Night of Light

“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 begi

The car stopped before the precinct 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 Bake- ling 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.