Chapter Seven

 

 

Noren regained consciousness in a tiny room, without doors or windows but dimly lit by Power. It did not look like a jail cell: the walls were of a pale, clear green that was rather pleasant; the floor was covered with thick padding; and the couch on which he lay was smooth and soft. Moreover, everything was very clean. Even his garments were clean, for they were new ones, made of ordinary fabric but beige, not brown, and styled exactly like Technicians’ clothing.

How had he arrived in this place? he wondered, getting to his feet. He had no recollection of anything else in the City. Strangely enough, his exhaustion was entirely gone and his arms and legs seemed to work normally; the pain in his knee had disappeared along with the bandage. Yet if he’d slept long, he should feel hungry, and he did not. What had happened? They’d lifted him from the steps . . .

He pressed his hand to his mouth, a surge of nausea rising in company with an overpowering sense of failure and of fear. His impulsive attempt to expose the Scholars’ ruthlessness had not done any good; he was to be killed in secret after all. His death would be wasted: worse than wasted, for they’d managed to turn his words to their advantage by creating the impression that they’d had no hand in his falling, that the Mother Star itself had punished him.

He should have foreseen, Noren thought despairingly, that they would not kill him before making an effort toward getting his recantation.

Why hadn’t he realized that? he asked himself in perplexity. Had he dreaded their unimaginable ways of coercion so much that he’d wished for immediate death . . . or had he actually wanted to be caught?

With honest self-appraisal, he saw that he had indeed wanted it. He had wanted to enter the City on any terms whatsoever! Furthermore, he’d known underneath that there was only one way left in which he could defy the Scholars: by confronting them and proving to them that not all heretics could be subjugated.

All right, he thought grimly, He was in their hands and totally helpless, but there would be certain compensations, compensations of which he’d been inwardly aware, and that gave him an edge of sorts. The circumstances of his recapture had been of his choosing, not theirs, and he was the stronger for it. It was impossible to guess how long it would be before they killed him, but he had little doubt that horrible things would be done during the interim. They would try to make him recant. He must not attempt to imagine how, for if he did, fear might sap his new-found strength; he must simply take the things as they came.

An opening appeared in the wall where a door, made of the same solid green material instead of matting, was swinging back. Two Technicians stood there; Noren straightened and, at their command, stepped into the corridor without protest.

He had hoped that he might see something of the City during his remaining days of life, but the room to which he was brought was as featureless as the hall leading to it. It was quite large, again lighted by Power, again with softly colored walls and floor. At one end was a dais upon which three Scholars sat at a curved table. Strangely, one of them was a woman; apparently the women among the Scholars shared in their decisions. All three wore the usual blue robes and their faces were indistinct; Noren had the impression that he might as well be facing a row of Machines. Certainly these judges showed no more feeling.

“Aren’t you going to kneel?” asked one of the Technicians, who, oddly, had not done so themselves.

“I am not,” replied Noren. He stood at the foot of the dais, his arms folded.

Nobody tried to force the issue; the Technicians left without restraining him in any way, and as yet none of the Scholars had spoken. He stood in silence for a long time before he realized that they were measuring his nerve.

Watching their faces, he saw that the apparent lack of feeling was deliberate, a mask. It was presumably meant to frighten him. But beneath the mask they were alert, intelligent people, people with whom a real argument might be held. At the trial he hadn’t been able to argue with his judges; they’d simply labeled his statements as heresy and let it go at that. Though the Scholars might do the same, they would be capable of going further if they chose. They could not believe the Prophecy as the councilmen did. While they wouldn’t admit that in public, mightn’t they to a person who was going to die anyway? If he could convince them that he would never be coerced into recanting, he might at least have the satisfaction of hearing them concede that his theories were correct.

He had nothing to lose by trying, Noren decided. Taking the initiative, he began, “You must have been surprised when I gave you the chance to arrest me.”

“Not at all,” replied one of the Scholars. “We could have arrested you at any time since you left your village; we had you under constant surveillance. But it was more to our purpose to let you come to us.”

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 dread 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?”

“They’re part of the sham. If you believe me, you know you won’t get anywhere by more talk, so you’ve no recourse but to put me to torture. There’s no mystery about that.”

“Does the prospect frighten you?”

“No,” said Noren staunchly, hoping his knees wouldn’t give way.

“That’s the first lie you’ve told,” the Scholar observed. He hesitated, giving Noren an appraising look. “I’ll be frank with you, Noren. If I thought I had a chance of getting your recantation in that way, I could not proceed without trying it; there are some good reasons why we don’t resort to the method I’m about to use with a person who can be made to cooperate through any other means. Fortunately, I already know you well enough to be sure that torture wouldn’t work.”

Astonished, Noren barely suppressed his breath of relief. This was undoubtedly another trap; still the admission restored not only his hopes, but his wavering self-esteem. Perhaps they had no mysterious means of defeating him after all, and he would not give in from mere fear of them!

Stefred regarded him soberly. “You’re surprised. You weren’t sure in your own mind, were you? You believed you could stand up under it, but you weren’t absolutely sure.” Keeping his voice level, he continued, “That’s something one seldom knows about oneself, but we Scholars are usually able to tell. You see, we’re interested not only in what people do, but in why they do it; and once we’ve determined why a heretic is holding out, we can judge what sort of persuasion he’s susceptible to. In your case I am certain that physical discomfort, however severe, would have no effect. What I’m going to do is rather more complicated, and as I’ve said, it’s undertaken only as a last resort.”

