This Star Shall Abide (16 page)

How had he arrived in this place? he wondered, getting to his feet. He had no recollection of anything else in the City. Strangely enough, his exhaustion was entirely gone and his arms and legs seemed to work normally; the pain in his knee had disappeared along with the bandage. Yet if he’d slept long, he should feel hungry, and he did not. What had happened? They’d lifted him from the steps…

He pressed his hand to his mouth, a surge of nausea rising in company with an overpowering sense of failure and of fear. His impulsive attempt to expose the Scholars’ ruthlessness had not done any good; he was to be killed in secret after all. His death would be wasted: worse than wasted, for they’d managed to turn his words to their advantage by creating the impression that they’d had no hand in his falling, that the Mother Star itself had punished him.

He should have foreseen, Noren thought despairingly, that they would not kill him before making an effort toward getting his recantation.

Why hadn’t he realized that? he asked himself in perplexity. Had he dreaded their unimaginable ways of coercion so much that he’d wished for immediate death… or had he actually
wanted
to be caught?

With honest self-appraisal, he saw that he had indeed wanted it. He had wanted to enter the City on any terms whatsoever! Furthermore, he’d known underneath that there was only one way left in which he could defy the Scholars: by confronting them and proving to them that not all heretics could be subjugated.

All right, he thought grimly, He was in their hands and totally helpless, but there would be certain compensations, compensations of which he’d been inwardly aware, and that gave him an edge of sorts. The circumstances of his recapture had been of his choosing, not theirs, and he was the stronger for it. It was impossible to guess how long it would be before they killed him, but he had little doubt that horrible things would be done during the interim. They would try to make him recant. He must not attempt to imagine how, for if he did, fear might sap his new-found strength; he must simply take the things as they came.

An opening appeared in the wall where a door, made of the same solid green material instead of matting, was swinging back. Two Technicians stood there; Noren straightened and, at their command, stepped into the corridor without protest.

He had hoped that he might see something of the City during his remaining days of life, but the room to which he was brought was as featureless as the hall leading to it. It was quite large, again lighted by Power, again with softly colored walls and floor. At one end was a dais upon which three Scholars sat at a curved table. Strangely, one of them was a woman; apparently the women among the Scholars shared in their decisions. All three wore the usual blue robes and their faces were indistinct; Noren had the impression that he might as well be facing a row of Machines. Certainly these judges showed no more feeling.

“Aren’t you going to kneel?” asked one of the Technicians, who, oddly, had not done so themselves.

“I am not,” replied Noren. He stood at the foot of the dais, his arms folded.

Nobody tried to force the issue; the Technicians left without restraining him in any way, and as yet none of the Scholars had spoken. He stood in silence for a long time before he realized that they were measuring his nerve.

Watching their faces, he saw that the apparent lack of feeling was deliberate, a mask. It was presumably meant to frighten him. But beneath the mask they were alert, intelligent people, people with whom a real argument might be held. At the trial he hadn’t been able to argue with his judges; they’d simply labeled his statements as heresy and let it go at that. Though the Scholars might do the same, they would be capable of going further if they chose. They could not believe the Prophecy as the councilmen did. While they wouldn’t admit that in public, mightn’t they to a person who was going to die anyway? If he could convince them that he would never be coerced into recanting, he might at least have the satisfaction of hearing them concede that his theories were correct.

He had nothing to lose by trying, Noren decided. Taking the initiative, he began, “You must have been surprised when I gave you the chance to arrest me.”

“Not at all,” replied one of the Scholars. “We could have arrested you at any time since you left your village; we had you under constant surveillance. But it was more to our purpose to let you come to us.”

Noren suppressed the dismay he felt. That must be a lie, for surely they couldn’t have anticipated what he himself had not consciously intended! “You’re wrong if you think I did it because I considered myself beaten,” he declared.

“We don’t. But you have learned that you cannot win support for your theories. You’ve also learned other things that you don’t yet recognize. Frankly, Noren, we’re glad you robbed that Technician of his uniform. Though we didn’t plan it, your temporary escape will benefit us in the end.”

