Chapter Seven

Noren awoke in a bed not his own, unsure of whether or not it was morning. In the windowless rooms of the towers one couldn’t tell, and his inner time sense seemed hazy. The lamp was on; he could see the tall time-glass in the corner. Its sand had run all the way through—but would Veldry have turned it over as people usually did on retiring? Under the circumstances, that seemed unlikely.

He found to his dismay that he had little recollection of what he and Veldry had said to each other. He’d intended only to ask her . . . somehow it had gone further than that. He ought, he supposed, to be glad. Instead he felt as if something very special had been devalued.

Veldry sat at the foot of the bed, her back to him, brushing her hair. It was long and dark, like Talyra’s. He had, he remembered, imagined he was with Talyra, much as he had during the secret dream: Veldry’s own identity had been vague, like that of the woman the First Scholar had loved. Only this had not been a dream. He hadn’t been wholly himself—he’d been so hot with anger that he’d not thought beyond his vow that he would bring about his people’s survival—yet he could not say he had not known what he was doing. He’d had too much ale earlier in the evening, perhaps; he’d raged at Lianne’s refusal to bring help to the world, and yes, she had roused other feelings too; all those things might explain his impulsiveness. But they did not make what had happened any less real.

He sat up, reaching for his clothes. “Veldry—” he began, wondering what he could possibly say. He had assumed she wouldn’t get hurt. He’d supposed making love was something she took lightly. It hadn’t been that way; her welcome had been genuine, and her emotions as he’d explained the risk had been deep, though unreadable. That much he did recall.

She turned to him. Her face, of course, was not Talyra’s. It was older and lined with past sadness, though now it was alight with joy. It was also, by ordinary standards, more beautiful; Veldry was considered strikingly lovely. But there was more to her than that, Noren realized, trying to guess her thoughts. He sensed more intellect than rumor credited her with. If only he were better at understanding people. . . .

“Veldry,” he said stiffly. “I—used you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” she answered, “I’ve never let anyone use me. One thing I always do is make up my own mind.” Then, watching his eyes, she suddenly exclaimed, “Noren, you don’t believe me! You really think you came here last night and got me to give something you’re sorry you asked for, when it wasn’t that way at all. You were the one who gave! You’ve given me the only chance I’ve ever had to be somebody.”

“I don’t see what you mean.”

“I’m—beautiful,” she said slowly, not in a boastful way, but as if it were some sort of burden. “I’m acclaimed for my beauty, and that’s as far as anyone’s looked. When I was a girl, they called me wild; I guess I was, by their scale of values. I had a lover in the village before I was married, and there, that was a disgrace. But I really loved him. Then I found out that all he saw in me was—physical. That was all my husband saw, too. After a while I left him and started telling people what I thought about the world, only no one listened.” With a bitter laugh she added, “They didn’t even listen to heresy! If a girl’s pretty enough, it’s assumed she hasn’t any thoughts, let alone heretical ones. Do you know what I was finally arrested for? Blasphemy—the blasphemy of claiming to have made love with a Technician.”

“Why did you tell a lie like that?” Noren asked, appalled. It could not possibly have been a true claim; Technicians were forbidden by the High Law to take advantage of village women, who, assuming them to be superior beings, would obey any request without question.

“Didn’t you ever want to convince people Technicians were human, and that you were their equal?”

Yes, of course he had. All village heretics defied the caste concept; Veldry’s form of rebellion had been imaginative if not prudent.

“Maybe I wanted to see the inside of the City,” she went on, “or maybe I just wanted to die trying to be more than the object of men’s desire. I knew the Scholars were wise. I thought they’d see what I was, even though they’d kill me for it.”

“But Stefred did see, surely. He judged you qualified for Scholar rank.”

“Yes. At first I was overwhelmed, it was so inspiring—the dreams, I mean. I wouldn’t have accepted rank as payment for recanting; I’ve never sold myself any way. But the Prophecy . . . well, I was never a heretic about that; I liked the ritual even as a little girl. I liked the thought of a changing future. I was so dedicated in the beginning, Noren. Only . . . there hasn’t been anything I could do here, to help change things, I mean. I’m not a scientist, my mind isn’t that sort. I know officially the work I do rates just as much respect. But—but men still single me out for my starcursed beauty!” She reached out for his hand, clutched it. “You’re the first one who’s wanted anything more important.”

“You’ve had babies before. That’s important.”

“Yes, of course, but the men who fathered them weren’t thinking about future generations, they just—well, you know. I don’t mean they didn’t love me, I’ve never had a lover who didn’t claim he was in love . . . only there was never anything lasting.”

“Veldry,” Noren said painfully, “I’m not sure what I said about us, and that bothers me, because what’s between us can’t last, either.”

“It will! Not you and me, no, of course I know that. Do you think I wouldn’t have known even if you’d tried to pretend?” She stood up, began fastening the front of her tunic. “You’d never been with anyone but Talyra before, had you?”

He didn’t reply. “I knew that, too,” Veldry went on. “You were still with Talyra last night, in your mind, anyway.”

“I suppose I was. And it wasn’t fair to you,” he confessed in misery. “You’re you, and I didn’t respect you enough. It wasn’t right.”

“How can you say you didn’t respect me? You told me future generations will live because of us! That our child will be the first person truly adapted to this world, that from him and others like him will come a race that can survive after the machines break down, and maybe someday, somehow, will get back to the stars. No one ever talks to me about things like that. You did. You asked my opinion of what the woman did in the dream. And when I said I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person she was, do something really significant and daring, I meant it.”

“Even knowing how it turned out for her?”

“Even so—because someone’s got to try, somebody’s got to take the risks. I admire you for taking them, even going against the Council to take them. You paid me the biggest compliment anyone ever has by guessing I’d be willing to take them, too. That’s what matters, not the fact you can’t fall in love with me.”

“I wish I could, Veldry,” Noren told her. “But I’m not ever going to fall in love again.”

“Yes, you are,” she said gently. “In time, you are. I’m not the right person for you, but in time there’ll be someone—not to replace Talyra, no one ever could—but someone different, someone you’ll share a whole new life with. And she will be a very fortunate woman.”

“I hope you’ll find someone to share with, too.”

“Maybe it’ll happen. I try—every time, I believe it will, only there just aren’t many men who look at things the way I do. I—I’ll always be happy to know there’s one, and that I’m having his child.”

“We can’t really be sure yet,” Noren pointed out, “and much as I’d like to promise I’ll be back—”

“You won’t be back,” Veldry acknowledged. “What happened last night couldn’t happen twice, not between you and me. But I wouldn’t have asked you to stay if the timing had been wrong. I wouldn’t have presumed to take Talyra’s place without expecting to conceive. You mustn’t worry yet—I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a baby.”

*  *  *

Back in his own room, alone, Noren began facing the fact that there was nothing further he could do until the baby was born. Nothing . . . and he did not see how he could live with his own thoughts, let alone carry on normal relationships with people, considering the magnitude of the secrets he now bore.

He did have to keep Lianne’s secret. He was absolutely convinced, as if she’d somehow communicated it directly to his inner mind, that Lianne would kill herself if he told anyone about her. To be sure, he might tell Stefred in confidence—but no, Lianne would sense that Stefred knew. She was too intuitive not to. And if she carried out her threat, Stefred would suffer terribly.

