Beyond The Tomorrow Mountains (3 page)

“Not at the price of outranking people who have no chance to learn.”

“We don’t. Anyone on this planet is eligible to earn Scholar status; scientific aptitude has nothing to do with it. Some of us study other fields, or choose work that doesn’t require study. The old lady who filled our trays, for instance—she was a basket-weaver in her village, and a grandmother; the council that convicted her of heresy thought she was a witch. Most women like that turn out to have no real heretical convictions, and they become Inner City Technicians without being required to recant, but not this one. She had her doubts about the justice of the High Law, and Stefred couldn’t shake her. So he took her the whole way: the dreams, recantation in its most difficult form, everything. She works in the refectory kitchen now, but she ranks the same as a fully trained scientist and her vote has equal weight.”

“Maybe so,” Brek protested, “still, I’m never going to feel right about the system.”

“Naturally you’re not,” agreed Noren. “Don’t you see, Brek? A person who doesn’t think anything’s the matter with it isn’t fit to hold power! The caste system necessary to human survival here is evil. The system whereby Scholars control all machines and all knowledge is evil, even though the villagers run their own affairs and enforce the High Law themselves through their elected councils. We who were heretics knew it was, and said so; we got ourselves tried and convicted and we refused to recant, believing we’d die for it. No one who’s not that strongly opposed to such evils can qualify.”

“But in the end we did recant.”

“We’re impenitent, though. We still have the same values, the same goals; we recanted only when we found that the other Scholars share them.” Noren spoke firmly, doing his best not to rouse the conflicting feelings he’d suppressed during nearly a year of concentration on study. He had allowed the thrill of absorbing knowledge he’d always craved to engross him, but some of that knowledge had been disturbing. Some of it had raised questions that had not occurred to him at the time of his recantation, questions he did not want to think of, much less discuss with Brek.

He was still sure, of course, that the sealing of the City was necessary to human survival. Without its irreplaceable life-support machines, everyone on this colony planet would suffer chromosome damage; future generations would be subhuman. The First Scholar had not allowed that to happen. He’d set himself up as an apparent dictator, knowing that the villagers would hate him and eventually kill him for it. To preserve their hope, he’d kept silent about the nova that had destroyed the Six Worlds of their home system and deprived them of all that the City must safeguard for posterity. Even when he lay dying—when he recorded his idea for the religion through which an abiding hope was to be sustained—his wish had been that the truth about him should never be known to any but those judged fit for stewardship. He had not wanted to be idolized as prophet and martyr.

“What went on before the ceremony this morning was—arranged, wasn’t it?” Brek asked. “I relived the dream where the First Scholar was killed; I stood in the same spot outside the Gates while people threw mud at me, just as they’d thrown stones and knives at him. At first I was so stunned I thought I’d lose control of myself, and then it dawned on me that Stefred meant me to feel—well, honored.”

“Of course. He honored you by recognizing that you look at things the way Scholars do, that you’d understand the symbolism, as well as the fact that if people like the ones in the crowd were given no outlet for their hatreds there’d eventually be bloodshed. But he meant you to feel something more, Brek.”

Noren glanced around the smooth windowless walls of the refectory—ancient walls that had been constructed on one of the Six Worlds, since the Hall of Scholars, like all the Inner City’s towers, was in reality a converted starship. He raised his eyes to the prismatic glass sunburst, symbol of the Mother Star, that was fixed to the center of the ceiling. “We agreed to go through that ceremony,” he continued slowly, “because we’d learned not only that the prophesied appearance of the Mother Star is based on fact, but that changes are honestly expected to occur when the Star does appear. The Prophecy is what keeps people hoping. It’s the only means of telling them that the world won’t always be as it is now. In time, when the light of the nova reaches this planet and the real Mother Star becomes visible, the Prophecy’s promises must come true; yet they can’t be fulfilled if we don’t manage to synthesize usable metal by then, so that we can build enough machines for everybody.”

