The Doors of the Universe Page 5

  “The last dream’s not the problem. If it were, I could handle it; she’d need temporary isolation, perhaps, but given time, I could prepare her. What seems to be happening is that she’s too intuitive. The recruiting scheme wasn’t designed to deal with someone who grasps things outside any conceivable past experience.” He leaned forward, frowning. “Noren, what if you’d guessed the extent of the editing in the candidates’ version of the dreams? Could you have gone through with voluntary recantation?”

  “No,” Noren said. “No, I based my decision on first-hand knowledge of the First Scholar’s motives. When you told me afterward about the editing I was furious—I thought for a moment you’d manipulated things to deceive me.”

  “Lianne,” Stefred reflected, “underwent more anguish than any person I have ever monitored in the first dream. It’s not enjoyable for anyone—it can’t be; watching a sun nova and consume its planets isn’t an easy experience. But most candidates are detached at that stage; it’s nightmare, not reality. Not till later does the reality sink in. Lianne got it all. From what she said after she regained consciousness, I know she got everything the First Scholar felt—but of course, without his foreknowledge.”

  “Everything? But she couldn’t have known what populated worlds are like,”protested Noren, remembering his own slow absorption of the idea that not just one City but thousands had been wiped out in that single surge of intolerable fire.

  “I wasn’t sure she could take another session,” Stefred went on, “but she was willing, and I went ahead with close monitoring. Her physiological responses showed she was coping; I thought we’d passed the crisis. And then, when she woke, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Why have you edited it so much?’”

  “Oh, Stefred.”

  “You see what’s going to happen. She’ll stick to her refusal to recant even after finishing the sequence—precisely because she is strong, is perceptive, she’ll hold out on the grounds that I’ve kept part of the truth from her. Her very fitness to become one of us will force her into a position that deprives her of the chance.”

  “That’s awful. It’s one thing to make that choice out of real disagreement with the First Scholar’s decision, but to have to live with its consequences because of a false suspicion that you’re cheating—”

  “I know,” Stefred sighed, “especially since I have cause to believe she doesn’t disagree. The dreams wouldn’t affect her so deeply if she didn’t share his convictions. For that matter, she wouldn’t be unsatisfied by the explanation I’ve given her about the editing.”

  “Stefred,” Noren mused, “why wasn’t I unsatisfied? You told me thoughts beyond my comprehension had been removed from the recording, and I took your word.”

  “It was true in your case,” replied Stefred grimly. “With Lianne I’ve come close to lying.”

  Noren stared at him in bafflement. Stefred never lied to anyone; that was why even candidates under stress learned to trust him. “I don’t see,” he admitted, “how the partial truth can be less valid in her case than in mine.”

  “Neither do I, really. Even mature candidates don’t notice what’s absent from the First Scholar’s thoughts at first; his world is too strange and distracting. As for you, though, you were very young, Noren. You didn’t miss the deleted emotions because you’d never imagined such feelings, and they’d have been truly beyond you. That’s one reason we see to it that known heretics are brought to trial in adolescence.”

  “Is she an older woman?” Noren asked, surprised. The majority of people with heretical tendencies did reveal them early, though since opportunity to earn Scholar status was every citizen’s birthright, older candidates occasionally apeared.

  “Well, not adolescent, certainly. Oddly enough, her age is one of the things she won’t tell me. She was a stranger in the village where she was arrested, so we don’t know her real identity, and all she’ll say is that she has no children—which, barring some medical cause, means she’s unconventional in more than her opinions. She can’t have lacked suitors; she’s quite pretty, in an unusual sort of way.” He shook his head, obviously perplexed. “Her face looks young, but her mind seems as old as any I’ve encountered. The full version of the dreams would not be incomprehensible to her, and she’s well aware of that.”

