Chapter 30 Chapter Thirty

When Sifna 89 stumbled out of the damaged observatory building, darkness still hung over the world.The diabolical stream of light from the stars still flooded Kargash, but there was a faint light of dawn on the eastern horizon, the first hopeful sign that the sun might be returning to the sky. She stood on the lawn of the observatory with her legs stretched out, her head raised, and she took a deep breath of air. Her mind was numb.She could not tell how many hours had passed since the sky darkened and the stars suddenly appeared and sounded like a million trumpets.All night she had been wandering the corridors of the observatory, unable to find her way out, battling madmen who were rushing at her from all directions.Whether she herself had gone mad was not something she had stopped to think about.She was preoccupied with surviving: punching the hands that grabbed her, parrying clubs that were swung at her with clubs snatched from fallen people, dodging groups of seven or eight who swarmed arm in arm The lunatics...they screamed and trampled over whoever stood in their way.

It seemed to her that there were millions of citizens in the Observatory.Wherever her gaze turned, she saw swollen faces, protruding eyes, protruding tongues, missing mouths, and fingers bent like claws. They are destroying everything.She didn't know where Beanie or Theremon were.She vaguely remembered that Arthur was surrounded by a dozen or twenty angry scoundrels, his thick white hair standing on end... going down the stairs and disappearing into the crowd. Other than that, Sifna couldn't remember anything.Throughout the eclipse, she ran up and down the hall corridors like a mouse caught in a maze.She was not at all familiar with the situation at the observatory, but if she was sane, leaving the building would be no problem for her.However, at this time, the strong light of the stars was mercilessly directed at her from every window, and her brain seemed to be pierced by crushed ice.She couldn't think, so she could only run back and forth to push away those hideous-looking fools who were talking to themselves, squeezed through the crowd of ragged clothes and trousers, desperately looking for the main exit, but it was futile.So, hour after hour passed, and she seemed to be caught in an endless nightmare.

Now she's finally out.She didn't know how to get out, when suddenly a door appeared in front of her, at the end of the corridor, she was convinced that this was the door she had passed through thousands of times.As soon as she pushed it, the door opened, and a gust of fresh and cool air hit her, and she stumbled over. The whole city was burning, and she saw flames in the distance, a bright, crazy red fireball that reflected the dark sky. She heard screams, cries, and maniacal laughter from all around. At her feet was a trail that went down the mountainside, and some people were stupidly pulling down trees, dragging branches and pulling roots out of the ground.She couldn't guess why they did it, and maybe they couldn't guess it themselves.

In the observatory parking lot, others overturned the car.Sifna didn't know if one of them was hers, she couldn't remember, not at all, and even her own name had a hard time remembering. "Sifna," she said aloud, "Sifna 89, Sifna 89." She likes the sound of the name.It's a nice name.It might be her father's name... or her grandfather's name, but whose name it was she couldn't be sure. "Sifna 89," she said again. "I'm Sifna89." She tried to remember where she lived.No, where is the address here? It's just a bunch of meaningless numbers and numbers.

"Look at the stars!" screamed a woman running past her, "Watch the stars die!" "No," Sifna replied calmly, "why should I die?" But she still looked at the stars.She was almost used to them now, and they were like bright lights... very bright... so close together in the sky that they hung like a great shimmering cloak in the sky.As she watched for a second or two, she thought she could make out each individual point of light, throbbing with unearthly energy, appearing brighter than the surrounding stars.But she can only look at it for five or six seconds at most, and then all those dancing lights will overwhelm her, make her scalp ache, her face is hot, and she has to hang her head and rub her fingers. place.

Ignoring all the craziness around her, she made her way across the parking lot and appeared somewhere across the way.From there a paved road led up the ridge at the bottom side of the observatory, and somewhere in her sane brain told her that was the way from the observatory to the main part of the university campus.Going forward to a higher place, Sifna finally saw some taller buildings in the university. You should go and save those soil Janes.A voice spoke in her head, which she recognized as her own. Soil Jane?What soil Jane? Dr Tom Jane. Oh yes, of course, isn't she an archaeologist?Yes, the job of an archaeologist is to discover cultural relics.She has been working on this in a faraway place.Sajamot?Becky Kan?It seems that these prehistoric soil slip records have been discovered.In a place called Tombo, there are very important antiquities, cultural relics.

