The Doors of the Universe

by Sylvia Engdahl

  Stefred, though unable to see the specific way to success till it was pointed out to him, had committed himself by fathering Veldry’s child. He would not have done that without believing underneath that a way would be found. There was the child to consider; he would not have risked that child’s welfare merely out of kindness to Veldry or desire to support Noren’s cause.

  Noren, too, had believed strongly enough to take risks. In the end, he had committed himself not to mere risk but to outright sacrifice. Yet in his conscious mind, he’d been uncertain that it would achieve anything; he had left the City less out of faith than out of the knowledge that to stay would be to concede defeat. He had imagined a long period of vagueness—of grayness, like the moss-covered land into which he’d come—during which he must live in utter despair. He’d thought it would be like the time at the outpost, only more permanent. It wasn’t. Once his commitment was complete, he felt hope, even excitement. The pieces began to mesh. The plan was really going to enable humanity to survive!

  The experimental children, all of them, must live in the new “city.” Stefred would be able to arrange that—it had already been agreed that they’d be named by their parents according to a code both he and Noren could recognize. Having them sent where he ordered wouldn’t be hard, for village-bound Technicians were accustomed to obeying Stefred’s instructions without informing other Scholars. If his interference with normal procedures ever came out, he’d have only to say his aim was to make Noren answerable for those children’s welfare. Already, word of the new prophecy would have reached him; he would contrive to delay the adoption of his son till he heard that the settlement was established. He would understand that the children must eat food from unquickened land.

  Their adoptive parents also would have to eat it, which meant they must have their own genes altered. This, the human experimentation among villagers, was the part Noren liked least. Yet it wasn’t as if it were an untried change, and he’d already resigned himself to the fact that a comparable situation would arise as soon as the children came of age. Better to have them together than scattered throughout the population, and better, too, to place them with families composed of volunteers. The couples would give informed consent; he could tell them the essential truth in terms they’d understand. People would come to his settlement as Technicians sought admission to the Inner City, knowing the hardships involved, but nothing of the real reason these must exist.

  Noren’s own task, apart from bringing to pass the miracle on which he’d now staked his life, was to choose the residents of—of what? He spoke of it as a new city, but he could not think of it that way in his own mind. The research outpost had been conceived as “a new City beyond the Tomorrow Mountains,” but everybody called it simply the outpost. Villages had names: Abundance, Prosperity, and so forth. He named the planned settlement Futurity. He began to talk about it by name. Rumor spread ahead of him; it was not long before people in the villages he entered were already believers in the place, starting to wonder who would be fortunate enough to live there.

  They turned out to meet him now in holiday garb, green instead of everyday brown, adorned with the blue glass beads that symbolized religious devotion. They filled the village squares as they normally would on feast days. Their bearing toward him was not so much worshipful as jubilant; his coming was cause for celebration. The farther he got from the City, the truer this was, for not everyone had opportunities to travel—some had lived to old age without a pilgrimage to the Gates, and had not seen Scholars even from a distance.

  It was impossible, of course, for him to individually bless every man, woman and child in each and every village along the road. He spoke to those on outlying farms, but in the centers he held services. Once, he thought ruefully, he had shrunk from the role of presiding priest at small City gatherings; now he was assuming it before hundreds—and on those occasions, he could not stop them from kneeling.

  He was also asked to bless wedding parties. Weddings were solemnized by village councils and blessed, when possible, by Technicians as the Scholars’ representatives; but naturally people were eager for the unprecedented distinction of a benediction from a real priest. At first Noren wondered how there could be so many weddings. Were these boys and girls marrying hastily simply because of his appearance? No doubt a few dates were advanced, but he soon learned that some couples were traveling long distances on connecting roads from villages on other radials, bringing their families and friends along. His days were long, hot and thirsty, but at night there was invariably a wedding feast—and he saw that when the time came to introduce innovations, there’d be no lack of enthusiasm.

  He did not mind weddings or the rites of Thanksgiving for Birth, but services for the dead were another matter. The first time he was called upon he was, unreasonably, stunned. It was the job of Technicians to conduct such services! But no one sent for the Technicians when a priest was present; instead, they thanked providence for their good fortune. And in fact it was whispered that the aged woman who’d died, after outliving her grandchildren, had declared that now—having seen a Scholar with her own eyes—she could depart in peace. Horrified, shivering despite the heat, Noren went through with the service, though of course the Technicians had to be summoned first to bring the aircar, which he was incapable of calling down from the sky as he’d been expected to. Watching it lift away afterward, he nearly lost his self-control. His face was wet with tears. What would happen when there were no more aircars? Ultimately, when genetic change was complete, recycling of bodies would not be necessary; his new crops would have genes to recover trace elements efficiently from organically fertilized soil. But the people, who knew nothing of the disposal of bodies in any case, would wish to continue sending them to the City as long as the City stood. It was a symbol not to be lightly cast aside. And indeed, thought Noren, did he not want his own body to go there; did he not wish to think that in death if not in life, he would someday return?

