Chapter Three
The nightmare was unlike anything one might imagine; he knew of no words that could convey its content. There were no thoughts: not his, not the First Scholar’s, not anyone’s. There was only horror and revulsion. This horror . . . nameless, shapeless . . . was part of him, or he of it; the scope of it had no boundaries. He knew it not from sight or sound but as pure emotion. It was as if he’d fallen into another dimension . . . no, as if he’d created such a dimension and had been trapped there. Its evil was of his own making, yet he’d meant no evil; he had tried to achieve something good. He must not stop trying, though he knew he would be punished for it by this unbearable deprivation of all rational connection to the universe he knew, to the form of life he knew. . . .
There were no concrete images in the nightmare itself, but just before waking he saw the mutant—not an adult mutant such as he’d killed in the mountains, but a hideous mutant child. Its body was like that of a human child just able to walk, but it was not human. It was mindless. There was only emptiness behind its eyes. Noren came to himself with long gasps, not sure if he’d been sobbing or retching. By the Star, he thought, not again! I can’t take it again. . . .
Gradually his head cleared. He sat up, finding himself as always in his own quarters, his own bed, knowing that many weeks had passed since his first waking from this agony. Knowing, too, that more weeks—perhaps years—might go by before he’d be free of it, if indeed he ever would be. He wondered how long his courage would last.
It was not a recollection of anything in the controlled dreams. Those had been all right: terrible at times, of course, but also uplifting. Though he’d shared depths of the First Scholar’s feelings that surpassed anything in the edited versions, the heights, too, had been correspondingly more intense. He had begun to grasp what it meant to come to terms with depression and fear that couldn’t be banished, evil that was part of a world from which no escape existed. He’d felt the rising of a faith that was more than escape, and pondering it, he knew why the full version of the recording was considered worth going through. It would be a long time, he realized, before he could consciously understand all he had learned from the First Scholar.
About the controlled dreams he had no regrets, except for disappointment at the fact that they’d indeed contained no additional ideas on the subject of genetic damage. But the ensuing nightmare was another matter.
Even Stefred was puzzled. It wasn’t the kind of problem he’d anticipated; and at first, during the long, deep follow-up discussions they’d had after the completion of the machine-induced dream sequence, he had said Noren had reacted remarkably well to the ordeal. There had been no signs of trouble then. Even the inexplicable guilt feelings of the First Scholar’s later years—which Noren perceived less as remorse than as a grief too dark and too personal for any dreamer’s comprehension—had not been unduly disturbing.
He had gone back to his own quarters, resigned to a return to study. In the days that followed, his grief for Talyra, though still painful, had gradually receded. He found himself not thinking about her till some small, sharp reminder—the sight of a Technician woman’s red bead necklace, for instance—brought back a temporary wave of engulfing sorrow. He’d quelled his rage at the way of things, recalling acceptance he’d drawn from the First Scholar’s mind; and once he had even presided at Vespers. He’d said the ritual phrases of hope with renewed confidence that they might, in the end, prove true.
Then the nightmare had begun.
The first time, he’d discounted it as fatigue mixed with too much ale. The second night he was more shaken, yet during the day he’d carried on and had relaxed with Brek and Beris in the evening. He’d been only a little apprehensive when he left them at bedtime; but that night, the third, had been the worst of all. After that, he’d been unable to eat, and as darkness came he’d gone in helpless, shamefaced panic to Stefred for formal consultation.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Stefred had said calmly, though his eyes were troubled. “First we’ll check to see if it’s my fault.”
“Stefred, that’s nonsense—”
“Possibly not. There shouldn’t have been risk in what I did to you, but I was so tired that week I may have botched it, left you with some posthypnotic suggestion that’s creating a problem. If so, I can remove it; you must let me explore, Noren.”
Seeing the logic, Noren had agreed to further hypnosis, but it had solved nothing. “If a person were to have recurrent nightmares of this sort without cause, we would call him ill,” Stefred said, “but in your case we know the cause. It hit you harder than I believed it could, despite all my misgivings; you’re handling it better than you realize.”
“But other people who go through the full version of the dreams don’t react this way. Even Lianne—”
“Lianne owes a great deal to you, Noren. She has said so.”
“You told her about me?” That surprised him; he did not want her assuming he’d done it for her sake when that hadn’t been his main motive.
“Not specifically. After her recantation, though, when I had to explain the edited secrets, she guessed a good deal more than I’d have expected she could about why I’d finally yielded to her request for less editing of other things. Lianne’s adapted to the Inner City fast, and she’s remarkably good at putting two and two together.”
Although she was now a Scholar, Noren had not seen Lianne often, for her work shift was at night. Surprisingly, despite obvious scientific aptitude, she had not chosen to study nuclear physics. Instead, she was working as a technical assistant in the controlled dreaming lab. Ordinary dream material, not the First Scholar’s thoughts but memories other Founders had recorded of the Six Worlds, required no monitoring; those who wished to experience such dreams did so during normal sleep hours. Someone must be on duty to operate the equipment, but this was not skilled work, and the job was often given to young, new Scholars who had not yet chosen permanent vocations—those most eager to dream of the Six Worlds themselves when the Dream Machine wasn’t being used for anything of higher priority.
