Chapter Four

The outer city, except for the dome containing the power plant, was normally off limits to Scholars, certainly to Scholars young enough to be recognized by Technicians as former heretics. For those who’d grown up there and were known, like Brek and Beris, there could be no exceptions; it was lucky, Noren thought, that the task of finding the secret recording hadn’t fallen to one of them. He himself took little risk. In the oldest dome, which was partitioned into areas for what few pieces of manufacturing equipment existed in the world, he would not even attract much attention. To go there was a violation of policy, but priests were expected to evaluate policy in the light of circumstances. He did not need to ask anyone’s permission.

But he would have to go robed. That fundamental rule couldn’t he set aside. Only Inner City Technicians knew that Scholars were ordinary mortals; the Outer City ones viewed them as villagers did. As a small boy, Noren had assumed they wore only robes, with no clothes underneath! Thinking them ageless and sexless, it had not occurred to him to wonder if they ever took them off. He’d devoted some thought to this later, to be sure, but it was one of his more heretical speculations—his mother would have labeled it blasphemy.

He carried the blue robe, folded, from his room to the gates of the exit dome. Then, passing through them into the corridor that led to the City’s main Gates, he slipped it on and secured the fastenings. Never before had he appeared robed to anyone but Inner City people, and it was not a milestone he looked forward to. Ceremonial appearances, on the platform outside the Gates or in audience chambers, were demanded only of older Scholars. He’d rather hoped, as did many young initiates, that a research breakthrough would make it possible to eliminate the caste system before he got that old. Was this now conceivable, perhaps, if research in genetics could bring about long-term survival?

Though he hadn’t explored the Outer City, he had studied a map. A corridor intersecting the one to the Gates connected the domes in the ring, which had no openings to the Inner City courtyard they enclosed. The oldest dome, the one built before the Founding, was adjacent to the one he’d first entered. It was silent there; work did not begin this soon after dawn. But Technicians were on duty in the radiophone room. All the villages had radiophone links to the City, not only for the transaction of routine business, but for requesting emergency medical aid. Noren thought back to the night when he himself had been viewed with awe by a village radiophonist simply for managing, to his own surprise, to replace a dead power cell. How long ago that seemed!

He stepped into the compartment and resolutely approached the main control board. The man and woman sitting there rose from their chairs and, turning to him in deference, they knelt.

Noren froze. He had known, of course, that it would happen, but he’d not let himself remember. It was so wrong. . . .

Wrong, but necessary—as his abhorrence of it, too, was necessary. He was not supposed to enjoy it. Anybody who might enjoy it would have been screened out during the inquisition Scholar candidates underwent. The blue robe helped, at least. The robes were identical; they, not their wearers, inspired reverence. To these Technicians he was not a man, but a symbol. He was not receiving personal homage. A High Priest does not receive, Stefred had assured him. He gives. . . .

“May the spirit of the Star be with you,” he said quietly. “Please return to your duties; I only wish to inspect the equipment.”

He walked around the control board, which was set out from the wall; behind it were cabinets, and one did indeed have a combination lock. Rapidly he opened it, feeling awe at the thought that the last fingers to touch it had been those of the First Scholar, generations ago. There was no dust in the domes, for prolonged exposure to the planet’s atmosphere was corrosive to most Six Worlds alloys and the air was therefore filtered. No Technician would have questioned the strange device, any more than the two now present questioned his need to inspect it. The panel swung open. Noren removed a sealed plastic container and re-locked the cache.

As he returned to the corridor, he found he was shaking less from possession of a sacred relic than from the turmoil that the kneeling of the Technicians had stirred in him. Necessary, yes . . . but it should not have to be! The First Scholar would not have designed it, given choice! If by genetic change people could be enabled to live without the City, he would not have perpetuated the caste system any longer than was necessary to effect such change—even if it meant the City’s ultimate destruction. Even if it meant loss of the computers’ knowledge. And he, Noren, could not do so either, he thought in agony. Would the recording he now carried give him power to abolish the castes, power that for some reason hadn’t been available to the First Scholar?

He had been psychologically tested. He had been warned of difficulties past imagining. And it had been made clear that for the recording to fall into the wrong hands would be disastrous. Abruptly, Noren saw what might lie beneath these measures.

All Scholars were trustworthy; the selection process ensured that. All were honest. But they did not all agree on matters of policy . . . and to eliminate need for the City would not only cause knowledge to be lost, but would leave the Prophecy unfulfilled. Priesthood meant affirmation of the Prophecy. If its promises came into conflict with the more basic issue of human survival . . .

He held the recording under the folds of his robe, wishing there were a duplicate copy back in the cache.

For the present, the big problem was how to experience the dream secretly. Thought recordings weren’t private property, and they were not carried around; he couldn’t simply walk into the dream room and hand it to the person on duty. Nor did he know how to operate the Dream Machine himself, even if it should be unattended long enough. And it wouldn’t be. He might have to wait weeks for a time slot without priority authorization from Stefred—yet he could not tell Stefred, excited though Stefred would be by an ancient recording’s discovery.

It was still early; the past night’s scheduled dreamer might just be waking. Right now would be best! The prospect of prolonged delay was more than Noren could stand. Stefred wouldn’t be around at this hour when he wasn’t working with a candidate. Who would be?

