The Doors Of The Universe (16 page)

“I know,” he replied grimly. “The child didn’t choose. Yet there’s no other way.”

“It has to be tried,” she agreed. “We owe it to the generations who’ll come after us.”

“To those that might not come after us if we fail to try.”

“Yes. Still, I don’t feel good about it. I never will.”

“We’ve done the best thing,” he said reassuringly, although he did not feel good about it either. Gradually, Noren perceived that “we” referred not to the Founders as a group, as it usually did in the dreams, but to himself and this woman alone. And he knew what they had done.

She was a geneticist, one of those who’d worked on the modification of the work-beast embryos. Secretly, with the aid of the computers, she had determined what alteration of human genes would be needed to enable people to drink unpurified water. But of course, she could not modify human embryos in the same way she’d done the animal ones; that would indeed be unthinkable, and it would not be practical in any case. In humans, the genetic modification must be made in adults, made in such a way that it would be inherited by their children. The concept wasn’t new—on the Six Worlds, some genetic work with animals had been done in that way. Genes of adults could indeed be changed.

But it had never been tried on humans before.

So again they must accept an evil that, except for the ban on human genetic research, could have been prevented. On the Six Worlds, far more animal tests would have been done before such a technique was considered ready for human testing. But in the new world no biologically similar animals existed. All medical tests must be done on human volunteers. She had wanted to try it on herself, to alter her own genes. He, the First Scholar, hadn’t let her do that. His unwillingness to expose her to such a risk had not been what had convinced her; in the end, he’d argued that she was young enough to have other babies and that the colony needed children. If the test should fail, the person on whom it was done could have no more offspring. It was better for that person to be a man. He had persuaded her to try the genetic alteration on him.

That did not mean she took no personal risk, however, for it was she who would bear the child. And the child might not be normal. They knew that; they knew they were experimenting with a human being who’d been given no choice. They hated themselves for it. The child might be mutant… the horror of that engulfed Noren. He saw again the image of the mutant child that had appeared in his nightmare… .

This, of course, must come from his own mind. Reaching for the First Scholar’s thought, he was aware that unlike himself, the First Scholar hadn’t actually seen any mutants of the sort that later inhabited the mountains. He knew the result of drinking unpurified water only from the record of what had happened to the planet’s first explorers. He, too, felt horror, but it did not come from personal experience, at least this recorded memory included no such experience. There was a—a foreboding, somehow… .

Perhaps it was only fear. He had drunk the water
on purpose
. He’d had to; there was no other way to test the genetic alteration. That alteration had been made in his body—it had been done with a vaccine—and then he had deliberately drunk more unpurified water than was considered safe. Theoretically, the genetic alteration made it safe: his body should now be able to metabolize the damaging substance in the water. His genes should not have been damaged by drinking. But how had he found the courage to put such a thing to the test?

He wondered. Even as the First Scholar he wondered. Now that it was too late to turn back, he did not feel courageous at all.

“What will we do if…?” the woman questioned, not for the first time.

“We will face that if we must,” he told her. “Don’t worry now. There’s no point in worrying before the child is born.”

There was no way of knowing beforehand if the water had damaged his genes; the computer system was not yet programmed for the sperm tests routine in Noren’s own time. The two of them must simply wait. For her, he felt, that would be even harder than for him—to know the child she’d conceived might be a mutant seemed past any woman’s bearing. Yet she had been willing. She believed, as he did, that it was a lesser evil than to passively accept the odds against survival without genetic change.

He embraced her, trying not to think of the future. It was not only peace of conscience they were prepared to sacrifice, and not only the anguish they might feel about the child that they were risking. Nor was the risk of his position as leader what troubled his emotions. They would lose everything if their child wasn’t normal; they would even lose each other. That was why they hadn’t married. He wanted to marry her, he planned to do so once they knew the experiment’s outcome—surely, he told himself, it would succeed! But if it did not, then she must be free to marry someone else. Only on the grounds that the world needed her future children had he persuaded her to try the genetic change on him instead of on herself. He could have no more children if this test failed. He had drunk the water, and if damage had been done it was irreversible.

They had been lovers before he had drunk it. They’d been careful, since they had not wanted a child until they were ready to make the test, but the worst an unexpected pregnancy could have caused would have been delay. Later, should there prove to be genetic damage, they could take no chance at all. There would be no question of sterilization, for the colony’s gene pool was considered a resource and he could not tell any doctor what he had done. He could not marry her, and he could not remain her lover, either, even if she chose to reject all other suitors.

As the dream became hazy and began to shift, Noren understood with dismay why it was that all thoughts of love had been edited from the First Scholar’s later memories.

She whom he loved was no longer in his arms; she receded from him, and feeling her go, he knew it was forever. He knew the test had not succeeded. As Noren, he’d known this all along, underneath—if it had been successful, the course of history would have been different—and the First Scholar had known also, for the recording had been made not before the child’s birth, but long afterward. This was the submerged horror that had been in the dream from the beginning.

The horror not only of this controlled dream, but of his nightmare. The mutant child had been real… .

He knew what he would be required to face, both in the dream and after waking.

The mist cleared; once more he found that time and place had altered. In terror, he perceived that he would be given not knowledge alone, but direct experience. He must not retreat from it. He, Noren, had been chosen—but he had also been permitted to choose. As the First Scholar, he knew that the incomplete editing in the officially preserved recordings had been deliberate, that it was designed as a test and as an invitation. This horror would not be forced on anyone. Only a person willing to confront it consciously would reach the point where he must look into the eyes of his mutant son.

