Chapter One

 

 

Three orange crescents hovered above the fields and Little Moon was rising over the Tomorrow Mountains when Noren and Talyra left the schoolhouse. Laughter blended with the music of flutes drifted out across the stony area as they walked toward the sledge.

“By the Mother Star, it’s hot!” exclaimed Noren as he swung himself to the wicker seat and held out a sturdy hand to the girl.

“Don’t swear,” she reproved gently, climbing in beside him. “You never used to swear.”

Frowning, Noren reproached himself for his carelessness. He hadn’t meant to offend her, but it was hard to remember sometimes that she, so spirited in other ways, still held the conventional beliefs on a subject about which he had long ago formed his own. He’d planned to discuss that subject on their way home, and he was already off to a bad start.

He jerked the reins; the work-beast snorted and headed reluctantly down the sandy road away from the village. “We’re free!” Talyra said exultantly. “How do you feel?”

Noren considered it. Their schooling was finished for good; having reached mid-adolescence, they were free citizens: free to claim new farmland or to seek any work they chose; free even to move to some other village. And they were also free to marry. So why should he feel less satisfied than ever in his life before? “I don’t know how I feel,” he told her.

She stared at him, surprised and a little hurt. Suddenly Noren was ashamed. This was not a time to worry about freedom, or knowledge, or the Prophecy. He let the reins fall slack and drew Talyra toward him, kissing her. But there was a restlessness in his mind that refused to slip aside. Talyra felt it, too. “You’re angry,” she accused. “Is it because of the Technician?”

“I’m not angry.”

“You fume whenever you catch a glimpse of one of them,” she said sadly, sliding over on the seat. “I wish he’d never shown up at the dance. I can’t imagine what he’s doing in the village tonight, anyway.”

“What does a Technician ever do?” Noren retorted with undisguised bitterness. “He comes either to inspect something or to inform us of some duty to the High Law that we may not have noticed.”

“That’s not true. More often the Technicians come with Machines, or to hold devotions, or cure someone who’s ill—”

“No one was ill at the schoolhouse.” Noren’s voice was sharp, for inwardly he knew she was right; the High Law was enforced not by men of the Technician caste, but by the village council.

“You’re funny, Noren,” Talyra said. “Technicians aren’t unkind, ever; why do you hate them?”

He paused; it was a hard thing to explain. “They give no reasons for what they do. They have knowledge we’re not allowed to share.”

“Reasons? They are Technicians!”

“Why are they Technicians? They’re men and women like us, I think.”

Talyra withdrew her hand from his, shocked. “Noren, they’re not; it’s blasphemy to think of them so! They have abilities we can’t even imagine. They can control Machines for clearing land, and quickening it, or for building roadbeds, or—or anything. They talk to radiophonists from a long way off; they travel through the air from village to village . . . it’s been said they can go to the other side of the world! And they’ve got all sorts of marvelous things in the City. Why, they know nearly as much as the Scholars, who know everything.”

“And tell us almost nothing.”

“What would you expect them to tell us?” asked Talyra in surprise. The Scholars, as High Priests, were the acknowledged guardians of all mysteries. “We know all we’ll ever need to,” she continued. “You wouldn’t want to go to school any more, would you?”

“No, I already know what the teacher knows,” Noren agreed. “I’ve read all the books, and Talyra, I’ve worked out math problems the teacher couldn’t even follow. But there is more knowledge than that. I want to know different things, like—like what Power is, and why crops can’t be grown till a Machine’s quickened the soil, and what good it does for Technicians to put clay into a purifying Machine before the potter’s allowed to shape it.”

“People aren’t meant to know things like that! Not yet.”

“Yet? You mean before the time given in the Prophecy?”

“Of course. The time when the Mother Star appears.”

“Talyra,” Noren said hesitantly, “do you believe that?”

“Believe in the Prophecy?” she gasped, her shock deepening. “Noren . . . don’t you?”

“I’m not sure,” he temporized. “Why should there be a time, generations in the future, when our descendants will suddenly know all the secrets? Why should knowledge be reserved for them? I want to know now.”