Lianne, probably. All at once he recalled Stefred’s words: Lianne owes a great deal to you, Noren. She has said so. And Lianne was so new at the job that she might not know that such a request was unprecedented. Even if she did realize, somehow he knew she wouldn’t feel bound by the rule book . . . not Lianne. She was too mysterious a person to refuse involvement in further mystery.

His pace quickened as he crossed the Inner City courtyard, his priest’s robe once again folded over his arm. The upper level of the Hall of Scholars was deserted; most people were at breakfast. Noren had no appetite, nor did he feel lethargic from lack of sleep—which was fortunate, he thought with detachment, since the coming sleep of controlled dreaming would be anything but restful.

Lianne was in the dreamer’s chair, the headband nearly covering her cropped curls. At first, thinking her unconscious, he turned away in disappointment. Then to his astonishment she sat upright, smiling not only with recognition but with welcome. She reached out for the switch on the panel beside her; a blue light turned to yellow.

Noren stared at her. “You were getting input while you were awake?” Stefred could do that; it was a step in the editing process and must also have been done by his professional predecessors. Not by other people, however.

“Just sampling the library. There are so many dreams I want to experience, and not nearly enough time—I was trying to choose one.”

“For your next scheduled session, you mean?”

“It’s this morning. There’s no one else due until noon.”

Then he must take a quick plunge. “Lianne,” he asked bluntly, “can you keep a secret?”

Her smile became unreadable. “I’m rather good at that, actually.”

“Even from Stefred?” Too late, he recalled that Stefred was attracted to this woman and that weeks had passed since his professional relationship to her had ended; conceivably they were already lovers.

No hint of that showed in her expression. “Especially from Stefred,” she told him. “Because I’ve had practice.” She raised the reclining chair and removed the wired band from her head. “It’s hard, isn’t it, with Stefred—once you know him well, you want to tell him everything. But when you’ve an earlier commitment to keep quiet—”

“A commitment to other heretics?” It was the only thing he could imagine a candidate being obliged to conceal, and he had been told she’d concealed a great deal during her inquisition. “Stefred doesn’t probe for that. He wouldn’t want you to betray anyone’s confidence. At the beginning, though, when he’s testing you, he lets you worry about it.”

“Stefred and I understand each other,” Lianne agreed. “He knows I’ve kept something from him, yet he’s never tried to pry it out of me. I’m told past lives aren’t mentioned in the City. I suppose everyone must be curious about mine.”

“Well, we’re human. And there were rumors about your reaction to the dreams, so that when you chose to work here, despite how bad it had been for you at first—”

“But you’ve all experienced them; you know . . . oh, maybe you don’t. You, though, Noren—” She broke off, embarrassed. “I guess I’ve heard rumors, too.”

“What rumors?”

“That you’re a lot like the First Scholar.”

“You mean because I’m supposed to turn into some sort of scientific genius? That isn’t going to happen, Lianne. Oh, I’ll work toward it, but I’m not going to come up with any radical new nuclear theory; it’s not possible.” This was the sort of thing he’d resolved not to say to people, but with the situation now about to change . . .

Surprisingly, Lianne didn’t argue. “I’m not talking about what you’ll accomplish. I meant outlook, strength—knowing life’s not as simple as most people try to make it. That sort of likeness.”

“I didn’t realize there were any rumors about that. Stefred knows, but he wouldn’t talk about me that way.”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “He wouldn’t—he hasn’t! I suppose it . . . it must be what he calls my gift of empathy.”

“Empathy?”

“Sensing people’s feelings. That’s why he’s training me in psychiatry.” She caught his wordless surprise and went on, “You didn’t know? Of course not, most of the women who take shifts in the dream room aren’t his personal students, they’re just temporary assistants. I’m to study medicine and psychology, help with interviewing and so forth.”

“I didn’t know Stefred wanted any help.”

“Noren—I’m a lot younger than he is. Someday he’ll have to choose a successor. He’s waited—”

“For someone with the right talents. I see.” I see more than she’s saying, he thought.

Though he had not spoken this aloud, she blushed. “Maybe you’ve heard—other things. They’re not true. It’s not that I don’t like Stefred, I do! He’s one of the most admirable men I’ve ever known. I’m truly sorry I can’t feel as he wishes I did. When he asked me to marry him, though, I had to say no. I don’t plan ever to marry.”

How sad, Noren thought, for both of them. She must have loved someone in the village, someone she’d never see again. “You’re being trained as Stefred’s heir,” he said slowly, “and you know he wants to marry you—yet still you keep secrets from him?”

“I told you, he’s aware of that.”

“All the same, I shouldn’t have come to you with mine.”

“Is it against Stefred’s best interests?”

“No. No, it’s more like what you said—a prior commitment. A—a higher loyalty, if you like. But he’d give almost anything, personally, to know it.”

“He’d feel that way about some of my secrets, too. That’s why it hurts to keep them.” Beyond doubt she was sincere; Noren perceived that it hurt her with an intensity he couldn’t account for.

“I can’t tell you everything,” he began, wondering why he dared tell her anything at all. “I never planned to; I thought you’d be too inexperienced to realize how much I was holding back. I see you aren’t. But if you’re willing to be stuck with something else that’ll be hard to hide—”

“For you, I’m willing,” she said softly, again averting her eyes.

He pulled the recording from his tunic. “I’m not free to say where I got this,” he declared, “and I can’t pretend it’s normal for me to be carrying it around. But it’s a dream I have to go through. Soon.”