Brek frowned. “Is there any question about it? The starships that escaped the nova got here generations ago and Scholars have been working ever since to create metallic elements through nuclear fusion. Haven’t they been making progress?”

“Brek,” Noren said sadly, “you can’t say
they
any more; you’ve got to say
we
. We’re working under terrible handicaps—even worse handicaps than you could guess from the dreams—and if those of us who’ve proven ourselves fit for the job don’t do it, the Prophecy will become as false and empty as we thought it was when we laughed at what sounded like a silly legend.”

The words seemed stiff. Was it really possible, mused Noren, that he was not giving Brek the whole truth? Was he hiding not merely fear, but fact? He was repeating what he himself had once been told; he’d been utterly convinced of its validity; yet deep inside, he sensed that dreadful doubts were stirring. Pushing them back, he went on, “When we re-enact the dream, we take on all the responsibility it implies. That’s what we’re meant to feel, not so much during the ceremony as afterward, when it seems that we’ve been duped into selling out.”

Thoughtfully Brek said, “I’m willing to do any work I’m given, just as I was willing to do what had to be done to uphold people’s respect for the Prophecy and the High Law. But becoming a Scholar is something else again. It means giving the impression that I’m in favor of the way things are.”

“You’ve already done that; you made your decision when you consented to the ceremony. What’s the difference now?” Noren averted his face as he spoke, for he knew perfectly well what the difference was; night after night he had lain awake for hours on end, unable to come to terms with it. He wondered if he was hoping that Brek would tell him that no real difference existed.

“The difference,” declared Brek bluntly, “is that during my recantation I was hated, but most people don’t hate Scholars nowadays. They worship them.”

Their eyes met, and there was no need to say anything further; neither of them was wearing the blue robe of priesthood, and that was not merely because the occasion wasn’t formal enough to warrant it. “It’s rightfully yours,” Noren had said when he’d given Brek the clean clothes set aside for him, “but you need not put it on unless you choose to. The robe’s a symbol; among us it represents full commitment. Scholar status was conferred on us without our knowledge or consent, but we are free to decide how we’ll use that status, and whether we’ll reveal it to anyone besides our fellow Scholars. So far I’m committed only to scientific training.”

He had agreed to train for the research work that must be done if synthesization of metal was to be achieved, for Stefred had convinced him that he’d betray his own principles if he refused to contribute actively toward the Prophecy’s fulfillment. It had been a difficult step to take, since like Brek he’d longed desperately for the training and had been incensed at the idea of receiving such an incredibly high privilege as the result of having conceded that the world could not be transformed overnight; still, reason had told him that it was the only course. The work was an obligation, not a reward, and the fact that he would enjoy it did not make it any less vital. But to assume the role of High Priest—to share responsibility for the control of the City’s contents, or to appear in public, when he was old enough not to be recognized as a former villager, and receive people’s homage—of that he wasn’t at all sure. Yet somebody had to do it. Stefred hated it, and for that matter, so had the First Scholar. And the First Scholar had been wise enough to arrange things so that nobody who wanted that kind of power would ever have it.

The First Scholar had been wise in many ways, but his greatest accomplishment had been the creation of a scheme under which power could be held only by those who, under pressure, had proven themselves incorruptible. Never in the history of the Six Worlds had there been such a scheme. Authoritarian systems, benevolent or otherwise, had always selected leaders from among their supporters instead of their opponents. The First Scholar had loathed the forced stratification of society he’d established. While he’d been aware that without it, the human race would be unable to preserve the essential life-support equipment during the generations when the growing population must live and farm by Stone Age methods, his plans had centered on the day when the system could be abolished. He had had the wisdom to know that it would never be abolished if people who approved of it wound up on top.

So through the years, the secret truths had been passed to those who approved
least
: those who had offered their lives in opposition to the supposed tyranny. To be sure, some heretics failed to qualify; they were motivated by desire to seize power for themselves or they weakened during the stress of the inquisition and its aftermath. But these people suffered no harm. Though they could not be released, they had the status of Technicians and did work of their own choosing.

