The Doors of the Universe Read online

  If he could find a mathematical basis for a Unified Field Theory, Noren thought—show how metal had to be synthesized in principle—people might admit that their faith was misplaced. This, then would be his task. It was an impossible one; the greatest physicists of the Six Worlds had sought a Unified Field Theory for centuries, and the chances of his coming up with it within his lifetime, let alone within the next year, were therefore effectively zero. Yet he had to do something with the year! And it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant prospect, even knowing himself foredoomed to failure. It would help keep fear of a worse failure from his mind.

  The day after reaching this decision, he mentioned it to Lianne. He’d been seeking her company casually, in the refectory and in other gathering places, since modifying his genes. She did not know about the vaccine; he had not yet told her how far he’d gone in genetics, or how far he planned to go. That must wait till he had checked the impure water’s effect on him. But considering what he planned to ask of her, he must strengthen their friendship. Though he would not court her as if he loved her, he could scarcely ignore her until it was time to broach the subject. And he discovered, with some surprise, that he did not want to ignore her. That troubled him; it seemed disloyal to Talyra. Having pledged himself to Talyra in mid-adolescence, he’d never paid attention to any other girl. Now to his dismay he found himself enjoying Lianne’s companionship—even, on occasion, looking forward to the time when they would share more than companionship.

  Lianne knew how he still felt about Talyra. He was sure she did, for though she quite evidently welcomed his company, she was as careful as he to shy away from anything suggesting courtship. She was on guard, he felt, against displaying her feelings, and sometimes joy in her eyes turned to pain. Yet it was not his lack of ardor that was hurting her. Lianne’s pain went deeper. Whatever her secrets, they seemed to weigh heavily upon her, and Noren sensed that he could not have helped even if his heart had been free to give.

  Nor did Lianne need help. She was . . . self-sufficient. He could not doubt her ability to handle problems. For some reason, however, her self-sufficiency was unlike his own—she was not a loner, as he was, and nobody thought her cold or unapproachable. Lianne radiated warmth. He felt comfortable in her presence, despite the fact that her mind was inscrutable. Her wisdom was baffling at times, but never irritating. The Unified Field Theory, for instance . . .

  “It’s not a thing I can explain,” Noren told her, “not to someone who hasn’t studied physics. But matter and energy are—well, two aspects of the same thing. The power plant converts matter to energy. If we really understood the relationship, completely understood it, we might reverse the process, convert energy to matter, to metal, perhaps—”

  “But you don’t have the facilities you’d need to do that,” Lianne replied promptly. “They didn’t fully understand it on the Six Worlds, even studying particles with far higher energies than we can produce here.”

  Noren gaped, incredulous. To be sure, Lianne had experienced the secret dream by now, and the First Scholar had spoken of the Unified Field Theory in that dream. But had he thought specifically about subnuclear particles? Even if he had, how could a village woman—one now studying psychiatry, not physics—have drawn their significance from the recording?

  “Some of the mathematical foundation might be laid,” she went on, “only I think it’s beyond you, Noren.”

  “Of course it’s beyond me,” he agreed. “That’s the point! It’s beyond all of us; that’s what I’ve got to prove before I can make people accept the alternative.”

  “Can you really work with math at that level, or are you going to fake it?”

  “Fakery,” he replied quietly, “is something I’ve never been willing to stand for.”

  “So I thought,” she murmured, troubled. She seemed about to say more, yet held back. “It’s so hot,” she burst out, “let’s find someplace cooler! I don’t see how people bear this endless heat.”

  The heat was, to be sure, scorching, as it always was outside and had been every day within Noren’s memory; the cool interiors of the towers and domes had been startling to him on his initial entry to the City. Lianne had been in the City less than a year. “We’ll go indoors if you like,” he said, wondering if her white hair and extraordinarily pale skin made her sensitive to sunlight.

  “I guess that’s our only choice. Don’t you wish, though, that we could walk somewhere in the shade, under trees?”