Think about it sometime, Lianne had said when he’d asked why secrecy was worth her life. She’d said it was one mystery he might solve. He’d never approved of secrets. No Scholar did; the guardianship of knowledge was condoned only as a necessary evil. How could Lianne have gotten through the tests of candidacy if she accepted an equivalent form of secrecy as right?

For that matter, how had she gotten through them at all?

Stefred had not invaded her privacy. But he must certainly have tested her in all relevant ways. If she did not truly care about the survival of future generations, she would have been disqualified. If she considered herself superior to people, even subconsciously, she’d have been screened out, too; that was one thing for which prospective Scholars were probed very thoroughly. Anyway, it just wasn’t possible to believe Lianne’s view was as heartless as she’d claimed. He, Noren, had long known how she felt toward him, and the kind of love she’d been hiding could not exist in someone whose inner feelings were inhuman.

The other kind, the outward physical expression . . . Lianne had not offered that before; she’d understood too well about Talyra. How could she have been so inconsistent in the end? It wasn’t just that she wanted his love—she’d had her chance, she could have lived with him for weeks without confessing there’d be no child. What he’d discovered shouldn’t have altered anything, for she knew better than to think he’d accept that sort of “comfort” from her. The pieces didn’t fit. She’d risked a secret she’d give her life to keep by refusing him, then at the last minute, had insulted him by suggesting . . .

Oh, Noren thought suddenly, oh, what a fool he’d been! Both times, she had been thinking of the child she couldn’t give him. When his discovery had made him balk at the risk of the experiment, she’d insulted him purposely to drive him in anger to Veldry.

She’d taken terrible chances. In his rage he might have gone straight to Stefred if it hadn’t been that she was his only link to more information about the aliens. Why must she keep their presence secret? For the same reason the Founders’ secrets had been kept—people in general simply could not live with the frustration of knowing themselves to be cut off from the wider universe. Noren was not sure he would be able to live with it, even temporarily. He wasn’t sorry for his discovery, not when he’d felt deeply since childhood that it was always preferable to know the truth. But few others felt that way. He and Lianne had agreed on that, the day they’d talked about the alien sphere. He had told her that most Scholars refused to acknowledge its implications! No wonder she’d realized he could figure out the need for secrecy.

To hide knowledge was evil, yes. But necessary in this case, too, if his genetic work was the only hope. Yet how could it be, when there was an alien starship standing by?

Lianne was on his side, but on her own people’s, too. She had not said she was in conflict with them; she was their agent, their observer. How could they justify letting the caste system stand another two generations when they could end it by supplying metal? Lianne considered it evil, she couldn’t have qualified for Scholar status otherwise, still she wasn’t condemning her people’s inaction. Besides, after the genetic change was put into effect, the world would lose its metal-based technology, lose the Six Worlds’ heritage of knowledge—surely she could not let that happen. And if the aliens must intervene eventually, why not now?

In time, if you have courage enough, you’ll begin to perceive what’s involved, she’d said. In his anger Noren hadn’t stopped to ponder that. He’d indeed been a fool, he now realized. He had expected understanding their ways to be easy! He had been picturing a starship like the Six Worlds’ ships, “advanced” in the sense of having faster-than-light communicators, but not the vessel of a truly alien culture. He’d imagined no disquieting mysteries—yet at the same time he’d anticipated being immediately given all the answers to the secrets of the universe. Enlightenment didn’t work like that, not even for heretics who entered the City as Scholar candidates. One could hardly expect education by aliens to be less difficult than learning about the heritage of the Six Worlds. How blind he’d been not to see the comparison.

Stefred, too, had warned him that he would suffer, that there would be a price for knowledge. No doubt this was also the case with alien knowledge. Noren’s spirits lifted. He must face an ordeal, perhaps, but it would be the sort of challenge he’d long ago found he enjoyed.

He must not judge Lianne’s people prematurely, he thought as he put on fresh clothes. After all, he’d judged the Scholars throughout boyhood on the basis of false premises and had learned that motives couldn’t be guessed from the outside. He would not make that mistake again.

Sulking in his room would get him nowhere. He must prove himself worthy to be enlightened by proceeding with the research they considered essential. Though he couldn’t do any more with human genetics till his child’s birth, it would be possible to design the genetic changes needed to enable grain to grow in untreated soil. Low priority as that was, it would be constructive. Even if metal became available in time, ability to live off the land would be desirable. Of course! The genetic change would be needed in any case for his human race to be self-sufficient; knowing that, the aliens would see how far he could go without aid. In the meantime, they’d be evaluating his readiness to receive what would ultimately be offered. Heartened, Noren went to the refectory for a meal.

Later that day he saw Stefred. “I ran the blood test,” he told him impassively. “It showed Lianne’s right; genetically there’s no chance of her getting pregnant.”

“I’m sorry, of course, for her sake,” Stefred said, “but someday I’ll make her see that she’s worth as much as any other woman.”

“That shouldn’t be too big of a problem,” Noren agreed. He did not say, however, that he hoped she and Stefred would become lovers; he discovered to his surprise that this was no longer quite true.

*  *  *

Noren tried, honestly, to work. He sat at a computer console long past suppertime reading technical genetic data about grain. But he could not keep his mind from wandering.

He’d resolved to question Lianne no further till he had proven he could conquer impatience. So that evening after Orison it was she who came seeking him—he glanced up from the console and saw her standing there, looking so stricken that he was overcome by remorse. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might need reassurance.

“Lianne, you didn’t think I’d stay angry, did you?” he asked.

“I wasn’t sure,” she replied in a low voice. “I was afraid you’d hate me, but I see you already understand what I was doing—”

How could she? Noren wondered. Intuition couldn’t possibly be that specific—and for some reason he guessed she knew about Veldry, too, although he was positive that Veldry would have told no one. Perhaps this was his own wishful thinking; he found he was relieved at the idea of not having to tell Lianne.

“Anyway, that’s not why I came,” she was saying. “There are things I’ve got to tell you.”

They went upstairs and out into the starlit courtyard. Seeing the sky, Noren felt more awe of it than he’d experienced since his trip into space to retrieve the orbiting starship hull used at the outpost. But now his awe was elevating, not terrifying. Now he need not worry about the meaning of that vast universe; he was with someone who knew. Perhaps someday he might be allowed to board her people’s ship. . . .

“How many of those stars have you been to?” he whispered, wonder-stricken.

“Orbited? I don’t know, I’ve never kept count. This is the tenth planet I’ve landed on.”

“Counting the one where you were born?”

“I wasn’t born on a planet. Only relatively immature human species live that way. We live in orbiting cities, most of us, and keep our home planets as parks.”

“Why were the Six Worlds so crowded after the civilization matured, then?” Noren asked. “They had orbiting labs, but not cities in orbit.”

“Noren,” Lianne said levelly, “the Six Worlds’ civilization wasn’t mature, that is, your species wasn’t—isn’t. Inventing space travel’s near the beginning of the evolutionary timescale.” Before he could say anything she went on, “The Six Worlds were unusual in not having orbiting cities at the stage they had reached, though. It was because the solar system had so many planets similar to the mother world. In most systems, colonizing in orbit is more practical than settling neighboring planets.”

He turned to her, eager to hear more; but the sight of her eyes cut short his questions. It was as if she’d been crushed by personal tragedy—evidently something far more important than his curiosity was at issue. “Lianne, what’s the matter?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

“You don’t know what it means, my having given myself away,” she murmured. “I’m not blaming you for what you did, only—”

“Only what?” Suddenly it occurred to him that her own people might be angered. “They won’t punish you, will they?” he demanded, appalled.

