The Doors Of The Universe (21 page)

“It wouldn’t be that simple,” Noren acknowledged. He hadn’t thought about it before, but of course villagers would not do that. “We’d have to be ruthless, I guess,” he said slowly, “as the Founders were when they established the City in the first place. We might have to cut off the piped water supply, and certainly we’d have to stop treating land. But we could do it without harming anyone.”

“Could we?” Stefred turned to him. “If the day comes when you figure out how to do it without harming anyone—or even without setting off enough violence to seriously threaten the long-term survival of our species—then perhaps I’ll back you after all. Until then, consider me an opponent. And I am not just challenging you; I mean it. I will fight this idea all the way.”

Dismayed, Noren saw that he did mean it. He would not merely withhold support, but would lead active opposition against which the goal of changing people genetically could not possibly win approval. And yet, he thought, Stefred had called him dangerous, considered the recording itself dangerous… and therefore must feel he could succeed.

*
 
*
 
*

That there was no chance of getting the Council to sanction genetic research became more and more apparent as, one after another, its members experienced the dream. Noren knew he couldn’t prevent their doing so. He had been free to return it to the cache from which he’d obtained it, but having revealed it to Stefred, he could not keep it from other priests, all of whom had equal right to the truth. Realizing this, he felt at first there should be a general announcement of what had been learned. Yet to his own surprise he held back, some inner sense in conflict with his normal desire for full openness.

Stefred and his fellow Council members concurred. “We’ve got a delicately balanced society in the Inner City,” he said, “and our reverence for the First Scholar is its focal point. If you stand up in a meeting and declare that the mutants in the mountains are descended from him, you’ll deal a blow not only to your own aims, but to the rest of his plans—which he himself knew.”

It was true enough, Noren saw, that even to enlightened priests such a statement would be akin to blasphemy. Only by experiencing the dream itself could they understand. It was therefore made available to those who chose to go through what was described as a difficult and unnecessary ordeal. Since the experiencing of the full version of the other dreams was made a condition for exposure to the new one, few younger Scholars sought it. How, and by whom, a previously unknown recording had been discovered was told only to the Council; and the Council said that it contained private memories irrelevant to life in the present era.

Noren did not contest this judgment. He knew that if he joined battle too soon, he would lose. He allowed even Stefred to believe that for the time being at least, he was willing to let the matter drop.

He could see that Stefred’s arguments were valid. After discussing them for hours, he was forced to agree that people couldn’t survive the sudden loss of all they believed in. Even for the Prophecy’s fulfillment, the making of cities and machines available to all, there was an elaborate plan for a transition period. Though most non-Scholars assumed everything would happen on the day of the Star’s first appearance, of course that wasn’t how it would be. The Founders’ plan for the transition did ensure that no one would get hurt by the changes. The trouble was that it assumed survival would demand continued observance of most provisions of the High Law. It made no allowance for abolishing the whole Law along with the castes. And of course, the transition plan was also based on people being given what the Prophecy promised them.

“If genetic change had been initiated in the First Scholar’s time or soon after,” Stefred said, “there’d have been a chance for a culture based on the conditions in this world to develop. But now, if people’s established values should fail them, they wouldn’t be able to develop anything new. Innovation has been repressed too long. Without adequate natural resources, it can’t start again, not with a population as small as ours would be.”

“But we’ve grown since the Founders’ time—”

“Those gains would be lost. There would be fighting, Noren. Bad as our world is, we’ve at least kept it free of mass violence. But if its culture disintegrated, the survivors would kill each other off. They’d fight over the pure water in the rain-catchment cisterns, over the last remaining land-treatment machines—”

Yes, thought Noren—they would. He knew only too well that they would. But the First Scholar’s companions aboard the starship had told him his plan for the Founding would lead to violence, too.

Besides, there was no alternative. Without synthesization of metal everyone was going to die anyway when the machines wore out—and metal synthesization was a lost cause. That was the thing no one but himself seemed willing to face. Eventually, no doubt, others would reach the point of facing it; but by then it might indeed be too late. The genetic change couldn’t be considered proven until it had been inherited by its developers’ grandchildren.

Without quite knowing why, Noren began going to Orison, a religious observance open only to Scholars. He had previously avoided this; he’d gone instead to Vespers with Talyra, and after her death he’d rarely attended either service. Orison had always disturbed him—there’d been a period when it had even frightened him. So many unanswerables, so many fine words that might not come true… .

T
here is no surety save in the light that sustained our forebears; no hope but in that which lies beyond our sphere; and our future is vain except as we have faith. Yet though our peril be great even unto the last generation of our endurance, in the end humankind shall prevail; and the doors of the universe shall once again be thrown open. Not on this world only, but on myriad worlds of innumerable suns shall the spirit of the Star abide
. . . . To him, at the time of his earliest awareness of the Prophecy’s futility, this sort of liturgy had been more a terror than a comfort. Now it became piercing anguish. And yet he was drawn, somehow.

One evening, as he stood silently with eyes raised to the prismatic glass sunburst, symbolic of the Mother Star, that emblazoned the ceiling of the Hall of Scholars assembly room, comprehension came to him. It struck him so forcibly that he grew dizzy. How blind he’d been! He had thought he’d learned something of faith. He’d known its emotional impact before; on the day of his commitment to the priesthood he’d been deeply moved by these very symbols. It had not lasted, not the emotion… but that had been faith in which he’d had
no choice
. No choice but to die, anyway, as they’d all have died in the mountains if his subconscious faith had not sustained them. That was one kind, a necessary kind: simply to go on because there was nothing else to do. But it demanded no real action. Faith and action weren’t opposites; all at once Noren perceived what an act of faith involved. There had to be choice in it, a decision that might go either way; one must
choose
a road that might lead nowhere.

