Chapter One

The day, like all days, had been hot; the clouds had dispersed promptly after the morning’s scheduled rain. As the hours went by the sun had parched the villages, penetrating the thatch roofs of their stone buildings. Now low, its light filtered by thick air, it subdued the sharp contrast between machine-processed farmland and the surrounding wilderness of native growth, a rolling expanse of purple-notched grayness that stretched to the Tomorrow Mountains. Sunlight was seldom noticed within the City, for the domes, and most rooms of the clustered towers they ringed, were windowless. But since long before dawn Noren had watched the landscape from the topmost level of a tower he’d rarely entered. Like the other converted starships that served as Inner City living quarters, it had a view lounge at its pinnacle. And it was there that he awaited the birth of his child.

He’d been barred from the birthing room—part of the nursery area where infants were tended until, at the age of weaning, they must be sent out for adoption by village families. That was off limits to all but the mothers and attendants. By tradition, Scholars could not see their children. Even the women did not, except when no wet nurse was available among Technician women. Talyra, as a Technician, would nurse her own baby. Whether that would make it easier or harder when the time came for her to give it up, he was not sure. The knowledge that she could not keep the child hadn’t lessened her gladness in pregnancy any more than it had tarnished his own elation. It would not affect their desire for many offspring in the years to come. Yet it did not seem fair—she’d given up so much for his sake. . . .

For the world’s sake, she would say, and it was truer than she imagined. “In our children shall be our hope, and for them we shall labor, generation upon generation until the Star’s light comes to us,” she’d quoted softly the night before, when her pains began. Unlike himself, Talyra had found the symbolic language of the Prophecy meaningful even during her childhood in the village. He too now used it, not just to please her but with sincerity.

“And the land shall remain fruitful, and the people shall multiply across the face of the earth,” he’d replied, smiling. Then, more soberly, “For the City shall serve the people; those within have been consecrated to that service.” He knew that Talyra indeed felt consecrated, no less than he, though in a different way. Still, it troubled him that she could not know the truth behind the ritual phrases. She could not know that the City and its dependent villages contained but a remnant of the race that had once inhabited six vaporized worlds of the remote Mother Star, that to bring forth babies was not only an honor and sacred duty, but a necessity if humanity was to survive. Nor could she be told the main reason why Inner City people were not free to rear families, though it was obvious enough to her that the space enclosed by the Outer City’s encircling domes was limited.

She’d clung to his arm as they left their tiny room and walked across the inter-tower courtyard. At the door to the nursery area, she’d leaned against him with her dark curls damp against his shoulder. The pains were coming often; he knew they could not linger over the parting. And there was no cause to linger. Childbirth roused no apprehension in Talyra; she was, after all, a nurse-midwife by profession.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Noren,” she assured him happily. “Haven’t I been working in the nursery ever since I entered the City? Haven’t I wished for the day I could come here as a mother instead of just an attendant? Men always get nervous—that’s why we keep them out. We’ll send word when the child comes, you know that.”

“I’ll wait at the top of the tower,” he told her, “where I can look at the mountains, Talyra. Ours is the only child in the world to have begun life in the mountains. Maybe it means something that the wilderness gave us life instead of death.”

“It gave you your faith,” she murmured, kissing him. “We were blessed there from the start, darling—not simply when we were rescued. Let’s always be glad our baby’s beginning was so special.” She drew away; reluctantly, he let her go. They’d be separated only a few days, after all. Past separations, before their marriage, had been far longer and potentially permanent; he wondered why he felt so shaken by this brief one.

“May the spirit of the Star be with you, Talyra,” he said fervently, knowing these words were what she’d most wish to hear from him. The traditional farewell had become more than a formality between them, for Talyra took joy in the fact that he, once an unbeliever, had come to speak of the Star not only with reverence, but with a priest’s authority.

Now the long night had passed and also the day, and still no word had come. Far beyond the City, sunset was turning the yellow peaks of the Tomorrow Mountains to gold. Noren stared at the jagged range, the place where during the darkest crisis of his life, their child had been conceived. It was there that his outlook had changed. He did not share Talyra’s belief in the Star as some sort of supernatural force, yet he had felt underneath that the world’s doom was not as sure as it seemed. Perhaps that was why the aircar had crashed—perhaps there’d been more involved than bad piloting on his part; only that, and their unlooked-for survival, had kept him from his rash plan to publicly repudiate the Prophecy. . . .

After the crash, thinking himself beyond rescue, he had felt free, for once, of his search for peace of mind; he’d shaken off the depression that had burdened his previous weeks as a Scholar. He had at last stopped doubting himself enough to accept Talyra’s love. It had been a joyous union despite his assumption that they were soon to die, and afterward, he’d known she was right to maintain hope. Talyra, who knew none of the Scholars’ secrets, was almost always right about the things that mattered.

On just one issue was she blind—she saw nothing bad in the fact that Scholars kept secrets. Though she’d learned that they were not superhuman, she never questioned their supremacy as High Priests and City guardians; she perceived no evil in the existence of castes that villagers thought were hereditary. And she was therefore ineligible to attain Scholar rank. Talyra simply hadn’t been born to question things, Noren thought ruefully.

He could not communicate fully with Talyra. He couldn’t have done so even if no obligatory secrecy had bound him. She’d come to respect the honesty that had condemned him in the village of their birth. She had protested his confinement within the walls and had been admitted to the Inner City, given Technician rank, because she loved him enough to share it. The explanations she’d received contented her. It mattered little that she did not know, could never be allowed to know, that he’d ranked as a Scholar before committing himself to priesthood; the true nature of Scholar standing was past her comprehension.

While his status was concealed from her they could not marry; and though there’d have been no objection to their becoming lovers, he had held back while their future was uncertain. Talyra had been puzzled and hurt. Already she’d longed for a baby, Noren realized with chagrin, although she was as yet too young to be pitied for childlessness. In the City she wouldn’t be scorned as barren women were in the villages. He had assumed that since she could not rear a family, a delay in childbearing wouldn’t disturb her, or that if it did, she would break off her betrothal to him. At least that was what he liked to tell himself, though he knew he’d been too absorbed by his own problems to give enough thought to hers. There had been a time when he’d not cared to live, much less to love.

Then, in the mountains, everything had changed. He’d thrown problems to the wind and followed his instincts, and instinct led him not only to love, but to strive beyond reason for their survival and their child’s. They’d had no sure knowledge, of course, that there was a child—yet what couple would believe their first union unfruitful?