She took the container and broke the seal to examine the cylinder within. “How long is it?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“You haven’t experienced it before, then.”

“I’m not even sure what’s in it, except that it’s—significant.”

She studied him, once more seeming to grasp thoughts he hadn’t expressed. “You’ve got mixed feelings. Is there any chance it needs monitoring?” At his hesitation she added firmly, “I have to know.”

“I suppose you do. It’s not fair not to warn you that we could run into trouble. It—it’s probably pretty nightmarish, Lianne. Theoretically I guess it should be monitored. That’s one reason I can’t let Stefred find out; he knows me so well that if he was monitoring, he’d see it’s too important a thing for me to keep to myself. In fact under hypnosis I might talk freely to him—it’s something I’ve no deep determination to hide.”

“So you were going to just give it to one of the untrained assistants, have her put you under and close the door on you as if it were a sightseeing tour of the Six Worlds?”

“I hadn’t any choice.”

Lianne frowned. “Are you sure this was prepared by someone qualified, that it’s not raw thoughts of a person who might have been emotionally disturbed?”

“Absolutely. Whatever strong emotions are in it are there for a purpose.” In desperation he added, “Look, I wish I could explain more, but I’m bound, and I—I have to do this.”

“I believe you. But you don’t have to do it without monitoring.” As he drew breath to protest, she rose from the chair and inserted the cylinder into the machine. Her back to him, she said, “Noren, you’re trusting me awfully far. I could do more than tell Stefred, you know. I could copy this while it’s running and experience it later myself.”

Appalled, he could do no more than stand silent. He had not known the equipment well enough to foresee that possibility.

Lianne turned to face him. “I won’t, of course—which you realize, or you’d be calling this session off. So get into the chair.”

He obeyed, discovering that now that the moment was upon him, he was terrified. The First Scholar had warned that this dream might not be harmless.

“We’re going to have to trust each other,” Lianne said quietly. “I won’t tell Stefred—and you mustn’t tell him that I know more skills than he’s taught me.” She tilted the chair all the way back and then with quick, deft fingers she unfastened Noren’s tunic and began taping monitor electrodes to his chest.

“Lianne, how can you possibly—”

“Know how to monitor? That’s like asking you how you got hold of a recording with a seal that’s been intact since before your grandparents were born.”

He remained silent as she adjusted the band to his head. “I didn’t have to be so honest with you,” she pointed out. “I could have attached the monitors after you were asleep. But you’re too tired to be plunged into this without deep sedation; I’ll bet you haven’t closed your eyes since the night before last. I’m going to put you into trance, and for that, you’ve got to trust me completely. You’ve got to know I’m hiding no more than I’m required to hide—and that I’m competent.”

“Stefred hasn’t taught you deep trance techniques yet, either.”

“Hardly.” Her voice was even, yet somehow reassuring. “Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time I’ve used them. And there’s something else we need to consider. If you fear you might speak openly to Stefred under hypnosis, you might to me. I won’t probe, but if you talk freely—”

“You wouldn’t understand enough of it to matter.” He looked up into her face and then murmured, “Or would you?”

“It depends on what you mean by ‘matter.’ You say you’ve no underlying determination to hide the dream content, yet you were ready to risk physical shock rather than confide in Stefred.”

“Well . . . Lianne, it’s not just a—a personal thing. Stefred couldn’t treat it as a medical confidence. It may be relevant to fulfilling the Prophecy, so he’d be obligated to tell the whole Council.”

“I’m not bound to that yet. I haven’t assumed priesthood.” She appraised him thoughtfully. “But you have.”

“Yes.” He saw that he would have to say more. “If a person’s been given cause to suspect a conflict could arise between fulfilling the Prophecy and following the First Scholar’s plans, what should he do?”

“In your place,” she declared, “I’d be sure I knew all the facts before getting the Council involved. And Stefred is one of its senior members.”

Noren didn’t answer her. Lying still for the first time since last night’s inspiration, he found his mind beginning to drift. It touched questions he’d overlooked before. Genetic alteration of humans . . . but how? The analysis and modification of genetic material itself was something he’d studied; it would surely work with human cells as well as animal ones. But how would that help? The work-beast modification had been done on embryos. There’d been no room aboard the starships for animals; the embryos had been transported in test tubes. They had in fact been conceived in test tubes on the Six Worlds: an agricultural technique he had read about. Such a thing could hardly be arranged with humans, even if people would tolerate the idea of it, which of course they would not. There was only one way of conceiving babies, after all; the mere suggestion of interference would be indecent . . . and besides, there just wasn’t any means by which. . .

He felt his face grow hot. Lianne was bending over him; he caught sight of a monitor light flashing red. It was a good thing her “gift of empathy” didn’t extend to the actual reading of minds.

“I’ll put you in trance, now,” Lianne said. “I won’t use quite the routine you’re used to, but it’ll work the same if you want it to.” As her hand closed on his she added seriously, “Being scared of the dream is all right. But you mustn’t be nervous about me. I understand all kinds of feelings. I suppose you don’t expect that from women, even Scholar women.”

“Old ones, maybe, who’ve been priests for a long time.”

“But the young ones, scientists or not, are still influenced by village customs. Noren, I’ve never thought the way the villagers do.”

“Of course not. You became a heretic.”

“I don’t mean just that.”