“There isn’t any ‘why’ about it; that’s just the way it is. ‘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.’”

“How do you know that’s true?”

“It’s in the Book of the Prophecy.”

Noren didn’t answer. What he’d been thinking during the past years would horrify Talyra, but if they were to marry, he must not conceal it any longer. He was firmly convinced of that, though such an idea was no less contrary to custom than many of his other unconventional ones. Girls promised themselves to men they respected, and if they were loved and returned that love, so much the better; they did not expect to be told of a prospective husband’s feelings on other subjects. Yet because he did love Talyra, he’d decided that he owed her the truth. He had also decided that this was the night on which he would have to tell her.

At the edge of an open field he reined the work-beast to a halt and threw himself flat on the straw that filled the sledge, pulling Talyra down beside him. For a while neither of them said anything; they lay looking up at the stars, the faint but familiar constellations with puzzling names from the old myths: the Steed, the Soldier, the Sky-ship. . . .

It was very still. A slow breeze rustled the grain and mingled dust with the warm, rich odor of growing things.

Soberly Talyra ventured, “Why couldn’t you be happy tonight? Even before the Technician came you weren’t having fun. Everyone at the dance was happy except you. I kept trying to get you to laugh—”

“I’m very happy.” He fingered her dark curls.

“Don’t you care enough for me to share what’s bothering you?”

“It’s not easy to put into words, that’s all.” He must proceed slowly, Noren knew; he would frighten her if he came out with the thing before explaining the reasoning behind it. Probably he would frighten her anyway. “You say everybody at the dance was happy,” he went on. “Well, I guess they were. They’re usually happy; they’ve got plenty to eat and comfortable homes and that’s all they care about. They don’t think.”

“Think about what?”

“About how things really are—the world, I mean. They don’t mind not knowing everything the Technicians know. The Technicians bring the Machines we need and help us if we’re in trouble, so they think it’s all right for them to run things. They’re content with being dependent.”

“What’s wrong with it? It’s part of the High Law.”

“Suppose we knew how to build our own Machines?”

“We couldn’t,” Talyra objected. “Machines aren’t built, they just are. Noren, you’re mixed up. Technicians don’t run things in the village; our own councilmen do that.”

“We elect councilmen to make village laws,” admitted Noren, “but the Scholars are supreme, and the Technicians act in their name, not the council’s. They’re outside village law entirely.”

“Has a Technician ever interfered with anything you wanted to do?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is? Technicians don’t interfere, they only give; but no matter what they did, it would be right. Keeping the High Law’s a sacred duty, and the Scholars were appointed at the time of the Founding to see that it’s kept. The Technicians are their representatives.”

Noren hesitated a moment, then plunged. “Talyra, I don’t believe any of that,” he stated. “I don’t believe that the earth was empty and that people simply sprang out of the sky on the day of the Founding. It’s not—well, it’s just not the way things happen. It’s not natural. I think people must have been here for much, much longer than the Book of the Prophecy says, and to begin with they knew as little as the savages that live in the mountains—the ones we studied about, you remember; the teacher said they were once like us, but lost everything, even their intelligence, because they refused to obey the High Law?”

“Yes, but—”

“Let me finish. I think it was the other way around. You don’t forget something you once knew, but you can always learn more. I think we were like the savages until someone, maybe one of the Scholars, found out how to get knowledge. Only he didn’t tell anybody except his friends. He told the rest just enough to make them afraid of him, and made the High Law so that they’d obey.”

Talyra sat up, edging away from him. “Noren, don’t! That isn’t true; that—that’s heresy.”

“Yes, it’s contrary to the Book of the Prophecy. But don’t you see, the Scholars wrote the Prophecy themselves because they wanted power; it didn’t come from the Mother Star at all.”

