Chapter Nine

In the days that followed, Noren immersed himself totally in analyzing what had gone wrong with the genetic change. His error could not have been avoided, he found—it had not been a stupid mistake or even a careless one. And it had been made initially by the geneticist of the First Scholar’s time, whose design he had followed. She, like himself, had been forced into human experimentation long before it would have been tried if test animals had been available. Success at so early a stage would have been almost miraculous.

With painstaking care, he redesigned the change and went back to the Outer City’s labs to prepare a new vaccine. He injected himself with it to make sure it wasn’t virulent, but that, of course, proved nothing about its genetic adequacy. It must be tested on someone whose genes hadn’t been previously altered. His agonized doubt over whether he’d have the courage to perform such a test was mitigated, somewhat, by the fact that he saw no immediate chance of finding a volunteer to perform it on. As long as he was busy, he pushed that problem from his mind.

He continued to preside at religious services whenever his turn came. Lianne insisted that a sincere commitment to priesthood was indispensable to his task, rather than simply a means of gaining power among the Scholars; but she would not explain further. She seemed deeply troubled by the issue. “The knowledge of your course must grow from within you,” she told him. “It’s not beyond your reach, not something you need outside help to discover. To give you specific advice wouldn’t do you any good—while you’re unready to face it, I’d only cause you more pain.”

“Lianne,” he protested, “I’m ready to face anything. I’ve never backed off from the truth, not knowingly, and I won’t start now.” Which she ought to realize, he thought indignantly.

“It’s because I do realize it that I believe you have a chance of achieving the goal,” she replied, grasping more than he’d said, as always.

“I can tell you’re not happy about what you’re concealing,” he said forthrightly, “and I wish you wouldn’t try to spare me. I’d feel better knowing the worst.” Actually, he was sure nothing could be worse than the things to which he’d already resigned himself. The prospect of more pain did not seem to matter.

“There’ll be time enough to worry about it later,” Lianne declared. “I’ll say only that winning the villagers over will demand greater sacrifices than you’ve considered.”

Greater than the sacrifice of contact with her civilization? She did not know his mind as well as she seemed to, Noren thought in misery. Even so, he’d lost peace of conscience, the ability to have children, all hope that the Six Worlds’ technology could be preserved. He’d accepted the likelihood that he would end his days in exile at the now valueless research outpost beyond the mountains. “I’ve considered becoming a martyr like the First Scholar,” he said dryly, “but giving up my life wouldn’t do any good—and barring that, I don’t think there’s anything left for me to give up.”

“That’s because you don’t see how much you have to lose,” she observed sadly.

Contemplating this night after night, Noren confessed inwardly that it did dismay him, not so much because he minded being hurt—he felt past minding, numb—but because of his evident blindness. Why could he not perceive what Lianne foresaw? He tried, yet it eluded him. The fact that the means of gaining village support for a change in the High Law eluded Stefred also, and that she apparently expected no insight into it on Stefred’s part, didn’t cure him of self-doubt.

He saw little of Stefred these days, but Lianne was, of course, a go-between. Stefred allowed Noren to go his way without interference, presumably because he did not guess how far he had gone. Not guessing, he must feel that he, Noren, had turned his back on constructive science, that his youthful promise had gone sour; the thought of this was hard to bear. Some said such things openly of him. He now argued for genetic research and was viewed less as a threat to the established order than as the City eccentric. It had happened before, he’d heard: Scholars disillusioned in youth had become fanatic champions of impractical schemes, and while their right of free speech had been respected, the quality of their judgment had not. He must list the admiration of his peers among his losses, Noren knew, although never having cared much what others thought of him, he did not count it a great sacrifice. The loss of his closeness to Stefred was something else again. He missed that, and like Lianne he hated the deceit he was forced to practice upon the one man in the City most worthy of confidence.

He was free to study genetics; any Scholar was free to study anything—but to devote years to it, abandoning all pretense of research into metal synthesization, was out of the question. Genetic research fell in the avocation class, like art and music. Inner City people were expected to perform essential work, if not out of sheer dedication, then merely because they received food and lodging. Noren, as a trained nuclear physicist, volunteered for a shift in the power plant; and thereafter, since he spent even longer hours on the genetic work, he had a bare minimum of time left to eat and sleep. Fatigue added to his numbness, and for that he was grateful. Only work could insulate him from despair.

Veldry continued to attend Orison whenever he presided. One evening she approached him after the service and asked to talk in private. Too much time had passed for that to start gossip, he decided, and in any case he could refuse no request of Veldry’s. He went with her to her room, suppressing with effort the memories it stirred in him.

“Noren,” Veldry said, “the risk has to be taken again, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” he agreed in a low voice. “I’ve—reconciled myself to that. Only there’s no one I can ask.”

“You could use a volunteer who doesn’t need to be asked.”

“I don’t expect to be let off that easily. Who’d offer, when there’s no support for genetic change even in principle?”

“I’m offering,” she told him simply.

“You—what?”

“I’m willing to try again whenever you’re ready.”

“Veldry,” Noren protested, reddening, “I thought you understood. You and I can’t try again; my genes are damaged, and if I tried to repair them it wouldn’t be a valid test—the risk to the child wouldn’t be warranted. The new vaccine has to be used before the man drinks unpurified water.”

“I do understand. The man doesn’t have to drink it, the woman can. Genetically it doesn’t make any difference which parent gets the vaccine, so I’m volunteering to be inoculated.”

“Oh, Veldry,” he burst out, deeply moved. “It’s brave of you, but you mustn’t have a baby who might die, not twice—”

“I lost my special baby,” she said softly. “I want another to take his place—and anyway, why should more people than necessary get involved before we know it’s safe? I’m already committed. It’s better this way, really.”

Perhaps it would be, Noren thought. It had meant a lot to her; perhaps the chance of a happy ending was worth the danger. He paused, embarrassed, wondering if she’d really grasped the extent of the risk she was taking. “What if I fail again?” he asked.

“You won’t.”

“I may. I refused to accept that, the first time; I told you the change I’d made might not work right, but I never actually believed it. Now I do, and it has to be considered.”

“I wouldn’t be the only woman in the world to have lost two children.”

“You’d lose a good deal more,” he reminded her. “You’d lose your ability to have normal ones.”

“I’ve had my share in the past.”

“That’s not the only thing,” Noren said bluntly. “There are only a couple of doctors in the City qualified to sterilize a woman, both of them senior people we don’t dare to confide in—”

“I’ve had my share of lovers in the past, too,” Veldry broke in. “I thought I’d made clear that I want to do something more with my life.”

“But—if you should ever find the man you’ve been looking for, the one who’ll see beneath your beauty and whose love for you will last—”

“Then it will last till I’m past the age to have babies, and if he sees beneath my beauty, Noren, he’ll know that’s not such a lifetime away as you think.” She smiled ruefully. “You’d be surprised, I suppose, if you knew just how old I am—but didn’t you ever wonder how it happened that I’d experienced the full version of the First Scholar’s dream recordings long before the secret one was found?”

He drew breath; he had indeed wondered, for he’d assumed she’d arrived in the City only a few years ahead of him, and young people rarely sought the full version. It hadn’t occurred to him that being beautiful might mask the usual effects of age.

“I ask just two things,” Veldry went on levelly. “First, I’ve got to have your permission to tell someone the truth about the first baby.”

“Well, of course. I wouldn’t do this unless the father of the second one was informed. May I—ask who it’s to be, Veldry?”

“No, you can’t,” she replied. “That’s the second thing; I may never be able to name him to you, though I’ll get you a blood sample.” After a short pause she added slowly, “I may have to tell more than one person, and I can’t consult you about who. Do you trust me to choose?”

“You mean you’re just going to . . . persuade somebody?”

“I’m in a better position to do that than you are, after all.” Bitterly she continued, “I’ve got one asset, which has never done either me or the world any good. Is it wrong for me to take advantage of it the one time I might accomplish something worthwhile that way?”

“No,” he said. “No, maybe this will make up for all the grief it’s caused you. I trust you, Veldry. Tell whoever you need to, just so the facts don’t reach anyone who’d put a stop to the birth of genetically altered children.”

“If I have a healthy one,” Veldry declared, “nobody can stop it. Under the High Law I have a right to get pregnant as often as I want, and my genes will be changed for good.”

