Night of Light

by Philip José Farmer

  "Get away from me, Bakeling," Carmody said. He felt anger rising like mercury in a heat wave."Back away, and try to act like a man of God!"

  He paused, then could hold his anger no longer."Don't push me! I'm warning you!"

  "Ah, you banty rooster, you believe your own reputation for being a dangerous man! You're too little for me to even spit on! And not good enough for me to spit on, either!"

  The woman who had denounced Gideon spoke out again. "What kind of a priest are you? Taking up sides against your own religion, your own people?"

  Carmody attempted to calm himself. In a lower voice, he said,"I am trying to do the Christian thing, trying to keep you people from acting with hate. Remember: Love thy enemy."

  The woman screamed,"Next you'll be telling us to turn our other cheek and invite that filth to dinner! They're evil, Father, evil! And that Father Gideon is Satan himself! How could he. . . how could he. . .?" And she burst into a string of oaths and invective that Carmody in his former days, would have admired. Whatever else possessed the woman, she certainly had imagination and a flair for the profane.

  "Out of my way, Carmody!" the huge priest bellowed. "I'm going to make Gideon recant if I have to wring his neck!"

  "This isn't the way to do it!" Carmody said.

  "The hell it isn't!" Bakeling shouted, and he swung at Carmody. As the little priest ducked under the ponderous fist, the anger and frustration that had been burning in him since Anna's death took over. He rammed the stiffened fingers of his left hand into the big soft belly before him. Bakeling clutched at his stomach, whooshed, bent over and was hit squarely in the nose with a fist. Blood spurted out over his shoes onto Carmody's legs.

  A single roar welled from the crowd. They surged forward, drove Carmody back by the wall of their bodies, and pressed him against the screaming and yelling Boontists. Police whistles blew. Several fists struck Carmody, and he lost consciousness.

  When he opened his eyes, his head, jaw, ribs, and shoulders hurt. He was being administered to by a policeman in the white-and-black uniform and cone-shaped hat of the Springboard city force. Before Carmody could say anything, he was jerked upright and carried along by two big men toward the lobby and outdoors. Here several paddy wagons were waiting for him and for the other rioters who had not been swift enough or had been too injured to run.

  However, he was given special treatment. While most of the others were forced into the wagons, he was urged ungently into the back seat of a patrol car. A lieutenant sat on one side of him. On the other was Father Bakeling, a handkerchief pressed to his nose.

  "Now see what you've done, you troublemaker!" Bakeling mumbled. "You started a riot, and you've disgraced your Church and your vicarship!"

  "I?"

  Carmody looked startled, then he started to laugh but quit when his ribs wrenched a groan from him. "Are we going to be booked?" he said to the lieutenant.

  "Father Bakeling is pressing charges against you." He handed the priest a wristphone. "You are entitled to one call to your lawyer."

  Carmody ignored him and spoke to Bakeling, "If I'm delayed so long I miss getting a ship to Kareen, you'll have to answer to the highest authority for it. And I mean the highest."

  Bakeling dabbed at his nose with his handkerchief and growled, "Don't threaten me, Carmody. Remember, I know you for what you are, a lying little trickster."

  "I'll make a call after all," Carmody said. He took the phone. "What's the anticode?"

  The lieutenant told him the numbers, and Carmody repeated them. The gray half-moon on the upper half of the 5.08-centimeter disc became luminous.

  "What's Bishop Emzaba's number?"

  Bakeling started; the lieutenant's eyes blinked. Bakeling said, "I won't tell you."

  "All right, lieutenant, you tell me."

  The policeman sighed, but he pulled a little book from his beltbag and leafed through it. "606."

  Carmody spoke the number, and a second later the face of a young priest appeared on the tiny screen. Carmody rotated the movable upper part of the disc, and the face seemed to spring out of the screen and to hang, much enlarged, sixteen centimeters in front of the disc.

  "Father Carmody of Wildenwooly speaking. I must speak to the bishop. At once. It's an emergency."