  “You’ve been spending too much time with library dreams,” he told her, smiling. He knew what trees were; five of the Six Worlds had had them.

  “Dreams?” Lianne, who made incredibly complex connections between abstract things, was often dense about simple ones.

  “Yes—hasn’t Stefred explained about them? The pleasant ones aren’t just recreation; they’re designed to show us what this world hasn’t got, to make us feel the lacks in a way non-Scholars don’t. So that we’ll never be satisfied, always keep struggling. And maybe someday, once we have metal, we can find a better planet—” He broke off, aware with renewed anguish that this goal was among those that must be renounced.

  “I didn’t mean to stir that up,” Lianne said hastily. “I’m not quite sure how I managed to.”

  “What you said about trees, of course. Why not ask for an ocean?”

  She turned even paler than her normal coloring, as if the casual remark had been an unpardonable slip of some kind. Noren took her arm. “Lianne—don’t be sorry! I have to learn to bear this; we all do. It’s just that when we’ve believed in the Prophecy so long, believed not only in survival but in a better future—”

  “Yes,” she agreed; but she was still trembling. “Yet a—a simple thing like trees—”

  “We could have them, maybe!” Noren cried excitedly. “That might be done with genetic engineering after the essential jobs are finished. There are plants with thick stems, they just aren’t strong enough to stand upright. I never thought before, but in principle I could alter them. There’s a lot I could do! Oh, I know we’re going to lose the City—the power and the computers—in time, but as long as I’m alive I can keep them going; I can keep the genetic technology long enough to make this world better for our descendants. And though we don’t have oceans, there are big lakes. Villages could be built near them once it’s safe for people to touch the water. Do you know what swimming is?”

  “Well, of course—” She broke off. “I have experienced a dream of swimming,” she said slowly. “And boats. If there were trees, and wood, we could build some. Even Stone Age peoples have boats.”

  Noren stared at her. “You’ve studied the Six Worlds more than most of us,” he observed thoughtfully. “Not only the dreams, but facts stored in the computers. It’s not just what you know, but how you think, as if—as if you came from the Six Worlds, like the Founders.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” she confessed. “I—I’m different, I’ve always told you that . . . and there’s the empathy Stefred talks about . . . and I—well, I identify in the dreams, not just the First Scholar’s, but the library dreams, too. I mix them too much with reality, perhaps. I suppose that sounds like a retreat, a coward’s course.”

  “No,” Noren said. “No, it takes courage—don’t you see? Because you’re here, in the real world, and you’re not deluding yourself, not even with the Prophecy. You experience those dreams fully, think about them while you’re awake, knowing all the time you’ll never get out of this prison we’re in, not the City but our whole planet—”

  “Please don’t! You’re giving me credit I don’t deserve.”

  “You do deserve it. I know it hurts to talk about this—but Lianne, you choose to. Most people don’t. They enjoy the library dreams, but in the daytime they can’t bear to remember them. I’m like that myself—I push them out of my mind because awareness of our limits here is just too painful. Oh, I can take it; I force myself to think it through sometimes just to make sure I can. But you seem to
live with it naturally.”

  “I—I wish I were what you believe.” Lianne’s eyes glistened with tears.

  “I’ll bet I can prove you are.” He had led her to a spot in the courtyard shaded by the shadow of a tower, where they could look up into the blueness of the sky. “You remember you said once you’d like me to tell you more about the alien sphere I found in the mountains?”

  Abruptly Lianne pulled back, withdrawing her arm from his; she stiffened. Noren smiled. “I’m testing you; already you see that. Which is part of the test, because most people aren’t even perceptive enough to shrink. They look at the sphere and it fascinates them, and they talk endlessly about what sort of beings the Visitors must have been, and they speculate about what function the thing might have had—and their emotions aren’t involved at all.”

  “But yours are?”

  “What do you think about the sphere, Lianne?”

  “I’d rather hear what you think,” she said levelly.