“Oh, Noren!” Talyra whispered. “You mustn’t say such things.” Raising her eyes devoutly, she began, “‘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. . . We will follow the Law until the time when the Mother Star itself shall blaze as bright as little Moon—’”

Noren seized her angrily, swinging her around to face him. “Stop quoting empty phrases and listen! How could a new star appear when the constellations have been the same since before anyone can remember? And even if it could, how could the man who wrote the Prophecy know beforehand? How did he know there was a Mother Star if he’d never seen it?”

“Of course it’s invisible now; the Prophecy says so.”

“We don’t need a prophecy to tell us that. We do need one to tell us that it will someday be as bright as Little Moon, since common sense tells us that can never happen.”

“But the Prophecy gives the exact date.”

“When the date arrives, there will be a new Prophecy to explain the failure of the old one. Can’t you see, Talyra? It’s the Scholars’ scheme to make us think that their supremacy’s only temporary, so that we won’t oppose it. As long as we accept the story, they can keep their knowledge all to themselves and no one will protest; but if we rebel against it, we can make them give knowledge to everyone! We could have Cities and Power and Machines now; there’s no point in waiting several more generations only to find that there’ll be no changes after all.”

“I don’t want you to talk that way! What if someone should hear?”

“Perhaps they’d believe me. If enough people did—”

“They wouldn’t, any more than I do. They’d despise you for your irreverence, They’d report you—” Her dark eyes grew large with fear. “Noren, you’d be tried for heresy! You’d be convicted!”

He met her gaze gravely, glad that she had not forced him to say it himself. “I—I know that, Talyra.”

It was something he had known for a long time. He was a heretic. Decent people would despise him if he was found out. And eventually he would no longer be able to keep silent; to do so as a boy was one thing, but now that he was a man, his search for truth would take him beyond the safe confines of his private thoughts. Then, inevitably, he’d be accused; he would stand trial before the village Council and would be found guilty, for when put to the question, he would not lie to save himself.

And once convicted, he would be turned over to the Scholars. Under the High Law, the religious law that overrode anything village law might say, all heretics were taken into the custody of the Scholars, taken away to the City where mysterious and terrible things were done to them. No one really knew what things. No one had ever entered the City where all the Scholars and Technicians lived; no one had ever seen a Scholar except from a distance, during one of the various ceremonies held before the City Gates. Noren longed to go there, but he was not anxious to go as a condemned prisoner. He’d awakened in the middle of the night sometimes, drenched with sweat, wondering what that would be like.

He reached out toward Talyra, more gently this time, suddenly noticing how she was shaking. “Talyra—oh, Talyra, I didn’t want to scare you—”

“How could you not scare me by such ideas? I—I thought we were going to be married, Noren.”

“We are,” he assured her, hugging her close to him again. “Of course we are.”

She wrenched away. “No, we’re not! Do you suppose I want a husband who’s a heretic? One I’d always be afraid for, and who—”

“Who could put you in danger,” Noren finished slowly. chilled with remorse. “Talyra, I just didn’t think—it was stupid of me—” He dropped his head in his hands, realizing that in his concern for being honest with her, he’d forgotten that if he was ever tried for heresy, she would be questioned, too. She would be called to testify. Wives always were, yet she would be called whether they were married or not, for everyone knew they were betrothed, and she could no longer say that she knew nothing. “I’ve compromised you,” he whispered in anguish. “You could be punished for not reporting me.”

Talyra gave him a pained look. “Darling, don’t you trust me? Don’t you know I’d never tell anyone? I love you, Noren!”

“Of course I trust you,” he declared. “It’s you I’m afraid for. It’s not only that you’d be suspect because you hadn’t told; it’s that I’ve said enough to open your eyes. Before, you might never have thought of doubting, but now—well, now you’re not innocent, and if you’re questioned on my account you’ll have to admit it.”

“What do you mean, I’m not innocent?” she protested. “Do you think I believe any of those awful things, Noren? Are you suggesting that I’ll become a heretic myself? I love you and I won’t betray you, but you’re wrong, so wrong; I only hope that something will restore your faith.”