  The face thinned away; the screen became blank, although it still glowed. Abruptly, the features of a mulatto danced before Carmody. The shimmering face scowled, and the deep voice was harsh. "Carmody? What kind of a mess are you in now?"

  "One not entirely my own fault, Your Lordship," Carmody said. "As a matter of fact, I was merely trying to effect some Christian action, not to mention Christian charity. But I failed. And here I am, on my way to the police station, about to be charged and booked."

  "I heard about the action at the spaceport and about your being involved," Embaza said. "I've already started some action of my own. It may not be Christian, but it's a matter of utmost necessity."

  Carmody turned the phone so that the bishop could see Bakeling.

  Emzaba's scowl deepened. "Bakeling! Is it true you were fighting with another priest? And that you were leading a mob of your own parishioners against the Boontist converts?"

  Bakeling stuttered for a moment, then said, "I was merely trying to make Father Gideon and his people see the error of their ways, Your Lordship! But this, this Needlenose here, stood up for them! He actually attacked me, a brother priest, a member of his own order, to protect the Boontist heretics!"

  "Is that true?" Embaza said. "Carmody, turn the phone so I can see your face!"

  Carmody twisted the phone and said, "It's a long story, Your Lordship, and it would take a long time to separate the various threads of truth from those of passion. But I don't have time to explain. I must be on my way to Kareen! Immediately! I am on a mission of the gravest importance, authorized by the Holy Father himself!"

  Embaza said, "Yes, I know. A courier came yesterday to inform me I must help to speed you on your way, no matter how unreasonable or strange the demands you might make. I understand something of your mission, and I am prepared to aid you. But, Carmody, a brawl! You should realize more than anybody how necessary it is that you get involved in nothing which will delay you!"

  "I do, and I'm sorry. But here I am. Now, how do I get back to the port in time to catch the White Mule before it takes off? Or do I?"

  Embaza asked to speak to the lieutenant. Carmody swiveled the phone so that the policeman and bishop could talk face to face. The lieutenant listed the charges that were to be made against Carmody. At these, the bishop frowned so fiercely that he looked like one of the ebony idols fashioned by his ancestors in the long ago.

  "I'll speak to you again, lieutenant. Or someone will," Embaza said.

  His face dissolved, but the ghost of his anger hung in the air. Bakeling shifted, uneasily, glancing sideways now and then at Carmody. "If you get out of this, you slimy little rat, and I'm unjustly placed in the wrong. . . if I have to suffer because of you. . . so help me, I'll --"

  "You'll what?" Carmody said. "Refuse to learn your lesson and go charging off like a bull in rut and batter your thick head against the wall again?"

  "You're filthy, Carmody, a reproach to your sacred office."

  "Strong situations demand strong language," Carmody said. "But didn't you know that the bishop would be very angry with you because you were making martyrs of the Boontists? That is the one thing the Church does not want to do, and that was the one thing you were doing."

  "I was acting by the dictates of my conscience," Bakeling said stiffly.

  "You better take your conscience out and polish it up a little," Carmody said. "Make it shine like a mirror, and take a good look at yourself in it. I'll admit the sight will be nauseating, but sometimes it takes sickness to make a man well."

  "You mealy-mouthed little hypocrite!" Carmody's only reply was a shrug. He was beginning to get depressed again, for he knew that the bishop was right.

  The car stopped before the preci
nct headquarters. This was in one of the beavite cones taken over by the early settlers, a structure grayish-white on the outside, with a diameter of one hundred meters at the base and towering to four hundred at the apex. Once the cone had housed the entire central police organization of the planet. But in the fifty years of its colonization, Springboard had gained such a population that the building now was only the base for the first precinct. The planetary base had been shifted to a new structure twenty kilometers away, a skyscraper built by men.

  The original entrance, once just large enough for two beavites to pass through shoulder to shoulder, had been cut away to make a huge arch. Carmody went through the arch with the lieutenant and Bakeling into a long and high-ceilinged hall, the white nakedness of which had been covered with green formite. The hall led them to a big room. There was a curious smell, compounded of the fifty-year-old traces of beavite odor and the immemorial effluvium of police buildings and courthouses: cigar smoke and urine. Under the green paint, Carmody knew, were splotches and streaks of blood, for the beavites had refused to be dispossessed peacefully.

