The Doors Of The Universe (47 page)

“From the ship? When?” Lianne broke in, obviously startled.

He told her, perplexed by her surprise. “That was before I told them I want to stay,” she said, frowning. “There was no need for such a mind probe, certainly not then. And that man, he’s senior to most of us, he deals with basic policy; he rarely leaves the ship personally. I didn’t know probes of that kind were ever tried with people of immature species. Was it… painful, Noren?”

“In a way. He warned me not to panic; I assumed it was something telepaths do routinely.”

“Not like that. Deep wordless communication is used privately between people close to each other, but a full one-way scrutiny of motives done by a stranger, fast, and in public—very few untrained people could stand up under that. It’s a technique we reserve for special occasions. It has been done to me in Service rituals, was done yesterday by the same man, in fact, during my formal leave-taking aboard the starship.” She shook her head, puzzled. “I wondered why he didn’t argue more against my choice; now I see. But why didn’t he tell me he’d met you, or even that he’d been down to the surface?”

“What did he tell you about the Prophecy, about how our civilization will regain technology?” Noren asked. “He knows our evolution won’t stop, I could sense that. And anyway, they couldn’t have made a decision to withdraw unless they knew the answer.”

“He knew,” she agreed. “But he didn’t inform me; he said that by staying here, I’d forfeit my right to hear what they expect.”

“Not even whether the key will appear in your lifetime?” Noren protested indignantly. “Why would they be so merciless?”

“Because they realized that I love you,” Lianne told him, “and that I’d pass all my knowledge on to you.”

“They didn’t trust me not to tell anyone about them, then.”

“Oh, yes. If they hadn’t trusted you, they wouldn’t have allowed me to stay as living evidence. They withheld what they did for my sake—to make sure I really wanted to spend my life with you and wasn’t doing it merely to buy knowledge for you that your task doesn’t require.”

“I couldn’t endure having you give up the stars for my benefit,” he declared, trying to steady his voice.

“They realized that, too,” she said. “They aren’t merciless; they simply take a long view of mercy.”

Then they were waiting for her. They had trusted him not only with future generations’ welfare, but with hers, and had known he would say what must be said to send her back to them. Unless…

“Lianne,” he asked, trying to contain the sudden hope, “you told me subtle intervention’s permitted, sometimes. If there were a way we could keep our technology without synthesizing metal, some way we can’t ever discover, and they could give me a clue to it—would they?”

“Yes. Yes, and knowing you were probed before I left the City makes me wonder… only it doesn’t fit. They don’t lie, and they did tell me specifically that my decision was final, that no ship will return here for any reason in our era.”

A cold thrill, excitement mixed with dread, came over Noren, and he smiled. “It does fit! There’s still a chance, in the time before they leave orbit—they knew you’d want to be with me when the clue is offered. They’ll surprise you too, or perhaps you’ll even be needed to interpret, I know they won’t make it simple for either of us—”

She pulled away from him, staring. “Noren, I thought you understood. They’ve already left orbit. They’re light-years away by now.”

Shock drained him. “Are you sure?” he whispered, disbelieving.

“Of course I’m sure. If an agent decides to stay on a planet, there are—formalities. They aren’t painless because there’s got to be a guarantee that it’s an informed choice, and not a hasty one; I knew in advance what I’d have to do. I watched the ship go last night. The point of light was there and then it was gone, and the special links with me were just—cut off. Instantly, when the ship went into hyperdrive.”

He couldn’t speak, but his horror reached her silently. “Noren,” she pleaded, stroking his hand, “Noren, don’t lose heart now. They didn’t tell me the answer, but when they said farewell they weren’t grieving, not even for me. Telepathically, I could tell they weren’t; and if they’d believed us doomed to live out our lives in tragic futility, they would have been. What we do will lead somewhere, even if we never know where.”

“It’s not that,” he said, “not the thing I’d already come to terms with. It’s you, Lianne. Don’t you see, I wouldn’t have let you stay behind.”

“Why do you think I didn’t come here till they were gone?” She settled back against his shoulder, her white hair soft against his skin. “I wouldn’t have let you decide, and I wasn’t sure how to make you believe it’ll be all right for me—only now that’s easy. You’ve been probed by one of the most skilled elders of my people, and you
know
he grasped all your feelings. Remember that he probed me, too.”

Slowly, Noren absorbed it.
Life is life, on one world or a thousand
. She did not need to see more worlds; her life was here. The rest of the universe existed; it was full of wonders—and just knowing that was enough. Enough even for him, now that he did know. This world was not a prison, but a base: one might choose one’s base freely, but one could not escape the necessity of choosing. Might some even, perhaps, on the level veiled in mystery, choose worlds in which to be born?

He held Lianne close. They sat quietly, not even fondling each other. There was time ahead for that, and Noren knew it would be good, that there would be a union of spirit as well as of body that would illumine all the dark years confronting them. Though the doors of the universe were shut, Lianne could open a window; and he no longer feared to look through.

Suddenly, rays of sunlight flooded the room. “It’s morning,” said Noren, as if waking from sleep. “It’s a bright morning.”

He stood up, putting on his tunic and then his blue robe over it, and turned to Lianne. “We’ve got obligations, you know. You aren’t going to enjoy being a prophet.”

“A culture,” she told him, “can have only one great prophet at a time. I serve as a priest, but you are more. That, I think, must be what the mind probe was meant to confirm.”

Side by side, they stood in the doorway as people came up the hill toward his dwelling; it was time for Benison. Lianne looked and whispered in astonishment, “Noren, practically all those girls are soon to give birth.”