Noren jumped to his feet, angry and bewildered. He had not thought she’d consider him mistaken. It had never occurred to him that Talyra wouldn’t accept the obvious once it was pointed out to her. She was brighter than most girls; he’d liked that, and only because of it had he dared to speak of his conviction that the orthodox faith was false. To be sure, not even the smartest village elders ever questioned anything connected with religion, but he’d attributed that to their being old or spineless.

“I don’t want my faith restored,” he said heatedly. “I want to know the truth. The truth is the most important thing there is, Talyra. Don’t you care about finding it?”

“I already know what’s true,” she maintained vehemently. “I’m happy—I was happy—the way we are. If I cared about anything besides you I could have it, and if you’re going to be like this—”

“What do you mean, you could have it?”

She faced him, sitting back on her heels. “I kept something from you. I know why the Technician came tonight. He spoke to me; he said I could be more than the wife of a farmer or a craftsman. He asked if I wanted to be more.”

“Well, so there are rewards for blind faith in the righteousness of Technicians!”

“He said,” she went on, “that if I liked, I could go to the training center and become a schoolteacher or a nurse-midwife.”

Noren’s thoughts raged. If he were to ask for even a little knowledge beyond that taught in the school, he’d be rebuffed, as he had been so many times, times when his harmless, eager questions had been turned aside by the Technicians who’d come to work their Machines in his father’s fields. But Talyra, who seldom used her mind for wondering, had been offered the one sort of opportunity open to a villager who wanted to learn! To be sure, the training center vocations were semi-religious, and he was known to be anything but devout; yet it did not seem at all fair.

“I knew you’d be furious; that’s why I didn’t plan to mention it.” She got up, brushing the straw from her skirt, and climbed back onto the seat. “When I told him I was pledged to marry, he said I was free to be whatever I chose.”

“Even a Technician or a Scholar, maybe?” Noren said bitterly.

“That’s blasphemous; I won’t listen.”

“No, I don’t suppose you will. I can see how fraud has greater appeal than truth from your standpoint.”

“You’re questioning my piety, when you’re calling the High Law a fraud? You had better take back what you’ve said if you expect to go on seeing me!”

“I’m sorry,” he conceded. “That was unfair, and I apologize.”

“Apologizing’s not enough. I don’t mean just the angry things.”

Slowly Noren said, “I guess if I were to swear by the Mother Star never again to talk of the heretical ones, you’d be satisfied.”

Her face softening, Talyra pleaded, “Oh, Noren—will you? We could forget this ever happened.”

He knew then that she had not understood any of what he had revealed. In a low voice he replied, “I can’t do that, Talyra. It wouldn’t be honest, since I’d still be thinking them, and besides, an oath like that wouldn’t mean anything from me. You see, I wouldn’t consider it—sacred.”

Talyra turned away. Her eyes were wet, and Noren saw with sadness that it was not merely because their marriage plans were in ruins, but because she really thought him irreverent. She did not put a reverence for truth in the same category as her own sort of faith.

“T–take me home,” she faltered, not letting herself give way to tears.

He took his seat, giving the reins a yank, and the work-beast plodded on, the only sound the steady whish of the sledge’s stone runners over sand. Neither of them said anything more. Noren concentrated on keeping to the road; two of the crescent moons had set, and the dim light of the third wasn’t enough to illuminate the way ahead.

What now? he wondered. He had intended to go to the radiophonist’s office the next morning and submit his claim for a farm, but without Talyra that would be pointless. He did not want to be a farmer; he’d worked more than half each year, between school sessions, on his father’s land, and he had always hated it. Since he didn’t want to be a trader or craftsworker either, he had thought farming as good a life as any; a man with a wife must work at something. He had planned it for her sake. Now he had no plans left.

None, that is, but an idea he scarcely dared frame, the exciting, irrepressible idea that although there was no way to get more knowledge himself, he might someday manage to convince people—as many as possible, but at least some people—that knowledge should be made free to everyone without delay. He was not sure how to put such an idea into action, much less how to avoid arrest while doing so. He was not sure that arrest could be avoided. Noren was sure of only one thing: if and when he was convicted of heresy, he was not going to recant.

