• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The chip in its side had grown to a black encroachment that covered a third of Beta. He shuddered, and when he straightened once more his florid cheeks did not contain quite as much color as they had had previously.

With a smile that was almost apologetic, he reversed his chair also. 'There are probably two million people in Saro City that are all trying to join the Cult at once in one gigantic revival.' Then, ironically. 'The Cult is in for an hour of unexampled prosperity. I trust they'll make the most of it. Now, what was it you said?'

'Just this. How did the Cultists manage to keep the Book of Revelations going from cycle to cycle, and how on Lagash did it get written in the first place? There must have been some sort of immunity, for if everyone had gone mad, who would be left to write the book?'

Sheerin stared at his questioner ruefully. 'Well, now, young man, there isn't any eyewitness answer to that, but we've got a few damned good notions as to what happened. You see. there are three kinds of people who might remain relatively unaffected. First, the very few who don't see the Stars at all: the seriously retarded or those who drink themselves into a stupor at the beginning of the eclipse and remain so to the end. We leave them out --because they aren't really witnesses.

'Then there are children below six, to whom the world as a whole is too new and strange for them to be too frightened at Stars and Darkness. They would be just another item in an already surprising world. You see that, don't you?'

The other nodded doubtfully. 'I suppose so.'

'Lastly, there are those whose minds are too coarsely grained to be entirely toppled. The very insensitive would be scarcely affected --oh, such people as some of our older, work-broken peasants. Well, the children would have fugitive memories, and that, combined with the confused, incoherent babblings of the half-mad morons, formed the basis for the Book of Revelations.

'Naturally, the book was based, in the first place, on the testimony of those least qualified to serve as historians; that is, children and morons; and was probably edited and re-edited through the cycles.'

'Do you suppose,' broke in Theremon, 'that they carried the book through the cycles the way we're planning on handing on the secret of gravitation?'

Sheerin shrugged. 'Perhaps, but their exact method is unimportant. They do it, somehow. The point I was getting at was that the book can't help but be a mass of distortion, even if it is based on fact. For instance, do you remember the experiment with the holes in the roof that Faro and Yimot tried --the one that didn't work?'

'Yes.'

'You know why it didn't w --' He stopped and rose in alarm, for Aton was approaching, his face a twisted mask of consternation. 'What's happened?'

Aton drew him aside and Sheerin could feel the fingers on his elbow twitching.

'Not so loud!' Aton's voice was low and tortured. 'I've just gotten word from the Hideout on the private line.'

Sheerin broke in anxiously. 'They are in trouble?'

'Not they.' Aton stressed the pronoun significantly. 'They sealed themselves off just a while ago, and they're going to stay buried till day after tomorrow. They're safe. But the city. Sheerin --it's a shambles. You have no idea --' He was having difficulty in speaking.

'Well?' snapped Sheerin impatiently. 'What of it? It will get worse. What are you shaking about?' Then, suspiciously, 'How do you feel?'

Aton's eyes sparked angrily at the insinuation, and then faded to anxiety once more. 'You don't understand. The Cultists are active. They're rousing the people to storm the Observatory --promising them immediate entrance into grace, promising them salvation, promising them anything. What are we to do, Sheerin?'

Sheerin's head bent, and he stared in long abstraction at his toes. He tapped his chin with one knuckle, then looked up and said crisply, 'Do? What is there to do? Nothing at all. Do the men know of this?'

'No, of course not!'

'Good! Keep it that way. How long till totality?'

'Not quite an hour.'

'There's