He couldn’t remind Talyra that she would not live long enough to give birth; certainly he couldn’t remind her that perhaps she had failed to conceive. More significantly, he found he could not tell her that it made no difference to the world one way or the other. Science had proven the Prophecy vain—according to all logic, the human race was doomed by the alien world’s lack of resources. But he could not destroy Talyra’s faith. This too had been instinct, and through this, he’d discovered to his surprise that he could serve as a priest without hypocrisy. The role of a Scholar was to work toward a scientific breakthrough that could fulfill the Prophecy’s promises; the role of a priest was to affirm the Prophecy without evidence. He no longer felt the two were inconsistent.

He owed much to the child he would never be permitted to see, Noren thought: the child who would grow up as a villager—where, and under what name, he would not be told—and who, knowing nothing of his or her parentage, might someday in turn fight the High Law’s apparent injustice. . . .

“Noren—”

He looked up, expecting news from the nursery, but it was his friend Brek who stood in the doorway. “I guess you’re wondering why I didn’t come to the refectory,” Noren said. It was their habit to take their noon meal together in the Hall of Scholars, the central tower where as advanced students, they normally worked. “I wasn’t hungry, I’m as nervous as all fathers—just wait till it’s your turn.” Brek, quite recently, had married a fellow-Scholar; their delight in their own coming child had been plain.

Brek hesitated. “By the Star, Brek,” Noren went on, “it’s taking a long time, isn’t it? Should it take this long?”

“Noren, Beris asked me to tell you. They’ve sent for a doctor.” Brek’s tone was even, too even.

A doctor? Noren went white. Rarely had he heard of a doctor being called to attend a birth. The villages had no resident doctors; babies were delivered by nurse-midwives, trained, as Talyra had been trained in adolescence, for a vocation accorded semi-religious status. In the City there was no cause to usurp their prerogatives. Besides, it was improper to intervene in the process of bringing forth life. Only if the child were in danger . . .

Vaguely, from his boyhood, he recalled that babies sometimes died. So too, in the village, had mothers who were frail. It was not a thing discussed often, unless perhaps among women—though he had never known a woman whose eagerness for another child wouldn’t have overshadowed such thoughts.

“I think you’d better come,” Brek was saying.

As they descended in the lift, other boyhood memories pushed into Noren’s mind. The child might be past saving . . . against many ills doctors were powerless. They’d failed to save his mother. Though at the time he’d been outraged, he now knew she couldn’t have been helped; the poison in the briars she’d touched had no antidote. But some things without current remedies had been curable with Six Worlds’ technology.

Had the Six Worlds had ways of ensuring safe births? The computer complex could answer that, of course; he wondered, suddenly, if any past Scholar had been moved to ask. He himself was prone to ask futile questions as well as practical ones, a tendency not widely shared when it could lead only to frustration.

Brek was silent. That in itself was eloquent—Brek, Noren reflected, knew him much too well to offer false reassurances.

It had never occurred to Noren that the baby might die. He could face that himself, he supposed; he was inured to grim circumstances. The seasons since his marriage had been the happiest of his life, too good, he’d sometimes felt, to last. But Talyra’s sorrow he might find past bearing. It was so unjust that she should suffer . . . after all the grief and hardship he’d brought her in the past, he’d wanted to make her content. He’d vowed not to let her see that a priest could have doubts, or that even when closest to her he knew loneliness.

Was it only because of her pregnancy that he’d succeeded? If the child died, if she was desolate over what she’d surely perceive as a failure as well as a sorrow, would her intuition again lead her to sense that his own desolation went deeper? “You are what you are,” she had told him long ago, “and our loving each other wouldn’t make any difference.” It hadn’t; for a time this had seemed unimportant, yet throughout that time, the child had bridged the gulf between them. . . .

Talyra would blame herself if it wasn’t healthy; village women always did, and she’d been reared as a villager. It wouldn’t matter that no one in the City would consider her blameworthy. Noren cursed inwardly. Village society, backward in all ways because of its technological stagnation, was both sexist and intolerant; and while Talyra might be openminded enough to be talked out of most prejudices, she wouldn’t listen to him on a subject viewed as the province of women. Among Technicians there was less stigma attached to the loss of a child. Brek’s wife Beris had been born a Technician, in the Outer City, as had Brek himself. Maybe later on Beris would be able to help.

Yet Brek had said Beris sent the message—that was odd, since she was neither midwife nor nursery attendant. As a Scholar, Beris had work of her own in water purification control, vital life-support work she could not leave except in an emergency. As they reached the nursery level, Noren faced Brek, asking abruptly, “What’s Beris doing here?”

“She—she was called as a priest, Noren. I don’t know the details.”

The door where he and Talyra had parted was in front of them; Noren pushed and found it locked. He felt disoriented, as if he were undergoing a controlled dream like those used in Scholars’ training. Beris called as a priest? To be sure, no male priest would be summoned to the birthing room, and Talyra knew Beris well. But why should any priest be needed? At the service for the dead, yes, if the baby didn’t survive . . . but that would be held later, and elsewhere. He would be expected to preside himself, at least Talyra would expect it, and for her sake he would find the courage, disturbing though that particular service had always been to him. What other solace could a priest offer? Had they felt only a robed Scholar could break the news of her baby’s danger? That didn’t make sense—Talyra would know! She was a midwife; if the delivery didn’t go well, she would know what was happening.

She’d rarely spoken to him of her work. He knew only that she liked it, liked helping to bring new life into the world. Yet there had been times when she’d come to their room troubled, her usual vitality dimmed by sadness she would not explain. It struck him now that she might have seen babies die before. Perhaps she had seen more than one kind of pain.

That women suffered physically during childbirth was something everyone knew and no one mentioned. It was taken for granted that the lasting joy outweighed the temporary discomfort. Midwives were taught to employ a modified form of hypnosis that lessened pain without affecting consciousness, or so he’d been told, though Talyra wasn’t aware that the ritual procedures she followed served such a purpose. Doctors—and often priests—could induce full hypnotic anesthesia. Had Beris been summoned for that reason? Had Talyra’s pain been abnormally severe, could that be why they’d sought a doctor’s aid? Anguish rose in Noren; her confidence had been so great that he had not guessed she might be undergoing a real ordeal.