*  *  *

With grim determination, Noren injected Veldry with the corrected vaccine. When the alteration of her genes had been confirmed, he and Lianne stood by her while she drank from the courtyard waterfall. Veldry, having been told that Lianne was barren, not only shared the widespread assumption that she and Noren were lovers but rejoiced that they could remain lovers despite the necessity that he father no more children—in her eyes, Lianne’s apparent curse had become a blessing. He could not yet be sterilized; there was no doctor at all in whom he could confide, and the High Law prohibited sterilization except in cases of proven genetic damage. Unlike the First Scholar, who had been in the same position, he was young, and he was realistic enough to know that a time might come when this aspect of his personal sacrifice would become more burdensome than it was in his present state of depression. He might someday want love, and Lianne would not be in the City forever . . . but at that thought he turned, wounded, from all such reflection.

He drew back from a deep relationship with Lianne, even from the friendship that had grown strong between them. She knew him better than any human being ever had; she understood his dreams, his longings—his whole outlook on the world—in a way that hadn’t been possible for Talyra. It was due not only to her telepathic gift, but to the compatibility of their minds. With Lianne he knew, for the first time in his life, what it was not to be lonely. Yet this kinship of spirit had become a searing agony. He wanted desperately to glimpse the universe as she had seen it, to share the ideas she was now willing to discuss, but at the same time he could not bear to talk of them. What he could not have, he must forget, or lose his grip on the routine of everyday living. To his dismay he found himself avoiding his sole chance to exchange thoughts about the things that mattered most to him, shunning all reminders of the realms he had renounced.

There was little time to talk to Lianne anyway, considering his double workload; when he saw her, he fell into casual comments on daily happenings or technical points of the work. He was not fully aware of the extent to which this was deliberate. Looking back, however, he knew his one opportunity for real communication was slipping away. Lianne obviously knew, too, and was saddened. It occurred to him that she, left alone in his world for an indefinite number of years, was desperately in need of his companionship though she was resigned to not having his love. If she was the only person in the City he’d found who cared about the universe, the reverse was even more true. He was nevertheless powerless to help himself. Inwardly aching, he let their moments of contact run out in empty conversation.

Some weeks after Veldry had begun drinking unpurified water, she told him, radiantly, that she was pregnant. She seemed even more elated than she’d been the first time; Noren thought with chagrin that her courage outmatched his own. He was pleased by the news, but he could scarcely feel good about it—he knew that as time went on his terror would grow in pace with the growing child. Did joy in a new love override her fear? “I don’t suppose—” he began awkwardly.

“That I can say who the father is? No, he made me swear not to tell even you.”

With discouragement, Noren reflected that he would never be able to sway people, as a priest or otherwise. He just wasn’t the kind of person they confided in. Did someone think, after all the risks he’d taken privately, that he’d betray a supporter who desired secrecy, much less spread rumors about one brief and probably extramarital relationship?

“I’ll say, though, that you’d approve of him,” Veldry added, her eyes alight with fierce pride.

“He’s made you happy, then. I’m glad.”

“In the way you did, yes, he made me happy. He offered me respect, and he’ll share my feeling about the child whatever happens. But I meant you’d approve of him as—well, since you can’t be the biological father of the new race yourself—”

So the man was admirable, not a casual lover but someone who truly cared about future generations. For that he was thankful. Yet he was not sure he’d wholly approve of someone unwilling to declare his convictions openly. To conceal the experimentation was one thing, and necessary—but experimentation would serve no purpose unless the idea of genetic change eventually gained defenders.

Since he seemed unable to progress toward finding any, he finally broached the topic with Lianne. “No amount of sacrifice on my part will help matters if the majority can’t be won over,” he complained.

Lianne was silent, thoughtful, for a long moment. “What was the hardest part of what the First Scholar achieved?” she asked slowly.

Noren pondered it. Not martyrdom; that had been only the climax. Not the secret genetic experiment, which had achieved nothing in his time. “The worst was having to endorse a system he knew was evil,” he said. “We all know that, and we all relive it.”

“Yes, you reconcile yourselves to it, to the pattern of hardship his plan demands. But he himself had to do more. He had to break away from his society’s pattern. The truly difficult step was accepting the fact that a social structure like the one the Six Worlds had—the one he was used to and believed worked best—would not work in this colony. You probably got so wrapped up in the ethical issues that you haven’t grasped what a tremendous innovation it was for him to think of making any change at all.”

“I guess I haven’t.”

“I have,” Lianne told him. “Because I’ve studied lots of societies, I can make comparisons. People normally want to hang onto what they’re used to. The villagers’ feeling about the High Law is simply an exaggerated form of a tendency that exists in every culture, and what’s more, so is the Scholars’ outlook. It affects even your own thinking. You’re resigned to the necessary evils, therefore you haven’t separated the customs that are still necessary from those that aren’t.”

“Are you saying I’ve condoned evils that needn’t exist?” he protested, shocked.

“No, but you haven’t examined what’s essential as opposed to what’s merely traditional. For the Founders, changing their old system was hard not just because it meant condoning wrongs, but because it involved abandoning traditions. The First Scholar was the only one among them who questioned those traditions enough to see that some could be altered.”

“And if I were his equal, I could do that here?”

“Because you are his equal, you will do it.”

“That doesn’t sound—sacrificial,” Noren said. “If I’m not expected to lose my life in the process, where can I go but up?”

Soberly Lianne said, “Giving up the pattern of customs you’ve come to depend on is harder than you may think. I know! When we join the Service, we renounce allegiance to our native worlds, and we’re required to analyze thoroughly what it is we’re putting behind us.”

“That’s different,” he reflected. “You do it because you want the new pattern the Service offers; you don’t have to strike out on your own without one.”

“I never claimed I’m the equal of the First Scholar,” said Lianne.

Startled, Noren shielded his thoughts from her, unwilling to let her sense the dismay in them. “I . . . think I just got the point,” he said.

It was disconcerting to realize he had not questioned all his premises. As a heretic, had he not always been a questioner? Had he not, since, challenged the Founders’ plan itself? He’d never hesitated to break rules when he saw purpose in it; now, during the next weeks, Noren began looking for rules to break. None seemed relevant to his cause.

He could, to be sure, devise plans that went against tradition. For instance, it would help tremendously if the outpost were turned into a center for genetic research instead of nuclear research. Genetically altered crops could then be grown there by Scholars, who, beyond the mountains, did their own farming in any case. He’d by now nearly completed his computer work on the design of the changes necessary for growing food without soil treatment, weather control or irradiation of seed; at the outpost he could test them personally. By an even more radical breach of custom, parents of genetically altered children might rear their own families at the outpost, which would eliminate the large problem of keeping watch on those children and arranging intermarriages between them. But there was no way he could take over the outpost in the face of majority opposition. Besides, such a course would be useless for bringing about eventual genetic change in the villages, and that, rather than the research, was his main problem.

The seasons passed. Veldry once more became great with child, and it was Noren who felt the sickness by which she herself seemed untouched. “What did you do to her during that last birthing?” he asked Lianne. He had read that posthypnotic suggestion could be employed in powerful ways, though neither she nor Stefred had ever insulted him by offering it as alleviation of anxiety.

“Nothing lasting,” Lianne assured him, following his thought. “I only helped with the delivery. Now, I think, she’s got a real sense of destiny. But you are right that hypnosis can do more than anyone here uses it for. I was appalled when I first saw how commonplace it is in the City. Many societies misuse it before they understand the powers of the mind.”

Noren waited, hoping to hear more. He still knew little of those powers, and it was a subject she usually steered away from. “I needn’t have worried,” she went on. “Stefred is competent; he knows what not to try, and the others trained in induction don’t go beyond hypnotic sedation and anesthesia for physical pain. I stay within comparable limits, though I’m tempted sometimes to use my own training.”

“I wouldn’t want—anesthesia, not for mental things,” he told her.

“Of course not. But hypnosis can increase awareness, too. I could open whole areas of your mind that you’ve shut off—” She stopped, sorry, evidently, to have said something that might tantalize him.

“I suppose that isn’t permitted,” he said, unable to keep bitterness front his voice.

“Technically it isn’t, but that’s not what holds me back. It would be . . . disorienting, Noren. You’d be badly scared at first.”

“Well, I wouldn’t let that matter,” he declared with sudden hope.

“All the same it would interfere with your functioning as a scientist. You’d have to adjust to new states of consciousness; you wouldn’t be able to work till you’d regained confidence in your own sanity.”

