The Doors Of The Universe (6 page)

He did not share this confidence. He himself had never been deluded about the chances of his talent producing such an outcome. His very gift for the work showed him, with a clarity not apparent to others, that the limits imposed by available facilities were absolute. More and more, since his return from the outpost where future experimentation was to be tried, he had seen that the research would be fruitless. Study, like priesthood, was for him a gesture—a gesture that sustained people’s hope, unlike the destructive one through which he’d sought to deny life by declaring all hope fraudulent. He had acknowledged the value of faith and had even felt its power, but he’d found it couldn’t alter his scientific pessimism.

At times, with Talyra, he had forgotten all this. The end would not come in his lifetime, and he’d lived as if long-term survival of his people were indeed assured. He’d been on his way to becoming like everyone else. But he couldn’t have gone on with that forever, he thought, suddenly overcome by a sadness that was more than grief. He was not like everyone else; he never had been… .

The door slid aside, and Stefred stood for a moment in the lighted opening. Noren rose to greet him, and they gripped hands. “Noren,” he said quietly. “I—I’ve no words.”

“They aren’t needed,” Noren replied. With Stefred this was true; he had an uncanny ability to convey the warmth of his feelings even when forced to speak words not easy to hear.

“I can’t tell you it will stop hurting. I’ve been through it, and I know better. But in time—”

“You’ve never remarried.”

“That’s different.”

“How?” demanded Noren. Stefred wasn’t an old man—more than old enough to be his father, no doubt, but in a world where most married in adolescence, that did not make him old in years. Furthermore, everyone who knew Stefred liked and admired him; he’d scarcely have had trouble finding another wife.

“My position’s awkward,” he replied painfully. “There is a—a bond that develops between me and each candidate I examine; you know that. With the men it means lasting friendship. With the women it could mean more; ethics require me to suppress all such thoughts while acting in my professional role. Later… there’ve been several women I might have approached later, but by then they’d chosen others.”

“You could marry a Technician, though.”

“Could I? Noren, every Technician who enters the Inner City kneels to me in a formal audience during application for admission, seeks my blessing, thinking me of supernatural stature! I can’t hide my rank while getting acquainted with the newcomers, as the rest of you can.” His voice dropped as he added with bitterness, “No Technician woman would refuse me; she would feel awed by the thought of bearing my child. It goes without saying that I don’t want love on that basis.”

Of course not, Noren realized. Because in the villages most heretics were men, the balance between sexes would not be equal in the Inner City if Technician women weren’t brought in; but the religious devotion of these girls, who considered it a high honor to be accepted for lifelong confinement within the walls, was not exploited. They assumed they were to be courted by their peers. Stefred, who must appear robed at the admission interview and accept the near-worship accorded High Priests, was doomed to a unique sort of loneliness.

And loneliness wasn’t his heaviest burden. Meeting his eyes, Noren noticed the shadows beneath them, the lines of fatigue and worry in his face. Only a real emergency would have kept Stefred from the service for Talyra; he’d just now returned from a dream-monitoring session with a candidate whom he must consider in peril of cracking up. “This is a bad time for me to have come,” Noren apologized. “I know you can’t tell me the details, but people have heard rumors.”

Stefred crossed to his desk and slumped wearily into its chair, not bothering to turn on the lamp. “I’ll tell you this,” he said after a short pause. “I’m—afraid, Noren. For the first time, I’m dealing with someone I’m afraid I can’t bring through.”

“She’s not strong enough?” Noren sat down again, sensing that Stefred really wanted to talk about it. Detached though he felt, the situation puzzled him. If the girl lacked courage, that judgment would have been made earlier, before it was too late to pursue the heresy charge less rigorously and give her Technician rank. Once secrets had been revealed to her, she must be isolated from Technicians for the rest of her life if she proved unable to withstand the full sequence of ordeals that led to Scholar status. Since this would mean not mere confinement to the Inner City but true imprisonment, it was indeed a dismaying prospect—but surely a remote one. Stefred knew how to bring out the best in people.