“No. All the same, there will be consequences.”

“That’s what I used to tell Talyra,” he recalled sadly, “before I assumed priesthood, when she could see I was unhappy and thought the Scholars must be punishing me for my heresy. Finally she realized the consequences just followed of themselves.”

“Yes,” Lianne agreed. “But your heresy wasn’t a mistake. You had no load on your conscience. The position I’m in is more like when you crashed the aircar, except worse—possibly much worse. I may have upset the future evolution of your species, you see.”

“I don’t, quite. I guess I see that if I’d refused to keep working on genetics because I don’t understand the need, that might be your fault. But I’m not going to refuse. Even without understanding, I’m going to play the game.”

“It’s more than a game. And it’ll be harder for you, knowing about us, than it would have been otherwise. If—if that affects the course of your life, Noren, I’ll be responsible.”

“Don’t worry on my account,” Noren told her. “I’ll take full responsibility for my own fate, Lianne. And if it does turn out worse than I imagine, I still won’t be sorry, any more than I was sorry for becoming a heretic and learning the truth about the nova.”

“I realize that,” she said soberly. “One part of me grieves because you’re going to suffer, yet another part knows you’ll think it’s worth it. That’s not the thing that scares me.”

“Then what is?”

“I told you I’m bound by a commitment,” Lianne said. “It’s—well, formal, like commitment to the priesthood as for you, except it’s not just sharing accountability, it’s personal. When we’re alone or in small teams on primitive worlds, our actions can change those worlds’ histories unless we’re awfully careful. We swear to put the native people’s best interests above everything else, and their best interests normally demand that we not influence them at all. We swear specifically, for instance, to die rather than let them find out about our existence. I’d have killed myself to prevent your knowing, Noren, just as I still would to prevent the secret from going any further—not because you’ll suffer from knowing, but because of what it may do to your people’s future.”

“Our future isn’t very bright,” Noren observed grimly, “unless you do help us. You could hardly make it worse.”

“Yes, I could. I may have already, unwittingly. There are scenarios you don’t know about.”

“I think it’s my right to know, Lianne.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said with sorrow, “but of course you aren’t going to take my word for that. And now, since you already know more than you should, you do have to be told enough to give you a basis for the decisions you’ll be forced to make. I—I lay awake all last night deciding to be frank with you, even though that means breaking my oath not to disclose anything.”

“I don’t expect you to give me more knowledge than I’ve earned,” Noren protested. “I’ve thought a lot, too, and I’ve figured out a good deal. You’d have refused to support your people’s policies in the first place if you believe they’re wrong! You’ve got the instincts of a heretic in spite of having only pretended to be one during your inquisition. And that means—”

“Wait a minute! What makes you think I was pretending? I was masquerading as a village woman, of course, but everything else was real.”

“The qualities Stefred judged you on, yes; that’s what I’m saying. But the defiance of the High Law, the risks and the enlightenment and the initiation, that couldn’t have been real in the same way as for the rest of us—you knew our secrets from the start. That bothered me till I realized that because you weren’t gaining anything personally, it couldn’t have affected Stefred’s evaluation of your motives.”

“The risk was real enough,” Lianne said. “After all, I thought I might have to kill myself. I would have, if he’d probed too deeply.”

“Maybe so,” Noren conceded. “I—I believe you really would give your life to save us from something you’re convinced would harm us. But a convicted heretic expects to die without hope of saving anyone. It’s a matter of principle, of standing out against evil. You knew at the beginning the evil was necessary.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You must have known our life support equipment’s irreplaceable.”

“I didn’t; none of us did when we landed here. We only knew something strange was going on. And what we saw, we didn’t like. We thought what you thought when you were a boy, that the Scholars were dictators. There was just one thing that didn’t fit: we couldn’t understand why the villagers had so much freedom.”

“Freedom? Freedom to live in the Stone Age, shut out of the City?”

“Noren,” Lianne said gently, “in every similar culture that we’ve observed, the outsiders would have been slaves of the City—or else equipment wouldn’t have been expended on them. We couldn’t guess why they were permitted to live, dependent on City aid, yet free to govern themselves, not exploited, not even taxed. It was the strangest setup we’d ever encountered.”

“But still a bad one.”

“Of course. Not as bad as it could have been, but bad; I was a real heretic in the sense that I believed that. I also believed the Prophecy was a myth the Scholars had invented to maintain power.”

“Didn’t the references to the Mother Star make it clear? You knew we were colonists, and you surely knew what a nova is.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Only I didn’t know the entire Prophecy. Nobody sat down and recited the whole thing, after all. Everyone in the village assumed it was common knowledge. We’d heard just scattered passages—and we didn’t hear the High Law at all till I got caught breaking it.”

Noren stared at her, startled. “You didn’t plan your arrest?”

She shook her head. “I filled a drinking jug from a stream right before the eyes of a group of women gathering reeds to weave baskets. It never occurred to me it could be wrong. We’re trained to respect local taboos, but drinking the water isn’t taboo anywhere, unless it’s radioactive or something. We’d only been on the surface a couple of days; we hadn’t had a chance to observe the restrictions on food and drink.” With a rueful smile she added, “The village women surrounded me, taunted me about what would happen when the Scholars got hold of me. Scared? Noren, the night I spent in the village jail was the worst I’d ever been through, till then, anyway.”

“Couldn’t your people have helped you escape?”

“Yes, but I chose to see it through. We realized we’d have to get someone into the City sooner or later to learn the facts about this world.”

“The villagers must have told you that no one’s ever been released from the Inner City,” reflected Noren, puzzled. “You couldn’t have known then that you’ll be free to simply walk out when your job’s finished, not if you didn’t suspect the truth about the Scholars. So you were risking possible death and almost certain imprisonment—for information? Information that not only wouldn’t benefit your own people, but that you probably couldn’t ever pass on to them?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” she admitted slowly.

“I’m sure it is,” Noren said. “What you’ve just told me makes me surer than ever. We don’t rate your help automatically—all right, I won’t argue with that. We have to prove ourselves, pass some kind of test. And maybe for me, because I’ve found out too soon, the testing will be harder than it was meant to be. I’ll—cooperate, Lianne. I don’t want you to bypass anything for my sake. Whatever I have to go through to earn us a place in your interstellar society, I’m willing to take on.”

She sighed. “You have no idea of what you’re saying. And I’m tempted to let it pass; you’ve phrased it so that I could do that without lying.”

“If my statement of it is true, we can let it pass for now,” Noren declared resolutely. “You came to judge us. I don’t fear your judgment.”

“Did you fear Stefred’s?”

“When I was first brought into the City, you mean? That was different; I had misconceptions about what I’d be judged on.”

“So do you now,” Lianne said. “That’s why I have to warn you.”

“What I said is true, isn’t it?”

“In a sense. It’s true as far as it goes, just as the Prophecy’s words are true. I’m here to evaluate circumstances, and they’re such that you, personally, will have to take on a great deal. Ultimately, if you succeed, your people will attain their rightful place. But it will not happen as you envision, any more than cities will rise out of the ground on the day the Star appears.”

“I’m not naive,” Noren assured her. “I know I can’t imagine exactly what will happen. Later, when I’ve done whatever’s expected of me—”

“That will be the bad time for you, Noren,” Lianne said, squeezing his hand. “As if the City had shut you out for your heresy instead of in. It might be kinder of me not to tell you this, but cruel, I think, in the long run. I can’t let you build false hopes.”