“Like—like after my space flight,” he reflected. Like what? Lianne’s thought echoed, and he recalled that she could not know. He’d never told anyone but Stefred what had underlain his panic in space, where he’d been literally paralyzed not by physical fear but by what was happening in his mind. He rarely thought of it himself any more, having learned to put such things aside and get on with life. Now, at Lianne’s silent insistence, he let it well into memory: the detachment from ordinary reality, the horror of feeling that nothing had meaning in a universe too immense for rational comprehension. . . .

Lianne was speaking, urgently and aloud. “Those are feelings you connect with religion?”

He shook himself back. “I felt them first at Orison,” he admitted, “though not as strongly as later on. I know they don’t make sense. I doubt if they did even to Stefred, despite what he said about its being normal to get upset by unanswerable questions.”

“They make sense,” Lianne stated positively, surprisingly undisturbed by this most painful recollection of his past. “The fact that you’ve experienced them is—significant.”

“Stefred called it a sign of strength.” Noren had never fully understood that, though he’d tried to take Stefred’s word for it.

“He was right, as he usually is within the limits of his knowledge. What’s puzzled me is how anyone as strong as you could have shied away from them entirely, both the dark side and the bright. Now I see. You went part way on your own, young, in circumstances of great stress; and you got burned.”

“Part way to what?” Noren whispered. What bright side?

“To another state of consciousness where perception is not tied to reasoning. If you want a physical explanation, such a state involves separate areas of the brain; but it’s more than that, and more complicated. People react differently. Some find it pleasant—euphoric, even—but it can be terrifying, too, especially to anyone who values reason as much as you do.”

But it’s a way to see more of the truth, he thought, sensing from her emotion that the abyss that had haunted him was merely a stage on the road to the sort of mental power her own people possessed.

“I’ve been concerned,” Lianne said, “because your culture has no real mystic tradition. The Founders were scientists and preserved little of what they could not analyze. The computer record glosses over what other values were cherished on the Six Worlds. Normally, you see, a planetary civilization at your level has both science and mysticism; and both are needed to reach the levels ahead.”

Perplexed, Noren considered this. “Are you saying we’ll never learn the meanings of things, no matter how far advanced our science gets?”

“Through science alone you won’t. But there is a state of—of knowing the meaning, knowing in a way beyond faith that everything fits together.” Sighing, she added, “I can’t describe it any more than you can describe the bad part. There are no words.”

“You could show me . . . telepathically, couldn’t you?” Please, Lianne, please don’t withhold this from me! he pleaded silently.

“I have tried,” she said gently. “At Orison I’ve tried to reach you, but you shut me out. I know why, now. You were burned once; underneath you’re afraid to enter those regions again.”

“Never mind that. Use deep trance if you need to; I’m willing.”

She pressed his hand between hers, meeting his eyes. “Noren, to get there artificially, through hypnosis or drugs, is extremely dangerous. I’m trained to some extent, I could keep you from permanent harm, yet even if there weren’t that past panic to be overcome, it would interrupt your working life. I’m not a psychiatrist in my own culture, you know—I can do more than Stefred only because a standard Service education covers more information about the mind than Six Worlds psychiatrists possessed. I am no better qualified to heal you quickly than he was.”

And in the future when his work was completed, Noren thought in anguish, she would be gone. What would it be like to know that Lianne was out among the stars somewhere, seeing worlds he could never see, probing spheres of consciousness he could not attain?

She shivered, as if the sorrow were more hers than his own; he found himself wanting to hold her. But on the point of embrace, they both stood back. There was nowhere that could lead except to tragedy.

“At least it helps to know a bright side exists,” he said resolutely.

“It exists, and someday, if you hold your mind open to whatever inner experiences may come, you can reach it spontaneously. You have the proven capacity. To pursue that way actively simply isn’t your role.”

No, and to turn back from it was merely another sacrifice his role demanded. He wondered how many more there were going to be.

* * *

Somehow he got through the suspense of Veldry’s pregnancy; through her confinement; through the Thanksgiving for Birth that followed the delivery of a healthy baby boy. He’d privately hoped he might learn the father’s identity from that service, but Veldry forestalled him. “It would give away his secret, to you at least, if he arranged to preside,” she said. So the regular roster was evidently followed. As it happened, ironically, it was Stefred who officiated. Noren wondered how Lianne hid her feelings from him, and what he would say if he knew what he’d inadvertently blessed.

Veldry wasn’t permitted to nurse her own child this time, since there was no lack of wet nurses; but Lianne visited the nursery often enough to provide assurance that nothing was amiss. Gradually Noren’s dread gave way to elation. The ensuing relief, however, was shadowed by the realization that his grace period was over—he must delay no longer in finding volunteers to produce other children.

The solution dawned on him unexpectedly. One evening in the refectory a new Scholar, a man named Denrul, joined the table where he was sitting with several friends. Noren, rather amused at first, watched him rest his eyes on Veldry with something akin to adoration. Denrul, though older than most novices, was too recently admitted to have lost his awe of City women, and he’d as yet heard none of the long-standing gossip. Her beauty, for him, overwhelmed all else. Or did it? There was more in Denrul’s gaze than desire; Veldry’s own eyes lit with response, and Noren perceived that hope had wakened in her once more. Telepathy? he thought wryly. Maybe it was; maybe that was what love at first sight always was. In any case the two seemed well on the way to becoming love-stricken.

A new Scholar, Noren thought with sudden excitement—one whose ties with City tradition weren’t yet formed. As a recruit barely a week past recantation, Denrul’s idealism would be at its peak. That did not seem quite fair, and yet why not, except because he was just the sort of person who might be swayed? If to try to sway such people was wrong, then so was everything else he, Noren, had done. His instinct to avoid taking advantage of immature consciences was, perhaps, merely a sign of conflict in his own.

“Yes,” Lianne told him, “Denrul would be receptive. So would most candidates I’ve worked with, if approached early. I wondered when you would think of it.”

She now worked with them—he hadn’t stopped to consider that, for her discussions with candidates were as confidential as Stefred’s own. Unrobed assistants had always monitored some phases of the enlightenment dreams; Lianne was by this time fully trained to do so routinely. Thus the novice Scholars, their first few days after recanting, knew her better than anyone in the City aside from Stefred. Most of them were adolescent; all were elated by their triumph as heretics; all expected to adapt to new ways. Even more crucially, fresh from initial exposure to the dream sequence, they were loyal to the First Scholar alone.

The secret dream, by Council decision, had thus far been made available only to people who’d experienced the full version of the First Scholar’s other dream recordings: a policy Noren now saw was aimed toward restricting it to those with long-standing commitments to the Scholars’ traditional goals. He had been charged by the First Scholar’s words with full authority to decide who should be given access, and he recalled that at first, Stefred had feared the power this gave him. Power, yes! Novices would emerge from that dream ready to support what they’d see as an underground movement within the still-mysterious Inner City society. There were not enough of them to affect policy decisions, but as volunteer parents they would suffice.

During the days he pondered this, Veldry and Denrul spent much time openly in each other’s company. It reached the point where Noren wondered if she’d already explained about her genes; she’d have to, of course, if they became lovers, and in inoculating her he’d authorized her to reveal his own role as she saw fit. But when he brought up the subject, she seemed surprisingly embarrassed. “No,” she said. “He’d agree, but it shouldn’t come from me. That would be—seduction. You tell him, Noren. Tell him the truth about me, the whole truth. And then—” she blinked back tears “—then whatever he wants to do is up to him.”

Noren sought out Denrul, and they had a long talk. “You understand,” he said at the end of it, “that I’m asking you to perjure yourself as far as the Prophecy’s concerned. That’s what the others won’t do, and you’ve recanted on that basis of believing they won’t. To become a Scholar, at the same time realizing that what you affirmed in the ceremony’s false after all, won’t be easy. Especially when you’ll, well, gain personally—”

“Veldry? Noren, that’s not how I feel about her,” Denrul protested, shocked. “I’d never involve her in anything I had doubts over.”

“I’ve told you frankly that you’ll be far from her first lover.”

“I will not,” Denrul declared. “I’ll be her husband if she’ll have me at all.”

“That’s the village way,” agreed Noren, wondering uneasily whether Denrul’s fervent words reflected true devotion to Veldry or merely his inexperience with the Inner City’s less-strict conventions.

“It’s the only way right for her,” insisted Denrul. “Look, here’s a woman you say has had her choice of men—yet she thinks more about what’s best for her descendants than who she chooses? I say she wants more than love. I say she deserves a partner committed to more.”