  He got through that service by rote, as he had the one for his son, without letting himself think of the words. But it wasn’t the only such rite he performed, and the words did bother him. Not in memory alone does he survive, for the universe is vast. Was it right to tell the people something he wasn’t sure of? They trusted him! He owed them comfort, and yet . . . 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 he has passed. Lianne didn’t think such words were foolish, although she had no more real knowledge of the matter than he did. And he had none, after all. He certainly did not know they expressed a false idea—he could not say it was false any more than he could say the Prophecy was. Like the Prophecy, those words were more metaphor than blueprint.

  As he perceived this, much fell into place for Noren. Most villagers had a naive view of the Prophecy: they thought Cities would rise overnight on the date of the Star’s appearance. The Scholars considered themselves enlightened, yet he’d wondered, lately, whether their view might not be equally naive. Not false, as he’d feared in his despair over the impossibility of metal synthesization, but—well, oversimplified. Too literally tied to the Founders’ specific plans. The First Scholar himself had known better than that! He’d made provision for genetic change, knowing that would mean loss of technology; yet the ideas of the Prophecy had all been in his deathbed recording. It was on those ideas he, Noren, was now drawing in his own words to the people, rather than on the interpretation priests were taught, the narrow interpretation that kept them from facing the real world. Stefred knew. It had been he who’d declared it wasn’t a blueprint. But he knew, too, that most Scholars would hold to their interpretation as fiercely as the villagers to theirs. They would not pursue truth to a third level.

  Was that why he now felt no hypocrisy? Noren asked himself. Because, paradoxically, he still cared more about searching for truth than did others?

  One evening as he entered a village, people took him to the h
ouse of a critically sick man. He stood appalled by the bedside, his mouth dry with more than the thirst of the weary day behind him. They expected him to cure the man’s disease! They believed Scholars could do anything. If he failed, as he inevitably would, they might think him no true Scholar—yet if by chance the man survived, he could not accept the credit that would be accorded him. There were limits beyond which he would not go.

  “I can do nothing,” he said, inwardly groping for inspiration. “You must call the Technicians; illness can be cured only with Machines.”

  “The Technicians came yesterday, and said they could not help. But surely, Reverend Sir, if you merely speak the words—”

  It was possible. Noren knew from things Lianne had said that faith could often heal; if the man was a believer, and heard, he might recover—even from an illness beyond the skill of City physicians, he might. But he also might not. Some things mind could not do. If only he knew the diagnosis . . . but no, it was better this way. It was better if he himself did not know the probable outcome.

  “May the spirit of the Star abide with you,” he said gravely, placing his hand on the sick man’s hot forehead, “and if it be fitting, may you be healed; but rest assured that the light of the Star falls on realms beyond this earth.” He turned, and to the family went on, “Do you think we Scholars would permit any deaths if we could prevent them? We are but stewards, guardians of the Star’s mysteries. The power to give life or take it is not ours. I do not know how long this man will live.”

  And because this was true, they nodded in acceptance and let him go his way. If he’d been certain the man was dying, Noren perceived, what he had said would not have satisfied them. They’d have sensed a presumption of power at least to foresee. Only by keeping an open mind could he function as a prophet; he must make no predictions, good or ill, unless sure beyond logic that they were genuine.

  He had as yet no permanent followers, though people walked with him from village to village. Usually, now, he lodged with the heads of village councils, these being the most prominent citizens, deferred to by others desirous of the honor. It was ironic, considering the scorn he’d once received from the council of his own village that had tried him for heresy. When he asked himself whether his hosts would do the same, he knew that most would. He didn’t like to think of what might happen to youths of these villages who dared to express doubts about his status, yet wasn’t he serving his original aim? The more heresy he inspired, the better. It was good if boys and girls looked upon him and were set to thinking, good for the world, and good for them, too, in terms of their real fate if they were condemned on that account. But it was not good on the part of those who did the condemning. They were not the sort he wanted in Futurity; he could take neither such men nor those they judged, who, if not sent to the City, would be deprived of their birthright. So he must find some way to make contact with the folk who stayed in the background. Those like Talyra . . .

  Thoughts of Talyra came often to him, for with her he had shared the open land. He had sat with her on the gray moss; walked with her down roads like this, lined with dull-hued fodder and purple shrubs, past the green of quickened fields; taken her in his arms under the wide sky alight with silver crescents and the red bead of Little Moon. The memories, all too poignant, came back—still, he could not wish for those days. That part of his life was gone. His heart would always be in the City . . . or, when Lianne went, would it go with Lianne? Noren honestly did not know. It hardly mattered; that life was gone, too. Only his goal remained.

  Dwellings grew fewer as he traveled outward from the City, and villages were farther apart. There came a night when he stopped at a lone farmhouse once more. The husband and wife were respectful but less diffident than most; were it not for the now-tattered blue robe, he thought sadly, he might have talked with them as friends. Yet he sensed that they were troubled. No family was present, and the woman, beneath her courteous welcome, eyed him with the desperate plea for aid he’d now seen, and helplessly sorrowed over, in too many people to count.