“You’ve acknowledged we can earn a place among you.”

“Yes, in time—your species can—but . . . it’s a long time . . . long after the Star’s light has reached this world.”

“Not—in my lifetime?” Noren went cold, beginning to see where she was leading. “Lianne, I can’t accept that!”

“Perhaps not. It’s asking far too much of you; I never wanted you to bear so great a burden.” She was once more close to tears, though her voice was well controlled. And again, he could sense more than she’d said, as if he had become as intuitive as she. Very, very quietly her words continued. . . .

Noren blinked his eyes, finding himself giddy; his mind was reeling. This wasn’t just his own emotion, or even his perception of hers—there were concepts he could not integrate with the words Lianne was saying . . . or was she still speaking at all? Abruptly he became aware of silence. Had she said he must accept the burden for his people’s sake, that nothing but his voluntary acquiescence could save them? That didn’t make sense! Lianne, he thought despairingly, you don’t know! You can’t, no one who’s been to ten planets could know what it is to be confined forever to this one.

Lianne’s hand tightened on his. “Let’s sit down,” she whispered.

The paving stones of the courtyard were still warm from the day’s heat. Noren leaned back, gazing up at the stars. It’s not wrong to want the whole universe! he persisted. It’s not wrong to keep searching for the truth, no more so to demand it of your people than it was to demand it of the Scholars when I was a heretic. I’m willing to earn access to knowledge, but not to renounce it.

Lianne pressed close to him, not in a sensual way but in a gesture of complete and genuine sympathy. In her eyes was understanding as well as sadness. Somehow she did know. Could this be part of the test? Noren wondered. Was he expected to defy her people’s edict, as Scholar candidates were required to defy the teaching that it was wrong to aspire to the High Priests’ secrets? Yes, he thought dizzily, she admires strength of will. She no more wants passive acceptance than Stefred wants heretics to recant!

He faced her. “Look at me,” he said, “and tell me that there is no way for me to win your people’s aid during my lifetime.”

“I won’t lie to you—even if I were willing to, you’d realize in due course and stop trusting me.” Full trust between us is the only chance we have of getting through what’s ahead, she seemed to be saying. “There is one way,” Lianne continued. “But don’t found your hope on that; it’s one I don’t believe you’ll ever use.”

“By the Mother Star, I will!” Noren swore.

“Hardly in that name, if you hold it sacred.” She tried to smile. “I’m speaking in riddles, as Stefred does to candidates, because I shouldn’t be speaking of this at all. And you’re not ready; there’s a lot you need to know before you can begin to grasp the situation we’re in.”

Noren was silent. I won’t plead with you, he was thinking, but if you’re going to tell me some of it, what’s wrong with right now?

“Are you up to that tonight?”

“Yes, of course,” he declared, his head spinning so that he scarcely noticed that she had answered his unspoken thought.

“I mean physically—or doesn’t the disorientation bother you?”

“Does it show?” Noren burst out, mortified. The odd giddiness did seem to have become physical, and his mind wasn’t quite clear; looking back over the conversation he found it hard to recall all Lianne’s words. Am I going crazy? he thought in sudden panic. It’s not as if I haven’t been through plenty of stress in the past; I should be able to handle it by this time.

“This is something you’re not equipped to handle,” Lianne said. “It doesn’t show from the outside, but I get your sensations.”

With forced levity he said, “Sometimes I think you’re a witch after all, and can read people’s minds.”

“I admitted long ago the villagers would have accused me of witchcraft if they’d known more about me,” Lianne replied, not laughing.

Why laugh? an inner voice told him. Mind-to-mind communication’s natural enough— Horrified, he cut off the thought. He must indeed be going crazy. Mind reading was only a superstition; he had heard of it in Six Worlds’ folklore, but never from any other source. Desperately, his thinking now under firm control, he reflected, If it were real, Stefred would have mentioned it, surely.

“Stefred would be even more upset by it than you are,” Lianne said dryly, “because he’s read everything in the computers about psychology, and he believes the same theories of the human mind the Founders did.”

Lianne, what are you doing to me? Noren cried out silently, aware at last that this was not mere imagination, and that it terrified him.

“Nothing I haven’t done before with both you and Stefred when I had need,” she answered calmly. “I’m simply doing it now on a level at which you’re conscious of it. You must know about it to understand my role here, and you wouldn’t have believed in it without a demonstration.”

“You’ve been reading our minds all along?” he protested, appalled. “This is what we’ve been calling intuition?”

“Well, yes, but ‘reading minds’ isn’t an accurate way to describe it. I can’t invade anyone’s private thoughts—I get only emotions, plus ideas people want to communicate to me. If you want to tell me something, consciously or unconsciously, I know without being told; but nothing you want to conceal is accessible.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you have abilities we don’t,” Noren said slowly. “You’re a different species, after all. But your getting my thoughts wasn’t all that happened. I—I think I got some of your thoughts, too.”

“Yes. That was the frightening part. I induced you to knowingly accept mental input in a form that’s unfamiliar to you and beyond your control. I knew it would scare you, but I had to seize the opportunity that came to do it in a way that wasn’t dangerous.”

“Opportunity?”

“Strong emotion. That enhances everyone’s psychic power. For a person in a culture like yours where the existence of telepathy isn’t acknowledged, it’s essential, barring some artificial techniques I’d rather not try.”

Noren frowned. “Are you saying inhabitants of all worlds have this power?”

“This and some rather more spectacular ones I’m not even going to demonstrate. They are latent in all species. Full conscious control of them is possible only to those further evolved than yours, though people with exceptional talent sometimes have spontaneous psychic experiences when the circumstances are right.” She added, after a pause, “A few individuals, like Stefred, use telepathy unconsciously with their close associates.”

“Stefred? He does what you do?”

“Not to the same degree, and he’s not aware that he’s doing it. You know, though, that he’s unusually skilled in understanding people and in winning their trust.” She did laugh at Noren’s expression. “You needn’t be so shocked; there’s nothing sinister about it. It’s a gift like any other, and you’ve recognized all along that you don’t have the same gifts Stefred has. Yours are different.”

“I can’t learn to develop such skills, then.” The thought pained him.

“No,” Lianne said gently. “I could teach you to converse with me silently without feeling dizzy, but there are perils along that road. What comes naturally is harmless. Tonight I forced a level of rapport that was . . . well, let’s say a calculated risk. I won’t do that again because there’s no justification for it. I’ll stick to the sort of thing I’ve done with you in the past—for instance, last night when I convinced you I was serious about killing myself if you didn’t keep my secret.”

“I wondered why I believed you,” Noren reflected.

“It was because I communicated more than words or the idea the words expressed, I also communicated feelings. That level’s safe; it’s when telepathy is allowed to disrupt your thinking processes that we could run into trouble.”

“With your own people . . . you use even higher levels?”

“I have passed on all I’ve learned of the Six Worlds to the members of my team outside the City,” Lianne admitted. “That’s one reason you need to know I’m telepathic.”

Trying to seem unshaken, he asked, “Have you told them about me?”

“Not that you’ve learned my identity—they’re no longer within range. I’ve told them other things about you.”

“What?” inquired Noren, curious as to why she would have singled him out to be mentioned in what sounded like her official report.

“That the welfare of your species depends solely on you.”

He drew back, stunned. Lianne continued, “You’ve been assuming that only your knowledge of us has put you in a key position. But the position’s been yours all along, Noren. The Scholars who’ve been considering you the best hope for the future are right.”