And the Scholars themselves could not be released, neither from the physical confines of the Inner City nor from the unsought burden of representing a system which, while indispensable to survival in the alien environment, was abhorrent to them. It was they, not the villagers, who lived in bondage.

“It’s not easy,” Noren declared as he and Brek left the Hall of Scholars and walked through the Inner City’s enclosed courtyard toward one of the other towers, where Brek was to lodge with him.

“Stefred warned me in the beginning that a day would come when the consequences of my choice would seem so terrible that I’d beg to be let off,” Brek admitted. “I thought he was threatening to kill me, and I scoffed. Later I thought he’d been referring to the nightmarish parts of the dreams, or to the ceremony, or to imprisonment. But this—”

“This is worse than anything we envisioned,” agreed Noren. “We dedicated ourselves to resisting the Scholars’ authority, and now we’ve become what we most despised.”

On leaving the lift at the level of Noren’s compartment, they paused by the passageway window. The afternoon had gone swiftly; it was dusk, and the ring of large domed structures—the Outer City—that encircled the clustered towers looked dark and forbidding, an even more impenetrable barrier from within than it had once seemed from without. “Noren,” Brek ventured, “in your village… there was a girl, Talyra, wasn’t there? A girl you’d planned to marry?”

Noren lowered his eyes; it still hurt to think about that, and he did not want to speak of it. “Scholars aren’t barred from marriage,” he said. “We can even marry Technicians.”

“But not villagers.”

“No,” Noren replied shortly. He did not add that when certain conditions were met, villagers already married or betrothed to heretics could become Technicians, and that he’d dismissed the matter because he’d felt that in the City Talyra would be fearful and unhappy.

For a few moments they were silent. Far away across the fields stood the sharp silhouette of the Tomorrow Mountains, now pale below three crescent moons.
“‘And Cities shall rise beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, and shall have Power, and Machines, and the Scholars will no longer be their guardians,’”
Brek quoted softly. “How soon, I wonder? It’s not all going to happen on the day the Star appears! If we’re to be ready by then, the Prophecy must begin to come true long before.”

Noren, upset by Brek’s uninformed confidence, did not answer. Then, behind them, a voice said, “Maybe it will be sooner than you think, at least in a small way.”

Turning to greet the Scholar Grenald, the oldest and most distinguished of his tutors, Noren demanded, “What do you mean? Could it start in our lifetime after all?” The Time of the Prophecy—fixed by the distance in light-years to the Six Worlds’ exploded sun and chosen by the First Scholar not only for its symbolic value, but because survival without more metal could scarcely continue long past the time the light of the nova would arrive—was still several generations in the future.

Though Grenald smiled, the worry in his tone belied the hopefulness of his words. He looked at Noren intently, pleadingly, as if he somehow expected confirmation from a mere trainee. “It could,” he said. “You’re aware that it will start as soon as the research succeeds—”

“Of course,” agreed Noren hastily. The old man had been engaged for years in a series of experiments that was soon to culminate, and its outcome would give an idea of how much more research was needed; some Scholars felt that the results might point the way to an impending breakthrough. “We could be close, Grenald,” Noren declared. But as he spoke undeniable fear surged up in his mind, for he knew that if they were not close, they might not be on the right path.

And if that was the case, the Prophecy might never come true… yet he and Brek, like others before them, had publicly denied their heresy solely on the grounds that it would.

*
 
*
 
*

That night Noren dreamed he was the First Scholar again. It was not a controlled dream induced by the Dream Machine that fed recorded thoughts into his brain; but since experiencing those in which he’d shared the First Scholar’s thoughts, their content had recurred often in his natural dreams, particularly when he was tired or troubled. The controlled dreams of the revelation hadn’t been enjoyable; they had been nightmares. Though after the first Noren had submitted to them willingly, his hunger for the truth being stronger than his fear, the emotions they’d roused still frightened him.