The Doors Of The Universe (32 page)

“You mean because the struggle turns out to have been unnecessary? But that’s saying still earlier contact would have been better.”

“No! The struggle
is
necessary; no species can evolve without it—the struggle to solve its own problems, I mean. Its people can’t hold their own among biologically older peoples without that background. And their potential contribution to galactic civilization can’t develop, either. If a species turns to absorbing knowledge from others before gaining enough on its own, its unique outlook is lost. It has nothing to give, and the spirit of its people dies, Noren. No more progress is possible for them.”

“But they can mingle with the rest of you, surely—”

“Not in any permanent sense. Since it’s genetically impossible for species that evolve on different worlds to interbreed, they will always retain separate identity. What’s more, the majority of individuals in a young species can’t develop their latent telepathic powers or any other abilities they consider paranormal. So if their own culture isn’t viable and they lack the psychic skills basic to ours, their descendants are doomed to be like retarded children in the eyes of the Federation. The Service is dedicated to making sure that never happens where there’s an alternative.”

Noren pondered it. Finally he said, “Lianne, I can’t argue with the goal, but… it’s not as clear-cut as it sounds. There are more factors to weigh—”

“Of course there are. That’s why I’m still here.”

“To judge not our worthiness, but the odds against us?”

“To obtain data so that judgment can be made.” She reached out to him, fear surfacing once more. “Don’t you see, I’m just one person, quite a young person, and we’re talking about a decision that demands the collective wisdom of all the mature species in the galaxy! The Service will make it—but they will not tell me while I’m here, Noren. As long as I’m among you, I’ll be given no more power than you have. They won’t tell me the odds, or what’s best for your world, any more than they will tell you.”

Chapter Eight

It was astonishing, Noren thought, what one could adjust to when one had no other option. He wouldn’t have believed he could behave just as he always had since his entrance to the City—rise, dress, eat, work hour after hour at a computer console, even mingle naturally with people—knowing that the world was being observed by an alien civilization. Yet he did it. Weeks passed, and it became habit to push thoughts of that civilization from his mind and get on with the demands of routine living. He learned to treat Lianne almost exactly as he had before, and incredible though it seemed that the existence of secrets between them could go unnoticed, she assured him those secrets were safe.

“The most anyone might wonder,” she declared matter-of-factly, “is whether we are lovers. And since they wouldn’t mind if we were, it makes no difference if they guess wrong.”

“What about Stefred?” Noren inquired miserably. Despite the value he’d always placed on honesty, he was now hiding the genetic experimentation, hiding the existence of the aliens, hiding the true nature of his relationship with Lianne. For Stefred to have a false impression about that relationship would be one thing more than he could endure.

“Stefred can see you don’t love me,” Lianne said with pain. “Do you think I’d let him believe you do, when I’m forced to deceive him so many other ways?”

The deception was a deep grief to her. Though Stefred would never know the full extent of it, it wasn’t failure to win her love that was going to hurt him most. He was counting on her as the heir to his work, yet in time, when she disappeared from the City—something no Scholar had ever done—he’d assume that she was a deserter. Nor was that the only misapprehension she was fostering. “It’s not just that you won’t carry on after him,” Noren observed sadly, “but you already know more about the job than he does—”

“Not more about the techniques he uses, but I’m trained in some he’s never dreamed of. I wouldn’t be qualified to teach him such skills even if it were permissible; I can tell myself it’s a kindness not to let him suspect what he’s missing.”

“But Stefred wouldn’t look at it that way,” Noren protested, “any more than I do.”

Lianne sighed. “I know. But Noren, he would choose to reject access to knowledge for the sake of the principles he believes in. As you would. As you both did, in fact, when you were candidates.”

“Then, I thought the Scholars were going to kill me,” Noren reflected grimly. “The prospect of having to live with the choice wasn’t something I considered.”

Day by day, he learned to live with it—though in this case, he’d really been offered no choice. He told himself that if he were, he would of course choose to act in the long-term best interests of his species. He took pride in schooling himself to seem impassive, and that skill came back, for throughout boyhood he’d been obliged to conceal his feelings from his family. He’d been a heretic for years when they’d supposed him simply a muddle-headed dreamer. Now he was again a rebel: against the Scholars’ opposition to genetic research, and on another level, in the privacy of his deepest mind, against the relentless hands-off policy of Lianne’s people. By day, he turned from this second rebellion to devote his attention to the first. He proceeded with preliminary computer work so that if a chance ever came to test genetically altered crops, he would be ready.

At night it was harder. Nights had been hard in any case since Talyra’s death. Now, lying sleepless too long in the dark of his lonely quarters, he could not help imagining the wide universe that was Lianne’s heritage—that, if things were different, might well have been his. It
should
be his! He accepted the fate that barred him from it no more gracefully than in boyhood he’d accepted the idea of being forever barred from the City. Inwardly he raged just as he had then. And despite himself, despite his sureness that Lianne was truthful, he began to hope for a similar outcome. She’d admitted she did not know what her people would decide about his chances, that in fact there was much involved that was beyond the grasp of younger field agents. So was it sure that he would be offered no aid? There could be no open contact between cultures if that had proven invariably harmful, but in secret… what harm could be done if they enlightened a few individuals in secret, accepted a few, perhaps, into their own ranks?