“Mainly I’ve learned that I don’t care what you do to me,” asserted Noren, torn between relief that the Technician’s story had been accepted and consternation over the untroubled confidence of this man. “I spoke at the Benison not only to tell others the truth, but to show them how far you’ll go to hide it; I thought you might kill me then.”

“It’s not going to be that easy.” The Scholar frowned. “Just what do you mean by ‘the truth’?”

“What you call heresy. I understand it, so there’s no point in pretending I’m as naive as most people. I know all about the Prophecy.”

“You don’t know nearly as much as you think you do,” commented the Scholar dryly.

“Don’t you think a villager can be smart enough to figure it out?”

“I don’t think you have the background to figure it out.”

“You mean because I was brought up to believe in the Mother Star, I should believe in it. But I don’t. I’m admitting that I don’t, that I know the whole Prophecy’s a fake, a trick to make people content with having men like you keep all the knowledge for yourselves—”

The woman Scholar broke in sharply, “You’re mistaken. The Prophecy’s statements about the Mother Star are true. Everything you’ve been taught is true, except for a few exaggerated legends.”

“Don’t bother to say that, not with me.”

“Why should you doubt it?”

“Because it’s not logical or possible; magical things like new stars and people coming out of the sky don’t happen, and they never will. If there were to be a new star, you couldn’t know ahead of time, and anyway, even if you could, it would have nothing to do with your suddenly getting generous with the Power and the Machines!”

The Scholar’s reply was delayed slightly, and when it came it carried an aura of flat finality rather than of anger. “What you’re saying is false according to the Book of the Prophecy. You will suffer for holding such ideas. And you are wrong.”

“The Book of the Prophecy is not sacred; you Scholars wrote it yourselves, the way
you
wanted it,” insisted Noren, trying to match the woman’s cool assurance. “You can do anything you like with me, regardless of my ideas, as you can with anyone. I have no choice about what happens.”

“You had a choice between accepting what you were told and living out your life peacefully, or deciding to do your own thinking,” the first Scholar said slowly. “Now you have a choice between admitting the error of your opinions without further ado, or admitting it later, after certain experiences that will persuade you to cooperate.”

“I’ll stick to my opinions,” Noren declared. He hoped his voice sounded louder than it seemed to.

“The consequences of independent thought can be less inviting than you realize.”

Noren didn’t answer. After a short wait, the Scholars proceeded to play back the recording of his trial. He remained silent and impassive as he listened; to hear his own words repeated was strange, but not dreadful. He did not regret the statements he’d made. At the finish, when he was asked if there were any that he wished to modify, he declined without hesitation.

The third Scholar, the one in the center, hadn’t said anything; he had simply watched, and yet had somehow given the impression that he was the most formidable of them all. Finally, in a soft but commanding voice, he spoke. “I must warn you, Noren,” he said levelly, “that if you persist in your defiance, the consequences will be grave and irrevocable. You have no conception of the things that can happen to you here. This is your last chance to obtain our mercy.”

“I don’t want your mercy,” said Noren angrily.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not your inferior. To accept mercy would be the same as kneeling to you.”

The woman Scholar turned. “The boy is bold enough, Stefred,” she remarked. “Will you let such boldness pass?”

Noren’s skin prickled. So this was the Scholar Stefred, the dreaded Chief Inquisitor who had given the young Technician his instructions. No heretic, it was said, could resist Stefred’s methods.

“In time,” Stefred said confidently, “this boy will kneel to me in public and retract everything he has ever said against the Prophecy and the High Law. Until then let him speak as he likes. I am interested in what he has to say.” To Noren he continued, “We have a number of questions to ask you. Will you swear by the Mother Star to answer them truthfully?”

“I’ll take no such oath, since we both know it to be a farce.”

“You are frank, at least. Can I assume that you’ll be equally frank in response to the other questions?”

