Beyond The Tomorrow Mountains (8 page)

“Let her go free,” Noren begged, his lips dry. “Don’t make her face it for my sake.”

“Having gone this far, Noren, I must proceed for her own sake; to stop now would be misplaced mercy.”

Raising her head, Talyra faltered, “I—I never asked for mercy, sir. Even for Noren I asked only justice.”

“And you seemed convinced that in the end I would be just. I promise you that I shall be.”

“I believe that. You have exposed my impiety, which I most heartily repent; I don’t expect to escape—consequences.”

Noren cringed. To him, the kindness in Stefred’s tone was evident, but to Talyra, who had been forced to confess what she thought was an unforgivable crime, it would not be; and he knew that Stefred would probe her further. Underneath she could not actually feel she’d done any wrong; she must be compelled to admit that, too. Otherwise she’d remain forever unconvinced of her worthiness to be a Technician.

“So be it, Talyra,” the Scholar said decisively. He returned to the desk and faced her. “Because you have helped and defended Noren and have even accepted some of his ideas, you must share his fate. You shall be confined within the City, as he is; you will never see the village of your birth again.”

She swayed, staring at him, obviously overwhelmed by the seeming severity of the sentence. She had expected punishment, but not the punishment she’d considered too great even for Noren. In panic, Noren clenched his hands. Stefred had promised that there would be no danger! Yet he had gambled and made a pronouncement from which there could be no turning back—what would happen if she failed to rise to the challenge? As long as she was contrite, she could not qualify.

“Do you want to retract anything you’ve said?” Stefred asked.

“N—no, sir.” Talyra whispered.

“Do you think the verdict too harsh?”

“I—I deserve it, I guess.”

The Scholar shook his head. “Talyra, you’re being dishonest either with me or with yourself. You know in your heart that you’ve never harmed anyone and that your inner thoughts are not evil; you can’t possibly feel that you deserve life imprisonment any more than Noren does. Tell me what you do feel, not what you think I want to hear.”

“I feel such a penalty’s heavy in proportion to the offense,” she admitted, “but if it must be Noren’s, I’m willing to share it. You’ve shown me that I’m no less presumptuous than he.”

“And is presumption to be punished equally with crimes of violence? For that matter, is any form of heresy? Here in the City even a murderer would receive no worse! Really, Talyra—is that fair?”

Talyra stood up, flushed, at last jolted into questioning the shaky premises of the villagers’ brand of orthodoxy. “No,” she said, “it’s not fair. My thoughts may be blasphemous, but they are my own, as Noren’s were his; and as you’ve said, they never hurt anybody. I came here believing myself innocent of all heresy, but your effort to find it in me has fanned its flame. There’s no need to goad me into any more incriminating statements. I will give you one freely: I hereby abjure my penitence, for you have made me see that Noren’s doubts about the High Law were justified.”

Good for you, Talyra!
Noren cried inwardly. A mere indication that she was no longer sorry would have been enough, but by stating it formally, she had shown her true courage. In her view, if there was anything worse than a heretic it was a relapsed heretic—one who returned to heretical beliefs after having retracted them—and she had laid herself open to that charge.

She trembled a little, awaiting retribution, and then bewilderment crossed her face as Stefred answered, “I did so deliberately, Talyra. Later you will understand why.” To Noren he said. “All right. It’s finished; go to her now. The rest will come better from you than from me.”

Noren, with pounding heart, came forward to take Talyra in his arms. She clung to him, her eyes glistening. “I’m glad it turned out this way,” she said softly, giving him no chance to speak. “I could never have been happy in the village thinking of you here in prison; now at least I’ll be close by. And I—I see things clearer, Noren. Some of what you used to say makes more sense. Underneath I must have known it did; the Scholar judged me rightly.”

“He wasn’t mistaken, then, in deciding you’d rather be here with me than return to the village where we’d never see each other again?”

