Nightfall Read Online Free

He’s here to help you get well.”
    “Huh,” Harrim snorted. “Another double-brain! What good have any of you done for me?”
    “Absolutely right,” Sheerin said. “The only one who can really help Harrim get well is Harrim, eh? You know that and I know that, and maybe I can persuade the hospital people here to see that too.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. It creaked beneath the psychologist’s bulk. “At least they have decent beds in this place, though. They must be pretty good if they can hold the two of us at the same time. —Don’t like lawyers, I gather? You and me both, friend.”
    “Miserable troublemakers is all they are,” Harrim said. “Full of tricks, they are. They make you say things you don’t mean, telling you that they can help you if you say such-and-such, and then they end up using your own words against you. That’s the way it seems to me, anyway.”
    Sheerin looked up at Kelaritan. “Is it absolutely necessary that Cubello be here for this interview? I think it might go a little more smoothly without him.”
    “I am authorized to take part in any—” Cubello began stiffly.
    “Please,” Kelaritan said, and the word had more force than politeness behind it. “Sheerin’s right. Three visitors at once may be too many for Harrim—today, anyway. And you’ve already heard his story.”
    “Well—” Cubello said, his face dark. But after a moment he turned and went out of the room.
    Sheerin surreptitiously signaled to Kelaritan that he should take a seat in the far corner.
    Then, turning to the man in the bed, he smiled his most agreeable smile and said, “It’s been pretty rough, hasn’t it?”
    “You said it.”
    “How long have you been in here?”
    Harrim shrugged. “I guess a week, two weeks. Or maybe a little more. I don’t know, I guess. Ever since—”
    He fell silent.
    “The Jonglor Exposition?” Sheerin prompted.
    “Since I took that ride, yes.”
    “It’s been a little more than just a week or two,” Sheerin said.
    “Has it?” Harrim’s eyes took on a glazed look. He didn’t want to hear about how long he’d been in the hospital.
    Changing tack, Sheerin said, “I bet you never dreamed a day would come when you’d tell yourself you’d be glad to get back to the docks, eh?”
    With a grin, Harrim said, “You can say that again! Boy, what I wouldn’t give to be slinging those crates around tomorrow.” He looked at his hands. Big, powerful hands, the fingers thick, flattened at the tips, one of them crooked from some injury long ago. “I’m getting soft, laying here all this time. By the time I get back to work I won’t be any good any more.”
    “What’s keeping you here, then? Why don’t you just get up and put your street clothes on and get out of here?”
    Kelaritan, from the corner, made a warning sound. Sheerin gestured at him to keep quiet.
    Harrim gave Sheerin a startled look. “Just get up and walk out?”
    “Why not? You aren’t a prisoner.”
    “But if I did that—if I did that—”
    The dockworker’s voice trailed off.
    “If you did that, what?” Sheerin asked.
    For a long while Harrim was silent, face downcast, brow heavily knitted. Several times he began to speak but cut himself off. The psychologist waited patiently. Finally Harrim said, in a tight, husky, half-strangled tone, “I can’t go out there. Because of the—because—because of the—” He struggled with himself. “The Darkness,” he said.
    “The Darkness,” said Sheerin.
    The word hung there between them like a tangible thing.
    Harrim looked troubled by it, even abashed. Sheerin remembered that among people of Harrim’s class it was a word that was rarely used in polite company. To Harrim it was, if not actually obscene, then in some sense sacrilegious. No one on Kalgash liked to think about Darkness; but the less education one had, the more threatening it was to let one’s mind dwell on the possibility that the six friendly suns might somehow