by Jerry eBooks
“What is there in Darkness to drive me mad?”
Sheerin smiled to himself as he spun the empty liquor bottle with abstracted motions of his hand. “Have you ever experienced Darkness, young man?”
The newsman leaned against the wall and considered. “No. Can’t say I have. But I know what it is. Just—uh—” He made vague motions with his fingers, and then brightened. “Just no light. Like in caves.”
“Have you ever been in a cave?”
“In a cave! Of course not!”
“I thought not. I tried last week—just to see—but I got out in a hurry. I went in until the mouth of the cave was just visible as a blur of light, with black everywhere else. I never thought a person my weight could run that fast.”
Theremon’s lip curled. “Well, if it comes to that, I guess I wouldn’t have run, if I had been there.”
The psychologist studied the young man with an annoyed frown.
“My, don’t you talk big! I dare you to draw the curtain.”
Theremon looked his surprise and said, “What for? If we had four or five suns out there we might want to cut the light down a bit for comfort, but now we haven’t enough light as it is.”
“That’s the point. Just draw the curtain; then come here and sit down.”
“All right.” Theremon reached for the tasseled string and jerked. The red curtain slid across the wide window, the brass rings hissing their way along the crossbar, and a dusk-red shadow clamped down on the room.
THEREMON’s footsteps sounded hollowly in the silence as he made his way to the table, and then they stopped halfway. “I can’t see you, sir,” he whispered.
“Feel your way,” ordered Sheerin in a strained voice.
“But I can’t see you, sir.” The newsman was breathing harshly. “I can’t see anything.”
“What did you expect?” came the grim reply. “Come here and sit down!”
The footsteps sounded again, waveringly, approaching slowly. There was the sound of someone fumbling with a chair. Theremon’s voice came thinly, “Here I am. I feel . . . ulp . . . all right.”
“You like it, do you?”
“N-no. It’s pretty awful. The walls seem to be—” He paused. “They seem to be closing in on me. I keep wanting to push them away. But I’m not going mad! In fact, the feeling isn’t as bad as it was.”
“All right. Draw the curtain back again.”
There were cautious footsteps through the dark, the rustle of Theremon’s body against the curtain as he felt for the tassel, and then the triumphant ro-o-o-osh of the curtain slithering back. Red light flooded the room, and with a cry of joy Theremon looked up at the sun.
Sheerin wiped the moistness off his forehead with the back of a hand and said shakily, “And that was just a dark room.”
“It can be stood,” said Theremon lightly.
“Yes, a dark room can. But were you at the Jonglor Centennial Exposition two years ago?”
“No, it so happens I never got around to it. Six thousand miles was just a bit too much to travel, even for the exposition.”
“Well, I was there. You remember hearing about the ‘Tunnel of Mystery’ that broke all records in the amusement area—for the first month or so, anyway?”
“Yes. Wasn’t there some fuss about it?”
“Very little. It was hushed up. You see, that Tunnel of Mystery was just a mile-long tunnel—with no lights. You got into a little open car and jolted along through Darkness for fifteen minutes. It was very popular—while it lasted.”
“Popular?”
“Certainly. There’s a fascination in being frightened when it’s pa it of a game. A baby is born with three instinctive fears: of loud noises, of falling, and of the absence of light. That’s why it’s considered so funny to jump at someone and shout ‘Boo!’ That’s why it’s such fun to ride a roller coaster. And that’s why that Tunnel of Mystery started cleaning up. People came out of that Darkness shaking, breathless, half dead with fear, but they kept on paying to get in.”
“Wait a while, I remember now. Some people came out dead, didn’t they? There were rumors of that after it shut down.”
The psychologist snorted. “Bah! Two or three died. That was nothing! They paid off the families of the dead ones and argued the Jonglor City Council into forgetting it. After all, they said, if people with weak hearts want to go through the tunnel, it was at their own risk—and besides, it wouldn’t happen again. So they put a doctor in the front office and had every customer go through a physical examination before getting into the car. That actually boosted ticket sales.”
