The Doors Of The Universe (26 page)

The ritual dragged to a close. Noren pushed his way forward to Lianne’s side; at the sight of him, the shadow of sorrow in her eyes gave way to brightness. “There’s something I want to show you,” he said, keeping his voice as level as possible.

On the way to his room they said little, for he could think of no way to express it. How did one tell somebody that one had found out she’d come from another world? He couldn’t possibly be mistaken, yet she seemed so—so normal. Her spirits were rising; it occurred to him she might have feared she’d lost his friendship by her refusal to have his child. He couldn’t guess how she’d react to his discovery. Would she look on it as a betrayal? With the confrontation at hand, Noren became aware that it mattered to him—how
she
felt mattered. He couldn’t think of her as alien.

Wordlessly he pointed to the study desk, where the first screen of the disc he’d prepared was already displayed. Lianne sat down and began to read.

Gradually, she whitened; her pale skin turned nearly colorless. Though she was obviously stunned, she didn’t seem angry and certainly was not bewildered—the data she was scanning surprised her only by being in his possession. She read through to the end without speaking, her very silence confirming his interpretation of her origin. Suddenly the silence terrified him. He’d hoped, underneath, that she would be glad she need no longer keep up the pretense. But the face she finally turned to him was a mask of pain and despair.

“How did you get the blood sample?” she asked in a low voice.

Noren told her. “We weren’t trying to pry,” he added. “We meant it for your good, Lianne. We never guessed we’d learn anything except whether you could be cured of barrenness.”

“I know. The fault’s not yours, it’s mine. I said the wrong thing. I got—emotional. If I’d remembered how people in your world feel about sterility, I wouldn’t have blundered. I’d have told you I drank too much impure water as a village girl; you’d never have questioned that.” As she rose from the study desk Noren saw to his dismay that she was crying, not hysterically this time but silently, as if she were facing some profound and private grief.

Puzzled, he guided her to the bunk and sat on its edge beside her, putting his arm around her trembling shoulders. “I know you must have some reason for not wanting to tell us yet,” he said, “but is it really so terrible that we’ve found out?”

“We?” she inquired anxiously. “You haven’t told Stefred, I was with him almost all day—”

“No. I wanted to talk to you first. I guess I felt I needed verification of anything so—tremendous. Lianne, you surely don’t believe I think less of you for it, do you? That I think of you as inhuman or something? Why do you mind so much having me know?”

“Because it’s you who will suffer for my mistake,” she whispered.

“Suffer? Oh, no, Lianne! I suppose you mean you need to keep the secret awhile longer. If that’s important I’ll go along, and you’re right that it’ll be hard for me—but I’d still rather know than not know. Even just the knowledge that we’re to be saved—” He broke off, perplexed. “Why did you say before that rescue’s impossible, that I mustn’t hope?”

Lianne met his eyes. “I told you how things are.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There is a great deal you’re not going to understand. And you will be hurt by that, as well as in other ways you can’t imagine so far. I’d have done anything to prevent it, Noren, because I—I care about you. I wanted your love, I wished I could have your child—that’s why I wasn’t thinking clearly. I betrayed my responsibilities, and I betrayed you, too, without meaning to. Now it’s too late; nothing can undo the damage.”

“But Lianne, just because I know a little ahead of time—”

“You weren’t ever meant to know.”

“That you’re alien? But why not?”

“You weren’t ever to know aliens came.” She drew away from him, pausing as if she needed time to collect herself; when she faced him again she was very calm, composed not just as she usually was, but in a way that made her seem indeed the daughter of a different world.

“We would have to know eventually,” he pointed out, “I mean, when it comes to replenishing our world’s metal—”

“Noren,” Lianne interrupted, “I’ve got to set you straight, and it’s best if I don’t put it off. You want the truth, I think, even if it’s not pleasant to hear.”

“I’ve always wanted the truth.”