“Lianne, it can’t be like that! The fate of a whole human race can’t depend on one person—it couldn’t even if no alien starship was around.”

“Normally it couldn’t,” she agreed. “We’ve had occasion before to judge a species’ chance of survival, and we’ve never been able to identify the person on whom it depended, or even say it was dependent on some unknown person. But this is a very abnormal case. There are so few of you, and you have such limited resources, that we know positively that no one else has the potential to do what needs doing—and there isn’t time to wait for another such person to be born.”

“But I’m not what people think,” Noren protested. “I’m not the genius they’ve been hoping for; if you’re telepathic you must know that! I’ll try to change things so we can survive here, but I may fail.”

“Yes. And your discovering who I am has increased your chance of failure, which is why I’m so worried about my mistakes,” Lianne confessed.

“You’ve no right to be so highhanded with us, to set me up as a gamepiece forced to win or lose this world according to your arbitrary rules,” Noren said bitterly. “You can’t take it on yourselves—”

“That’s just the point,” said Lianne. “We can’t. We’re not wise enough; our intervention could do more harm than good.”

“Yet you think I’m wise enough?”

“Perhaps not. But you do have the right to act on behalf of your own people.” She got to her feet. “There’s more to it than this, Noren. First, though, you’d better hear some background—and if we’re going to talk all night, let’s sit someplace that’s private.”

*  *  *

She was an agent of what she called the Anthropological Service, the representative not of a single species, but of an organization made up of volunteers from many worlds united in an interstellar federation. The Service was not easy to get into; candidates, it seemed, were tested even more arduously than Scholar candidates and must prove themselves trustworthy during a long and difficult course of training. That was hardly surprising, Noren thought, considering that these people had to be ready to die for their convictions at any time it became necessary on any planet where they happened to land. They also, he gathered, had to undergo hardships other members of their civilization never encountered. Planets were uncomfortable compared to orbiting cities. And the planets visited by observing teams not only had living conditions that were primitive by Federation standards, they were also too apt to be the scenes of disease, violence and wars.

The worst of visiting such planets, Lianne said, was not the danger. It was the horror of seeing evils one was powerless to prevent. People who didn’t find that painful, who didn’t care what happened to other species, were not accepted into the Service. One was required to have empathy.

It sounded like a strange life to volunteer for, yet still, it was the only way to truly explore the universe, see more than the orbiting cities and the planets kept like parks beneath them. Federation citizens outside the Service were not permitted to land on the worlds of species not yet mature; there was too much danger of their doing inadvertent harm. Furthermore, Service life was challenging. Lianne was a person who enjoyed that. Other challenges had been open to her—she was rather vague about their nature, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she considered it over his head—but the Service was the one she had chosen. It was an irrevocable choice; the commitment she’d made was permanently binding, an arrangement that eliminated people who merely wanted a few years of adventure.

She had come to his world as one of three agents dispatched to investigate the undecipherable signal of a faster-than-light communicator in a solar system where no such communicator should be. “Only three?” Noren asked, surprised.

“We were among the few aboard who happened to look enough like your people to pass among you. A service ship carries agents of many species, since we never know till we orbit what sort of natives we’ll find.”

“But to commit a whole starship all this time, if only three of you could take action—”

“It orbited for a few weeks, then went elsewhere.”

“And stranded you here? With just two others?”

“No. Just me; the others went on. The ship will be back to contact me, don’t worry. I’ve been stranded on alien worlds before.” She smiled. “It’s not done just for efficiency—it’s a good strategy for preventing field agents from getting illusions of power.”

Their tangible support varied with circumstances, she told him. On some planets they did keep whole teams for the duration of the mission, and often even offworld equipment. On this one they realized, from having examined the Six Worlds’ stripped starship hulls they found in orbit, that they dared not possess any equipment a starfaring people could recognize as alien. Their shuttle abandoned them with nothing but native-style clothes and one concealed signaling device with which they could recall it. Being telepathic, they got the meaning of remarks villagers addressed to them, and since one of them was a skilled linguist they quickly learned the language. They knew from the Service’s vast experience how to be inconspicuous in the first village they entered and inquisitive in the second. It was a routine mission except for the presence of the mysterious City and the fact that the faster-than-light communicator, which had since been identified as an ancient artifact of a Federation species, was not in the City but in the outpost beyond the mountains—routine, at least, until Lianne’s unexpected arrest.

She’d communicated telepathically with the others during her night in the village jail. The team leader had advised her that she wasn’t obliged to accept the risk of entering the City—apparently there were situations in which she might have been, but in this case she was free to choose. She’d decided to take the chance. Not just to learn what was going on, though it had become obvious that they were dealing with something that didn’t fit known patterns; and not, evidently, to do anything against the Scholars if they turned out to be dictators, since that too would be interference. “There was a reason, Noren,” Lianne said, “and what I found here proved the risk was warranted. That’s something you’ll see later.” Having learned he must let her tell it her own way, he nodded and did not interrupt.

She had been thoroughly trained to deal with stress, and at the beginning, even within the City, she had the telepathic support of her teammates. When she was first brought before the Scholars, her only serious fear was that they would probe her mind forcibly by methods against which she’d be powerless. She had means to suicide if that seemed imminent, but the decision would be a hard one, for she could resist most drugs and might not be able to predict what sort they’d use. Fortunately, the inquisition turned out to be quite different from what she’d expected. A few minutes with Stefred and she knew her secret was safe from him, that even under the relatively mild drugs he did give her, he would not attempt to make her betray information she wanted to conceal.

But at the same time, she knew she was facing an experience unlike any that agents had previously encountered in fieldwork. She was being judged by the Service’s own criteria of worthiness—Stefred approached it as her instructors had, and as an individual he was equally expert. Yet it was not mere instruction. She was aware from his emotions that it was deadly serious, and that by her own code as well as his, it would be unethical as well as impossible to get through such a test by faking.

“According to what you’ve said about the training you had, you must have known you’d be able to pass it honestly,” Noren protested.

“That was the trouble,” Lianne said. “I did know, so I wasn’t scared—it was fear I’d have had to fake, and I couldn’t have, even if I’d wanted to; he’s too perceptive to be fooled. You know why he uses stress tactics even with candidates he’s sure of. They’ve got to be genuinely afraid of cracking up before he can proceed with the enlightenment, or else they’ll never be certain afterward that they couldn’t have been made to recant by terror. I was already certain; I’d been through similar experiences in my training, designed to give me that kind of confidence. But Stefred naturally assumed I simply didn’t know what real terror is like. He kept looking for ways to show me, and none of them worked since I’d picked up enough telepathically to realize he wasn’t going to subject me to any harm.”

“How much more did you pick up?” asked Noren, frowning.

“Not anything enlightening,” Lianne assured him. “I had no more access to his secrets than he had to mine. But of course, emotionally, he does want candidates to trust him—I knew the pressures he was using were for my benefit. And I knew he wanted me to resist them.”

“Is that why you didn’t recant in the first place? I’ve wondered, because from your standpoint, since you were there just to get information and weren’t part of our society, pretending to play along with the Scholars wouldn’t have been wrong. Especially not if you were offered knowledge in exchange for submission, as I was.”