“Well, then?”
“But, you see, there was something else. People sometimes came out in perfect order, except that they refused to go into buildings—any buildings; including palaces, mansions, apartment houses, tenements, cottages, huts, shacks, lean-tos, and tents.”
Theremon looked shocked. “You mean they refused to come in out of the open. Where’d they sleep?”
“In the open.”
“They should have forced them inside.”
“Oh, they did, they did. Whereupon these people went into violent hysterics and did their best to bat their brains out against the nearest wall. Once you got them inside, you couldn’t keep them there without a strait jacket and a shot of morphine.”
“They must have been crazy.”
“Which is exactly what they were. One person out of every ten who went into that tunnel came out that way. They called in the psychologists, and we did the only thing possible. We closed down the exhibit.” He spread his hands.
“What was the matter with these people?” asked Theremon finally.
“Essentially the same thing that was the matter with you when you thought the walls of the room were crushing in on you in the dark. There is a psychological term for mankind’s instinctive fear of the absence of light. We call it ‘claustrophobia,’ because the lack of light is always tied up with inclosed places, so that fear of one is fear of the other. You see?”
“And those people of the tunnel?”
“Those people of the tunnel consisted of those unfortunates whose mentality did not quite possess the resiliency to overcome the claustrophobia that overtook them in the Darkness. Fifteen minutes without light is a long time; you only had two or three minutes, and I believe you were fairly upset.
“The people of the tunnel had what is called a ‘claustrophobic fixation.’ Their latent fear of Darkness and inclosed places had crystallized and become active, and, as far as we can tell, permanent. That’s what fifteen minutes in the dark will do.”
THERE WAS a long silence, and Theremon’s forehead wrinkled slowly into a frown. “I don’t believe it’s that bad.”
“You mean you don’t want to believe,” snapped Sheerin. “You’re afraid to believe. Look out the window!”
Theremon did so, and the psychologist continued without pausing, “Imagine Darkness—everywhere. No light, as far as you can see. The houses, the trees, the fields, the earth, the sky—black! And Stars thrown in, for all I know—whatever they are. Can you conceive it?”
“Yes, I can,” declared Theremon truculently.
And Sheerin slammed his fist down upon the table in sudden passion. “You lie! You can’t conceive that. Your brain wasn’t built for the conception any more than it was built for the conception of infinity or of eternity. You can only talk about it. A fraction of the reality upsets you, and when the real thing comes, your brain is going to be presented with a phenomenon outside its limits of comprehension. You will go mad, completely and permanently! There is no question of it!”
He added sadly, “And another couple of millenniums of painful struggle comes to nothing. Tomorrow there won’t be a city standing unharmed in all Lagash.”
Theremon recovered part of his mental equilibrium. “That doesn’t follow. I still don’t see that I can go loony just because there isn’t a Sun in the sky—but even if I did, and everyone else did, how does that harm the cit
ies? Are we going to blow them down?”
But Sheerin was angry, too. “If you were in Darkness, what would you want more than anything else; what would it be that every instinct would call for? Light, damn you, light!”
“Well?”
“And how would you get light?”
“I don’t know,” said Theremon flatly.
“What’s the only way to get light, short of the sun?”
“How should I know?”
They were standing face to face and nose to nose.
Sheerin said, “You bum something, mister. Ever see a forest fire? Ever go camping and cook a stew over a wood fire? Heat isn’t the only thing burning wood gives off, you know. It gives off light, and people know that. And when it’s dark they want light, and they’re going to get it.”
“So they burn wood?”
“So they bum whatever they can get. They’ve got to have light. They’ve got to bum something, and wood isn’t handy—so they’ll burn whatever is nearest. They’ll have their light—and every center of habitation goes up in flames!”
Eyes held each other as though the whole matter were a personal affair of respective will powers, and then Theremon broke away wordlessly. His breathing was harsh and ragged, and he scarcely noted the sudden hubbub that came from the adjoining room behind the closed door.