“And today—all the hours you couldn’t find me—you’ve been building your hopes on the idea that you’re about to receive it, all of it, from my people. That we’re here to give you metal, restore the Six Worlds’ lost civilization and more.” He had the odd feeling that she was drawing this directly from his mind, though she knew him well enough, he supposed, to have guessed that he personally expected more than the Prophecy’s fulfillment, that it was her people’s knowledge that excited him most.

“Those hopes won’t be satisfied,” Lianne continued steadily. “We are here to observe—that’s all. Nothing in your world will change because of us. It’s necessary for you to realize that from the beginning.”

Horrified, Noren protested, “You’re saying you’d stand by and observe evils you could put an end to? Lianne, I don’t believe it!” And yet something in her look frightened him; it was almost as if her words were true.

“You
must
believe it. I don’t expect you to comprehend it yet. In time, if you have courage enough, you’ll begin to perceive what’s involved. But meanwhile you must take my word—if you refuse, if you cling to the illusion that we will save your people, you’ll lose your own chance to do it. And then nothing can save them.”

“Your civilization wouldn’t let us die.”

“That’s a complicated issue. There’s more to it than survival—after all, your descendants could survive as subhuman mutants. You want more than life for them, Noren. You want them to regain their rightful heritage. It may be in your power to ensure that. It is not in mine.

“It
is
, it must be if you’ve got starships,” he began; but then a new thought came to him. He had assumed Lianne represented her people—yet it was strange that she was here alone, that she’d been arrested and convicted of heresy, brought into the City without any means of communicating with the others. Could they possibly have abandoned her? Was she herself in fact powerless?

“What are they, your people?” he asked slowly. “Why did they come?”

“We are anthropologists. We have more knowledge than you can envision, Noren, but at the same time less; we visit young civilizations to learn. We aren’t the ones who left the sphere on this world, but we did pick up its signals. They were—incongruous. We came to investigate. Not to interfere, only to watch.”

“To watch us struggle against hopeless odds?” Noren exclaimed bitterly.

“If you want to put it bluntly, yes.”

“You’re—inhuman, then, after all, at least your people are.”

“From your standpoint, now, perhaps so. There are sides to it you can’t see.”

“And are you on our side, Lianne,” Noren demanded, “or on your cold-blooded observation team’s?”

She hesitated. “I’m on both. I wish I could explain more, but I’m bound by a commitment; there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

Anger rose in Noren; he seized her by the shoulders, pulling her toward him. “Nothing you can do, or nothing you will?” he questioned. “You’re not insensitive, Lianne. You’ve been playing a role all this time, yes, but you do care what happens to us. You couldn’t have gotten past Stefred if our people’s future didn’t matter to you; no Scholar candidate can. And there’ve been other things you couldn’t have faked.”

“You’re right,” she confessed, “I couldn’t fake how I felt about you. I couldn’t even hide it—you knew when you spoke of the child that it wasn’t just that I supported your experiments. Only I couldn’t stand in the way of those experiments; they’re too important! They’re the one chance you have of saving your people, and if they succeed—”

“If? Lianne, you must know the work I’m doing’s going to succeed. You wouldn’t let me risk harming a baby.”

“There’s risk in all scientific progress. You’re aware of that.”

“But you’ve got advanced knowledge of genetics, surely—”

“I’m an anthropologist, not a geneticist. I know what you’re doing is feasible, but I’m in no position to judge the details.”

“Not personally, perhaps, but your people… I can’t keep working by trial and error, knowing there are people around who’ve already passed this stage!”

“That’s one reason you weren’t supposed to know,” Lianne admitted miserably. “It’s going to make what you have to do much harder.”

“I can’t take risks that are unnecessary. There’s got to be another way.”

“There is no other way! What can I do to convince you?” She drew a resolute breath, then continued with deliberate coldness, “My civilization’s further above the Six Worlds than you can conceive, and we don’t share our knowledge with primitives.”

