The Doors of the Universe Read online

  USUALLY IT LIVES, BUT IS DISEASED OR DEFORMED.

  CAN TERATOGENIC DAMAGE CAUSE IT TO BE STILLBORN?

  OCCASIONALLY. MORE OFTEN, LETHAL DAMAGE WOULD RESULT IN EARLY MISCARRIAGE.

  Noren gripped the edge of the console keyboard, fighting sick despair. If it could happen, it was reasonable to assume that it had happened, given the fact that the impurities of the water had been in Talyra’s bloodstream throughout her first week of pregnancy.

  He drew deep breaths; then, with effort, continued, IF SUCH A CHILD IS STILLBORN, CAN THIS CAUSE THE DEATH OF THE MOTHER?

  NOT DIRECTLY. IN RARE CASES TERATOGENIC DAMAGE MIGHT LEAD TO COMPLICATIONS IN DELIVERY. CAN YOU SUPPLY SPECIFIC DATA?

  WHAT SORT OF DATA?

  GENETIC DATA THAT WOULD PERMIT THE PROBABILITY TO BE CALCULATED.

  No, thought Noren in dismay. He could not supply that. But the Founders could have—otherwise the computer wouldn’t be programmed to ask for it.

  He knew nothing about biology, but he was well-trained in higher mathematics; the calculation of probabilities was something he understood. HOW MANY INPUT VARIABLES ARE INVOLVED? he ventured.

  THE ENTIRE GENOTYPE OF BOTH PARENTS MAY BE RELEVANT. THE PROGRAM CAN DETERMINE SIGNIFICANT VARIABLES FROM THAT, PLUS CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SUBSTANCE IN QUESTION AND ITS TIME OF CONSUMPTION. THERE MAY BE OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES ALSO.

  Genotype? He did not know the word; fortunately computer programs were patient with stupid questions. DEFINE GENOTYPE, he commanded.

  GENOTYPE IS THE GENETIC MAKEUP OF AN INDIVIDUAL ORGANISM, THE SPECIFIC SET OF GENES IN ITS CELLS.

  HOW LARGE IS THE SET IN HUMANS? Noren inquired, thinking that perhaps some doctor would help him list his own genes in a form suitable for input. Incredibly, he found himself staring at a six-digit figure.

  THAT IS THE NUMBER OF GENES THAT MAY VARY? he asked in disbelief.

  IT IS THE NUMBER WITH WHICH THE PROGRAM DEALS. THE SET IS LARGER, BUT SOME GENES ARE REDUNDANT OR OF UNKNOWN FUNCTION.

  No wonder the Scholars hadn’t devoted time to studying the field, thought Noren. Genetics must be as complicated as nuclear physics. And surely even a knowledgeable person couldn’t key in that many separate bits of data; it would tie up a console for weeks.

  WHAT IS THE INPUT FORMAT FOR GENOTYPE? he queried.

  THE ANALYSIS CAN BE MADE DIRECTLY FROM A BLOOD SAMPLE THROUGH THE USE OF AUXILIARY INPUT EQUIPMENT.

  Did such equipment still exist? It must; the Founders had been careful to write the program in a way compatible with the facilities preserved for their descendants. So his own genotype could evidently be analyzed. For Talyra’s, it was too late. If he had known before her body was sent to the converters. . . Perhaps it was best that he had not, that he could obtain no real estimate of the odds, for they would not be zero, and they might prove conclusively that having a child under other circumstances wouldn’t have been fatal.

  Yet he could not just drop the matter. It happens, Beris had said. Occasionally it happens with a girl who seems healthy. Generations of women had accepted that, when all along the computers had been able to calculate probabilities in specific cases! Why had the Founders made no mention of this in the High Law, which explicitly mandated use of all other existing life-support technologies?

  Because, he saw, it would not fit the High Law’s purpose. The original population of the colony had been dangerously small, so small that maximum increase had been deemed desirable even though it would hasten the depletion of resources. Thus for survival’s sake the High Law encouraged childbearing; it forbade all contraception, not only the drugs that couldn’t be manufactured with available resources. There was no longer need for such a prohibition—any decent couple would be outraged at the mere thought of the things Scholars knew about from the old records. He himself had been more shocked by them than by the literal meaning behind the phrases referring to disposition of bodies. But this hadn’t been true in the Founders’ time. The Founders had grown up in a society where overpopulation was a serious problem; they had considered it natural and even admirable to limit births. They’d assumed that if people went on computing the odds of trouble when medical facilities were inadequate, no one would take any risk at all.