  “I think there’s a good chance that the civilization that once came to this world and left the sphere still exists somewhere. That things that used to be real on the Six Worlds are still real, other places. Maybe millions of places. Has that idea ever come into your mind?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, “it has.”

  “Do you believe it’s true?”

  “Certainly. I mean—well, of course they couldn’t all have been wiped out by novas, all the civilizations in the universe.”

  “But you’ve never heard anybody else in the City mention that.”

  “I guess I haven’t. It’s so obvious—”

  “No, it isn’t, not to the people who don’t have what it take to face the thought that we’re cut off from them. Lianne, that sphere is physical proof of what used to be only theory. Oh, the Founders knew this planet had been mined, but that could have been a billion years ago. The sphere isn’t that old. Right after I found it, I used to try to talk to people about the implications, only they didn’t see any implications. They didn’t want to see. Somebody told me once that if I’m hoping we’ll be rescued—”

  “That’s impossible!” Lianne broke in sharply. “You mustn’t have any such hope.”

  “I don’t. The odds against it are fantastically high; people know that, all right. So they’d rather not think of other civilizations as really existing, existing at this very moment—because once you think of them that way, you know we’re in a worse prison here than the First Scholar imagined. We lost more than the Six Worlds; we lost our starships. And since we aren’t going to succeed in synthesizing metal, we aren’t ever going to get them back. I know I’m behind bars; I’m not brave enough to imagine what that means very often, but I do know. I also know what it means for our human race to be maybe the only one in this whole galaxy that’s never going to get in touch with the rest. And the look in your eyes right now tells me you know, too.”

  Lianne didn’t answer; the emotion in her seemed beyond words, beyond even what he himself had felt whenever he’d allowed himself to ponder these things. “I’m not trying to be cruel,” he said. “I’m trying to show you how much I admire you, how much stronger you are than you think.”

  She managed a smile. “Stefred’s tactics? I’m the one who’s supposed to become the expert in encouraging people.”

  “You have a talent for it. Not only in what you do and say, but in what you don’t need to ask. Nobody else, not even Stefred, has been able to grasp how I feel about the sphere.” He hesitated. “There’s another thing. The Council ruled that it can never again be turned on, but the reason wasn’t publicized. It’s something I learned when I started studying genetics—there’s a chance the radiation might be what harmed Talyra’s child.”

  “Oh, no, Noren.” Lianne’s face showed not shock, but certainty.

  “Don’t try to spare me. If it was the cause, the fault’s mine; Talyra wouldn’t have been near it if it weren’t for me. Now that I’m sure no other pregnant women came in contact with it, I can’t say I’m sorry we found it, because if we hadn’t, Brek and I would have died, too, and Talyra would have died sooner—we’d all have died of starvation. But before I learned the radiation may have done harm, I was glad we found it. Underneath, it almost seemed like compensation for losing the aircar. Even though I know it can’t ever help us, even though it makes me feel worse than before about being stuck on this world—just knowing seemed better than not knowing. Talyra believed the Mother Star led us to it. Well, my ideas about its meaning weren’t any more realistic.” He searched Lianne’s face. “Was I a fool, do you think?”

  Her hand touched his. “No. Go on being glad; knowing is better. And the radiation did not harm the baby, I—well, I can’t explain why, call it my crazy intuition, but I’m sure it didn’t.”

  “There’s no way you could be sure of a thing like that.”

  “I suppose not, only what could a portable radiation device be except a communicator of some kind? And they wouldn’t have used communicators that could be harmful.”

  There was a strange intensity in her voice, so strong that he found himself believing her. Her argument was reasonable, yet hardly conclusive; who knew what might or might not be harmful to an alien species? Still . . . Lianne’s knowledge of things beyond her experience was often truly uncanny.

