The Doors of the Universe

by Sylvia Engdahl

  This was the step to which he’d been blind, blind because he could not face the thought of it. The thing of which Lianne had warned, seeing it far in advance—from the beginning, perhaps?—yet lacking the courage to open his eyes. This was the thing she’d known only Stefred could tell him.

  “I can’t make it easy for you,” Stefred said, “and harsh though it may sound, I wouldn’t at this moment even if I could.”

  “Because you want me to fail,” Noren said, not bitterly but in simple acknowledgment that Stefred’s compassion and his duty were at odds. “You’ve always opposed genetic change, apart from believing it couldn’t be brought about safely. You don’t think it’s the lesser of evils.”

  “I do think it is. I must be ruthless with you because I want you to succeed.”

  Noren turned in his chair, looking up at Stefred in utter astonishment. He could not speak.

  “I look far ahead, as you do, Noren,” Stefred went on. “I can’t say it’s wrong to put survival of our species ahead of all other goals, important though they are. I oppose you only because it would be self-defeating to put short-term survival at risk for the sake of long-term survival. Now for the first time you’ve come to me with a plan that entails no such risk. Of course I want you to succeed in it. But it’s more demanding than you realize, and you must face that from the start—only by doing so can you become strong enough to deal with the problems you’ll meet.”

  No doubt, Noren thought numbly. If he could find courage to accept exile from the City, he’d have courage to do anything; as usual, Stefred understood him perfectly. “I’m . . . not sure I can,” he confessed. “I’ve borne everything else so far without cursing fate, without asking why it has to be me who gets hurt. Yet this is so ironic—I’m just about the only person in here who doesn’t look at City confinement as a sacrifice—”

  “It is not ironic,” Stefred said, drawing his own chair close to Noren’s and sitting down again. “The fact that for you the sacrifice works the other way is providential. Noren, priesthood itself is founded on voluntary sacrifice. The Scholars who are homesick for the villages would have buried guilt feelings if they returned, and you will be in a position where you can’t afford not to feel wholly sure of your worthiness to fill the role in which you’ll be cast.”

  “I don’t feel sure,” Noren protested. “Oh, I know that I haven’t got selfish motives for letting people worship me. But I’m not really qualified to inspire them. I haven’t any gift for it; I’m a good scientist, but in dealing with people I’m—inept.”

  “I would not let you go if it were otherwise,” Stefred told him. “That handicap, too, will work for rather than against you.”

  “How, when I need to win their confidence?”

  “You will win it through your symbolic role and your integrity alone; you’ll be in no danger of receiving personal adulation. For a natural leader, even one who didn’t want homage, there would be that danger: by his very charisma he would, against his will, become a god. That’s a concept you may not be familiar with—”

  “I’ve read,” said Noren shortly. “The idea’s blasphemous.”

  “To you, yes, as it should be. To villagers it would seem a natural extension of the supposed superhuman stature of Scholars. And that fact creates peril, Noren. Our system keeps power-seekers from the priesthood; it even eliminates those who might be corrupted by the collective power we do have. But it cannot completely protect against the possibility that a natural leader in close contact with villagers might be tempted to use his power to serve unselfish ends. He might impose his own concept of what’s good for people upon them; that’s one reason such contact has been prohibited. What’s more, the people would welcome a godlike leader. They would demand that he take responsibilities they can better exercise for themselves. Someone gifted enough in leadership to assume them would not be the right person to enter the villages as prophet—but you, I trust.”

  Lianne had known these things, too, Noren perceived. They must have entered into her initial judgment of him as the only Scholar qualified to bring about genetic change. “What would happen,” he ventured, “if I couldn’t keep my promises to the people—if the genetic alteration I’ve designed fails in the next generation, or if the Council refuses to implement it after it’s proven?”

  Stefred hesitated, frowning. “There would be no harm done,” he said, “at least not by your actions. That’s why I can safely let you go.”

  “But the people would lose faith. They’d feel betrayed—they might not trust Scholars at all any more.”

  “You won’t be speaking for the Scholars, though they’ll assume you are.” He leaned forward and met Noren’s eyes unflinchingly. “If the experimental change fails, I will denounce you as no true priest but a renegade, and they’ll believe not what you’ve said, but what’s said of you in the formal ceremonies—because the latter will be what they’ll then want to believe. Does that risk frighten you?”

  “No,” said Noren resolutely. With quiet despair he became aware that Stefred had been speaking for some time in simple future tense, assuming that his choice was already firm, and inwardly he knew he was indeed committed. He was not sure he could endure exile or fulfill the role he must assume; beside those things, public humiliation seemed a minor ordeal. Apart from failure itself, it did not scare him.

  “It should,” Stefred informed him. “I’m not sure you see all the consequences of failure.”

  “I’m satisfied enough with the vaccine to stake my chances on it.”

  “You realize that if you are publicly banished from the priesthood, the villagers may kill you?”

  He hadn’t, but as Stefred said it he knew it for truth, and nodded. How he’d changed, he thought—long ago, when he and Brek had resolved to become real renegades and repudiate the Prophecy, they’d expected death at the hands of the villagers; but now he felt none of the resignation he had then. He no longer had any hidden desire to become a martyr.

