Noren suppressed the dismay he felt. That must be a lie, for surely they couldn’t have anticipated what he himself had not consciously intended! “You’re wrong if you think I did it because I considered myself beaten,” he declared.
“We don’t. But you have learned that you cannot win support for your theories. You’ve also learned other things that you don’t yet recognize. Frankly, Noren, we’re glad you robbed that Technician of his uniform. Though we didn’t plan it, your temporary escape will benefit us in the end.”
“Mainly I’ve learned that I don’t care what you do to me,” asserted Noren, torn between relief that the Technician’s story had been accepted and consternation over the untroubled confidence of this man. “I spoke at the Benison not only to tell others the truth, but to show them how far you’ll go to hide it; I thought you might kill me then.”
“It’s not going to be that easy.” The Scholar frowned. “Just what do you mean by ‘the truth’?”
“What you call heresy. I understand it, so there’s no point in pretending I’m as naive as most people. I know all about the Prophecy.”
“You don’t know nearly as much as you think you do,” commented the Scholar dryly.
“Don’t you think a villager can be smart enough to figure it out?”
“I don’t think you have the background to figure it out.”
“You mean because I was brought up to believe in the Mother Star, I should believe in it. But I don’t. I’m admitting that I don’t, that I know the whole Prophecy’s a fake, a trick to make people content with having men like you keep all the knowledge for yourselves—”
The woman Scholar broke in sharply, “You’re mistaken. The Prophecy’s statements about the Mother Star are true. Everything you’ve been taught is true, except for a few exaggerated legends.”
“Don’t bother to say that, not with me.”
“Why should you doubt it?”
“Because it’s not logical or possible; magical things like new stars and people coming out of the sky don’t happen, and they never will. If there were to be a new star, you couldn’t know ahead of time, and anyway, even if you could, it would have nothing to do with your suddenly getting generous with the Power and the Machines!”
The Scholar’s reply was delayed slightly, and when it came it carried an aura of flat finality rather than of anger. “What you’re saying is false according to the Book of the Prophecy. You will suffer for holding such ideas. And you are wrong.”
“The Book of the Prophecy is not sacred; you Scholars wrote it yourselves, the way you wanted it,” insisted Noren, trying to match the woman’s cool assurance. “You can do anything you like with me, regardless of my ideas, as you can with anyone. I have no choice about what happens.”
“You had a choice between accepting what you were told and living out your life peacefully, or deciding to do your own thinking,” the first Scholar said slowly. “Now you have a choice between admitting the error of your opinions without further ado, or admitting it later, after certain experiences that will persuade you to cooperate.”
“I’ll stick to my opinions,” Noren declared. He hoped his voice sounded louder than it seemed to.
“The consequences of independent thought can be less inviting than you realize.”
Noren didn’t answer. After a short wait, the Scholars proceeded to play back the recording of his trial. He remained silent and impassive as he listened; to hear his own words repeated was strange, but not dreadful. He did not regret the statements he’d made. At the finish, when he was asked if there were any that he wished to modify, he declined without hesitation.
The third Scholar, the one in the center, hadn’t said anything; he had simply watched, and yet had somehow given the impression that he was the most formidable of them all. Finally, in a soft but commanding voice, he spoke. “I must warn you, Noren,” he said levelly, “that if you persist in your defiance, the consequences will be grave and irrevocable. You have no conception of the things that can happen to you here. This is your last chance to obtain our mercy.”
“I don’t want your mercy,” said Noren angrily.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not your inferior. To accept mercy would be the same as kneeling to you.”
The woman Scholar turned. “The boy is bold enough, Stefred,” she remarked. “Will you let such boldness pass?”
Noren’s skin prickled. So this was the Scholar Stefred, the dreaded Chief Inquisitor who had given the young Technician his instructions. No heretic, it was said, could resist Stefred’s methods.
“In time,” Stefred said confidently, “this boy will kneel to me in public and retract everything he has ever said against the Prophecy and the High Law. Until then let him speak as he likes. I am interested in what he has to say.” To Noren he continued, “We have a number of questions to ask you. Will you swear by the Mother Star to answer them truthfully?”
“I’ll take no such oath, since we both know it to be a farce.”
“You are frank, at least. Can I assume that you’ll be equally frank in response to the other questions?”
Noren looked him in the eye. “I have nothing to hide,” he said. “It’s you who are hiding information; you, not I, have cause to fear the truth.”
“Very well.” Stefred leaned back, nodding to his associates to begin the questioning.
It went on for a long time. Noren answered candidly, having no desire to conceal anything aside from the details of his escape, which fortunately were not touched upon; and at first the game was not too disagreeable. The Scholars, instead of trying to extract heretical admissions, soon turned to opposite tactics: they tried to trap him into statements that could be construed as partial recantation. He refused to be trapped, and matching wits with them proved rather exhilarating.
After some hours, however, he was trembling with fatigue. The same questions had been repeated not once, but many times. Quite a few of them were foolish ones having nothing at all to do with the subject at hand: questions about his childhood, his family, his private thoughts about things entirely unrelated to the Prophecy or the High Law. . . .
