Nightfall (16 page)

“And the crosshatch settlement—how old is that?”

“Orthodox archaeological belief has been that the fragmentary crosshatch structures we’ve found here and there on the Sagikan Peninsula are only a few generations older than the Beklimot Major site. After the Thombo excavation, I don’t think so. My guess is that the crosshatch settlement on that hill is two thousand years older than the cyclopean buildings on top of it.”

“Two
thousand
—? And you say there are other settlements below that one?”

“Look at the chart,” Siferra said. “Here’s number three—a kind of architecture we’ve never seen before, nothing at all like crosshatch work. Then another burn line. Settlement number four. And a burn line. Number five. A burn line. Then numbers six, seven, eight, and nine—or, if Balik’s reading is correct, just numbers six and seven.”

“And each one destroyed by a great fire! That seems pretty remarkable to me. A deadly cycle of destruction, striking again and again and again in the same place.”

“The remarkable thing,” said Siferra in a curiously somber tone, “is that each of these settlements appears to have flourished for approximately the same length of time before being destroyed by fire. The layers of occupation are quite extraordinarily similar in thickness. We’re still waiting for the lab reports, you understand. But I don’t think my eyeball estimate is very far off. And Balik’s figures are the same as mine. Unless we’re completely mistaken, we’re looking at a minimum of fourteen thousand years of prehistory in the Hill of Thombo. And during those fourteen thousand years the hill was periodically swept by massive fires that forced its abandonment with clockwork regularity—one fire every two thousand years, just about exactly!”

“What?”

A shiver traveled along Beenay’s spine. His mind was beginning to leap to all manner of improbable and disturbing conclusions.

“Wait,” Siferra said. “There’s more.”

She opened a drawer and took out a stack of glossy photographs.

“These are pictures of the Thombo tablets. Mudrin 505 has the originals—the paleographer, you know. He’s been trying to decipher them. They’re made of baked clay. We found these three in Level Three, and these in Level Five. They’re both written in extremely primitive scripts, and the writing on the older ones is so ancient that Mudrin can’t even make a start on them. But he’s been able very tentatively to puzzle out a couple of dozen words from the Level Three tablets, which are written in an early form of the Beklimot script. So far as he can tell at this point, they’re an account of the destruction of a city by
fire—the work of angry gods who periodically find it necessary to punish mankind for wickedness.”

“Periodically?”

“That’s right. Does it begin to sound familiar?”

“The Apostles of Flame! My God, Siferra, what have you stumbled on here?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking myself since Mudrin brought me the first sketchy translations.” The archaeologist swung around to face Beenay, and for the first time Beenay saw how bleary her eyes were, how tense and drawn her face. She looked almost distraught. “Do you see now why I asked you to come here? I can’t talk about this with anyone in the department. Beenay, what am I going to do? If any of this becomes public, Mondior 71 and his whole crazy crew will proclaim it from the rooftops that I’ve discovered firm archaeological proof of their crackpot theories!”

“You think so?”

“What else?” Siferra tapped the charts. “Here’s evidence of repeated fiery destruction at two-thousand-year intervals, roughly, over a period of many thousands of years. And these tablets—the way it looks now, they might actually be some sort of prehistoric version of the Book of Revelations. Taken together, they provide, if not actual confirmation of the rantings of the Apostles, then at least a solid rational underpinning for their whole mythology.”

“But repeated fires at a single site don’t prove that there was worldwide devastation,” Beenay objected.

“It’s the periodicity that worries me,” said Siferra. “It’s too neat, and too close to what Mondior’s been saying. I’ve been looking at the Book of Revelations. The Sagikan Peninsula is a holy place to the Apostles, did you know that? The sacred site where the gods formerly made themselves visible to humanity, so they say. And therefore it stands to reason—listen to me, it stands to
reason
,” she said, laughing bitterly—“that the gods would preserve Sagikan as a warning to mankind of the doom that will come again and again if we don’t alter our wicked ways.”

Beenay stared at her, stunned.