This vision built up gradually, so that he was scarcely conscious of its formation. The Service to which Lianne belonged was mysterious in a way that excited him, drew him, as in his adolescence he’d been drawn to the mysteries of the City. Its senior members took on qualities he’d once attributed to Scholars, untarnished by the assumptions he’d then had about the Scholars’ motives. Knowing that Lianne trusted these elders implicitly, he let reverence displace the resentment he found intolerable. They were immensely powerful and wise, surely, beyond his furthest conceptions; their minds, their culture, their technology were infinitely advanced—and they could give him answers if they chose.

He did not expect them to make it easy for him; he did not even want them to. His growing dream-scenario included unimaginable trials, which surpassed the stress of Stefred’s challenges as those had surpassed his boyhood guesses about what Scholars might do to a steadfast heretic. The attempt to picture them was rather pleasantly terrifying. Inside, he longed to feel as he had during his earliest days as a Scholar, confident of his ability to handle himself in any situation that might arise. The ordeals of his candidacy had built that confidence, and he would be happy to endure further ones to get it back. The awesome Service grew in his mind as the one agency that might do for him what Stefred no longer could.

That he must first prove himself was only fair. Yet since Lianne’s people would not let his species die, they would not ask him to achieve the impossible—therefore what he was striving for must be possible. They might not come right out and say so, even to her; but neither she nor he himself, much less this planet’s inhabitants, would be allowed to come to harm. Had not her fellow agents taken a solemn oath to put the best interests of the worlds they visited above all other considerations?

The elation he’d first felt about the success of the genetic experiments began to return. Seen as a test of his abilities, the work no longer seemed futile, and he realized the Service was indeed wise—he would not want aliens to take over a task he himself could accomplish. With rising spirits, he looked forward to the birth of Veldry’s child.

She had not told him in words that she was pregnant, for they could not talk privately without fear of gossip. But one evening, after the appropriate interval of weeks, she had paused by the table where he was sharing a meal with Brek and, imperceptibly, nodded. Her face had shone with something deeper than its beauty; and in that moment he became aware that he too had crossed the line from bitterness to acceptance—even, at times, to joy. A child, his child, first of the new race that would someday regain its place in the universe… .

There was, to be sure, the fact that without metal the City’s technology couldn’t be maintained. Once it was gone, people couldn’t rise back out of the Stone Age. Without metal they’d have no chance of reaching the stripped starship hulls orbiting the world to which they’d be forever confined. So logic told him.

But now there was another logic. It couldn’t happen that way! The permanent loss of technology would mean the end of his civilization’s evolution just as surely as extinction would, and far more surely than would premature contact with the Federation. Thus there had to be a way out of the trap, though neither he nor anyone else in the City could yet perceive it—there had to be, or else Lianne’s people would consider intervention justified. There could be no point in withholding aid for the sake of not interfering with evolution if evolution was going to stop anyway.

He did not question Lianne directly about this. He guessed that one of the trials he, and no doubt she herself, must meet was despair over the Prophecy’s eventual failure. If he were given the answer to that despair, there’d indeed be outside influence on the course of the world’s history, for armed with an answer, he could easily win majority support. Besides, he was sure Lianne would not be told anything specific she would be obliged to keep from him.

Yet she evidently had faith in the Prophecy. She’d affirmed it at her own recantation, after all, knowing the attempt to synthesize metal was doomed to fail, and she insisted her only pretense concerned her background. Lianne never laughed at faith. “You have to believe in something,” she told him once, “and the more worlds you visit, the truer that is. Terrible things do happen. I’ve seen them everywhere—and here, the nova, I couldn’t bear that if I didn’t trust the universe further than I can see.”

“How did you learn to trust it?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Well… at the Service Academy, I suppose I started there; I never saw any of the bad things when I was little. At the Academy we have rituals, like Orison only far more complex, with telepathy in them, deep levels you can’t imagine. The old, experienced people, who’ve seen hundreds of worlds, participate. They show you the dark side, they make you feel horrible at some points, but then they show the good… and it seems you’ll never be afraid of
anything
after that. You are, of course. In the real world, you are. But you can’t ever forget that there are forces stronger than fear.”

Noren caught a hint of her emotion, though it was communicated on a level he didn’t know how to receive. For an instant he grasped the key concept: evil that couldn’t be banished could be transcended… .
It all fits
, he thought… but the perception quickly faded, and he could hold no more than the memory of a state in which he’d have given a great deal to remain.

Dazedly, as his surroundings became solid and familiar once more, he said, “I’ve—felt something like that before, I think.”

“Yes, in the last dream, when the First Scholar was dying.”

“
He
knew? But how? And why don’t I remember better?”

“Such knowledge can be attained by all humans,” Lianne told him, “but without expert teaching it usually comes only at times of crisis—and then only to those ready to open their minds. It’s not based on logic, it’s truly intuitive, a matter of sensing how the universe
is
.” Compassionately she added, “You don’t understand me. I could force rapport but you’d fight it, as you did even while you shared the First Scholar’s dying thoughts. He was an old man who’d reconciled the two sides of his nature, while in you there’s still conflict. That’s why you remember mostly terrifying feelings from the deathbed dream.”

“I remember his faith for the future.”

“His future, or the world’s?”

“The world’s, of course—the Prophecy. The ideas that became the Prophecy, anyway, that we now know were deluded hopes. He never had delusions about himself. Despite what’s been put into the liturgy, he knew perfectly well there wasn’t any future for
him
.”

Shaking her head, Lianne said, “What one draws from a controlled dream is limited by one’s preconceptions, I know that in principle. All the same, it’s hard to believe you missed so much.”

“What? Lianne, did I miss something significant?”

“Only to you. And perhaps,” she amended thoughtfully, “to your effectiveness in the role you’ll have to fill. Don’t expect to handle all the problems ahead with logic.”