An idea came to him. “Were you accused of witchcraft?” That could explain a lot. Most alleged witches, village women reputed to have strange powers, were innocent of real heresy and were given Technician status if condemned and delivered to the City; but there were occasional exceptions. And according to Stefred, some witch-women did use hypnosis.

Lianne laughed. “Witchcraft? No, but I probably would have been if people had known more about me. I’m—different. I can’t pretend not to be.”

“I used to feel that way myself, sometimes. As if I belonged in some other world.”

Very quietly she said, “That’s a good way to describe it.”

“I think if I’d heard then about the Visitors, the aliens who left the sphere we found in the mountains. . . Do you know about that, yet?”

“Yes,” Lianne said. “I do. I’d like you to tell me more, though, Noren . . . only first you need to sleep. . . .

She was skillful; he didn’t have time for apprehension.

*  *  *

As in the other dreams, he was the First Scholar, but retained consciousness of his own identity. He was standing in a wide space within the inner courtyard of the City—it was a time when not all the towers had been erected, so he knew it was some years before the end of the First Scholar’s life. The images of the dream, having been recorded as a long-ago memory, were less clear than in most. But the emotions were strong. Though he could not yet comprehend them, Noren was immediately aware that these were the undefined emotions of his nightmare.

Reaching out as he’d learned to do, he found he could gain no quick understanding of his situation. It was like his first experience in controlled dreaming, when he’d lacked the background to interpret what came into his mind, when he had sensed only that the First Scholar’s underlying thoughts were acutely painful. He would not grasp what was happening till he heard words spoken by himself and people around him; he must confront it one step at a time.

And the feelings were worse than those in the earlier controlled dreams. There was horror of a different sort from the horror he’d felt while watching the nova, or during the Founders’ reluctant seizure of power. Then, he had been horrified by things outside himself. Even while letting the village people think him a dictator, he’d known that he was not what he was forced to seem and that he was not going to hurt anybody. Now he knew the course he planned might bring someone harm. Indeed, it might bring harm to one intimately close to him. . . .

“It is unthinkable,” said the man who stood beside him.

“So was our sealing of the City,” Noren replied. “That went against all our ethical principles, too.”

“Yes, but we had no choice. There was no other chance for human survival,” the man replied. The personalities of the First Scholar’s companions were dim in the dreams, for he’d focused not on them, but on issues, in recording his memories for posterity. Noren was aware, however, that this man was one of his best friends—they were discussing something that to the Founders as a group would he unmentionable. “We supported you,” the friend continued, “because you convinced us that without preservation of the City, our grandchildren’s generation would be subhuman. It’s presumptuous to tell you that my conscience bears a heavy load. I know yours bears more than mine, and that you suffer from it. I will simply say I cannot bear a heavier load than I now carry—nor can any of us. We could not violate ourselves as you ask even if we saw justification.”

“Do you not see it? Death of our human race will be just as bad generations from now as it would be for our grandchildren.”

“Will be? Generations from now, a way to synthesize metal will have been found! The technology can be maintained indefinitely then. The City will be thrown open, and more cities will be built. That’s your own plan; you’ve made us believe in it—”

“It is my hope,” said Noren in a low voice. “And I have planned for its fulfillment. But it is not sure.” With dismay he realized, as himself, that the First Scholar had never been sure! In the full version of the officially-preserved dreams, he had experienced these doubts and the despair to which they led; but there had been editing, the First Scholar’s own editing, still. What he was feeling now had been removed. This was not just discouragement, not just lack of proof that synthesization of metal could be achieved. It was rationally based pessimism akin to what he, Noren, had developed later, when there’d been many years of unsuccessful experiments. From the beginning the true odds against success had been concealed.

“Think,” he found himself saying as the First Scholar. “There are avenues our descendants can try; nuclear fusion may indeed prove the key to artificial production of metallic elements. But what if it’s inherently impossible to do it that way? No doubt metal can be synthesized, but a likelier route to that goal would be a unified field theory—a way to transform energy directly into matter. You know that as well as I do.”

“If nuclear fusion won’t work, the unified field theory will be developed. Past physicists have failed, yes, but they never gave it top priority, as our successors will.”

“There won’t be the facilities to develop a unified field theory, let alone test it,” stated Noren bluntly. “If that weren’t so, I’d have taken that route to begin with. But it would demand an accelerator larger than the City’s circumference, containing more metal than we’ve got tied up in the life-support equipment. You’d know that, too, if you weren’t afraid to think it through.”

“You’re treading on dangerous ground,” replied his companion, after a short pause. “You’re coming close to telling me that we have sacrificed peace of conscience in a futile cause, that those who died aboard the starships—your wife, for instance—were perhaps wiser than we were.”

“No! There is a chance for survival in what we’re doing; otherwise there’d be no chance at all.”

“That’s not good enough. Most of us couldn’t live under this much stress without full belief in the goal.”

“I know,” agreed Noren. “That’s why I’m approaching people individually with the alternate one.”

“Oh? I assumed it was because you have the decency not to discuss obscenities in front of the women.”

“I have approached some women,” he replied quietly. “This thing is not obscene. You are too blinded by tradition to be objective. The Six Worlds are gone, now. A taboo on human genetic research should never have existed even there—but here, it is as meaningless and fatal as our taboo against drinking unpurified water would have been on our native planet.”

“That may be true. Yet I tell you I’d risk extinction rather than experiment with the genes of my unborn children, and I don’t think you’ll get any different reaction from the others.”

