Siferra said, “We’ve got a little Jonglor brandy back at our headquarters. I can authorize you to have some, I guess. For medicinal purposes, of course.”
“Brandy? Headquarters? What headquarters? What is this all about, Siferra? Are you really here at all?”
“You think I’m a hallucination?” She laughed and dug her fingertips lightly into his forearm. “Is that a hallucination, would you say?”
He winced. “Careful. I’m pretty tender there. And everywhere else, right now. —You just dropped right down out of the sky, is that it?”
“I was on Patrol duty, passing through the forest, and we heard the sounds of a scuffle. So we came to investigate. I had no idea you were mixed up in it until I saw you. We’re trying to restore order around here somehow.”
“
We?
”
“The Fire Patrol. It’s as close as there is to a new local government. The headquarters is at the university Sanctuary, and a man named Altinol who used to be some sort of company executive is in charge. I’m one of his officers. It’s a vigilante group, really, which has managed to put across the notion that the use of fire must be controlled, and that only members of the Fire Patrol have the privilege of—”
Theremon raised his hand. “Hold on, Siferra. Slow down, will you? The university people in the Sanctuary have formed a vigilante group, you say? They’re going around putting out fires? How can that be? Sheerin told me that they had all cleared out, that they had gone south to some sort of rendezvous at Amgando National Park.”
“Sheerin? Is he here?”
“He was. He’s on his way to Amgando now. I—decided to stick around here a little while longer.” It seemed impossible to tell her that he had stuck around on the unlikely chance that he would manage to find
her.
Siferra nodded. “What Sheerin told you was true. All the university people left the Sanctuary the day after the eclipse. I suppose they’re off in Amgando by now—I haven’t heard anything about them. They left the Sanctuary wide open, and Altinol and his bunch wandered in and took possession of it. The Fire Patrol has fifteen, twenty members, all of them in pretty good shape, mentally. They’ve been able to establish their authority over about half the area of the forest, and some of the surrounding territory of the city where people are still living.”
“And you?” Theremon asked. “How did you get involved with them?”
“I went into the forest first, once the Stars were gone. But it looked pretty dangerous here, so when I remembered about the Sanctuary, I headed there. Altinol and his people were already there. They invited me to join the Patrol.” Siferra smiled in what might have been a rueful way. “They didn’t really offer
me much of a choice,” she said. “They aren’t particularly gentle sorts.”
“These aren’t gentle times.”
“No. So I decided, better off with them than drifting around on my own. They gave me this green neckerchief—everybody around here respects it. And this needle-gun. People respect
that
too.”
“So you’re a vigilante,” Theremon said, musing. “Somehow I never figured you for that kind of thing.”
“I never did either.”
“But you believe that this Altinol and his Fire Patrol are righteous folk who are helping to restore law and order, is that it?”
She smiled again, and again it was not an expression of mirth.
“Righteous folk?
They
think they are, yes.”
“You don’t?”
A shrug. “They’re out for themselves first, and no kidding about that. There’s a power vacuum here and they mean to fill it. But I suppose they’re not the worst possible people to try to impose a governmental structure right now. They’re easier to take than some of the outfits I can think of, at least.”
“You mean the Apostles? Are they trying to form a government too?”
“Very likely they are. But I haven’t heard anything about them since it all happened. Altinol thinks that they’re still hidden away underground somewhere, or that Mondior has led them off to some place far out in the country where they’ll set up their own kingdom. But we’ve got a couple of new fanatic groups that are real lulus, Theremon. You just had a run-in with one of them, and it’s only by wild luck that they didn’t finish you off. They believe that the only salvation for humanity now is to give up the use of fire completely, since fire has been the ruin of the world. So they’re going around destroying fire-making equipment wherever they can find it, and killing anyone who seems to enjoy starting fires.”
“I was simply trying to cook some dinner for myself,” said Theremon somberly.
Siferra said, “It’s all the same to them whether you’re cooking a meal or amusing yourself with a little bit of arson. Fire is
fire, and they abhor it. Lucky thing for you that we came along in time. They accept the authority of the Fire Patrol. We’re the elite, you understand, the only ones whose use of fire will be tolerated.”