“I’ve got to go in there,” he told Brek. Having never been one to let custom stand in his way, he felt no hesitancy.

“You can’t do any good now. When you can, they’ll call you—”

“For the Star’s sake, she may need me! The doctor may not be here yet, she may be suffering—she’s not been trained to accept hypnosis as we have, and she’s not awed enough by a blue robe to let just any priest put her under.”

“Beris said something about drugs.”

“Drugs for childbirth?” Drugs were scarce and precious, not to be used where hypnosis would serve and surely not on anyone who wasn’t ill; Talyra would not accept them during the biggest moment of her life. Unless her baby had already died . . . but no, not even then; Talyra was no coward.

“I don’t understand,” he protested.

“Neither do I,” Brek said. “We don’t know enough about these things; sometimes I think women keep too much to themselves. I’d never have thought it could be risky for Talyra. She’s young and strong—”

Stunned, Noren burst out, “You mean there’s danger to Talyra? Not just to the child?” In sudden panic he threw his weight against the door, but it would not yield.

Brek grasped his arm, pulling him aside. “The child was stillborn, I think,” he admitted.

The door slid back and Beris emerged, still wearing the ceremonial blue robe of priesthood over her work clothes. She blocked Noren’s way.

“Let’s go down,” she said quietly. “I know a room that’s empty where we can go.”

“I’ve got to see Talyra.”

“You can’t, not here.”

“Where, then?” He wondered if they would move her to the infirmary; he knew nothing of what illness might strike during a delivery.

“Noren.” Beris kept her voice steady. “It was over faster than anyone expected. Talyra is dead.”

*  *  *

Later, he wondered how Brek and Beris had gotten him to the lift. They took him to a room on the next level that was temporarily unused. Once there, he collapsed on the narrow couch and gave way to tears. For a long time they said nothing, but simply let him weep.

When he was able to talk, there was little Beris could tell him. “It happens,” she said. “Usually with older women, or those who’ve never been strong; but occasionally it happens with a girl who seems healthy. Talyra knew that. She knew better than most of us; all midwives do.”

“She never said—”

“Of course not. You would be the last person to whom she’d have said such a thing.”

“Did it happen on the Six Worlds, too?” Noren asked bitterly. “Or could she have been saved there?”

“I don’t know. At least I don’t know if she could have been saved at this stage. It’s possible—they had equipment we haven’t the metal to produce, and they could tell beforehand if there were complications, so that their doctors could be prepared. Sometimes they delivered babies surgically before labor even began.”

Beris paused, glancing uncomfortably at Brek; her own pregnancy, though not yet apparent, could scarcely be far from their thoughts. “Talyra wasn’t a Scholar—she didn’t know how it was on the Six Worlds. But I do. I suppose men don’t absorb all that I did from the dreams the Founders recorded . . . but you do know it wasn’t the same as here. I mean, people didn’t have the same feelings—”

Noren nodded. The Six Worlds had been overpopulated; women hadn’t been allowed more than two children, and they’d had drugs to prevent unplanned pregnancies. Hard though it was to imagine, people hadn’t minded—at any rate, that was what all the records said. Sterility hadn’t been considered a curse. Some couples had purposely chosen to have no offspring at all; they had made love without wishing for their love to outlast their lifetime.

“Well,” Beris went on, “it was the custom there for women to be seen by doctors, not just during delivery, but all through pregnancy. They knew a long time ahead if things weren’t going right. And so pregnancies that were judged dangerous were—terminated.”

Noren was speechless. Brek, aghast, murmured, “You mean deliberately? They killed unborn children?”

“Their society didn’t look on it as killing. And it wasn’t done often once they had sure contraceptives—only when the child would die anyway, or when the mother’s health was at stake.”

“Talyra would not have done it at all,” declared Noren.

“No. That’s what I’m trying to say, Noren. She wouldn’t have, even if the option had been open, because in our culture we just can’t feel the way our ancestors did. Our situation is different. So unless the Six Worlds’ medical equipment could have saved her without hurting the baby, our having that equipment wouldn’t have changed anything.”

But the baby died too, Noren thought. She’d given her life for nothing. Perhaps these things happened, but why—why to Talyra? It was the sort of useless question that had always plagued him, yet he could not let it rest.

“She was so strong, she loved life so much . . . there’s got to be a reason,” he said slowly. He recalled how in the aftermath of the crash, Talyra’s indomitable spirit had kindled his own will to live. She had refused to let him give in. All the hardships—the terror of the attack by subhuman mutants, the heat, the exhaustion, the hunger and above all the thirst—had left Talyra untouched. How could she have come through all that, only to die as a result of the love that had led to their near-miraculous rescue?

“She believed the Star would protect her,” he persisted, “even in the mountains where we knew we were dying, she kept believing! You were there, Brek—you saw. I couldn’t disillusion her. That was what pulled us through. It’s so ironic for her faith to let her down in the end.”

“Talyra was a realist,” Brek declared, “I remember she said, ‘If we die expecting to live, we’ll be none the worse for it; but if we stop living because we expect to die, we’ll have thrown away our own lives.’”

“She didn’t feel faith had let her down,” Beris added. “It comforted her! She knew she’d lost too much blood, she’d seen such cases before—and she wanted the ritual blessing. That’s why I was sent for.”

“You gave it to her, Beris? You said those words to a dying person as if they were true?” Noren frowned. May the spirit of the Mother Star abide with you, and with your children, and your children’s children; may you gain strength from its presence, trusting in the surety of its power. He had conceded the words were valid when said to the living, who were concerned for the welfare of future generations. But in the context of death—death not only of oneself but of one’s only child—they took on a whole new meaning.

“I’ve never used ritual phrases lightly, not as a priest, anyway,” Beris answered. “The words do express truth, just as much as the ones you say every time you preside at Vespers. Of course I said them, and part of the service for the child, too, because she wanted to hear it.”

He turned away, realizing that though he himself could not have denied Talyra’s wish, he’d have been choking back more than tears. “A priest gives hope,” he said softly, “that’s what Stefred told me when I agreed to assume the robe. It’s a—a mockery to use the symbols where there’s nothing left to hope for.”

“But Noren—” Beris broke off, seeing Brek’s face; she did not know Noren’s mind as Brek did. “Talyra hoped for you,” she continued quietly. “The last thing she said to me was, ‘Tell Noren I love him.’”

