by Isaac Asimov
Get down and wriggle, now, the way they had before. Once again across the field—looking this way and that, scanning for sentries who might be on duty at the perimeter of the Apostles’ camp—
Her needle-gun was in her hand, set for minimum aperture, the sharpest, most highly focused, deadliest beam the gun could produce. If anyone came upon her now, so much the worse for him. There was too much at stake to worry about the niceties of civilized morality. While still half out of her mind she had killed Balik in the Archaeology lab, not meaning to, but he was dead all the same; and, a little to her surprise, she found herself quite ready to kill again, this time intentionally, if circumstances required it of her. The important thing was to get a vehicle and get out of here and carry the news of the Apostles’ army’s approach to Amgando. Everything else, including considerations of morality, was secondary. Everything. This was war.
Onward. Head down, eyes raised, body hunched. She was only a few dozen yards from the camp now.
It was very silent over there. Probably most of them were asleep. In the murky grayness Siferra thought she could see a couple of figures on the far side of the main bonfire, though the smoke rising from the fire made it difficult to be sure. The thing to do, she thought, was to slip into the deep shadows behind one of the trucks and toss a rock against a tree some distance away. The sentries would probably investigate; and if they fanned out separately, she could slip up behind one of them, jab the needler into his back, warn him to keep quiet, make him strip off his robe—
No, she thought. Don’t warn him of anything. Just shoot him, quickly, and take his robe, before he can call out an alarm. These are Apostles, after all Fanatics.
Her own newfound cold-bloodedness amazed her.
Onward. Onward. She was almost at the nearest truck now. Into the darkness on the side opposite the campfire. Where’s a rock? Here. Here, this is a good one. Shift the needler to the left hand for a moment. Now, toss the rock at that big tree over there—
She raised her arm to make the throw. And in that moment she felt a hand seize her left wrist from behind and a powerful arm clamp across her throat.
Caught!
Shock and outrage and a jolt of maddening frustration went coursing through her. Furiously Siferra lashed out with her foot, kicking backward with all her strength, and connecting. She heard a grunt of pain. Not enough to break the man’s strong grip, though. Twisting halfway around, she kicked again, and attempted at the same time to pass the needle-gun from her left hand to her right.
But her assailant pulled her left arm upward in a short, sharp, agonizing gesture that numbed her and sent the needler spilling out of her hand. The other arm, the one that was pressing against her throat, tightened to choking intensity. She coughed and gasped.
Darkness! Of all the stupidity, to let someone sneak up on her while she was sneaking up on them!
Tears of rage burned her cheeks. In fury she kicked backward again, and then again.
“Easy,” a deep voice whispered. “You could hurt me that way, Siferra.”
“Theremon?” she said, astounded.
“Who do you think it is? Mondior?”
The pressure at her throat eased. The hand that clutched her wrist released its grasp. She took a couple of tottering steps forward, fighting for breath. Then, numb with confusion, she swung around to stare at him.
“How did you get free?” she asked.
He grinned. “A holy miracle, it was. An absolute holy miracle. —I watched you the whole time, coming from the woods. You were very good, really. But you were concentrating so hard on getting here unnoticed that you didn’t notice me circling around behind you.”
“Thank all the gods it was you, Theremon. Even if you did give me the shock of my life when you grabbed me. —But why are we standing here? Quick, let’s grab one of those trucks and clear out of here before they see us.”
“No,” he said. “That isn’t the plan any more.”
She gave him a blank look. “I don’t understand.”
“You will.” To her amazement he clapped his hands and called loudly, “Over here, fellows! Here she is!”
“Theremon! Are you out of your—”
The beam of a flashlight struck her in the face with an impact nearly as devastating as the one the Stars had had. She stood blinded, shaking her head in bewilderment and consternation. There were figures moving all around her, but it was another moment before her eyes adapted sufficiently to the sudden brightness for her to make them out.