How am I doing?she asked herself. The answer is: you did a good job. she smiled.Gradually I feel better.She thought it was the dawn on the horizon that was warming her.Morning is approaching and the Sun Onas is entering the sky.Once Onas rises, the starlight recedes and the fear lessens.The stars were disappearing fast, those to the east already dimmed in Onas's powerful light.Even in the western sky, where darkness still looms, the stars are little fish in a pond, flickering and disappearing.Those horrible glares have started to fade away, and now she can look at the sky continuously without headache.Her mind was much clearer, and now she remembered clearly where she had lived, where she had worked, and what she had been doing the night before.

At the observatory...with her fellow astronomers who foretell a solar eclipse... eclipse…… She finally understood what she had been doing: waiting for the eclipse, waiting for the darkness, waiting for the stars. Yes, waiting for the flames, Sifna thought, and there they were.Everything is happening exactly as planned and the world is burning like it has burned many times before... It is not God, not the power of the stars, but ordinary men and women who ignite the fire .Fear of the stars bordered on them, and they sank into a panic of despair.They had to resort to all means to restore the normal light of day.

Despite the chaos around her, she maintained her composure.Her wounded mind was insensitive and unable to fully respond to the catastrophe the darkness had brought.She walked down the road, straight on, into the quadrangle of the school grounds, through the horrible scene of devastation and devastation, without shock, without regret for all that had been lost, and without regret for the difficult times ahead. fear.This feeling is due to the fact that her mind has not fully recovered.Now she is purely an observer, calm and isolated.She knew that the burning building over there was the university library she had helped design, but the sight didn't move her in any way.At this point, even walking past a ruined 2,000-year-old archaeological site, she would dismiss the old historical records.It would never have occurred to her to weep over two thousand-year-old ruins, nor did it occur to her when the university around her was engulfed in flames.

Now she has come to the center of the campus, looking for a familiar path.Some buildings are still burning, some have been extinguished.She turned left like a sleepwalker, passed the administration building, turned right to the gymnasium, turned left to the mathematics building, then walked back and forth through the geology and humanities building to her headquarters... Archeology Hall.The front door was open and she walked in. The entire building appears to be mostly intact, some display cases in the porch were vandalized, but not by looters, as all the exhibits are still there.The elevator door fell off its hinges, and the advertising board next to the stairs fell to the floor, but otherwise everything was visibly intact.She heard nothing, it was empty.

