Chapter One

 

 

The room was high in one of the City’s towers. Its window viewed a vast panorama of grain fields dappling gray-purple wilderness, and of more wilderness beyond: a vista rimmed by the jagged yellow ridges of the Tomorrow Mountains. Noren was not looking at the view, however. His back to it, he sat nervously on the edge of a low couch, eyeing the closed-circuit video built into the opposite wall and thinking of the heavy responsibility that soon would fall to him. He was too young and unskilled to conduct an interview so crucial as the one to come; he had been told that frankly—still it was deemed best that he be entrusted with it. He’d accepted the job gladly, despite his inexperience. Only now, with the time at hand, had he begun to feel other misgivings.

The screen before him showed the ceremony taking place outside the City, on the wide stone platform before the Gates. It was a public recantation. The robes of the Scholars were brilliant blue against the white pavement, a sharp contrast to the green uniforms of the Technicians and the mud-stained gray garment of the prisoner whom they guarded. The crowd in the plaza was not visible, being behind the camera, but the audio picked up hostile murmurs. The sentencing was over and the people were beginning to jeer again, though they would throw no actual dirt in the Scholars’ presence; it would not be seemly, for Scholars were High Priests and were revered.

The prisoner, Brek, knelt before the Scholars, his hands bound behind him. His hair had been cropped short, a sign of penitence and shame, but there was neither penitence nor shame in his bearing; he held his head high. Through the ordeals of the ceremony, his spirit had not faltered. The spectators might think that he’d been broken, but it was not true. On the contrary, Brek had just passed the final test of indomitability.

Noren’s heart warmed with sympathy and admiration. It took courage to do what Brek was doing. He was a heretic: he had maintained that it was wrong for the Scholars to keep their knowledge secret and that the sacred Prophecy in which the villagers and Technicians believed was a fraud, a foolish story invented to forestall rebellion against the priest caste’s supremacy. He’d refused to recant despite his assumption that refusal was punishable by death. Yet now he was recanting after all, voluntarily denying most of his former convictions, though it meant exposing himself not only to the contempt of believers, but to the abuse and scorn of fellow-rebels who would think that he had sold out.

Noren understood how hard an act that was; he had recanted himself less than a year before.

Loud music burst forth, drowning the noise of the crowd, as the attending Scholars, in solemn procession, left the platform. Noren switched off the screen; Brek had been surrounded by a protective cordon of Technicians and was no longer in sight. A few minutes later the door of the room slid open and the Scholar Stefred, Chief Inquisitor, stood in the archway, still clad in his ceremonial robe. Unfastened, it flapped open to reveal plain beige clothing like Noren’s own. “Brek’s on his way up here,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone with him; you can help him more than I can at this point. Set his mind at ease, Noren.”

Noren nodded. “I’ll try. He must have caught the symbolism of what was happening to him out there; he took it well.”

“Very well indeed, and it was a greater triumph for him than for you; he lacks your natural self-confidence. But as you know, the next step’s difficult, and Brek has suffered more than you did. You had nothing in your past life to feel guilty about.”

“Neither does he.”

“No, but he thinks he does, and I couldn’t let him know otherwise. In the early stages of his inquisition I had to play on it.” Stefred sighed, troubled. “I was ruthless with Brek. I manipulated him more cruelly than I do most heretics; that’s necessary in the case of a Technician. I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been sure of him, and even surer of you. How you handle the next few days will determine whether it leaves lasting scars.”

Alone once more, Noren paced back and forth with growing apprehension. He hoped fervently that Stefred’s confidence would prove justified, for he owed Brek a great deal. The two had met only briefly, some time back, when as a villager Noren had never imagined friendship with a Technician; Technicians, who lived in the enclosed City and were permitted to handle machines, were of a higher caste than villagers and were viewed by most of them with awe, though Noren himself had felt bitter envy. Yet Brek had defied both custom and religious law in an attempt to save him from the heretic’s supposed fate: punishment, perhaps torture, at the hands of the Chief Inquisitor. In those days neither of them had shared the prevailing trust in the Scholars’ goodness.

Once actually in Stefred’s hands, one learned to trust, but the trust developed gradually. Terror had to come first. At the outset Stefred concealed his true sympathies, not only to test the prisoner’s resolution but because he knew that no committed heretic who doubted his own ability to withstand terror would be able to make an objective decision about voluntary recantation. During the inquisition, before learning the secret facts about the Prophecy, a heretic must feel real fear: worse fear than of the rumored death sentence to which he was resigned. With Noren there’d been no need to generate that fear; as a villager to whom the forbidden City was awesomely mysterious and who had never before seen a Scholar at close range, he had been sufficiently terrified by his mere surroundings. For a Technician it was different. Noren knew what had been done to make Brek afraid, and he did not like to think about it; it was a grim piece of deception. Not that any lies had been told—but Brek’s imagination must have tormented him in more ways than one during the solitary confinement he’d experienced.