“It helps to have needle-guns,” Theremon said. “That gets you a lot of toleration too.” He rubbed a sore place on his arm and looked off bleakly into the distance. —“There are other fanatics besides these, you say?”
“There are the ones who think the university astronomers had discovered the secret of making the Stars appear. They blame Athor, Beenay & Co. for everything that’s happened. It’s the old hatred of the intellectual that crops up whenever medieval emotions start surfacing.”
“Gods! Are there many like that?”
“Enough. Darkness only knows what they’ll do if they actually catch any university people who haven’t already reached Amgando safely. String them up to the nearest lamppost, I suppose.”
Morosely Theremon said, “And I’d be responsible.”
“You?”
“Everything that’s happened is
my
fault, Siferra. Not Athor’s, not Folimun’s, not the gods’, but mine. Mine. Me, Theremon 762. That time you called me irresponsible, you were being too easy with me. I wasn’t just irresponsible, I was criminally negligent.”
“Theremon, stop it. What’s the good of—”
He swept right on. “I should have been writing columns day in and day out, warning of what was coming, crying out for a crash program to build shelters, to set aside provisions and emergency generating equipment, to provide counseling for the disturbed, to do a million different things—and instead what did I do? Sneered. Poked fun at the astronomers in their lofty tower! Made it politically impossible for anybody in the government to take Athor seriously.”
“Theremon—”
“You should have let those crazies beat me to death, Siferra.”
Her eyes met his. She looked angry. “Don’t talk like a fool. All the government planning in the world wouldn’t have changed anything. I wish you hadn’t written those articles too, Theremon. You know how I felt about them. But what does
any of that matter now? You were sincere in what you felt. You were wrong, but you were sincere. And in any case there’s no sense speculating about what might have been. What we have to deal with now is what
is
.” More gently she said, “Enough of this. Are you able to walk? We need to get you back to the Sanctuary. A chance to wash up, some fresh clothes, a little food in you—”
“Food?”
“The university people left plenty of provisions behind.”
Theremon chuckled and pointed to the graben. “You mean I don’t have to eat
that?
”
“Not unless you really want to. I suggest you give it to someone who needs it more than you do, while we’re on our way out of the forest.”
“Good idea.”
He pulled himself to his feet, slowly and painfully. Gods, the way everything was hurting! An experimental step or two: not bad, not bad. Nothing seemed to be broken after all. Just a little bit misused. The thought of a warm bath and actual substantial food was healing his bruised and aching body already.
He took a last look around at his little flung-together lean-to, his stream, his scruffy little bushes and weeds. His home, these strange few days. He wouldn’t miss it much, but he doubted that he’d forget his life here very soon, either.
Then he picked up the graben and slung it over his shoulder.
“Lead the way,” he said to Siferra.
They had not gone more than a hundred yards when Theremon caught sight of a group of boys skulking behind the trees. They were the same ones, he realized, who had flushed the graben from its burrow and hunted it to its death. Evidently they had come back to search for it. Now, sullenly, they were staring from a distance, obviously annoyed that Theremon was walking off with their prize. But they were too intimidated by the green neckerchiefs of office that identified the Fire Patrol group—or, more likely, simply by their needle-guns—to stake a claim to it.
“Hey!” Theremon called. “This is yours, isn’t it? I’ve been taking care of it for you!”
He flung the carcass of the graben toward them. It fell to the ground well short of the place where they were, and they hung
back, looking mystified and uneasy. They were obviously eager to have the animal but afraid to come forward.
“There’s life in the post-Nightfall era for you,” he said sadly to Siferra. “They’re starving, but they don’t dare make a move. They think it’s a trap. They figure that if they step out from those trees to get the animal we’ll shoot them down, just for fun.”
Siferra said, “Who can blame them? Everyone’s afraid of everyone, now. Leave it there. They’ll go after it when we’re out of sight.”
He followed her onward, limping as he went.