They stared at each other, Noren resolving that he would not be the first to drop his eyes. There was something strange in Stefred’s manner; though the words were cold, Noren sensed none of the calculated coldness he had felt during the inquisition. Why, he admires me! he realized suddenly. This Scholar needs to break me, but underneath he admires me for standing up to him. He acknowledges me as a true opponent. The thought was heartening; on the strength of it, he managed a forced smile.

Stefred returned it, his own smile looking surprisingly genuine. “You’re wondering what can possibly be worse than the pain to which you’d steeled yourself. Tell me, what makes you think it’s going to be?”

Caught off guard, Noren could only stammer, “Why—why—”

“You haven’t an answer. You’ve got plenty of intelligence. but you haven’t yet learned to make full use of it. You question a great many things that other people accept, but still, inside yourself, you’re holding to premises for which you have no valid grounds. That’s one of the ways in which you’re vulnerable, Noren. I’m not going to treat you like a helpless victim; I shall fight on your own terms: the terms you chose when you stood before us and claimed intellectual equality as your birthright.”

“I claimed the right to knowledge. There’s no equality as long as it’s hidden from me.

“True. You will be armed with what you need. But first, let’s dispose of some of those false premises. Number one: we never said that you were our inferior, or for that matter, that any other villager was. Because many of them told you so, you assumed it was our idea. It wasn’t.”

Noren scowled, stricken by confusion. This was scarcely the kind of attack he’d been anticipating. “Number two,” the Scholar went on, “we never threatened you with torture. We never threatened you at all. We merely told you that we could compel you to recant, and you assumed that we had no better weapon than fear. Like many of your other assumptions, that’s wrong. Some of what I do to you will be terrifying, but you won’t be swayed by that; when in the end you recant, you’ll do so of your own free will, because your innate honesty will leave you no choice.”

“No,” Noren insisted, “I’ll never go back on what I believe.”

“That’s a very dogmatic statement, and it’s unworthy of you. If you cling to it, you’ll be going back on the key point in your defense: the assertion that you care more for truth than for comfort.” Rising, Stefred fixed penetrating gray eyes on Noren. “The next few days aren’t going to be comfortable; truth, when it conflicts with your personal opinions, is not easy to confront. Yet you maintained over and over again that you wanted to know the truth. All right. Your wish is hereby granted. My weapon is not like anything you ever expected, Noren. I’m simply going to give you what you asked for.”

Noren shook his head. “You tried to bribe me before; I haven’t changed my mind.”

“This isn’t a bribe. There are no strings attached, and you aren’t being offered a choice. You’ve already passed the point of no return.”

“There must be a catch,” protested Noren skeptically. “As you yourself told me, there’s a price for knowledge.”

“Of course there is,” Stefred agreed. “In the first place, once you’ve become privy to the secrets I’m about to reveal, you will be confined to the City for the rest of your life.”

That, thought Noren, was unlikely to be long. “It would have happened anyway,” he said. “No heretic has ever left the City.”

“Not often, but there’s a small chance when a person’s repentance comes early. For an enlightened heretic, however, there is no release; our secrets must stay within these walls. And there are other consequences. You’re in deeper waters than you realize; before I’m through with you, you’re going to be shown things—unpleasant things—that even the Technicians don’t know.” The Scholar approached Noren, his tone carrying more force, yet at the same time more feeling. “Did you demand truth for its own sake, or merely to prove yourself right? Do you value it enough to take its consequences without protest?”

“I do,” Noren declared, “if you can convince me that what you tell me is really true. I won’t accept empty words.” With chagrin, he saw that he had made a concession by admitting the possibility that Stefred might not lie; yet somehow he couldn’t help feeling that this man was not like most Scholars. In any case, he could scarcely have answered otherwise.

Stefred sighed. “You’ll receive more than words,” he informed Noren, “and the consequences will be grimmer than you suppose. I warn you that a day will come when you’ll be willing to give up everything you care most for in order to escape them.”

Did they think he didn’t know they were going to kill him? Noren wondered. Just because they’d never threatened to, did they think him naive? Aloud he said, “I made my choice long ago. I’ll have no complaints as to where it leads.”

“You’re mistaken. I’m willing to bet that when the time is ripe you will stand here in this very room and give me all sorts of arguments as to why you should be let off.”

Deliberately and with effort, Noren laughed. “I see what you’re trying to do. If you could make me refuse your offer now, under these terms, it’d be the same as making me say that I don’t really care about truth after all.”

“You’re very perceptive,” the Scholar acknowledged. “However, as I explained, it’s less an offer than a judgment. Hard as it may be for you to credit, you’ve convinced me that you do have the right to the facts about the Prophecy, which as you’ve guessed are not quite the same as the official interpretation. They are not the same as your interpretation, either; but then, your information has been very limited. It will be limited no longer, Noren. You’ve won what you wanted.” With a strange note of sympathy he added, “I only hope you’ll never be sorry that you did.”