THE LONG TWILIGHT

Reviewed 12/26/2020

Cover art by James Warhola

Film This!

THE LONG TWILIGHT Keith Laumer New York: Berkley Books, September 1982				Rating: 5.0 High
ISBN-13 978-0-425-05629-5
ISBN-10 0-425-05629-5	222pp.	SC	$2.50

Gralgrathor came to Earth some 1,200 years ago in a singleship of the White Fleet that for centuries had been defending the planet from an enemy that could easily vaporize it. Stranded now, he survived amid the barbarian cultures of the time thanks to some special qualities imparted to his human frame by the superior science of Ysar, his homeworld. His fighting skills earned him a place in the northern town of Björnholm, where he found himself a wife, Gudred. Time passed, marked only by those milestones common to all humans: the building of a home with Gudred; gaining status among his adopted clan; the birth of a son he named Loki. Memories of his home kept him in part a stranger, but he was accepted and content.

Then, another stranger came to Björnholm. But Lokrien was no stranger to Gralgrathor; he was also a son of Ysar. Loki and Thor had served together in the White Fleet.1 Loki had come to take Thor back, deserting his post in order to track him down. Thor welcomes him, but insists he won't leave Earth. He provides Loki a place to bed down, then goes for a walk as he often does, the hound Odinstooth at his side.

At the top of the ridge known as Snorri's Ax, Odinstooth whines, sniffing the air. Gralgrathor strokes the old hound's blunt head. The dog's growl ends in a sharp, frightened yap.

"It takes more than a bear to make you nervous, old warrior. What is it?" Gralgrathor stares downward through the night toward the faint spark far below that is the firelight shining from his house.

"Time we went back," he murmurs. "The moon's down; morning soon."

He is half a mile from the house when he hears the scream, faint and muffled, quickly shut off. In an instant he is running, the big hound bounding ahead.

The servants are clustered in the houseyard, holding torches high. Big, bowed-backed Hulf comes to meet him, a knobbed club gripped in his hands. Tears run down his sun-and-ice-burned face into the stained nest of his beard.

"You come too late, Grall," he says. The big dog halts, stands stiff-legged, hackles up, snarling. Gralgrathor pushes through the silent huddle of housecars. The bodies lie outside the threshold: Gudred, slim and golden-haired, the blood scarlet against her ice-white face. For an instant her dead eyes seem to meet his, as if to communicate a message from an infinite distance. The boy lies half under her, face down, with blood in his fair hair. Odinstooth crouches flat at the sound that comes from his master's throat.

"We heard the boy cry out, Grall," an old woman says. "We sprang from our nests and ran here, to see the troll scuttling away, there . . ." She points a bony finger up the rocky slope.

"Loki—where is he?"

"Gone." The old woman sags. "Changed into his black were-shape and fled—

Gralgrathor plunges into the house. The embers on the hearth show him the empty room, shadow-crowded, the fallen hangings ripped from the sleeping alcove, glossy spatter of blood across the earthen floor. Behind him, a man comes through the doorway, his torch making great shadows which leap and dance against the dark walls.

"Gone, Grall, as old Siv said. Not even a troll would linger after such handiwork as this."

Gralgrathor catches up a short-handled iron sledge hafted with oak. The men scatter as he bursts from the house.

"Loki," he screams, "where are you?" Then he is running, and the great hound leaps at his side.

– Pages 79-80

The bad blood between Gralgrathor and Lokrien endures, as they do, up to the present. Loki has apparently disappeared from the tale, but Thor is confined at Caine Island Federal Penitentiary, somewhere on the southeast coast of the U.S. He goes by the name Grayle; no one is sure how long he has been there or why. He has been a model prisoner, and is 90 days from release.

Meanwhile, at the Upper Pasmaquoddie Power Station in Minnesota, chief engineer Hunnicutt prepares to inaugurate a new system that will broadcast power through the air to users across the nation. Seven sites, Caine Island among them, will be the initial users of the untried system. When the broadcast power begins to flow, several mysterious things happen.

Grayle, after tricking his orderly out of the room, unaccountably goes on a rampage and breaks up all the furniture.
A big man enters Smitty's Conditioning Parlor and Health Club in St. Louis, telling George the night man he needs lots of heat because his body's full of poison. George directs him to the steam room. An elderly physician present has overheard the remark about poison and asks George about it. "He meant the booze, doctor," George tells him. "Smell it on him." As the big man strips, they notice that his body carries a variety of scars. He spends twice as long in the steam as George predicts, then plunges into the deluge showers. After two more cycles, he emerges. The reek of alcohol is gone, and they notice that the scars have faded. The doctor is eager to know how this could be, but the big man is in a hurry. He dresses, throws down a few bills, and is out the door.
Northwest of Bermuda, a storm forms in clear weather. A few hours later, it threatens the entire east coast with lashing wind and rain. The center of it holds position as if nailed down, and observation shows what seems to be a whirlpool two miles across at that point. A pleasure boat is sucked into it, and a Navy spotter plane soon follows. Great volumes of air and water seem to be flowing into the whirlpool with nothing coming out.

After Grayle's outburst, the warden transfers him to Gull Key. Along the way, he escapes. Shortly he is seen heading northwest. In St Louis, the big man hires a driver to take him to Princeton, where he has an estate. There he chooses one of his five expensive cars and also heads northwest. As they travel, and as a manhunt closes in on them, it becomes clear that they are heading for the same spot, a few miles from the Upper Pasmaquoddie Power Station. There, the long twilight battle between Gralgrathor and Lokrien will reach its climax.

Keith Laumer's The Long Twilight is a fast-paced, well-constructed tale that holds your attention. There are few errors of grammar or continuity. I give it full marks, rate it a must-read, and think it should be turned into a film.

1 They may be brothers. Laumer describes them thus, but it's unclear if he means it literally or metaphorically.

Errata for The Long Twilight