“So do I,” Noren admitted with relief. “But you see, people not in on this secret have no way of knowing what she really cares about.”

Although Denrul had been won to the cause of genetic change without the secret dream, Noren was unwilling to alter the genes of anyone who hadn’t experienced it. It was too harrowing in some respects for anyone unready for the full version of the others; but it could be edited—Lianne was as skilled in that process as Stefred. During one long, agonizing night he went through it again, serving as monitored dreamer while she prepared a version suitable for those who’d recently completed the enlightenment dreams. This she kept in her personal possession. Denrul was told to sign up for library dream time, and on his scheduled night, she arranged to be on duty. Shortly thereafter, pale but resolute, he returned to Noren for inoculation.

A few weeks later, Denrul and Veldry stood up at Orison and to everyone’s amazement exchanged marriage vows. Veldry wore everyday beige trousers instead of a traditional red bridal skirt, and there were no officially designated attendants—Noren, who couldn’t publicly have assumed that role without arousing comment, found himself in the less welcome one of presiding priest. It was his regular turn, Veldry having carefully checked the roster, so when the newlywed couple stood before him to receive formal benediction, it was assumed they had no special friend to perform the office. The blessing was taken for a routine one. To Noren, however, it was a turning point: his own confirmation of total responsibility for other people’s risks.

He joined them afterward for a private feast in Veldry’s room, at which Lianne was the only other person present. She poured from a large jug she had brought, and Noren proposed the conventional toast: “To this union—may it be fruitful and bring lasting joy.”

They drank. At the first taste Veldry seemed ebullient and Denrul perplexed. Noren, in bewilderment, burst out, “By the Star, Lianne, this stuff’s like water! Couldn’t you find any better ale?”

“Under the circumstances I thought watered ale might be more appropriate,” she said pointedly, “considering where the water came from.”

Denrul’s puzzled frown gave way to bravado; with shaking hands he drained his cup without pausing. Indignantly Noren protested, “Lianne, that was cruel. At a marriage feast, a time for celebration—”

“No, Lianne’s right,” Veldry interrupted. “It’s melodramatic, maybe, but not cruel. It’s got to be like this. I mean, if we believe in what we’re doing, believe strongly enough to overthrow the old traditions, we’ve got to establish new ones. We need to dramatize! Life’s not all abstract science and ethics.”

Lianne was brimming with exhilaration; it was as if the ale had been more potent than usual instead of less so. “I propose a second toast,” she said, “to the day when stream water will be drunk sacramentally at village weddings.”

In high spirits they finished the contents of the jug. Denrul—who like many heretics had sampled impure water before his arrest—passed the safe limit in a single evening. Only for him was it a crucial step, since the others had consumed plenty of such water before. The symbolic significance in the act was nevertheless strong. For Noren in particular it was a poignant reminder of what he had lost, what he had yet to hazard before the gamble could pay off.

Later, walking back to his own lodging tower with Lianne, he mused, “I couldn’t see for myself what Veldry saw. Is that why I’m not getting anywhere, why I’m blind to the path ahead?”

“Partly.” Lianne seemed troubled; the elation she’d shown earlier had faded. “I—I gave you a clue, Noren, in my toast. I don’t think I overstepped my role because both Veldry and Denrul got what I was driving at. You . . . for several reasons you’ll find that harder.”

“I’ve never liked ceremony, that’s one, I suppose—though what happened in there was good. Were you doing something to us with your mind?”

“Nothing more than people usually do with their minds under such circumstances. That’s one of the things you don’t grasp about ceremony.”

“Well, nobody here knows about psychic undercurrents.” She could hardly be expecting him to act on the basis of knowledge she’d insisted was beyond him, Noren thought in frustration.

“Not consciously. But they sense what’s going on, as Veldry did—and as Stefred would. He’d deny the existence of telepathy, but he could predict exactly what the effects of the symbolic action would be.”

“Why doesn’t he, then? You say the clue’s in your suggestion about watering the ale at village weddings, but he maintains villagers wouldn’t be willing to drink unpurified water at all. And I should think a wedding would be the last occasion they’d pick to do it.”

“There’s a gap between existing tradition and what must replace it,” she agreed. “Stefred can’t bridge that gap; he’s too bound to the conventions the Founders established. You are freer—precisely because you’ve stood off from religious symbolism, you are free to reinterpret it as the Founders reinterpreted their own.”

“I already tried that once, trying to make gods of your people. I’ll not repeat that mistake.”

“Have you analyzed it, though?”

Not as well as he should have, Noren thought with chagrin. His mistake, as with his earlier errors concerning religion, had been in trying to name the ultimate. He was willing now to call it the Star and let that go. But Lianne was talking not about ultimates but about concrete things: the provisions of the High Law, for instance. The things that not only could change, but must. The Law forbade drinking impure water; she foresaw not merely the breaking of that Law but its reversal, for people would never ignore religion on a formal occasion like a wedding. He’d imagined their hoarding what little purified water was left simply to serve wedding guests. . . .

“Oh, Lianne,” he murmured. “I’m beginning to guess where you’re leading—but if symbols can be manipulated like that, turned around and given whatever significance someone wants them to have—”

“It is dangerous,” she admitted. “Like everything else, it’s a principle that can be put to ill use, and on most worlds both unscrupulous people and deluded ones have misused it. Here there are exceptional safeguards, which you will have to override.”

It was true, he reflected, that the Founders had deliberately created the symbols and ritual of a new religion in the first place; what they had done could in principle be redone. Yet conditions had not been the same. “I don’t think Scholars would ever revise the basic symbols,” he declared. “That’s not as simple as creating a little ceremony to express our own feelings about defying a taboo we’ve already decided to ignore at our own risk. There’d be—well, no authority for it. People don’t just make up their minds to change what things mean. The Scholars won’t take my word for scientific facts; how can we expect that I can alter their religious views?”

“We can’t,” Lianne acknowledged. “The kind of thing we did tonight will help form a small group of dedicated volunteers to produce genetically altered children. What I proposed in the toast was something altogether apart. It concerned not the Scholars’ religion but the villagers’.”

“But one’s got to lead to the other.”

“Really? Who believed in the symbols first when the Founders established them?”

The villagers did, Noren realized, confused. The Founders gave them the Prophecy and High Law believing in the ideas behind the symbols, but it was the villagers who took them at literal face value. Only later, when village-born heretics were brought into the City, did those symbols acquire true religious significance within the walls. “We can’t alter people’s views by a proclamation from the Gates,” he protested. “How can the interpretation in the villages change before it’s changed here?”

Lianne stopped and faced him, reaching for his hand. “You’re beginning to ask the right questions,” she said, almost with sadness. “Noren, we are coming perilously close to things I must not say to you. If that last question is answered, it must be by you and you alone—not so much because I shouldn’t intervene as for your own sake. I—I couldn’t bear to have you change the shape of your life on my word.”

She gave his cheek a light kiss, then turned quickly and hurried across the courtyard toward the tower where she lodged. Noren was left listening to the echo of her footsteps.

*  *  *

It was not long before Veldry was pregnant again. By that time, the group of volunteers had grown by another couple and several young men—novices still in adolescence—who were willing to be genetically altered as soon as they could find brides. Once a man’s genes were altered, he would never be free to love Technician women, who could not participate in human experimentation. For this reason Noren decided to accept couples only, and their number was necessarily limited by the number of female novices who entered the City. It seemed a bit unfeeling to tell these women that if they wished to serve the cause of human survival, they must choose husbands immediately from among the eligible men on the waiting list—yet after all, in the villages most marriages were arranged by families. Few girls grew up expecting to marry for love.

Though men and women alike were free to refuse the dream Lianne offered them, none did so, and none, having experienced the dream, refused to support the First Scholar’s secret goal. They were not yet priests and had been told by Stefred that they need never assume the robe; the conflict between endorsement of the Prophecy and advocacy of genetic change was not severe with them. More significant, Noren suspected, was the fact that in working for the latter they were continuing to oppose authority. A new Scholar’s biggest problem was generally turning from heresy to support of the established order.

The risk to the children was no longer a great worry, with Veldry’s baby thriving well. The worst part of the whole business, for Noren and Lianne, was the extent to which they were deceiving Stefred. He had always been close to each Scholar he’d brought through candidacy; now all the new ones, within days of recantation, were being sworn to stop confiding in him. Noren feared some might break this oath, but Lianne seemed to see no danger. “It’s not as if he’s going to suffer any harm,” she pointed out. “Oh, he’ll feel hurt if he finds out about the conspiracy, but they don’t realize that. He’s still Chief Inquisitor to them. Though they trust his integrity, they don’t know he’s vulnerable to personal feelings.”