Again the door opened, and this time it was Brek who appeared. His wrist manacles had been removed, but he still wore the gray penitent’s garb; he’d had no opportunity to remove it or to wash the mud from his face and arms. Though at one time Noren would have raged at the idea of a person’s being subjected to such degradation, he knew that what Brek had undergone had not been degrading. Stefred never degraded anyone. Heretics who agreed to recant under pressure were not exposed to the abuse of the crowd. Those permitted to face such abuse did not suffer from it; one mark of a person ready to share the Scholars’ secrets was the ability to endure outward humiliation without loss of inner dignity.

Brek’s difficulties weren’t over, to be sure—nor, for that matter, were Noren’s. The consequences of heresy were grave. They changed the course of one’s whole life, and the interval since Noren’s own recantation was still relatively short. During that interval he had acquired both privileges and burdens; to these he must now introduce Brek. Set his mind at ease, Stefred had said . . . yet, Noren reflected ruefully, he himself felt no peace of mind. There were certain things he dared not let himself contemplate, and it would be hard to keep them out of the coming discussion. In the past half-hour uncertainty had stricken him. Was it right to keep such things out, to conceal from Brek his recent fear that the Prophecy’s fulfillment was less sure than one believed when, in recanting, one affirmed it?

The escort of Technicians withdrew. Brek stepped forward into the room, his drawn face lighting with startled recognition. “I didn’t know whether they’d let me see you,” he said, his voice low but steady. “I wanted to, Noren, though I don’t suppose you can ever forgive me.”

“No, I can’t,” said Noren, determined to keep worry from his smile. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

“But you were condemned because of me! You were living a normal life back in your village until I tricked you into a public admission of heresy.”

“You did the job assigned to you, as you were bound to under the High Law. And then after the village council convicted me, you helped me to escape from jail; you gave me your Technician’s uniform and stayed behind in my place! You claimed you weren’t risking anything, but I know better now.”

“I wasn’t arrested for that,” protested Brek. “Oh, I was accused of it later, but not until I’d balked at setting a trap for somebody else.”

Noren sat down on the couch, offering a place to Brek, who after slight hesitation joined him. “You’ve gotten to know Stefred, and you’ve learned that he was sincere when he told you that it’s better for a heretic to be trapped than to be caught accidentally when there are no Technicians around to protect him from his fellow villagers,” Noren said. The High Law required anyone convicted of heresy to be turned over to the Scholars unharmed; but without Technicians to enforce this, there was real peril, for people who blasphemed against the Prophecy—or worse, against the Mother Star itself—were deeply despised by villagers and were occasionally murdered.

“I know Stefred tries to suppress heresy without hurting anybody,” Brek agreed. “I know he doesn’t torture or kill those who won’t recant. But I didn’t know it then.”

“So the second time, you defied him openly and were brought to trial for it?”

“Yes. Originally I was charged only with disobeying orders, but when the Council of Technicians asked me why I’d done it—well, I told them. From then on it was a full-scale heresy trial, though not much like the farce you went through with that self-righteous village council. Afterward, during the inquisition, the emphasis was on what I believe, not how I’d acted.”

“Was it rough?” Noren inquired, knowing that it had been, and that talking about it would help to heal the wounds.

“No rougher than I deserved,” Brek answered grimly. “It seemed ironic the way the punishment fit the crime: not heresy, which is no real crime at all, but the part I’d played in your conviction. You see, there was a time when they let me think they’d broken you.”

“Stefred told me,” said Noren. The stress of a heretic’s inquisition was not intended as punishment, and Brek must be made to realize that. “I’d convinced you that I’d never recant, no matter what they did; you honestly believed that I could hold out despite the rumors that nobody ever has. So they showed you films of my recantation—edited films, the worst parts—without any comment at all, and then they locked you up to think it over.”

In agony, Brek confessed, “I almost cracked up, Noren. I hadn’t even known that you’d been recaptured! I’d been clinging to the hope that you’d escaped, that I hadn’t really brought you any harm. But after those films, I could only think that heretics must be subjected to something more terrible than either of us imagined. I knew you wouldn’t have given in to save your life, or even to spare yourself pain, at least not beforehand—”

“Neither would you,” Noren interrupted. “That’s why it was done: to prove that you wouldn’t.”

“To Stefred?”

“No. He was already sure; if he hadn’t been, he’d never have risked using that kind of pressure. His aim was to prove it to you.”

“But Noren,” Brek admitted unhappily, “I wasn’t sure at all! I was shaking so hard I could hardly stand when I was taken to see him again. I didn’t know how I’d answer until I heard my own voice.”

“That’s the point. Stefred knew you weren’t going to crack—but you didn’t, not till the moment came. And you needed to know. You wouldn’t have felt right about recanting if you hadn’t been shown that you could have held out if you’d chosen to.”

Brek nodded slowly, “That’s true. He never did try to force me to do anything against my will! I got the feeling that he respected me for defying him, even for disobeying his orders in the first place; I just wish I’d done it sooner.” Bowing his head, he added miserably, “Nothing can change the fact that you’d be free now if I had.”

Noren regarded him, concerned. This must be settled quickly, for his main task was to bring Brek face to face with a more difficult dilemma. “Brek,” he asked seriously, “are you sorry you became a heretic? Do you regret speaking out against the Prophecy and the High Law when you were tried?”

