This Star Shall Abide

by Sylvia Engdahl

  “Not from my memories, no; we must keep the secret as long as our stewardship is required. But we must give the villagers a promise. They must be told that our control of the City is temporary.”

  “How could we tell them that without saying why? And even if we could, they would not believe us.”

  “They will believe,” he declared. “If it’s done right, they . . . will . . . believe. . . .”

  He could not do it right. He was too weak; there was too much pain; and besides, he was not a poet. “If I had a gift for poetry, I could do it as I’ve wanted to—”

  “He speaks of poetry again,” the voices said. “His mind is going. We had better remove the recording contacts before he dies.”

  “Please, please,” Noren begged, “give me the time I have left to think out what I cannot say! Someday, someone will make a book of it; the people are not quite ready yet in any case. But when all who came from the Six Worlds are gone, their descendants will need a promise—”

  They conceded to his wish; he was an old man whom they loved, and he was dying. Noren had not guessed how it would feel to die. It seemed as if one ought to be afraid, but the First Scholar was not afraid. He was only weak and tired, and of course, he was in pain. If he had let them stop the pain his mind would not be clear to think, and he must think; he must not give in until this task was done.

  The people must have a promise! They must not be content with a Dark Age; they must hope for something more: machines, cities, free access to knowledge—they must want them, and they must not be allowed to forget that they wanted them. Furthermore, they must not forget the spirit that had once driven explorers out from their mother world—and eventually, from their mother star itself—toward something that must one day be sought again. That spirit must stay with them if the human race was to have another chance. They must believe in it without knowing that humankind needed another chance; they must do so until such time as their foothold was strong and their own culture well established.

  He must give them the promise and the belief.

  The mother star . . . the sun that gave humanity life . . . it would be visible someday, but by then, no one save the Scholars would understand what it meant. Yet they must understand! They must realize that it meant something very important! And perhaps—yes, almost surely—that would be time enough. If it was not, humankind was doomed, for the equipment could scarcely last longer; so wouldn’t it be justifiable to gamble? Symbols for the truths we cannot express openly, he’d said to his friends, but though he had left them a plan formed in the dark nights of many years, the symbols themselves had eluded him. Now, in his last hour, the central one became clear. . . .

  The First Scholar had the idea and the purpose, and groped for words; but Noren already knew them. “There shall come a time of great exultation, when the doors of the universe shall be thrown open and everyone shall rejoice. And at that time, when the Mother Star appears in the sky, the ancient knowledge shall be free to all people, and shall be spread forth over the whole earth. And Cities shall rise beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, and shall have Power, and Machines; and the Scholars will no longer be their guardians. For the Mother Star is our source and our destiny, the wellspring of our heritage; and the spirit of this Star shall abide forever in our hearts, and in those of our children, and our children’s children, even unto countless generations. It is our guide and protector, without which we could not survive; it is our life’s bulwark. And so long as we believe in it, no force can destroy us, though the heavens themselves be consumed! Through the time of waiting we will follow the Law; but its mysteries will be made plain when the Star appears, and the children of the Star will find their own wisdom and choose their own Law.”

  For the first time he found comfort in those words. To the First Scholar, the thought behind them was a solace he had ached for during all the years of sorrow past. The tragedy had been surmounted. His work was finished; he could let go and sink into death, for the fierce, lethal explosion of the Mother Star had been made a symbol not of futility, but of hope.

  * * *

  The people crowded round, but he could not see them; he was too close to death. He was too weary, too crushed by the burden of leadership; too sick at the thought that people could survive only so long as he withheld from them that which was rightfully theirs. He’d done enough; why wouldn’t they let him die in peace?

  They would not. They called him name, urgently: “Noren! Noren!” Over and over they called until he opened his eyes and found that it was Stefred who was bending over him—Stefred and other men and women, all of whom seemed genuinely concerned for his life.

  “I was . . . dying,” Noren whispered. “I was really dying!”

  “Yes,” Stefred admitted. “The last dream is dangerous, and the more closely a person has shared the feelings of the First Scholar, the more dangerous it is. You would have died when he did if we hadn’t been here to rouse you.”

  Why had they bothered? Noren wondered. They were going to kill him anyway. And yet of course they couldn’t let him die while they were still hoping he’d recant.

  “You would have died in spite of us,” Stefred went on, “if you had not been brave enough to live. I knew that beforehand; I had to make the decision to let the last dream begin. I knew during our first interview that someday the decision would be mine. Do you envy me my job, Noren?”

  That was when Noren looked into Stefred’s face and knew, with chagrin, astonishment, and a kind of awe, that they were not going to kill him. There had never been any intention of killing him. Whether he recanted or not had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

  The other Scholars had silently left the room. “Stefred,” Noren said haltingly, “The rumors were false. I—I don’t believe you’ve ever killed anyone. I don’t believe you could.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Stefred declared. “I knew, of course, what you’ve been assuming, but I hoped I could win your trust without bringing it up.”