  “The full version . . . wait a minute! Are you saying she’s concerned about things in the full version, the one I haven’t been through myself yet, not just the second version that contains the plan for the succession scheme?” Shaken from his stupor, Noren realized that he’d nearly forgotten that such a version existed. He had been told about it when in deciding to accept priesthood, he’d inquired about the First Scholar’s personal religious beliefs. But it covered much more than religion. Though its ultimate effect on most dreamers was heartening, the First Scholar’s trust in the future had been hard-won. His recorded memories were said to involve agonizing periods of doubt and near-suicidal depression. Ordinarily only experienced Scholars chose to grapple with these feelings; Noren, who’d tasted them in his own life, had nevertheless been advised to wait awhile.

  That advice had been given just after the return from the wilderness, he reflected. Stefred had known then that Talyra might have conceived a child there; had he also known there was risk of a disastrous outcome? Was there something related to such an outcome in the full version of the First Scholar’s memories, something there’d have been no use in worrying about while awaiting the birth? It was all too likely. The First Scholar had been absolutely positive that genetic damage was unavoidable without technology to compensate for the alien environment—the edited recordings emphasized this certainty, for nothing else could justify guardianship of the City. But, Noren thought suddenly, it was not a fact he’d have accepted without strong proof. . . .

  “Yes,” Stefred was saying, “she sees the questions you did recognize last year as things he must have thought about. Life, death, why novas wipe out worlds—you know what I mean. And the despair, Noren. She perceives he’d have experienced despair, not just horror and regret.”

  “Does she also sense that he rose out of it?” inquired Noren. In the end the First Scholar had met death fearlessly, with genuine conviction that the world was to be saved—but could a person who knew about despair guess that? Perhaps he’d not guessed it himself during the bad times. And perhaps it wouldn’t have happened that way at all if he’d known what had since been discovered about the impossibility of synthesizing metal.

  “I think she does,” Stefred replied, “though I admit I don’t know just why. I haven’t even hinted; my only recourse has been to hope she’ll assume I’m withholding the worst parts out of misguided kindness. Actually, of course, to use the full recording would be a mercy in her case. She—she has begged for it, Noren; it is very hard to subject her to as much torment as I must.” Incredibly, his voice faltered as if he were struggling to hold back emotion he could not share even with a fellow-Scholar.

  “Torment? But why is it any worse than what came before, when she knew Scholars weren’t telling her all she wanted to know?” Noren asked. Obviously the full recording could not be used; it included references to the secret of the succession. But if the feelings it contained were so painful, to keep it from candidates not yet informed about the hopeful ending seemed indeed kind as well as essential.

  Stefred, once more in full command of himself, explained, “Right now she’s suffering in a way that should never be necessary: she reaches for thoughts that won’t come, knowing full well what sort should come. You know how hard it is to reach out that way in the dreams; you had courage enough to reach further than most—but you were too inexperienced in life to absorb all the data you received. The real gaps you accepted as mystery. If I put you through the candidates’ version now, you’d find it intolerable to be held within its limits.”

  Limits . . . yes, the City, too, had once seemed limitless, thought Noren, looking out from the dim room to the closely grouped towers that bloc
ked most of the night sky. He had thought he could never exhaust the well of knowledge preserved here in the City. He’d thought there could be no need to seek beyond. Even when he’d found that limits did exist, he had told himself he could live within them. He had resolved to play the game because there was no other; he had stopped reaching for what he knew would never come.

  Was this strange village woman, who by her reaching took on torment even Stefred felt was excessive, less of a realist than he?

  He’d changed so much since his own initiation . . . but in what direction? How many directions? He knew more, and yet perhaps he’d lost something, too, something besides Talyra. He did not feel like the same person; perhaps he’d lost part of himself. Confused, cold with apprehension he did not understand, he heard his own voice ask, “What if you put me through the full version now? I—I think the time’s come when I need to know what’s in it.”

  “Not when you’re burdened by grief, you don’t,” Stefred said gently. “Maybe in a year or two.”

