The Doors Of The Universe (30 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*
 
*
 
*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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