Night of Light

by Philip José Farmer

  He whirled, firing his gun in the general direction of the monk, unable to see him because of the glare of flame.

  Suddenly, the dazzling light and the scorching heat were whisked away. Carmody blinked, readjusting his eyes to the dim purple, looking for Ralloux's body, thinking that the hallucination must have died with the projector of it. But there was only one corpse, Mary's.

  Down the street, something black-looking slipped around the corner. A scream drifted back. Ralloux in hot pursuit of his torture and justification.

  "Let him go," said Carmody, "as long as he takes the flame with him." But, he thought, it was the flame that was dragging the monk after it.

  Now that Mary was dead, it was time to determine for himself something about which he'd wondered very much.

  It took him a little while. He had to get out of the car's toolbox a hammer and a dull chisel-like instrument that was probably used to pry the hub cap and the tire from the wheel. With these he managed to split her skull open. Putting the tools down, he picked up the flashlight and on his knees bent over close to the open cranium, holding his coat over him to give some cover for the beam. He pressed the light's button, shining it straight into the hole, his face close as possible to the brain. It was not, he knew, that he would be able to distinguish between a man's brain, his, and a woman's brain, Mary's. But he was curious to see if she did have a brain or if, perhaps, there was just a large knot of nerves, a nexus for the telepathic orders that he gave it. If her life and her behavior were somehow dependent upon the workings of his own unconscious, then. . .

  The light sprang into being.

  There was no brain that he could see. Just what it was he had no time then to determine, only time to see a coiled shape, glittering red eyes, a gaping white-fanged mouth, and then a blur as it struck.

  He fell back, the light falling from his hand and rolling away, its beam shining out into the night. He didn't care or even think about it, for his face had begun puffing up at once. It was like a balloon, swelling as if air were being pumped into it at a very fast rate. And at the same time, an intense pain spread from it, ran down his neck and into his veins. Fire invaded his body, spreading through him as if his blood were turning into molten silver.

  There was no running away from this flame, as there had been from Ralloux's.

  He screamed again and again, leaped to his feet, and, half out of his mind, drove his heel in hysterical fury and pain against the snake whose fangs had bitten into his cheek and whose tail merged into the cluster of nerves at the base of Mary's spine, growing from it. It had been living coiled up in her skull, surely waiting for the time when John Carmody would open its bony nest. And it had released its deadly poison into the flesh of the man who had created it.

  Not until the horrible thing had been crushed beneath his heel, smashed into a blob from which two long curved broken fangs still stuck out, did Carmody cease. Then he fell to the ground beside Mary, the tissue of his body seeming like dry wood that had burst into flame, and the terror of dissolving forever wrenching a choked cry from a throat that had seemed too full of a roaring fear to utter ever again. . .

  There was one thought, the only shape in the chaos, the only cool thing in the fire. He had killed himself.

  Somewhere in the moon-tinged purple mist a bell was ringing.

  Far off, the referee was chanting slowly, ". . . five, six, seven. . ."

  Somebody in the crowd -- Mary? -- was screaming, "Get up, Johnny, get up! You've got to win, Johnny boy, get up, knock that big brute down! Don't let him count you out, Joh-oh-oh-oh-neeee!"

  "Eight!"

  John Carmody groaned, sat up and tried, in vain, to get on his feet.

  "Nine!"

  The bell was still ringing. Why should he get up when he was saved by the bell?

  But then why hadn't the ref quit counting?

  What kind of a fight was this where the round wasn't over even if the bell did ring?

  Or was it announcing the opening of a new round, not the closing of an old?

  "Gotta get up. Fight. Whale hell outa that big bastard," he muttered.

  "Nine" still hung in the air, as if it had yelled in the mist and was glowing there, faintly, violently phosphorescent.

  Who was he fighting? he asked, and he rose, shakily, his eyes opening for the first time, his body crouching, his left fist sticking out, probing, his chin behind his left shoulder, his right hand held cocked, the right that had once won him the welterweight championship.