“You and I know.” Noren bit his tongue; he was sorry that had slipped out, for Lianne was in a far worse situation than he was. She worked with Stefred, saw him daily and discussed the progress of these same novices with him. Furthermore, Stefred was still in love with her, though he’d long ago given up hope of her returning that love, and there was now small chance of his finding happiness with anyone else. Were he to be attracted to some newcomer, that woman would be committed to genetic experimentation before he was free to speak.

Denrul had chosen medical and surgical training, realizing that a physician who knew of the experimentation was desperately needed. On the side, he completed the computer training program in genetics, and Noren began tutoring him privately in the details of his own more advanced work. He himself must have a successor, in case . . . in case of emergency, he told himself firmly. The Service was not going to take him away aboard the starship, not ever. But the work was too vital to depend on a single person’s presence. And besides, Denrul, who was to specialize in medical research, had more access to lab facilities than Lianne. There was even the possibility that after he was no longer being supervised, they could produce the genetic vaccine in the Inner City instead of having to make clandestine excursions to the officially off-limits domes.

Noren rarely saw Brek any more except at large gatherings, but when he did, Brek’s troubled look was haunting. It was not only that Brek now thought the worst of him. Nuclear physics, for Brek, was finally producing the disillusionment Noren’s greater talent had found there earlier. Even his happiness with Beris seemed affected. One evening, when she wasn’t present, he approached Noren and said miserably, “You were . . . right. It’s hopeless. I want you to know that I—I understand, better, why you gave it up. I think I even forgive hypocrisy now. I can’t seem to renounce priesthood myself, and you—you never felt as I did about the Star in the first place. You at least believe we have some way of surviving.”

“Are you sure my way’s wrong?” Noren asked slowly.

“Maybe not. Maybe I’m simply a coward—only Beris . . . I couldn’t let Beris—”

“Even if there were healthy babies before hers?” Telling Brek would do no harm now. He would never betray anyone, and though he might be shocked, sickened, by the now-available dream of the First Scholar’s involvement, it would lend weight to what he’d viewed as an indefensible position. Things were not the same as before the birth of Veldry’s son.

“That’s a hypothetical question,” Brek declared, “to which there’s no honorable answer. I couldn’t ask others to do the dirty part.”

“Nor could I,” agreed Noren; “but the issue’s not hypothetical any more.” He went ahead with the whole story, omitting only the truth about Lianne.

“There’s no excuse for me, for the way I doubted you,” Brek said when he’d heard it all. “I’ve known you too long and too well. I’m not saying I could have done what you did—I’ve never been as strong as you—but I should have known things weren’t as they seemed. I’ll talk to Beris. I’ll go through this dream; I owe you that much. Only . . . about the Prophecy . . . I’m not sure. Even if we keep working at the outpost, we’ll know that cause is lost—”

“We know now,” said Noren sadly.

Hypocrisy about it wasn’t a solution—not for him, not for Brek, not for anyone. Yet neither was abandonment of the symbols. They must be reinterpreted, not abandoned; he’d known that since the night of Veldry’s wedding . . . but how? How?

“I’ve been going at it backwards,” he said to Lianne. “Destruction of symbols doesn’t work, I know that! I tried it in the village when I was condemned for heresy, and then later I crashed the aircar on the way to trying it again. Stefred permitted it both times because he knew there was no danger of my succeeding. Yet I’ve still been thinking in those terms, and so has he. We can’t ever get people to break the High Law by destroying their belief in it—”

“No more than the First Scholar could have overcome people’s attachment to the Six Worlds by revealing those worlds were gone,” she agreed.

“He gave them something constructive,” reflected Noren, “turned a symbol of tragedy into one of hope.”

“That wasn’t unprecedented,” Lianne said. “Successful religions of many worlds have been centered on symbols with transformed significance.”

“Then what we do with watered ale at wedding feasts is more than dramatization of our defiance?”

“Well, it represents defiance, but not just of the Law. We defy our fear of destruction, Noren, and our confinement within the limits this world’s environment imposes. It’s a small thing, of course, not the equivalent of the Star and not nearly so powerful. Yet many religions do incorporate rites that involve food or drink with symbolic meaning—that’s a missing element in what you’ve got here, where there are only negative taboos. It would fit naturally.”

“But nobody not already willing to drink impure water would accept it, or get any lift out of it if they did.”

“No. By itself it’s not the answer.”

“What is?”

“Read up on the Six Worlds’ religions, how they originated, how they changed,” Lianne suggested, evading a direct answer.

He’d come to the end of the genetic design work and had found no way to experiment with plants past the sprouting stage, so he followed this advice—and was soon absorbed in a field of inquiry wholly new to him. In the past, he’d questioned the computers about beliefs; now he sought detail about the histories of those beliefs. It fascinated him and at the same time disturbed him . . . so many of the beliefs were manifestly untrue. And yet, it was not true that a miraculous star controlled the destiny of this world, either. Had the symbols of the ancients, even those taken literally, been less valid?

To be sure, evil as well as good had been done in the name of religion. There had been hideous episodes in which whole opposing populations had slaughtered each other in the belief that their causes were holy. Manipulation of symbols could, as Lianne had acknowledged, be dangerous. But the danger lay in the character of the manipulators. Anything could be twisted, perverted, used to destroy people’s freedom, their minds, even their lives; still a man of integrity could lead without destroying. The First Scholar had done it. Before him, there had been others. An appalling number of them had died as martyrs. Unlike him, some had been openly worshipped after their deaths. Yet, Noren realized, the worthy ones never sought this, would never have wanted it personally—it was a price to be paid for the victory of the truths they’d lived for.

Time went on. Noren resigned himself to an interval of inaction. The pain of past losses had dulled, and while he could not call himself happy, his appreciation of the inner City—of his access to the computer complex and the Six Worlds’ accumulated wisdom—began to return. It was anguish to know that Lianne’s people had far more knowledge than the computers, knowledge he could not attain. Still, he had by no means exhausted the resources available to him. More than you can absorb in a lifetime, Stefred had promised him long ago; and that was true. Lianne herself knew only a fraction of what the Service knew.

Lianne too was unhappy. Increasingly, she shielded even her emotions. He wondered if she missed her people despite her insistence that she did not. “It’s normal in the Service to spend long periods alone,” she declared, “that is, apart from our own kind. I’m not really alone. Here, I’m among people equal to my own—with individuals, the evolutionary distance doesn’t count. That’s significant only for cultures.”

Another child was born to Veldry, a girl, Denrul’s daughter. Soon afterward, a son was born to the second genetically altered couple, premature but otherwise healthy. That made three healthy children, two of whom had the altered genes from both parents, and since several other couples had been recruited—including Brek and Beris—more were already on the way. It was almost time for the first child’s weaning. He would be sent out for adoption soon; a plan for keeping track of his whereabouts must be made.

“Is this the tradition I must somehow overthrow?” Noren asked. “We can’t rear families in the City, both because there isn’t room and because the castes mustn’t become hereditary. But I suppose the custom of losing track of our children isn’t essential. It was set up merely because the Founders felt Scholars should sacrifice normal kinship ties.”

To his surprise, Lianne shook her head. “It’s far more important than that; the system couldn’t work without it. If Scholars’ children weren’t reared as villagers, indistinguishable from the others, a question would arise that no one here’s ever raised: the question of how much more survival time could be bought if some villages’ life support were cut off. There’d be a kind of division even the castes don’t create.”

Horrified, Noren protested, “We’re stewards! We couldn’t possibly prolong life on this planet by not spreading the resources equally.”

“That’s what a starship captain does in an emergency,” Lianne pointed out, “where it’s a choice between death for some and ultimate death for all. And that’s what it would come to when the time ran out here with no metal synthesization in sight. The Founders foresaw it. They barred specific records of adoptions because they knew Scholars wouldn’t cut off their own offspring as long as there was any alternative.”

“It’s a tradition I can’t tamper with, then.”

“You can’t abolish it,” she agreed, “but you’d be justified in modifying it because with genetic changes, the villages will be self-sufficient. It won’t matter if the advocates know where their children are. . . .