“Oh, she’s strong,” he was saying, “she’s more than strong enough; she’s the most promising candidate I’ve seen in a long time. If I fail, the tragedy won’t be just hers and mine. It will affect all of us.”

“But then if it’s just some personal reaction to the dreams, can’t you help her deal with it?” Stefred, Noren knew, would never violate anyone’s confidence, let alone reveal a confession made under the drugs, which, in a private inquisition, he must have used. However, it was no secret that things in a candidate’s background could make particular aspects of the dreams unduly trying, and in such cases, hypnotic aid was normally given.

“She’s concealing too much from me,” Stefred said. “There’s a wall in her mind I can’t get past, and I wouldn’t be justified in breaching it even if I could. I’m already sure she meets the qualifications—she hates the caste system as much as we all do and will gladly work toward its abolishment if she finds herself on top. I’ve no warrant to invade her privacy except to determine that. You know I can’t probe her subconscious merely to spare her suffering.”

“Not unless she consents,” Noren agreed. “Still, if you’ll risk killing her otherwise…” It was possible, in theory, for someone who’d identified closely with the First Scholar to literally share his death in the last dream, the crucial one that dealt with the Prophecy’s origin.

“The last dream’s not the problem. If it were, I could handle it; she’d need temporary isolation, perhaps, but given time, I could prepare her. What seems to be happening is that she’s too intuitive. The recruiting scheme wasn’t designed to deal with someone who grasps things outside any conceivable past experience.” He leaned forward, frowning. “Noren, what if you’d guessed the extent of the editing in the candidates’ version of the dreams? Could you have gone through with voluntary recantation?”

“No,” Noren said. “No, I based my decision on first-hand knowledge of the First Scholar’s motives. When you told me afterward about the editing I was furious—I thought for a moment you’d manipulated things to deceive me.”

“Lianne,” Stefred reflected, “underwent more anguish than any person I have ever monitored in the first dream. It’s not enjoyable for anyone—it can’t be; watching a sun nova and consume its planets isn’t an easy experience. But most candidates are detached at that stage; it’s nightmare, not reality. Not till later does the reality sink in. Lianne got it all. From what she said after she regained consciousness, I know she got everything the First Scholar felt—but of course, without his foreknowledge.”

“Everything? But she couldn’t have known what populated worlds are like,”protested Noren, remembering his own slow absorption of the idea that not just one City but thousands had been wiped out in that single surge of intolerable fire.

“I wasn’t sure she could take another session,” Stefred went on, “but she was willing, and I went ahead with close monitoring. Her physiological responses showed she was coping; I thought we’d passed the crisis. And then, when she woke, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Why have you edited it so much?’”

“Oh, Stefred.”

“You see what’s going to happen. She’ll stick to her refusal to recant even after finishing the sequence—precisely because she
is
strong, is perceptive, she’ll hold out on the grounds that I’ve kept part of the truth from her. Her very fitness to become one of us will force her into a position that deprives her of the chance.”

“That’s awful. It’s one thing to make that choice out of real disagreement with the First Scholar’s decision, but to have to live with its consequences because of a false suspicion that you’re cheating—”

“I know,” Stefred sighed, “especially since I have cause to believe she doesn’t disagree. The dreams wouldn’t affect her so deeply if she didn’t share his convictions. For that matter, she wouldn’t be unsatisfied by the explanation I’ve given her about the editing.”

“Stefred,” Noren mused, “why wasn’t I unsatisfied? You told me thoughts beyond my comprehension had been removed from the recording, and I took your word.”

“It was true in your case,” replied Stefred grimly. “With Lianne I’ve come close to lying.”

Noren stared at him in bafflement. Stefred never lied to anyone; that was why even candidates under stress learned to trust him. “I don’t see,” he admitted, “how the partial truth can be less valid in her case than in mine.”

