“Yes,” Beenay whispered. “You’re completely right.”
“You’ll go to him, then?”
“Yes. Yes. I have to, I suppose.” Beenay bit his lip. “I feel miserable about this, Theremon. I feel like a murderer.”
“I know you do. But it isn’t Athor you’ll be murdering, it’s a defective theory. Defective theories must never be allowed to persist. You owe it to Athor as well as yourself to let the truth emerge.” Theremon hesitated. A sudden startling new idea had occurred to him. “Of course, there’s one other possibility. I’m only a layman, you know, and you’ll probably laugh.—Is there any chance that the Theory of Gravitation might be correct despite everything, and that the computer’s figures for Kalgash’s orbit are right also, and that some other factor entirely, something altogether unknown, might be responsible for the discrepancy in your result?”
“That could be, I suppose,” said Beenay in a flat, dispirited tone. “But once you begin dragging in mysterious unknown factors, you begin to move into the realm of fantasy.—I’ll give you an example. Let’s say there’s an invisible seventh sun out there—it’s got mass, it exerts gravitational force, but we simply can’t see it. Since we don’t know it’s there, we haven’t plugged it into our gravitational calculations, and so the figures come out cockeyed. Is that what you mean?”
“Well, why not?”
“Why not five invisible suns, then? Why not fifty? Why not an invisible giant who pushes planets around according to his whims? Why not a huge dragon whose breath deflects Kalgash from its proper path? We can’t disprove it, can we? When you start in with why nots, Theremon, anything becomes possible, and then nothing makes any sense. At least not to me. I can only deal with what I know is real. You may be right that there’s an unknown factor, and that therefore the gravitational laws aren’t invalid. I certainly hope so. But I can’t do serious work on that basis. All I can do is go to Athor, which I will, I promise you that, and tell him what the computer has told me. I don’t dare suggest to him or anybody that I blame the whole mess on a hitherto undiscovered ‘unknown factor.’ Otherwise I’d sound just as crazy as the Apostles of Flame, who claim to know all sorts of mystic revelations.—Theremon, I really want that other drink now.”
“Yes. All right. And speaking of the Apostles of Flame—”
“You want a statement from me, I remember.” Beenay passed a hand wearily in front of his face. “Yes. Yes. I won’t let you down. You’ve been a tremendous help to me this evening.—What is it exactly that the Apostles have said now? I forget.”
“It was Mondior 71,” said Theremon. “The Grand High Mumbo-Jumbo himself. What he said was—let me think—that the time is very near when the gods intend to purge the world of sin, that he can calculate the exact day, even the exact hour, when doom will arrive.”
Beenay groaned. “So what’s new about that? Isn’t that what they’ve been saying for years?”
“Yes, but they’re starting to hand out more of the gory details now. It’s the notion of the Apostles, you know, that this won’t be the first time the world has been destroyed. They teach that the gods have deliberately made mankind imperfect, as a test, and that they have given us a single year—one of their divine years, not one of our little ones—in which to shape up. That’s called a Year of Godliness, and it’s exactly two thousand and forty-nine of our years long. Again and again, when the Year of Godliness has ended, the gods have discovered that we’re still wicked and sinful, and so they have destroyed the world by sending down heavenly flames from holy places in the sky that are known as Stars. So say the Apostles, anyway.”
“Stars?” Beenay said. “Does he mean the suns?”
“No, Stars. Mondior says that the Stars are specifically different from the six suns.—Haven’t you ever paid any attention to this stuff, Beenay?”
“No. Why in the world should I?”
“Well, in any event, when the Year of Godliness ends and nothing on Kalgash has improved, morally speaking, these Stars drop some sort of holy fire on us and burn us up. Mondior says this has happened any number of times. But each time it does, the gods are merciful, or at least a faction among them is: every time the world is destroyed, the kinder gods prevail over the sterner ones and humanity is given one more chance. And so the godliest of the survivors are rescued from the holocaust and a new deadline is set: mankind gets another two thousand and forty-nine years to cast off its evil ways. The time is almost up again, says Mondior. It’s just under two thousand and forty-eight years since the last cataclysm. In something like fourteen months the suns will all disappear and these hideous Stars of his will shoot flame down out of a black sky to wipe out the wicked. Next year on Theptar nineteenth, to be specific.”
“Fourteen months,” Beenay said in a musing way. “The nineteenth of Theptar. He’s very precise about it, isn’t he? I suppose he knows the exact time of day it’ll happen, too.”
“So he says, yes. That’s why I’d like a statement from somebody connected with the Observatory, preferably you. Mondior’s latest announcement is that the exact time of the catastrophe can be calculated scientifically—that it isn’t simply something that’s set forth as dogma in the Book of Revelations, but that it’s subject to the same sort of computation that astronomers employ when—when—”
Theremon faltered and halted.
“When we calculate the orbital motions of the suns and the world?” Beenay asked acidly.
“Well, yes,” Theremon said, looking abashed.
“Then maybe there’s hope for the world after all, if the Apostles can’t do any better job of it than we do.”
“I need a statement, Beenay.”
“Yes. I realize that.” The next round of drinks had arrived. Beenay wrapped his hand around his glass. “Try this,” he said after a moment. “ ‘The main task of science is to separate truth from untruth, in the hope of revealing the way the universe really works. Putting truth to work in the service of untruth is not what we at the university think of as the scientific way. We are capable now of predicting the movements of the suns in the heavens, yes—but even if we use our best computer, we are no closer than we ever were to being able to foretell the will of the gods. Nor will we ever be, I suspect.’—How’s that?”
“Perfect,” Theremon said. “Let’s see if I’ve got it. ‘The main task of science is to separate truth from untruth, in the hope of—of—’ What came next, Beenay?”
Beenay repeated the whole thing word for word, as though he had memorized it hours before.
Then he drained his third drink at a single astonishing long gulp.
And then he stood up, smiled for the first time all evening, and fell flat on his face.
9
Athor 77’s eyes narrowed, and he scrutinized the little sheaf of printouts lying before him on his desk as though they were maps of continents that no one had ever known existed.
He was very calm. He was amazed at how calm he was.
“Very interesting, Beenay,” he said slowly. “Very, very interesting.”
“Of course, sir, there’s always the possibility that not only have I made some crucial error in fundamental assumptions, but that Yimot and Faro also—”