Before Noren could reply she dropped her head; the next thing he knew she was leaning against him. He was dazed—with the ale he’d drunk, with ups and downs of emotion, with the conviction that Lianne could not be as coldhearted as she seemed; instinctively he embraced her. She was warm, not cold at all… .

“You’re so alone,” she murmured. “I can’t spare you what you’ll suffer from knowing about us. But I might—comfort you sometimes, offer the only thing I’m free to offer—” Though she said no more, abruptly her thought blazed clear in his mind, and outraged, he thrust her away.

“Sex?” he burst out in fury. “Am I on no higher level than that in your view—a primitive who’d be satisfied with sex when you could give me the
stars?”

Lianne sprawled motionless on the bunk where she had fallen, her face set with anguish and resignation. She did not answer.

“I don’t need anything from you,” Noren said. “Or from your people, either. If they’re hoping to observe a so-called primitive civilization’s reaction to foreknowledge of certain doom, they’ll be disappointed—because we’re not going under. I’m going to have children, and I’m going to see to it that others do, too, children who can live on this world without the metal you see fit to deny us.”

For a moment a light flared in Lianne’s eyes; then, as he went on speaking, their brilliant blue darkened. “That’s not all,” Noren told her. “We respect each other here, and we respect privacy—but since you don’t rank us on your level, you’ve forfeited all right to be treated as human by our standards. Stefred could have had all your secrets during your inquisition if he’d chosen to take them without consent; he will take them now. Whatever knowledge we can get from your mind, we’ll get. It may be you know the key to metal synthesization after all, maybe even to the Unified Field Theory—”

“You aren’t going to tell Stefred or anyone else who I am, Noren,” Lianne declared with clear assurance. “Not ever.”

“What’s to stop me? I’ve got proof you can’t deny.”

“No one will believe the disc; it will only discredit your genetic work.”

“They’ll believe the computers if the blood test is repeated by experts.”

“There will be no opportunity to repeat it. If you tell, I will kill myself, as I would have if Stefred had pursued the inquisition too far in the first place—there’s no way he can forestall that. Did you think I came unprepared?”

Noren stared at her in astonishment, sensing beyond doubt that this was no empty threat. She meant it. “Why?” he asked, baffled. “Why is secrecy worth giving your life for?”

“Think about it sometime,” she replied quietly. “You won’t like the answer, but you’re capable of figuring it out, part of it, anyway.”

He was too aroused by rage and frustration to think anything out at the moment. He wanted no more of Lianne, not now, not ever except as an information source—yet she remained unmoving, showing no sign that she intended to leave his room. Turning his back on her, Noren strode out the door, realizing only dimly that he’d been left no choice, that he was on his way to find Veldry.

Chapter Seven

Noren awoke in a bed not his own, unsure of whether or not it was morning. In the windowless rooms of the towers one couldn’t tell, and his inner time sense seemed hazy. The lamp was on; he could see the tall time-glass in the corner. Its sand had run all the way through—but would Veldry have turned it over as people usually did on retiring? Under the circumstances, that seemed unlikely.

He found to his dismay that he had little recollection of what he and Veldry had said to each other. He’d intended only to ask her… somehow it had gone further than that. He ought, he supposed, to be glad. Instead he felt as if something very special had been devalued.

Veldry sat at the foot of the bed, her back to him, brushing her hair. It was long and dark, like Talyra’s. He had, he remembered, imagined he was with Talyra, much as he had during the secret dream: Veldry’s own identity had been vague, like that of the woman the First Scholar had loved. Only this had not been a dream. He hadn’t been wholly himself—he’d been so hot with anger that he’d not thought beyond his vow that he
would
bring about his people’s survival—yet he could not say he had not known what he was doing. He’d had too much ale earlier in the evening, perhaps; he’d raged at Lianne’s refusal to bring help to the world, and yes, she had roused other feelings too; all those things might explain his impulsiveness. But they did not make what had happened any less real.