“Be with you?You mean I’ll be allowed to see you—often?”

“As often as you like,” Noren told her, smiling. “We’re not going to be punished, Talyra. I didn’t understand either when I was sentenced—we weren’t meant to—but the Scholar Stefred never said we’d be put in prison; he simply forbade us to leave the City.”

“But—but only Scholars and Technicians live in the City! And besides, we’ve broken the High Law—”

“I broke it, but I’ve recanted and been pardoned. You never broke it at all. In the Scholars’ eyes you’re completely innocent.”

“How could I be, Noren? Helping you to escape may have been just a civil offense, but I’m still guilty of blasphemy.”

“No,” said Noren gently. “I was right about some things; it’s not blasphemous to think you’d like to be a Technician. Talyra, you are a Technician now! Stefred had to make sure you wanted it before he passed judgment, because no one who’s aware that not all Technicians are born to their status can be released.”

She stared, wide-eyed. “Are
you
a Technician, too?”

Noren had learned long before that one could conceal without lying. “As you said, only Scholars and Technicians live in the City,” he told her. “A heretic who recants is confined here because of the secrets he knows, but he lives and works like the others.”

Talyra, for the moment speechless, turned to Stefred in a mute appeal for confirmation. His smile was warm, yet solemn. “There is nothing in the High Law that prevents a villager who is qualified from becoming a Technician or even a Scholar,” he said. “There can never be anything wrong in a person’s wanting to know more than he knows, or be more than he has been; the Law specifies only that those who do choose that course can never go back.”

He rose and walked to the door. Freeing herself from Noren’s embrace, Talyra followed, holding out her hands in the ritual plea for blessing. As Stefred extended his, she knelt, and this time he did not forbid her; she would have felt crushed, rejected, if he had, for she sought not to pay homage but to receive. But before the words could be pronounced, she looked anxiously over her shoulder. “Noren?”

In dismay, Noren watched her new glow of confidence fade to troubled confusion at his failure to kneel beside her. He moved to do so, but with a barely perceptible shake of the head Stefred stopped him. No pretense would be permitted. Not yet High Priest, he was nevertheless a Scholar, and one Scholar could neither kneel to another nor receive from his hands what faith alone could bestow; Talyra’s distress could not alter that. And this would not be the last time he would have to hurt her.

The flowing sleeves of Stefred’s blue robe hid her face as he intoned the formal benediction:
“May the spirit of the Mother Star abide with you, and with your children, and your children’s children; may you gain strength from its presence, trusting in the surety of its power.”
Surety? thought Noren bitterly. But there was no surety! One could not trust that the Star’s heritage of knowledge would lead to a transformation of the world, for it was quite possible that it would not. That was the truth he’d hidden from, the thing he was learning from science, and there was indeed no going back. He wondered how Stefred could sound so sincere.

Chapter Three

Alone together, Noren and Talyra forgot all doubts and fears in the joy of their reunion. Then, later, he took her through the corridor into the Inner City that was to be her whole world; and though it was strange and awesome to her, she did not seem to mind. To Noren the high spires of the towers that had once been starships were beautiful because of all that was preserved there. He’d thought that Talyra, who must remain ignorant of their origin and who had never craved more knowledge than was useful in the village, would find them disturbingly alien. She did not. She found them holy. In her own way, she too considered them the abode of truth.

They stood hand in hand, with the sun streaming down between the lustrous towers to the incongruously rough pavement of the courtyard, while he told her all he could about the life in store for her, amazed by the serenity with which she confronted it. Talyra had always thought it proper for the Scholars to have secrets, so the fact that anyone who learned some of those secrets must be kept permanently within the walls was in her view very logical. That among Technicians Inner City work was an honor seemed natural to her; that she herself should be so honored filled her with gladness. Slowly, Noren began to see that he’d underestimated Talyra. She had never been unwilling to accept new ideas. Her convictions were entirely sincere, and the discovery that the exaggerated teachings of the prevalent religion weren’t officially endorsed merely strengthened those convictions. “I’ve said all along that our sacred duty is to the spirit of the Mother Star.” she declared. “If some of what people think about it is mistaken, so what? Do you suppose I’d take my
family’s
word over a
Scholar’s?”

