This Star Shall Abide (26 page)

He had no idea what depended on whether or not he recanted, although reason told him that something must, some aspect of his personal future. “You’re not permitted to know yet, Noren,” Stefred had said. “As I told you, there’ll be difficulties either way, but I can’t explain them in advance.”

“Why not?”

“You tell me why not,” Stefred had replied, smiling.

“I’d say it’d be—well, the wrong basis for a decision.”

“Anyone who’s come this far has a better basis,” Stefred had agreed. “You don’t need any advice from me; your own mind is more than adequate to determine your course.”

“If you believe that, Stefred,” Noren had challenged, “then why do you make heresy a crime?”

“We don’t. Heresy isn’t forbidden by the High Law; the villagers ban it themselves.” He’d hesitated. “The reason they do is complicated, and I can discuss only a little of it now. Later you’ll learn more.”

Stefred had gone on then to tell what had happened after the First Scholar died. The Book of the Prophecy, and with it the High Law, had been given to the villagers the next year. That had been possible because in accordance with the First Scholar’s instructions, all those who’d originally come from the Six Worlds had been admitted to the City as Technicians. It had been announced that only the “dictator’s” insanity had kept them out in the first place—which was the last lie ever told by the Scholars. In the role of High Priests they had practiced no form of deceit.

The first-generation villagers had been warned that once inside the City they could never leave, but all the same they’d been happy, for they had missed the kind of life they’d been born to. The native-born, on the other hand, hadn’t wanted to live in the City. They’d always been skeptical of their parents’ claim to have been reared in such a place, and they’d known that with the elders gone, they would be the undisputed village leaders. So they’d been quite content with the distant promises of the Prophecy, which they had believed without question. There’d been nobody left who could refute anything it said—nobody who could distinguish symbols from science—and after all, it had been the first book they’d ever seen; they had learned to read and write by means of slates. Most had thought reading and writing a silly waste of time. Still, the Book of the Prophecy proved that the elders’ insistence on school had not been entirely foolish, for if the Scholars themselves said the future would be unlike the past, was it not well to look ahead to that future? The Scholars that appeared as High Priests did not act like the “dictator” who’d been thought mad, and besides, the people knew that they were dependent on those Scholars’ good will. They weren’t anxious to jeopardize village welfare by letting anybody disobey the High Law, which set forth the same rules they’d been taught as children in any case. As time went on, however, they made rules of their own and became more and more intolerant.

“I don’t quite see why,” Noren had confessed.

“You’ll have to study a good deal before you do. Essentially it was because village society reverted to a more primitive level not only as far as technology was concerned, but also in other ways. Attitudes that had been outgrown by the time the people of the Six Worlds built their starships came back, just as tallow lamps did.”

“Couldn’t you Scholars have prevented that?”

“No, no more than we could have prevented technological skills from being lost. Societies, like people, cannot be controlled without destroying their ability to grow and develop. All we can do is maintain an island of light amid the dark.” With a sigh, Stefred had added, “Those of us on the island are not just basking in that light, you know. We’re working against time to bring about the Prophecy’s fulfillment.”

Thinking about it, Noren knew that it was that—the research work—about which he really had to decide.

The Prophecy was true. He would gladly admit that publicly, though his reasons for doing so would be misconstrued by everyone but the Scholars themselves. He would affirm the Prophecy with pride; he knew that the First Scholar had created it in those painful last hours because only such a promise could ensure that the Dark Age would be temporary.

The High Law was also valid, and it too was necessary. It contained no provisions that were not essential either to the survival of humankind or to prevention of harm that might be caused by people’s wrong interpretations. Stefred had given him a copy to review and, reading it in the light of his new knowledge, he’d seen that. The decree that convicted heretics must be turned over to the Scholars, he realized, had been placed there not to ensure their punishment, but to provide them with an avenue to the truth! The rules about Machines were all concerned with keeping people from damaging those Machines, or from going to the opposite extreme and worshipping them. There was nothing in the High Law that he was not willing to obey.

