The Doors of the Universe Page 3

  In the morning he viewed the bodies privately, dry-eyed, before they were shrouded and moved to the open courtyard. Because Talyra had been a Technician, the service was not held within the Hall of Scholars. Except for the absence of kinfolk, with whom all Inner City people sacrificed contact, it was more like a village ceremony; and for this Noren was thankful. Ritual of one sort or another could be more easily dismissed as routine in mixed groups than when only Scholars were present.

  Alone, for Brek had quietly assumed the presiding priest’s place, Noren joined the gathered mourners as they began the traditional hymn. He was too much a loner to want others’ sympathy, though there were many present who would offer it. The ceremony was a thing to live through. So, perhaps, would be all his days to come. Reason told him his work in nuclear physics was futile, and without Talyra to bolster his faith . . .

  How proud she’d been when he first put on the blue robe, and how needless his fear that it would turn her love to a deference he would abhor. Not till he was much older would he be required to assume the burden of appearing at public ceremonies outside the Gates, where villagers and Technicians would kneel to him. In the Inner City such customs were not observed; the robes, in fact, were rarely worn except for formal officiation. But like the other acknowledged Scholars in attendance, he wore his now, as befitted the solemnity of the occasion.

  He had steeled himself to the words of committal; the shock of understanding them had worn off since he’d first heard them as a Scholar. Recycling of bodies with the ancient converters from the starships was necessary to future generations in an alien world that did not provide enough of the trace elements on which biological existence depended. In any case, he had never shared the villagers’ reverent awe at the thought that when one’s body was taken into the City, one somehow became part of the life cycle only Scholars could comprehend. He’d long since resigned himself to the fact that the physical side of this holy mystery was all too earthly.

  It was the other part that still disturbed him. “For as this spirit abides with us, so shall it with her; it will be made manifest in ways beyond our vision. . . .” Sunlight beat down between the glistening towers onto Noren’s uplifted face; he closed his eyes, marveling at the sincerity in Brek’s voice.

  Villagers and Technicians believed that Scholars were omniscient, that they knew what happened after death. Did not the Scholars know the answers to all other mysteries: why crops would not grew in unquickened soil, how impure water could turn sane men into idiots, and even how Machines had come into the world? Having been enlightened as to these latter things, Noren himself had not, at first, doubted that the former was equally explicable. He grew hot at the memory of his naivete when he’d queried the computer complex about death, and of his stunned disillusionment at its inability to provide any information. He’d been a mere adolescent then, of course. The past year had taught him much. His emotions had become less involved, at least as far as his own fate was concerned. But now, Talyra . . .

  “Her place is assured among those who lived before her and those who will come after, those by whom the Star is seen and their children’s children’s children, even unto infinite and unending time. And not in memory alone does she survive, for the universe is vast. Were the doors now closed to us reopened, as in time they shall be, still there would remain that wall through which there is no door save that through which she has passed. . . .”

  Somehow, said of Talyra, it seemed less incredible than it always had to him. Surely Talyra wasn’t just . . . extinguished. He could not imagine a universe in which Talyra had ceased to exist.

  He had studied the computers’ records of the Six Worlds’ religions, and he’d learned that belief in continuance after death had been common though not, by the time of the Founders, widely accepted among scientists. He had wondered why the Founders—all trained as scientists—had put it into the liturgy; for in establishing themselves as priests, they had been scrupulous about proclaiming only those ideas in which they sincerely believed. To the First Scholar, who had planned this, the test of a false religion was not whether someone had made up its symbols on purpose, but whether that person had been aiming to defraud. The Founders had been required to cloak certain facts in symbolism, but they had not practiced deception. They had meant everything they said. How, Noren had asked himself, could they have meant what they seemed to be saying in the service for the dead, especially after they’d seen thirty billion people die in the vaporization of the Six Worlds?

  Now, suddenly, he understood. It had been the First Scholar’s influence, the dreams’ influence! They’d all experienced the death of the First Scholar’s wife: experienced it in personal terms—just as he, Noren, had—as a result of the dual identity one assumed in controlled dreaming. The dream material, even in its most complete version, was edited. The Founders had recorded memories for posterity, knowing that only so could they convey the reality of the Six Worlds’ tragic end to those in whose hands survival of their race must rest. But they’d had a right to some privacy; the First Scholar had edited his thoughts to remove such personal ones as would contribute nothing to comprehension of future problems. Thus his image of his wife’s personality had not been preserved. But he had loved her. No doubt he’d indeed felt that somewhere in the universe she must, in some way, live—such a feeling might even remain in the recordings. Each dreamer drew different things from them, according to his or her own background. The Founders, having lost loved ones to the nova, might well have clung to emotion as if it were the First Scholar’s actual conviction. After his martyrdom they had revered him, as all Scholars still did, striving to emulate him in everything.

  It was ironic. To the First Scholar himself, faith not based on evidence hadn’t come easily. “Did you suppose he was born with it?” the Scholar Stefred had said when Noren, on his return from the mountains, had begun to perceive the real nature of commitment to the Prophecy. Stefred had always maintained that Noren’s mind was very like the First Scholar’s.