“Stefred didn’t use that strategy with me. He never does in cases where he sees the candidate’s hoping to learn something that might be passed on to others who oppose the system. The bribe was a valid test of motivation for you only because you were convinced that if you accepted it, you’d be the only one to gain.” She stopped for a moment; when she continued it was with telepathic overtones of intense feeling. “I didn’t know whether or not resisting recantation would be to my advantage, Noren. That wasn’t the basis on which I was acting. When we take on this sort of role, we act as we personally would if we’d been born into it. I truly opposed what the Scholars seemed to stand for. If I’d really been a village woman, I’d have refused to endorse the caste system, the Prophecy or the High Law; so that was how I had to play it—otherwise I’d have been lying instead of just concealing things.”

“I guess I see,” Noren admitted. “There’s a difference; he conceals without lying, and in fact we all do, as priests. I did with Talyra.”

“Yes. The scale of values in the Inner City is much like ours—on most worlds we don’t fit in as well, and sometimes we’re forced to lie. Here I’ve lived as if I were one of you. I want you to know that; it’s important.”

To her, Noren perceived, important not just because she values honesty or because she needs my trust . . . it’s important because of how she feels about me. “I owe you honesty, too,” he said. “I don’t doubt you mean all you’re saying, but there’s one thing you seem to have overlooked. The initial risk, the stress you let Stefred impose on you, your opposition to the caste system—all that may have been real. The ordeals of enlightenment and recantation may have been as rough for you as for any of us. But the sentencing, that was sham, Lianne.”

She didn’t reply. Noren went on painfully, “When we kneel in that ceremony and hear ourselves sentenced to life imprisonment within the City, we believe it. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us here, either the good or the bad; but we know it’s permanent, a real price, not something we can get out of when we’re through playing the game—”

“Game? Do you suppose that’s all it is to me?”

“I’d like to believe it’s not. I guess I do believe, now, that you’re sincere about wanting to help us even though you’ve been taught not to interfere. But you aren’t stuck here, as we are. Lianne, the City isn’t our real prison—this planet is! All of us who’ve been through the dreams know that we and our people have been deprived of our rightful heritage. You’re pretending to share that sentence when you’re really free. That’s the deceit I can’t ignore, not that your genes are different or that you concealed your origin from Stefred. It doesn’t matter that you believe the same things as a real heretic, that you’re willing to suffer or even die for them. When you submitted to the sentencing, you were lying, and so you’re not a real Scholar—you’re acting the part without paying the price.”

He could feel her surge of emotion, not anger at his accusation, but a mixture of sorrow and guilt. “I haven’t overlooked that,” she said quietly. “It’s why I haven’t assumed the robe.”

Noren was speechless; it had not occurred to him that Lianne would see more in religion than a mask for secrets. He’d been assuming she wasn’t a priest because she supported the genetic change that would make fulfillment of the Prophecy’s promises impossible.

“Stefred doesn’t understand, of course,” she continued. “He’s eager for me to do it because I can’t appear at inquisitions unrobed, and he feels that by now I could help new candidates more than the Scholars he’s been using as assistants during the open questioning. That’s true; and I’d like to take part in ritual, too . . . I’d like to give hope if nothing else. But you are right, Noren—I am not wholly committed. There are roles I can accept here, but not priesthood.”

“For you it wouldn’t be a religious kind of priesthood anyway, even if your ship never came back,” Noren argued, “so why does it matter ethically whether or not you wear the robe?”

“Why wouldn’t it be religious? That’s what priesthood is.”

“Well, you don’t believe in the Star—”

“Do you?”

“Not the way some do. I don’t believe there are any supernatural powers out there for it to symbolize. But it’s come to mean something to me, it stands for truth I can’t reach—I need that. You don’t.”

“Oh, Noren.” She did not have to use words; attuned now to the emotional channel of communication, he perceived for the first time what Lianne had been trying all evening to convey. No one can reach all truth. Even people who’ve visited many stars can’t, people whose resources aren’t restricted. But the more one does know of the universe, the more one longs to reach further . . . and the harder it is to accept one’s limitations.

“Lianne, I—I take it back,” he said awkwardly. “I think it could all be real for you. Even priesthood could.”

“No. When a priest speaks the ritual, he or she acts as spokesman for the people; that’s universally true. I have no right to be your people’s spokesman. I am limited, but not by the same set of barriers.” She smiled and touched his hand. “Don’t think I lack sources of faith. I have my own symbols, after all.”

“You do?” Almost before the words were uttered Noren was thinking, Sorry—that’s a stupid question.

“It’s not stupid. You associate the need for them with your own world’s unique problems—you’ve never been in a position to generalize.”

He absorbed not only her reply, but the feeling behind it. “Are the problems of other worlds . . . hard, Lianne? As hard to face as ours?

“For individuals, often a great many individuals, they are worse. You’d know that if you’d ever had to fight in a war.”

“I’ve been more naive that I thought, I guess. I’ve read what the computers say about the Six Worlds’ wars, yet I can’t picture them as—reality.”

“Reading doesn’t tell you enough. In the Service we are taught such things through controlled dreaming,” Lianne replied grimly.

“Dreaming? But then when Stefred began it with you—”

“I was afraid,” she acknowledged. “You’ve got to hear the rest of the story. But since you asked a question, I’ll answer it first; I’ll warn you where the story’s heading. For individuals, Noren, life can be worse on many worlds than on this one, and the more immature the civilization, the more suffering people undergo. For whole species, though, the problems are soluble. The suffering leads somewhere; it’s part of evolution. Your species is experiencing an interruption of evolution—perhaps an end to its progress. That is far more serious than problems of other kinds. It’s terrible in ways you’ve not yet conceived. Alone, you would not become aware of them.”

“I want to be aware of them,” Noren declared, inwardly dismayed by the cold terror he’d begun to feel. I’ve always wanted the whole truth; why am I afraid now, almost as if I were undergoing another dream?

He needed no answer—he knew the fear was hers as well as his, that telepathically he was sharing her emotions, much as in controlled dreaming one shared the feelings of the person from whose mind the recording had been made. Lianne was truly afraid for his people. She was not forcing this rapport—he had freedom to reach for it or shut it out, and as always in the dreams, he chose to reach.

*  *  *

Stefred had been unable to scare Lianne during her inquisition; they had reached an impasse, for measures extreme by his standards could not frighten her. She had been taught more than he could guess: not only self-assurance, but methods of controlling her physical reactions. He suffered far more than she did, both from the seemingly harsh tactics he was forced to employ and from his knowledge of the tragedy that might ensue if they failed to challenge her sufficiently.

Ironically, that was the turning point. When Lianne sensed Stefred’s growing fear for her, she herself began to feel terror.

She could draw no facts from his mind; she knew only that he was an inwardly compassionate person whose ostensible cruelty was designed to protect her best interests. She’d understood all along that he was testing her rather than attempting to break her, but she had assumed it was to satisfy himself of her sincerity. Now she perceived that he’d been satisfied for quite a while, that the point still at issue was her own awareness of strength; he was preparing her for some mysterious ordeal from which he could not save her. He pitied her even as he strove to ensure that she would meet it with confidence. Lianne could not tell whether Stefred’s view was shared by all Scholars or whether he was simply one admirable man playing a dangerous game within a society of tyrants, but she knew he was powerless to spare her the suffering that lay ahead. No hint of its nature came through to her except that in his eyes, the face in store for her would be permanent, and bravery would be her sole defense.