“I know that, too,” Noren confessed. “You are the last person on my list, and it’s true that the rest reacted as you did. All except . . . one.”

He, the First Scholar, allowed the memory to surface, and as Noren he accepted it, letting the despair engulf him. Only one supporter . . . just one whose intelligence, whose natural faith in the future, overrode the conditioning of her rearing—and perhaps it was for his sake that she’d opened her mind. Why should she bear the whole burden, she for whom he cared more than anyone else in the whole City?

Dimly, in the part of himself that was Noren, he felt surprise. The First Scholar had not remarried in all the years he’d lived after the death of his wife. There were no thoughts of love in any of the other dreams. It was a thing many Scholars had found strange—no grief for his wife remained in the later recordings, and his own plans for the new culture encouraged the production of offspring. It was odd that he had not set an example, for in all other ways he had lived by the precepts of the High Law he’d designed. Now, the thoughts coming into his mind made plain that far more editing had been done in the official record than anyone had guessed.

But though they were thoughts of love, they were not happy thoughts. The recording, of course, had been made many years after the events with which it dealt. The mental discipline required to make such a recording, keeping later emotions below the surface, must have been tremendous. Noren perceived that the First Scholar had not wholly succeeded—the horror of his feelings was not all apprehension; there was recollection involved also. In the dream it was like precognition. Terror began to rise in him. He was doomed to proceed step by step toward disaster.

“You acknowledge, then, that we must continue as we’ve started?” asked his friend.

“Yes,” he agreed shortly. He had approached only the people he felt might be receptive to an even more drastic plan than the one he’d originally set in motion. They had rejected it. He’d foreseen that they would, but he had been obliged to try. There was no further step he could take to win open support. He must pursue the alternate course in secret, since he was unwilling to let future survival rest on the nuclear fusion work alone.

Yet there was risk. If anyone found out what he was doing, he would lose his place of leadership. His companions had accepted much from him, but for this, they would despise him and would vote him down. Even the original plan would then be doomed, for there were steps in it he had not confided to the others. There was the matter of his calculated martyrdom, which would ultimately be necessary in order to win the enduring allegiance both of the villagers and of the City’s future stewards. Without it, there would eventually be fighting. Those who told him no such system as he’d established could last without bloodshed were right; they did not guess that he knew this, and that he expected the blood to be his own. But it would not work unless he retained leadership until the time for it was ripe.

Was he to die for nothing in the end? He was willing to die, but not without the belief that future generations would live. Synthesization of metal would save them, but it was by no means the most promising way to do so. He’d realized that from the start, though he’d edited this realization from the thought recordings. The recordings weren’t for posterity alone. They were experienced as dreams by his fellow Founders, and there was too much peril in confronting his contemporaries either with doubt about metal synthesization or with its alternative.

Genetic engineering . . . the mere mention of it was branded as obscenity! The taboo was so strong that the way out of the survival problem had not even occurred to the biologists who’d worked on the animal embryos brought for beasts of burden. They’d genetically modified them to accept a diet of native vegetation, yet had never reasoned that the same principle might work on human beings.

As things stood, the human race could never adapt biologically to the native environment. The damaging substance in the water and soil would result in offspring of subhuman mentality; within a generation there would be no human beings left. But it was so needless! A simple genetic alteration to permit the alien substance to be metabolized, and the damage would no longer occur. It would not have to be done in any generation but the present one, for the alteration, once made, would be inherited. Water and soil purification would never again be necessary.

There would be a price, oh, yes—a terrible price. The City’s technology would be permanently lost. The technology couldn’t be maintained without the caste system, and the caste system was justifiable only because there was no way of surviving without it. Once people could drink unpurified water and eat native plants, the City must be thrown open. Its resources would be used up quickly, for they must be equally shared among members of present generations instead of being preserved for future ones. Some metal must be diverted to farming and craft tools. The research could not continue long; it would be doomed to fail even if metal synthesization was theoretically possible. Once the machines wore out, no more could ever be built.

This prospect, to him, was a grief beyond measure—yet as the price of ultimate human survival, of a free and open society that could survive, it would be endurable. Some might disagree. But so far, they were not even considering that issue. They could not look far enough ahead to confront it, so great was the taboo on human genetic engineering itself.

The Six Worlds, long before the invention of the stardrive, had banned all research into modification of human genes. All forms of interference with procreation, in fact, had become anathema once sure contraceptive drugs had been perfected. Medically assisted conception had been abandoned as contrary to the public interest. It had been declared that human reproduction was not the business of science.

To be sure, there had been legitimate worries about abuse. There had been all too strong a chance that governments would try, by any scientific means that existed, to control people. Agricultural genetic engineering techniques had been discovered while the mother world’s governments were still primitive and corrupt. Use of such techniques on humans was indeed a potential that might have been misused.

Ironically, however, justified fears of abuse had been magnified into distorted ones. Genetic engineering would have been no more dangerous than other scientific capabilities that could be used wrongly—but there had been political opposition to it. It was known, for instance, that it might lead not only to misuse, but to elimination of genetic disease and to longer lifespan. Such benefits had been less well publicized than the dangers. The Six Worlds’ governments had not wanted to spend money on the research that could lead to starships, and they had not liked the thought of people traveling to other solar systems beyond their control; so they’d encouraged the notion that it was wise to ban anything that might ultimately result in a population increase.