  “You weren’t trying to scare me into recanting?”

  “At the beginning, yes. If you’d been susceptible, the truth would not have been shared with you.”

  “I—I guess I see,” Noren said slowly. “You don’t like the system any better than I do, but it’s—necessary. You have to make people respect it. If somebody cares enough to give up his life, though, he earns the right to know why.”

  “It’s something like that. As you know, the Founders didn’t want to keep knowledge from people; they made provision for it to be given to anyone who values it highly enough.”

  “More knowledge than was in the dreams?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve never lied to me,” Noren mused. “When you said that if I recanted voluntarily I’d be given access to more than I could absorb in a lifetime, you meant it, didn’t you?”

  The Scholar was silent. It didn’t add up, Noren realized. He’d been right to refuse the bribe; he was sure he had been, and even at the time it had been evident that Stefred was pleased by his refusal. “They just wouldn’t have arranged it like that,” he reflected aloud.

  “How would they, then?”

  “There are different sorts of knowledge,” Noren said thoughtfully. “If I’d accepted the offer, I might have been told things Technicians know, but not the secret—not what’s in the dreams. And now, well, now I can go on learning whatever else happens. Recantation isn’t a condition.”

  “That’s right. Still, you have problems ahead of you; there’ll be difficult ones even if you do recant.”

  Noren shivered, knowing Stefred’s warning that the consequences of truth would seem terrible must also have been sincere; but he was too overwhelmed to worry about it. He lay back, still weak and shaken by the death he had so nearly shared. “Why,” he asked softly, “weren’t people ever told that the First Scholar wrote the Prophecy? They look up to Scholars now; they would honor him even without understanding what he really did.”

  “They’d go beyon
d that,” replied Stefred, “and it was his wish that the facts about him never be revealed. To be worshipped was the last thing he wanted; it’s not what any of us want, though it happens. We try to remain as anonymous as we can.”

  That was true, thought Noren in surprise. They had never demanded obeisance; they had never claimed to be innately superior; they had never declared that to speak against them was blasphemy. All those ideas—the ones that weren’t mentioned in the Prophecy—had been originated not by the Scholars, but by the villagers themselves. The First Scholar deserved every honor short of worship, but people wouldn’t have stopped there. He had been a martyr; when their hatred faded, they’d have built statues of him and pronounced it heresy not to bow down.

  Unjust though it seemed, it was better that he was remembered only in legend: the distorted legend about the evil magician who’d tried to rule by force and who had been vanquished by the proclamation of the High Law. He would be glad that forced rule was still thought evil.

  “There’s something I must explain,” Stefred went on. “The First Scholar did not write the Prophecy, at least not the words. The idea was his, but the Book of the Prophecy itself was written later by a man who experienced that last dream many times.”

  “But the words were in the dream,” protested Noren.

  “No,” Stefred said. “They are not in the recording, Noren; you supplied them yourself.”

  “If I did, if I put the idea and the words together, then—” Noren drew breath, suddenly taking in the implications of what he was about to say. “Then inside I must have known that they—fit.”

  “That the symbols are an accurate expression of the idea, yes. All words are symbols. These, being familiar to you, came naturally into your mind. They are figurative words, poetic words, and as such have more power than the scientific ones the First Scholar knew weren’t suited to his purpose.”

  “I could say them and not be lying,” Noren declared wonderingly. “The Prophecy is true!”

  “You could; you passed that hurdle without even making an effort. The real question is whether you should.” Stefred looked down at Noren, his eyes filled with compassion and warmth, adding, “Remember that long ago you conceded that you would accept the Prophecy if I could prove it, and you were well aware that recanting means far more.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Alone in his old quarters, the tiny green-walled room, Noren thought it through. He knew that he would receive no help from Stefred, much less any pressure; his decision was to be entirely free. It would be freer than it could ever have been while he hated the Scholars. Of all the strange things that had happened to him in the City, to have been granted this freedom was the strangest.

  He had no idea what depended on whether or not he recanted, although reason told him that something must, some aspect of his personal future. “You’re not permitted to know yet, Noren,” Stefred had said. “As I told you, there’ll be difficulties either way, but I can’t explain them in advance.”

  “Why not?”

  “You tell me why not,” Stefred had replied, smiling.

  “I’d say it’d be—well, the wrong basis for a decision.”

  “Anyone who’s come this far has a better basis,” Stefred had agreed. “You don’t need any advice from me; your own mind is more than adequate to determine your course.”

  “If you believe that, Stefred,” Noren had challenged, “then why do you make heresy a crime?”

  “We don’t. Heresy isn’t forbidden by the High Law; the villagers ban it themselves.” He’d hesitated. “The reason they do is complicated, and I can discuss only a little of it now. Later you’ll learn more.”