  “There is something more,” Stefred continued. “As you say, if the vaccine proves safe, majority opinion among Scholars may still hold fast against implementation of genetic change. I will have the power to override the Council decision, secretly if necessary, and I won’t hesitate to use it if I am sure the villagers will give up City aid willingly. My highest loyalty is, and always has been, to them and their descendants. But if at the time you’ve set for the change they’re against it, or so divided that interruption of the pure water supply would lead to widespread violence, it will be no better than if the vaccine itself had failed. I’ll still have to denounce you and even your own followers may turn on you; if they do, I’ll lift no hand to save you. Do you understand why?”

  In a low voice Noren said, “It would be the same kind of situation as it was with the First Scholar. People were justifiably angry, and he led them to take it out on him instead of killing others. I have to—to plan it that way from the beginning, don’t I . . . make sure that if I fail, I’ll be the only one to bear the blame.”

  “Yes,” Stefred said gently. “I’m trusting you for that, too. I couldn’t very well refuse to after all these years of saying you’re more like the First Scholar than any other man I’ve known.”

  Noren looked around the familiar study, realizing with a shock that after this day he might never enter it again. More than any other place in the City it had been home to him; more than anyone else in his life, excepting only Talyra, Stefred had been family. Now if they ever did meet again, Stefred would be old. . . .

  He stood up. “We can’t communicate, can we,” he stated, knowing the answer.

  “No. I’ll have reports on your actions from Technicians, but you must not send direct word, and you won’t know what’s happening here.”

  “It’s better if I don’t; it won’t be good news.”

  “You’ll be despised by all but your secret supporters,” Stefred agreed, “and I can’t openly defend you. If the Council wants you stopped, I will have only
one weapon to ensure your freedom—the argument that you’ve made promises for which you must take personal responsibility.”

  Promises. A new age; a new kind of City built by common people, of stone; new seed that would flourish in untreated land. Machines, yes—to villagers any unknown object was a Machine. Knowledge, too, for who was to decide the bounds of knowledge? He could make it all fit the Prophecy, and the people would never know what they must lose.

  Stefred’s face was drawn with pain. “This is true priesthood,” he said, “to take the universe as it is and affirm what we cannot alter. What’s humanly possible to change, we will. We must change even our own biological design when survival demands it. But we have no power to reorder the world to match our hopes. If there is no way to preserve our ancestors’ knowledge—if despite all our striving, its loss is inherent in the nature of things—then we must affirm that fact without despair. The Prophecy is a metaphor, not a blueprint. It proclaims a future better than the present. That’s the only absolute we can have faith in.”

  His throat aching, Noren stood mute while Stefred embraced him. Then he turned quickly, knowing he must go before tears surfaced.

  Stefred called him back. “Noren,” he said. “Noren . . . make a good future for my son.”

  What a strange way to put it, Noren thought—the children of Stefred’s wife must now be full-grown, and he had never mentioned any particular one, nor had he acknowledged other offspring. “The future belongs to the new race,” he said firmly. “Perhaps to some of your son’s children, Stefred, if he accepts genetic alteration himself in his later life.”

  “He won’t need to. He was born with genes adapted to this world.”

  “Born—” Noren’s breath caught; in shock, he whispered, “Veldry’s son . . . yours? But she wouldn’t have—”

  “Wouldn’t have revealed your secret to me, no. But watching you preside at the service for her dead baby, Noren, I guessed; I knew you too well not to realize there was just one reason you could have been suffering as you were. I also knew Veldry well enough to anticipate what she’d do next, and when I saw her begin to smile at men she had previously discouraged, I confronted her with it. She’d had no hope of finding anyone who approved of the experiments; she was ready to sacrifice her pride by offering herself to one of those unlikely to care one way or the other. I spared her that, at least.”

  “You were willing to take the risk, knowing how my son died, knowing yours might die too or else live with some horrible handicap, and that if he didn’t, if things turned out well, you could never tell anyone?”

  “Not even you—I couldn’t have told you if you were remaining here; the others would read it in your eyes. My stand against genetic change is all that’s prevented the idea from tearing the Inner City apart. But did you suppose I could favor your goal and let the burden rest on you alone?” Himself close to tears, Stefred went on, “You must bear the heaviest load; I can’t spare you any part of it—but I can’t spare myself, either.”

  “Oh, Stefred.” He could neither spare himself nor be spared, Noren thought; the worst, for Stefred, was yet to come. Lianne would disappear, and in that grief he’d be unable to see any purpose.

  Abruptly, inspired by unconscious telepathy, Stefred said, “Noren, you mustn’t tell Lianne; it would ruin her recruiting system. Unless . . . it just occurs to me . . . she may go with you. If she offers, you must accept for the sake of her happiness as well as yours.”

  “The rumors aren’t true,” Noren said. “We aren’t lovers; I thought you knew that.”

  “I know that so far your love is unconsummated—but I also know, perhaps better than you do, that it exists. It would be harmless for the two of you to share the village work. I would . . . miss Lianne, miss her a great deal, but I could train another assistant who’d win novices to your cause.”