“Of course not. They wanted me to say I was during the ceremony, but I drew the line there and was pronounced impenitent, though I was warned that that’ll affect what becomes of me.” He faced Noren with returning pride. “I don’t care! I recanted because they proved that the High Law is necessary to keep people alive on this planet until the Prophecy can be fulfilled, but I’m not sorry for having challenged it.”

“That isn’t what I mean,” Noren said. “I refused to fake penitence, too, and as a matter of fact that’s what Stefred hoped we’d do. The official script we were offered was designed to give us the satisfaction of rejecting it. But are you sorry all this happened, that you’ve been told secrets that will keep you confined here in the Inner City for the rest of your life?”

“No,” Brek declared. “It—it’s worth whatever comes, I guess, to know the truth.”

“Then don’t you suppose it’s worth it for me? Truth was what I cared most about, what I set out to find, and I couldn’t have found it back in the village.”

Brek stared at him. “I haven’t looked at it that way. I thought only of your being imprisoned.” He glanced around the room, with its comfortable though austere furnishings and its breathtaking view, for the first time aware of the strangeness of a prisoner’s being left unguarded in such a place. “What’s it like, Noren? I’ve been told nothing.”

Noren hesitated. He remembered only too well how it felt to be told nothing: to kneel on the hot shimmering pavement and hear the grim sentence, Perpetual confinement, subject to such disciplines as we shall impose. And to know that despite the Scholars’ kindness, that sentence was no more a lie than any of the earlier and more frightening warnings. “It’s hard to accept at first,” he said frankly, “but not much like what you’re expecting. You’ll be surprised.” This was not the time to mention that some of the surprises would be pleasant, since for someone in Brek’s position the wished-for things were the hardest to accept of all.

“Stefred said I’d be equal to it,” Brek reflected.

“He tells everyone that. He means it, too, because no one gets this far who isn’t. People who don’t qualify rarely get past the inquisition phase.”

“Qualify? That’s an odd way to put it.”

“You didn’t know you were being tested?”

“Well—well, yes, at some points. It was pretty clear that they wouldn’t have let me in on any secrets if I’d been willing to recant under threat, or if I’d accepted the bribe they offered.”

“It’s more complicated than that. There are still secrets to learn, Brek. So far you’ve not heard the most important one. They think I’m the best person to enlighten you.” Noren smiled, trying to seem reassuring, though he still found it incredible that he should tutor Brek: Brek, who was nearly two years older than he, who’d been born a Technician, trained in electronics instead of farming, and whom he had once addressed as “sir!”

“You enlightened me to start with,” Brek told him. “I might never have known I was a heretic if it hadn’t been for what you said at your trial.”

“That’s why you were sent to observe it,” said Noren levelly.

“You mean Stefred knew how I’d react? But then why—” He broke off, appalled. “Noren, was I led into a trap, as you were? Was the whole thing planned?”

“Yes. From the beginning.” Pausing again, Noren wondered what tactics to pursue. There were no hard-and-fast rules, but he must proceed careful, he knew; he must cushion the shock. Brek must figure out as much as he could for himself.

Brek’s eyes were anguished. “I’d come to trust them.”

“Why?” Noren asked. “You’ve known all along that Scholars watch anyone suspected of having heretical ideas.”

“They don’t like the way things are any better than we do, though,” Brek asserted. “They don’t want to keep machines away from the villagers, and they don’t want to hide their knowledge; they’re doing it only because they have no choice. And as for being venerated as High Priests—well, they hate it.”

“All of them? Or just Stefred?”

“Stefred’s the only one I’ve ever really talked to, I suppose. But in the dreams—”

“In the dreams you shared the First Scholar’s recorded memories and you knew what he believed, what the other Founders believed; you knew that they never sought power. Yet they lived long ago. What’s to prove that all their successors are like them? What’s to say some aren’t out for personal gain, as you claimed at your trial?”

“Well, I—” Brek stopped, frowning. “You weren’t at my trial.”

“I’ve heard the transcript of it.” Slowly, aware that having broached the key issue, he must say something more direct. Noren added, “I’ve also dreamed those dreams a second time, Brek, and they’re—different. There are things in the recordings that only Scholars are permitted to know.”

“Then how do you know them?”

Noren drew breath, his heart pounding. The most painful part of his job could be put off no longer. “I am a Scholar now, Brek,” he admitted steadily. “I don’t wear the robe, but I’m entitled to.”

Stunned, Brek recoiled from him, then rose and walked away. “I’ve been naive,” he declared dully. “Before revealing the truth they offered me further training in exchange for unqualified submission, and I turned them down . . . would they have gone that far if they’d wanted me enough?” With a bitter laugh he added, “You’ve a sharper mind than I have; you’ll be useful to them. I don’t wonder you could set your own price.”

Fury spread in a hot wave through Noren, but he kept his face impassive. Brek couldn’t be blamed. It occurred to him that Stefred would have foreseen this, that his own levelheadedness was no doubt being evaluated; the challenges of the training period were at times no less demanding than the qualifying ones. And if he failed to meet this one, it was Brek who would be hurt.