  Carmody and Bakeling sat down on a bench while the lieutenant left to talk to his superiors. Five minutes later, he returned, his face pale and lips tight.

  "The bishop has interfered with police procedure!" he said. "He must really be swinging his weight around. I just got word to drop all charges and release you two. And as if that isn't bad enough, I'm to escort you, Carmody, back to the port."

  The two priests, silent, rose and followed him out of the building. This time, Carmody was put into an aircar. The craft rose upward and then rushed toward the spires of the port, its sirens wailing and its yellow lights flashing.

  The lieutenant, sitting in the seat before Carmody, suddenly turned and handed him the phone. "The bishop," he said, and turned his back.

  Emzaba's face shot up from the screen, and stopped only a few centimeters from Carmody's. He was so close that the priest could perceive the writhing lines that formed the projection. They added to the wrathful thunder of the bishop's words.

  Afterward, Carmody, thoroughly chastened and contrite, apologized. He said nothing about the death of his wife. But the bishop must have heard of it, for, immediately after his lecture, he softened.

  "I know that you are carrying a grievous burden, John. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have withheld a tongue-lashing. But nothing should have diverted you from your mission."

  "Things have a way of getting out of hand," Carmody said. "Well, I'll be on Kareen soon and fully engaged in my task."

  The bishop was silent for a minute, then he said, "Would it be presumptuous to ask for more details of your mission? I have a general idea, but I was not given any specifics. However, don't feel that you have to tell me anything just because I'm curious. Regard me as a fellow religionist who's gravely concerned and who can keep his mouth shut."

  Carmody delayed to light a cigarette, then said, "I can tell Your Lordship that my mission is twofold. One, I'm to try to talk Yess out of sending his missionaries to extra-Kareenan planets. Two, I will also try to talk Yess out of forcing the entire population of Kareen into going through the Night of Light."

  Emzaba was shocked. "I did not know that Yess intended to keep all his worshippers Awake!"

  "It's not definite. Apparently, he's still considering it and won't give his decision until just before the Night begins."

  "But why should he do that?"

  "I was told that he would like to weed out all the secret worshipers of Algul and also the lukewarms and the lip-servers. He wants a planetful of zealots."

  The bishop nodded. "And Yess would send these fanatics out as missionaries, right?"

  "Right."

  "And Yess has the power to do this, to make everybody put himself into the terrible jeopardy of the Night?"

  "He has the power."

  The bishop hesitated, frowned, then said, "Our superiors must believe that you have some chance of succeeding. Otherwise, you'd not have been sent to Yess."

  "They could also be doing it out of desperation," Carmody said. "The inroads that Boontism has been making into our faith, into all non-Kareenan faiths, have been devastating. And it will get worse."

  "I know. Yet. . . you went through the Night. . . it is even said that you were one of the Fathers of Yess. . . but you did not become a worshiper of the Goddess. So, there is hope. But I do not understand why you have not been publicized by the Church. You are our greatest living testimony to our faith."

  Carmody smiled grimly and said, "There is great danger in my testifying. How would it look to the average man if I had to swear -- and I would have to -- that the phenomena of the Night are real? That the god Yess is formed out of the air by a mystical union between the Great Mother and the Seven Fathers? That so-called miracles are a dime a dozen on Kareen, that Boontism can offer living proof of its claims, solid and visual results from the practice of its religion?

  "Or that I was a criminal of the worst sort, a murderer many times, a thief, a pervert, you name it -- yet after I passed through the Night I did not even have to be given the rehabilitation treatment at Johns Hopkins?"

  "They would say that Boontism did it and would give more credence to the Kareenan missionaries. Yet, you did not become a worshiper of Boonta."

  "I might have if I had stayed on Kareen," Carmody said. "But I returned almost immediately to Earth after the Night. And while in Hopkins, I had an experience the details of which I won't go into now. It's enough that I decided to join the Church, and became a lay brother and am now a priest."