Noren looked him in the eye. “I have nothing to hide,” he said. “It’s you who are hiding information; you, not I, have cause to fear the truth.”

“Very well.” Stefred leaned back, nodding to his associates to begin the questioning.

It went on for a long time. Noren answered candidly, having no desire to conceal anything aside from the details of his escape, which fortunately were not touched upon; and at first the game was not too disagreeable. The Scholars, instead of trying to extract heretical admissions, soon turned to opposite tactics: they tried to trap him into statements that could be construed as partial recantation. He refused to be trapped, and matching wits with them proved rather exhilarating.

After some hours, however, he was trembling with fatigue. The same questions had been repeated not once, but many times. Quite a few of them were foolish ones having nothing at all to do with the subject at hand: questions about his childhood, his family, his private thoughts about things entirely unrelated to the Prophecy or the High Law… .

“No more of this,” he declared at last, fearing that at any moment he might collapse. They had not told him he must stand throughout the inquisition, but there were no chairs in the room and to sit on the floor seemed akin to kneeling. “There is nothing more to say; I’ve told you the whole truth.”

“We cannot be sure you have. Besides, there were a few questions to which you gave no responses at all.”

“Some things,” protested Noren indignantly, “are none of your business!”

“Everything is our business in an inquiry of this kind.”

The details of his feelings toward girls, about which all too much interest had been expressed, could have no possible bearing upon heresy, Noren felt. Surprisingly, they had not mentioned Talyra specifically or asked anything that could conceivably be related to her having helped in his escape, though he’d dreaded it constantly, knowing that if they did, he would have to lie, since to remain silent might cast suspicion upon her. The questions he’d resented had been of a different sort. Most of them seemed stupid, for if Scholars knew anything at all about human nature, they could easily have guessed the answers; on second thought, however, it occurred to him that their aim might merely have been to catch him in an obvious falsehood.

“I will not answer anything else,” he announced.

“You will,” Stefred assured him, rising. Stefred himself had taken little part in the questioning, but he had listened with avid attention, hoping, no doubt, to detect some small inconsistency in Noren’s responses. Now he touched a button on the table before him, summoning the Technicians. “We are specialists in the study of people’s minds, Noren,” he said, “and when someone does not tell us all we need to know, we have a way of compelling him to do so. You will find this frightening, but if you are sincere in your desire to be honest, you have nothing to dread from it.”

The Technicians brought not a chair, but a low, padded bench on which they required Noren to lie. He complied without struggle; resistance was useless, he knew, and he was so tired that he scarcely minded. The needle that was stuck into his arm did frighten him, but not until a few minutes later did he become really terrified.

The thing that frightened him was the realization that he was speaking, speaking rapidly, yet without full conscious control.

*
 
*
 
*

Noren never knew exactly what he said under the influence of the drug. He knew only that it was Stefred who questioned him and that he was unable to hold anything back. He talked on and on for hours, yet the hours went quickly; he could not judge the time. He could not see anything but the blue-robed blur of the Scholar who bent over him, and who, surprisingly, spoke with a gentleness that had no cruel undertones. Hazily, he realized that the questioning was retracing all the same ground that had been covered before: his beliefs, his desires, his fears and above all, his reasons for what he had done. Why had he become a heretic? Why did he hate Scholars? Did he want to kill them, and if not, why not? Did he want to seize power for himself?

They had asked that last question constantly right from the beginning, disguised in different forms. It must be impossible, Noren had decided, for Scholars to conceive of anyone’s not wanting power! They must think all heretics were trying to replace them. No wonder they cared so much about getting public recantations.

While drugged he could not reason that out, but he was aware that the point was being examined again from every possible angle. Then, eventually, he ceased to be aware of anything at all.

Later—perhaps a day later, perhaps more—he awoke in the small green room where he’d originally regained consciousness. Immediately terror engulfed him. What had he done? Had he spoken of Talyra or of the young Technician, or denied the things he had sworn to himself he’d never deny? Had they somehow
changed
him?