  Yet . . . there were nevertheless perplexities. Why, for instance, had he come upon this knowledge only through purposeful inquiry? Basic information about human reproduction was not obscure, and the sexual customs of the Six Worlds were known to any Scholar familiar with material about the vanished culture; there were allusions to them even in dreams. Scientific details, on the other hand—and especially those related to genetics—received practically no mention. It was almost as if references to the topic had been deliberately omitted from the reading matter of the Scholars themselves. And that was strange. Not only was access to knowledge supposed to be unrestricted, but genetics was the very thing most pertinent to understanding of the alien world’s limitations.

  Guardianship of the City was justifiable only because it was the sole alternative to genetic damage: so the Founders had believed, so all Scholars since had agreed. There was no question about this fact. But why was it thought sufficient to know that it was true if the computers had detailed information about why it was true, about the biological mechanism that produced the damage? And why hadn’t the First Scholar’s recorded thoughts dealt with the subject more fully?

  Having raised these issues, Noren could not fail to pursue them; it was not in him to let such things ride. CAN THE PROBABLE CAUSE OF THE MOTHER’S DEATH BE ESTIMATED WITHOUT HER GENOTYPE? he asked.

  NOT ACCURATELY. A ROUGH APPROXIMATION CAN BE MADE.

  That was better than nothing. SHE CONSUMED UNPURIFIED WATER, he keyed. FOR CHEMICAL ANALYSIS REFER TO MEMORY. The computers had more information about what was in it than he did, after all.

  AMOUNT AND TIME OF CONSUMPTION?

  MINIMUM DAILY RATION, FIRST SIX DAYS OF PREGNANCY OR LESS.

  FOOD DURING THIS PERIOD?

  NONE AT ALL. They had agreed to starve—there’d been no safe food, so he, Brek and Talyra had calmly discussed it and decided that starvation would be preferable to an adaptation that would lead to production of subhuman offspring. Had she even then been carrying a defective baby?

  QUALITY OF PRENATAL MEDICAL CARE?

  Again, NONE.

  ANY EXPOSURE TO RADIATION?

  No, Talyra hadn’t entered the power plant; and though he himself had worked both there and in nuclear research labs, any failure of the shielding would have been detected. No case of radiation exposure had occurred since the accident that had killed Stefred’s wife. But wait . . . radiation?

  There had been the mystifying radiation given off by the alien sphere.

  It had brought about their rescue. They’d found the little sphere in the mountains, an artifact from some other solar system, long ago abandoned by the mysterious Visitors who’d mined and depleted this planet’s scant metal resources before humans from the Six Worlds had arrived. He had manipulated it, made it radiate—an alarm had been triggered in the monitoring section of the computer complex. Thus an aircar had been sent out from the City and had located them. But he’d been unable to walk after retrieving the sphere from the rock niche where it had lain; it had been Talyra who, at his instructions, had carried it to the open plateau and turned it on.

  Since then, the sphere had been studied at the research outpost. It had been pronounced harmless; the radiation it emitted was of a previously unknown sort and no one could tell what it was for, but it didn’t seem to hurt anybody. It caused no mutations in fowl, the only creatures available to test it on. There were no facilities for taking it apart or attempting its duplication, but as the only artifact of the Visitors ever discovered, it had been observed with great fascination by the few Scholars fortunate enough to draw duty at the newly built outpost. Were any of those Scholars pregnant? One thing was sure—no woman who’d touched the sphere as early in pregnancy as Talyra could yet have given birt
h, for Talyra had been the first.

  CAN TERATOGENIC DAMAGE BE CAUSED BY RADIATION HARMLESS TO ADULTS? Noren asked.

  YES.

  BY THE UNKNOWN RADIATION THAT LAST YEAR TRIGGERED AN ALARM?

  INSUFFICIENT DATA, replied the screen tersely. That was what it always said when one asked a question for which the programmers hadn’t had an answer.

