Beyond The Tomorrow Mountains (14 page)

The thought, though sobering, did not alter anyone’s enthusiasm. Stefred, convinced that they were genuine volunteers, went on to discuss the details of their preparation, setting up schedules for intensive use of the Dream Machine. But it was plain that he was not really comfortable about the project. Noren was uncomfortable also, but for a different cause; when Brek and the others left, he stayed behind a few minutes.

“Stefred,” he asked, “why, when you knew I’d be away erecting the tower at the new outpost, did you bring Talyra in yesterday? Why did you say that the decision could not wait?”

Stefred hesitated for a long time. “Someday I’ll tell you, Noren,” he said finally. “It’s complicated.” He made a gesture of dismissal; then, abruptly, burst out, “If you have any reservations about what you said yesterday during our talk, any doubts about preferring to know more than can be learned through exclusive concentration on science, then you should not join the space crew.”

Numerous though Noren’s doubts had become, there were none on that score. He said nothing, realizing that no reply was expected.

“Grenald begged me to disqualify you arbitrarily, but it wouldn’t have been fair to do that. The choice had to be yours. Nevertheless, he does have logic on his side; the risk, in your case, is perhaps excessive—”

Slowly, Noren shook his head. “It won’t do, Stefred,” he said. “You’ve been trying to scare me, but you know I won’t back out no matter how scared I am. We both know that the Scholars who voted in favor of this project are just as concerned about the risking of life as you are, and that it’s basic policy to respect the decisions of volunteers. You’ve admitted you can’t bar me from volunteering. You can’t even tell me to consider my potential as a scientist; yesterday you advised the exact opposite! There’s some other issue that’s worrying you, and you still aren’t giving me all the facts.”

“Maybe I’m not,” Stefred conceded. “But did it ever occur to you that perhaps I don’t have them all?” He stared out into the night, where the glowing windows of the adjacent tower obscured the stars. “I don’t know why I blame myself,” he muttered, more to himself than to Noren. “If I followed Grenald’s urgings and my own best judgment, you would hate me for it. You’ve got too independent a mind to want protection from the perils to which skepticism can lead—and you also have youth. That’s a dangerous combination. Yet if salvation of the world lay solely in old men’s caution, why would young people be born?”

Noren left the room quietly, pressing the point no further. Though the reply he’d received was cryptic, it was obviously not meant to be otherwise. Always before he had felt secure under Stefred’s guidance. Now he sensed that something was wrong, terribly wrong—something Stefred himself was disturbed by. This time the challenge was not a planned lesson. It was real and unavoidable, and Stefred trusted him to find a way to meet it.

*
 
*
 
*

From then on the days were too busy for brooding over anything. The training dreams, unlike the edited one Stefred had devised as a test, had no element of nightmare; both Noren and Brek found them fascinating. Dreaming, they experienced not only zero gravity and the techniques of maneuvering in a spacesuit, but the specific process of dismantling starships—which, having been originally assembled in orbit, were designed to come apart. The starships were made not of metal, but of a semi-metal alloy that could not be reshaped by any means available on the planet. Had it been possible to melt them down, the material would have been used long before to make tools and machines. As it was, special tools were needed to separate the sections of airtight shell, and only a few had been kept, enough for two men to use at a time. That meant the job would be a slow one. Many trips would be required to get an entire starship down using a single small shuttle, and since only two men could work, only two would go on each flight. The fact that this also appeared to minimize the risk seemed of little comfort to Stefred.

Noren did not see Stefred often; the Dream Machine was turned over to the young women who normally operated it, and the six prospective astronauts used it in rotation, day and night. In between, they scrutinized the Inner City’s towers closely, tried on the carefully preserved spacesuits, and—following the detailed instructions of the computers—checked out the shuttlecraft itself. It was stored in its original bay in a tower that had not been fully converted. The first ascent was to be made under cover of darkness so that the villagers would not observe it. After that, of course, all traffic would be on the other side of the Tomorrow Mountains.