“My recantation was as sincere as yours.” he said quietly, “and I knew no more of what was in store for me than you did. You see, the biggest secret—the one that was edited out of the dreams—concerns the scheme of succession. The status of Scholar is neither sold nor inherited; it is earned. No man or woman attains it whose trustworthiness is unproven. If you doubt that, remember that you could not have knelt to Stefred and the others, even ceremonially, if there’d been any question in your mind about their honesty.”

Brek turned and for a long moment appraised Noren in silence, noticing the lines of weariness in his face, marks that made him seem older than his years. “There’s no question about yours,” he said finally. “I don’t understand everything yet, but one thing’s clear: somehow they recognized that, even in a former heretic, and bestowed rank and power where it was deserved.” Approaching the couch where Noren still sat motionless, he continued, “I never knelt to Stefred in private, at least not after my arrest. While I hated him I ignored the conventions, and then later I sensed that he disliked them as much as I. Before the crowd I did it simply in honor of what he stood for. But I kneel to you, sir, as I now have new cause to beg your forgiveness.” He dropped to his knees as was customary in addressing a Scholar, not subserviently but with dignity, his eyes meeting Noren’s without flinching.

“No!” exclaimed Noren hastily, sliding to the floor himself and gripping Brek’s outstretched hands. “Not to me, and never again to Stefred. And you don’t call me ‘sir,’ either. Those customs don’t apply; we’re equals.”

“Stefred’s acknowledged me his equal in all the ways that matter. If Scholars must pass some special test of worthiness, that makes them all the more entitled to the courtesy due their rank. Do you think I’d want such status myself?”

“You have it whether you want it or not,” said Noren gently, “since you too have earned it.”

Brek drew back with incredulous dismay. “Scholar rank? But that’s awful; it can’t possibly work like that! I wouldn’t have recanted if I’d known there’d be any such reward.”

“Nor would the rest of us; that’s one reason we weren’t told.”

“The rest of us . . . there are others?”

“All the others, even Stefred, when he was young! He wasn’t born a Scholar; no one is. Scholars’ children are given up for adoption. All candidates prove themselves in the same way.”

Outraged, Brek persisted, “You mean the whole system’s a sham—those chosen must demonstrate their outlook toward this setup, with all its evils, by humbly submitting to a ceremony of recantation?”

“No,” Noren assured him. “Not by recantation, but by unrepented heresy.”

*  *  *

It was past noon, and there was barely time left for Brek to bathe and dress before the refectory closed. That was just as well, Noren thought; there would be fewer people to confront than had greeted him during his own first meal as a Scholar. One was not permitted to retreat from one’s new status; however great the strain, one was plunged immediately into the regular routine of Inner City life, and the adjustment was trying. It was supposed to be. Villagers and Outer City Technicians assumed that Scholars knew no hardship; the sooner a heretic learned that this was not the case, the sooner he could overcome his natural resistance to membership in a “privileged” caste. All the same, the traditional requirement that he appear in the Hall of Scholars’ refectory shortly after recantation, maintaining his poise while receiving with bewildered embarrassment the congratulations of men and women hitherto viewed as a class apart, imposed arduous demands.

Brek bore up well, though his face was set and he spoke little as he and Noren made the rounds of the occupied tables. “The first few days are rough,” Noren told him when they were settled with their food at a small table in a corner. “But once you get started on your training, you won’t have time to worry about anything else. And you’ll like it. Stefred says you’re well-fitted to become a scientist; you always wanted to do such work, didn’t you, even before you learned what the Scholars’ main job is?”

“Not at the price of outranking people who have no chance to learn.”

“We don’t. Anyone on this planet is eligible to earn Scholar status; scientific aptitude has nothing to do with it. Some of us study other fields, or choose work that doesn’t require study. The old lady who filled our trays, for instance—she was a basket-weaver in her village, and a grandmother; the council that convicted her of heresy thought she was a witch. Most women like that turn out to have no real heretical convictions, and they become Inner City Technicians without being required to recant, but not this one. She had her doubts about the justice of the High Law, and Stefred couldn’t shake her. So he took her the whole way: the dreams, recantation in its most difficult form, everything. She works in the refectory kitchen now, but she ranks the same as a fully trained scientist and her vote has equal weight.”

“Maybe so,” Brek protested, “still, I’m never going to feel right about the system.”

“Naturally you’re not,” agreed Noren. “Don’t you see, Brek? A person who doesn’t think anything’s the matter with it isn’t fit to hold power! The caste system necessary to human survival here is evil. The system whereby Scholars control all machines and all knowledge is evil, even though the villagers run their own affairs and enforce the High Law themselves through their elected councils. We who were heretics knew it was, and said so; we got ourselves tried and convicted and we refused to recant, believing we’d die for it. No one who’s not that strongly opposed to such evils can qualify.”

“But in the end we did recant.”

“We’re impenitent, though. We still have the same values, the same goals; we recanted only when we found that the other Scholars share them.” Noren spoke firmly, doing his best not to rouse the conflicting feelings he’d suppressed during nearly a year of concentration on study. He had allowed the thrill of absorbing knowledge he’d always craved to engross him, but some of that knowledge had been disturbing. Some of it had raised questions that had not occurred to him at the time of his recantation, questions he did not want to think of, much less discuss with Brek.

