The Doors Of The Universe (34 page)

Weak not with fear now but with relief, Noren was unable to piece things together. “Do you feel guilty about using telepathy that way?” he asked slowly.

“No, certainly not. There’s no harm in my helping people as individuals. Veldry doesn’t know why the birth was easier than usual any more than you knew why your convalescence wasn’t as bad as you expected, and in both cases I prevented needless suffering.”

“But when you came just now, your face—”

Lianne’s smile faded. “Noren,” she said cryptically, “you’ve a long way to go. The road’s rougher than you’ve let yourself think, rougher in some ways than you’ve any grounds for anticipating. Let’s not talk about it now! Let’s just be happy because the baby’s so healthy.”

“You’re certain he’s perfectly normal?” Noren persisted, striving to attain the state of elation he’d assumed would come naturally.

“As certain as anyone can be by looking at him. But I’m not omniscient, Noren, and I’m not as competent to judge his genetic makeup as you are.”

She hadn’t brought the blood sample with her; she declared he was too tired to handle it effectively and insisted that he get some sleep. It being impossible to visit the birthing room, Noren followed this advice. He woke exultant, so exultant that as he ran the tests he was not even nervous.

The standard programmed analysis of the baby’s genotype, completed rapidly by the computer system, revealed no genetic defects of types known to the Founders. Noren’s own painstaking work, the many hours at a console during which he examined the coded data in detail, proved that the change he’d made to his own genotype had indeed been inherited by his son. The genes involved were, of course, dominant; it had been designed that way so only one parent’s genes need be altered in the first experiment. This meant the boy could metabolize the normally-damaging substance in native vegetation and water without ill effects, though verification would be needed after he was mature. Not all his descendants would inherit the same capability, however. The changed genes were unavoidably paired with the unaltered recessives that had come from Veldry, and chance alone would determine which would be passed to particular offspring. From now on, since the vaccine was no longer untried, the genes of both parents must be altered.

And yet, Noren thought, this wouldn’t be the case in the next generation unless experimental children paired with each other. How was he to arrange that? To deprive them of free choice would be unthinkable; Scholars saw to it that heretics were subtly encouraged, but no other interference in villagers’ lives was permitted. Even if he managed to keep track of the babies, there would have to be a lot of them before enough data could be obtained to prove it was safe to inoculate the whole population.

So what next? “What’s your next step?” Lianne challenged when they met late that evening—and Noren became uncomfortably aware that underneath, he’d hoped she would tell him. Had he not gone as far as it was possible to go without Service guidance? What constructive end would be served by letting him waste time in further groping, considering they must already have analyzed what he ought to do?

“I don’t know what to do now,” he said, thinking that perhaps this direct admission was required of him. “But you, Lianne—” He stopped; he still could not speak openly of his conviction that he’d be ultimately enlightened. “You know the people in the City better than I do,” Noren went on slowly. “I’m not good with people. You are, and you’ve some degree of access to their minds. Who can you name that might be open to the idea of volunteering?”

“I can’t name anyone,” she replied soberly. “Oh. I would, Noren—I am permitted to help you in any way I could if I were truly of your people, even by using psychic powers abnormal among you. But if you have any potential supporters, they’re keeping their thoughts to themselves.”

“How can everyone be so shortsighted?” Noren burst out angrily.

“They aren’t in a position to judge metal synthesization,” Lianne pointed out, “and they’d rather believe you are wrong about it than that the Founders were.”

And they have no grounds for believing the Prophecy can come true without it
, Noren remembered. If he had not learned Lianne’s identity, neither would he. And to go on affirming religion’s promises under those conditions would have been impossible.

“There’s more involved,” Lianne said. “Not all of them feel that losing technology would be intolerable—they don’t all see, as you do, that it would mean the end of your civilization’s evolution. But as long as they believe there’s hope of synthesizing metal, they can’t endorse an alternate plan. They’re afraid the caste system might be maintained longer than is necessary for mere survival.”

“But we wouldn’t maintain it if the alternate could be implemented!”

“No? For a while you suspected even the Founders had done so.”

“It would be a—a hard decision,” he conceded. “There’d be a fight over it. Some would say that as long as there was any chance of bringing the Prophecy to fulfillment, we should keep the capability even though it would mean keeping the castes. I haven’t faced that because I knew, even before you told me, that the Founders’ plan offers no chance.”

Lianne’s eyes weren’t visible in the darkness of the courtyard. “You must face what you’re asking your followers to face,” she said levelly.

Yes. I can’t be spared anything merely because I know the point’s a moot one
, he perceived. Knowing nothing of the Service, what would he say? After a long time he ventured, “There might be a compromise. The research outpost’s set up for the nuclear work; we could move the essentials there so they wouldn’t be lost when the City’s opened to everyone and its resources are quickly exhausted. Each Scholar could choose personally whether or not to go there. But oh, Lianne, the aircar traffic would stop, and the people who went would be exiled futilely—”

“
You
know that.”

“And knowing, I should try to talk them into it?”

“It may be the only arguing point you have. But it won’t be enough. To win out, you’ll have to—to act, Noren.”

He pondered the implications. “In the end, when the genetic change is accomplished and I’m old, I’d have to go there myself and continue nuclear research. Die there as leader of that lost cause.”

Her calm tone gave way to hesitancy. “Perhaps.”

He would have to promise that, certainly, and he would have to mean it. He couldn’t go to the outpost until his work was finished, since the computer complex was indispensable to analysis of genotypes. But afterward… wasn’t it what he’d have wanted if he hadn’t known the truth about Lianne? To preserve technology—some remnant of knowledge at least—after sharing of metal with the Villagers made maintenance of the City impossible, simply as a monument to what the Six Worlds had once accomplished? The gesture would be empty now; this must be why Lianne had told him he’d suffer for his discovery. Whatever the Service offered him, he must return to play out the charade, unless the real route to restoring technology appeared during his lifetime.