By the time interstellar travel became a reality—just in time, as it turned out, to save one small colony from the nova—human genetic engineering was a forgotten concept. People had been conditioned to believe that application of science to alteration of human genes, unlike all other medical science, was somehow “unnatural.” Perhaps, eventually, this might have changed. But the discovery of the impending nova had come . . . and it was too late to regain the lost ground.

If it had not been for the ban, specific techniques for genetically adapting to the alien world would have been already available, even routine—he had known this when he received the mandate to lead the final expedition. He had known when he made his plans that if his ancestors had not restricted freedom of research, those plans would not have been necessary. There would have been no need to establish the caste system in the new world at all.

Noren, absorbing this thought, grew cold with the dismay of it. The Founders and all generations since had upheld a system they knew was evil, supposing that the necessity for it was an unavoidable quirk of fate. No one could have prevented the destruction of the Six Worlds. No one could have made the new world different. But if the Six Worlds had not taken a wrong turning, if people there had been allowed to pursue knowledge freely as he himself had always believed it should be pursued, the evil could have been avoided! And the First Scholar knew. No wonder he’d kept this particular recording hidden.

But there were worse things in it than the pain of knowing what might have been. The First Scholar wouldn’t have used a dream instead of a computerized text if all he’d had to present was Six Worlds’ history. What had happened so far was only background. . . .

The scene shifted, as happens in dreams, and he soon realized that there was a shift of time as well as scene. It came to him that several recordings had been spliced. Episodes that would normally be separate dreams were to be experienced in unbroken sequence, without intervening rest periods, without time to think and adjust. For the first time in controlled dreaming, Noren found himself fighting to be free of an experience he did not wish to share. He had been warned that he would be placed under great stress; still he had not expected to be as afraid as this . . . not when there was no physical danger. How could he feel such dread, such revulsion, when neither he nor the First Scholar believed genetic change to be wrong?

Resolutely he willed to surrender. His own identity was primary now, and with a corner of his mind he remembered, thankfully, that Lianne was monitoring the safety of his sleeping body. Unaccountably, he saw an image of her face: a pale oval framed with white curls, eyes searching him. Then he was caught up again in the mind and body of the First Scholar.

He was with Talyra. He was happy—he could not think beyond that. The future did not matter while he was with her. . . .

It was not Talyra, of course, but the woman the First Scholar had loved. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he became aware that be had not seen her at all in the dream—he had experienced only feelings. He, Noren, could not associate such feelings with anyone but Talyra, but as the First Scholar they’d been aroused in him by the woman now at his side. Since the recording contained no pictures, her form was dim; but from his thoughts he knew that she was beautiful and good and that she was the most important person in his life.

“We are committed now,” she said, her voice trembling a little.

“Are you afraid?”

“Not for myself. Not even for you, though you’ve risked the most; you chose to take the chance. But the child—”

“I know,” he replied grimly. “The child didn’t choose. Yet there’s no other way.”

“It has to be tried,” she agreed. “We owe it to the generations who’ll come after us.”

“To those that might not come after us if we fail to try.”

“Yes. Still, I don’t feel good about it. I never will.”

“We’ve done the best thing,” he said reassuringly, although he did not feel good about it either. Gradually, Noren perceived that “we” referred not to the Founders as a group, as it usually did in the dreams, but to himself and this woman alone. And he knew what they had done.

She was a geneticist, one of those who’d worked on the modification of the work-beast embryos. Secretly, with the aid of the computers, she had determined what alteration of human genes would be needed to enable people to drink unpurified water. But of course, she could not modify human embryos in the same way she’d done the animal ones; that would indeed be unthinkable, and it would not be practical in any case. In humans, the genetic modification must be made in adults, made in such a way that it would be inherited by their children. The concept wasn’t new—on the Six Worlds, some genetic work with animals had been done in that way. Genes of adults could indeed be changed.

But it had never been tried on humans before.

So again they must accept an evil that, except for the ban on human genetic research, could have been prevented. On the Six Worlds, far more animal tests would have been done before such a technique was considered ready for human testing. But in the new world no biologically similar animals existed. All medical tests must be done on human volunteers. She had wanted to try it on herself, to alter her own genes. He, the First Scholar, hadn’t let her do that. His unwillingness to expose her to such a risk had not been what had convinced her; in the end, he’d argued that she was young enough to have other babies and that the colony needed children. If the test should fail, the person on whom it was done could have no more offspring. It was better for that person to be a man. He had persuaded her to try the genetic alteration on him.

That did not mean she took no personal risk, however, for it was she who would bear the child. And the child might not be normal. They knew that; they knew they were experimenting with a human being who’d been given no choice. They hated themselves for it. The child might be mutant . . . the horror of that engulfed Noren. He saw again the image of the mutant child that had appeared in his nightmare. . . .

This, of course, must come from his own mind. Reaching for the First Scholar’s thought, he was aware that unlike himself, the First Scholar hadn’t actually seen any mutants of the sort that later inhabited the mountains. He knew the result of drinking unpurified water only from the record of what had happened to the planet’s first explorers. He, too, felt horror, but it did not come from personal experience, at least this recorded memory included no such experience. There was a—a foreboding, somehow. . . .