Till this point, she’d expected she could learn the City’s secret and then be rescued in some way. Stefred’s feelings made her realize it would be more complicated. There might be no chance of rescue; she might face ceaseless, futile punishment; worst of all, she might learn nothing to justify her sacrifice. But she did not falter. The unanticipated terror hit swiftly, and it took only an instant for her to pass from fearlessness to courage.

Though she showed no outward sign, Stefred was sensitive enough to her emotions to be immediately aware of the difference and to see that she could now be safely enlightened. Thus her fear was compounded, for his inner relief was mixed with worry. He could not guess why she’d slipped suddenly to the verge of panic; could the foregoing stress she’d withstood too well have brought on a delayed reaction? For the first time he found himself dealing with someone he could not understand—someone he must subject to the dream sequence without anticipating what unusual problems she might face in it.

If he had foreseen how great those problems would be, or if he’d been aware that had he shown her the Dream Machine in the first place there’d have been no need to bother with any other stresses, he might never have dared to begin the dreams at all.

At the moment he judged her ready for enlightenment, they were not in his study, where the initial steps were to take place. As he escorted her through the corridor, they passed the dream room, the door of which stood open with complex equipment, sinister in appearance to the inexperienced, plainly visible. “Take a good look,” Stefred said casually. “If you persist in your refusal to recant, you will spend a great deal of time strapped into that chair.” The remark wasn’t meant to be cruel; it was a routine instance of the tactics he used with everyone: a true statement that was unnerving when heard as an implied threat, but heartening when remembered later as one successfully withstood. In the light of Lianne’s proven fortitude, he expected her to gain an immediate sense of triumph. To his astonishment and dismay she nearly stumbled against him, her face ashen, and in that moment their fear fed each other’s.

“I’m glad he’ll never have any suspicion of how rough he made my last hours of ignorance,” she told Noren, “because he’d be horror-stricken by what was in my mind.”

“You recognized the function of the equipment, I suppose,” Noren reasoned, “and if they train you to understand things like wars that way, no wonder you were nervous. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“We’re conditioned to fear controlled dreaming, yes,” she agreed, “and not just because it’s the only means of showing us evils that don’t exist in our own civilization. It’s through dreams that we’re taught to meet fear itself—after all, we couldn’t be seriously afraid of our own instructors. I’m used to training dreams, I don’t mind them however scary they are. But there were worse possibilities.” She turned to him, her eyes large with remembered terror. “Some cultures use controlled dreaming in ways Stefred is too innocent to imagine.”

“I’d be surprised if there’s much that Stefred is naive about,” observed Noren. “He’s read a lot of things he doesn’t speak of, evils that sometimes occurred on the Six Worlds. If you mean controlled dreaming could be used for torture, well, even I’ve imagined that. But you knew he wouldn’t do it.”

“I wasn’t sure how much power he held; I thought I might be taken over by some higher authority—he was afraid of something bad happening to me, certainly, and I realized that what he’d said was less a threat than a true warning. I could deal with torture, though, if it were temporary—”

“It couldn’t very well be permanent.”

“Yes, it could. A body can be maintained indefinitely with life support equipment and dream input. Only that’s not the worst, because if the mental input is pure nightmare, the brain dies relatively soon, and I did know that wasn’t going to happen to me. He was thinking in terms of wasted life, not lingering death. The other thing sometimes done isn’t called torture; there are worlds where people actually choose it. A person can be kept alive year after year on a machine like that with pleasant dreams.”

Noren struggled with sudden nausea. “Lianne—that’s horrible.”

“Of course. To you and to Stefred and to me, to anyone who values consciousness. But it matched the pattern of what I knew at that point. There are societies where it would be considered fitting punishment for heretics, and others where it would be viewed as a merciful alternative to imprisonment in close quarters. I had visions of a compartment somewhere in the City with row after row of encapsuled dreamers, like frozen sleep quarters on a slow, primitive starship except with no oblivion and no promised awakening.”

“Oh, Lianne.” Noren put his arm around her, found she was trembling.

“I’m not looking for sympathy, you know that,” she said quietly. “But understanding how I’m vulnerable is related to the rest of what you need to understand. The next part’s even more so, only you won’t like what you hear.”

“I have to hear it. I want to. But—but Lianne, it’s hard because I’ve always thought of the universe as, well, good, somehow. In spite of freak disasters like the nova, I’ve believed there are more than enough wonderful things out there to balance.”

She was radiant for a moment; he sensed an emotion new to him. “There are!” she burst out. Then, slowly, “There are wonders past your imagination. But if I were to show them to you at this stage, you would only feel more bitter. Right now you believe that I am heir to all the glories while you are doomed by fate to a dark prison world. You must see that darkness, too, is universal—then later you’ll find that you do have access to some of the light.”

Of course, Noren thought as the surge of elation ebbed. You’ve got to have seen more good than I have, or else you couldn’t possibly bear to confront all you’re telling me about. Aloud he said, “If I’ve shown any courage in my life, it’s been only because I’ve had no choice. But you, you chose—not only here, but at the start, when you chose to be exposed to evils you would never have had to know exist. I admire your strength more than ever; don’t think my finding out who you are has changed that.”

“You chose, too, by becoming a heretic,” she answered.

“I couldn’t have been anything else on this world.”

“No, because you wouldn’t have been content not to look at all sides of things. But it was a choice all the same. Elsewhere you’d have had more options, and you’d have picked the one that let you see farthest. Which on any world would have meant looking at darkness, just as my choice did.” With a wry smile she added, “That’s why you share my horror at the idea of perpetual sweet dreams.”

He shuddered. “Lianne—when you were hooked up to the Dream Machine for your first session, did you really think that was what would happen?”

“No, I knew better by then. I’d been shown the films of the Six Worlds and the Mother Star before that point, and I recognized a nova when I saw one. I’d begun to piece things together—and it was more of a shock than you’ve guessed, worse than the other, much worse.”

The hardest act she’d put on had been concealing the fact that she understood the film of the nova. There was no actual revelation of the Six Worlds’ destruction in that film, but for Lianne, of course, its mere identification as the Mother Star was the key to the colony’s situation—it would have been even if she hadn’t received Stefred’s powerful emotions.

The Service had known from the beginning that the people of the planet were not only colonists but lost colonists, out of touch with their world of origin. That had been evident from the converted starships used as living quarters in the City, which like the orbiting hulls were made of an alloy that couldn’t be melted and used for other purposes with the facilities available. Lost colonies, however, were not particularly uncommon. In the early phases of every civilization’s interstellar expansion, some starships failed to get home. Descendants of their passengers weren’t necessarily in danger—they often survived successfully enough, and in due course, were contacted by other explorers of their own species. In any vase they were not the sole representatives of their species. The Service did not worry about the welfare of lost colonies.

Novas were another matter entirely. And when Lianne perceived that she would be forced to dream of the nova, she wasn’t at all sure she would be able to endure it.

Her experience in controlled dreaming, in voluntary acceptance of nightmare, made it harder rather than easier. She knew in advance that this would be so. She realized that the dreams were ordinarily used with people who did not have any foreknowledge about novas, or even about worlds unlike their own. For them, there would be terror and emotional pain—but there would not be complete grasp of significance. They would not absorb anywhere near all the feelings of the person who’d made the recording, while she would share those feelings fully. And she would suffer other feelings beyond that. One experienced a dream according to one’s own background, and her background was such that to her, destruction of an entire human species was an ultimate, intolerable evil. Lesser evils she’d been taught to bear on the basis of evidence that they occurred in all species and were thus apparently part of the evolutionary process. But what answer was there for an evil that robbed all the rest of meaning?