Ten days were allotted to preparation, the maximum number that could elapse, according to the computers’ projections, if the starship beacon was to function until all the work was finished. Lots were drawn whereby Scholars not held back by essential duties were designated for the first staff of the outpost; they too began to get ready. Until the tower was assembled, only a few would go; but more would follow, and with them, Inner City Technicians. That was necessary because some of the chosen Scholars were married to Technicians, and also because others, like Noren and Brek, were uncommitted. The secret of the outpost’s existence could not be kept from the Inner City Technicians, and once they saw people not known to be Scholars going there, they would want an equal chance for themselves.

Everybody wanted to go beyond the mountains. Yet life in the settlement would be anything but easy. There would be backbreaking work with an absolute minimum of equipment, not only in construction, but in the raising of food. Aircars couldn’t be spared to transport food indefinitely; the Scholars would have to spend part of their time farming by the primitive Stone Age methods they’d been taught in the villages as children. Noren was not looking forward to that, though he considered the founding of a new city well worth it.

Meanwhile, whatever free time he had he spent with Talyra. He had thought she would be lonely and frightened in the City, that she would seek not only his love, but his comfort; yet it didn’t work out that way. To his astonishment, Talyra did not seem to have any difficulty adjusting to her new situation. She liked it. When she was unhappy it was not for her own sake, but because he could not convince her that he himself was all right.

Talyra had been given a job in the nursery, which horrified Noren when he first heard of it; it seemed unnecessarily cruel. Talyra didn’t agree. She informed him that this was the first assignment for all Technician women. They were supposed to be under no illusions as to what they would face if they married: the bearing of children they could not rear. Because Talyra had been trained to deliver babies, she worked mainly as a midwife; but she also took care of the babies as the other nursery attendants did, and she didn’t mind at all. “But Noren,” she declared, “I
like
babies! Why shouldn’t I enjoy the work?”

“Doesn’t it bother you to see the mothers come in to nurse their children, loving them, yet knowing they’ll have to give them up when they’re old enough to be weaned?”

“That is the High Law,” she answered soberly. “How else could it be? There is no room for families in the Inner City, and we who are privileged to serve here must accept it. It’s hard, but everyone knows that Wards of the City go only to homes where their new parents will love them, too.”

Noren could understand that view in the Scholar women—who knew why the sacrifice was necessary—although in one way it was worse for them because they also knew that on the Six Worlds, where it had been possible to get milk from animals, babies whose mothers couldn’t keep them had been adopted at birth. It was more difficult for him to see why Talyra took it so calmly. Was she covering up on his account? he wondered. Or did she still trust the High Law blindly? She had remained as devout as ever, certainly; like most Technicians she attended the Inner City’s open-air Vespers daily. When he could, Noren went with her, telling himself that he did it to make her happy, yet knowing inside that it was to avoid accompanying Brek to Orison, which was held at the same hour.

As a nurse, Talyra occasionally assisted in the medical research laboratory, a fact that appalled Noren still more until he realized that she was completely unaware of the true nature of what went on there. She did not know that the people she tended had volunteered to be made sick. Technicians, of course, were not permitted to do that, The volunteers were all Scholars. He himself had already been through it once, and it wouldn’t be the last time. Medical research was, after all, the only type that could be of benefit to the present generation of villagers, and it would be unthinkable to try things out on
them
. There were no animals with a biological resemblance to human beings, as there had been on the Six Worlds. Some diseases that had been conquered there were no longer curable, because of a lack of drugs and facilities; then too, there were still local ills for which no help existed. Noren had tried to exact a promise that if they ever found an antidote for the poison that had killed his mother, they would test it on him; but since the same one had also killed the First Scholar, his name was far down on the volunteer list.