She went on talking, but Noren was deep in thought. As always, it came back to the problem of how to withdraw City aid without bloodshed. Religious sanction . . . but he was no closer to knowing how to provide that than he’d been seasons ago. “You told me to study how the Six Worlds’ religious traditions changed,” he said reflectively, “but things were different there. The leaders with new ideas, the prophets, weren’t shut away in a City, and usually they weren’t the official priests. They were often considered heretics, as far as that goes. They lived among common people and interacted with them.”

There was an abrupt silence; Lianne cut off what she’d been saying in mid-sentence. “Priests here begin as heretics,” she said, her blue eyes focused on his. “And they do grow up among the people.”

“But as heretics they can’t persuade anybody to change. I know; I tried it! And after they get in a position to speak with authority, they’re isolated.”

Lianne kept on looking at him. “Must they be?” she asked quietly.

“Well, of course; the most basic tradition we have is our confinement to the City—” He broke off, struck suddenly, horribly, by the implications of what he had said. Tradition. By tradition, Scholars did not mingle with villagers. When he and Brek had planned to defy that tradition, they’d gone as relapsed heretics, not as priests, and would not have been recognized as Scholars. But if a robed Scholar were to walk into a village square, people would listen to what he told them, listen in a way different from the way they listened at formal ceremonies. On the platform before the Gates, Scholars were anonymous figures; in a village they’d be seen as individually human.

Or superhuman.

Faintness came on him as the blood drained from his face. “Set out to become a prophet, you mean? Lianne, I couldn’t!”

She remained silent, waiting; he sensed her sympathy, but not whether the thing he was now thinking was what she’d foreseen all along. “I couldn’t,” he repeated. “You didn’t grow up here yourself; maybe you don’t know how villagers feel about us. They’d worship me! It would be everything the First Scholar wanted to avoid when he set up our anonymity—why, they’d follow me around, treat every word I uttered as holy.”

“Well, yes, that would be the idea,” she agreed. “They would accept what you said in personal contact with them when they’d never tolerate it as a sudden ceremonial proclamation. They’d get used to the idea of a coming change, over the years—”

“Years!”

“Oh . . . I assumed, that is, I was thinking in terms of the preparation years being the main point. The genetic testing of crops will take a long time, too, and you could handle it yourself—” She bit her lip, hesitant, unsure how far he had gone in the perception of something obviously well-developed in her own mind.

“We won’t be able to delay more years after we prove the change is safe to implement,” Noren protested. “It’s bad enough having to wait for the first generation of babies to grow up.”

“You don’t have to wait shut inside the City.”

“Start talking to villagers now, not knowing for certain that implementation’s going to become possible?”

“You’re confident of the vaccine now.”

“Three normal babies, yes, I’m confident enough to use it on as many Scholars as will accept it. But I’m not ready to risk the entire species. And—and if I promised such a change, people would want a demonstration. That would mean human experimentation on villagers, which is unthinkable.”

“If it’s unthinkable, Noren,” Lianne said bluntly, “you had best say so before Veldry’s baby is adopted. When that boy matures, you will have human experimentation among villagers whether you like it or not, with the first child he begets. The gene pool of the species will be permanently affected. Surely you weren’t counting on his being convicted of heresy before ever touching a girl.”

He had been. Without thinking it through, he’d pictured the children becoming heretical enough to reach the City before they married, while remaining conventional enough to abstain from earlier involvements—which was of course an unreasonable assumption. It was true that with their adoption he’d be committed to tests involving non-Scholars. Perhaps a small-scale experiment with village volunteers would be no worse.

That paled, however, beside the other issue. To personally visit the villages . . . but of course, it would be impossible. “Stefred wouldn’t let me go outside the City,” he said, ashamed of the inward relief that swept through him at remembrance of the obstacle.

“Stefred can’t keep you from going,” Lianne argued, “any more than he can stop me when I go.”

“Not from walking out the Gates, no—but if I spoke to villagers he’d have me brought back and lock me up from then on.” The Technicians who reported to Stefred kept in touch by radiophone and aircar. Village affairs were quickly known in the City, and Stefred would not hesitate to use force if he believed the people’s welfare was at stake.

“I think you’re mistaken,” said Lianne slowly. “Noren—Stefred knows human experimentation has gone on.”

“Knows? You told him?”

“Of course not, but do you think anyone as perceptive as he could remain blind so long, when we recruit all the novices?”

“But if he knew, he’d have put a stop to it.”

“No. Interference would be an even worse threat to the Inner City than supporting you would be—social interaction here is founded on the right of each Scholar to make his or her own decisions. Stefred can’t override that when the experimentation does no harm to people not involved in it. If he felt that there was danger of children with defective genes being sent to the villages, he’d act, but he trusts your scientific competence.”

“Have you—discussed it with him?” Noren asked, appalled.

“No! Never—and I haven’t picked up much from his mind, either; he shields more than when I first knew him, as if he has secrets of his own. But he’s an excellent psychologist, after all. On that basis I can predict his reactions, even his reaction to the idea of your speaking out publicly.”

“He left me free to do that before because he judged me bound to fail,” Noren said. “If he kept his hands off again—well, I wouldn’t be willing to do such a thing as a mere gesture. I’d have to believe I could succeed. Yet if in principle I could, he’d be duty-bound to prevent it. The Council would force him to.”

“You underestimate Stefred. He has more independence than you give him credit for—and more courage.” Lianne’s eyes filled with tears. “More courage than I have, Noren.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Because there’s so much you don’t yet see, and I—I’m not brave enough to tell you. Stefred will be. Since he can stop you anyway if he wants, you have nothing to lose by talking it over with him. As a favor to me, will you do that?”

“Yes,” Noren promised, putting his arm around her, realizing from her trembling that she was even more upset than he himself. “If a time comes when I feel I should talk to villagers, I’ll talk to Stefred first.”

*  *  *

He tried to drive the idea from his mind, but it would not let him be. The more he thought of it, the more he knew it could work. It would demand unprecedented personal sacrifice, as Lianne had foreseen—the idea of receiving homage was repugnant to him. The prospect of doing so in official ceremonies when he got older was bad enough; this other would be infinitely worse. He had never liked villages in any case and would despise whatever time he spent there, all the more so because his role would encompass all the most difficult aspects of priesthood. Yet several ends would be served by it: not only alteration of the villagers’ attitude, but the crop testing—which he could accomplish with the aid of Technicians under his orders—and continuous observation of the children through successive visits.

The one thing he did not see was how Stefred could let it happen. But he had never known Lianne to be wrong. And he’d promised her to discuss it with Stefred, rash though that seemed. She avoided him during his days of deliberation; she seemed afraid to confront him, afraid even to meet his eyes. Noren knew he must get the decision over with.

“Yes,” Stefred admitted when Noren asked, “I’ve known for some time you are experimenting. I don’t know exactly who’s involved, and I don’t want to. It’s a matter for individual consciences.”

They were alone in the study, in the old way, the old atmosphere of trust strong between them; it was as if there had never been any rift. Never again, Noren thought, would he stay away from the one person with whom he felt free to express his deepest thoughts. Even with Lianne he was not as free as he was with Stefred. Between Lianne and himself, on both sides, was the tension of holding back feelings. And he feared hurting Lianne, whereas Stefred, as she’d perceived, had unlimited strength to face whatever needing facing.

“I’ve hated deceiving you,” Noren said, knowing the words weren’t necessary, knowing too that one deceit must continue. He could never reveal Lianne’s identity or the fact of her people’s existence—but with the reasons for that restriction, Stefred would concur.

“You’ve had to deceive me,” Stefred acknowledged. “As I’ve deceived you, pretending not to know.”

“I’ll spare us both and tell you the next step outright.” He did so, finding the words came easily. Stefred’s face, listening, was unreadable.

For a long time after Noren finished he was silent. Then, wonderingly, he said, “It . . . might work. It’s bolder than anything that’s occurred to me, further from the principles I’ve spent my life upholding. Strict isolation from the villagers is indispensable to their freedom under our system, yet while we hold to it, the High Law can’t be altered. In contact with villagers . . . there would be a chance. We’d have a chance, while otherwise there is none.”

“You’re saying you’d support me?” Noren asked, incredulous. To his chagrin, he felt more dread at the thought than elation.

“No,” Stefred told him. “If we should commit ourselves to your plan and fail, the morale of the Inner City would be destroyed just as surely as if I had supported you all along—and without the Inner City’s stability, the villages would be doomed. I can’t risk that, even knowing this change may be the only means of saving our remote descendants. I have a responsibility to the intervening generations.”