The Service was, of course, aware that novas sometimes destroyed populated solar systems. But never before had such a case been observed—once a nova was detected, there was no way to determine whether the planets of the star had been populated or not. If the star of a Federation solar system novaed, the event was predictable and the population was evacuated. The same was true when a known immature species was similarly endangered. . . .

“Wait a minute!” Noren broke in. “You’re saying that if your Service had been observing the Six Worlds before the nova, it would have saved the people?”

“Not all of them; that would have been impossible. But enough to make sure your species was safe.”

“But then you’re admitting you do intervene sometimes.”

“If nothing else can prevent extinction, yes. There is no evil worse than extinction of a whole human species. The Founders were right about that; every Scholar who recants is right about it. I know what you’re going to ask next, Noren—but don’t ask it, not yet. Hear me out.”

Deeply though she feared the dreams, having grasped what they would contain, Lianne had been obliged to undergo them willingly. That was required of her not only by the role she was playing with Stefred, but by her own oath to the Service. Her awareness of the nova changed everything. She now knew that the colonists might be the sole survivors of their home system; it was her responsibility to find out for sure. And if they were indeed the only survivors it was her responsibility to determine whether or not they had the resources to go on surviving.

The dream sequence proved even more taxing than she’d anticipated, for she identified in a close personal way with the First Scholar. She hadn’t expected recordings made by anyone with insight so far ahead of most of the people of his civilization. The agony was somewhat tempered by his courage, yet on the other hand, she knew his specific hope for survival to be groundless. It was evident to Lianne that the nuclear research goal was unattainable with the City’s facilities—she drew more detail from his thoughts about these than less knowledgeable dreamers could—and she knew from the start what Noren had learned gradually, what most other Scholars, even Stefred, still could not bring themselves to believe. If they relied on synthesization of metal, the colony was doomed.

Furthermore, there was the edited state of the recordings to cope with. “It was bad in the way Stefred explained it to you,” she told Noren, “more of a torment than he realized, in fact, to have my mind held within unrealistic limits, because I was so accustomed to full recordings. If you hadn’t done what you did to spare me that, there’s no telling what would have happened. Even knowing the editing was drastic, I trusted Stefred enough to believe it hadn’t been done for deception. But I might have cracked up during the later part of the dream sequence.”

She had not been in touch with her teammates at that point; when she’d first grasped the nature of her inquisition, she had broken off with them so as to have no unfair advantage. She had asked them not to resume telepathic communication until she initiated contact herself, and she’d resolutely refrained from doing so not only during the intervals between dreams, but throughout the ceremony of recantation. They had witnessed that ordeal without understanding it. Afterward, however, she had passed on the whole story, and she’d told them what they already saw from the discoveries she reported: there was no question of her leaving the City until she had learned whether anyone had found the route to permanent survival of the colony.

“Genetic engineering, you mean? But I didn’t find out about it till weeks after you recanted,” Noren objected. “Why did you stay so long?”

“You’d begun to be interested in genetics—I’d learned that much.”

“Telepathically?” he inquired uncomfortably.

“No, at least not till you came to me with the secret recording. I sensed your goal then because I already knew you’d studied the field, and because I’d been looking for the same thing you had in the full version of the First Scholar’s memories.”

Did it give you nightmares, too? he wondered. He’d never told her of his own.

“I have skills for gaining access to my subconscious mind,” Lianne said, “so I perceived the clues he left without being disturbed by them. I didn’t follow them through; I waited to see what you’d come up with.”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t found the secret file? The timing was quite a coincidence, after all—generations passing, and then its being discovered the year you got here.”

“Not really a coincidence. Your finding the sphere in the mountains triggered both my arrival and the thoughts that led you to pursue genetics. As to what I’d have done if you hadn’t pursued it, well, after a while I’d have used telepathy to steer you in that direction.”

Noren frowned. “You mean you can control people that way?”

“Definitely not. They must choose to respond, but I sensed that you would. I had you identified as the potential leader even before I knew you were on the right path.”

Keeping himself under rigid control, Noren ventured, “What if there’d been no potential leader?” He would not ask the more fundamental question directly; Lianne was aware that the inconsistencies in what she’d revealed were obvious to him. You were trained by the same principles Stefred follows, he thought, and like Stefred, you expect people to work out the answers on their own. . . .

“I could have told you the answers hours ago,” she agreed, “but you’d simply have rejected them. I had to give you the emotions, the conflicts, make you feel the paradox for yourself. I’ve tried to state enough of the facts for you to resolve it.”

Slowly, Noren said, “You’re sure in your mind that if there’d been no potential leader, the outlook wouldn’t be bright. In that case your people would save us, as they would have from the nova, because nothing else could prevent our extinction.”

“Save you from extinction, yes, since there’s no greater evil.”

“But some other evil would follow that they couldn’t save us from,” he went on painfully, “one of those scenarios I don’t know about.” That’s got to be how it is—I’ve had proof that you feel as strongly as I do about what happens to us: Stefred’s judgment, and now direct communication from your mind to mine. What’s more, your feeling is tied in with how you feel about the Service! The conflict’s not between two loyalties, and you’re not so timid as to stand back just for fear your action might miscarry. . . .

“The results of intervention are well known from the Federation’s past history,” said Lianne, her voice remote and sad. “In the early days some species were brought in too soon. It was thought mature civilizations could help young ones, that if an effort was made to respect their cultures, it would work like the merging of ethnic groups on a single mother world. But that’s not comparable.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“Different cultures on a mother world are made up of people of the same species. There’s no difference in length of evolutionary history involved. But with separate species that have evolved on separate worlds, a certain level has to be reached before contact is fruitful, before it’s safe, even. If a species hasn’t yet attained that level, all the struggle of its past evolution goes for nothing.”

“You mean because the struggle turns out to have been unnecessary? But that’s saying still earlier contact would have been better.”

“No! The struggle is necessary; no species can evolve without it—the struggle to solve its own problems, I mean. Its people can’t hold their own among biologically older peoples without that background. And their potential contribution to galactic civilization can’t develop, either. If a species turns to absorbing knowledge from others before gaining enough on its own, its unique outlook is lost. It has nothing to give, and the spirit of its people dies, Noren. No more progress is possible for them.”

“But they can mingle with the rest of you, surely—”

“Not in any permanent sense. Since it’s genetically impossible for species that evolve on different worlds to interbreed, they will always retain separate identity. What’s more, the majority of individuals in a young species can’t develop their latent telepathic powers or any other abilities they consider paranormal. So if their own culture isn’t viable and they lack the psychic skills basic to ours, their descendants are doomed to be like retarded children in the eyes of the Federation. The Service is dedicated to making sure that never happens where there’s an alternative.”

Noren pondered it. Finally he said, “Lianne, I can’t argue with the goal, but . . . it’s not as clear-cut as it sounds. There are more factors to weigh—”

“Of course there are. That’s why I’m still here.”

“To judge not our worthiness, but the odds against us?”

“To obtain data so that judgment can be made.” She reached out to him, fear surfacing once more. “Don’t you see, I’m just one person, quite a young person, and we’re talking about a decision that demands the collective wisdom of all the mature species in the galaxy! The Service will make it—but they will not tell me while I’m here, Noren. As long as I’m among you, I’ll be given no more power than you have. They won’t tell me the odds, or what’s best for your world, any more than they will tell you.”