Noren sat motionless, already feeling the return of the emptiness that had paralyzed him during his weeks at the research outpost. Brek and Beris seemed far away, their voices echoes of a world he no longer inhabited.

“This isn’t the time to tell you this,” Beris was saying, “but Talyra made me promise. She said you must have more children, that it’s important, because otherwise the world will lose twice as much—”

“She knew I wouldn’t want anyone’s children but hers.”

“That’s why she said it—she did know. She knew you don’t hold with custom and might not choose someone else just for duty’s sake. And there was something about what happened in the mountains that I didn’t understand, she said it would become pointless, what you suffered there.”

“I suppose she meant your drinking so little water,” Brek said. To Beris he added, “I never told you the whole story. Noren nearly died of dehydration; he couldn’t drink as much impure water as Talyra and I could because he’d already drunk some as a boy in the village.”

“You’d drunk impure water without need?” Beris was shocked.

“Just for a few days before I was taken into the City,” Noren assured her. “I didn’t believe in the High Law then, not any of it—it wasn’t only the injustice that made me a heretic. And I’d decided I’d outgrown nursery tales about stream water turning people into idiots.”

“But then how could you dare to—”

“I was tested for genetic damage, just as Brek was after we got back from the mountains. He must have explained about that, or else you wouldn’t have married him. Anyway, I’d been told how much more I could safety drink, and in the wilderness I kept within that limit for Talyra’s sake. We’d seen the mutants, you know. Talyra hadn’t heard of genetics, but she knew they were subhuman because their ancestors drank the water . . . and, well, even though I thought we’d die there, I couldn’t let her fear, while we were sleeping together—” He broke off and concluded miserably, “She was right; it’s turned out to have been pointless. I’m not likely to want another child.”

“If you say that, it’s like telling Talyra your love for her made you stop caring about the future. That it was hurtful to you.”

“To me?” Wretchedly he mumbled, “If it weren’t for me, Talyra might have lived a long, happy life in the village.”

“How could she have? She’d surely have tried to have children, so the same thing would have happened.”

“Would it?” Noren burst out, “Beris, my child may have killed Talyra! You’ve learned all these things about pregnancy, things they knew on the Six Worlds—hasn’t it occurred to you it may not always be the woman’s fault when things go wrong? How much do you know about genetics?”

“Not much,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone does, beyond the fact that technology’s needed for survival here because something in the water and soil damages genes if it’s not removed.”

“There must be more detail than that in the computers—they preserve all the Six Worlds’ science, and more must have been known in the Founders’ time.” The idea came slowly; as it formed, Noren wondered why no one had ever spoken of it. “In the dreams, the Founders knew the genetic damage was unavoidable without soil and water processing. Yet there weren’t any subhuman mutants then. The mutants came later, as the offspring of rebels who fled to the mountains rather than accept the First Scholar’s rule. That means the First Scholar predicted the mutation, and he couldn’t have done that without understanding what genes are! What’s more, there must have been cases of genetic damage on the Six Worlds themselves, because the concept wasn’t a new one. Perhaps there were mutations that didn’t destroy the mind.”

“Genetic diseases, yes,” Beris agreed. “I did get that much from one dream. But not necessarily mutations. A lot of people had defective genes to begin with, only not all the genes a person has affect that person, or all her offspring.”

“Why aren’t some of our offspring still affected, then?”

“The Founders—women and men both—passed genetic tests,” Brek reflected. “Don’t you remember, Noren? When they knew their sun was going to nova, how they chose the people eligible to draw lots for the starships?”

“And there was something about genetics in the First Scholar’s plan, too,” Noren recalled. “It was one of the reasons he wouldn’t let Scholars’ children be reared in the City, even the Outer City. Their being sent to the villages had something to do with what he called the gene pool.”

“You’re right, there’s got to be a lot of stored information,” said Brek. “I suppose no one’s ever taken time to study it because it’s so irrelevant to our work now. Till we find a way to synthesize metal, so that soil and water processing can continue indefinitely, it doesn’t make any difference whether we understand genes or not. Understanding can’t prevent the damage, only technology can.”

True, thought Noren grimly. Still, he’d always wanted to understand things—and to him, this was no longer irrelevant.

*  *  *

It was near midnight when he returned to his own quarters. At Brek’s insistence he had accepted bread and a hot drink, knowing that one should not go more than a full day without nourishment. “Or without sleep,” Brek said worriedly. Tactfully, he avoided any direct suggestion about hypnotic sedation.

“I’ll sleep,” Noren said quickly. He did not see how he could do so in the bed he’d shared with Talyra, but the Inner City was crowded; barring the infirmary, there was nowhere else to sleep. And after all, rooms were nearly identical, having once been cabins aboard the Founders’ starships. There were no personal furnishings, for such materials as could be manufactured were allocated to the Outer City, while the Inner City practiced an austerity that even to villagers, who had wicker and colored cloth, would have seemed strange. Talyra had kept her few belongings neatly stored in a compartment beneath the bunk; none would be in evidence to torment him.

“Noren,” Brek continued hesitantly, “the service tomorrow—”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Will you preside?”

“I—I can’t, Brek.”

“I understand, of course. So will everyone. But it’s your right, so I had to ask.”

“You don’t understand at all,” Noren told him. “I wouldn’t crack up. I’d like to be the one to speak about Talyra, what she was, what her life meant to us. It’s the ritual part I can’t do.”

He thought back to the first such service he had ever attended, the one for his mother, and how awful he’d felt hearing the Technicians, who in the villages performed priests’ functions by proxy, read the false, hollow phrases over her body. His mother had believed those things. She’d believed her life and death served some mystical power, the power of a star not yet even visible in the sky.

He had since learned it was not all a lie. But the service for the dead was not part of the Prophecy that science might fulfill. Nor did it deal only with the Mother Star. It was one thing to accept the Star as a symbol of the unknowable—as he’d done when he assumed priesthood—as well as of the heritage from the Six Worlds. Symbols no longer bothered him. But in this ceremony alone, the Founders had gone further. “I’m not like you and Beris,” he told Brek. “I can’t feel the words about death symbolize truth.”

The night dragged on. Noren could not cry any more, even when alone; he did not believe any emotion would return to him. He’d been right, perhaps, when despair had first gripped him, the year before at the outpost. His marriage had been only a brief reprieve.