Her office is on the second floor.As she went upstairs she came across the body of an old man lying on his back. "I think I know you," Sifna said. "What's your name?" He didn't answer. "Are you dead or alive? Tell me." He opened his dull eyes, and Sifna pressed his cheek with her fingers. "Mudlin, that's your name. Or... well, you're too old anyway." She shrugged and continued walking up. The door to the office was unlocked and there was a person inside. He looked familiar, too, but the man was still alive, curled up and leaning against the filing cabinet in an odd position.The man was solid, with powerful forearms and broad cheekbones, and a deep-set chest.His face was glistening with sweat, and his eyes were full of fiery light. "Sifna? Are you here?" "I've come for the tablets," she told him. "These tablets are very important, and they must be protected." He straightened his crouching body and took two staggering steps towards her. "The soil tablets? These soil tablets are gone, Sifna! The cultists stole them, remember?" "Missing?" "It's gone, yes, like your mind. You're out of your mind, aren't you? You're dead-faced. You don't see anyone, I can see that. You don't even know who I am .” "You are Barrick".she said, the name blurting out of her mouth. "So you do remember." "Yes, Barrick. Mudlin's on the stairs. He's dead, you know?" Barrick shrugged. "I think so, we're all going to be dead in a moment. The whole world has gone mad. But why should I bother telling you that? You're crazy too." His lips trembled, his hands trembled, and he gave a short, strange groan. Laughter, and then he clenched his jaw again as if trying to suppress them. "I've been here all through the dark, I've been working late, and when the light started to fade... oh my god," he said, "stars, stars. I took a quick look at them and then I hid at my desk down, and stayed there ever since.”He went to the window, "But now that Onas is coming, the nightmare must be over. Is there fire everywhere outside, Sifna?" "I'll get the soil slips." She said again. "They're gone" he spelled to her. 'do you understand me?Gone, not here, stolen! " "Then I'm going to take my graph," she said, "and I have to protect the knowledge." "Are you totally crazy? Where were you, at the observatory? You saw the stars clearly, didn't you?" He started giggling again, walking straight across the room, approaching her.Sifna's face was contorted with nausea, and now she could smell a strong, unpleasant smell of sweat from him, like he hadn't showered in a week.He looked as if he hadn't slept in a month.As she backed away, he said, "I won't hurt you." "I want the chart, Barrick." "Of course, I'll give you the charts, and the photos and all, but I've got to give you something else first. Come here, Sifna." He reached out and pulled her to his side.She felt his hands on her breasts, his rough cheeks pressed against hers, and the smell of him was unbearable.She was furious.How dare he touch her like this?She angrily pushed him away. "Hey, come on, Sifna! Come on, sweetie. God knows, there's only two of us in the world, you and me, and we'll live in the forest, hunting small game, picking nuts and berries. Yes, being hunters and Foragers, we will also invent agriculture." He laughed, his eyes gleam lewdly, his skin sallow.He reached out to grab her hungrily again, one cupped hand grabbing one of her breasts, the other slid down her spine, pressing his face against the edge of her throat, snouting like some kind of animal kiss her.His lips kept mingling with hers, and at the same time, he began to push her back into the corner of the room. Suddenly Sifna remembered the stick she had picked up in the observatory building one night, and it was still in her hand.She swung the stick up quickly, hitting Barrick hard on the jaw.He jerked his head back, making his teeth chatter. He let go of her and staggered back a few steps.His eyes were wide open in surprise, the pain was unbearable, his lip was broken, and blood was dripping from the corner of his mouth. "Hey you bitch! Why are you hitting me?" "Who told you to touch me." "Exactly, I was touching you! And the timing is just right." He pressed his chin and said, "Listen, Sifna, put the stick down and don't look at me like that. I'm your friend, your partner. Now the whole world is a jungle, just the two of us. I need you and you need me. It's not safe to go it alone right now, you can't risk that." He moved closer to her again, raising his hands to grab her. She hit him again. This time she swung the stick and hit him hard on the cheek, focusing on the protruding bone, and Barrick staggered from the force.He turned his head to one side, stared at her dumbfounded, and staggered back a few steps.But he still didn't fall.She swung the stick in a long arc and hit him a third time over the top of the ear.When he fell, Sifna mustered all her strength and hit the same place again.Balik closed his eyes tightly, and made a muffled sound, like a deflated rubber ball, sank against the wall, his head and shoulders turned to one side. "Let's see if you dare to touch me." Sifna poked him with the tip of her stick.Balik neither squeaked nor moved. Balik would never touch her again. Now it's time to find Tujian, she thought, feeling peaceful. No, Tujian is gone, Balik said.Stolen, she remembered now: they had been stolen, gone before the eclipse.OK, so what about the diagrams, all those drawings of the structure of Tombo