The Dashiell Hammett Megapack
The M.R. James Megapack
The Selma Lagerlof Megapack
The Murray Leinster Megapack
The Arthur Machen Megapack**
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack
The Talbot Mundy Megapack
The Andre Norton Megapack
The H. Beam Piper Megapack
The Mack Reynolds Megapack
The Rafael Sabatini Megapack**
The Saki Megapack
The Robert Sheckley Megapack
*Not available in the United States.
**Not Available in the European Union.
OTHER COLLECTIONS YOU MAY ENJOY
The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany Megapack”)
The Wildside Book of Fantasy
The Wildside Book of Science Fiction
Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories
More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories
X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries
THE TRUE DARKNESS, by Pamela Sargent
The shrieking wind went mute. Lydia’s ears throbbed in the silence. Matt reached for the remote just as the TV screen went black and the overhead lights winked out.
Matt did not curse the darkness.
Lydia lifted a hand to her face. The living room was so dark that she couldn’t see her own fingers. “Isn’t there a flashlight by the bookcase?” she asked. Matt had been looking for his nail clippers over there earlier, shining a flashlight under the bottom shelf and behind the books; she had reminded him that he wouldn’t have lost the damned clippers in the first place if he didn’t insist on clipping his nails while he watched TV. “Think you left it there before.”
“If I can find it.” She felt the shifting of his weight on the sofa. “Jesus, can’t see a thing.” His voice was above her now. “This must be the third power failure we’ve had. Better call and find out how long it’ll be.”
“Even if we manage to call through, they won’t tell us much,” she said.
“At least we’d have an idea.”
Lydia leaned forward, felt around on the coffee table for her cellphone, flipped it open, and thumbed a button. The tiny screen should have been glowing by now. “My cell’s not working.”
“What do you mean it’s not working?” Matt’s voice was a bit more distant.
“Just what I said.” She paused. “Where’s your iPhone?”
“Think I left it upstairs.”
“I could try the phone in the kitchen.”
There was the sound of a thump. “Ow!” Matt said. “Just bashed my knee.”
Action and reaction, Lydia thought, yet another example of Newton’s third law of motion. She said, “Be careful.”
“Found the flashlight.” A small round circle of light appeared, moved up and down, then went out. There was something wrong with the flashlight, too. Everything around it, except for the patch of light, had remained completely black.
The floor creaked and then she felt the weight of her husband against her left side. “You don’t have to sit right on top of me,” she said.
“Sorry.” He moved away from her. The disk of light reappeared, but failed to illuminate anything around it. “This is really weird,” Matt continued. “This flashlight is screwy.” His voice was shaky.
“Guess I should try calling,” she said, “even if they don’t tell us much.” She had stored the number for National Access Incorporated in both her cellphone and the landline phone in the kitchen after the last power failure. She fiddled with the cellphone again, but nothing happened. “I’ll try the phone in the kitchen.”
“Take the flashlight.”
She felt the cool metal cylinder against her palm and closed her fingers around it, then pushed against the slide with her thumb. At first she thought that the flashlight had died, and then she turned the cylinder toward herself and saw the small circle of light.
Her face felt cold; it was harder to breathe. She aimed the flashlight away from herself and saw the light disappear.
She heard Matt catch his breath, but he said nothing. During the last power failure, Matt had cursed National Access for a minute or two, cursed some more while trying to locate a flashlight, had tried and failed to get a call in to the power company, then had suggested that they relax and finish their wine and he would tell her about his latest project while they waited for the power to come back on. It wasn’t like him to sit there saying nothing at all.
Lydia stood up. Even with the flashlight on, she had to feel her way toward the kitchen. She crept through the dining room, expecting at almost any moment to get to the doorway and then around the corner to the countertop where the phone was located, but the kitchen felt far away, almost unreachable. Before she could take one step, she had to take half a step, then half of that half-step, then half—
Stop it, she told herself. The minutes seemed to crawl by before she finally touched the edge of the kitchen counter.
Late that afternoon, a middle school kid had called the library the library to ask what Zeno’s paradox was; Lydia had taken the call.
“You don’t need a reference librarian to answer that question,” she had told him.
“But I don’t understand the answer I found,” the boy replied, sounding close to tears. A homework assignment, she thought, probably one he had put off doing until the last minute, and maybe his computer wasn’t working and he couldn’t go online to search for more information.
“Well, let me put it as simply as I can,” Lydia said. “Zeno’s paradox states that an arrow will never hit its target, because it has to fly half of the distance to it first, and then half of that distance, and so on and so forth, so the arrow will never reach the target at all, because it has to traverse—move through—an endless series of halves.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Having to cover endless half-distances and never able to get where it’s going is a way of saying that motion is impossible. Or an illusion. Think about it.”
“Thanks, lady,” the boy said, sounding unconvinced.
At least she had made it to the kitchen, unlike the arrow forever kept from its target by halves. The power had only gone out for an hour last time, and for about half an hour a month ago, but there had been a high wind warning up earlier in the evening. There had been more such warnings lately, perhaps a sign of increasing climate change since this region had rarely been swept by such strong winds in the past, and the wind had been howling for at least a couple of hours, to the point where she had started to worry about the roof and the tree limbs that might come crashing down on the house. That was one thing they hadn’t had to worry about while living in the city, where the nearest trees of any great size were in the park a block and a half away.
She