Sheerin spoke, and it was with an effort that he made it sound matter-of-fact. “I think I heard Yimot’s voice. He and Faro are probably back. Let’s go in and see what kept them.”
“Might as well!” muttered Theremon. He drew a long breath and seemed to shake himself. The tension was broken.
THE ROOM was in an uproar, with members of the staff clustering about two young men who were removing outer garments even as they parried the miscellany of questions being thrown at them.
Aton bustled through the crowd and faced the newcomers angrily. “Do you realize that it’s less than half an hour before deadline? Where have you two been?”
Faro 24 seated himself and rubbed his hands. His cheeks were red with the outdoor chill. “Yimot and I have just finished carrying through a little crazy experiment of our own. We’ve been trying to see if we couldn’t construct an arrangement by which we could simulate the appearance of Darkness and Stars so as to get an advance notion as to how it looked.”
There was a confused murmur from the listeners, and a sudden look of interest entered Aton’s eyes. “There wasn’t anything said of this before. How did you go about it?”
“Well,” said Faro, “the idea came to Yimot and myself long ago, and we’ve been working it out in our spare time. Yimot knew of a low one-story house down in the city with a domed roof—it had once been used as a museum, I think. Anyway, we bought it—”
“Where did you get the money?” interrupted Aton peremptorily. “Our bank accounts,” grunted Yimot 70. “It cost two thousand credits.” Then, defensively, “Well, what of it? Tomorrow, two thousand credits will be two thousand pieces of paper. That’s all.”
“Sure,” agreed Faro. “We bought the place and rigged it up with black velvet from top to bottom so as to get as perfect a Darkness as possible. Then we punched tiny holes in the ceiling and through the roof and covered them with little metal caps, all of which could be shoved aside simultaneously at the close of a switch. At least, we didn’t do that part ourselves; we got a carpenter and an electrician and some others—money didn’t count. The point was that we could get the light to shine through those holes in the roof, so that we could get a star-like effect.”
Not a breath was drawn during the pause that followed. Aton said stiffly:
“You had no right to make a private—”
Faro seemed abashed. “I know, sir—but, frankly, Yimot and I thought the experiment was a little dangerous. If the effect really worked, we half expected to go mad—from what Sheerin says about all this, we thought that would be rather likely. We wanted to take the risk ourselves. Of course, if we found we could retain sanity, it occurred to us that we might develop immunity to the real thing, and then expose the rest of you to the same thing. But things didn’t work out at all—”
“Why, what happened?”
It was Yimot who answered. “We shut ourselves in and allowed our eyes to get accustomed to the dark. It’s an extremely creepy feeling because the total Darkness makes you feel as if the walls and ceiling are crushing in on you. But we got over that and pulled the switch. The caps fell away and the roof glittered all over with little dots of light—”
“Well?”
“Well—nothing. That was the whacky part of it. Nothing happened. It was just a roof with holes in it, and that’s just what it looked like. We tried it over and over again—that’s what kept us so late—but there just isn’t any effect at all.”
There followed a shocked silence, and all eyes turned to Sheerin, who sat motionless, mouth open.
Theremon was the first to speak. “You know what this does to this whole theory you’ve built up, Sheerin, don’t you?” He was grinning with relief.
But Sheerin raised his hand. “Now wait a while. Just let me think this through.” And then he snapped his fingers, and when he lifted his head there was neither surprise nor uncertainty in his eyes. “Of course—”
He never finished. From somewhere up above there sounded a sharp clang, and Beenay, starting to his feet, dashed up the stairs with a “What the devil!”
The rest followed after.
THINGS happened quickly. Once up in the dome, Beenay cast one horrified glance at the shattered photographic plates and at the man bending over them; and then hurled himself fiercely at the intruder, getting a death grip on his throat. There was a wild threshing, and as others of the staff joined in, the stranger was swallowed up and smothered under the weight of half a dozen angry men.
