Let there be Night. Robert F. Young

after slipping her feet into a pair of clodhopper shoes, she produced a comb from the voluminous interior of her dress and proceeded to comb her hair. It fell all the way to the small of her back, and how she managed to comb it straight back from her face and forehead and compress it into a bun no bigger than a billiard ball I’ll never understand, but comb and compress it she did, after which she donned a bonnet that matched her dress and that hid not only all of her hair but half of her face as well. Looking at her, I saw no vestige whatsoever of the girl I had seen bathing in the brook, but fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be I have a good memory.

      A path bordered the opposite bank of the brook, and presently she started along it in the direction of the village. I waited. till the trees hid her from view, then I forded the brook at a point where the waters ran relatively shallow, and detoured around her at a brisk dogtrot. Emerging on the path, I laid down on the ground and made like I had dropped in my tracks. It wasn’t a particularly difficult subterfuge to bring off, for my three days on the mountainside and my three-quarters of a day in the forest had taken just about all the starch out of me, and the brisk dogtrot had decimated the modicum there was left.

      I kept one eye on the alert in case the sight of me lying helpless on the path failed to evoke the reaction I was gambling on and evoke a diametrically different one instead. I needn’t have worried: the minute she rounded a turn in the path and saw me, she became a veritable engine of concern and bore down upon me in a flurry of feminine tenderness. Kneeling beside me—no small accomplishment in that outfit she had on she felt my forehead. Next, she lay her head upon my chest and listened for my heartbeat. All this while I had been watching her with one slitted eye; now, I opened both eyes, raised my head, and looked full into her face. We were so close, our noses almost touched. “Pervitu es Uiren?” she asked, straightening abruptly.

      I propped myself into a sitting position. Getting across the phony background I had decided upon i.e., that I had suffered a total loss of memory, had wandered away from my own village (if there was one, there had to be others), and become lost in the forest was no easy matter with nothing to work with except a series of improvised signs, but at length I managed, and was rewarded by a warm look of sympathetic understanding. Helping me to my feet, she pointed down the path in the direction of the village and indicated by means of several improvised signs of her own that I was to accompany her to her home, where I would be suitably cared for. She even proffered her shoulder for me to lean on. I didn’t avail myself of it, however, I may be an opportunist, but I draw the line when it comes to taking undue advantage of trusting females.

      As we walked slowly along, she kept glancing curiously at my torn and begrimed space fatigues. I hoped they weren’t too radically different from the garments worn by the menfolk of her village, and apparently they weren’t, for after a while her interest waned and her glances petered out. The trail widened gradually into a rutted road. The ruts spelled wagons, and hoofmarks in between them spelled some manner of equine beast of burden. The brook purled along beside the road, and occasionally I glimpsed small game in the underbrush bordering the opposite bank. Some of the trees had some kind of letters carved in their trunks. There were birds everywhere, and the way was sweet with their evening songs. In several sheltered places, pale patches of snow lingered. Certainly, I reflected, it was rather early in the season for a girl to be bathing in a brook.

      Shadow lengthened around us, and. I Could tell from the way my companion kept trying to step up our pace that she wanted to make it home before darkness fell. Noticing the increasing coolness of the air, I thought I knew why, but I didn’t really till darkness actually did fall. Then, when she knelt down in the middle of the road and bowed her head, I realized that she was afraid.

      Afraid of that silly satellite rising into the sky.

      I made haste to kneel down beside her. I couldn’t of course join her in the little prayer that she uttered—I learned afterward that it was a prayer beseeching forgiveness for being out after dark with a man to whom she was not betrothed but obviously my comportment left nothing to be desired for, several moments later when she got to her feet and looked down at me, I saw gratitude shining in her eyes.

      I stood up beside her. Before we started on our way again, I stole a look at old mountain-nose. I had already figured out his habits that is to say, his orbital velocity and his trajectory and knew that during each twenty-six hour period he rose and set at the same time and consequently underwent no phases. The look he gave me back seemed even dirtier than the previous looks I had rated. Now that I came to think of it, there was something familiar about that somber frown of his. Somewhere or other I had encountered it before. Suddenly I remembered. I had seen it on the face of Michelangelo’s Yahweh in the Sistine Chapel.

      The village began without preamble. It was situated near the shore of a small lake, and consisted of a cluster of perhaps three thousand buildings crisscrossed by avenues and side streets just wide enough for two medium sized wagons to pass comfortably. With the exception of a half dozen large, factory-like structures standing in a sizable clearing on the outskirts, the buildings were all alike, so a description of the one the girl led me to should suffice. The ground floor measured something like 35X35X12 feet and was constructed of heavy planking. Two square windows and a thick rectangular door distinguished the facade from the other three sides, and there was a small plot of ground separating it from the street. At first glance, the second floor seemed to be nothing more than a set of shingleless rafters rising steeply into a series of individual peaks; at second glance, however, the glass roofing material became visible, and you realized that you were confronted with a large second-story room, the walls and ceiling of which were one enormous skylight. Rising along the rear wall and protruding from the transparent peak was a stone chimney, and from its mouth issued a thin trail of smoke.

      The girl opened the door and we went inside. Like the second floor, the ground floor consisted of but one room. It was commodious enough, however, and functioned as living room, dining room, and kitchen. The kitchen was located along the rear wall and featured a big stone hearth in which an anemic wood-fire was burning. Next to the hearth, a ladder climbed the wall to a trap door in the ceiling. The dining room was little more than a round wooden table, several wooden chairs, and a box-like affair that functioned as a sort of buffet and cupboard combined. The living room was about as cozy as a third-class spaceport waiting room. There was a long wooden bench, a wooden armchair, and a small wooden table. On the table burned the source of the room’s sole illumination a primitive oil lamp with a glass chimney. Attached to the table’s legs a few feet above the bare plank floor was a rack, and on this rack lay a thick book bound in black leather. No one needed to tell me what kind of a book it was, and no one needed to tell me who or rather, what its subject matter concerned.

      In the kitchen stood a woman. She was wearing a camouflage-bonnet and a tepee dress, and she was engaged in stirring the contents of a large cast-iron kettle that was suspended over the anemic flames of the hearth-fire. In the living room sat a man. He was wearing skin-tight black trousers and a black frock coat that came all the way to his knees, and he was engaged in making entries in a large ledger that lay on his lap. Both the man and the woman looked up when the girl and I came in, and when the girl spoke several words to them they came hurrying over to my side. The man was tall and thin and bearded, and about twice my age (I was twenty-nine at the time). He looked as though he had lost his last friend. The woman was somewhat younger than he was, almost as thin, and she looked as though she too had lost her last friend. Glancing at the girl, I saw the melancholy in her eyes for the first time, and realized that she also looked as though she had lost her last friend. I began to wish that I had remained on my mountain.