  Noren dropped his head, burying his face in his folded arms. He was indeed responsible, he thought despairingly—for the child’s death and no doubt Talyra’s also, for would it not be too great a coincidence if she’d died of some other cause? As a scientist, he could see that there was no conclusive proof. But how could he ever, in the face of so many suspicious factors, believe otherwise?

  And for how many more deaths might he become responsible, if women at the outpost now carried unborn children damaged by the sphere?

  It would have been better not to have found it. It would have been better if they had died in the mountains, as they’d expected they would. Yet Talyra had viewed its discovery as a confirmation of her faith. She’d believed the spirit of the Mother Star would guard them, and in her eyes it had—they had been led to an utterly unpredictable deliverance, as the Prophecy proclaimed would someday happen for their whole race. Though our peril be great even unto the last generation of our endurance, in the end humankind shall prevail; and the doors of the universe shall once again be thrown open. . . . On the basis of the analogy, he had accepted priesthood. So great an irony as that was past bearing. . . .

  No. The whole chain of events had begun with his unwillingness to live with his own failings; he would not make the same mistake twice. Wearily, Noren sat upright once more and went on questioning.

  Chapter Two

  As dusk came on, Noren waited alone in Stefred’s secluded study high in the Hall of Scholars. Beyond the window three waning moons hung between the lighted pinnacles of adjacent towers. There had been moonlight on the plateau in the mountains, too, he found himself thinking, the harsh, desolate wasteland that to him and Talyra had been a place of beauty. And long before, the same three crescents had shone on the village square where they’d made their first pledge of love. Life had been simple then, despite his dissatisfaction with its injustice and his inner knowledge that he might someday face punishment for heresy. He hadn’t imagined how much things could change.

  What was left for him now? he thought numbly. It would be better if he had some constructive job to turn to. He didn’t expect happiness—without Talyra, how could he know happiness again? Nor did he still look for peace of mind. But tomorrow morning would come, and the next, and the next . . . he would have to do something, since no one was idle in the City, and how could he go back to work—futile work—when all hope for its success was dead in him?

  This was not a question to ask Stefred, or for that matter, anyone else. Even from Brek, he knew, he would receive an all-too-ready answer. It would be said that if his actions had caused deaths, that was all the more reason why he was obligated to work toward the ultimate preservation of lives. By many of his fellow-priests, in fact, he would be told that if he’d survived last year’s events at high cost, it was because he might be destined to preserve humanity; that was the basis on which they’d justified the loss of the aircar. He must therefore avoid letting the issue be raised in the light of what he’d learned about the baby, for he could not endure the thought of its life, and Talyra’s, being figured into the balance. The proffered answers would no doubt be the same.

  No price would be thought too high for his salvation. He, Noren, was regarded by most as a genius who, in his later years, would bring about the advance in physics needed to realize the Founders’ hope of synthesizing metal through nuclear fusion. All efforts of past generations to achieve this had been proven vain by last year’s experiments; a flaw had appeared at the level of basic scientific theory. The computers now said the task was impossible. The priests, however, maintained that it could not be impossible—that since nothing else could enable their species to survive, an unforeseen breakthrough would occur if they kept working. Noren was viewed as the most likely person to make it.

  He did not share this confidence. He himself had never been deluded about the chances of his talent producing such an outcome. His very gift for the work showed him, with a clarity not apparent to others, that the limits imposed by available facilities were absolute. More and more, since his return from the outpost where future experimentation was to be tried, he had seen that the research would be fruitless. Study, like priesthood, was for him a gesture—a gesture that sustained people’s hope, unlike the destructive one through which he’d sought to deny life by declaring all hope fraudulent. He had acknowledged the value of faith and had even felt its power, but he’d found it couldn’t alter his scientific pessimism.

  At times, with Talyra, he had forgotten all this. The end would not come in his lifetime, and he’d lived as if long-term survival of his people were indeed assured. He’d been on his way to becoming like everyone else. But he couldn’t have gone on with that forever, he thought, suddenly overcome by a sadness that was more than grief. He was not like everyone else; he never had been. . . .

  The door slid aside, and Stefred stood for a moment in the lighted opening. Noren rose to greet him, and they gripped hands. “Noren,” he said quietly. “I—I’ve no words.”