“Neither do I, really. Even mature candidates don’t notice what’s absent from the First Scholar’s thoughts at first; his world is too strange and distracting. As for you, though, you were very young, Noren. You didn’t miss the deleted emotions because you’d never imagined such feelings, and they’d have been truly beyond you. That’s one reason we see to it that known heretics are brought to trial in adolescence.”

“Is she an older woman?” Noren asked, surprised. The majority of people with heretical tendencies did reveal them early, though since opportunity to earn Scholar status was every citizen’s birthright, older candidates occasionally apeared.

“Well, not adolescent, certainly. Oddly enough, her age is one of the things she won’t tell me. She was a stranger in the village where she was arrested, so we don’t know her real identity, and all she’ll say is that she has no children—which, barring some medical cause, means she’s unconventional in more than her opinions. She can’t have lacked suitors; she’s quite pretty, in an unusual sort of way.” He shook his head, obviously perplexed. “Her face looks young, but her mind seems as old as any I’ve encountered. The full version of the dreams would not be incomprehensible to her, and she’s well aware of that.”

“The full version… wait a minute! Are you saying she’s concerned about things in the
full
version, the one I haven’t been through myself yet, not just the second version that contains the plan for the succession scheme?” Shaken from his stupor, Noren realized that he’d nearly forgotten that such a version existed. He had been told about it when in deciding to accept priesthood, he’d inquired about the First Scholar’s personal religious beliefs. But it covered much more than religion. Though its ultimate effect on most dreamers was heartening, the First Scholar’s trust in the future had been hard-won. His recorded memories were said to involve agonizing periods of doubt and near-suicidal depression. Ordinarily only experienced Scholars chose to grapple with these feelings; Noren, who’d tasted them in his own life, had nevertheless been advised to wait awhile.

That advice had been given just after the return from the wilderness, he reflected. Stefred had known then that Talyra might have conceived a child there; had he also known there was risk of a disastrous outcome? Was there something related to such an outcome in the full version of the First Scholar’s memories, something there’d have been no use in worrying about while awaiting the birth? It was all too likely. The First Scholar had been absolutely positive that genetic damage was unavoidable without technology to compensate for the alien environment—the edited recordings emphasized this certainty, for nothing else could justify guardianship of the City. But, Noren thought suddenly, it was not a fact he’d have accepted without strong proof… .

“Yes,” Stefred was saying, “she sees the questions you did recognize last year as things he must have thought about. Life, death, why novas wipe out worlds—you know what I mean. And the despair, Noren. She perceives he’d have experienced despair, not just horror and regret.”

“Does she also sense that he rose out of it?” inquired Noren. In the end the First Scholar had met death fearlessly, with genuine conviction that the world was to be saved—but could a person who knew about despair guess that? Perhaps he’d not guessed it himself during the bad times. And perhaps it wouldn’t have happened that way at all if he’d known what had since been discovered about the impossibility of synthesizing metal.

“I think she does,” Stefred replied, “though I admit I don’t know just why. I haven’t even hinted; my only recourse has been to hope she’ll assume I’m withholding the worst parts out of misguided kindness. Actually, of course, to use the full recording would be a mercy in her case. She—she has begged for it, Noren; it is very hard to subject her to as much torment as I must.” Incredibly, his voice faltered as if he were struggling to hold back emotion he could not share even with a fellow-Scholar.

“Torment? But why is it any worse than what came before, when she knew Scholars weren’t telling her all she wanted to know?” Noren asked. Obviously the full recording could not be used; it included references to the secret of the succession. But if the feelings it contained were so painful, to keep it from candidates not yet informed about the hopeful ending seemed indeed kind as well as essential.

Stefred, once more in full command of himself, explained, “Right now she’s suffering in a way that should never be necessary: she reaches for thoughts that won’t come, knowing full well what sort
should
come. You know how hard it is to reach out that way in the dreams; you had courage enough to reach further than most—but you were too inexperienced in life to absorb all the data you received. The real gaps you accepted as mystery. If I put you through the candidates’ version now, you’d find it intolerable to be held within its limits.”