Apostles. Half a dozen of them.
She glared accusingly at Theremon. He seemed calm, and very pleased with himself. Her dazed mind could barely begin to accept the awareness that he had betrayed her.
When she tried to speak, nothing but blurted monosyllables would emerge. “But—why?—what?—”
Theremon smiled. “Come on, Siferra. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
[43]
Folimun said, “There’s not really any need to glower at me like that, Dr. Siferra. You may have trouble believing it, but you are among friends here.”
“Friends? You must think I’m a very gullible woman.”
“Not at all. Quite the contrary.”
“You invade my laboratory and steal priceless research materials. You order your horde of berserk superstitious followers to invade the Observatory and wreck the equipment with which the university astronomers are trying to perform unique, essential research. Now you hypnotize Theremon into doing your bidding, and send him out to capture me and turn me over to you as a prisoner. And then you tell me that I’m among friends?”
Theremon said quietly, “I haven’t been hypnotized, Siferra. And you aren’t a prisoner.”
“Of course not. And this is all just a very bad dream, too: Nightfall, the fires, the collapse of civilization, the whole thing. An hour from now I’ll wake up in my apartment in Saro City and everything will be just the way it was when I went to sleep.”
Theremon, facing her across the middle of Folimun’s tent, thought that she had never looked more beautiful than she did right then. Her eyes were luminous with anger. Her skin seemed to glisten. There was an aura of intensely focused energy about her that he found irresistible.
But this was hardly the moment to tell her anything like that.
Folimun said, “For stealing your tablets, Dr. Siferra, I can only offer my apologies. It was a shameless act of theft, which I assure you I never would have authorized except that you made it necessary.”
“I made it—”
“You did. You insisted on keeping them in your possession—on placing those irreplaceable relics of the previous cycle in jeopardy at a time when chaos was about to break loose and, for all you knew, the university buildings were going to be destroyed down to the last brick. We saw it as essential that they be placed in safekeeping, that is to say, in our own hands, and since you would not authorize that we found it necessary to take them from you.”
“I found those tablets. You’d never have known they existed if I hadn’t dug them up.”
“Which is beside the point,” Folimun said smoothly. “Once the tablets were discovered, they became vital to our needs—to humanity’s needs. We felt that the future of Kalgash was more important than your personal proprietary interest in your artifacts. As you will see, we have translated the tablets fully now, making use of the ancient textual material already available to us, and they have added greatly to our understanding of the extraordinary challenges that civilized life on Kalgash must periodically confront. Dr. Mudrin’s translations were, unfortunately, extremely superficial. But the tablets provide an accurate and convincing version, uncorrupted by centuries of textual alteration and error, of the chronicles that have come down to us under the name of the Book of Revelations. The Book of Revelations, I must confess, is full of mysticism and metaphor, adopted for propagandistic purposes. The Thombo tablets are straightforward historical accounts of two separate advents of the Stars thousands of ye
ars ago, and of the attempts made by the priesthoods of the time to warn the populace of what was about to happen. We can demonstrate now that throughout history and prehistory on Kalgash, small groups of dedicated people have struggled again and again to prepare the world for the disruption that repeatedly falls upon it. The methods they used, obviously, were insufficient to the problem. Now at last, aided as we are by a knowledge of past mistakes, we will be able to spare Kalgash from another devastating upheaval when the present Year of Godliness comes to its end two thousand years from now.”
Siferra turned to Theremon. “How smug he sounds! Justifying his own burglary of my tablets by telling me that they’ll enable him to set up an even more efficient theocratic dictatorship than they had hoped! Theremon, Theremon, why did you sell me out like this? Why did you sell us out? We could have been halfway to Amgando by this time, if only—”
Folimun said, “You’ll be in Amgando tomorrow afternoon, Dr. Siferra, I assure you. All of us will be in Amgando by tomorrow afternoon.”