Inner City customs were so unlike village ones that Noren marveled at Talyra’s quick adaptation to them. It was strange to see her dressed in City women’s trousers instead of the skirts she had always worn, but she found them comfortable, she told him. She was awed by the quality of garments cut with scissors and stitched with metal needles; villagers had only bone. Because there weren’t enough scissors and needles to go around, all City clothes were made by seamstresses, and Talyra declared that she hated sewing anyway. That surprised him, for she had never complained as he had about farm chores. He was also surprised to learn that she disliked cooking and thought the arrangement whereby even married couples lived in tiny rooms, taking all their meals in the refectory, was a fine system. Talyra was not one to rage against the world; she simply went ahead with what had to be done. Yet though she’d seemed satisfied in the village, she found the Inner City more truly satisfying—or would have, Noren saw, had it not been for his own evident turmoil.

He hadn’t quite realized how hard it would be to conceal his problems if he and Talyra saw each other every day. And the problems had intensified. His feeble attempts to hide them did little good. Repeatedly he asserted that he had not been punished for his heresy, yet Talyra remained doubtful. Finally, after nearly a week of her desperate probing for reassurance, he said sharply. “Have you ever known me to lie? You broke our betrothal because I wouldn’t lie about being a heretic; you defended me before the Scholar Stefred on the grounds that I’d always been honest. Why should you think I’m lying now?”

She raised her eyes to meet his, saying in a low voice. “Will you swear to me by the Mother Star that they have given you no punishment?”

“Yes,” he maintained. “By the Mother Star, Talyra.” As he said it, he recalled the day long before when they had quarreled over his refusal to hold such an oath sacred, thinking that on that point at least, they no longer differed.

To his amazement, she burst into tears. “Then it’s as I feared,” she whispered. “You—you still don’t believe, Noren, I see it in your face. You’re still a heretic; that’s why you aren’t able to accept all they offer you.”

Later, lying sleepless on his bunk, it occurred to Noren that Talyra’s keen intuition had again brought her very close to the truth; but at the time he was outraged. “Are you suggesting I lied at my recantation?” he demanded angrily.

“No, you wouldn’t do that. You’d been forced to concede that the Scholars are wise; yet in your heart you have no faith.”

“You’re not being reasonable,” he insisted. “Faith? What is that but to be content with ignorance? I
know
, Talyra! I know that the Mother Star exists, that it will someday appear as the Prophecy says—”

“And that we need fear nothing as long as its spirit remains with us?”

He turned away, knowing that although he could scarcely acknowledge such a belief, he was not free to deny it; and suddenly it came to him that perhaps the book of the Prophecy would not be “true in its entirety” even if the research succeeded.
“So long as we believe in it, no force shall destroy us, though the heavens themselves be consumed… .”
He had not lied. He had believed it; he had supposed that human survival was certain. The First Scholar had been certain! If he hadn’t been, he could never had done what he did, nor could he possibly have borne what he had to bear. Moreover, the feeling of certainty had been strong in the dreams. Had the First Scholar, a scientist who must surely have known that, himself been deluded?

“You still can’t be happy,” Talyra said sorrowfully, “because you aren’t whole. Before, you were sure what you believed, so sure… and I used to think that once you saw how mistaken you were, that would fix everything. I—I’ve been stupid, Noren. Heresy isn’t a sin, it’s something you’re born with, and recanting can’t give you faith you just don’t have. The Scholars don’t punish; that’s not their way—you simply have to live with the consequences of what you are.”

Noren did not try to talk about it again. Although more than once after that night Talyra sought statements from him to allay her fears, he found that his own fears led him invariably to anger. That was not her fault and he had only a few days left to be with her, so he stifled it, kissing her instead of speaking. And when they kissed he could not regret her entrance to the City, unlikely though it seemed that the barrier to their marriage would ever fall. He now felt that the revelation of his Scholar status must be postponed indefinitely; nothing short of concrete proof that the Prophecy’s promises were fulfillable would make him willing to assume the robe. How could he have imagined that his misgivings would lessen with time?