  But there was no one there to fight. No referee. No crowd. No Mary screaming encouragement. Only himself. Somewhere, though, there was a bell ringing.

  "Telephone," he muttered, and looked around. The sound came from the massive granite public phone booth half a block away. Automatically, he began walking towards it, noticing at the same time what a headache he had and how stiff his muscles were and how his guts writhed uneasily within him, like sleepy snakes being awakened by the heat of the morning sun.

  He lifted the receiver. "Hello," he said, at the same time wondering why he was answering, knowing that it couldn't possibly be for him.

  "John?" said Mary's voice.

  The receiver fell, swung, then it and the phone box erupted into many fragments as Carmody emptied a clip at them. Pieces of the red plastic struck him in the face, and blood, real blood, his, trickled down his cheeks and dripped off his chin and made warm channels down the sides of his neck.

  Stiffly, almost falling, he ran away, reloading his gun but saying over and over, "You stupid fool, you might have blinded yourself, killed yourself, stupid fool, stupid fool. To lose your head like that."

  Suddenly, he stopped, put the gun back into his pocket, took out a handkerchief, and wiped the blood off his face. The wounds, though many, were only surface-deep. And his face was no longer swollen.

  Not until then did he perceive the full significance of the voice.

  "Holy Mother of God!" he moaned.

  Even in his distress, one part of him stood off, cool observer, and commented that he'd not sworn since childhood, but now he was on Dante's Joy he seemed to be doing it at every turn. He had long ago given up using any blasphemous terms because, in the first place, almost everybody did, and he didn't want to be like everybody, and, in the second place, if you blasphemed, you showed you believed in what you were blaspheming against, and he certainly didn't believe.

  The cool observer said, "Come on, John, get a grip on yourself. You're letting this shake you. We don't let anything shake us, do we?"

  He tried to laugh, but succeeded only in bringing out a croak, and it sounded so horrible that he quit.

  "But I killed her," he whispered to himself.

  "Twice," he said.

  He straightened up, put his hand in his pocket, gripped the gun's butt tightly. "OK, OK, so she can come back to life, so I'm responsible for it, too. So what? She can be killed, again and again, and when the seven nights are up, then she's done forever, and I'll be rid of her forever. So, if I have to litter this city from one end to the other with her corpses, I'll do it. Of course, there'll be a tremendous stink afterwards" -- he managed a feeble laugh -- "but I won't have to clean up the mess, let the garbage departments do that."

  He went back to the car but decided first to look at the old body of Mary.

  There were huge pools of black blood on the pavement and bloody footprints leading off into the night, but the dead woman was gone.

  "Well, why not?" he whispered to himself. "If your mind can produce flesh and blood and bone from the thin air, why can't it even more easily repair blasted flesh and blood and bone and re-spark the dead body? After all, that's the Principle of Least Resistance, the economy of Nature, Occam's razor, the Law of Minimum Effort. No miracles in this, John, old partner. And everything's taking place outside you, John. The inner you is secure, unchanged."

  He got into the car and drove on. Because the night seemed a little brighter, he drove a little faster. His mind, too, seemed to
be coming out of the slowness induced in it by the recent shocks, and he was thinking with his former quick fluidity.

  "I say, 'Arise from the dead,' and they arise," he said, "like Jairus' daughter. Talitha cumi. Am I not a god? If I could do this on some other planet, I would be a god. But here," he added, chucking with some of his old vigor, "here I am just a bum, one of the boys, prowling the night with the other monsters."

  The avenue ahead of him drove straight as a kaser beam for two kilometers. Normally, he would have been able to see the Temple of Boonta at the end of the avenue. But now, despite the enormous globe of the moon, halfway up the sky, he could discern the structure only as a darker purple bulk looming in the lesser purple. The mass gave only a hint that it was formed of stone and not of shade, that it was itself the substance and not the shadow. And the hint was ominous.