“What will you do?” she asked hotly. “March me in chains at the rear of your conquering army? Tie me up and make me walk in the dust behind Mondior’s chariot?”
The Apostle sighed. “Theremon, explain things to her, if you please.”
“No,” she said. Her eyes were blazing. “You poor brainwashed ninny, I don’t want to hear the gibberish this maniac has poured into your mind! I don’t want to hear anything from any of you! Let me alone. Lock me up, if you like. Or turn me loose, if you can bring yourself to do it. I can’t possibly harm you, can I? One woman against a whole army? I can’t even cross a field without having someone come up and surprise me from behind!”
Theremon, dismayed, reached toward her.
“No! Keep away from me! You disgust me! —But it isn’t your fault, is it? They’ve done something to your mind. —You’ll do it to me too, won’t you, Folimun? You’ll make me into an obliging little puppet. Well, let me ask just this one favor. Don’t force me to wear an Apostle’s robe. I can’t stand the idea of walking around inside one of those ridiculous things. Take my soul away, if you have to, but let me dress as I please, all right? All right, Folimun?”
The Apostle laughed faintly. “Perhaps it would be best if I left the two of you alone. I see that nothing’s going to be accomplished so long as I’m part of the conversation.”
Siferra cried, “No, damn you, I don’t want to be left alone with—”
But Folimun had already risen and walked quickly from the tent.
Theremon turned toward Siferra, who backed away from him as though he were carrying some plague.
Softly he said, “I wasn’t hypnotized, Siferra. They haven’t done anything to my mind.”
“Of course you’d say that.”
“It’s true. I’ll prove it to you.”
She stared at him bleakly, coldly, making no response. Very quietly he said, after a moment, “Siferra, I love you.”
“How long did it take the Apostles to program that line into you?” she asked.
He winced. “Don’t. Don’t. I mean it, Siferra. I won’t try to tell you that I’ve never said those words to anyone before. But this is the first time I’ve meant them.”
“Oldest line in the book,” said Siferra derisively.
“I suppose I deserve that. Theremon the ladies’ man. There-mon the seducer-about-town. Well, all right. Forget I said it. —No. No. I’m serious, Siferra. Traveling with you these past weeks—being with you morning and afternoon and evening—there hasn’t been a moment when I haven’t looked at you and thought to myself, This is the woman I was waiting for all these years. This is the woman I never dared to imagine I would find.”
“Very touching, Theremon. And the best way you could find to show your love was to grab me from behind, practically breaking my arm in the process, and turn me over to Mondior. Right?”
“Mondior doesn’t exist, Siferra. There’s no such person.”
For an instant he saw a flicker of surprise and curiosity cut through her hostility.
“What?”
“He’s a convenient mythical construct, put together by electronic synthesis to make speeches on television. No one’s ever had an audience with him, have they? He’s never been seen in public. Folimun invented him to be a public spokesman. Since Mondior never appears in person, he can be on television in five different countries at once, all over the world—nobody could ever be sure where he really was, and so he could be displayed simultaneously. Folimun’s the real boss of the Apostles of Flame. He simply masquerades as a public-relations officer. In fact he calls all the shots, and has for the past ten years. Before that there was someone named Bazret, who’s dead now. Bazret was the one who invented Mondior, but Folimun’s brought him to his present eminence.”
“Folimun told you all this?”
“He told me some. I guessed the rest, and he confirmed it. He’ll show me the Mondior apparatus when we’re back in Saro City. The Apostles plan to restore television transmissions in another few weeks.”
“All right,” Siferra said harshly. “The discovery that Mondior’s a fake so overwhelmed you with its slimy cleverness that you decided on the spot that you absolutely had to join up with Folimun’s outfit. And your first assignment was to turn me in. So you skulked around looking for me, and took me by surprise, and thereby made certain that the people down in Amgando would fall into Folimun’s clutches. Nicely done, Theremon.”