  After supper she approached him privately. “Reverend Sir, I wish no favor,” she said, “yet for my husband’s sake I will speak, since you have paid us honor such as we could not have hoped for. As you see, we have no children. We are undeserving of anyone’s esteem. Yet he has not divorced me, shame though my barrenness is on us. If I merit punishment so heavy, can it not take form that falls on me alone?”

  “Barrenness is not a punishment,” Noren began. But then, having learned much from Stefred’s ways, he added, “Do you feel you are justly punished, and if so, why? I warn you that you mustn’t lie to me.”

  The woman drew breath, then met his eyes steadily. “I am aware of no weighty sin. I thought you, Reverend Sir, might enlighten me; for it’s hard not knowing what I’ve done wrong.”

  If she had been guilt-ridden or had shown false humility, he would not have pursued the matter, but he saw that this woman and her husband were fit parents. Since they could have no children of their own, why not some of his wards? The tradition whereby Wards of the City were placed only with large families, barren wives being considered unworthy, was senseless. Besides, he must take only childless couples, for he disliked the thought of inoculating young children who’d been born with unaltered genes and he did not want to limit the settlement to newlyweds. He alone would have authority to place the experimental babies—that was necessary, since only he would know which were in fact siblings who must grow up as foster-kin lest they later, unknowingly, intermarry—and no one would challenge his decisions.

  “You have heard me speak of Futurity,” he said slowly, “where barren land will become fruitful. Unfruitful marriages will also be blessed there. I cannot promise that you will conceive a child if you come, but whether or not you do, you will be mother to Wards of the City.”

  She dropped to her knees despite his earlier prohibition, joy and gratitude illuminating her plain features. Noren took her hands. “It will not be an easy life,” he warned. “Get up and call your husband, and I will tell you what the people of Futurity must venture.”

  Before he left the next morning, they had pledged to sell their farm and come after him. They were mature, reliable people, a good balance to the adolescent couples who would of necessity make up the majority of the Chosen Families. To them, he decided, he would give Veldry’s children.

  The alteration of people’s genes must be done dramatically, for it must be made clear from the start who was free to drink impure water and who was not. Furthermore, people would want the assurance of a rite. They would even want the rite to be frightening; though ordinarily the injection involved was painless, they’d feel better afterward if it were made an ordeal. Again following what Stefred had taught him of initiations, Noren realized that it would be necessary to give the volunteers proof of their own worthiness. Also, almost too late, he remembered that in the case of those yet to be married the injections must take effect before the weddings, and in fact brides must be required to swear by the Mother Star that they were not already with child. He dared not inoculate a woman who might be pregnant; the effect on the unborn baby’s genes would be too uncertain.

  In the last village, therefore, he waited. He spoke of how Chosen Families must qualify, and word spread, by the traders and by radiophone; before long barren and betrothed couples began arriving from other regions. Most were years younger than himself, youngsters fresh from school eager to embark on a glorious adventure. They made him feel ancient—as, now full-bearded, he indeed must look to them, if they looked beyond his priest’s robe at all.

  He’d expected to call on the village for help in building, but he soon saw that that would be a mistake. There were far too many volunteer couples; he had to make the conditions hard. They must be willing to raise the new “city” unaided, stone by stone. It was well, and necessary, for them to come anticipating miracles; but all that could be done without miracles they must do for themselves. This wasn’t only a screeni
ng strategy, he realized. Later, they would take pride in what they’d accomplished.

  Gradually, through many interviews, he chose those with the soundest motives. He explained the goal with half-truths, nonetheless valid for being partial. “Families grow, the villages grow, there are more and more people every year—and this is as it should be under the Law. Yet the City does not grow at all. A time will come when the world needs more farmland than can be quickened, more water than can be made pure; the Technicians will have too few Machines to serve everyone. The Law does not say this, for the Law does not speak of the future. The Prophecy does not say it, for the Prophecy tells of the time when the Star will become visible. But the Scholars know it. They know someday the Law must change, and my work is to teach you to live with tomorrow’s Law. To this, if you are willing, you will be sealed; but if you choose it, you cannot go back, nor can your children. You will belong to Futurity as Technicians belong to the City. . . .”

  They were, Noren feared, spellbound. One by one he listed the hardships: no preexisting village comforts, no buildings except those they raised themselves, no City goods such as traders sold elsewhere. Limited social contacts outside the new settlement. Poverty unprecedented in their world, since they’d have no harvests or craftwork to sell and no time free to work for wages. Mysterious changes in the High Law that would not be spelled out in advance; still more mysterious risks that might extend to their descendants. Most sobering of all, a rule that their children must marry within the community or face charges of heresy. Noren had read enough to know that while many of these provisions would, under other circumstances, be wholly unjustifiable, in most societies it would nevertheless be easy for a self-proclaimed prophet to find people who’d voluntarily comply with them. The magnitude of Stefred’s trust in him impressed him anew. What he was doing was dangerous, though it was a lesser evil than extinction, lesser even than the caste system his work would ultimately abolish.