  From his place in the inner circle Noren glanced around, expecting to see Stefred among the blue-robed figures closest to him. Astonishingly, he was absent. It was unthinkable that he wouldn’t attend this service if aware of it; unthinkable, too, that Brek would have neglected to tell him of Talyra’s death.

  Noren himself had not sought out Stefred, nor did he intend to do so. There was no help for this sort of pain. As head of recruitment and a skilled psychiatrist, Stefred knew all young Scholars’ deepest feelings; he had guided them through the ordeals of inquisition, enlightenment and recantation. He had aided their adjustment to the status they’d neither sought nor welcomed. He’d been their first friend in the Inner City and remained, to all, a warm one. But though he’d want to help, he was uncompromisingly honest—he would not try to argue away grief.

  Yet neither would he ignore it. Could he be tied up with urgent Council business? Noren had not entered the Hall of Scholars for two days; he had heard none of the current rumors about the City’s affairs. Abruptly, it occurred to him that these affairs had not halted, that little as they now mattered to him, they would go right on. The effort to fulfill the Prophecy would go on, hopeless though it was. He had committed himself to participation. For a time he’d had faith that it was worthwhile. Had that been only for the child’s sake?

  He’d thought such faith, once discovered, would be permanent. But perhaps it had never been valid at all; perhaps it had been a mere feeling, no better founded than this unexpected feeling that Talyra’s true self still lived on.

  “. . . so may the spirit of the Star be with her, and with us all.” Brek stopped speaking; there was a long silence. Gradually Noren became aware that men stood ready to lift the shroud, that they were waiting for his signal.

  Stepping forward, he dropped his eyes. There was nothing to be seen, of course, but dazzling white cloth; wherever Talyra was, she could not be there. Nor could the child—the boy, he’d been told—in whom they’d taken such j
oy. Oh, Talyra, he thought, it wasn’t the way we imagined. The wilderness gave us death after all.

  * * *

  When it was over, Brek took him to the refectory, persuaded him to eat. “Stefred sent a message,” he said. “He’d like you to stop by his study—”

  “I don’t need to do that.”

  “You and your starcursed pride,” murmured Brek. “I should have known better than to say it that way. I know you don’t need therapy from Stefred. So does he. But after all, his own wife died—and he still mourns her; he’s never looked at anyone else. It’s no wonder if he’s sorry he couldn’t be at the service and wants to tell you so personally. You owe him the chance, when he’s so troubled right now himself.”

  “Troubled? Why?”

  “You haven’t heard? Everyone’s mystified. We don’t know what the problem is, except that he’s working with a heretic who’s been reacting badly to the dreams. Apparently he doesn’t dare leave her.”

  “Not at all?” The testing and enlightenment of a Scholar candidate took several weeks of intensive therapy, but not all phases demanded Stefred’s presence. There were rest periods, and some of the machine-induced dreams could be controlled by assistants.

  “Well, he won’t leave his suite at all; he’s having his meals brought to him. And he’s monitoring the entire dream sequence personally. As far as that goes, he handled the inquisition personally after the first hour or so—the observers were sent out. I don’t suppose we’ll ever hear what happened.”

  “No,” agreed Noren, “but it must have been rough for them both.” Any candidate experiencing the dreams had been judged trustworthy. That meant she had stood up to Stefred despite real terror, which in Technicians—and most female heretics had been born to that caste—could sometimes be hard to induce. Technicians weren’t overwhelmed by City surroundings, as villagers were; stress had to be artificially applied. Stefred knew how to do it harmlessly, and when necessary he could be ruthless. It was for the candidate’s own benefit: no one unsure of his or her inner strength could endure the outwardly degrading recantation ceremony, or accept the “rewards” that came after. One must be certain in one’s own mind that one hadn’t sold out. If that certainty could be engendered only through extreme measures, Stefred would use them; but he would not enjoy the process.

  “The odd thing,” Brek went on, “is that she’s a village woman. Yet at first, I’m told, she was fearless. Everyone who saw her noticed—she was as self-composed as an experienced initiate. It was almost unnatural.”

  Slowly, Noren nodded. It was indeed odd that a villager, brought straight from a Stone Age environment into the awesome City—believing she’d be put to death there for her convictions—could be so cool under questioning that Stefred would have to employ unusual tactics. But they would learn nothing of her background. Not only were closed-door sessions with Stefred treated as confidential, but no questions were asked in the Inner City about newcomers’ past lives. This convention had been established because the true significance of heresy must be concealed from the uninitiated, but it was also a matter of courtesy. Former heretics, who were by nature nonconformists, had not always behaved admirably in youth; it would be tactless to risk embarrassing anyone, or to stir up memories better left to fade.

  “What’s strangest,” Noren reflected, “is that someone strong-willed enough to need special handling would be endangered by the dreams. They’re hard for everybody at first. A person who wasn’t bothered by what the Founders did wouldn’t be a fit successor. But close monitoring—that’s used only for the most terrifying ones, the ones that could induce physical shock. I never heard of monitoring the whole series.”

  “Could he have put her under too much stress beforehand, maybe?”