“Folimun’s heading for Amgando, yes,” Theremon said. “But he doesn’t intend to harm those who have gathered there. He wants to offer them posts in the new government.”
“Gods almighty, Theremon, do you believe—”
“Yes. Yes, Siferra!” Theremon held his hands out, fingers spread wide in an agitated gesture. “I may be a mere coarse journalist, but at least grant me that I’m no fool. Twenty years in the newspaper business has made me an excellent judge of character, at the very least. Folimun impressed me in a strange way from the first time I met him. He seemed very much the opposite of crazy, very complex, very sly, very sharp. And I’ve been talking with him for the past eight hours. Nobody’s been sleeping here this evening. He’s laid his whole plan bare. He’s shown me his entire scheme. Would you grant, for the sake of argument, that it’s possible for me to get an accurate psychological reading on someone during the course of an eight-hour conversation?”
“Well—” she said grudgingly.
“Either he’s completely sincere, Siferra, or he’s the best actor in the world.”
“He could be both. That still doesn’t make him someone we’d want to trust.”
“Maybe not. But I do. Now.”
“Go on.”
“Folimun is a totally ruthless, almost monstrously rational man who believes that the only thing that’s of any real importance is the survival of civilization. Because he’s had access, through his age-old religious cult, to historical records of previous cycles, he’s known for many years what we’ve all just learned in the hardest possible way: that Kalgash is doomed to be shown a view of the Stars once every two thousand years and that the sight of them is so overwhelming that it’ll shatter ordinary minds and give even the strongest ones a bad time for days or weeks. —He’s willing to let you see all their ancient documents, by the way, when we’re back in Saro City.”
“Saro City has been destroyed.”
“Not the part of it controlled by the Apostles. They made damned well sure nobody would be setting any fires within a mile of their tower on all sides.”
“Very efficient of them,” Siferra said.
“They’re efficient people. All right: Folimun knows that in a time of total madness the best hope of pulling things together is a religious totalitarianism. You and I may think the gods are just old fables, Siferra, but there are millions and millions of people out there, believe it or not, who have a different view of things. They’ve always been uneasy about doing things that they consider sinful, for fear the gods wil
l punish them. And now they have an absolute dread of the gods. They think the Stars might come back tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, and finish off the job. —Well, here are the Apostles, who claim a direct pipeline to the gods and have all sorts of scriptural passages to prove it. They’re in a better position to set up a world government than Altinol, or the little provincial overlords, or the fugitive remnants of the former governments, or anyone else. They’re the best hope we have.”
“You’re serious,” Siferra said in wonder. “Folimun hasn’t hypnotized you, Theremon. You’ve managed to do it to yourself!”
“Look,” he said. “Folimun’s been working all his life toward this moment, knowing that his is the generation of Apostles on whom the responsibility for ensuring survival will fall. He’s got all sorts of plans. He’s well on his way to establishing control over enormous territories north and west of Saro City, and next he’s going to take charge of the new provinces along the line of the Great Southern Highway.”
“And establish a theocratic dictatorship that will begin its rule by executing all the atheistic, cynical, materialistic university people like Beenay and Sheerin and me.”
“Sheerin’s already dead. Folimun told me his people found his body in a ruined house. He was apparently killed some weeks back by a band of anti-intellectual crazies.”
Siferra looked away, unable for a moment to meet Theremon’s eyes. Then she stared at him more angrily than before and said, “There you are. First Folimun sends his goons crashing into the Observatory—Athor was killed too, wasn’t he?—and then he eliminates poor harmless Sheerin. And then all the rest of us will be—”
“He was trying to protect the Observatory people, Siferra.”
“He didn’t go about it very well, did he?”
“Things got out of hand. What he wanted to do was rescue all the scientists before the rioting started—but because he was operating under the guise of a wild-eyed fanatic, he had no way of persuading them to hear what he was offering, which was to give them safe-conduct to the Apostles’ Sanctuary.”