Noren found himself tongue-tied, unable, somehow, to argue. Had he come to Stefred hoping that he’d be overruled and would thus escape the burden of carrying out a plan he hated?

There was another pause. Then in a low voice Stefred said, “It’s impossible for me to support you. But if you take it upon yourself to act, I will look the other way, Noren.”

“I—thought you might. The idea depends on your treating it as you have the experimentation. Yet in this case, how can you get away with that?”

“The Gates are unlocked; we are held here only by our freely accepted obligation to follow the First Scholar’s rules. If you decide your conscience leads you elsewhere, no one will hear that the issue was discussed between us.”

“But wouldn’t tolerance on your part be the same as support as far as most Scholars are concerned? If I’m allowed to come and go, they’ll see you’re letting me do it.”

Stefred’s eyes widened with surprise that faded into evident pain. “By the Star,” he murmured, “I’ve been wondering how you of all people could propose this scheme so calmly. I assumed you understood what you’d be taking on.” He rose and came to Noren, laying a steady hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t say I could permit you to come and go,” he said quietly. “Only to go once, with the assurance that as long as you incite no violence you won’t be brought back by force.”

Stunned, Noren formed words with difficulty; his mouth was so dry he wondered if they were audible. “Leave the City—permanently?”

“You’d best think in those terms. Many years from now, after the genetic change has been accomplished, you might be able to return. But our society will be so altered that neither you nor I can make sure predictions.”

It hardly mattered. Years . . . enough years for the babies to grow up and have babies of their own, then for inoculation of the whole population . . . and then the cutoff of the purified water supply; if he made people accept that through their trust in him, he would have to stay with them while it was happening. Yes, to be exiled that long would be the same as permanence.

He had never imagined that kind of exile. From the morning he’d first seen the City, its bright towers dazzling with reflected sunrise, he had believed he would live and die within its walls. That thought had uplifted him even while he’d assumed he would die soon. He’d invited capture for the sake of one brief glimpse of such existence! There had been disillusionment; the City was not the Citadel of All Truth he’d envisioned, shouting his heresy before the Gates in defiance of the Law that barred them. It did not hold all he’d expected to find—not, he now knew, all he might find elsewhere in the universe. It was nevertheless the sole repository of knowledge in his world, and its contents had been ample compensation for what was formally termed “perpetual confinement.” How could he give up that sustenance? Access to knowledge was his life’s core. He’d contemplated eventual exile at the research outpost, but only with the supposition that stored knowledge would be transferred there, that it would become the last bastion of knowledge when the City’s technology wore out. To leave the City now, to live in a Stone Age culture among people with whom he could never speak of matters not taught in the village schools, without the computer complex, without discs or even books apart from village tales and the Book of the Prophecy. . . .

This was the step to which he’d been blind, blind because he could not face the thought of it. The thing of which Lianne had warned, seeing it far in advance—from the beginning, perhaps?—yet lacking the courage to open his eyes. This was the thing she’d known only Stefred could tell him.

“I can’t make it easy for you,” Stefred said, “and harsh though it may sound, I wouldn’t at this moment even if I could.”

“Because you want me to fail,” Noren said, not bitterly but in simple acknowledgment that Stefred’s compassion and his duty were at odds. “You’ve always opposed genetic change, apart from believing it couldn’t be brought about safely. You don’t think it’s the lesser of evils.”

“I do think it is. I must be ruthless with you because I want you to succeed.”

Noren turned in his chair, looking up at Stefred in utter astonishment. He could not speak.

“I look far ahead, as you do, Noren,” Stefred went on. “I can’t say it’s wrong to put survival of our species ahead of all other goals, important though they are. I oppose you only because it would be self-defeating to put short-term survival at risk for the sake of long-term survival. Now for the first time you’ve come to me with a plan that entails no such risk. Of course I want you to succeed in it. But it’s more demanding than you realize, and you must face that from the start—only by doing so can you become strong enough to deal with the problems you’ll meet.”

No doubt, Noren thought numbly. If he could find courage to accept exile from the City, he’d have courage to do anything; as usual, Stefred understood him perfectly. “I’m . . . not sure I can,” he confessed. “I’ve borne everything else so far without cursing fate, without asking why it has to be me who gets hurt. Yet this is so ironic—I’m just about the only person in here who doesn’t look at City confinement as a sacrifice—”

“It is not ironic,” Stefred said, drawing his own chair close to Noren’s and sitting down again. “The fact that for you the sacrifice works the other way is providential. Noren, priesthood itself is founded on voluntary sacrifice. The Scholars who are homesick for the villages would have buried guilt feelings if they returned, and you will be in a position where you can’t afford not to feel wholly sure of your worthiness to fill the role in which you’ll be cast.”

“I don’t feel sure,” Noren protested. “Oh, I know that I haven’t got selfish motives for letting people worship me. But I’m not really qualified to inspire them. I haven’t any gift for it; I’m a good scientist, but in dealing with people I’m—inept.”

“I would not let you go if it were otherwise,” Stefred told him. “That handicap, too, will work for rather than against you.”

“How, when I need to win their confidence?”

“You will win it through your symbolic role and your integrity alone; you’ll be in no danger of receiving personal adulation. For a natural leader, even one who didn’t want homage, there would be that danger: by his very charisma he would, against his will, become a god. That’s a concept you may not be familiar with—”

“I’ve read,” said Noren shortly. “The idea’s blasphemous.”

“To you, yes, as it should be. To villagers it would seem a natural extension of the supposed superhuman stature of Scholars. And that fact creates peril, Noren. Our system keeps power-seekers from the priesthood; it even eliminates those who might be corrupted by the collective power we do have. But it cannot completely protect against the possibility that a natural leader in close contact with villagers might be tempted to use his power to serve unselfish ends. He might impose his own concept of what’s good for people upon them; that’s one reason such contact has been prohibited. What’s more, the people would welcome a godlike leader. They would demand that he take responsibilities they can better exercise for themselves. Someone gifted enough in leadership to assume them would not be the right person to enter the villages as prophet—but you, I trust.”

Lianne had known these things, too, Noren perceived. They must have entered into her initial judgment of him as the only Scholar qualified to bring about genetic change. “What would happen,” he ventured, “if I couldn’t keep my promises to the people—if the genetic alteration I’ve designed fails in the next generation, or if the Council refuses to implement it after it’s proven?”

Stefred hesitated, frowning. “There would be no harm done,” he said, “at least not by your actions. That’s why I can safely let you go.”

“But the people would lose faith. They’d feel betrayed—they might not trust Scholars at all any more.”

“You won’t be speaking for the Scholars, though they’ll assume you are.” He leaned forward and met Noren’s eyes unflinchingly. “If the experimental change fails, I will denounce you as no true priest but a renegade, and they’ll believe not what you’ve said, but what’s said of you in the formal ceremonies—because the latter will be what they’ll then want to believe. Does that risk frighten you?”

“No,” said Noren resolutely. With quiet despair he became aware that Stefred had been speaking for some time in simple future tense, assuming that his choice was already firm, and inwardly he knew he was indeed committed. He was not sure he could endure exile or fulfill the role he must assume; beside those things, public humiliation seemed a minor ordeal. Apart from failure itself, it did not scare him.

“It should,” Stefred informed him. “I’m not sure you see all the consequences of failure.”

“I’m satisfied enough with the vaccine to stake my chances on it.”

“You realize that if you are publicly banished from the priesthood, the villagers may kill you?”

He hadn’t, but as Stefred said it he knew it for truth, and nodded. How he’d changed, he thought—long ago, when he and Brek had resolved to become real renegades and repudiate the Prophecy, they’d expected death at the hands of the villagers; but now he felt none of the resignation he had then. He no longer had any hidden desire to become a martyr.

“There is something more,” Stefred continued. “As you say, if the vaccine proves safe, majority opinion among Scholars may still hold fast against implementation of genetic change. I will have the power to override the Council decision, secretly if necessary, and I won’t hesitate to use it if I am sure the villagers will give up City aid willingly. My highest loyalty is, and always has been, to them and their descendants. But if at the time you’ve set for the change they’re against it, or so divided that interruption of the pure water supply would lead to widespread violence, it will be no better than if the vaccine itself had failed. I’ll still have to denounce you and even your own followers may turn on you; if they do, I’ll lift no hand to save you. Do you understand why?”