  “No,” said Noren steadily. “Lianne has her mission, as I have mine. After tonight we won’t see each other again.”

  * * *

  In the computer room, after he’d generated the discs of essential data, checked and rechecked, realizing that this was his last opportunity ever to question the computers personally, Noren recalled the secret file once more, for courage. He reread the First Scholar’s last words to him: MAY THE INFINITE SPIRIT GUIDE AND PROTECT YOU; AS I DIE, YOU WILL BE IN MY THOUGHTS.

  When he’d experienced those dying thoughts in dream form—that most intense transfer of knowledge which, like all other kinds, would now be unavailable to him—they had concerned not genetic change, but the Prophecy. Were the promises indeed one and the same? As Stefred had said, the Prophecy was metaphor. The First Scholar had not composed its words. It’s there in my mind, but I’ve never been able to frame it as it should be, he’d thought through his pain. I’m a scientist, not a poet. . . . He, Noren, was also a scientist. Would he be able to find adequate words for new promises, or would his sacrifice be futile?

  He should wait, perhaps, and compose the words before going. But if he waited, he would wait forever; he would lose courage, not gain it. He might already have lost what had carried him through the day. . . . Motionless, clinging to the console he might never touch again, he found he could not choose a question to be his last.

  His head dropped, and he wept.

  Lianne found him there long after midnight. Noren turned slowly, reaching out to her. “Lianne,” he said in agony. “I can’t.”

  She touched his face with cool, gentle fingers. “You have no choice.”

  “I do have a choice! No one’s path is predestined; no one’s required to take on the job of saving the world.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant you’ve already chosen. You may feel you can’t go—but can you stay?”

  No. It was as simple as that. He could not stay in the City, aware of what he might achieve outside it; if he tried, he would only come to despise himself.

  Lianne held him close as they left the computer complex, giving him no chance to look back. They sat on a stone bench in the courtyard, under fading stars. “All this time,” she murmured, “all this time, nearly four years, I’ve known you would go before I did. That you’d give up not just the things you longed for, but those you already had.”

  She too was an exile, Noren thought, though her renunciation of her heritage was temporary, and he’d done little to ease her loneliness. His arms tightened around her. Now that it was too late, all the pent-up passion he’d denied was rising in him: passion not only of his body but of his yearning to reach Lianne’s world. Just when had he stopped measuring Lianne against Talyra? He would always love Talyra, but she had been dead four years; she wouldn’t have wanted him to mourn indefinitely. He hadn’t waited solely for her sake. He had held back, unwittingly guarding himself against this moment, the moment of the inevitable parting. And now that it had come, it was no easier for his long self-restraint.

  “I don’t know why I wasted the years,” he said with remorse. “I wanted to love you, but I felt—frozen. Sometimes I think I’m the one who’s alien.”

  “I understood how it was with you, Noren. As a child you lost your mother; as a man you lost your bride—you couldn’t love only to lose again. You were afraid to give your heart, and I wouldn’t have wanted less.”

  “Yet you too knew we’d lose each other, and you weren’t afraid.”

  “I’d have taken the time we could have rather than none,” she acknowledged. “But people are different, born different, and not only because of their genes. You were born to stand apart, as you were born with a questioning mind.”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing, since I’ll always have to,” he declared. His position would be solitary past the endurance of a warmer person. Furthermore, a Scholar in the villages could love no woman—in the eyes of the people, any such relationship between castes would be shockingly unnatural. It was no longer important that his genes were damaged; no situation where it mattered could arise. And anyway, he would not want anyone but Lianne. He’d given
his heart despite himself, long ago. He would not give it a third time even after she was gone from the world.

  Would he know when she was gone? Someday the starship would return; would he look up some night and see a light move and know that was the moment when she was lost to him? When the doors of the universe were for him irrevocably closed?

  Her face was wet against his, and sobs shook her body. Oh, Lianne, he thought, how could I have deceived myself so? If I’d been as honest about my feelings as about my beliefs, we’d have had what people think we’ve had. . . .

  “We have the rest of tonight,” Lianne said. “We still can have memories.”

  He took her into the lodging tower, and for a few brief hours of his last night in the City, Noren’s spirits were lifted.

  Chapter Ten

  In the morning, Noren took the blue robe from beneath his bed, opening the storage compartment quietly so as not to wake Lianne—though he knew she was only pretending to be asleep. She was right; there must be no farewell. Neither of them could get through it without breaking. He would need his strength for this day, and for the days ahead.

  He had no real plan. “Take things as they come,” Stefred had advised him. “You’ve always been quick-witted and resourceful; rely on those assets instead of trying to deal with what you can’t foresee. You have the right instincts. You’ll find them more effective than you expect.”

  Lianne had put it somewhat differently. “You will receive—inspiration, Noren,” she’d said seriously. “I don’t know how to explain this to you, but I am sure, from many worlds’ experience, that it is true. Unconscious functions of the mind play a part in it, but one draws, too, on something outside oneself.”