The Doors Of The Universe (38 page)

She shivered, as if the sorrow were more hers than his own; he found himself wanting to hold her. But on the point of embrace, they both stood back. There was nowhere that could lead except to tragedy.

“At least it helps to know a bright side exists,” he said resolutely.

“It exists, and someday, if you hold your mind open to whatever inner experiences may come, you can reach it spontaneously. You have the proven capacity. To pursue that way actively simply isn’t your role.”

No, and to turn back from it was merely another sacrifice his role demanded. He wondered how many more there were going to be.

* * *

Somehow he got through the suspense of Veldry’s pregnancy; through her confinement; through the Thanksgiving for Birth that followed the delivery of a healthy baby boy. He’d privately hoped he might learn the father’s identity from that service, but Veldry forestalled him. “It would give away his secret, to you at least, if he arranged to preside,” she said. So the regular roster was evidently followed. As it happened, ironically, it was Stefred who officiated. Noren wondered how Lianne hid her feelings from him, and what he would say if he knew what he’d inadvertently blessed.

Veldry wasn’t permitted to nurse her own child this time, since there was no lack of wet nurses; but Lianne visited the nursery often enough to provide assurance that nothing was amiss. Gradually Noren’s dread gave way to elation. The ensuing relief, however, was shadowed by the realization that his grace period was over—he must delay no longer in finding volunteers to produce other children.

The solution dawned on him unexpectedly. One evening in the refectory a new Scholar, a man named Denrul, joined the table where he was sitting with several friends. Noren, rather amused at first, watched him rest his eyes on Veldry with something akin to adoration. Denrul, though older than most novices, was too recently admitted to have lost his awe of City women, and he’d as yet heard none of the long-standing gossip. Her beauty, for him, overwhelmed all else. Or did it? There was more in Denrul’s gaze than desire; Veldry’s own eyes lit with response, and Noren perceived that hope had wakened in her once more. Telepathy? he thought wryly. Maybe it was; maybe that was what love at first sight always was. In any case the two seemed well on the way to becoming love-stricken.

A new Scholar, Noren thought with sudden excitement—one whose ties with City tradition weren’t yet formed. As a recruit barely a week past recantation, Denrul’s idealism would be at its peak. That did not seem quite fair, and yet why not, except because he was just the sort of person who might be swayed? If to try to sway such people was wrong, then so was everything else he, Noren, had done. His instinct to avoid taking advantage of immature consciences was, perhaps, merely a sign of conflict in his own.

“Yes,” Lianne told him, “Denrul would be receptive. So would most candidates I’ve worked with, if approached early. I wondered when you would think of it.”

She now worked with them—he hadn’t stopped to consider that, for her discussions with candidates were as confidential as Stefred’s own. Unrobed assistants had always monitored some phases of the enlightenment dreams; Lianne was by this time fully trained to do so routinely. Thus the novice Scholars, their first few days after recanting, knew her better than anyone in the City aside from Stefred. Most of them were adolescent; all were elated by their triumph as heretics; all expected to adapt to new ways. Even more crucially, fresh from initial exposure to the dream sequence, they were loyal to the First Scholar alone.

The secret dream, by Council decision, had thus far been made available only to people who’d experienced the full version of the First Scholar’s other dream recordings: a policy Noren now saw was aimed toward restricting it to those with long-standing commitments to the Scholars’ traditional goals. He had been charged by the First Scholar’s words with full authority to decide who should be given access, and he recalled that at first, Stefred had feared the power this gave him. Power, yes! Novices would emerge from that dream ready to support what they’d see as an underground movement within the still-mysterious Inner City society. There were not enough of them to affect policy decisions, but as volunteer parents they would suffice.

During the days he pondered this, Veldry and Denrul spent much time openly in each other’s company. It reached the point where Noren wondered if she’d already explained about her genes; she’d have to, of course, if they became lovers, and in inoculating her he’d authorized her to reveal his own role as she saw fit. But when he brought up the subject, she seemed surprisingly embarrassed. “No,” she said. “He’d agree, but it shouldn’t come from me. That would be—seduction. You tell him, Noren. Tell him the truth about me, the whole truth. And then—” she blinked back tears “—then whatever he wants to do is up to him.”

