Night of Light

Straightening up, he allowed himself the luxury of a firecracker-string of curses. It was ridiculous, this verbal explosion, of no practical use whatever. But he certainly felt a little less tense.

He looked up and down the street. Nobody in sight.

He looked down, remembering then that he had had the impression his legs had been wetted during the night. Dried blood caked his sandals and stained the green and white stripes of his fashionably painted legs.

He muttered, “Oh, no, not again,” thinking of the shower of blood in Mrs. Kri’s kitchen. But a further examination showed him that Mary was not responsible. The stuff had spurted from wounds made in the body of a monster, which lay face up at the base of the pedestal, its dead eyes staring at the purplish sky. It was twice as tall as the average

Kareenan and was covered with a bluish feathery hair. Apparently its body hairs, once no thicker than those of an Earthman, had sprouted into a dense mat. Its legs and feet had broadened, like an elephant’s, to support its weight. From the hips, grew a long thick tapering tail that would in time have resembled that of a Tyra

Then six men walked around the corner and halted staring at him.

Though they seem unarmed, there was something in the concentration of their expressions that alarmed him. Violently he jerked upon his finger, again and again until, panting, sweating, he could only look into the rigid grin and fixed eyes of the statue and swear at it. Once, he thought, this thing was human and therefore could have been dealt with, being of weak flesh and blood. But now, dead and of unyielding, uncaring metal, it was past argument, past cu

He ground his teeth in silent agony, and he thought, If they won’t help me, and there’s no reason why they should, then I must sacrifice my finger. That’s logical; that is if I want to get free again. It is possible to get my knife from my pocket and...

One of the men said, mockingly, and as if he had been reading Carmody’s thoughts, “Go ahead, Earthman, cut it off! That is, if you can possibly endure to mutilate your precious flesh!”

For the first time, Carmody recognized the man as Tand.

He had no chance to reply, for the others began to jeer, making fun of his having been caught in such a ridiculous way, asking him if he always made a public spectacle of himself like this. They hooted and laughed and slapped their thighs and each other’s backs in typically uninhibited Kareenan fashion.

“This is the pipsqueak who thought he would kill a god!” howled Tand. “Behold the great deicide, caught like any baby with his finger in the jam jar!”

Keep cool, Carmody, they can’t touch you.

That was a fine thing to say, and it meant exactly nothing. He was tired, tired, his proud bristling-forward bearing gone with the strength that seemed to have drained from his body. If his finger did not hurt because it was of frozen metal, his feet certainly made up for it. They felt as if he’d been standing on them for days.

Suddenly, he felt panic. How long had he been upon this pedestal? How much time had flowed by? How much time did he have left before the Night of Light was over?

“Tand,” said one of the men, “do you honestly think that this would-be statue might have the Power?”

“Look at what he has done so far,” replied Tand. He spoke to Carmody. “You have slain the old Yess, friend. He knew that it was to happen, and he told me so before the Night began.

“Now, we six are looking for one more to make the Seven Lovers of the Great Mother, the Seven Fathers of the baby Yess.”

“So you lied to me!” snarled Carmody. “You weren’t going to Sleep, then?”

“If you will recall my exact words,” said Tand, “you will see that I did not lie. I told you the truth but ambiguously. You chose the particular interpretation.”

“Friends,” spoke another man, “I think we are wasting our time here and giving the Enemy an advantage we may not be able to overcome. This man, despite his tremendous power, which I can sense in him even without probing—this man, I say, is one of the dirty-souled. In fact, I doubt if he does have a soul. Or, if he does, it is a fragment, a rag, a minuscule, a tiny little thing cowering in the deep and the darkness, afraid to have anything to do with the body, allowing the body to operate as it will, refusing to take any responsibility, refusing to admit even its own existence.”

The others seemed to find this very fu

Carmody trembled. Their amused contempt struck him like six hammers, one after the other, then all at once, then one after the other, like an anvil chorus. It was intensified many times because he shared in it at the same time that he felt its impact, as if he were both transmitter and receiver. He who had always thought he was above being affected by anyone’s contempt or laughter had suddenly found that it was not altitude that protected him but a barrier built up around him. And the defense had crumbled.

Wearily, hopelessly, he began jerking on the finger, then, as he saw six other strangers walking down the street toward him, he gave up. These men were also unarmed and walked with the same proud bearing possessed by the other group. They, too, stopped before him but ignored the first-comers.

“Is this the man?” said one.

“I think he is,” replied another.

“Should we release him?”

“No. If he wishes to be one of us, he will release himself.”

“But if he wishes to be one of them he will also release himself.”

“Earthman,” said a third, “you are being honored above all others—indeed you are the first man not born on this planet ever to be so honored.”

“Come,” said a fourth, “let us go to the Temple and there lie with Boonta and so father Algul, the true prince of this world.”

Carmody began to feel less humiliated. Apparently, he was important, not only to the second group, but to the first. Though if the first wanted him for something, they had a strange way of enlisting him.

What made the procedure so peculiar was that no man in the two groups was distinguished by any conventional marks of good or evil. All were handsome, vigorous, and seemingly self-confident. The only difference in their bearing was that the first, those who spoke for Yess, seemed to be having a good time, and were not afraid to lose their dignity in laughter. The second were uniformly grave and somewhat stiff.

They must need me badly, he thought.

“What will you give me?” he said very loudly, encompassing both groups in one glance.

The men of the first group looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and Tand said,”We will give you nothing you can’t give yourself.”

The spokesman for the newcomers, a tall young man, almost too handsome, said, “When we go into the Temple and there lie with Boonta as the Dark Mother, and father Algul her Dark Son, you will experience an ecstasy that ca

“Even,” broke in Tand, “the fear of these others killing you so they may not have to share any of the riches which they ca