  Above it, the moon shone golden-purple in the center and silver-purple around the edges. So huge was it, it seemed to be falling, and this apparent down-hurtling was strengthened by the slight shifting of hue in the purple haze. When Carmody looked directly at the moon, it billowed. When he looked to one side, the moon shrank.

  He decided to quit staring through the windshield at the uncertain globe. Now was no time to get lost in the monster, to feel utterly small and helpless beneath its overbearing bulk. It was dangerous to concentrate on anything in this darkness of threats. Everything seemed ready to swallow him up. He was a little mouse in the midst of giant purple cats, and he did not like the feeling.

  He shook his head as if trying to waken himself, which was, he thought, exactly correct. Those few seconds of looking at the moon had almost put him to sleep. Or, at least, the brief time had sucked much awareness from him. The moon was a purple sponge that absorbed much -- far too much. He was now only a half a kilometer from the Temple of Boonta, and he did not remember traveling the last kilometer and a half.

  "Whoa, John!" he muttered. "Things are going too fast!"

  He steered the car to the base of a statue in the middle of the avenue. The vehicle would be hidden by the broad base from the view of anyone who might be standing before the Temple. Also, it would be concealed from anyone inside the Temple itself and looking out its windows.

  He got out of the car and peered around the base. As far as he could see -- a limited distance in these purplish veils -- there were no living beings. Here and there a few bodies on the pavement and a few more sprawled on the ramp that led to the great portico of the Temple. But there was nothing dangerous. Not, that is, unless someone was playing possum, hoping that a careless passerby would not dream that the motionless body, apparently slain, would leap up to become the slayer.

  Cautiously, he approached. Before getting close to any of the bodies, he stopped to watch them. None gave any sign of life. Indeed, most of them could not possibly be living. They were torn apart or else so mutilated or disfigured by growths or distortions, they could not have survived.

  He passed the bodies and walked up to the ramp. The dark stone pillars of the portico soared, their upper parts dim in the coiling haze. The lower parts were carved into the shapes of great legs. Some were male, some female.

  Beyond the vast legs was shadow -- shadow and silence. Where were the priests and priestesses, the choir, the image-bearers, the screaming women red from head to foot with their own blood, shaking the knives with which they had slashed themselves? Earlier -- how much earlier? -- when he had attended the rituals, he had been one man lost in thousands, in a crashing noise. Now, darkness and a singing silence.

  Did the god Yess live in the Temple, as every Kareenan to whom he had talked had insisted? Was Yess even now in the Temple and waiting for another Night of Light to pass? The story was that Yess could never be sure, during this time, that his Mother would not withdraw Her grace from him. If Algul won, then Algul, or one of his followers rather, would kill Yess. Sometimes, so the myth said, a follower of Algul would be so strong -- so great with evil -- he would be able to kill the god Yess.

  Then, when the Night ended, and the Sleepers awakened, a new god would be reigning. And the worshipers of Algul would have their way until the next Night began.

  John Carmody's heart beat even faster. What greater act than to kill a god? Deicide! Now, that was something only one man among many billions could boast of being. A deicide. And if his reputation had been high before, known throughout the Galaxy, think of what it could become. His stealing of the Starinof Shootfire was nothing compared to this! Nothing!

  Up to now, he told himself, he had done nothing. He gripped his gun barrel, then relaxed his hold because it was too tight. He walked between the ankles of a stone woman. The purple thickened into black, but he walked slow step by step forward. Ahead, he could see nothing. Once, he turned to look back. There was light, or at least some illumination, a cerulean glow between the legs of the statues. Beyond this, the dark did not seem to intensify. Instead, the light wavered, like a sheet rippled by wind.

  He turned around to face the darkness across the Temple face. He did not know what the wavering of light meant, but it had managed to threaten something that outweighed all the many threats he had encountered during this long Night.

  Or was it something projected by someone to force him to go into the Temple?

  He paused. He did not at all like the idea that something knew he was here, was waiting for him, and was eager to get hold of him.