  Stefred had gone on then to tell what had happened after the First Scholar died. The Book of the Prophecy, and with it the High Law, had been given to the villagers the next year. That had been possible because in accordance with the First Scholar’s instructions, all those who’d originally come from the Six Worlds had been admitted to the City as Technicians. It had been announced that only the “dictator’s” insanity had kept them out in the first place—which was the last lie ever told by the Scholars. In the role of High Priests they had practiced no form of deceit.

  The first-generation villagers had been warned that once inside the City they could never leave, but all the same they’d been happy, for they had missed the kind of life they’d been born to. The native-born, on the other hand, hadn’t wanted to live in the City. They’d always been skeptical of their parents’ claim to have been reared in such a place, and they’d known that with the elders gone, they would be the undisputed village leaders. So they’d been quite content with the distant promises of the Prophecy, which they had believed without question. There’d been nobody left who could refute anything it said—nobody who could distinguish symbols from science—and after all, it had been the first book they’d ever seen; they had learned to read and write by means of slates. Most had thought reading and writing a silly waste of time. Still, the Book of the Prophecy proved that the elders’ insistence on school had not been entirely foolish, for if the Scholars themselves said the future would be unlike the past, was it not well to look ahead to that future? The Scholars that appeared as High Priests did not act like the “dictator” who’d been thought mad, and besides, the people knew that they were dependent on those Scholars’ good will. They weren’t anxious to jeopardize village welfare by letting anybody disobey the High Law, which set forth the same rules they’d been taught as children in any case. As time went on, however, they made rules of their own and became more and more intolerant.

  “I don’t quite see why,” Noren had confessed.

  “You’ll have to study a good deal before you do. Essentially it was because village society reverted to a more primitive level not only as far as technology was concerned, but also in other ways. Attitudes that had been outgrown by the time the people of the Six Worlds built their starships came back, just as tallow lamps did.”

  “Couldn’t you Scholars have prevented that?”

  “No, no more than we could have prevented technological skills from being lost. Societies, like people, cannot be controlled without destroying their ability to grow and develop. All we can do is maintain an island of light amid the dark.” With a sigh, Stefred had added, “Those of us on the island are not just basking in that light, you know. We’re working against time to bring about the Prophecy’s fulfillment.”

  Thinking about it, Noren knew that it was that—the research work—about which he really had to decide.

  The Prophecy was true. He would gladly admit that publicly, though his reasons for doing so would be misconstrued by everyone but the Scholars themselves. He would affirm the Prophecy with pride; he knew that the First Scholar had created it in those painful last hours because only such a promise could ensure that the Dark Age would be temporary.

  The High Law was also valid, and it too was necessary. It contained no provisions that were not essential either to the survival of humankind or to prevention of harm that might be caused by people’s wrong interpretations. Stefred had given him a copy to review and, reading it in the light of his new knowledge, he’d seen that. The decree that convicted heretics must be turned over to the Scholars, he realized, had been placed there not to ensure their punishment, but to provide them with an avenue to the truth! The rules about Machines were all concerned with keeping people from damaging those Machines, or from going to the opposite extreme and worshipping them. There was nothing in the High Law that he was not willing to obey.

  But recantation meant more than affirming the Prophecy and the High Law. It also involved affirmation of the system under which Scholars had privileges unavailable to others. It meant agreeing that they must remain supreme until the Prophecy’s promises had been fulfilled—giving up all thought of changing the world immediately, letting people think he approved of things as they were . . . was that right?

  It was not right! Yet the First Scholar had known better th
an anyone else that it was not; he’d established the system not because it was right, but because it was the lesser of two evils. And he had died at the hands of men whom he’d allowed to misunderstand him.

  For the Prophecy was true only as long as the system was upheld. The ancient knowledge shall be free to all people—that couldn’t happen unless the Six Worlds’ knowledge was preserved. The Scholars were working to extend that knowledge so that humans could survive on this world as they had on the old ones. They were striving desperately to create the kinds of metal needed to make the Machines that were essential to the support of life. They must finish the work; the world couldn’t begin to change until they did.

  To try to make it perfect overnight wouldn’t make it perfect, it would only cause all that had been salvaged from the burning of the Six Worlds to be lost. Humankind would perish just as surely as if the First Scholar’s plan had failed. Even revelation of the secret would be fatal, not for the same reasons as in his time, but because people were now as dependent on their belief in the Prophecy as they’d once been on the Six Worlds’ culture. Through its fulfillment alone could the world be successfully transformed.

  Between the dreams and what Stefred had told him, Noren knew something about why the research work was taking so long. It was harder than anything that had been achieved on the Six Worlds. There, they’d had plenty of metal; they had found it in the ground. Even people like the villagers had found it, and had used it to make tools and Machines of their own—slowly, generation by generation, they had improved them, before either Technicians or Scholars had ever existed, and by doing so they had learned more and more, until finally they were Technicians and Scholars. His theory about savages becoming smarter and discovering knowledge for themselves had been quite true on the mother world. That was the way human beings were meant to progress, and that was how all the knowledge in the computers had been accumulated.