“Well, their weddings were all held on the same day.” He smiled. “This is what we’ve worked toward, isn’t it—new life, a new generation that’s born adapted to this world? It’s a good thing you’ve had some medical training, seeing as I forgot to include a midwife among the settlers. You got here just in time to deliver a lot of babies.”

He took her hand and led her out before the assembled people. “Tonight is to be a feast night,” he announced with rising happiness, “for I will ask you to witness my marriage to the Scholar Lianne.”

Epilogue

As is well known, the Scholar Noren became a legend among his people. The usual image of him is as a white-bearded patriarch, revered Archpriest to the world of the Interregnum Era; that he was still a young man when he came out of the City is rarely remembered. That his exile outside the walls involved self-sacrifice is never so much as imagined, although those who knew him best did note that in his eyes, even at the moments of his greatest triumphs, was an inexplicable sadness. This seemed something of a paradox, for beneath the wisdom all acknowledged were intuitions of deeper things—things concerning the vast universe of which the Prophecy spoke—and there, he evidently found more light than dark. There is thus little doubt that his consort Lianne showed him visions of realms she had explored, and that she opened his questing mind to more than she herself had seen in them.

In the closing years of the Dark Era, the settlement at Futurity flourished. The first harvests were small; most of the grain was kept for seed and the rest ceremonially consumed by the few Chosen Families then in residence. But word of the miracle spread. As each new crop sprouted, crowds came to see it, and to be blessed by the Scholar who was already accorded a status different from that of other priests, different even from that of the Scholar Lianne who stood at his side. He could have taken power over all the land in those years. People would have believed anything from him—except that his prophecies might yet fail. That knowledge, like the knowledge that such failure would turn men to vengeance, he kept to himself; yet he claimed none of the authority that could have been his. By his word, the City remained the world’s center. His task was not to abolish the High Law, but to herald the age of its transformation.

Within the City, where this goal soon became openly known, the Scholar Noren was held in contempt. He was viewed as a defector, and a dangerous one; only the belief that he must stand answerable for his prophecies saved him from seizure. Few of his opponents felt—or wanted to feel—that the Law could be changed with safety, or that the promises of the Prophecy as traditionally interpreted might not be essential to survival. Alteration of human genes, in the second generation if not in the first, would surely prove as ruinous as it was indecent. For this, in the villages, Noren alone must be blamed; only so could the City’s life-support role be preserved. And meanwhile, grain was growing in untreated soil, grain that might be consumed by the unfit were it not for Noren’s presence. He was therefore left alone; but among the Scholars he was already a scapegoat, not merely for anticipated disaster, but for the lack of progress toward metal synthesization.

This injustice even his secret supporters encouraged, telling themselves that the First Scholar’s pose as a mad tyrant had been comparable. Aware that a means of retreat must indeed be left open until genetic change was fully proven, they were obliged to become more secretive than ever, lest their cause be won too soon. Slowly, their number grew. There were more heretics than there used to be, youngsters stirred by Noren’s subtle discouragement of the caste concept. With such as these, he was merciless; he stimulated their rebellion and then contrived for them to be condemned, knowing they’d hate him for the betrayal, yet knowing, too, that they must be led to claim their birthright. Once enlightened in the City, their bitterness turned to loyalty, for Lianne had seen to it that recruitment of novices would be continued by her successor. By this means, over the years, Noren won a large following among the Scholars: a following inspired by him personally. The Scholar Stefred, foreseeing this, bided his time. He continued to champion tradition, forestalling the showdown until the outcome was assured.

Genetic work continued, led by Noren outside the City and Denrul within, through the unquestioning Technician intermediaries. The genes of the newborn were tested. More Wards of the City were adopted, and more Chosen Families admitted to Futurity. Changes were made to the vaccine so as to impart heritable immunity to the planet’s lethal diseases; offspring of the first families were inoculated against disease like all villagers, but for their own children, and those of couples chosen later, that was no longer required—it would become impossible, after all, once the City’s technology failed. This was the last of the genetic alterations indispensable to human survival. When it was complete, Noren went on working: he designed vegetables to supplement the monotonous diet of grain. It was now also safe for the flesh of work-beasts to be eaten, but this he kept from the citizens of Futurity in fear that it would be called an abomination.

Futurity’s children came of age. They married within the community as arranged; the few who refused were tried by the council for their defiance and delivered to the City for discipline—to Noren’s private satisfaction. He did not send word to Stefred that one of these was his son, for it would not help the boy to be the only known child of Scholars to attain Scholar rank in turn. That much of tradition must stand. But he confessed in his own heart that he’d fostered that child’s nonconformity.

The children had children of their own, and all were born genetically healthy.
There will be a time when all the world shall live as Futurity lives
, the Scholar Noren had prophesied,
and this will be in our era, before the Mother Star appears to posterity. Scholars will come forth to bless unquickened fields, and to mark all people, that they may turn from the old Law to the new
. To the day of this event, all villages looked forward with gladness. No date had been given, but within the City, supporters and opponents alike knew the time for the change was ripe.

They awaited Noren’s word. For he would choose his day, and they must respond: either in full agreement, or—as many feared—through a split no longer dangerous. The supporters were numerous enough now to take control; they would destroy the water purification plant if need be; but they would not see the castes maintained in the name of the original Prophecy’s lost cause.

On Founding Day, the Scholar Noren spoke out, spoke to vast crowds at Futurity rivaling those before the City’s Gates. As always, Technicians recorded his words, and those words were soon heard in the Inner City.

But they were not the words anyone expected to hear.

I will build another new City
, Noren had said,
on the shores of a great lake two weeks’ journey hence; and it will be called Providence. And those in Providence will live as do those in Futurity; but there will be Technicians among them, and all villagers who work there will become Technicians
.