  “They aren’t needed,” Noren replied. With Stefred this was true; he had an uncanny ability to convey the warmth of his feelings even when forced to speak words not easy to hear.

  “I can’t tell you it will stop hurting. I’ve been through it, and I know better. But in time—”

  “You’ve never remarried.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?” demanded Noren. Stefred wasn’t an old man—more than old enough to be his father, no doubt, but in a world where most married in adolescence, that did not make him old in years. Furthermore, everyone who knew Stefred liked and admired him; he’d scarcely have had trouble finding another wife.

  “My position’s awkward,” he replied painfully. “There is a—a bond that develops between me and each candidate I examine; you know that. With the men it means lasting friendship. With the women it could mean more; ethics require me to suppress all such thoughts while acting in my professional role. Later . . . there’ve been several women I might have approached later, but by then they’d chosen others.”

  “You could marry a Technician, though.”

  “Could I? Noren, every Technician who enters the Inner City kneels to me in a formal audience during application for admission, seeks my blessing, thinking me of supernatural stature! I can’t hide my rank while getting acquainted with the newcomers, as the rest of you can.” His voice dropped as he added with bitterness, “No Technician woman would refuse me; she would feel awed by the thought of bearing my child. It goes without saying that I don’t want love on that basis.”

  Of course not, Noren realized. Because in the villages most heretics were men, the balance between sexes would not be equal in the Inner City if Technician women weren’t brought in; but the religious devotion of these girls, who considered it a high honor to be accepted for lifelong confinement within the walls, was not exploited. They assumed they were to be courted by their peers. Stefred, who must appear robed at the admission interview and accept the near-worship accorded High Priests, was doomed to a unique sort of loneliness.

  And loneliness wasn’t his heaviest burden. Meeting his eyes, Noren noticed the shadows beneath them, the lines of fatigue and worry in his face. Only a real emergency would have kept Stefred from the service for Talyra; he’d just now returned from a dream-monitoring session with a candidate whom he must consider in peril of cracking up. “This is a bad time for me to have come,” Noren apologized. “I know you can’t tell me the details, but people have heard rumors.”

  Stefred crossed to his desk and slumped wearily into its chair, not bothering to turn on the lamp. “I’ll tell y
ou this,” he said after a short pause. “I’m—afraid, Noren. For the first time, I’m dealing with someone I’m afraid I can’t bring through.”

  “She’s not strong enough?” Noren sat down again, sensing that Stefred really wanted to talk about it. Detached though he felt, the situation puzzled him. If the girl lacked courage, that judgment would have been made earlier, before it was too late to pursue the heresy charge less rigorously and give her Technician rank. Once secrets had been revealed to her, she must be isolated from Technicians for the rest of her life if she proved unable to withstand the full sequence of ordeals that led to Scholar status. Since this would mean not mere confinement to the Inner City but true imprisonment, it was indeed a dismaying prospect—but surely a remote one. Stefred knew how to bring out the best in people.

  “Oh, she’s strong,” he was saying, “she’s more than strong enough; she’s the most promising candidate I’ve seen in a long time. If I fail, the tragedy won’t be just hers and mine. It will affect all of us.”

  “But then if it’s just some personal reaction to the dreams, can’t you help her deal with it?” Stefred, Noren knew, would never violate anyone’s confidence, let alone reveal a confession made under the drugs, which, in a private inquisition, he must have used. However, it was no secret that things in a candidate’s background could make particular aspects of the dreams unduly trying, and in such cases, hypnotic aid was normally given.

  “She’s concealing too much from me,” Stefred said. “There’s a wall in her mind I can’t get past, and I wouldn’t be justified in breaching it even if I could. I’m already sure she meets the qualifications—she hates the caste system as much as we all do and will gladly work toward its abolishment if she finds herself on top. I’ve no warrant to invade her privacy except to determine that. You know I can’t probe her subconscious merely to spare her suffering.”

  “Not unless she consents,” Noren agreed. “Still, if you’ll risk killing her otherwise . . .” It was possible, in theory, for someone who’d identified closely with the First Scholar to literally share his death in the last dream, the crucial one that dealt with the Prophecy’s origin.