  “No,” declared Noren, suddenly very sure of what he was looking for. “Not in a year or two—now.”

  * * *

  He had thought Stefred would be unwilling even to discuss it at a time when he was preoccupied, a time when the Dream Machine was obviously not available in any case. Candidates always had priority for controlled dreaming, and there was always a waiting list of Scholars who’d signed up to experience library dreams through which they could learn more about the Six Worlds. Yet surprisingly, Stefred seemed eager to dissuade him from a decision that could simply have been delayed.

  “The part about his wife,” he said. “That would hurt, now, more than you expect; you’d experience it in a very personal way.”

  “But he did come to terms with it.”

  “Are you thinking you might be helped to do the same?”

  “Well, yes, that too,” Noren said, realizing this was true. “But I have something else in mind.” No doubt Stefred assumed that he hadn’t guessed, that he still needed protection from knowledge of his own blameworthiness in what had happened; maybe that was why he’d suddenly averted his eyes, as if stricken by remembrance of something better left unspoken. But if so—if Stefred knew portions of the First Scholar’s memories did deal with the problem of genetic damage—that was all the more reason for proceeding as soon as the equipment was free.

  It was unlike Stefred to avoid anyone’s gaze. Normally he was brutally straightforward about harsh reality, thereby inspiring people to rise to the challenge. To be sure, he was expert in masking his feelings for good purpose; but Noren knew all those games and had always found them exhilarating. Now his tone was oddly uncertain. “Noren, it’s not like the first times through,” he said. “You don’t just relive nightmare and wake up with new knowledge. What you gain from the full version is more subtle: emotions, value judgments, that take a lifetime to interpret even after you’ve shared the First Scholar’s view of them. In fact it contains some feelings none of his successors have ever managed to interpret. It’s a harrowing experience. Ideally it should be spread out over many weeks, one step at a time.”

  “But you say this village woman, this Lianne, wouldn’t be harmed by getting the whole thing fast, under stress of heresy proceedings.”

  “I’m balancing perils. To her, we are liars if we make it seem too simple; and since that may lead her to choose permanent imprisonment through misunderstanding of our aims, she has nothing to lose.”

  “Neither have I,” Noren muttered. Then, because Stefred had heard and reacted, he added quickly, “I mean, would I suffer more than I’m already suffering? I’m not going to feel good, whatever I do now.”

  “No—and I wouldn’t have you believe I’d try to distract you from sorrow that’s natural and unavoidable.”

  “I don’t want distraction,” said Noren, thinking that no such aim on Stefred’s part had been implied by any of his comments. “It’s just that I—I have to move on, Stefred. I can’t slip back into the mold, or I’ll end up paralyzed, the way I was at the outpost.”

  “There’s risk of something worse than that,” Stefred said with artificial, measured coldness. “You might be thrown into a depression more serious than last year’s, and the recovery could be a good deal slower.”

  Perhaps, but last year too Stefred had cautioned him, and had assumed responsibility before the Council when things seemed to be turning out wrong. Yet he had not felt it was wrong for either of them to take risks. Looking at him now, Noren could see plainly that he was deeply troubled. He would consider it his fault if Lianne got hurt, however unavoidable his actions had been in the case. He was not judging objectively in this separate matter—he simply didn’t want another crackup on his conscience.

  “You know me better than to warn me away from the truth,” Noren said levelly.

  Stefred nodded without answering, and Noren saw, suddenly, that it was unfair to let him bear any part of the accountability for his own future undertakings. “The decision’s mine,” he went on. “As a committed priest I have the right of access to the entire heritage left us by the First Scholar; that’s the rule.”

  “It is,” Stefred replied reluctantly, “though I never expected to hear you claim the prerogatives of the priesthood in opposition to me.” He lowered his head, so that his face was hidden, but the pain in his voice was unmistakable.