  He murmured, "Don't be getting spooked now, John. When in hell before did you ever get so nervous? So, why now? Even if this is the Big One, don't let it get to you. You can't afford to let it. Besides, what the hell's the difference, one way or the other? Either you make it or you don't.

  "Still, I'd like to do it. Show those other bastards."

  He did not know what he meant by his last remark nor did he reflect on it. Was there anything wrong in wanting to outdo all the others? Maybe. He should not care.

  He thrust the idea away. The business here and now had to be taken care of. Despatched. . . no, dispatched. Both.

  Suddenly, without any sensory indication, he knew he had passed from the portico into the Temple interior. There was neither lessening nor increasing of light or of sound. But he knew he was inside. Without being able to see it, he could visualize the floor of polished medium-red stone stretching at least half a kilometer from entrance to farther wall. The sides of the room would also be glass-smooth. They would bend imperceptibly, curving gently inward to form a sphere. Unlike the exterior architecture, stone almost drunken with image, the interior walls were bare as the shell of an egg.

  Slowly, he walked forward. His knees were slightly bent; he was ready to spring away at the smallest sound or merest touch. The darkness was congealing around him. It felt thick, as if it were pouring into his ears and eyes and nostrils and making the blackness inside him even denser. When he turned so he could keep track of the direction by which he had entered, he could no longer see the outline of the archway. He was a mote of dust in a beam of unlight.

  But he was not floating; he had free will. He was driven by no one but himself, and he had a goal.

  Even so, he was taking a long time to get there. Step by step over half a kilometer, with frequent pauses to listen, took time. Finally, when he was wondering if he were not angling off, his toe touched something solid. He knelt to feel with his hand. It was the primary slab. He lifted his foot, stepped up on the rock, and advanced. The second slab stopped his cautious foot. He stepped upon that and shuffled on until he came to the throne.

  "Let's see," he mumbled. "The chair faces this way, towards the entrance. So, if I go in a straight line from the back of the chair, I come to the little entrance at the wall. And beyond that. . ."

  Beyond that wall, he had been told, was the Arga Uboonota, the Holy of Holies. To get to it, one pushed on the wall, and a door of stone swung inward. The chamber to which the door gave access was supposed to be one into which only the elect of the elect were admitted. These would be the higher priests
and priestesses, the great statesmen, and, of course, the arrshkiim. This Kareenan word could be translated as "the passed": those who had survived the Night of Light.

  In that chamber the higher mysteries were celebrated. Also in this room, if he could believe the Kareenans, were born the gods Yess and Algul. In this room, the Great Goddess Boonta sometimes made Her presence known. And here she communed mystically with the Good Seven or the Evil Seven to procreate Her sons.

  The door itself, so he understood, was never locked. No Kareenan who did not think himself worthy would dare to open it or even to look inside if it were accidentally opened. And the elect passed through at extreme peril.

  "Boonta doesn't care what She eats, and She is often hungry," was a Kareenan proverb. The speaker never elaborated, perhaps because he knew no more than the saying itself and had never considered the implications. Perhaps he was afraid to consider them. But the speaker always made that circular sign during the utterance, as if he were protecting himself.

  John Carmody had been convinced that the Kareenan religion was based on a fraud that used superstition to advance itself, as all religions did. Now he was not so sure there were not some genuine elements in Boontism. Too many events that would be unbelievable elsewhere had actually occurred here.

  His outstretched right hand, the free one, touched the wall. The stone felt warm, too warm. It was as if there were a fire on the other side.

  He pushed, and the wall gave. The door was swinging in. No light streamed through. It was as dark within as without.

  For a long time he stood with his hand on the wall door, unwilling to go in and unwilling to stay. If he entered and let the door swing shut, he might be trapped.

  "What the hell!" he murmured. "All or nothing."

  He pushed harder as he entered, and the door moved without a sound. Although he kept his hand close to it, or tried to do so, he could not feel a displacement of air as it closed. But closed it was, with no way he knew to open it. He tried, but it did not budge.