Most heretics did, he knew. Most of them, after a week or two in the City, knelt before the Scholars in a ceremony outside the Gates and publicly repudiated every heretical belief they’d ever held. And that was no great surprise, Noren thought, cold despite the oppressive heat of the evening. It was all too understandable, when the penalty for not recanting was reputed to be death.

*  *  *

It was close to dawn when Noren unhitched the work-beast in his father’s barn and went in to bed, undressing silently to avoid waking his brothers. He did not sleep. Talyra . . . it was hard to accept what had happened with Talyra. He had never been close to other people; he had always felt different, a misfit; but he’d had Talyra, whom he loved, and for the past year he had looked forward increasingly to the day when he would have her as his wife. Now, with the day almost upon him, his one hope for the future had been dashed. If only he’d been less honest!

But he could not have been. It was not in him to live as a hypocrite, Noren realized ruefully. The only thing in the world that meant more to him than Talyra was . . . Truth. He thought about it that way sometimes—Truth, with a capital letter—knowing that people would laugh at him if they knew. That was the difference between himself and the others: he cared about the truth, and they did not.

Looking back, he could not remember just when he’d started to reject the conventional beliefs; he was aware of much he had not known in the beginning, and could not trace the development of his doubts, which at first had been only a vague resentment at the fact that knowledge existed that was unavailable to him. Perhaps he’d begun to formulate them on the evening the Technician had come unannounced to his father’s farm.

That had been before his childish admiration of Technicians had turned to inexplicable dislike; he’d been quite a young boy, and the sight of the aircar floating down over his own family’s grainfield had thrilled him. The Technicians who quickened the soil at the start of each growing season seldom arrived in aircars, for they simply moved on from the adjacent farm, pushing their noisy Machines back and forth over the continuous strip of cleared land. So, with his brothers, Noren had run excitedly to meet the descending craft.

The man had asked lodging for the night, and had offered to pay well for it; Technicians never took anything without paying. Noren’s father would have been within his rights to refuse the request. But of course it would never have occurred to him to do that, any more than it would have occurred to him to wonder why a Technician needed lodging when the aircar could have taken him back to the City in no time at all. Nobody ever questioned the ways of Technicians.

This Technician had been a young man with a pleasant smile and a friendly manner that had put the boys immediately at ease. He had allowed them to come close to the aircar, even to touch it. At least Noren had touched it; his brothers had hung hack in awe, as people generally did in the presence of a Machine. He would have liked to climb inside, but that, the Technician would not permit. Noren had to content himself with running his hand over the smooth, shining surface of the craft and, later, with fingering curiously the green sleeve of the Technician’s uniform, so different from the coarse brown material of which ordinary clothing was made. And still more wondrous were the metal tools that the Technician carried, for metal was sacred and few villagers had opportunity to see it at close range. Only if wealthy or especially blessed might one possess a small metal article of one’s own.

Those things, however, had not been what impressed him most about the Technician, for to his surprise Noren had found that this was a man he could talk to. Even in childhood he had found it difficult to talk to his friends about anything more significant than their day-by-day activities. Certainly he couldn’t talk to his family. His father, though intelligent enough, cared for nothing but the price of grain and the problems of getting in the harvest; his brothers were stolid boys who spoke of happenings, but never of ideas. At times he’d felt that his mother had deeper interests than they; still, she was not one to go against women’s custom by displaying such interests. She gave him love, yet could communicate with him no better than the others. The Technician was not like any of these people. The Technician spoke to Noren as if the use of one’s mind was something very important. They had talked for a long time after supper, and Noren had felt a kind of excitement that he had never before imagined.

But in the morning, when the Technician had gone, the excitement had turned to frustration; and that day he had done a great deal of thinking.