Aton came up last, breathing heavily. “Let him up!”
There was a reluctant unscrambling and the stranger, panting harshly, with his clothes tom and his forehead bruised, was hauled to his feet. He had a short yellow beard curled elaborately in the style affected by the Cultists.
Beenay shifted his hold to a collar grip and shook the man savagely. “All right, rat, what’s the idea? These plates—”
“I wasn’t after them,” retorted the Cultist coldly. “That was an accident.”
Beenay followed his glowering stare and snarled, “I see. You were after the cameras themselves. The accident with the plates was a stroke of luck for you, then. If you had touched Snapping Bertha or any of the others, you would have died by slow torture. As it is—” He drew his fist back.
Aton grabbed his sleeve. “Stop that! Let him go!”
The young technician wavered, and his arm dropped reluctantly. Aton pushed him aside and confronted the Cultist. “You’re Latimer, aren’t you?”
The Cultist bowed stiffly and indicated the symbol upon his hip. “I am Latimer 25, adjutant of the third class to his serenity, Sor 5.”
“And”—Aton’s white eyebrows lifted—“you were with his serenity when he visited me last week, weren’t you?”
Latimer bowed a second time.
“Now, then, what do you want?”
“Nothing that you would give me of your own free will.”
“Sor 5 sent you, I suppose—or is this your own idea?”
“I won’t answer that question.”
“Will there be any further visitors?”
“I won’t answer that, either.”
Aton glanced at his timepiece and scowled. “Now, man, what is it your master wants of me? I have fulfilled my end of the bargain.” Latimer smiled faintly, but said nothing.
“I asked him,” continued Aton angrily, “for data only the Cult could supply, and it was given to me. For that, thank you. In return, I promised to prove the essential truth of the creed of the Cult.”
“There was no need to prove that,” came the proud retort. “It stands proven by the ‘Book of Revelations.’ ”
“For the handful that
constitute the Cult, yes. Don’t pretend to mistake my meaning. I offered to present scientific backing for your beliefs. And I did!”
The Cultist’s eyes narrowed bitterly. “Yes, you did—with a fox’s subtlety, for your pretended explanation backed our beliefs, and at the same time removed all necessity for them. You made of the Darkness and of the Stars a natural phenomenon, and removed all its real significance. That was blasphemy.”
“If so, the fault isn’t mine. The facts exist. What can I do but state them?”
“Your ‘facts’ are a fraud and a delusion.”
Aton stamped angrily. “How do you know?”
And the answer came with the certainty of absolute faith. “I know!” The director purpled and Beenay whispered urgently. Aton waved him silent. “And what does Sor 5 want us to do? He still thinks, I suppose, that in trying to warn the world to take measures against the menace of madness, we are placing innumerable souls in jeopardy. We aren’t succeeding, if that means anything to him.”
“The attempt itself has done harm enough, and your vicious effort to gain information by means of your devilish instruments must be stopped. We obey the will of their Stars, and I only regret that my clumsiness prevented me from wrecking your infernal devices.”
“It wouldn’t have done you too much good,” returned Aton. “All our data, except for the direct evidence we intend collecting right now, is already safely cached and well beyond possibility of harm.” He smiled grimly. “But that does not affect your present status as an attempted burglar and criminal.”
He turned to the men behind him. “Someone call the police at Saro City.”
THERE WAS a cry of distaste from Sheerin. “Damn it, Aton, what’s wrong with you? There’s no time for that. Here”—he bustled his way forward—“let me handle this.”
Aton stared down his nose at the psychologist. “This is not the time for your monkeyshines, Sheerin. Will you please let me handle this my own way? Right now you are a complete outsider here, and don’t forget it.”
Sheerin’s mouth twisted eloquently. “Now why should we go to the impossible trouble of calling the police—with Beta’s eclipse a matter of minutes from now—when this young man here is perfectly willing to pledge his word of honor to remain and cause no trouble whatsoever?”