Siferra and the other Patrol people moved confidently through the forest, as though invulnerable to the dangers that were lurking everywhere. And indeed there were no incidents as the group headed—as rapidly as Theremon’s injuries permitted—toward the road that ran through the woods. It was interesting to see, he thought, how quickly society was beginning to reconstitute itself. In just a few days an irregular outfit like this Fire Patrol had begun to take on a kind of governmental authority. Unless it was just the needle-guns and the general air of self-assurance that kept the crazies away, of course.
They came to the edge of the forest, finally. The air was growing cooler and the light was uncomfortably dim, now that Patru and Trey were the only suns in the sky. In the past Theremon had never been bothered by the relatively low light levels that were typical of the hours when the only illumination came from one of the double-sun pairs. Ever since the eclipse, though, such a two-sun evening had seemed disturbing and threatening to him, a possible harbinger—although he knew it could not be so—of the imminent return of Darkness. The psychic wounds of Nightfall would be a long time healing, even for the world’s sturdiest minds.
“The Sanctuary is just a little way down this road,” Siferra said. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m all right,” said Theremon sourly. “They didn’t cripple me, you know.”
But it was a considerable struggle to force his sore, throbbing legs to carry him along. He was intensely gladdened and relieved when at last he found himself at the cave-like entrance to the underground domain that was the Sanctuary.
The place was like a maze. Caverns and corridors led off in all directions. Vaguely in the distance he saw the intricate loops and coils of scientific-looking gear, mysterious and unfathomable, running along the walls and ceiling. This place, he remembered now, had been the site of the university’s atom smasher until the big new experimental lab at Saro Heights opened. Apparently the physicists had left a good deal of obsolete equipment behind.
A tall man appeared, radiating authority.
Siferra said, “This is Altinol 111. Altinol, I want you to meet Theremon 762.”
“Of the
Chronicle
?” Altinol said. He didn’t sound awed or in any way impressed: he seemed merely to be registering the fact out loud.
“Formerly,” said Theremon.
They eyed each other without warmth. Altinol, Theremon thought, looked to be a very tough cookie indeed: a man in early middle age, obviously trim and in prime condition. He was well dressed in sturdy clothing and carried himself with the air of someone who was accustomed to being obeyed. Theremon, studying him, riffled quickly through the well-stocked files of his memory and after a moment was pleased to strike a chord of recognition.
He said, “Morthaine Industries? That Altinol?”
A momentary flicker of—amusement? Or was it annoyance?—appeared in Altinol’s eyes. “That one, yes.”
“They always said you wanted to be Prime Executive. Well, it looks like you are, now. Of what’s left of Saro City, at least, if not the whole Federal Republic.”
“One thing at a time,” Altinol said. His voice was measured. “First we try to stumble back out of anarchy. Then we think about putting the country together again and worry about who’s going to be Prime Executive. We have the problem of the Apostles, for example, who have seized control of the entire north side of the city and the territory beyond, and placed it under religious authority. They won’t be easy to displace.” Altinol smiled coolly. “First things first, my friend.”
“And for Theremon,” Siferra said, “the first thing is a bath, and then a meal. He’s been living in the forest since Nightfall. —Come with me,” she said to him.
Partitions had been set up all along the old particle-accelerator track, carving it up into a long series of little rooms. Siferra showed him to one in which copper pipes mounted overhead carried water to a porcelain tank. “It won’t be really warm,” she warned him. “We only run the boilers a couple of hours a day, because the fuel supply is so low. But it’s bound to be better than bathing in a chilly forest stream. —You knew something about Altinol?”
“Chairman of Morthaine Industries, the big shipping combine. He was in the news a year or two back, something about wangling a contract by possibly irregular means to develop a huge real-estate tract on government land in Nibro Province.”
“What does a shipping combine have to do with real-estate development?” Siferra asked.
“That’s exactly the point. Nothing at all. He was accused of using improper government influence—something about offering lifetime passes on his cruise line to senators, I think—” Theremon shrugged. “Makes no difference now, really. There’s no more Morthaine Industries, no more real-estate developing to be done, no Federal senators to bribe. He probably didn’t like my recognizing him.”