dua as she was? She had always been difficult, but she was growing worse.…

Dua was aware of the left-right agitation concerning her in a dim and faraway manner and her rebelliousness grew.

If one or the other, or both, came to get her, it would end in a melting and she raged against the thought. It was all Tritt knew, except for the children; all Tritt wanted, except for the third and last child; and it was all involved with the children and the still missing child. And when Tritt wanted a melting, he got it.

Tritt dominated the triad when he grew stubborn. He would hold on to some simple idea and never let go and in the end Odeen and Dua would have to give in. Yet now she wouldn’t give in; she
wouldn’t—

She didn’t feel disloyal at the thought, either. She never expected to feel for either Odeen or Tritt the sheer intensity of longing they felt for each other. She could melt alone; they could melt only through her mediation (so why didn’t that make her the more regarded). She felt intense pleasure at the three-way melting; of course she did, it would be stupid to deny it; but it was a pleasure akin to that which she felt when she passed through a rock wall, as she sometimes secretly did. To Tritt and Odeen, the pleasure was like nothing else they had ever experienced or could ever experience.

No, wait. Odeen had the pleasure of learning, of what he called intellectual development. Dua felt some of that at times, enough to know what it might mean; and though it was different from melting, it might serve as a substitute, at least to the point where Odeen could do without melting sometimes.

But not so Tritt. For him there was only melting and the children. Only. And when his small mind bent entirely upon that, Odeen would give in, and then Dua would have to.

Occasionally she tried to swarm with other Emotionals and to withstand the chatter and the crowding. After all, she did occasionally feel like a more substantial meal than she usually got and it did make for better melting. There was a joy—sometimes she almost caught the pleasure the others got out of it—
in slithering and maneuvering for exposure to Sunlight; in the luxurious contraction and condensation to absorb the warmth through greater thickness with greater efficiency.

Yet she feared that self-generating desire. It was different when the desire came through the hectic combined stimulation of left-ling and right-ling. It was the self-generation that meant she would be ripe to bring about the initiation of a little-mid. And—and she didn’t want to!

It was a long time before she would admit the truth to herself. She didn’t want to initiate an Emotional! It was after the three children were all born that the time would inevitably come to pass on, and she didn’t want to. She remembered the day her Parental had left her forever, and it was never going to be like that for her. Of that she was fiercely determined.