But recantation meant more than affirming the Prophecy and the High Law. It also involved affirmation of the system under which Scholars had privileges unavailable to others. It meant agreeing that they must remain supreme until the Prophecy’s promises had been fulfilled—giving up all thought of changing the world immediately, letting people think he approved of things as they were… was that right?

It was not right! Yet the First Scholar had known better than anyone else that it was not; he’d established the system not because it was right, but because it was the lesser of two evils. And he had died at the hands of men whom he’d allowed to misunderstand him.

For the Prophecy was true only as long as the system was upheld.
The ancient knowledge shall be free to all people
—that couldn’t happen unless the Six Worlds’ knowledge was preserved. The Scholars were working to extend that knowledge so that humans could survive on this world as they had on the old ones. They were striving desperately to create the kinds of metal needed to make the Machines that were essential to the support of life. They must finish the work; the world couldn’t begin to change until they did.

To try to make it perfect overnight wouldn’t make it perfect, it would only cause all that had been salvaged from the burning of the Six Worlds to be lost. Humankind would perish just as surely as if the First Scholar’s plan had failed. Even revelation of the secret would be fatal, not for the same reasons as in his time, but because people were now as dependent on their belief in the Prophecy as they’d once been on the Six Worlds’ culture. Through its fulfillment alone could the world be successfully transformed.

Between the dreams and what Stefred had told him, Noren knew something about why the research work was taking so long. It was harder than anything that had been achieved on the Six Worlds. There, they’d had plenty of metal; they had found it in the ground. Even people like the villagers had found it, and had used it to make tools and Machines of their own—slowly, generation by generation, they had improved them, before either Technicians or Scholars had ever existed, and by doing so they had learned more and more, until finally they were Technicians and Scholars. His theory about savages becoming smarter and discovering knowledge for themselves had been quite true on the mother world. That was the way human beings were meant to progress, and that was how all the knowledge in the computers had been accumulated.

But normal progress couldn’t occur where there could be no technological innovation. On the mother world, tribes of people who never learned to get metal from the ground never improved their ways of doing things; once they’d gone as far as they could with stone, they stopped changing. And because this world’s ground had no metal at all that was suitable for making tools, the villagers’ situation was very similar. They could not develop better ways to use their limited resources, since their ancestors had already known the most efficient methods there were for everything from the fashioning of household implements to the building of bridges. Only within the City did the conditions for new discoveries exist.

And the discovery that must be made was extremely difficult even for the Scholars—they must learn how to create metallic elements through nuclear fusion. Noren hadn’t really grasped what nuclear fusion was, but he could see that although it involved combining several substances to get a different one, it was not just a matter of stirring those substances together. The Six Worlds’ scientists had known how to achieve nuclear fusion to get Power. Nuclear fusion to get metal had been beyond anyone’s hopes. Here, however, it was the only hope there was.

No one knew when that hope would be realized. Conceivably it could be soon, and in that case new Cities would be built immediately; the Prophecy did not say that there would be no changes
before
the Star appeared! In the meantime, the Scholars must retain their stewardship if hope was to continue.

You would have died in spite of us,
Stefred had told him,
if you had not been brave enough to live
. The words had been puzzling, but all at once Noren understood them. A person who’d seen the world through the First Scholar’s eyes had to be brave, for no one who wasn’t could face the hard truth about the world. But there was more to it. Only a brave person could face the awareness that his own honest attempt to fight injustice, if successful, would have accomplished the opposite of what had been aiming for.

Noren faced it. He admitted to himself that overthrowing the Scholars would not have helped the villagers, but would instead have prevented Machines and knowledge from ever becoming available to them. To capitulate and recant would not be a defeat, he realized with surprise. His goals had not changed; his beliefs had not changed. What he’d wanted all along was for the world to be as the Prophecy said it would become. He would merely be conceding that it could not be that way before the time was ripe.