In a low voice Noren said, “It would be the same kind of situation as it was with the First Scholar. People were justifiably angry, and he led them to take it out on him instead of killing others. I have to—to plan it that way from the beginning, don’t I . . . make sure that if I fail, I’ll be the only one to bear the blame.”

“Yes,” Stefred said gently. “I’m trusting you for that, too. I couldn’t very well refuse to after all these years of saying you’re more like the First Scholar than any other man I’ve known.”

Noren looked around the familiar study, realizing with a shock that after this day he might never enter it again. More than any other place in the City it had been home to him; more than anyone else in his life, excepting only Talyra, Stefred had been family. Now if they ever did meet again, Stefred would be old. . . .

He stood up. “We can’t communicate, can we,” he stated, knowing the answer.

“No. I’ll have reports on your actions from Technicians, but you must not send direct word, and you won’t know what’s happening here.”

“It’s better if I don’t; it won’t be good news.”

“You’ll be despised by all but your secret supporters,” Stefred agreed, “and I can’t openly defend you. If the Council wants you stopped, I will have only one weapon to ensure your freedom—the argument that you’ve made promises for which you must take personal responsibility.”

Promises. A new age; a new kind of City built by common people, of stone; new seed that would flourish in untreated land. Machines, yes—to villagers any unknown object was a Machine. Knowledge, too, for who was to decide the bounds of knowledge? He could make it all fit the Prophecy, and the people would never know what they must lose.

Stefred’s face was drawn with pain. “This is true priesthood,” he said, “to take the universe as it is and affirm what we cannot alter. What’s humanly possible to change, we will. We must change even our own biological design when survival demands it. But we have no power to reorder the world to match our hopes. If there is no way to preserve our ancestors’ knowledge—if despite all our striving, its loss is inherent in the nature of things—then we must affirm that fact without despair. The Prophecy is a metaphor, not a blueprint. It proclaims a future better than the present. That’s the only absolute we can have faith in.”

His throat aching, Noren stood mute while Stefred embraced him. Then he turned quickly, knowing he must go before tears surfaced.

Stefred called him back. “Noren,” he said. “Noren . . . make a good future for my son.”

What a strange way to put it, Noren thought—the children of Stefred’s wife must now be full-grown, and he had never mentioned any particular one, nor had he acknowledged other offspring. “The future belongs to the new race,” he said firmly. “Perhaps to some of your son’s children, Stefred, if he accepts genetic alteration himself in his later life.”

“He won’t need to. He was born with genes adapted to this world.”

“Born—” Noren’s breath caught; in shock, he whispered, “Veldry’s son . . . yours? But she wouldn’t have—”

“Wouldn’t have revealed your secret to me, no. But watching you preside at the service for her dead baby, Noren, I guessed; I knew you too well not to realize there was just one reason you could have been suffering as you were. I also knew Veldry well enough to anticipate what she’d do next, and when I saw her begin to smile at men she had previously discouraged, I confronted her with it. She’d had no hope of finding anyone who approved of the experiments; she was ready to sacrifice her pride by offering herself to one of those unlikely to care one way or the other. I spared her that, at least.”

“You were willing to take the risk, knowing how my son died, knowing yours might die too or else live with some horrible handicap, and that if he didn’t, if things turned out well, you could never tell anyone?”

“Not even you—I couldn’t have told you if you were remaining here; the others would read it in your eyes. My stand against genetic change is all that’s prevented the idea from tearing the Inner City apart. But did you suppose I could favor your goal and let the burden rest on you alone?” Himself close to tears, Stefred went on, “You must bear the heaviest load; I can’t spare you any part of it—but I can’t spare myself, either.”

“Oh, Stefred.” He could neither spare himself nor be spared, Noren thought; the worst, for Stefred, was yet to come. Lianne would disappear, and in that grief he’d be unable to see any purpose.

Abruptly, inspired by unconscious telepathy, Stefred said, “Noren, you mustn’t tell Lianne; it would ruin her recruiting system. Unless . . . it just occurs to me . . . she may go with you. If she offers, you must accept for the sake of her happiness as well as yours.”

“The rumors aren’t true,” Noren said. “We aren’t lovers; I thought you knew that.”

“I know that so far your love is unconsummated—but I also know, perhaps better than you do, that it exists. It would be harmless for the two of you to share the village work. I would . . . miss Lianne, miss her a great deal, but I could train another assistant who’d win novices to your cause.”

“No,” said Noren steadily. “Lianne has her mission, as I have mine. After tonight we won’t see each other again.”

*  *  *

In the computer room, after he’d generated the discs of essential data, checked and rechecked, realizing that this was his last opportunity ever to question the computers personally, Noren recalled the secret file once more, for courage. He reread the First Scholar’s last words to him: MAY THE INFINITE SPIRIT GUIDE AND PROTECT YOU; AS I DIE, YOU WILL BE IN MY THOUGHTS.

When he’d experienced those dying thoughts in dream form—that most intense transfer of knowledge which, like all other kinds, would now be unavailable to him—they had concerned not genetic change, but the Prophecy. Were the promises indeed one and the same? As Stefred had said, the Prophecy was metaphor. The First Scholar had not composed its words. It’s there in my mind, but I’ve never been able to frame it as it should be, he’d thought through his pain. I’m a scientist, not a poet. . . . He, Noren, was also a scientist. Would he be able to find adequate words for new promises, or would his sacrifice be futile?

He should wait, perhaps, and compose the words before going. But if he waited, he would wait forever; he would lose courage, not gain it. He might already have lost what had carried him through the day. . . . Motionless, clinging to the console he might never touch again, he found he could not choose a question to be his last.

His head dropped, and he wept.

Lianne found him there long after midnight. Noren turned slowly, reaching out to her. “Lianne,” he said in agony. “I can’t.”

She touched his face with cool, gentle fingers. “You have no choice.”

“I do have a choice! No one’s path is predestined; no one’s required to take on the job of saving the world.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant you’ve already chosen. You may feel you can’t go—but can you stay?”

No. It was as simple as that. He could not stay in the City, aware of what he might achieve outside it; if he tried, he would only come to despise himself.

Lianne held him close as they left the computer complex, giving him no chance to look back. They sat on a stone bench in the courtyard, under fading stars. “All this time,” she murmured, “all this time, nearly four years, I’ve known you would go before I did. That you’d give up not just the things you longed for, but those you already had.”

She too was an exile, Noren thought, though her renunciation of her heritage was temporary, and he’d done little to ease her loneliness. His arms tightened around her. Now that it was too late, all the pent-up passion he’d denied was rising in him: passion not only of his body but of his yearning to reach Lianne’s world. Just when had he stopped measuring Lianne against Talyra? He would always love Talyra, but she had been dead four years; she wouldn’t have wanted him to mourn indefinitely. He hadn’t waited solely for her sake. He had held back, unwittingly guarding himself against this moment, the moment of the inevitable parting. And now that it had come, it was no easier for his long self-restraint.

“I don’t know why I wasted the years,” he said with remorse. “I wanted to love you, but I felt—frozen. Sometimes I think I’m the one who’s alien.”

“I understood how it was with you, Noren. As a child you lost your mother; as a man you lost your bride—you couldn’t love only to lose again. You were afraid to give your heart, and I wouldn’t have wanted less.”

“Yet you too knew we’d lose each other, and you weren’t afraid.”

“I’d have taken the time we could have rather than none,” she acknowledged. “But people are different, born different, and not only because of their genes. You were born to stand apart, as you were born with a questioning mind.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing, since I’ll always have to,” he declared. His position would be solitary past the endurance of a warmer person. Furthermore, a Scholar in the villages could love no woman—in the eyes of the people, any such relationship between castes would be shockingly unnatural. It was no longer important that his genes were damaged; no situation where it mattered could arise. And anyway, he would not want anyone but Lianne. He’d given his heart despite himself, long ago. He would not give it a third time even after she was gone from the world.

Would he know when she was gone? Someday the starship would return; would he look up some night and see a light move and know that was the moment when she was lost to him? When the doors of the universe were for him irrevocably closed?

Her face was wet against his, and sobs shook her body. Oh, Lianne, he thought, how could I have deceived myself so? If I’d been as honest about my feelings as about my beliefs, we’d have had what people think we’ve had. . . .

“We have the rest of tonight,” Lianne said. “We still can have memories.”

He took her into the lodging tower, and for a few brief hours of his last night in the City, Noren’s spirits were lifted.