Night of Light

He awoke with the phone ringing on the table above him. Instead of rolling out and springing up to the phone, he peered from beneath the tablecloth. The morning light was filtering through the iron bars and the double glass of the windows. All looked safe, so he crawled out from under the table. His muscles were stiff and sore from the exertions of the night before and his cramped position.

Tand was calling. He looked as if he had slept even less well than Carmody. His face was drawn, and there were harsh lines raying out from the corners of his nostrils down to the edges of his lips. Nevertheless, he smiled.

“Did you enjoy your first night’s stay at our hotel?”

“It wasn’t boring,” Carmody replied. He looked at the clock on the wall. “Almost lunch time. I slept through breakfast.”

“I have good news,” Tand said. “Yess will see you tonight. At the hour of the thrugu.”

“Very good. Now, tell me, do you think there’s a chance our line is being tapped?”

“Who knows? It could be. Why?”

“I’d like to talk to you. Right now. It’s very important.”

“I haven’t slept all night,” Tand said. “But then who does at this time? All right. Why don’t you come to my place? Or would you prefer another place?”

“Your house could be bugged.”

Tand lost his smile. “It’s that bad? Very well. I’ll drive myself, pick you up in front of the hotel. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

While waiting in his room, Carmody walked back and forth, his arms swinging violently up and down as if he were striding across fields on a hike. The name Fratt beat like a gavel. Fratt! Fratt! Who was Fratt? Where? When? Why?

He had an excellent memory, undimmed and unblocked. He remembered well the hideous crimes he had committed. There had been a time when he had thought the only way he would be able to stop remembering them would be to kill himself. That was long ago. Now, he could visualize all he had done, but it was as if he were looking at someone else.

But why could he not summon the man Fratt from the past?

He ran through the names of all the victims he could recollect. There were many. Then he tried to visualize the anonymous faces, of which there were also many.

By the time he had to leave his room, he had given up. He also had a slight headache, something he had not suffered for many years. Was it caused by his conscience? Was there still something lurking in his unconscious, when he thought he had cleansed himself of guilt and remorse?

He walked out of the hotel door just as Tand drove up in a long sleek black car. Its right door opened before Carmody got to it, and it closed after Carmody settled himself beside Tand in the front seat.

“This is a Ghruzha,” Tand said with some pride. “It is modeled after the Earth GM Stego, you’ll notice.”

Tand left the main street and drove to a residential district. He stopped the car by a children’s playground. “Don’t worry about tappers beaming in on us,” he said. “I have a scrambler working.”

Carmody told his friend of the previous night’s happenings.

Tand said, “I’ve suspected something of the sort. But there’s nothing we can do. We don’t have any concrete evidence on which to act. Now, we could confront Abog with your accusations, but what could we do with them? In the first place, you don’t really know whether or not the man in the Eeshquur costume was Abog. You may be sure, but you can’t, in the legal sense, positively identify him. Moreover, say you could. So he was talking to an Earthman in a tavern. Is that anything unusual during the pre-Night festival? And he could claim he didn’t even know that Lieftin was an Earthman.”

“No, he couldn’t,” Carmody said. “I doubt that Lieftin can speak Kareenan like a native.”

“You can’t prove anything,” Tand said in English. “However, as you Terrestrials say, forewarned is four-armed.”

Carmody laughed, for he appreciated the pun. Tand had made the sign that Kareenan children and superstitious rurals used to ward off the evil spirit Duublow, who is supposed to have four arms with which he catches unwary travelers at crossroads before devouring them.

Tand continued, “Rilg may not be an Algulist at all. He may think of himself as a very devout Yessite. But he is chief of our government, and his first concern will be the survival of the state and the welfare of Kareen. I don’t envy his position. He’ll be torn between his religious inclination to accept whatever his god says and his desire to preserve the status quo. Plus his doubts about his own ability to survive the Night. The last element is, I would say, the strongest in him, as it will be in most people.

“However, what he can’t see, as the majority can’t see, is that a purge has to be faced up to at some time. So why not now, no matter how painful? Believe me, the very resistance that so many have expressed illustrates how shallow the faith of most is. It’s easy to follow the most popular religion, to worship the victorious god. But when you’re called on to make the supreme test, that’s different.”

“Yess is separating the men from the boys?”

“That’s a good way to put it.”

“But the children!”

Tand grimaced. “I don’t relish the idea. But the whole idea would be defeated if they were not subjected to the Night.”

“That’s not logical,” the priest said. “Suppose the Night does leave none but the good to breed? What about their children? You can’t say that goodness—whatever that is by your definition—is a genetic trait.”

“ No, but children tend, generally, to be what their parents are. In any case, it won’t matter. Because, once Yess decrees a general Waking, there will be no more Sleeping. All will go through every Night.”

“All right. I can see there’s no use arguing about this particular point. So, what are you going to do about Rilg and Abog?”

“Enforce the precautions taken to guard Yess. And to guard you. I’ve already had your belongings moved to a room on the fourteenth floor. The men who were guarding you will be replaced by men I know I can trust. You won’t take a step outside your room without adequate protection.”

Carmody said, “That seems reasonable, if restricting. Oh, by the way, could you make provision for the widow and orphans of the poor taxi driver? I’m not really responsible for his death, but, if it hadn’t been for me, he’d still be alive.”

“I’ve already done that,” Tand replied. He smiled grimly. “However, the money may not do them much good. It depends on how they get through the Night. And whether or not money is worth anything afterward.”

Tand started the car and drove back toward the hotel. Carmody was silent for a long time. His cardinal had given him instructions to try to persuade Yess from forcing a universal Waking. But it looked as if that might be just the thing to desire, from the Church viewpoint. If Kareenan civilization collapsed, the Kareenans would not be doing any extensive missionary work for a long time.

From the humane point of view, however, the cardinal was correct. But Carmody doubted that the cardinal and his superior had even considered this. To them, removed a million and a half light-years from an alien culture, the results of Yess’ decision would not be apparent. They would be thinking only of what a thoroughly Yessed and doubtless zealous people would be. They were visualizing swarms of fanatics descending upon Earth and the colonial planets.

What should he urge upon Yess? That, contrary to the cardinal’s instructions, he should encourage the decision for all to pass through the Night? Or should he follow his orders and act contrary to the interests of the Church, even if the Church did not know it?

There was no doubt in Carmody’s mind. Prevent the slaughter and the pain and misery. He could not be a Christian and do otherwise. His superiors would have to understand that only a man on the spot was capable of knowing the situation well. And that such a man, if he were a man, would disobey. Should his superiors not sympathize, then they would have to punish him as they thought fit. He was ready.