Toward dawn he drifted into sleep and was immediately caught up in nightmare, the old nightmare induced by the controlled dreams through which Scholar candidates learned of the Founding. He was the First Scholar, yet at the same time, himself; the woman dying in his arms had Talyra’s face, Talyra’s voice. . . He surfaced, telling himself as always that it was just a dream, Talyra still lived, in experiencing the First Scholar’s emotions he had drawn images from his own memory. But when fully conscious, he knew that never again would it be a dream from which he could wake up.

The First Scholar too had lost his wife. She had killed herself because she could not bear the knowledge that the Six Worlds were destroyed. That had been what convinced the First Scholar that the secret of the nova must be kept; it was a key episode, so despite its pain it was one new Scholars had to go through. What kind of woman would prefer death to serving the future? Noren wondered. Talyra wouldn’t have! Why then had Talyra died? There was no sense in any of it . . . the First Scholar’s wife had served the future after all, for her husband’s decision had hinged on hers, the symbolic interpretation of the Mother Star itself had hinged on it. How could the future be served by senseless tragedy?

In the morning he viewed the bodies privately, dry-eyed, before they were shrouded and moved to the open courtyard. Because Talyra had been a Technician, the service was not held within the Hall of Scholars. Except for the absence of kinfolk, with whom all Inner City people sacrificed contact, it was more like a village ceremony; and for this Noren was thankful. Ritual of one sort or another could be more easily dismissed as routine in mixed groups than when only Scholars were present.

Alone, for Brek had quietly assumed the presiding priest’s place, Noren joined the gathered mourners as they began the traditional hymn. He was too much a loner to want others’ sympathy, though there were many present who would offer it. The ceremony was a thing to live through. So, perhaps, would be all his days to come. Reason told him his work in nuclear physics was futile, and without Talyra to bolster his faith . . .

How proud she’d been when he first put on the blue robe, and how needless his fear that it would turn her love to a deference he would abhor. Not till he was much older would he be required to assume the burden of appearing at public ceremonies outside the Gates, where villagers and Technicians would kneel to him. In the Inner City such customs were not observed; the robes, in fact, were rarely worn except for formal officiation. But like the other acknowledged Scholars in attendance, he wore his now, as befitted the solemnity of the occasion.

He had steeled himself to the words of committal; the shock of understanding them had worn off since he’d first heard them as a Scholar. Recycling of bodies with the ancient converters from the starships was necessary to future generations in an alien world that did not provide enough of the trace elements on which biological existence depended. In any case, he had never shared the villagers’ reverent awe at the thought that when one’s body was taken into the City, one somehow became part of the life cycle only Scholars could comprehend. He’d long since resigned himself to the fact that the physical side of this holy mystery was all too earthly.

It was the other part that still disturbed him. “For as this spirit abides with us, so shall it with her; it will be made manifest in ways beyond our vision. . . .” Sunlight beat down between the glistening towers onto Noren’s uplifted face; he closed his eyes, marveling at the sincerity in Brek’s voice.

Villagers and Technicians believed that Scholars were omniscient, that they knew what happened after death. Did not the Scholars know the answers to all other mysteries: why crops would not grew in unquickened soil, how impure water could turn sane men into idiots, and even how Machines had come into the world? Having been enlightened as to these latter things, Noren himself had not, at first, doubted that the former was equally explicable. He grew hot at the memory of his naivete when he’d queried the computer complex about death, and of his stunned disillusionment at its inability to provide any information. He’d been a mere adolescent then, of course. The past year had taught him much. His emotions had become less involved, at least as far as his own fate was concerned. But now, Talyra . . .

“Her place is assured among those who lived before her and those who will come after, those by whom the Star is seen and their children’s children’s children, even unto infinite and unending time. And not in memory alone does she survive, for the universe is vast. Were the doors now closed to us reopened, as in time they shall be, still there would remain that wall through which there is no door save that through which she has passed. . . .”

Somehow, said of Talyra, it seemed less incredible than it always had to him. Surely Talyra wasn’t just . . . extinguished. He could not imagine a universe in which Talyra had ceased to exist.

He had studied the computers’ records of the Six Worlds’ religions, and he’d learned that belief in continuance after death had been common though not, by the time of the Founders, widely accepted among scientists. He had wondered why the Founders—all trained as scientists—had put it into the liturgy; for in establishing themselves as priests, they had been scrupulous about proclaiming only those ideas in which they sincerely believed. To the First Scholar, who had planned this, the test of a false religion was not whether someone had made up its symbols on purpose, but whether that person had been aiming to defraud. The Founders had been required to cloak certain facts in symbolism, but they had not practiced deception. They had meant everything they said. How, Noren had asked himself, could they have meant what they seemed to be saying in the service for the dead, especially after they’d seen thirty billion people die in the vaporization of the Six Worlds?

Now, suddenly, he understood. It had been the First Scholar’s influence, the dreams’ influence! They’d all experienced the death of the First Scholar’s wife: experienced it in personal terms—just as he, Noren, had—as a result of the dual identity one assumed in controlled dreaming. The dream material, even in its most complete version, was edited. The Founders had recorded memories for posterity, knowing that only so could they convey the reality of the Six Worlds’ tragic end to those in whose hands survival of their race must rest. But they’d had a right to some privacy; the First Scholar had edited his thoughts to remove such personal ones as would contribute nothing to comprehension of future problems. Thus his image of his wife’s personality had not been preserved. But he had loved her. No doubt he’d indeed felt that somewhere in the universe she must, in some way, live—such a feeling might even remain in the recordings. Each dreamer drew different things from them, according to his or her own background. The Founders, having lost loved ones to the nova, might well have clung to emotion as if it were the First Scholar’s actual conviction. After his martyrdom they had revered him, as all Scholars still did, striving to emulate him in everything.

It was ironic. To the First Scholar himself, faith not based on evidence hadn’t come easily. “Did you suppose he was born with it?” the Scholar Stefred had said when Noren, on his return from the mountains, had begun to perceive the real nature of commitment to the Prophecy. Stefred had always maintained that Noren’s mind was very like the First Scholar’s.

From his place in the inner circle Noren glanced around, expecting to see Stefred among the blue-robed figures closest to him. Astonishingly, he was absent. It was unthinkable that he wouldn’t attend this service if aware of it; unthinkable, too, that Brek would have neglected to tell him of Talyra’s death.