Perhaps it was only fear. He had drunk the water on purpose. He’d had to; there was no other way to test the genetic alteration. That alteration had been made in his body—it had been done with a vaccine—and then he had deliberately drunk more unpurified water than was considered safe. Theoretically, the genetic alteration made it safe: his body should now be able to metabolize the damaging substance in the water. His genes should not have been damaged by drinking. But how had he found the courage to put such a thing to the test?

He wondered. Even as the First Scholar he wondered. Now that it was too late to turn back, he did not feel courageous at all.

“What will we do if . . .?” the woman questioned, not for the first time.

“We will face that if we must,” he told her. “Don’t worry now. There’s no point in worrying before the child is born.”

There was no way of knowing beforehand if the water had damaged his genes; the computer system was not yet programmed for the sperm tests routine in Noren’s own time. The two of them must simply wait. For her, he felt, that would be even harder than for him—to know the child she’d conceived might be a mutant seemed past any woman’s bearing. Yet she had been willing. She believed, as he did, that it was a lesser evil than to passively accept the odds against survival without genetic change.

He embraced her, trying not to think of the future. It was not only peace of conscience they were prepared to sacrifice, and not only the anguish they might feel about the child that they were risking. Nor was the risk of his position as leader what troubled his emotions. They would lose everything if their child wasn’t normal; they would even lose each other. That was why they hadn’t married. He wanted to marry her, he planned to do so once they knew the experiment’s outcome—surely, he told himself, it would succeed! But if it did not, then she must be free to marry someone else. Only on the grounds that the world needed her future children had he persuaded her to try the genetic change on him instead of on herself. He could have no more children if this test failed. He had drunk the water, and if damage had been done it was irreversible.

They had been lovers before he had drunk it. They’d been careful, since they had not wanted a child until they were ready to make the test, but the worst an unexpected pregnancy could have caused would have been delay. Later, should there prove to be genetic damage, they could take no chance at all. There would be no question of sterilization, for the colony’s gene pool was considered a resource and he could not tell any doctor what he had done. He could not marry her, and he could not remain her lover, either, even if she chose to reject all other suitors.

As the dream became hazy and began to shift, Noren understood with dismay why it was that all thoughts of love had been edited from the First Scholar’s later memories.

She whom he loved was no longer in his arms; she receded from him, and feeling her go, he knew it was forever. He knew the test had not succeeded. As Noren, he’d known this all along, underneath—if it had been successful, the course of history would have been different—and the First Scholar had known also, for the recording had been made not before the child’s birth, but long afterward. This was the submerged horror that had been in the dream from the beginning.

The horror not only of this controlled dream, but of his nightmare. The mutant child had been real. . . .

He knew what he would be required to face, both in the dream and after waking.

The mist cleared; once more he found that time and place had altered. In terror, he perceived that he would be given not knowledge alone, but direct experience. He must not retreat from it. He, Noren, had been chosen—but he had also been permitted to choose. As the First Scholar, he knew that the incomplete editing in the officially preserved recordings had been deliberate, that it was designed as a test and as an invitation. This horror would not be forced on anyone. Only a person willing to confront it consciously would reach the point where he must look into the eyes of his mutant son.

Perhaps the dream had not been intended to be so vivid. Perhaps if he’d not met mutants in the mountains, an event the First Scholar couldn’t anticipate, he would see the child no more clearly than the mother. In her he sensed pain and felt it as his own; but her face was still shadowy. The child stood out in sharp contrast, mindless, but with the body of a human. It had light skin and reddish curls and it was old enough to walk.

He clutched the woman’s hand. He still loved her, deeply and hopelessly. They no longer lived as lovers, of course, but they let it be assumed that they did; it was the only way they could explain their refusal to take other partners. All the Founders had originally been married, since only married couples had been selected for the starships; but with the passage of years open love affairs occurred among those widowed or separated. That their leader should have such an affair did not bother anyone. That he should neither remarry nor love would, in view of the need for children, be less acceptable.

“There is no more time,” she said to him with sorrow. “The child is old enough to be weaned, and I can keep it in my room no longer. You know I can’t! By your own rule all others must give up their babies. People will not like it if you make an exception of yours.”

“No,” he agreed, “but perhaps they will tolerate it. They will not tolerate the truth.” So far, no one had gotten a close look at the child’s face; she had told them it was sickly and had allowed no one but herself to tend it. Now it should be sent to the dome where the rest of the Founders’ offspring were being reared to become the new and essential Technician caste. But that was impossible. This child was not merely retarded, it was of subhuman mentality—and a doctor could determine why. Everyone knew what damage unpurified water caused; without that knowledge they would not have gone along with the sealing of the City. They all knew such water wouldn’t be drunk accidentally. She was a geneticist, and to some he’d argued for genetic engineering. If they saw the child, they would guess the truth, and his chance to establish a lasting society would be lost.

Somehow it had not occurred to him beforehand that such a child would live.

He’d assumed that if the test failed, the child would die in infancy. The mutant children of the exploratory team had died; their brains had been sent to the Six Worlds for autopsy. That was how the nature of the genetic damage had become known. Yet, he now realized, the mutation itself was not lethal. The colonists’ descendants, if not saved by future science, would not die but would become subhuman. He really did not know how the other mutant babies had died. He perceived that he hadn’t wanted to know.