“ . . . 
so, therefore, we consecrate ourselves to stewardship, to the ensuring of human survival; and may the spirit of the Star be our guide
.” Into the familiar words Noren put for the first time a commitment to risk of failure; and he knew he would never be quite the same person as before.

Late that night, robed, he went to the lab in the Outer City lab where vaccines were manufactured. Because equipment was limited, the work there was done in shifts; there were always Technicians present. They were trained microbiologists, far older and more experienced than he—still they knelt to him, addressing him as “Reverend Sir.” Noren thought ruefully that he’d have preferred another siege of purple fever. One did what one must, however. He gave orders, and since the High Law commanded obedience, he was asked for no explanations. It was unheard of for a Scholar to visit Technicians instead of sending for them, still more so for him to require a virulent virus strain and use of one of the few existing biological safety cabinets so that he could work with it personally. But people didn’t question the ways of Scholars. If it occurred to them that it was ludicrous and downright hazardous for him to put a lab coat over a flowing blue robe, they refrained from saying so.

Noren returned to the lab many nights, carrying sealed test tubes to the computers for analysis in the hour before dawn. At length, after a passage of weeks, he carefully but matter-of-factly injected himself with his new vaccine.

As he prepared to leave, he told the lab chief he wouldn’t return in the near future, receiving the usual courteous acknowledgment. He started toward the door, feeling lightheaded with a mixture of relief and fear; but the Technician’s voice stopped him. “Reverend Sir—we would be honored by your blessing.”

Noren turned. He owed them that. It had been a breach of etiquette to necessitate their working in a “superior being’s” presence night after night, one for which he’d have been severely criticized by fellow priests. Furthermore he had delayed their own work by preempting scarce equipment. These people were entitled to all he could give them. Holding out his hands in the formal gesture of benediction, he nodded, and the lab workers clustered around him. He’d used the words often enough at Vespers, but never in personal audience, never to people kneeling, awaiting his touch. “
May the spirit of the Mother Star abide with you, and with your children, and your children’s children
. . . .”

Your children’s children. He hoped so; he hoped it would be a more tangible blessing than he could offer in mere words.

For three weeks after that he waited, his dread growing. He did not expect the injection to harm him—although in any experimental work there was that possibility—for he’d modified the virus to remove its toxic effects as well as to give it genes for the capabilities he wanted it to have. Nor did he worry about whether it would spread throughout the cells of his body; that could be, and was, confirmed by computer analysis of blood and tissue samples. Whether the added genes would work as expected was another matter entirely. To test that, he’d have only one chance. Once he’d drunk unpurified water, there would be no turning back.

And the next step? A marriage of convenience, he had thought. Well, he’d be willing. What he’d had with Talyra could never be duplicated, and it was respectable, even customary, for a man to marry without being in love. Yet who was there to marry? There were very few unmarried Scholar women, and all of those young enough to bear children had plenty of suitors. Though he might successfully court someone, he didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t just that most women wouldn’t support the genetic research—he could probably find one who would share his belief in its necessity. But she would want him to love her in a way he could not; and what if later, she met someone who did?

No, it would not be right for him to bind anyone. It would be fairer if there was no expectation of permanence on either side.

For couples to be lovers was not unusual; in the Inner City, where families couldn’t be reared, it was not frowned upon. Still, a woman could be hurt that way. She could fall in love and be heartbroken over a breakup even if there had been no promises. Asking someone to bear a genetically altered child was bad enough without that. Now that the time was at hand, Noren knew he was unwilling to let it happen.

To be sure, there were women among the Scholars who loved casually. In the case of most such women, he feared, birth of a normal child would not prove much about any particular man’s genes. However, there were exceptions. There was Veldry, for example. Veldry had been faithful to her lovers; she was a decent enough person. It was just that she couldn’t seem to be happy with anyone for more than a year or two. To swear by the Star to be faithful forever wasn’t her sort of commitment.

Veldry was always doing unexpected things, Noren reflected. She was, for instance, one of the few younger women who’d chosen to experience the newly discovered dream. Admittedly, she liked newness. But there was more to it than that; she’d been through the full version of the First Scholar’s memories earlier, and one didn’t undergo that ordeal merely for love of novelty. Perhaps he was unfair to her in considering her shallow because of her short-term personal relationships. She might be just the person to commit herself to an experiment in genetics; she’d already had several babies, and she was, after all, a Scholar who had passed all the tests of dedication to the welfare of future generations. Yet he could not help the way he felt. He wanted a child, a child to live after him—and he did not want Veldry to be that child’s mother.

So if he could not marry, and could not bring himself to start a casual love affair either, what was left? He knew underneath that just one course was left; he’d known even before Stefred had spoken of it. Looking back on those days of recovery from purple fever, he saw that Stefred had been right. Lianne would wholeheartedly support the goal. But there had been more in her friendship than desire to work toward ensuring human survival. She had refused Stefred, as she would no doubt refuse any man for whom she had no deep feelings, and had declared she did not want marriage. Yet Noren knew, from the way she’d looked at him, that Lianne would not refuse his love.

He did not love her as he’d loved Talyra. He wouldn’t pretend to, wouldn’t want to pretend even if he could. But if it must be someone—and Talyra herself had said he must have children—he could not honestly tell himself that he didn’t want it to be Lianne.

More than a half a year had passed since his discovery of the First Scholar’s secret when Noren, knowing the vaccine had had more than enough time to act on him, took the irrevocable step. Under cover of darkness he unflinchingly violated the High Law’s most sacred precept.