He’d sprawled under a tall outcropping of rock in the corner of the field where he was supposed to be cutting grain, staring at his laboriously-sharpened stone scythe with the thought that a metal one—if such a thing existed—would be vastly more efficient. And gradually, with a mixture of elation and anger, he had become aware that Technicians were not the unique beings people presumed them to be. They were men! What they knew, other men could learn. Noren had been convinced, as surely as he’d ever been of anything, that he himself would be fully capable of learning it.

He’d also known that he would not be allowed to.

Someday, he’d decided fiercely, someday I’ll . . . He had not let himself complete the thought, for inwardly he’d been afraid. Inside he’d already sensed what would happen someday, though he had not recognized his heresy for what it was until the following season.

He’d assumed that there was nobody in the world with whom he could talk as he had with the Technician, but he’d been mistaken. That year he had at last found a real friend: not just a companion, but a friend who had ideas, and spoke of those ideas. Kern had been much older than Noren and in his final year of school; but once during noon hour, when Noren had asked to borrow a book not available in his own schoolroom, they’d discovered that they had more to say to each other than to their contemporaries. Instinctively Noren had avoided mentioning his opinion about Technicians to anyone else, but Kern he’d told freely and gladly, only to find that Kern was already far beyond him.

He had looked up to Kern as he’d never been able to look up to his father and brothers. Not that Kern had been considered admirable by the villagers, for he’d been a wild boy, a boy who laughed a great deal, belying the true gravity of his thoughts; and he had defied as many conventions as he could get away with. Though he’d spent much of his time with various girls—too much, their families felt—it was to Noren that he had turned with the confidences to which no ordinary person would listen. He’d been recklessly brave and proud of his secret heresies. He had said terrible things, shocking things that Noren had never expected to hear from anyone. He’d said that Scholars were as human as Technicians. He’d said that they were not immortal, but were vulnerable to the same injuries as other people. He had even said that they were not all-wise and were therefore unworthy of the reverence accorded them. But Kern had been careful to whom he expressed such views, at least until one night when he’d forgotten himself to the extent of telling a blasphemous joke within the hearing of a respectable tavernkeeper.

Noren had been in the village that night; he’d seen the marshals arrest Kern, and he’d seen the crowd gather around the jailhouse with blazing torches held aloft. There was to be a heresy trial the next day, but everyone had known that there could be no doubt as to its outcome. Kern himself had known, for once apprehended, he’d abandoned caution and vaunted offenses that even Noren had not suspected. He had gone so far as to boast of having drunk impure water—water neither collected from rain nor sent from the City—a claim few had believed, since had it been true he would most assuredly have been transformed into a babbling idiot. Having dared to laugh at an inviolable provision of the High Law, however, he’d incurred still greater contempt than heretics usually did.

Sick with dread, Noren had stood in the shadows watching the enraged mob. Kern would not cringe at his trial, he’d realized; Kern would laugh, as always, and when the Technicians took him away to the City, he would go with his head high. The terror of such a fate had overwhelmed Noren, but he’d tried very hard to look upon it as an adventure, as Kern surely would. They had often talked about the City, and there had been more to Kern’s speculations than idle bravado. One time, in a more serious tone than usual, he had said, “There are mysteries in the City, Noren, but we mustn’t fear them. Our minds are as good as the Scholars’. We can’t be forced to do or to believe anything against our will. Don’t worry about me, because I’m ever condemned I’m going to find out a lot that I can’t learn here.”

Kern never did find out. He’d never reached the City; he’d received no chance to explore the mysteries and test himself against the powers he had defied. There had not even been any trial, for the mob was inflamed, the councilmen were not present, and though the High Law decreed that all heretics must be turned over to the Technicians, there were no Technicians present either. Somehow the thatched roof of the jailhouse had caught fire—Noren had known how, as had everyone, but there’d been no particular man who could be accused—and when the Technicians had come, they’d found only the blackened stones.