He was still sure, of course, that the sealing of the City was necessary to human survival. Without its irreplaceable life-support machines, everyone on this colony planet would suffer chromosome damage; future generations would be subhuman. The First Scholar had not allowed that to happen. He’d set himself up as an apparent dictator, knowing that the villagers would hate him and eventually kill him for it. To preserve their hope, he’d kept silent about the nova that had destroyed the Six Worlds of their home system and deprived them of all that the City must safeguard for posterity. Even when he lay dying—when he recorded his idea for the religion through which an abiding hope was to be sustained—his wish had been that the truth about him should never be known to any but those judged fit for stewardship. He had not wanted to be idolized as prophet and martyr.

“What went on before the ceremony this morning was—arranged, wasn’t it?” Brek asked. “I relived the dream where the First Scholar was killed; I stood in the same spot outside the Gates while people threw mud at me, just as they’d thrown stones and knives at him. At first I was so stunned I thought I’d lose control of myself, and then it dawned on me that Stefred meant me to feel—well, honored.”

“Of course. He honored you by recognizing that you look at things the way Scholars do, that you’d understand the symbolism, as well as the fact that if people like the ones in the crowd were given no outlet for their hatreds there’d eventually be bloodshed. But he meant you to feel something more, Brek.”

Noren glanced around the smooth windowless walls of the refectory—ancient walls that had been constructed on one of the Six Worlds, since the Hall of Scholars, like all the Inner City’s towers, was in reality a converted starship. He raised his eyes to the prismatic glass sunburst, symbol of the Mother Star, that was fixed to the center of the ceiling. “We agreed to go through that ceremony,” he continued slowly, “because we’d learned not only that the prophesied appearance of the Mother Star is based on fact, but that changes are honestly expected to occur when the Star does appear. The Prophecy is what keeps people hoping. It’s the only means of telling them that the world won’t always be as it is now. In time, when the light of the nova reaches this planet and the real Mother Star becomes visible, the Prophecy’s promises must come true; yet they can’t be fulfilled if we don’t manage to synthesize usable metal by then, so that we can build enough machines for everybody.”

Brek frowned. “Is there any question about it? The starships that escaped the nova got here generations ago and Scholars have been working ever since to create metallic elements through nuclear fusion. Haven’t they been making progress?”

“Brek,” Noren said sadly, “you can’t say they any more; you’ve got to say we. We’re working under terrible handicaps—even worse handicaps than you could guess from the dreams—and if those of us who’ve proven ourselves fit for the job don’t do it, the Prophecy will become as false and empty as we thought it was when we laughed at what sounded like a silly legend.”

The words seemed stiff. Was it really possible, mused Noren, that he was not giving Brek the whole truth? Was he hiding not merely fear, but fact? He was repeating what he himself had once been told; he’d been utterly convinced of its validity; yet deep inside, he sensed that dreadful doubts were stirring. Pushing them back, he went on, “When we re-enact the dream, we take on all the responsibility it implies. That’s what we’re meant to feel, not so much during the ceremony as afterward, when it seems that we’ve been duped into selling out.”

Thoughtfully Brek said, “I’m willing to do any work I’m given, just as I was willing to do what had to be done to uphold people’s respect for the Prophecy and the High Law. But becoming a Scholar is something else again. It means giving the impression that I’m in favor of the way things are.”

“You’ve already done that; you made your decision when you consented to the ceremony. What’s the difference now?” Noren averted his face as he spoke, for he knew perfectly well what the difference was; night after night he had lain awake for hours on end, unable to come to terms with it. He wondered if he was hoping that Brek would tell him that no real difference existed.

“The difference,” declared Brek bluntly, “is that during my recantation I was hated, but most people don’t hate Scholars nowadays. They worship them.”

Their eyes met, and there was no need to say anything further; neither of them was wearing the blue robe of priesthood, and that was not merely because the occasion wasn’t formal enough to warrant it. “It’s rightfully yours,” Noren had said when he’d given Brek the clean clothes set aside for him, “but you need not put it on unless you choose to. The robe’s a symbol; among us it represents full commitment. Scholar status was conferred on us without our knowledge or consent, but we are free to decide how we’ll use that status, and whether we’ll reveal it to anyone besides our fellow Scholars. So far I’m committed only to scientific training.”

He had agreed to train for the research work that must be done if synthesization of metal was to be achieved, for Stefred had convinced him that he’d betray his own principles if he refused to contribute actively toward the Prophecy’s fulfillment. It had been a difficult step to take, since like Brek he’d longed desperately for the training and had been incensed at the idea of receiving such an incredibly high privilege as the result of having conceded that the world could not be transformed overnight; still, reason had told him that it was the only course. The work was an obligation, not a reward, and the fact that he would enjoy it did not make it any less vital. But to assume the role of High Priest—to share responsibility for the control of the City’s contents, or to appear in public, when he was old enough not to be recognized as a former villager, and receive people’s homage—of that he wasn’t at all sure. Yet somebody had to do it. Stefred hated it, and for that matter, so had the First Scholar. And the First Scholar had been wise enough to arrange things so that nobody who wanted that kind of power would ever have it.