Noren sought out Denrul, and they had a long talk. “You understand,” he said at the end of it, “that I’m asking you to perjure yourself as far as the Prophecy’s concerned. That’s what the others won’t do, and you’ve recanted on that basis of believing they won’t. To become a Scholar, at the same time realizing that what you affirmed in the ceremony’s false after all, won’t be easy. Especially when you’ll, well, gain personally—”

“Veldry? Noren, that’s not how I feel about her,” Denrul protested, shocked. “I’d never involve her in anything I had doubts over.”

“I’ve told you frankly that you’ll be far from her first lover.”

“I will not,” Denrul declared. “I’ll be her husband if she’ll have me at all.”

“That’s the village way,” agreed Noren, wondering uneasily whether Denrul’s fervent words reflected true devotion to Veldry or merely his inexperience with the Inner City’s less-strict conventions.

“It’s the only way right for her,” insisted Denrul. “Look, here’s a woman you say has had her choice of men—yet she thinks more about what’s best for her descendants than who she chooses? I say she wants more than love. I say she deserves a partner committed to more.”

“So do I,” Noren admitted with relief. “But you see, people not in on this secret have no way of knowing what she really cares about.”

Although Denrul had been won to the cause of genetic change without the secret dream, Noren was unwilling to alter the genes of anyone who hadn’t experienced it. It was too harrowing in some respects for anyone unready for the full version of the others; but it could be edited—Lianne was as skilled in that process as Stefred. During one long, agonizing night he went through it again, serving as monitored dreamer while she prepared a version suitable for those who’d recently completed the enlightenment dreams. This she kept in her personal possession. Denrul was told to sign up for library dream time, and on his scheduled night, she arranged to be on duty. Shortly thereafter, pale but resolute, he returned to Noren for inoculation.

A few weeks later, Denrul and Veldry stood up at Orison and to everyone’s amazement exchanged marriage vows. Veldry wore everyday beige trousers instead of a traditional red bridal skirt, and there were no officially designated attendants—Noren, who couldn’t publicly have assumed that role without arousing comment, found himself in the less welcome one of presiding priest. It was his regular turn, Veldry having carefully checked the roster, so when the newlywed couple stood before him to receive formal benediction, it was assumed they had no special friend to perform the office. The blessing was taken for a routine one. To Noren, however, it was a turning point: his own confirmation of total responsibility for other people’s risks.

He joined them afterward for a private feast in Veldry’s room, at which Lianne was the only other person present. She poured from a large jug she had brought, and Noren proposed the conventional toast: “To this union—may it be fruitful and bring lasting joy.”

They drank. At the first taste Veldry seemed ebullient and Denrul perplexed. Noren, in bewilderment, burst out, “By the Star, Lianne, this stuff’s like water! Couldn’t you find any better ale?”

“Under the circumstances I thought watered ale might be more appropriate,” she said pointedly, “considering where the water came from.”

Denrul’s puzzled frown gave way to bravado; with shaking hands he drained his cup without pausing. Indignantly Noren protested, “Lianne, that was cruel. At a marriage feast, a time for celebration—”

“No, Lianne’s right,” Veldry interrupted. “It’s melodramatic, maybe, but not cruel. It’s got to be like this. I mean, if we believe in what we’re doing, believe strongly enough to overthrow the old traditions, we’ve got to establish new ones. We need to dramatize! Life’s not all abstract science and ethics.”

Lianne was brimming with exhilaration; it was as if the ale had been more potent than usual instead of less so. “I propose a second toast,” she said, “to the day when stream water will be drunk sacramentally at village weddings.”