At first Noren had blamed the Technicians because they hadn’t arrived in time to claim the prerogative given them by the High Law; later he’d blamed them for that Law itself. Who was to say that death by fire had not been the most merciful alternative? That thought had haunted Noren. School, which he’d once liked, became dreary, for having abandoned all friends but Kern, he was too absorbed in his bitterness to accept the inanities of his classmates. Besides, his liking for Kern was well known, and he was wary of talking much lest he arouse the suspicion with which, had he been older, he would certainly have been viewed. There had been little left for the school to teach him in any case. He began to seek elsewhere for answers, but soon learned that they could be found only within his own mind. The villagers were ignorant of things that interested him, and the Technicians who came to the farm were unlike the young man who’d once taken lodging there. They would not respond to his questions even when he bridled his resentment, approaching them with deference for the sake of the knowledge he craved. Sometimes it had seemed as if they were deliberately trying to frustrate him.

And then, the next year, his mother had died. She’d fallen ill suddenly while gathering sheaves at the outermost edge of their land, and he had found her lying there, her face contorted with pain, arms cruelly scratched by the wild briars into which she had fallen. The Technicians sent for had declared that she’d been poisoned by some forbidden herb, but Noren had been sure that she, of all people, would never have tasted anything not grown from seed blessed by the Scholars. They’d tried to save her, at least they’d said they were trying, but afterwards he’d never been quite certain. All knowledge was theirs; if they’d truly wanted her to live, surely they could have cured her illness as they did ordinary maladies. Or perhaps it was merely that they had again come too late. If he, Noren, had possessed the syringes they’d brought—if he’d known how to use them—he might have saved her himself; it was not right that such things should be only in the hands of Technicians!

He had said so to their faces, too stricken by grief and rage to care what they did to him. Surprisingly, they had not done anything. They had simply stated that he must not aspire to knowledge beyond his station; and from that moment, his aspirations had increased.

Yet as they’d increased, so had his realization that those aspirations could never find fulfillment. Soon he would have to choose a way to make his living, and there was no work he wanted to do. He despised farming; he was too inept at working with his hands to became a successful craftsworker; he had neither the money nor the inclination to go into business as a trader. He had talent only for the use of his mind, and in the village that was more of a liability than an asset. The best he could hope for was that some trader or shopkeeper would hire him to keep accounts, since the few people who worked as schoolmasters, radiophonists and so forth obtained their posts only after appointment to the training center by Technicians. Noren had perceived that he would get no such appointment, for each year the school examiners had treated him more scornfully beneath their outward courtesy. They’d guessed his heretical thoughts, perhaps, though they could not take him into custody unless he was first convicted in a civil trial.

The world had grown steadily darker. Noren had turned still further inward after his mother’s death, but because her loss was not his deepest pain, his grief had taken the form of an intensified search for some one good thing to make the future seem worth looking toward. And he had found it, for a time, in Talyra.

They’d known each other since childhood, for she lived on a neighboring farm, but he had not paid much attention to girls. Then all of a sudden he’d noticed her, and within a few weeks he had been in love. Never before had anyone cared for him, needed him, as Talyra did; nor had he ever received such joy from another person’s presence. He’d no longer been lonely. He’d no longer considered the life of a farmer an intolerable one. His secret ideas had still been the core of his thought, but they’d been submerged, overshadowed by new and more powerful feelings. Underneath he had known that if forced to choose, he would not forsake those ideas, but he hadn’t anticipated any choice. He’d told himself that Talyra would accept them, that he could share them with her as he had with Kern and, by the sharing, keep them from bursting forth to destroy him.

But it wasn’t going to be that way. He’d been deluding himself, Noren perceived bitterly. He should have known that no girl, however deeply in love, would marry someone who admitted to being a heretic. Such a thing was unheard of. He had been selfish to ask it of her, for he had exposed her not only to possible peril, but to the scorn of the whole village even if her personal innocence was never placed in doubt. And she was indeed innocent. Why should she take his word against that of the venerated High Priests, the Scholars?

So it had come to a choice after all, and now the futile search would begin again; yet to Noren it would not be the same. He was a man now. He had nothing left to wait for. And he knew that from this night forward he would always be torn, for he still loved Talyra, and truth or no truth, he would never be happy without her.