  * * *

  Twice in the past his reproductive cells had been tested for genetic damage; doctors had handled it. But there was no need to involve a doctor if one knew how to use the computer input equipment and ask the right questions about the data. At least for a man there wasn’t. Since to test a woman’s reproductive cells demanded surgery, the vaccine, if it worked on men, must be presumed to work on women without this intermediate check. The really crucial trial would be the health of the baby. But before daring to father a baby, he himself must make sure that impure water hadn’t affected him as it would have before his vaccination.

  He did the test at night, as he’d done the blood tests, when the computer room was deserted. Handling the apparatus, entering preliminary analysis commands, he worked steadily and impassively without permitting his mind to stray. Only when he keyed the final query did his fingers fumble and his eyes drop from the screen. Cursing himself for his cowardice, he forced himself to look. The report read, FERTILITY UNIMPAIRED. NO INDICATION OF GENETIC DAMAGE. NO KNOWN CAUSE TO EXPECT DEFECTIVE PROGENY.

  Noren’s clenched hands let go, and he felt weak, reeling with the release of pent-up tension. To his astonishment he found that he was weeping. He had not let himself know how terrified he’d been.

  As he emerged from the Hall of Scholars into the brightening dawn, Noren knew elation for the first time since Talyra’s death. That was behind him now. The memory would always hurt; he could never feel for anyone what he’d felt for Talyra. But the children he’d have had with Talyra would not have helped humanity to survive. His future children would! They would be the first of a new race, the first born able to live without aid in the only world now accessible to them. What is needful to life will not be denied us . . . that was true! If the genetic code of life could be changed, surely the problem of getting people to do it could be overcome also. By the Star, Noren vowed, he’d make a good world for his children!

  His and Lianne’s. He was not sure why it had become so important that they be Lianne’s—perhaps, he thought, because she, above all women he’d known, would understand the meaning. She saw nothing unnatural in using knowledge to alter life. With eagerness, he turned back into the tower.

  He found her in the dream room; she still worked there some nights, and her shift was just ending. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said. “Now, while it’s cool out in the courtyard.”

  She looked so openly pleased that he was ashamed. His impatience to make plans, more than consideration for her comfort, had prompted this suggestion—and he realized that he cared how she felt about trivial things as well as serious ones. Maybe sunlight really was hard on her. He’d learned Talyra’s feelin
gs, all of them, but never anyone else’s. Had he tried? Could he become close in that way to Lianne?

  “We haven’t talked about the secret dream,” he said as they crossed the deserted courtyard, their footsteps loud in the hush of daybreak.

  “You never seemed to want to.” This was true; he’d carefully stayed clear of the topic while unready to pursue it fully. “I understand how it must have been for you, Noren,” Lianne went on. “Personal, too personal to speak of. I monitored you, of course—”

  “What did that show?” he asked, wondering.

  “Only that it affected you deeply . . . in lots of ways. Later, when you asked me what I thought about genetic change, I guessed the dream was involved. And then when I went through it myself and learned how the First Scholar’s experience fits in, I knew you must feel—chosen.”

  “Stefred thinks that makes me dangerous. I’m not quite sure why. I see his point about how hard it’ll be to get people to abandon the High Law willingly, but if he’s right that it’s too late, I couldn’t cause any harm by myself. Any implementation is far in the future anyway. So why does he oppose even the research?”

  “You don’t know?” Lianne asked, surprised. “Noren, of course you couldn’t do anything alone that would threaten village culture—and you wouldn’t; Stefred’s aware of that. But think what it would do to us, to the priesthood, if we stopped believing the Prophecy.”

  “I stopped a long time ago,” Noren confessed bitterly. “And it hurts. Stefred isn’t a man who’d back away from that.”

  “Not from the despair,” she agreed. “Suppose, though, that you were to win official support for genetic alteration, Council support—and we gave up metal synthesization as hopeless. Gave up the plan to fulfill the Prophecy’s promises. No priest, least of all Stefred, could ever again speak those words about knowledge and cities and machines with a clear conscience. Starting now, in our generation, not in our grandchildren’s! We’d reinterpret the symbolism among ourselves, but nobody would be able to preside at public ceremonies.”