This Star Shall Abide (6 page)

Leaving the bridge, Noren flung himself flat on the mossy earth beside the stream and, defiantly, drank long and deep. The water tasted pure; it tasted better than cistern water ever had. Rising, he wiped his face with the back of his hand and looked up at the sky. He had not become an idiot. He was himself, and if anything, he felt stronger and wiser than before.

Perhaps he was not so helpless as he’d supposed against the formidable power of the Scholars. Perhaps, if he lived his beliefs instead of merely holding to them, he could really find a way to make people see.

Chapter Three

Though the sun had gone down when Noren returned to his own village, it was yet early and the inn’s tavern was not crowded. He sat at an empty table to eat the meal Arnil gave him, thinking only of how tired he was. He’d had no sleep for two days, and so much had happened… the dance; the ordeal of telling Talyra his secret, followed by their quarrel and the disruption of all his hopes; his long-awaited departure from home; the grueling, futile trip in the midday heat; the various disappointments and frustrations of the past hours… and the triumphs. There had indeed been triumphs—he’d at last proven himself not only against his brother, but against the High Law itself! He had drunk the forbidden water and was unharmed! Surely, in due course, he would get to the City.

His head drooped wearily; and since his back was to the door, he did not see the Technicians until their dark green uniforms loomed in front of him. There were two of them: the middle-aged one who’d appeared at the dance, and another who seemed very little older than Noren. “My greetings, citizen,” said the first. “May we sit down with you?”

“I am pleased by your concern, sir,” replied Noren. He was not pleased, but that was how one responded to the greeting of a Technician.

Arnil hurried over to serve the Technicians food and ale, and at their sign, placed a mug of ale before Noren also. “To the Scholars,” said the young man, raising his.

Noren drank; it would have been unthinkable not to, though aside from his dislike of the toast he was unused to ale, having had neither the money nor the friends to spend much time in taverns. He found that it lessened his weariness. He looked across at the Technicians, irritated by the contrast between their situation and his own. It was unfair! Why should they have the right to know more than he did simply by virtue of their birth?

Wiping his brow, the young Technician declared, “Had I known the evenings were as hot as noon, I’d have been reluctant to stay the night.”

Surely, thought Noren, these men could not think him so stupid as to suppose they’d chosen to sit at a villager’s table merely to discuss the weather. “Is it less hot in the City, sir?” he asked.

“Since the Outer City is roofed over, its air is filtered,” answered the other, “and it is therefore cool. My young companion has not lodged in a village before.”

Noren had not been aware that the privileges of Technicians extended not only to education and the use of metal tools and Machines, but to unique physical comforts; his resentment grew. “You must excuse my ignorance,” he said with ill-concealed irony.

The younger man smiled disarmingly. “Tell me, Noren, have you ever wished to learn more than you were taught in school?”

“More about what, sir?” The man’s knowledge of his name was proof that they’d sought him out with a purpose; no doubt they’d seen him enter the inn.

“About—well, about the Prophecy, for instance. Where it came from, how it is that we have a Prophecy.”

“I’ve wondered, yes.”

“And developed your own answers, perhaps?”

Noren hesitated. One was not supposed to develop one’s own answers. These Technicians could well be trying to trap him into an admission of heresy, and here, in a public tavern, such an admission would be fatal. He was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and it was hard to think clearly; yet he knew he must be very careful. “There’s much in the Book of the Prophecy that needs to be explained,” he said levelly. “To an ignorant person like myself, much of it seems to have more than one interpretation.”

“Yet it’s hardly your job to interpret it,” the older Technician said. “What are you going to do now that you’ve got to choose your work? Does farming satisfy you?”

“No, sir, it doesn’t.” Noren replied frankly. “I haven’t decided exactly what I’ll do.” Inwardly he was in turmoil. He’d felt for some time that most Technicians suspected him and were watching him, but why should they want to provoke him into revealing his thoughts? Logically, they should try to prevent any unorthodox opinions from being heard. Was it possible that he was a threat to them? Could this mean that there was some way in which he could expose the Scholars’ deceit?