“Why did Lianne withstand the full version better than I did, when she has so much less experience?” Noren persisted.
Stefred’s look was grave, yet a little perplexed. “Perhaps because you haven’t forgiven yourself for what happened to Talyra.”
Noren frowned. “You said I might transfer the First Scholar’s guilt to my own situation—but that’s not how it is in the nightmare; Talyra isn’t in it. None of the personal things are involved. I do still feel guilty about them, but I’ve . . . accepted that.”
“I know,” Stefred agreed. “You acknowledge it consciously, which in theory should keep it from causing you subconscious trouble. Yet there’s the image of the mutant.” He continued thoughtfully, “That might have appeared anyway in your natural dreams; you and Brek are the only people living who’ve actually seen mutants, and now that you fear your stillborn child might have been damaged—well, we may be dealing with a separate problem. It’s not the sort of thing the First Scholar’s memories could have triggered in you.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” Noren declared. Certainly there’d been no thoughts about mutants in the recording; he had been alert for them. “Besides, the focus of the nightmare is something else, something I can’t put a name to, not an image at all—something I can’t face because I can’t even define what it is.”
Stefred appraised him searchingly. “Noren, posthypnotic suggestion could free you of this nightmare, let you sleep peacefully. Do you want that kind of help?”
“No!” Noren burst out.
“Why not?”
“Because—because it wouldn’t solve anything. I’d still not know why.”
“Given a choice, you prefer to go on suffering?”
“I—I deserve it, I guess. Or it wouldn’t be happening.”
Soberly, Stefred reflected, “That could be true.”
“That it’s punishment? Oh, Stefr
ed, you don’t really believe the spirit of the Mother Star can reach down and strike me, the way villagers would think!” No such preposterous idea was implied by official liturgy; only the villagers’ corrupted notions of blasphemy endowed the Star with power to punish.
“Of course I don’t,” Stefred assured him. “But you are quite capable of punishing yourself; your subconscious mind can do more than you realize, and you are strong enough to take a good deal of voluntary punishment.”
“You mean that’s really what’s happening?”
“It’s one of the things that can happen. But it’s not a healthy response, and with you I think the situation’s more complex. You don’t despise yourself enough to abandon all constructive aims for destructive ones, any more than you did last year.”
“By the Star, Stefred, I want to do something constructive! Only I—I feel so helpless, because there’s nothing to do.” He remembered just in time not to mention the uselessness of his work specifically.
“You’re still searching for something.”
“Yes, I suppose so. It was why I insisted on the dreams . . . but I seem to have hit a dead end.”
“I’m not so sure,” Stefred said slowly. He was silent for a while, then went on. “You want to get to the bottom of this. You don’t want me to stop it for you artificially—which, incidentally, I was counting on when I offered to, because suppression of such a dream might do you real harm. So we’re going to have to wait and see what happens.”
“You mean I’ve got to just—live with it?” Noren faltered. Talyra’s sad voice echoed in his memory: You simply have to live with the consequences of what you are. She had not blamed him for being different, but she’d always felt it would doom him to suffering, and for that, she had wept.
“For the time being. I’m not callous; I know how bad it is, and I’m too much of a realist to tell you not to let it frighten you. In fact the best advice I can give you is not to fight that—fighting will only make it worse.” Pressing Noren’s hand, he added, “Come back to me in a week or two if the nightmare doesn’t stop; there are some other things I can do if necessary.”
It had not stopped. It hadn’t come every night, but Noren had learned to fear sleep. At first he’d thrown himself into his work in the daytime; that was a strategy that had brought him through bad times before. It was no longer one that worked. He found it wholly impossible to fix his mind on the mathematical problems he had once found engrossing. The image of the mutant child haunted him, looming between the study screen and his eyes.
One day in desperation, unable to work, unable to face Brek’s well-meant solicitude or to confess that he had not eaten, he’d hidden in the computer room. Idly, without conscious plan, he had asked, IS THERE A TRAINING PROGRAM IN GENETICS? The computers were programmed to give systematic training in sciences relevant to the Scholars’ work, training designed to enable young people with no schooling beyond that offered in the villages—the mere rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic—to rapidly master material that on the Six Worlds would have required years to absorb. It was done through individually generated study discs, intensive quizzing, and memorization of details under hypnosis: a fast-paced, demanding process, yet enjoyable if one wished to learn. Noren had been through such programs in math, physics and chemistry; he knew there were certain others, but he did not expect genetics to be among them. Surprisingly, it was.
Feeling uncomfortable about so blatant a departure from the job to which he was committed, he told himself that a short break could do no harm; he was only going through the motions with regard to nuclear physics anyhow. He embarked on the genetics program—and soon found why the Founders had provided it for the benefit of posterity. No one could possibly be expected to assemble such a program from scratch after fulfillment of the Prophecy, for no non-specialist would be able to ask the right questions. The basic vocabulary and concepts alone took him days to acquire even with hypnotic aid. He had not known what genetics involved; he’d assumed it just had something to do with reproduction and biological inheritance. He hadn’t imagined every cell in every organism’s body was continuously controlled by the interactions of countless genes. In fact he’d had no real idea of what a gene was—that it consisted of a chemical code so complex as to demand computer analysis amazed and fascinated him. No wonder the First Scholar’s memories contained no details about genetics. They contained no details about the mathematics of nuclear reactions, either.