The First Scholar had been wise in many ways, but his greatest accomplishment had been the creation of a scheme under which power could be held only by those who, under pressure, had proven themselves incorruptible. Never in the history of the Six Worlds had there been such a scheme. Authoritarian systems, benevolent or otherwise, had always selected leaders from among their supporters instead of their opponents. The First Scholar had loathed the forced stratification of society he’d established. While he’d been aware that without it, the human race would be unable to preserve the essential life-support equipment during the generations when the growing population must live and farm by Stone Age methods, his plans had centered on the day when the system could be abolished. He had had the wisdom to know that it would never be abolished if people who approved of it wound up on top.

So through the years, the secret truths had been passed to those who approved least: those who had offered their lives in opposition to the supposed tyranny. To be sure, some heretics failed to qualify; they were motivated by desire to seize power for themselves or they weakened during the stress of the inquisition and its aftermath. But these people suffered no harm. Though they could not be released, they had the status of Technicians and did work of their own choosing.

And the Scholars themselves could not be released, neither from the physical confines of the Inner City nor from the unsought burden of representing a system which, while indispensable to survival in the alien environment, was abhorrent to them. It was they, not the villagers, who lived in bondage.

“It’s not easy,” Noren declared as he and Brek left the Hall of Scholars and walked through the Inner City’s enclosed courtyard toward one of the other towers, where Brek was to lodge with him.

“Stefred warned me in the beginning that a day would come when the consequences of my choice would seem so terrible that I’d beg to be let off,” Brek admitted. “I thought he was threatening to kill me, and I scoffed. Later I thought he’d been referring to the nightmarish parts of the dreams, or to the ceremony, or to imprisonment. But this—”

“This is worse than anything we envisioned,” agreed Noren. “We dedicated ourselves to resisting the Scholars’ authority, and now we’ve become what we most despised.”

On leaving the lift at the level of Noren’s compartment, they paused by the passageway window. The afternoon had gone swiftly; it was dusk, and the ring of large domed structures—the Outer City—that encircled the clustered towers looked dark and forbidding, an even more impenetrable barrier from within than it had once seemed from without. “Noren,” Brek ventured, “in your village . . . there was a girl, Talyra, wasn’t there? A girl you’d planned to marry?”

Noren lowered his eyes; it still hurt to think about that, and he did not want to speak of it. “Scholars aren’t barred from marriage,” he said. “We can even marry Technicians.”

“But not villagers.”

“No,” Noren replied shortly. He did not add that when certain conditions were met, villagers already married or betrothed to heretics could become Technicians, and that he’d dismissed the matter because he’d felt that in the City Talyra would be fearful and unhappy.

For a few moments they were silent. Far away across the fields stood the sharp silhouette of the Tomorrow Mountains, now pale below three crescent moons. “‘And Cities shall rise beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, and shall have Power, and Machines, and the Scholars will no longer be their guardians,’” Brek quoted softly. “How soon, I wonder? It’s not all going to happen on the day the Star appears! If we’re to be ready by then, the Prophecy must begin to come true long before.”

Noren, upset by Brek’s uninformed confidence, did not answer. Then, behind them, a voice said, “Maybe it will be sooner than you think, at least in a small way.”

Turning to greet the Scholar Grenald, the oldest and most distinguished of his tutors, Noren demanded, “What do you mean? Could it start in our lifetime after all?” The Time of the Prophecy—fixed by the distance in light-years to the Six Worlds’ exploded sun and chosen by the First Scholar not only for its symbolic value, but because survival without more metal could scarcely continue long past the time the light of the nova would arrive—was still several generations in the future.

Though Grenald smiled, the worry in his tone belied the hopefulness of his words. He looked at Noren intently, pleadingly, as if he somehow expected confirmation from a mere trainee. “It could,” he said. “You’re aware that it will start as soon as the research succeeds—”

“Of course,” agreed Noren hastily. The old man had been engaged for years in a series of experiments that was soon to culminate, and its outcome would give an idea of how much more research was needed; some Scholars felt that the results might point the way to an impending breakthrough. “We could be close, Grenald,” Noren declared. But as he spoke undeniable fear surged up in his mind, for he knew that if they were not close, they might not be on the right path.

And if that was the case, the Prophecy might never come true . . . yet he and Brek, like others before them, had publicly denied their heresy solely on the grounds that it would.

*  *  *

That night Noren dreamed he was the First Scholar again. It was not a controlled dream induced by the Dream Machine that fed recorded thoughts into his brain; but since experiencing those in which he’d shared the First Scholar’s thoughts, their content had recurred often in his natural dreams, particularly when he was tired or troubled. The controlled dreams of the revelation hadn’t been enjoyable; they had been nightmares. Though after the first Noren had submitted to them willingly, his hunger for the truth being stronger than his fear, the emotions they’d roused still frightened him.