In high spirits they finished the contents of the jug. Denrul—who like many heretics had sampled impure water before his arrest—passed the safe limit in a single evening. Only for him was it a crucial step, since the others had consumed plenty of such water before. The symbolic significance in the act was nevertheless strong. For Noren in particular it was a poignant reminder of what he had lost, what he had yet to hazard before the gamble could pay off.

Later, walking back to his own lodging tower with Lianne, he mused, “I couldn’t see for myself what Veldry saw. Is that why I’m not getting anywhere, why I’m blind to the path ahead?”

“Partly.” Lianne seemed troubled; the elation she’d shown earlier had faded. “I—I gave you a clue, Noren, in my toast. I don’t think I overstepped my role because both Veldry and Denrul got what I was driving at. You… for several reasons you’ll find that harder.”

“I’ve never liked ceremony, that’s one, I suppose—though what happened in there was
good
. Were you doing something to us with your mind?”

“Nothing more than people usually do with their minds under such circumstances. That’s one of the things you don’t grasp about ceremony.”

“Well, nobody here knows about psychic undercurrents.” She could hardly be expecting him to act on the basis of knowledge she’d insisted was beyond him, Noren thought in frustration.

“Not consciously. But they sense what’s going on, as Veldry did—and as Stefred would. He’d deny the existence of telepathy, but he could predict exactly what the effects of the symbolic action would be.”

“Why doesn’t he, then? You say the clue’s in your suggestion about watering the ale at village weddings, but he maintains villagers wouldn’t be willing to drink unpurified water at all. And I should think a wedding would be the last occasion they’d pick to do it.”

“There’s a gap between existing tradition and what must replace it,” she agreed. “Stefred can’t bridge that gap; he’s too bound to the conventions the Founders established. You are freer—precisely because you’ve stood off from religious symbolism, you are free to reinterpret it as the Founders reinterpreted their own.”

“I already tried that once, trying to make gods of your people. I’ll not repeat that mistake.”

“Have you analyzed it, though?”

Not as well as he should have, Noren thought with chagrin. His mistake, as with his earlier errors concerning religion, had been in trying to name the ultimate. He was willing now to call it the Star and let that go. But Lianne was talking not about ultimates but about concrete things: the provisions of the High Law, for instance. The things that not only could change, but must. The Law forbade drinking impure water; she foresaw not merely the breaking of that Law but its reversal, for people would never ignore religion on a formal occasion like a wedding. He’d imagined their hoarding what little purified water was left simply to serve wedding guests… .

“Oh, Lianne,” he murmured. “I’m beginning to guess where you’re leading—but if symbols can be manipulated like that, turned around and given whatever significance someone wants them to have—”

“It is dangerous,” she admitted. “Like everything else, it’s a principle that can be put to ill use, and on most worlds both unscrupulous people and deluded ones have misused it. Here there are exceptional safeguards, which you will have to override.”

It was true, he reflected, that the Founders had deliberately created the symbols and ritual of a new religion in the first place; what they had done could in principle be redone. Yet conditions had not been the same. “I don’t think Scholars would ever revise the basic symbols,” he declared. “That’s not as simple as creating a little ceremony to express our own feelings about defying a taboo we’ve already decided to ignore at our own risk. There’d be—well, no
authority
for it. People don’t just make up their minds to change what things mean. The Scholars won’t take my word for scientific facts; how can we expect that I can alter their religious views?”

“We can’t,” Lianne acknowledged. “The kind of thing we did tonight will help form a small group of dedicated volunteers to produce genetically altered children. What I proposed in the toast was something altogether apart. It concerned not the Scholars’ religion but the villagers’.”

“But one’s got to lead to the other.”

“Really? Who believed in the symbols first when the Founders established them?”

The villagers did
, Noren realized, confused. The Founders gave them the Prophecy and High Law believing in the ideas behind the symbols, but it was the villagers who took them at literal face value. Only later, when village-born heretics were brought into the City, did those symbols acquire true religious significance within the walls. “We can’t alter people’s views by a proclamation from the Gates,” he protested. “How can the interpretation in the villages change before it’s changed here?”