The short break from physics stretched on, week after week. Noren’s days became bearable; often they extended from one to the next—it was a good excuse for not sleeping. It was customary for Scholars pursuing specific training programs to work far into the night. Among the young initiates, this was viewed as a game, a challenge. To force one’s mind to the point of exhaustion was a gesture of protest against living a life one had looked upon as privileged. Noren was past that stage. He’d long since learned that the so-called “privilege” of Scholar rank entailed hardship and deprivation beyond the imagination of the relatively prosperous villagers. But his long hours in the computer room were not thought strange; even Brek accepted a new study program as a legitimate retreat from grief. That it was also a retreat from terror, Noren confided to no one.
Now, however, waking again from the nightmare, he knew that he could retreat no more. He’d completed the formal training sequence and had reached the point where in other sciences one could progress further only with the aid of a tutor. No one was qualified to tutor him in genetics—he himself already knew more about it than anyone had learned for generations. In any case, what a tutor did was to introduce trainees to applications of the knowledge they’d acquired. Genetics had no applications, not in this world, anyway.
On the Six Worlds, which had had a tremendous variety of plant and animal life, genetic engineering had been used for agriculture—it had been, during the last centuries of the civilization’s existence, a major weapon in the battle against hunger. The Six Worlds had been overpopulated and short of food. Genetic alteration of crops and livestock had increased the supply. But there was no food shortage on this alien planet, and no edible lifeforms either, other than the few imported ones already fully utilized. No genetic alteration of native lifeforms could overcome the fact that they were based on alien, damaging chemistry, incompatible with human life. That was the reason human life wasn’t going to be possible after the irreplaceable soil and water purification equipment gave out. . . .
Everything led back to that one inescapable fact.
Noren, sitting on the side of his bunk, found himself literally, physically sick—sick from fatigue, from frustration, from terror and despair. He had honestly tried to act constructively. He’d put fear out of his mind while learning, and what he’d learned was important—all preserved knowledge was important, it all reflected the Six Worlds’ rise. The Six Worlds’ people, his people, had penetrated so far into the mysteries of the universe . . . how much further might they have gone? It was too late, now. He had learned something worth learning, but he could not pass it on. Someday he would die. Eventually his whole species would die—not in some dim, unforeseeable future, but by a known date, not many generations ahead. All the effort would prove useless. He’d learned a whole new complex of ideas, ideas that should be exciting, and they could be of no use whatsoever. He felt worse despair than what he’d begun with.
The First Scholar had felt despair too; by sharing it in the dreams, one was supposed to learn the way out. One suffered, but one got past that. In real life, Noren realized suddenly, he wasn’t going to get past it. The way out was through action. The First Scholar’s life had been full of action: hard action, action sometimes justifiable only as the lesser of evils, yet action he believed would save his people. He had not faced a situation where the more knowledge he gained, the more clearly he saw that no such action was open to him. It’s no wonder, Noren thought, that I feel trapped in the nightmare. . . .
He reached for the w
ashbasin, a white plastic basin since, without metal for pump parts, adequate plumbing was a luxury the City’s towers did without. His sickness was no mere feeling. He hadn’t thought he had eaten enough to be so sick; perhaps the cup of tea he’d forced down had been a mistake.
At length, when he was able to stand, he mustered his courage and returned to Stefred, knowing that no alternative remained.
* * *
He consented to deep probing not only under hypnosis, but under drugs. A time came when he found himself conscious; Stefred was saying to him, “I’d like to monitor the nightmare itself, Noren.”
“I’m not sure I can go to sleep. I’m not even tired any more.” Saying this, Noren realized he’d undergone prolonged sedation.
“I can induce it, if you’ll let me. It can’t be done against your will.”
Thinking that it had happened against his will all too many times, but ashamed to admit he did not feel he could endure it one time more, Noren agreed. The session was grueling despite Stefred’s calm support, and he came to himself shivering, soaked with sweat.
“What’s wrong with me?” he murmured, for the first time dreading the relentless honesty on which his trust in Stefred was founded. “I could always cope before. Even during my first days at the outpost, when I’d panicked in space and thought I was losing my sanity, I didn’t lose it—”
“That thought’s what scares you most,” Stefred observed, “much more than the nightmare does.”
“Yes,” Noren confessed in a low voice. He had never seen insanity, but he’d learned enough from the computers to know it existed. “They told us when we were little, in the village, that we’d turn into idiots if we drank impure water,” he reflected. “I laughed then because I didn’t believe it. And now, of course, I know better, I know it can’t happen that way to me. I even know it wasn’t just like that with my child—” This was true; he had learned from his study of genetics that Talyra’s baby could not have been like the mutants after all. It had perhaps suffered teratogenic damage, but not the same sort of damage that had produced the subhuman creatures in the mountains.
The Doors of the Universe Page 7