So over and over, when he slept, he watched the nova explode into a blinding sphere of intolerable fire that filled the starship’s viewport; and usually he awakened then, drenched with sweat and hoping that he had not cried out aloud. But this time he dreamed on, images from his personal past mingling with those from the controlled dreams. He was the First Scholar, weighed down with the grief of what had been and what he knew must come, yet he walked through a village the First Scholar had never seen: the village where he, Noren, had been born. He saw the place—the rough stone houses, the sanded roads marred by sledge tracks and the hoofs of plodding work-beasts, the desolate gray shrubby areas surrounding quickened fields—through a Scholar’s eyes, and it seemed even more dreary than when he’d been growing up there. He had the First Scholar’s memory of the Six Worlds, of a civilization that had built interstellar ships! He was a stranger in the world where he found himself. . . .

Yet it had always been that way. He’d been a misfit since childhood, for most villagers were not unhappy; they did not crave the sort of knowledge he had craved, or care about truth as he had always cared. They were content with the life they had. The Technicians who brought Machines to clear the land and to quicken it never interfered with anyone’s personal freedom, and who but the impious would envy their right to handle those Machines? Who but a presumptuous fool would be concerned over why even greater wonders were reserved for the City alone?

“You are a fool, a lazy dreamer,” Noren’s brothers said to him as, dreaming, he found himself back in the house of his family. They were right, he suspected; he had no aptitude for crafts or trading and he was ill-suited to be a farmer, though for Talyra’s sake he was prepared to try. He must try something, for he had absorbed the meager offerings of the village school and was a grown man by his people’s standards, although on the Six Worlds he would have been thought too young to work, much less to marry. Such wasn’t the case in this land of more primitive custom. His impending marriage was the one thing to which he looked forward with pleasure. . . .

But even Talyra could not understand the urge that drove him to question the Prophecy. And so he turned his face to the City, the impenetrable stronghold of all knowledge, compelled by some inner longing that outweighed his belief that to enter it would mean death. In the way of dreams, his view was abruptly transposed. He feared not the City, but a future that might imperil it. If there were no City everyone would die—and if none dared challenge its mysteries, there would be no Scholars to keep it functioning. The ground he trod was permeated with a substance damaging to life that had evolved elsewhere; because the mutations it caused reduced mental capacity to a subhuman level, no biological adaptation would ever be possible. Machines must continue to inactivate the substance so that imported grain could be raised. The City was needed to guard all machines: not only those used in the fields, but the more complex ones for rainmaking, for purifying additional water, for irradiating grain seed—and for generating the nuclear power upon which the other machines depended. And of course, the City must safeguard the computers. In those computers’ memories was stored the accumulated knowledge of the Six Worlds, and if that were ever lost, there could be no second beginning. There would be no chance of achieving what must be achieved if the new world was to become a place where humans could thrive. . . .

“And the land shall remain fruitful, and the people shall multiply across the face of the earth, and at no time shall the spirit of the Mother Star die in the hearts of its children.” He, Noren, stood again at the table in his father’s farmhouse and said the words automatically, as he’d done before every meal, disbelieving them, yet maintaining the pose because that was the way life was. Besides, had not his mother believed them? His dream-self recalled how she’d died believing, died slowly and in pain because the Technicians had not arrived in time to save her from the poisonous briars. . . .

But it was a native poison for which there was no cure; as the First Scholar, he too was dying of it. The scene of the dream shifted once more, and he lay within the City, realizing that such poison had been on the knife that had struck him down. He’d faced the mob at the Gates knowing what would happen, and knowing also that he could nullify his people’s hatred in no other way. He had not known, however, how much pain there would be, or how long it would take to die. “There shall come a time of great exultation . . . 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. . . .” They were comforting words! True words! His friends could stop the pain, but if he allowed that, he could not record the words that were so important. Yet how had he found them? He’d tried for years to frame such words, and had failed, for he was no poet; he was only a scientist.

“And so long as we believe in it, no force can destroy us, though the heavens themselves be consumed. . . .” It was Talyra who was saying them now, although that could not be, for had not she whom he loved died aboard the starship, died because the Six Worlds were gone and humanity was gone and she lacked the courage to live in a universe that seemed so empty? When he, the First Scholar, had looked down upon his wife’s lifeless form, the face had been Talyra’s face. . . Still Talyra stood before him, alive, believing, and her sorrow was not for herself but for him. “May the spirit of the Mother Star go with you, Noren. . . .”

As the voice faded Noren awoke, dazed and shaken, lying still while he sorted the dream from the reality he had so recently begun to understand. “The First Scholar did not write the Prophecy,” Stefred had told him. “The idea was his, but the words are not in the recording; you supplied them yourself.” And also, much later, “The last dream was particularly dangerous for you, since as a child you watched your mother die by the same poison. I hesitated, Noren. All the rules of psychiatry said I should not let you proceed. Yet what was I to do? You had proven yourself fit to become a Scholar; was I to disqualify you on account of a tragic coincidence that had already caused you more than enough hurt?”