  In confusion and remorse, Noren went to him and touched his shoulder. “Stefred, I’m sorry. We’re both under strain; I shouldn’t even be here tonight. Certainly I shouldn’t be talking about my problems when you’ve got a big one of your own to deal with. But—but I can’t play it both ways. I can’t go on acting a priest’s role without taking full responsibility for what I do. You’re my friend, you always will be. I’m grateful for the way you’ve helped me—and I know what you gambled for my sake when I was too proud to seek help—but I’m not a candidate any more, not even a trainee. You can decide what’s best for Lianne, but not for me. Not any longer.”

  For a time Stefred was silent. Then he said, barely audibly. “Do you mean that, Noren? You’re willing to go counter to my advice in this?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you—I never wanted to. It—it just didn’t come out the way I meant it to.” Like so much else, he thought in misery. Stefred’s friendship had been the one firm thing left to count on.

  With evident effort, Stefred smiled. “You haven’t hurt me,” he said. “Did you imagine I’d think less of you for having a mind of your own? It’s what we demand of heretics in the first place, after all.”

  “Oh, of course you wanted me to stand out against you while you seemed to be supporting injustice. But—”

  “But it’s harder to do when you’re aware my job’s to support you.

  “This isn’t just a matter of pride, this time.”

  “No. It’s more a matter of growth.”

  Startled, Noren felt his face redden. “What a fool I’ve been,” he murmured. “You’ve known that it is, all along.”

  “Well, I’ve known you’re a promising innovator.”

  “For the Star’s sake, are we back to that?” exclaimed Noren impatiently. “That’s part of the trouble; I’m sick of hearing about my so-called promise! I’m sick of having everyone expect something of me that I’ll never be able to deliver. I know you think I’ll achieve great things someday, but I just can’t take your word for it.”

  “I realize you can’t,” Stefred admitted sadly. “That’s part of the pattern; one sign of your promise is your inability to take anyone’s word for something you’ve reached the point of doubting.”

  “That’s the same thing you see in Lianne,” Noren observed.

  “One of the things, yes.”

  “Then you’re manipulating me again, and I’m letting you! It’s why you’ve told me as much about her reaction to the dreams as you have; you knew I’d see the comparison—”

  “No!” Stefred burst out, wrenching his chair around to fa
ce Noren directly. “By the Star, Noren, I never anticipated this. It didn’t occur to me it could help till you proposed it yourself. Eventually, yes; we both knew you’d choose it eventually—you’re too much like him not to want awareness of all he went through. But no wish of mine led you to suggest it now, not—not unless you can read my mind.”

  “You do think it may help me, then.”

  “I don’t presume to judge; you’ve taken the decision into your own hands.” At Noren’s look he added, “I guess that sounded sarcastic. Forgive me; I’m slow tonight. As you said, we’re both under strain. I honestly don’t know if it will help you. My thought was—elsewhere.”

  On Lianne, yes, as it should be. “I’d better go,” Noren said.

  As he reached the door, Stefred stood up. “Noren . . . wait,” he said softly.

  “I’ve already said more than enough I’m sorry for.”

  “You’ve changed your mind?”

  “About the full version of the dreams? No, of course not, but I shouldn’t have bothered you with it. I’ll sign up for the first open time slot on the regular schedule sheet.”

  “They’re not like library recordings. They have to be monitored.”

  “Oh, come on, Stefred—they won’t send me into physical shock or anything. Not at this stage.”

  “I trust not. Nevertheless monitoring’s standard procedure. Does that alter your enthusiasm?” Restlessly, Stefred paced back and forth between the desk and the window, his indecision more evident than ever.

  “What it alters,” said Noren sharply, “is my optimism about how soon my theoretical right of access is going to take effect. You can always give me a medical disqualification, and since you’re the only one in the City qualified to monitor controlled dreaming—”

  “Don’t reproach me for a circumstance I’ve spent the past two nights regretting,” said Stefred wearily. “Just sit down again and listen.”