Noren himself had not sought out Stefred, nor did he intend to do so. There was no help for this sort of pain. As head of recruitment and a skilled psychiatrist, Stefred knew all young Scholars’ deepest feelings; he had guided them through the ordeals of inquisition, enlightenment and recantation. He had aided their adjustment to the status they’d neither sought nor welcomed. He’d been their first friend in the Inner City and remained, to all, a warm one. But though he’d want to help, he was uncompromisingly honest—he would not try to argue away grief.

Yet neither would he ignore it. Could he be tied up with urgent Council business? Noren had not entered the Hall of Scholars for two days; he had heard none of the current rumors about the City’s affairs. Abruptly, it occurred to him that these affairs had not halted, that little as they now mattered to him, they would go right on. The effort to fulfill the Prophecy would go on, hopeless though it was. He had committed himself to participation. For a time he’d had faith that it was worthwhile. Had that been only for the child’s sake?

He’d thought such faith, once discovered, would be permanent. But perhaps it had never been valid at all; perhaps it had been a mere feeling, no better founded than this unexpected feeling that Talyra’s true self still lived on.

“. . . so may the spirit of the Star be with her, and with us all.” Brek stopped speaking; there was a long silence. Gradually Noren became aware that men stood ready to lift the shroud, that they were waiting for his signal.

Stepping forward, he dropped his eyes. There was nothing to be seen, of course, but dazzling white cloth; wherever Talyra was, she could not be there. Nor could the child—the boy, he’d been told—in whom they’d taken such joy. Oh, Talyra, he thought, it wasn’t the way we imagined. The wilderness gave us death after all.

*  *  *

When it was over, Brek took him to the refectory, persuaded him to eat. “Stefred sent a message,” he said. “He’d like you to stop by his study—”

“I don’t need to do that.”

“You and your starcursed pride,” murmured Brek. “I should have known better than to say it that way. I know you don’t need therapy from Stefred. So does he. But after all, his own wife died—and he still mourns her; he’s never looked at anyone else. It’s no wonder if he’s sorry he couldn’t be at the service and wants to tell you so personally. You owe him the chance, when he’s so troubled right now himself.”

“Troubled? Why?”

“You haven’t heard? Everyone’s mystified. We don’t know what the problem is, except that he’s working with a heretic who’s been reacting badly to the dreams. Apparently he doesn’t dare leave her.”

“Not at all?” The testing and enlightenment of a Scholar candidate took several weeks of intensive therapy, but not all phases demanded Stefred’s presence. There were rest periods, and some of the machine-induced dreams could be controlled by assistants.

“Well, he won’t leave his suite at all; he’s having his meals brought to him. And he’s monitoring the entire dream sequence personally. As far as that goes, he handled the inquisition personally after the first hour or so—the observers were sent out. I don’t suppose we’ll ever hear what happened.”

“No,” agreed Noren, “but it must have been rough for them both.” Any candidate experiencing the dreams had been judged trustworthy. That meant she had stood up to Stefred despite real terror, which in Technicians—and most female heretics had been born to that caste—could sometimes be hard to induce. Technicians weren’t overwhelmed by City surroundings, as villagers were; stress had to be artificially applied. Stefred knew how to do it harmlessly, and when necessary he could be ruthless. It was for the candidate’s own benefit: no one unsure of his or her inner strength could endure the outwardly degrading recantation ceremony, or accept the “rewards” that came after. One must be certain in one’s own mind that one hadn’t sold out. If that certainty could be engendered only through extreme measures, Stefred would use them; but he would not enjoy the process.

“The odd thing,” Brek went on, “is that she’s a village woman. Yet at first, I’m told, she was fearless. Everyone who saw her noticed—she was as self-composed as an experienced initiate. It was almost unnatural.”

Slowly, Noren nodded. It was indeed odd that a villager, brought straight from a Stone Age environment into the awesome City—believing she’d be put to death there for her convictions—could be so cool under questioning that Stefred would have to employ unusual tactics. But they would learn nothing of her background. Not only were closed-door sessions with Stefred treated as confidential, but no questions were asked in the Inner City about newcomers’ past lives. This convention had been established because the true significance of heresy must be concealed from the uninitiated, but it was also a matter of courtesy. Former heretics, who were by nature nonconformists, had not always behaved admirably in youth; it would be tactless to risk embarrassing anyone, or to stir up memories better left to fade.

“What’s strangest,” Noren reflected, “is that someone strong-willed enough to need special handling would be endangered by the dreams. They’re hard for everybody at first. A person who wasn’t bothered by what the Founders did wouldn’t be a fit successor. But close monitoring—that’s used only for the most terrifying ones, the ones that could induce physical shock. I never heard of monitoring the whole series.”

“Could he have put her under too much stress beforehand, maybe?”

“Stefred? He’s never miscalculated; you know that!”

“I do know,” Brek replied. “Yet now he’s worried. No one’s seen him since Orison the night before last, and then he looked—well, as if he needed that kind of reassurance. Since he’s willing to talk to you—”

“I’ll find out what I can.” It was true enough, Noren realized, that only pride had made him resolve not to go to Stefred, the one person in the City to whom he could speak freely of sorrow.

But there was another encounter that had priority. On the verge of taking the lift up to the tower suite in which he’d met so many past crises, Noren moved his hand instead to the button for “down.”

At the foundation of the Hall of Scholars was the computer complex, most sacred of all places in the City because there alone the accumulated knowledge of the Six Worlds was preserved. To Noren, knowledge had seemed sacred from his earliest boyhood; to all Scholars, its guardianship was a holy responsibility. The information stored in the computers was irreplaceable. If lost, it could not be regained, and without that information, human survival would become impossible. Unrestricted access to it was the right of every Scholar. Priesthood wasn’t a condition—but it was in contact with the computer complex that Noren felt most nearly as he supposed a priest ought to feel. The computers held such truth as was knowable. He knew better, now, than to think that they held all truth, but they held all his human race had uncovered, all he was likely to find in his own world.

In this only, there was happiness he had not shared with Talyra. It was the single aspect of his life her loss would not diminish. But he could not accept the joys of learning without also accepting the demands. I care more for truth than for comfort, he’d declared at his trial. He’d been a mere boy, fresh from the village school; it sounded naively melodramatic now. He had known even then that most people would think it foolish. The village councilmen who condemned him had been appalled by his blasphemous presumption. During the subsequent inquisition, however, Stefred had not thought it foolish; he’d called it the key point in his defense. Stefred, who knew more than any village council about uncomfortable truths, had challenged him to choose. He could not now revoke the choice he had made.