That Stefred himself could be hesitant and unsure was something Noren hadn’t realized till then. Scholars, as guardians of all mysteries, were, in the villagers’ eyes, omniscient, and though he’d once thought them tyrants, he had not suspected that they were ever doubtful about anything. After coming to trust Stefred, he had assumed that the man’s wisdom was limited only in regard to the basic problem of creating metal. Gradually, however, he’d begun to discover that this was not the case. In the first place, no single Scholar knew everything that had been known on the Six Worlds. The amount of knowledge was so vast that it was necessary to specialize, and Stefred, as a specialist in psychiatry, had little training in other fields. Furthermore, in every field there were areas not thoroughly understood by the experts. The existence of such gaps amazed Noren. Truth was far more complicated than he’d supposed it to be when he had demanded free access to it; the further he got into his training, the more evident that became. On mornings like this one the thought was frightening. . . .

His surroundings seemed somehow unfamiliar; as he came fully awake, Noren saw that it was because the room’s study desk was folded back into the wall. When it was out, there was scarcely space to turn around, so to accommodate Brek he’d put it away for the first time since entering training. That was probably why he’d dreamed as he had. In talking things over with Brek, he had allowed his worries to surface, as he had not done on previous days when study had absorbed his entire mind.

All his life he’d sought opportunity to study; and, Noren reflected, this aspect of being a Scholar had surpassed his greatest hopes. He had natural talent for it—especially for mathematics, on which he had so far concentrated as the first step toward specialization in nuclear physics—and though he’d been told he was progressing much faster than average, the days were not long enough for all he wanted to learn. Much of his time was occupied with more sophisticated training techniques than the reading of study discs; still he always kept a disc on hand to use in spare moments. Brek, on the upper bunk that had until now been unoccupied, was still asleep. Noren rose and restored the study desk to its normal position before even putting on his clothes. It made the cramped room more comfortable, for any link to the Six Worlds’ huge store of knowledge was, to him, a marvel that compensated for all the difficulties and confusions of his strange new life.

But as he settled himself silently before the desk’s screen, the mood of his dream failed to pass. Talyra’s face loomed between him and the information he was perusing; Talyra’s voice echoed in his ears. Irritably, he blamed Brek for having raised the subject. Brek had been persistent, unwilling to let it drop; they had talked on after bidding Grenald goodnight. “She was the one who got you clothes after you left the jail, wasn’t she?” Brek had said. “After watching her at the trial, I guessed she would, though I saw why you couldn’t trust me enough to say so.”

“I’m the one who should be asking your forgiveness,” Noren had muttered, recalling his unfounded suspicion that a trap might be laid for Talyra also. “Yes, she gave me clothes and money, too, in spite of believing that to aid an escaped heretic was sinful.”

Talyra was very devout; they’d quarreled bitterly when he had first told her of his heresy. She had broken their betrothal then, declaring that she would marry no man who did not revere the Mother Star, and when at his trial he had denied the Star’s very existence, she had been genuinely horrified. But she had grieved for him, knowing that he would not back down to save himself, and had gone counter to all she’d been taught in order to help him. “Talyra believed every word of the Prophecy,” he’d remarked to Brek, “and she was right! I just wish I could tell her that.”

Brek had looked at him, frowning. “Without telling her why? You were both right, but she would still think you’d been wrong to question! And anyway, she may well have heard that you recanted.”

“She didn’t hear,” Noren had said grimly. “She saw. She was there, and she must have thought what you thought when you were shown the films.” In anguish he remembered the pain that had filled her eyes when the public sentence was passed upon him. The harshest consequence of heresy was that one could not comfort one’s loved ones.

To be sure, a reunion might be arranged at the price of permanent Inner City residence for Talyra, but Noren had told Stefred that he would prefer separation. Talyra had her own life to live. After his arrest she had accepted the Scholars’ appointment to the training center where she was preparing for the semi-religious and highly respected vocation of a village nurse-midwife. Though that appointment had been made partly so that her disappearance from home could be explained if she chose to share his confinement—a fact of which she herself was unaware—he couldn’t ask her to make the sacrifices entrance to the Inner City would entail. It was better that she should suppose him broken and condemned to prison.

Noren dropped his head in his arms, too disconsolate to turn back to the normally fascinating study screen. All thought of seeing Talyra again was foolish in any case, for the decision was not his; a villager not convicted of heresy could gain entrance to the City only by requesting audience to plead the cause of someone who was imprisoned. Stefred had seemed to think Talyra might do that, but Noren knew she would never question the rightness of the High Priests’ decision.

There was a knock at the door; hurriedly Noren opened it and stepped into the corridor, greeting in a low voice the man who stood there. He did not want Brek disturbed, not when the ordeals of the previous day had been so great and when other demanding things lay ahead.

The man, a casual acquaintance, had merely stopped by with a message. “Stefred wants to see you,” he told Noren. “Right away.”

“Right away? That’s funny; yesterday he said not till I’d gotten Brek initiated into our routines. We had the whole schedule planned.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, but he spoke to me at breakfast and asked me to send you over to his office. It sounded urgent; maybe it’s something to do with tonight’s meeting.”

“What meeting?”

“You haven’t heard? I suppose not, if you haven’t been downstairs yet, but there’s a notice posted. We’re to assemble right after Orison—all Scholars, even the uncommitted—in one general session. And from the look of the executive council people, I’d say something important’s come up.”