Night of Light

They stepped into a small room, bare of furniture and with thick dust on the floor. Another door, opened with the same wall key, permitted access to yet another small room. A third door, swinging on pivots as the hotel doors did, gave them entrance to a hall the floor of which was dusty. Again, the key unlocked another door, and they were in the anteroom in which Carmody had been before. It was the one with the elevator cage that had taken him up to meet Yess.

The door swung shut behind them and seemed to be one piece with the wall.

“Get in,” Tand said. The cage rose. At the top of the shaft, they left the cage and walked down a broad corridor for at least half a kilometer. There were many doors on both sides, all shut. At the end of the passageway, they came to another elevator. It took them back down to the ground floor. Two more rooms had to be crossed, and then they were in the great room where, so many years ago, Carmody had murdered the old Yess.

The new Yess was there. He stopped talking to the Fathers and priests and priestesses gathered around him to greet the two newcomers. “I had not yet given up hope that you were alive and could get here. But I was begi

“What’s the situation?” Tand said.

“Rilg and his Algulists are besieging us. They have some heavy artillery and kasers, but they haven’t used them against the Temple, and I doubt that they will. Their war is with me; they would not dare to do too much damage to the house of the Great Mother Herself. But they are preventing anybody from entering or leaving. I think they plan to attack later in the Night.”

Yess placed his hand on the priest’s shoulder and said, “Come to my rooms, Father. I have something I want to show you.”

Tand shouted, “Look out!” He was pointing upward.

Lieftin was standing in the gallery above. He was against the railing and had a bazooka on his shoulder aimed at Yess.

Carmody drew his gun and fired.

Only later was he able to reconstruct what had happened. A blast of fire and smoke covered Lieftin. The roaring air knocked Carmody and all those around him, except Yess, off their feet. Carmody arose, stu

He walked up the flight of steps that led to the gallery and examined the benches. The twisted bazooka, one end ripped off, lay under a bench. A few scraps of skin, blood, and smashed bones were all that remained of Lieftin.

Tand, who had followed him, said, “I think your bullet struck the missile just as it came out of the tube. It exploded, and—well, you see the result.”

“I was aiming at him, not the tube,” Carmody said. “It was a lucky shot, just plain dumb luck.”

“Are you sure?” Tand said. “I’m not.”

“You mean that someone—Yess or Boonta? -- guided my aim?”

Tand shrugged and said, “Not the Mother.” He made the circular sign. “She would not take sides. But Yess... who knows? He will not say.”

“It was chance.”

“As you will. There’s no way of proving or disproving it.”

Tand went up to the top row of benches and out through an archway. Carmody, going after him, found him looking into a doorway cut in the stone of the wall.

“Lieftin, or those who hired him, found another one of our secret entrances,” Tand said. “It was to be expected. I wonder how long they’ve known about it?”

“Won’t they be using it again when they find Lieftin has failed?”

“I doubt they’ll try it. They banked on one man getting through, which was wise of them, for a number might have tripped off the alarms. And they know we’ll not allow them to use the same tu

Tand strode off. Carmody returned to Yess, who repeated his invitation to go to his rooms. When they arrived, Yess pulled a dicspool from a drawer of his desk.

“I dictated this an hour ago. It’s the last chapter of the Book of Light. I do not know myself what it says, for I was in the presence of the Mother. She talked, and I was Her voice.”

He handed the spool to Carmody. “Take it with you; run it off. When the Night is ended, see if what I have said has not come true.”

“You predicted the course of events to come?”

“In full detail.”

“How do you know this if you can’t remember what you said?”

Yess smiled, “I know.”

Carmody put the spool in the beltbag. “Why do you give it to me? Do you expect something to happen to you?”

“I don’t know anything except that you were to get the last chapter. Will you promise that you’ll have it published?”

“Do you realize what you’re asking? I’m a priest of a Church that is threatened by your religion. Why should I have it published?”

“Because you are the one who is entrusted with it. That’s all I am able to tell you.”

Carmody said, “I can’t promise anything. I’d have to consult with my superiors first. They will undoubtedly want to hear it themselves, and what they will do with it after that I can’t say.”

“Very well. But at least promise me that you’ll listen to it before anyone does. Then you may act as you see fit.”

“Very well. Now I’d like to be alone for a while. The only place is the roof top. How can I get to there?”

Yess gave him directions. As Carmody started to leave, Yess embraced and kissed him. “You are my Father,” Yess whispered.

“In one way I am,” Carmody said. “But I wonder what a scientific comparison of blood and cell types would show? Tell me, do you feel lonely? Do you think you might have made a terrible mistake by commanding all to go through the Night?”

“I am alone but not lonely. Don’t mistake my expression of love for you as a weakness or cry for help. I am Yess, a being you ca

Yess walked away. Carmody watched him and thought of what a splendid being, physically, the naked god was. And he thought of the impossibility of Yess’ existence. Only a miracle, or some form of supernatural power, could have created him.

This was the overpowering factor in the spread of Boontism; this was what made it so dangerous to all other religions, not just those of Earth alone.

When he stepped out of the gravcage onto the rooftop, Carmody was startled. Subconsciously, he must have expected an unrelieved flatness. Most large buildings of the Federation had level and unobstructed roofs to receive aircraft. But he had forgotten that he was not only on the planet of Dante’s Joy but on the high place of the Temple of Boonta Herself. And before, behind, below and above was a maelstrom of stone shapes, a mimetomantic nightmare.

Originally, the rooftop must have been meters thick, a solid slab of marble webbed with many colors. From it some mad Titan had chiseled an inferno of writhing figures. And he must have started from the very spot on which Carmody stood, since the flow and rush and swirl of rock was outward in every direction from this center, as if the figures were waves twisted by the force of a whirlpool and he was at the bottom of a hole created by the vortex in the marble sea.

Nevertheless, despite the first impression of an impenetrable host, there were avenues, and through one of these Carmody made a slow and cautious progress toward the edge of the rooftop.

Savage and long-necked and crawling things, flat-tailed, tentacled, and flippered, jostled each other and turned to bite at one another or even at themselves. Many were coiled in furious combat or even more furious copulation, in disregard of difference of kind.

Carmody had to duck under a huge head barring his path. The long teeth projecting downward tugged against the back of his cloak. Abruptly, he was in a gigantomachy of land monsters. These, like the thalassic things behind him, were eating or chasing each other or mating with a frenzy that only a master could have evoked from the inanimate marble. Yet, the faces of the creatures, no matter how savage, contained more intelligence and, somehow, more a sense of striving forward than those of the beasts Carmody had first encountered.