He knew very little about the Apostles and their teachings, really. Such pathological fantasizing had never held any interest
for him, and he had been too busy with his scientific work to pay heed to Mondior’s windy apocalyptic prophecies.

But now the memory of the conversation he had had some weeks before with Theremon 762 at the Six Suns Club burst with furious impact into bis consciousness.
“… won’t be the first time the world has been destroyed … the gods have deliberately made mankind imperfect and given us a single year—one of their divine years, not one of our little ones—in which to shape up. That’s called a Year of Godliness, and it’s exactly two thousand and forty-nine of our years long.”

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 flames.… 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 two-thousand-and-forty-nine-year cycle, actually, and this is the two-thousand-and-forty-eighth 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 was barely 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!”

At this hour the Observatory was practically deserted. No one was there but Faro and Thilanda. To Beenay’s relief, Athor 77 was nowhere to be seen. Good, Beenay thought. The old man was exhausted enough from the effort he had devoted to working out the Kalgash Two concept. He didn’t need more stress loaded upon him this evening.

And it would be just fine, having only Faro and Thilanda here. Faro had exactly the kind of quick, untrammeled mind
that Beenay needed right now. And Thilanda, who had spent so many years scanning the empty spaces of the heavens with her telescope and camera, might be able to fill in some of the conceptual material Beenay would require.

Thilanda said at once, “I’ve been developing plates all day, Beenay. But it’s no go. I’d stake my life on it: there’s nothing up there in the sky except the six suns. You don’t think the great man’s finally gone around the bend, do you?”

“I think his mind is as sharp as ever.”

“But these photos—” Thilanda said. “I’ve been running a random scan of every quadrant of the universe for days now. The program’s all-inclusive. Snap, move down a couple of degrees, snap, move, snap. Methodically sweeping the entire sky. And look at what I’m getting, Beenay. A bunch of pictures of nothing at all!”

“If the unknown satellite is invisible, Thilanda, then it can’t be seen. It’s as simple as that.”

“Invisible to the naked eye, maybe. But the camera ought to be able to—”

“Listen, never mind that now. I need some help from you two, purely theoretical stuff. Related to Athor’s new theory.”

“But if the unknown satellite’s nothing but pie in the sky—” Thilanda protested.

“Invisible pie might still be real pie,” Beenay snapped. “And we won’t like it when it comes hurtling out of nowhere and hits us in the face. Will you help me or won’t you?”

“Well—”

“Good. What I want you to do is prepare computer projections of the movements of all six suns covering a period of forty-two hundred years.”

Thilanda gaped incredulously. “
Four thousand two hundred
, is that what you said, Beenay?”

“I know that you don’t remotely have records of stellar movements over any such span. But I said computer projections, Thilanda. You’ve got at least a hundred years of reliable records, right?”

“More than that.”

“Even better. Set them up and project them backward and forward in time. Have the computer tell you what every daily combination of the six suns was for the last twenty-one centuries,
and for the twenty-one centuries to come. If you can’t do it, I’m sure Faro will be glad to help you write the program.”

“I think I can manage it,” said Thilanda in a glacial tone. “And would you mind telling me what this is all about? Are we going into the almanac business now? Even the almanac is content to settle for just the next few years of solar data. So what are you up to?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Beenay said. “That’s a promise.”

He left her fuming at her desk and walked across the Observatory to Athor’s work area, where he took a seat in front of the three computer screens on which Athor had calculated the Kalgash Two theory. For a long moment Beenay stared thoughtfully at the center screen, showing the orbit of Kalgash as perturbed by the hypothetical Kalgash Two.

Then he touched a key and the proposed orbital line of Kalgash Two became visible in bright green, a huge eccentric ellipse splayed out across Kalgash’s own more compact and nearly circular orbit. He studied it for a while; then he hit the keys that would bring the suns onto the screen, and peered broodingly at them for perhaps an hour, summoning them in all their varying configurations, now Onos in the sky with Tano and Sitha. Onos with Trey and Patru, Onos and Dovim with Trey and Patru, Dovim with Trey and Patru, Dovim with Tano and Sitha, Patru and Trey alone—