Hill?Inside are paintings of stone walls, charcoal ash on foundations, and ancient fires like the ones that are decimating the city of Salo at the moment. Where are they? Oh, here in the chart cabinet, this is where they belong. Reaching into the cabinet, she pulled out a sheaf of parchment, which she quickly rolled up and tucked under her arm.Now she thought of Barrick on the ground and glanced at him.But Balik still didn't move, and he didn't look like he wanted to move. Downstairs, outside the office door, Mudlin remained where he was, sprawled motionless, rigid on the landing.Sifna bypassed him and ran towards the first floor. Outside the building, morning slowly descends.Onas was rising, and the stars seemed dimmer in its light.The air seemed to be cleaner and fresher, although the wind still carried a strong smell of smoke.She saw a group of people below the mathematics building smashing windows. After a while, they saw her and shouted at her in a hoarse and incoherent language, and several people ran towards her. Her breasts hurt where Balik had pinched her, and she didn't want any more hands to touch her.She turned around and quickly ran towards the back of the archaeological building, passed through the bushes next to the path, ran straight across the lawn, and arrived in front of the gray building of the flora she was familiar with in an instant.There is a small botanical garden behind the building, and on the hill outside the garden is an experimental botanical garden, next to the forest surrounding the campus. Sifna glanced back, thinking that the gang was still chasing her, and though she couldn't be sure, she galloped past the Plant Building and jumped gently over the low walls around the Plant Garden. A man waving at her with a lawn mower, wearing the grass-green uniform of a college gardener, was moving methodically back and forth in the center of the garden, pruning shrubs.He giggled to himself as he worked. Sifna bypassed him, sprinted a few steps, and came to the botanical garden.Are they still after her?She didn't want to bother looking back, so she kept running and running.This is the best policy.Her slender, powerful legs carried her across rows of neatly arranged trees with ease.She ran forward steadily and felt fine.Run, just run forward like this. She came to the rougher parts of the Arboretum, where brambles grew and everything was tightly woven together.Sifna rushed in without hesitation, thinking that no one would chase there.Branches scratched her face like claws and tore her clothes.When she passed through the dense area, she lost the roll of charts in her hand, and came to the far end empty-handed. Let them go, she thought.Anyway, they don't make any sense anymore. But now she has to rest.When walking across a stream by the edge of the botanical garden, I accidentally fell on a piece of cold green freshwater.She was panting from exhaustion.At this time, no one was following her, only her. She looked up through the tops of the trees, and the golden sun filled the sky, and the stars could no longer be seen.The nights and nightmares are finally over! No, she thought, the nightmare has only just begun. Shock and extreme disgust rose and fell in her heart like waves, and the numbness that had haunted her throughout the night began to disappear.After hours of distraction, she began to re-understand the structure of things, putting one event after another together to make sense of them.She thought of the schoolyard in ruins, the flames rising above the city in the distance, the madmen roaming about, chaos and looting. And the smirk on Barrick's face when he grabbed her, the look of surprise on his face when she hit him. I killed someone today, Sifna thought in shock and distress.Me, how could I do such a thing? She began to tremble, horrific memories filling her heart with horror: the sound of the club when she hit him, the way Barrick stumbled backwards and fell, the blow again, the blood, and his twisted body. head.It was this man who had worked with her for a year and a half and patiently helped her with excavations at the Beckerimot archaeological site.At this time, he fell under her stick like a slaughtered beast.And afterward, she was surprisingly calm... the satisfaction of refraining from him harassing her again, and that was probably the ugliest part of the whole memory. Then Sifna told herself that she didn't kill Barrick, but just a madman in Barrick's shell, and when he grabbed and stroked her with his hands, he stared wildly and talked nonsense.And when she wields that club, she is not the real Sifna, either, but the devil Sifna, the dreamy Sifna, the Sifna who sleepwalks through the horrors of the dawn. But now, sanity is recovering.Now, she is starting to understand the impact and impact of events caused by the eclipse.Not only would she not allow herself to feel guilty for Barrick's death...or any guilt for the demise of an entire civilization. She heard voices coming from far behind in the direction of the campus, voices as deep as beasts, from people whose minds had been destroyed by the stars and could never recover.She reached for the stick, had she lost it in her frantic escape through the Arboretum?No, no, it's here.Sifna grabbed it and ran away. The forest seemed to beckon to her, and she turned and ran into a cool grove. As long as her physical strength can support her, she will continue to run. What else is there to do but keep running?run, run.