She was surprised, of course, to learn that Scholars were not born, but appointed; yet this did not shock her either. “How are people chosen?” she asked curiously.

“That is a deep secret,” Noren replied gravely. “Only the Scholars themselves are allowed to know that.” It was an answer that satisfied her completely.

All the things he had expected to have trouble in presenting—that Scholars wore robes only for ceremonies and audiences; that one did not kneel to them on other occasions; that Inner City people, whether Scholars or Technicians, commonly ate together, shared leisure time, and even intermarried—proved easy for Talyra to accept. There was just one point that was awkward. “Noren,” she asked hesitantly, “can former heretics marry, too?”

He was prepared; he’d known well enough that the matter must be discussed. “A heretic must have the permission of the Scholars,” he told her, “but in time, it is often granted.” He drew her toward him, fingering the red necklace she wore, the betrothal gift he had bought in the village with coins hoarded throughout his boyhood. “You know, don’t you, that we’d get married right away if I were free to?”

“Of course.”

“There are reasons why I am not free, and I—I don’t know when I will be. There may be a long wait. It may never be possible at all.” Painfully he added, “You are not bound by such restrictions. If someone else were to ask you, you could marry him whenever you wished.”

“Oh, Noren! As if I would!”

“It’s likely that you’ll have suitors,” he said frankly. It was all too likely, since because of the way girls were reared in the villages, far fewer women than men became heretics. Although unmarried Technician women who requested Inner City work were frequently brought in, they did not stay unmarried long. He could hardly ask Talyra to wait for him. Yet neither could he pretend that he had left her free, he thought miserably, for obviously she
would
wait, whether he asked it or not. He’d known that when he’d consented to her admission, and he had also known that she might wait in vain. Perhaps he’d been selfish… but much as he loved her, he could not assume the robe on that basis.

She regarded him with concern, sensing his anguish. “You couldn’t receive the Scholar Stefred’s blessing, nor can you yet marry—is the penance so harsh, Noren? I thought at first, when you said you’d been pardoned—”

“There is no penance. The Scholar Stefred has conferred more upon me than you can imagine; underneath he’s as kind as he is wise.”

“But he told me that even he is not free to do as he likes.”

“Not if it would interfere with his duties as a guardian of the Mother Star’s mysteries,” Noren agreed. “He wouldn’t want to be; no Scholar would. Sometimes he has to do things he hates doing, things that seem cruel.”

He was referring to the interview just past, but Talyra grasped more than he’d meant to reveal. “You’ve been hurt,” she observed sadly.

“No,” Noren insisted, but she was not convinced; he had never been a good liar. “I haven’t been hurt in the way I feared once,” he assured her. “Not the way you must have thought when I recanted.”

“Physically? I never thought that! I knew they’d done something that showed you how wrong you’d been. Why, I told you long ago that the Scholars wouldn’t want anyone to recant unless he really meant it.”

She had, and he’d considered her naive; yet her guesses had come closer to the truth than his own.
Perhaps it’s like the inoculations Technicians give
, she’d said.
The needle hurts, but without it we’d all get sick and die
.

“When the Scholar Stefred questioned me,” Talyra reflected, “I felt awful; he made me say things I’d been afraid even to think. It seemed as if all the firm ground would crumble away and leave me falling. But afterward—well, I was surer of myself than before. Even though I saw I’d had some false ideas, I liked myself better—” She broke off, watching Noren, realizing how much older he looked than when they’d parted. “What happens to heretics is like that, isn’t it? Only it’s harder, and goes on longer?”

He nodded. “Something like that. We’re not permitted to tell the details.”