Short Stories Vol.1

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 Cente

'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 "Tu

'Yes. Wasn't there some fuss about it?'

'Very little. It was hushed up. You see, that Tu

'Popular?'

'Certainly. There's a fascination in being frightened when it's part 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 fu

'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 tu

'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 or a heavy dose of tranquilizer.'

'They must have been crazy.'

'Which is exactly what they were. One person out of every ten who went into that tu

'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 enclosed places, so that fear of one is fear of the other. You see?'

'And those people of the tu

'Those people of the tu

'The people of the tu

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 the 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 mille

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 cities? 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 a sun?'

'How should I know?'

They were standing face to face and nose to nose.

Sheerin said, 'You burn 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 burn whatever they can get. They've got to have light. They've got to burn 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 hustled 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 -- '