“I’ll do whatever’s necessary,” he declared, wondering if he was as sincere as he wished to be, and if she could assure her seniors that he was.

“I believe you will,” Lianne agreed, not happily. “But even action won’t be enough; people need—inspiration. You’ll have to give them that.”

As a priest gives hope
. In the past he’d given little of anything. When he’d offered the truth, which was what he most valued, it had often been rejected.

“Noren,” Lianne said suddenly. “You’re willing to give, I know that, yet I—I think you also must learn to receive. You’re—you’re more isolated here than I am, even. You don’t know how to interact.”

His heart ached for her. She, warm and loving by nature, had made her feeling toward him plain, and in this he’d been the one to reject the offering. “You do understand, don’t you—” he began, knowing that with her, there was no need to complete the thought in words.

“About Talyra? Yes, very well—more than you do, maybe.”

He didn’t probe her meaning; he knew only that although it had been nearly two years since Talyra’s death, he could not love Lianne in the same way. There were times when he wanted to. He certainly wasn’t held back by the fact that she was alien—and although that made marriage impossible, since it precluded an honest commitment to permanence, there was no rational reason for not turning what City gossip now held to be fact into the truth. Perhaps he hesitated only because Talyra had said simply that he must have children, not that he should love for love’s own sake. Yet he sensed that there was more to it than loyalty.

Besides, he must indeed have more children. With Veldry? She was as dedicated to the future as the rest of the Scholars, and less narrow-minded. Maybe he should marry her. She would accept him; he could make her happy; on his side, it would be no worse than any other marriage of convenience. Veldry had taken no lover since the night their child was conceived, and if for his second genetically-changed baby he turned to someone else, she would be hurt as he’d never expected her to be. He did not want to seek another bride. Why, then, did he not want to marry Veldry, either?

It did not matter what he wanted. If he married her, he could acknowledge their son publicly without implying anything extraordinary. Most Scholars would be surprised but not suspicious—yet on the other hand, if any did support his proposal, they would recognize that he had acted upon it. Lianne would let it be known that she was barren; that was no shame among her own people and would not bother her. With rumor as it stood, he would appear to be giving her up on that account, which would show potential allies that his talk of genetic change was more than talk, more even than cold science. It would be seen as a human commitment. A gesture, a symbol, yes—but in such things lay power. Only so could he inspire anybody to follow him.

But he did not look forward to the end of Veldry’s confinement, knowing what he must say to her when he told her of his joy about the child.

*
 
*
 
*

Women stayed in the birthing room three days, then rejoined friends and loved ones at the noon meal in the commons. Everyone came forward to congratulate new mothers; Noren had no chance to speak to Veldry privately. No one saw anything odd in the warmth of his felicitations, or even in the fact that he took the chair next to hers—Lianne was on his other side, and it was assumed they were simply being friendly. Veldry was radiant. “You’ve given a great gift to the world,” said Noren, and his intensity was noticed only by her; the people present thought it merely a conventional phrase. But Veldry took his true meaning without need of further words.

“I am fortunate,” she replied; and that too had double meaning. It struck him that when they married, many would be less surprised by his choice than by hers. Desiring her for her beauty, they would be envious. There was envy in their looks as they waited for the unnamed father to appear. It embarrassed him; he should not acknowledge the child, perhaps, until the interest had died down. So he told himself.

To see her alone, he would have to go to her room, which he felt himself obligated to do. But that evening when he joined the group gathering for Orison, she stood in the front row. Only then did it dawn on him that he—never attentive to religious observances—had overlooked a more obvious duty: she’d assumed he would arrange the roster so as to preside at the ritual Thanksgiving for Birth. Hastily he found the priest scheduled to officiate and with the excuse that he wouldn’t be free for his regular turn, asked to switch, donning a borrowed robe in lieu of his own. There was no time to review the service. He had heard it, naturally, but had never read it through, and almost stumbled over the substitution of “this mother” for “these parents” which he should have been prepared to manage smoothly. Otherwise he found the experience strangely moving.

Veldry came forward—without kneeling, of course, since it was not fitting for one Scholar to kneel to another—and met his gaze with high spirits as he placed his hands on her head in the formal gesture.
“The blessing of the Star’s spirit has been bestowed upon her, for she has given herself freely in love and in concern for the generations on which its light will fall. Now in their name we acknowledge their debt to her, and wish her joy in the knowledge that her child will live among those whose heritage we guard as stewards.”
Her child, and his! Ever after, he’d know that somewhere a part of him lived on.

She expected no private talk, Noren perceived as she stepped back. It was too soon for her to start another pregnancy; without conscious decision, he put off making any move. Days passed. And then early one morning, awakened by a knock at his own door, he opened it in dismay to Veldry.

He hardly knew her; there were lines in her face he’d never noticed before, and she was red-eyed from weeping. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, his voice rough with anger not at her, but at whoever had found out and now scorned her. It was the only explanation he could think of—and marriage would not mend matters, not if she with her pride had been reduced to this by someone’s branding of the experimentation as “obscene.”

“I—I don’t know how to tell you,” she faltered. “You don’t deserve so much tragedy in your life. It’s not fair, when you meant to do good.”

“Look, Veldry,” Noren said, gripping her shoulders, “I’m ready to face up to anything that happens—don’t worry about
me
. But I won’t stand for it if people are blaming you for trying to do good yourself. I’ll take full responsibility, I’ll lie if I have to, say I didn’t tell you till afterward—”