Perhaps the dream had not been intended to be so vivid. Perhaps if he’d not met mutants in the mountains, an event the First Scholar couldn’t anticipate, he would see the child no more clearly than the mother. In her he sensed pain and felt it as his own; but her face was still shadowy. The child stood out in sharp contrast, mindless, but with the body of a human. It had light skin and reddish curls and it was old enough to walk.

He clutched the woman’s hand. He still loved her, deeply and hopelessly. They no longer lived as lovers, of course, but they let it be assumed that they did; it was the only way they could explain their refusal to take other partners. All the Founders had originally been married, since only married couples had been selected for the starships; but with the passage of years open love affairs occurred among those widowed or separated. That their leader should have such an affair did not bother anyone. That he should neither remarry nor love would, in view of the need for children, be less acceptable.

“There is no more time,” she said to him with sorrow. “The child is old enough to be weaned, and I can keep it in my room no longer. You know I can’t! By your own rule all others must give up their babies. People will not like it if you make an exception of yours.”

“No,” he agreed, “but perhaps they will tolerate it. They will not tolerate the truth.” So far, no one had gotten a close look at the child’s face; she had told them it was sickly and had allowed no one but herself to tend it. Now it should be sent to the dome where the rest of the Founders’ offspring were being reared to become the new and essential Technician caste. But that was impossible. This child was not merely retarded, it was of subhuman mentality—and a doctor could determine why. Everyone knew what damage unpurified water caused; without that knowledge they would not have gone along with the sealing of the City. They all knew such water wouldn’t be drunk accidentally. She was a geneticist, and to some he’d argued for genetic engineering. If they saw the child, they would guess the truth, and his chance to establish a lasting society would be lost.

Somehow it had not occurred to him beforehand that such a child would live.

He’d assumed that if the test failed, the child would die in infancy. The mutant children of the exploratory team had died; their brains had been sent to the Six Worlds for autopsy. That was how the nature of the genetic damage had become known. Yet, he now realized, the mutation itself was not lethal. The colonists’ descendants, if not saved by future science, would not die but would become subhuman. He really did not know how the other mutant babies had died. He perceived that he hadn’t wanted to know.

But he could imagine.
Her
courage had not faltered; for more than a year she had nursed this mutant—one couldn’t think of it as one would think of a human baby—and had borne the sight of its empty stare. There was no love in it. She had treated it gently, but it was not a docile creature and he knew, sickened, that when it was older its mindless rages would turn to animal ferocity. Loose in the wilderness, it would survive for that very reason.
The mutants in the mountains were cannibals
, Noren thought, remembering all too well… but as the First Scholar he did not have foreknowledge; he simply doubted that another woman, one who’d not taken a calculated risk with the resolve to bear the consequences, would have nourished such an infant at her breast.

“We can no longer hide it,” she told him, “yet the truth must not be known. There is only one thing I can do.”

Stunned, appalled, he waited, not daring to answer her. For the first time he feared that perhaps he should not be leader after all. He’d handled countless bad situations and had often been called wise and brave, yet now he felt utterly helpless. He did not see anything they could do, though he knew the welfare of future generations might hinge no less on this decision than on his others.

Calmly, holding back tears, she continued, “I must leave the City. Though it’s forbidden, there are no guards, and when I’m gone, no one will guess the reason.”

“No! Dearest, you can’t!”

“It’s the only way. And there’s nothing more I can do here in any case. I have analyzed the genotypes; I know where I may have gone wrong—but nothing can be proven without more testing. I’d be willing to try again, I would even take another lover if there were anyone we could trust. But there’s no hope of that. I can help you only by going. I’ve enough medical knowledge to be useful in the village, and you know I won’t betray the City’s secrets to the people there.”

“You don’t understand,” he protested. “There’ve been rebels in the village, those unwilling to acknowledge dependence on water piped from the City. They are outcasts. They drink from streams, and most flee to the mountains before they give birth. If you take the child to the village, you may be forced to follow them.”

It was more than he could endure. The present inhabitants of the village, colonists who’d been shut out of the City, had been born on the Six Worlds; they knew the danger of the water as well as the Founders did. Their leaders would not permit violation of the already-sacred rule: those who incurred genetic damage, or who bore damaged children, could not live among them. His most painful visions were of the rebels he’d failed to save, those he could not contrive to take into the City as he took other dissidents. They faced worse than peril and hardship in the mountains, worse than the production of subhuman offspring—observing his own child, he knew that when such offspring grew to maturity their parents would be endangered by them.

He could not let her take so great a risk as that. Yet neither could he prevent it. She had nursed the child; it was animal, not human, yet if he killed it to save her, she would not forgive him… nor would he ever forgive himself.

“My darling, I know what may happen,” she said steadily. “But what choice have I?”

“You have none,” he heard himself whisper. “We made our choice long ago, both of us.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No. We did wrong, and we must pay for it—yet what we did was best. Not to try to prevent extinction would have been a greater wrong. For all children to be like this would be the worst form of extinction.”

“I’ve left the genetic data in the computers. Will people of the future try again, perhaps?”

They
must
, he thought. Not only to ensure survival if metal synthesization failed, but so that her suffering would not be vain. “They will,” he promised. “I’ll see that the knowledge is passed to them. That won’t be easy to manage, but neither will the—the rest of my plans. I can arrange it so that things work out.”