But he could imagine. Her courage had not faltered; for more than a year she had nursed this mutant—one couldn’t think of it as one would think of a human baby—and had borne the sight of its empty stare. There was no love in it. She had treated it gently, but it was not a docile creature and he knew, sickened, that when it was older its mindless rages would turn to animal ferocity. Loose in the wilderness, it would survive for that very reason. The mutants in the mountains were cannibals, Noren thought, remembering all too well . . . but as the First Scholar he did not have foreknowledge; he simply doubted that another woman, one who’d not taken a calculated risk with the resolve to bear the consequences, would have nourished such an infant at her breast.

“We can no longer hide it,” she told him, “yet the truth must not be known. There is only one thing I can do.”

Stunned, appalled, he waited, not daring to answer her. For the first time he feared that perhaps he should not be leader after all. He’d handled countless bad situations and had often been called wise and brave, yet now he felt utterly helpless. He did not see anything they could do, though he knew the welfare of future generations might hinge no less on this decision than on his others.

Calmly, holding back tears, she continued, “I must leave the City. Though it’s forbidden, there are no guards, and when I’m gone, no one will guess the reason.”

“No! Dearest, you can’t!”

“It’s the only way. And there’s nothing more I can do here in any case. I have analyzed the genotypes; I know where I may have gone wrong—but nothing can be proven without more testing. I’d be willing to try again, I would even take another lover if there were anyone we could trust. But there’s no hope of that. I can help you only by going. I’ve enough medical knowledge to be useful in the village, and you know I won’t betray the City’s secrets to the people there.”

“You don’t understand,” he protested. “There’ve been rebels in the village, those unwilling to acknowledge dependence on water piped from the City. They are outcasts. They drink from streams, and most flee to the mountains before they give birth. If you take the child to the village, you may be forced to follow them.”

It was more than he could endure. The present inhabitants of the village, colonists who’d been shut out of the City, had been born on the Six Worlds; they knew the danger of the water as well as the Founders did. Their leaders would not permit violation of the already-sacred rule: those who incurred genetic damage, or who bore damaged children, could not live among them. His most painful visions were of the rebels he’d failed to save, those he could not contrive to take into the City as he took other dissidents. They faced worse than peril and hardship in the mountains, worse than the production of subhuman offspring—observing his own child, he knew that when such offspring grew to maturity their parents would be endangered by them.

He could not let her take so great a risk as that. Yet neither could he prevent it. She had nursed the child; it was animal, not human, yet if he killed it to save her, she would not forgive him . . . nor would he ever forgive himself.

“My darling, I know what may happen,” she said steadily. “But what choice have I?”

“You have none,” he heard himself whisper. “We made our choice long ago, both of us.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No. We did wrong, and we must pay for it—yet what we did was best. Not to try to prevent extinction would have been a greater wrong. For all children to be like this would be the worst form of extinction.”

“I’ve left the genetic data in the computers. Will people of the future try again, perhaps?”

They must, he thought. Not only to ensure survival if metal synthesization failed, but so that her suffering would not be vain. “They will,” he promised. “I’ll see that the knowledge is passed to them. That won’t be easy to manage, but neither will the—the rest of my plans. I can arrange it so that things work out.”

He had not told her that in the end he himself must die at the hands of the villagers. It was the only secret he had kept from her. Were it not for that, he thought despairingly, he might go with her, as he longed to do—he would rather share her lot than stay behind as leader. He no longer wanted to lead. The burden was too heavy; without her, he might not be able to bear up under it; others might do a better job of leading than he. But there was no other who would carry through the ultimate phase of his plan.

Resolutely, he lifted the child, held it in his arms, his face for the moment averted.

“Don’t torture yourself,” she murmured. “That serves no purpose.”

“It serves our successors,” he said. “This is necessary for the same reason I observed the nova from the starship—there are certain lessons they can learn only from thought recordings. They’ll know the evils we established, the closed City and the castes. They must be shown the larger evils with which we had to deal.”

“The nova, yes. But how can you record personal contact with a mutant? How can you explain it?”

“To most future dreamers I can’t. In time, though, there will be a person who won’t shrink from the truth. That person may succeed where we’ve failed.”

He turned the child toward him and, for the first time since its early infancy, fixed his own eyes on its vacant ones.

And now, there could be no question from whose mind the image came. Like the nova, it was burned indelibly into the memory of the First Scholar, and the recollection was sustained during the recording process in such a way as to overwhelm whoever experienced the dream. It would make no difference, Noren knew, if he had never seen other subhuman mutants, never been attacked by them and killed them as in fact he had; he would draw from this moment the full shock of all he’d previously undergone. The mindless creature cloaked in human flesh would be no less revolting to him if he’d never been tormented by fears about Talyra’s baby . . . for as the First Scholar he knew that this was his child.

He knew also, while recording the memory, that in the end its mother had been driven with it into the mountains. That the bestial breed established there would carry his genes.

But even that was not the worst. The First Scholar, in subjecting him to this, had meant him to know the agony of personal involvement, yes. But the true evil was not in involvement but in the illustration of what might happen to the whole human race. This was a warning not of the consequences of action, but of those that might follow inaction. The First Scholar had taken the fathering of this child upon himself, as he’d later taken the villagers’ wrath at their exclusion from the City, to spare future generations. Better that his genes should be damaged than that everyone’s should. . . .

And it was not to justify himself that the First Scholar had made the recording. He had made it for a chosen heir. That person may succeed where we’ve failed, his words echoed. He, Noren, had said them, yet as the dream faded and his own identity emerged from it, he was not sure that he wanted to wake.