“No more of this,” he declared at last, fearing that at any moment he might collapse. They had not told him he must stand throughout the inquisition, but there were no chairs in the room and to sit on the floor seemed akin to kneeling. “There is nothing more to say; I’ve told you the whole truth.”
“We cannot be sure you have. Besides, there were a few questions to which you gave no responses at all.”
“Some things,” protested Noren indignantly, “are none of your business!”
“Everything is our business in an inquiry of this kind.”
The details of his feelings toward girls, about which all too much interest had been expressed, could have no possible bearing upon heresy, Noren felt. Surprisingly, they had not mentioned Talyra specifically or asked anything that could conceivably be related to her having helped in his escape, though he’d dreaded it constantly, knowing that if they did, he would have to lie, since to remain silent might cast suspicion upon her. The questions he’d resented had been of a different sort. Most of them seemed stupid, for if Scholars knew anything at all about human nature, they could easily have guessed the answers; on second thought, however, it occurred to him that their aim might merely have been to catch him in an obvious falsehood.
“I will not answer anything else,” he announced.
“You will,” Stefred assured him, rising. Stefred himself had taken little part in the questioning, but he had listened with avid attention, hoping, no doubt, to detect some small inconsistency in Noren’s responses. Now he touched a button on the table before him, summoning the Technicians. “We are specialists in the study of people’s minds, Noren,” he said, “and when someone does not tell us all we need to know, we have a way of compelling him to do so. You will find this frightening, but if you are sincere in your desire to be honest, you have nothing to drea
d from it.”
The Technicians brought not a chair, but a low, padded bench on which they required Noren to lie. He complied without struggle; resistance was useless, he knew, and he was so tired that he scarcely minded. The needle that was stuck into his arm did frighten him, but not until a few minutes later did he become really terrified.
The thing that frightened him was the realization that he was speaking, speaking rapidly, yet without full conscious control.
* * *
Noren never knew exactly what he said under the influence of the drug. He knew only that it was Stefred who questioned him and that he was unable to hold anything back. He talked on and on for hours, yet the hours went quickly; he could not judge the time. He could not see anything but the blue-robed blur of the Scholar who bent over him, and who, surprisingly, spoke with a gentleness that had no cruel undertones. Hazily, he realized that the questioning was retracing all the same ground that had been covered before: his beliefs, his desires, his fears and above all, his reasons for what he had done. Why had he become a heretic? Why did he hate Scholars? Did he want to kill them, and if not, why not? Did he want to seize power for himself?
They had asked that last question constantly right from the beginning, disguised in different forms. It must be impossible, Noren had decided, for Scholars to conceive of anyone’s not wanting power! They must think all heretics were trying to replace them. No wonder they cared so much about getting public recantations.
While drugged he could not reason that out, but he was aware that the point was being examined again from every possible angle. Then, eventually, he ceased to be aware of anything at all.
Later—perhaps a day later, perhaps more—he awoke in the small green room where he’d originally regained consciousness. Immediately terror engulfed him. What had he done? Had he spoken of Talyra or of the young Technician, or denied the things he had sworn to himself he’d never deny? Had they somehow changed him?
No, he realized. He was still himself. He was still sure that they could not force him to recant. If it were that simple—if they could do it merely by sticking a needle into somebody’s arm—they would not bother with all the preliminaries.
The Technicians brought him food: good food, though he had little appetite for it. Then he was taken back to the large room to confront the same three Scholars. Again, he remained standing. He was no longer tired, he found, and his mind was absolutely clear. To his astonishment, his spirits were high. So far he had triumphed over these inquisitors; they weren’t nearly so powerful as they pretended to be.
“We are satisfied that you have not lied to us,” he was told. “It is impossible for anyone to lie while under the drug. A person can keep back information if he’s determined to, but if you’d been concealing any we’d wanted from you, we would have known.”
Relief lifted Noren’s spirits still further. His worst fear had been that he might have been made either to betray those who had helped him escape or to say something he did not believe; but if he’d done so, they would surely boast of their success.
“We have learned a great deal about you,” Stefred said. “We’ve learned, for instance, that you really want the knowledge we have here in the City. You long desperately for it.”
“I’ve never denied that,” Noren agreed. “Knowledge is the right of everyone; it should be available to all. Of course I want it.”
“You want it not only because it’s been kept from you, but for itself.”
“Yes, I do.”
Stefred eyed him thoughtfully. “Like everything else, knowledge has its price,” he said. “Would you be willing to pay the price, Noren?”
On the verge of assent, Noren felt a vague sense of alarm. He’d already demonstrated that he was willing to pay with his life; what more could they ask? “That would depend on what it was,” he said cautiously.
“In this case, it involves an ordeal that you would find quite difficult.”
“No ordeal would be too difficult if it led to the truth you’re hiding,” declared Noren, with a sudden, irrational hope that they might actually decide to enlighten him.