If so, then he must at all costs stay free to do it; still he must at the same time take a calculated risk. He must play along with them, let them think they were succeeding, in the hope of finding a clue to what they feared.

“It must be hard to come to the end of your schooling when there’s still a great deal you’d like to know,” remarked the younger Technician with apparent sympathy. “I would find it intolerable myself.”

Noren almost choked on a swallow of ale. The implied acknowledgment of equality astonished him; he had not thought they’d make such a statement publicly, whatever their reasons. Then, looking around, he saw that only two of the other tables were occupied, and that the men there were paying no attention to any talk but their own. Arnil was in the kitchen. For the moment, at least, they could not be overheard.

“It’s indeed hard,” he confessed. “I would give much for further learning.”

“Villagers do learn more at the training center outside the City, where men and women are prepared to become radiophonists, schoolteachers, nurse-midwives, and the like. It is a virtue to so dedicate oneself.”

“Are you offering to send me there?” Noren demanded. That was the proposal that had been made to Talyra; he had not expected it for himself, but crumb though it was, he would not reject such a chance.

“No,” the Technician said. “Those to whom offers are made are chosen by the Scholars; we are merely envoys.”

“How do the Scholars choose?”

“By school records, I suppose. They have everyone’s school records, you know.”

He hadn’t known, but it was not surprising. There must be more to the choice than that, however, for he had led his class in school. Perhaps the Technicians actually weren’t informed. “Don’t the Scholars tell you?” he inquired casually.

“They tell us very little,” the young man said. “We are trained in our work; that is all. Someone who does well can receive extra training if he wishes, but he is not taught the reasons for things.”

The words sounded a bit rueful, and Noren was nonplused; he had not stopped to think that the Technicians themselves might long for more knowledge. Machines were obviously complicated and would require much wisdom to build. “Is it not necessary to know reasons in order to make the Machines function?” he asked.

“No, not at all. If a Machine is damaged, a specialist must repair it, and few of us do work of that kind.”

Startled, Noren perceived that the men who operated the Machines might know very little about how they were made, though he had never before had cause to suspect such a distinction. “Do you choose the kind of work you want to learn?” he persisted.

“Yes, if it’s available; we’re as free as you are in that respect.”

That seemed an odd way to put it. Maybe, Noren reflected, he had been mistaken about these men’s motive for sitting down with him; they were less patronizing than most, and it was possible that they were simply making conversation. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the room was still nearly deserted. He paused, wondering how best to make use of this opportunity, while the older of the two men refilled the mugs with ale.

“I myself would like to know reasons as well as skills,” the younger man continued. “I can’t see what harm there’d be in it.”

Noren stared at him. Somehow it had not occurred to him that he might find allies among the Technicians. He’d lumped them together with the Scholars, assuming them to be equally calculating in their support of the High Law. But that was not really very reasonable. If they were men, they had opinions and feelings like other men, and they too must resent being deprived of the whole truth! For he saw that apart from the specific jobs they performed, they did not know nearly as much as he’d supposed. They were only tools. They probably took the Prophecy as seriously as did the villagers.

He must find out! Alone he was powerless; even if he should succeed in convincing a handful of other people, they could do nothing against the Scholars. But if
Technicians
could be won over…

“You were asking me about the Prophecy,” he said. “I’ve been told, of course, that it came to us from the Mother Star; but that’s confusing. The Mother Star is not yet even visible. So how did it determine the words written in a book?”

“That is a mystery,” said the other Technician. “We are not intended to understand such things as that.”

He had said “we,” Noren noted. And the more he thought about it, the more evident it was that the Scholars would not have confided in the Technicians. There were too many of them; if they suspected any fraud, they would no longer take orders. Technicians, being outside village law, were subject to the direct authority of the Scholars, whose power depended on their obedience.