Noren sat at a console, not yet touching the keys, glad that in the dim light of the computer room no one would notice his hesitancy. He had never been afraid of knowledge. He’d learned early that it could be painful to possess as well as to acquire; he had shut it out at times; still he could not consciously deny that knowing was better than not knowing. Somewhere in the computers was information that could tell him: had actions of his killed Talyra?

Quite possibly they had. If so, it was fitting retribution for the mistakes on his part that had led to the crash in the mountains . . . yet how could things work like that? She had been guiltless!

He himself was not. He had by his rashness destroyed one of the world’s few aircars; its loss might affect the well-being of generations yet unborn. He’d thought himself willing to destroy people’s hope at the cost of his own life. These events were behind him now. Stefred had said he must look forward, not back. Yet considering the death of the child . . .

Could the child have been harmed by the mountain water after all? Though Noren’s genes hadn’t been affected by it, Talyra had not been tested. They’d said it was more complicated with a woman, that it would demand surgery for which they had no proper equipment and which would in any case be risky during her pregnancy. Talyra had drunk no more of the water than Brek, whose test result showed no harm—not nearly as much as the officially established limit. Still, if genetics hadn’t been studied since the Founders’ time, did anyone really know how exact the limit was?

All the science of the Six Worlds was in computer memory. He had access to all of it if he could frame the right questions. Since becoming a Scholar, he’d acquired skill in questioning, a process that demanded deep thought. It would not be possible simply to ask why Talyra had died, or even why the baby had; the program couldn’t respond to a query of that kind. His questions must be specific. He must analyze the issues, however hard they were to face.

Suppose there had been damage to Talyra’s genes, suppose the limit was not the same for everyone—even so, the mutation caused by impure water wasn’t lethal. The mutants in the mountains, despite subhuman brains, were all too healthy. Besides, the baby most likely had been conceived the first night. Impure water was harmful only to reproductive cells, not to embryos . . . wasn’t it? He frowned, struggling with concepts unfamiliar to him, as a new thought came into his mind.

He knew little about pregnancy. Such things were not studied—babies came and were welcomed; one did not ponder how they grew. Beris had said that on the Six Worlds doctors had known more. Had they known what could harm an embryo during the first days of its existence?

A child newly conceived was alive; like all living things it needed water; it must get this through its mother’s blood. But it was surely very small. So could a small amount of some damaging substance hurt it, even if the mother herself was not damaged?

This, he knew, was the kind of question that was answerable. Whether or not anyone had asked it before in the City, the program would reply as promptly as if the query concerned recent experiments. His hands trembling, Noren keyed, CAN AN UNBORN CHILD BE HARMED BY WHAT ITS MOTHER CONSUMES EARLY IN PREGNANCY?

Instantly the screen before him displayed, YES.

EVEN IF SHE HERSELF IS NOT MADE ILL?

YES. SUCH DAMAGE IS CALLED TERATOGENIC.

IS THAT THE SAME AS MUTATION?

NO, IT IS A DIFFERENT TYPE OF GENETIC ERROR. TERATOGENIC DAMAGE IS NOT INHERITED BY THE CHILD’S OFFSPRING.

SUCH A CHILD SOMETIMES LIVES, THEN?

USUALLY IT LIVES, BUT IS DISEASED OR DEFORMED.

CAN TERATOGENIC DAMAGE CAUSE IT TO BE STILLBORN?

OCCASIONALLY. MORE OFTEN, LETHAL DAMAGE WOULD RESULT IN EARLY MISCARRIAGE.

Noren gripped the edge of the console keyboard, fighting sick despair. If it could happen, it was reasonable to assume that it had happened, given the fact that the impurities of the water had been in Talyra’s bloodstream throughout her first week of pregnancy.

He drew deep breaths; then, with effort, continued, IF SUCH A CHILD IS STILLBORN, CAN THIS CAUSE THE DEATH OF THE MOTHER?

NOT DIRECTLY. IN RARE CASES TERATOGENIC DAMAGE MIGHT LEAD TO COMPLICATIONS IN DELIVERY. CAN YOU SUPPLY SPECIFIC DATA?

WHAT SORT OF DATA?

GENETIC DATA THAT WOULD PERMIT THE PROBABILITY TO BE CALCULATED.

No, thought Noren in dismay. He could not supply that. But the Founders could have—otherwise the computer wouldn’t be programmed to ask for it.

He knew nothing about biology, but he was well-trained in higher mathematics; the calculation of probabilities was something he understood. HOW MANY INPUT VARIABLES ARE INVOLVED? he ventured.

THE ENTIRE GENOTYPE OF BOTH PARENTS MAY BE RELEVANT. THE PROGRAM CAN DETERMINE SIGNIFICANT VARIABLES FROM THAT, PLUS CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SUBSTANCE IN QUESTION AND ITS TIME OF CONSUMPTION. THERE MAY BE OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES ALSO.

Genotype? He did not know the word; fortunately computer programs were patient with stupid questions. DEFINE GENOTYPE, he commanded.

GENOTYPE IS THE GENETIC MAKEUP OF AN INDIVIDUAL ORGANISM, THE SPECIFIC SET OF GENES IN ITS CELLS.

HOW LARGE IS THE SET IN HUMANS? Noren inquired, thinking that perhaps some doctor would help him list his own genes in a form suitable for input. Incredibly, he found himself staring at a six-digit figure.

THAT IS THE NUMBER OF GENES THAT MAY VARY? he asked in disbelief.

IT IS THE NUMBER WITH WHICH THE PROGRAM DEALS. THE SET IS LARGER, BUT SOME GENES ARE REDUNDANT OR OF UNKNOWN FUNCTION.

No wonder the Scholars hadn’t devoted time to studying the field, thought Noren. Genetics must be as complicated as nuclear physics. And surely even a knowledgeable person couldn’t key in that many separate bits of data; it would tie up a console for weeks.

WHAT IS THE INPUT FORMAT FOR GENOTYPE? he queried.

THE ANALYSIS CAN BE MADE DIRECTLY FROM A BLOOD SAMPLE THROUGH THE USE OF AUXILIARY INPUT EQUIPMENT.