“If you recant voluntarily,” Stefred announced, “you will be given access to more knowledge than you can absorb in a lifetime.”
Noren recoiled, stunned first by disappointment and then by his own stupidity in not having spotted the trap. That they could obtain recantations by bribery when threats had failed hadn’t occurred to him, yet it was all too logical.
“Think before you answer,” Stefred went on. “I know you’re tempted. I know you well enough to be sure that it’s a more painful temptation than the first offer you were made. Think: is your pride in your ability to hold out worth more to you than knowledge?”
Noren’s head swam. Put that way, his determination to hold out seemed arrogant foolishness, a contradiction of everything he had said about what he was seeking. Yet there was a flaw; there had to be. That was not the way it should be put.
He raised his eyes. “Knowledge is worthless apart from truth. It’s the truth I really value, but if I recanted, I’d be lying. Truth belongs to everybody; to recant would be to accept your right to keep it from the other villagers.”
“That’s your final word?”
“Yes.”
Stefred did not seem disappointed; as a matter of fact he looked quite pleased. It was probable, Noren thought dejectedly, that they’d known all along that the bribe would be refused. If they’d analyzed his mind as well as they said they had, they must have known. They must also have known that the memory of this lost chance would keep on hurting right up to the end.
“Perhaps you’re better off,” said the other man. “Knowledge can be frightening, after all; sometimes people are better off without knowing everything. Sometimes they’re aware of that underneath.”
It was a skilled twist of the knife; Noren caught his angry reply just in time, realizing that to defend himself against the implicit accusation would be beneath his dignity. “Perhaps,” he agreed, “especially since I have no reason to think you’d have kept your word in any case. Where do we go from here?”
“You know, I suppose, that we’ve hardly begun.”
“I know,” Noren replied grimly. They would not raise the subject of killing him yet, he felt, not while he was strong enough to laugh at them.
“Whatever you may think to the contrary,” Stefred stated, “you are going to be compelled to recant. Your recantation will be wholly sincere and will be obtained by a means that you’ll be powerless to resist. I shall not describe the procedure in advance; I’ll merely say that it’s beyond your present comprehension and that I judge you to be more vulnerable to it than average. You have until tomorrow morning to think that over.”
The ultimatum was more unnerving than Noren had imagined it could be. He stood silent, utterly dismayed, while without another word the three Scholars left the room; then, blindly, he followed as the Technicians escorted him back to his own quarters. There he collapsed on the couch, unsure of his ability to endure the hours of delay and thankful that no one was present to observe his lapse of self-control. More vulnerable than average? Stefred must have been lying, bluffing; surely he’d not displayed any vulnerability.
But the Scholar’s eyes had not been veiled as for a bluff, and he had spoken with the force of total conviction.
* * *
When morning came, Noren was led through a maze of passageways and finally, after a puzzling wait in a small cubicle within which he felt an odd sense of motion, he found himself thrust through a tall door that, although also solid, had slid aside to admit him. There was light, brilliant daylight streaming through a window; Noren glanced out and drew a quick breath. The glistening towers were no longer above him, but stood directly opposite. He was high above the City walls! He looked down, seeing that they were merely the outer faces of a ring of domed structures. The huge silver circles dazzled him as he gazed across them to the busy markets and the grainfields beyond. This
was what Technicians must see when they traveled through the air.
Reluctantly, Noren turned his attention to his surroundings. His guards had withdrawn, and at first he thought himself alone; but as he stepped further into the room, he saw that someone was seated behind a large desk made of some shiny white substance. Because the man was dressed in clothes similar to the ones Noren himself wore, it was a moment before he recognized the Scholar Stefred.
“Sit down, Noren,” Stefred said, indicating a not-uncomfortable looking chair next to his own.
“I’d rather stand,” replied Noren defiantly.
“As you wish. But we’ll be spending a good deal of time together.” Stefred’s voice wasn’t angry; it didn’t even seem stern. Noren stood motionless, nonplused. The room was not the sort of place he had thought he’d be taken to; there was nothing particularly ominous about it. To be sure, he noticed a number of Machines that were incomprehensible to him, but he also noticed inviting shelves of books. One of the books lay open atop a pile of papers, as if hastily set aside. Did Scholars spend the time between ceremonies in rooms like this, unrobed, reading books as he himself might do if he had the chance? Though he’d denied their superiority, he had not pictured them as human in just that way.
Stefred leaned forward. “I believe you’ve been honest with us,” he said. “I believe that when you say truth is more important to you than anything else, you mean it. We are now about to see whether you have what it takes to live up to what you claim.”
Noren was silent. Would he? he thought, fighting for composure. He’d made up his mind that he would, no matter how much whatever they did to him might hurt; but suppose they really had a form of pressure against which he’d be powerless?
“You have courage,” Stefred remarked, almost with warmth. “I shall challenge it; aren’t you curious as to how?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Noren said evenly.
“Really? You’ve heard all sorts of ghastly stories, haven’t you, about the goings on here in the City—things that no one can describe, no one can even imagine?”
This Star Shall Abide Page 13