“I suppose the Scholars understand.”

“The Scholars understand everything,” agreed the man.

“No doubt. Yet are they really more capable of understanding than wise men like yourselves? You, sir—” Noren turned to the sympathetic younger Technician with the tone of deference that he’d long ago learned to feign. “You have so much more knowledge than I do; I can’t believe that there’s anything you could not grasp if it were explained to you. Have you never wished that these mysteries were not hidden?”

“I have, sometimes,” the youth admitted. “At times I’m weary of spending my days in the villages checking radiophone equipment; in fact I’ve requested Inner City work, which would give me opportunity to see the Scholars and perhaps learn from them. But that, for us, is an honor demanding self-dedication, as is the training center for you, and so far my request has been denied.”

Noren was by this time wholly absorbed by the new and promising discovery he’d made; he had forgotten to watch over his shoulder. “Perhaps the Scholars fear you might learn too much,” he suggested.

“Too much?”

“Maybe there are things you could indeed understand, but would make you less content to follow their orders. Would you be here in this inn tonight if you did not believe in the superior wisdom of Scholars?”

After a slight pause, the man dropped his eyes. “I—I never thought of it that way,” he said, almost with chagrin. “No, I don’t suppose I would.”

“Nor would I,” declared Noren. “If wisdom and Power and Machines were shared equally among all, as the Prophecy tells us will someday happen, we would both be freer and happier. Why should there be any delay?”

Abruptly, the Technician stood up. His expression had changed; he seemed stricken by a guilt he had not felt at first. “I spoke in haste,” he said with evident distress. “We must discuss these matters with caution; the Prophecy covers them, and the Scholars are our betters—”

Noren too got to his feet, swaying unsteadily. He was in no condition to be cautious; his head was spinning with excitement, with prolonged fatigue, and perhaps with too much ale. “But Scholars are not our betters!” he exclaimed, unaware of how his voice had risen. “They’re no better than you are, nor than the rest of us, either! Don’t you see, the Prophecy’s only an excuse; they made it up so that we wouldn’t object to having them keep things from us.”

There was dead silence. The young Technician looked positively ill, and following his anguished gaze, Noren turned to meet the scandalized stares of nearly a dozen men: those at the other tables, old Arnil the innkeeper, and in the open doorway, a newly-arrived group that included his own two elder brothers.

*
 
*
 
*

Noren’s head swam dizzily. The room whirled, and for a moment he was sure he would collapse. It did not seem as if this could really have happened. How could he have been so rash as to say words that would condemn him?

Grimly, he reminded himself that he had always known it must happen someday. “Someday,” however, was vague, and his fear of it could be pushed aside… whereas this was
now
. The damage was irrevocable; he would be tried tomorrow, and the next day he would reach the City without the effort of driving a trader’s sledge.

The Technicians moved quietly into the background, for it was not their business to arrest heretics; under the High Law they could neither accuse nor give evidence. They would take charge of him only after his conviction. For the present he stood alone, facing the villagers’ enmity.

“I knew the boy was worthless,” announced one of his brothers coldly, “but I hadn’t thought him guilty of heresy. It’s a good thing he no longer lives under our roof.”

The public disavowal did not surprise Noren; few families would stand behind a self-proclaimed heretic, and certainly not his. The morning’s fight with this brother had nothing to do with it. He knew, however, that they were all too pleased by his downfall.

The dread word
heresy,
once uttered, spread through the group like fire out of control. There hadn’t been a heresy trial in the village for some time, and the last case had been an old woman, falsely accused of disobeying the High Law by making cook-pots of unpurified clay, who had actually been acquitted. There was no possibility of acquittal when the charge was brought by many witnesses. “I’ll fetch the marshals,” cried one of his brothers’ friends excitedly.

Several men advanced toward Noren, and one of them spat contemptuously. “So the Scholars are not your betters,” he growled. “You’ll learn differently, boy, when they get you inside that City of theirs.”