Did such equipment still exist? It must; the Founders had been careful to write the program in a way compatible with the facilities preserved for their descendants. So his own genotype could evidently be analyzed. For Talyra’s, it was too late. If he had known before her body was sent to the converters. . . Perhaps it was best that he had not, that he could obtain no real estimate of the odds, for they would not be zero, and they might prove conclusively that having a child under other circumstances wouldn’t have been fatal.

Yet he could not just drop the matter. It happens, Beris had said. Occasionally it happens with a girl who seems healthy. Generations of women had accepted that, when all along the computers had been able to calculate probabilities in specific cases! Why had the Founders made no mention of this in the High Law, which explicitly mandated use of all other existing life-support technologies?

Because, he saw, it would not fit the High Law’s purpose. The original population of the colony had been dangerously small, so small that maximum increase had been deemed desirable even though it would hasten the depletion of resources. Thus for survival’s sake the High Law encouraged childbearing; it forbade all contraception, not only the drugs that couldn’t be manufactured with available resources. There was no longer need for such a prohibition—any decent couple would be outraged at the mere thought of the things Scholars knew about from the old records. He himself had been more shocked by them than by the literal meaning behind the phrases referring to disposition of bodies. But this hadn’t been true in the Founders’ time. The Founders had grown up in a society where overpopulation was a serious problem; they had considered it natural and even admirable to limit births. They’d assumed that if people went on computing the odds of trouble when medical facilities were inadequate, no one would take any risk at all.

Yet . . . there were nevertheless perplexities. Why, for instance, had he come upon this knowledge only through purposeful inquiry? Basic information about human reproduction was not obscure, and the sexual customs of the Six Worlds were known to any Scholar familiar with material about the vanished culture; there were allusions to them even in dreams. Scientific details, on the other hand—and especially those related to genetics—received practically no mention. It was almost as if references to the topic had been deliberately omitted from the reading matter of the Scholars themselves. And that was strange. Not only was access to knowledge supposed to be unrestricted, but genetics was the very thing most pertinent to understanding of the alien world’s limitations.

Guardianship of the City was justifiable only because it was the sole alternative to genetic damage: so the Founders had believed, so all Scholars since had agreed. There was no question about this fact. But why was it thought sufficient to know that it was true if the computers had detailed information about why it was true, about the biological mechanism that produced the damage? And why hadn’t the First Scholar’s recorded thoughts dealt with the subject more fully?

Having raised these issues, Noren could not fail to pursue them; it was not in him to let such things ride. CAN THE PROBABLE CAUSE OF THE MOTHER’S DEATH BE ESTIMATED WITHOUT HER GENOTYPE? he asked.

NOT ACCURATELY. A ROUGH APPROXIMATION CAN BE MADE.

That was better than nothing. SHE CONSUMED UNPURIFIED WATER, he keyed. FOR CHEMICAL ANALYSIS REFER TO MEMORY. The computers had more information about what was in it than he did, after all.

AMOUNT AND TIME OF CONSUMPTION?

MINIMUM DAILY RATION, FIRST SIX DAYS OF PREGNANCY OR LESS.

FOOD DURING THIS PERIOD?

NONE AT ALL. They had agreed to starve—there’d been no safe food, so he, Brek and Talyra had calmly discussed it and decided that starvation would be preferable to an adaptation that would lead to production of subhuman offspring. Had she even then been carrying a defective baby?

QUALITY OF PRENATAL MEDICAL CARE?

Again, NONE.

ANY EXPOSURE TO RADIATION?

No, Talyra hadn’t entered the power plant; and though he himself had worked both there and in nuclear research labs, any failure of the shielding would have been detected. No case of radiation exposure had occurred since the accident that had killed Stefred’s wife. But wait . . . radiation?

There had been the mystifying radiation given off by the alien sphere.

It had brought about their rescue. They’d found the little sphere in the mountains, an artifact from some other solar system, long ago abandoned by the mysterious Visitors who’d mined and depleted this planet’s scant metal resources before humans from the Six Worlds had arrived. He had manipulated it, made it radiate—an alarm had been triggered in the monitoring section of the computer complex. Thus an aircar had been sent out from the City and had located them. But he’d been unable to walk after retrieving the sphere from the rock niche where it had lain; it had been Talyra who, at his instructions, had carried it to the open plateau and turned it on.

Since then, the sphere had been studied at the research outpost. It had been pronounced harmless; the radiation it emitted was of a previously unknown sort and no one could tell what it was for, but it didn’t seem to hurt anybody. It caused no mutations in fowl, the only creatures available to test it on. There were no facilities for taking it apart or attempting its duplication, but as the only artifact of the Visitors ever discovered, it had been observed with great fascination by the few Scholars fortunate enough to draw duty at the newly built outpost. Were any of those Scholars pregnant? One thing was sure—no woman who’d touched the sphere as early in pregnancy as Talyra could yet have given birth, for Talyra had been the first.

CAN TERATOGENIC DAMAGE BE CAUSED BY RADIATION HARMLESS TO ADULTS? Noren asked.

YES.

BY THE UNKNOWN RADIATION THAT LAST YEAR TRIGGERED AN ALARM?

INSUFFICIENT DATA, replied the screen tersely. That was what it always said when one asked a question for which the programmers hadn’t had an answer.

Noren dropped his head, burying his face in his folded arms. He was indeed responsible, he thought despairingly—for the child’s death and no doubt Talyra’s also, for would it not be too great a coincidence if she’d died of some other cause? As a scientist, he could see that there was no conclusive proof. But how could he ever, in the face of so many suspicious factors, believe otherwise?

And for how many more deaths might he become responsible, if women at the outpost now carried unborn children damaged by the sphere?

It would have been better not to have found it. It would have been better if they had died in the mountains, as they’d expected they would. Yet Talyra had viewed its discovery as a confirmation of her faith. She’d believed the spirit of the Mother Star would guard them, and in her eyes it had—they had been led to an utterly unpredictable deliverance, as the Prophecy proclaimed would someday happen for their whole race. Though our peril be great even unto the last generation of our endurance, in the end humankind shall prevail; and the doors of the universe shall once again be thrown open. . . . On the basis of the analogy, he had accepted priesthood. So great an irony as that was past bearing. . . .

No. The whole chain of events had begun with his unwillingness to live with his own failings; he would not make the same mistake twice. Wearily, Noren sat upright once more and went on questioning.