Night of Light

He waved his hand to indicate the wind howling down the street.

Carmody did not understand what he meant. He was disappointed; he’d expected the usual violent reaction to his amusement at the subject of his “crime.” Perhaps the fellow was a policeman. Otherwise, in the face of Carmody’s laughter, how explain the stiff self-control? But it might be that he was untouched because the murder had happened on Earth and to a Terrestrial. An individual of one species found it difficult to get excited about the murder of a person belonging to another, especially if it was 10,000 light-years away.

However, there was the universally admitted deep empathy of the natives of Dante’s Joy; they were acknowledged to be the most ethical beings in the world, the most sensitive.

Abruptly bored, Carmody said, “I’m going back to Mother Kri’s. You coming along?”

“Why not? Tonight’s the last supper she’ll be serving for some time. She’s going to Sleep immediately afterwards.”

They walked down the street, silent for awhile though the wind, erratic as ever, had died down and made conversation possible. Around them towered the massive gargoyle- and-god-decorated buildings, built to last forever, to withstand any treatment from wind, fire, or cataclysm while their inmates slept. Here and there strode a lonely, silent native, intent on some business or other before he took the Sleep. The crowds of the day before were gone, and with them the noise, bustle, and sense of life.

Carmody was watching a young female cross the street and was thinking that if you put a sack on her head you wouldn’t be able to distinguish her from a Terrestrial. There were the same long legs, the wide pelvis, seductive swaying of hips, narrow waist, and flowering of breasts... suddenly the light had changed color, had flickered. He looked up at the noonday sun. Blindingly white before, it was now an enormous disc of pale violet ringed by a dark red. He felt dizzy and hot, feverish, and the sun blurred and seemed to him to melt like a big ball of taffy, dripping slowly down the sky.

Then just as quickly as they had come, the dizziness and faintness were gone, the sun once again was an eye-searing white fire, and he had to look away from it.

“What the hell was that?” he said to no one in particular, forgetting that Tand was with him. He found out he was shivering with cold and was drained of his strength as if he’d been upended and decanted of half his blood.

“What in God’s name?” he said again, hoarsely. Now he remembered that something like this had happened less than an hour ago, that the sun had changed to another color— violet? blue? -- and that he’d been hot as if a fire had sprung up in his bowels and that everything had blurred. But the feeling had been much quicker, just a flash. And the air about three feet before him had seemed to harden, to become shiny, almost as if a mirror were forming from the molecules of air. Then, out of the seemingly much denser air, that face had appeared, that half-face, the first layer of skin, tissue-thin, whisked away at once by the wind.

He shivered. The wind’s springing up again did not help his coolness. Then he yelled. About ten feet away from him, drifting along the ground, blown down the street and rolled into a ball by now, was another piece of skin. He took a step forward, preparatory to ru

“This could get you down after a while,” he said aloud. “But they’re not getting their hooks into John Carmody. That skin or whatever it is can go floating on down into the sewer, where it belongs, for all I care.”

He took out another cigarette, lit it, then looked for Tand. The native was in the middle of the street, bending over the girl. He was on her back, her legs and arms rigid but shaking, her eyes wide open and glazed, her mouth working as she chewed her lips and drooled blood and foam.

Carmody ran over, took one look, and said, “Convulsions. You’re doing the right thing, Tand. Keep her from biting her tongue. Did you have medical training, too?”

He could have bit his own tongue then. Now the fellow would know a little more of his past. Not that it would help Tand much in gathering evidence about him, but he didn’t like to reveal anything at all. Not without getting paid for it in one form or another. Never give anything away! It’s against the laws of the universe; to keep living you have to take in as much or more than you put out.

“No, I didn’t,” replied Tand, not looking up but intent on seeing that the wadded handkerchief thrust into her mouth didn’t choke her. “But my profession requires I learn a certain amount of first aid. Poor girl, she should have gone to Sleep a day earlier. But I suppose she didn’t know she was liable to be affected this way. Or, perhaps, she did know and was taking the Chance so she might cure herself.”

“What do you mean?”

Tand pointed at the sun. “When it discolors like that it seems to raise a tempest among one’s brainwaves. Any epileptoid tendencies are revealed then. Provided the person is awake. Actually, though, you don’t see this very often. Hereditary tendencies to such be- havior have been nearly wiped out; those who gamble on the Chance usually are struck down, though not always. If one does come through, he is cured forever.”

Carmody looked unbelievingly at the skies. “A flareup on the sun, eighty million miles away, can cause that?”

Tand shrugged and stood up. The girl had quit writhing and seemed to be peacefully asleep. “Why not? On your own planet, so I’ve been told, you are much influenced by solar storms and other fluctuations in the sun’s radiations. Your people—like ours—have even charted the climactic, psychological, physical, business, political, sociological, and other cycles that are directly dependent upon changes on the surfaces of the sun, that can be predicted a century or more in advance. So why be surprised because our own sun does the same, though to a much more intense degree?”

Carmody began to make a gesture of bewilderment and helplessness, then halted his hand because he did not want anybody to think that he could for a moment be uncertain about anything.

“What is the explanation for all this—this hibernating, these incredible physiological transformations, this... this physical projection of mental images?”

“I wish I knew,” said Tand. “Our astronomers have studied the phenomenon for thousands of years, and your own people have established a base upon an asteroid to examine it. However, after their first experience with the time of the Chance, the Terrestrials now abandon their base when the time for Sleep comes. Which makes it practically impossible to make a close examination. We have the same trouble. Our own scientists are too busy fighting their own physical stress at this period to be able to make a study.”

“Yes, but instruments aren’t affected during these times.”

Tand smiled his blue smile. “Aren’t they? They register a wild hodgepodge of waves as if the machines themselves were epileptic. Perhaps these recordings may be very significant. But who can translate them? No one, so far.”

He paused, then said, “That is wrong. There are three who could explain. But they won’t.”

Carmody followed the direction of his pointing finger and saw the bronze statuary group at the end of the street: the goddess Boonta protecting her son Yess from the attack of Algul, the dark god, his twin brother, in the metamorphosis of a dragon.

“Them...?”

“Yes, them.”

Carmody gri

“Intelligence has nothing at all to do with religious belief,” replied Tand. He bent down over the girl, opened her eyelid, felt her pulse, then rose. He removed his hat with one hand and with the other made a circular sign.