That evening he told the man who brought him food that he wanted to see Stefred. The Chief Inquisitor had been quite correct, he reflected ruefully, in predicting that in the end his innate honesty would leave him no choice.

*
 
*
 
*

It was dusk; the City towers were shafts of silver thrust skyward between the orange moons. Noren sat by the window in Stefred’s study and watched the stars come out. “Will people ever travel between the stars again?” he asked wistfully. “Will there be more worlds to settle someday?”

“Someday,” Stefred said, “if we don’t fail on this one. It’s the only permanent answer to our lack of resources here. The starships’ design is stored in our computers, and in fact there are still stripped hulls in orbit; but there is much else we must accomplish first. It can’t happen in our lifetime.”

“Neither can the things I wanted people to fight for.”

“No. There are some things fighting can’t achieve.”

“Is it always wrong to fight, then?”

“Not always. That can be necessary, too. If you study the history of the Six Worlds, you’ll find that there are no clear-cut answers.”

“There’s a time to fight, I guess… and a time to surrender. I—I’ve come to surrender, sir.” Noren sighed, glad that he had finally gotten the words out.

For quite a while Stefred was silent. Then, in a troubled voice, he asked, “Have you ever witnessed a public recantation, Noren?”

“Yes.” Noren’s heart chilled at the recollection.

“For some people it’s worse than for others,” the Scholar said, “and I can spare you nothing.”

“I—I don’t suppose you can.”

“I must be sure you understand,” Stefred persisted. “If you recant, I shall preside at the ceremony. You may think that because we know each other, trust each other, it will be less difficult for you; but it won’t. It will be more so. You have never knelt to me, and I’ve never asked it; in fact I’d have thought less of you if you had. Can you do it before a crowd of villagers who’ll think I’ve broken your spirit?”

“It’s a form, a symbol, as the words of the Prophecy are symbols,” Noren said. “It doesn’t mean I’m your inferior. It means only that what you represent is worth honoring.”

“Yes, you know that now. But the people in the crowd will not.”

Noren swallowed. “It’s necessary.”

“Why, Noren?” demanded Stefred suddenly. “You know I won’t force this on you. You must also know that you won’t be punished for not doing it. Why take on such an ordeal? You came here seeking the truth, and you found it; what more do you hope to achieve?”

“I wanted truth not just for myself, but for everyone. I can’t accept it without giving.”

“Giving what? You won’t be allowed to reveal anything of what you’ve learned; you’ll stick to a prepared script.”

“There won’t be any lies in the script, will there?”

“No. The words you say will be literally true. But they’ll be phrased in the language of the Prophecy, and the people have already heard those words.”

“They’ve also heard me deny them. They’ve heard me ask
them
to deny them, and every heretic who does so strikes at the thing the First Scholar died for. I was wrong, Stefred! Would you have me conceal my error to save my pride?”

“No,” answered Stefred. “I wouldn’t have you do that. But though you were wrong, you were not without justification; and when a heretic recants no justification can be claimed.”

“That doesn’t matter. Truth is truth, and it’s more important than what people think of me. Don’t you see? I stuck to my heresy because I cared about truth; now I’ve got to recant for the same reason.”

“I see very clearly,” Stefred admitted, “but I had to satisfy myself that you do. This is no mere formality. It will be harder than you realize, Noren, and there will be lasting consequences.”

“You warned me about consequences before,” said Noren, smiling. “You thought I’d beg to be let off. You underestimated me after all.”

“Don’t be too sure. Your problems aren’t over yet.” The Scholar pulled a sheaf of papers from his desk and looked through them, handing one to Noren. “This is the statement you’ll make. Read it.”

Noren did so with growing dismay. He had not remembered the specific wording of the ceremony; the tone of it was something of a shock. Phrases like “I am most grievously sorry for all my heresies,” and “I confess my guilt freely; I am deeply repentant, and acknowledge myself deserving of whatever punishment may fall to me,” stuck in his throat. He went through it again, slowly and thoughtfully, before raising his eyes.