  The bishop said, "I still don't understand. You affirm the validity of Yess and of Boonta, yet you also declare the truth of our faith. How can you reconcile such opposites?"

  Carmody shrugged and said, "I don't. I have my questions, plenty of them. But so far they've not been answered. Perhaps this visit to Kareen will do it."

  The aircar settled down in the parking lot, Carmody said goodbye to Embaza, received his blessing, then delayed to ask the bishop to go easy on Bakeling. Emzaba replied that he would try to be as just as possible. But before he was through, he would make Bakeling understand just what he had done and promise to avoid such errors in the future.

  Carmody got into his seat in the White Mule only a minute before the ports were shut for the pre-takeoff checkout. He saw that most of the Boontist converts involved in the riot had been able to make the ship.

  One fellow, who had entered on Carmody's heels, was not a Boontist. He was a short muscular man who looked as if he were about Carmody's physiological age, that is, anywhere between thirty-five and a hundred. He had thick, black, very curly hair, a broad Amerindian face with a big aquiline nose, thin lips, and a jutting cleft chin. He wore all-white clothing: a conical hat with a broad flappy brim, a close-fitting shirt with puffy sleeves, a big leatheroid belt with a hexagonal metal buckle, a white beltbag, and trousers that clung to the thighs but ballooned from the lower legs. His shoes lacked the fashionable frills and festoons of spherelets; they were simple and rugged.

  Clutched in one hand was a large white-covered book. On its cover, in the old-style nonphonemic alphabet, were words in black: TRUE VERSION -- HOLY SCRIPTURES. By this and his white garments, Carmody knew the man belonged to an increasingly powerful religious group. The members of the Rockbottom Church of God -- sometimes referred to by their enemies as the Hardasses -- were fundamentalists who believed they had returned to the original faith of the original Christians. Carmody had met a few on Wildenwooly.

  However, it was not the man's religion that made Carmody's eyes open wide. It was the shock of recognition.

  So, all the old pros were not gone! This man was Al Lieftin, and he had once worked with Carmody during a phase of the Staronif robbery.

  Lieftin's own eyes expanded on seeing Carmody's face. They opened even more when they lowered to take in the maroon robes of a priest of the Order of St. Jairus.

  Lieftin raised his hand as if to ward of
f something, took a step backward, then turned away. But the priest called to him.

  "Al Lieftin! Come sit by me! No need to avoid me. I've nothing to hide. And it looks as if we've both changed."

  Lieftin hesitated. The color came back to his face; he grinned, and he almost swaggered over to the seat beside Carmody's.

  "You startled me," he said. "It's been so many years. You. . . you're Father Carmody now?"

  "Father it is," said Carmody. "And you?"

  "I'm a diaconus of the True Church," Lieftin said. "Praise the Lord! The evil days are gone forever; I saw the light in time. I repented, I paid for my sins. And now I preach the Basic Word."

  "I'm very happy that you're at peace," Carmody said. "At least, I presume you are. We've taken somewhat different paths, but they are both, I trust, good paths, the right paths.

  "Tell me," Father Carmody continued, "that is if you don't object, why're you going to Dante's Joy? The Night of Light is due. Surely you're not planning to go through it?"

  "Never! No, I'm going because my church has sent me to make a report on the pre-Night rituals, then take the last ship out. I preferred not to have to watch those Satanic doings, but the Eldest himself asked me if I would."

  "Why does your church want a report? Certainly, there are enough data about Kareen in the Earth libraries."

  Lieftin said, "The bitter truth is that we've lost more people to the false god Yess than we care to admit. Many men and women I would never have believe could be persuaded from the Basic Word have succumbed to the Satanic wiles of the Kareenan missionaries.

  "So, I'm to make a detailed report, find things that the books don't report, get a first-hand account. I'm to take films, too, and use all this for lecture tours on Earth. I'll show the people of Earth what sinners the Kareenans really are. When the indescribably obscene evil acts the Kareenans commit in the name of their religion are shown, why, then, the Terrestrials won't be so full of fire to convert to Boontism. They will have seen for themselves what abominations are practiced in Boonta's name."