  “Stefred? He’s never miscalculated; you know that!”

  “I do know,” Brek replied. “Yet now he’s worried. No one’s seen him since Orison the night before last, and then he looked—well, as if he needed that kind of reassurance. Since he’s willing to talk to you—”

  “I’ll find out what I can.” It was true enough, Noren realized, that only pride had made him resolve not to go to Stefred, the one person in the City to whom he could speak freely of sorrow.

  But there was another encounter that had priority. On the verge of taking the lift up to the tower suite in which he’d met so many past crises, Noren moved his hand instead to the button for “down.”

  At the foundation of the Hall of Scholars was the computer complex, most sacred of all places in the City because there alone the accumulated knowledge of the Six Worlds was preserved. To Noren, knowledge had seemed sacred from his earliest boyhood; to all Scholars, its guardianship was a holy responsibility. The information stored in the computers was irreplaceable. If lost, it could not be regained, and without that information, human survival would become impossible. Unrestricted access to it was the right of every Scholar. Priesthood wasn’t a condition—but it was in contact with the computer complex that Noren felt most nearly as he supposed a priest ought to feel. The computers held such truth as was knowable. He knew better, now, than to think that they held all truth, but they held all his human race had uncovered, all he was likely to find in his own world.

  In this only, there was happiness he had not shared with Talyra. It was the single aspect of his life her loss would not diminish. But he could not accept the joys of learning without also accepting the demands. I care more for truth than for comfort, he’d declared at his trial. He’d been a mere boy, fresh from the village school; it sounded naively melodramatic now. He had known even then that most people would think it foolish. The village councilmen who condemned him had been appalled by his blasphemous presumption. During the subsequent inquisition, however, Stefred had not thought it foolish; he’d called it the key point in his defense. Stefred, who knew more than any village council about uncomfortable truths, had challenged him to choose. He could not now revoke the choice he had made.

  Noren sat at a console, not yet touching the keys, glad that in the dim light of the computer room no one would notice his hesitancy. He had never been afraid of knowledge. He’d learned early that it could be painful to possess as well as to acquire; he had shut it out at times; still he could not consciously deny that knowing was better than not knowing. Somewhere in the computers was information that could tell him: had actions of his killed Talyra?

  Quite possibly they had. If so, it was fitting retribution for the mistakes on his part that had led to the crash in the mountains . . . yet how could things work like that? She had been guiltless!

  He himself was not. He had by his rashness destroyed one of the world’s few aircars; its loss might affect the well-being of generations yet unborn. He’d thought himself willing to destroy people’s hope at the cost of his own life. These events were behind him now. Stefred had said he must look forward, not back. Yet considering the death of the child . . .

  Could the child have been harmed by the mountain water after all? Though Noren’s genes hadn’t been affected by it, Talyra had not been tested. They’d said it was more complicated with a woman, that it would demand surgery for which they had no proper equipment and which would in any case be risky during her pregnancy. Talyra had drunk no more of the water than Brek, whose test result showed no harm—not nearly as much as the officially established limit. Still, if genetics hadn’t been studied since the Founders’ time, did anyone really know how exact the limit was?

  All the science of the Six Worlds was in computer memory. He had access to all of it if he could frame the right questions. Since becoming a Scholar, he’d acquired skill in questioning, a process that demanded deep thought. It would not be possible simply to ask why Talyra had died, or even why the baby had; the program couldn’t respond to a query of that kind. His questions must be specific. He must analyze the issues, however hard they were to face.

  Suppose there had been damage to Talyra’s genes, suppose the limit was not the same for everyone—even
so, the mutation caused by impure water wasn’t lethal. The mutants in the mountains, despite subhuman brains, were all too healthy. Besides, the baby most likely had been conceived the first night. Impure water was harmful only to reproductive cells, not to embryos . . . wasn’t it? He frowned, struggling with concepts unfamiliar to him, as a new thought came into his mind.

  He knew little about pregnancy. Such things were not studied—babies came and were welcomed; one did not ponder how they grew. Beris had said that on the Six Worlds doctors had known more. Had they known what could harm an embryo during the first days of its existence?

  A child newly conceived was alive; like all living things it needed water; it must get this through its mother’s blood. But it was surely very small. So could a small amount of some damaging substance hurt it, even if the mother herself was not damaged?

  This, he knew, was the kind of question that was answerable. Whether or not anyone had asked it before in the City, the program would reply as promptly as if the query concerned recent experiments. His hands trembling, Noren keyed, CAN AN UNBORN CHILD BE HARMED BY WHAT ITS MOTHER CONSUMES EARLY IN PREGNANCY?

  Instantly the screen before him displayed, YES.

  EVEN IF SHE HERSELF IS NOT MADE ILL?

  YES. SUCH DAMAGE IS CALLED TERATOGENIC.

  IS THAT THE SAME AS MUTATION?

  NO, IT IS A DIFFERENT TYPE OF GENETIC ERROR. TERATOGENIC DAMAGE IS NOT INHERITED BY THE CHILD’S OFFSPRING.

  SUCH A CHILD SOMETIMES LIVES, THEN?