The Doors of the Universe

by Sylvia Engdahl

  ARE YOU WILLING TO FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS?

  YES. The hardest part would be keeping it from Stefred. . . .

  I WARN YOU THAT THE DREAM WILL NOT BE PLEASANT.

  NONE OF THEM ARE, Noren acknowledged. Not the First Scholar’s, anyway.

  THIS CONTAINS ELEMENTS NOT PRESENT IN THE OTHERS, BOTH IN RECORDING TECHNIQUE AND IN CONTENT. YOU WILL UNDERGO CONSIDERABLE STRESS.

  More than in the deathbed recording? But of course, when the First Scholar had programmed these words, he hadn’t expected to make that one. It had been the result of the last-minute inspiration he’d had about the Prophecy. He had planned his martyrdom—to prevent widespread violence, he’d purposely incited the villagers to kill him—but he had not known when he made those plans that all future Scholar candidates would experience his death, or be required to ceremonially reenact it. He had not yet conceived of viewing the Mother Star as a symbol, even.

  So one could hardly swear by the Star to do as he asked. Feeling foolish at the thought that he’d been about to do just that, Noren keyed simply, WHERE WILL I FIND THE RECORDING?

  IN THE OLDEST DOME, BEHIND THE MAIN RADIOPHONE CONTROL BOARD. THERE IS A SMALL LOCKED PANEL. The lock’s combination followed; Noren memorized it.

  Putting the recording in a dome rather than a tower had been a brilliant tactic, he saw. If it had been concealed anywhere in the Inner City, Scholars might easily have come across it. But the Technicians of the Outer City, bound by the High Law to avoid touching machines they hadn’t been personally trained to handle, would never disturb its hiding place. A combination lock would be a “machine” in their eyes, and to tamper with it would be sacrilege.

  ONCE YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED THE DREAM YOU MUST BE THE SOLE JUDGE OF WHETHER IT SHOULD BE SHARED WITH TOUR CONTEMPORARIES. YOU MUST ALSO MAKE CERTAIN OTHER JUDGMENTS. THEY WILL NOT BE EASY.

  WILL I RECEIVE FURTHER INSTRUCTION?

  THIS FILE CONTAINS DATA YOU MAY CHOOSE TO RETRIEVE. I HAVE LEFT YOU NO MORE WORDS. I CAN OFFER YOU NO COUNSEL, FOR CIRCUMSTANCES IN YOUR TIME WILL NOT BE THE SAME AS IN MINE. MAY THE INFINITE SPIRIT GUIDE AND PROTECT YOU; AS I DIE, YOU WILL BE IN MY THOUGHTS.

  Stunned, Noren absorbed the significance of this final message, written mere weeks before the First Scholar’s death, the death he himself, dreaming, had come near to sharing. The full version of that particular recording was, of course, wholly unedited. And there was a mystery about it. “There’s a sense of deliberate effort to channel his mind away from something that haunted him,” Stefred had said. “The self-control needed for that would have been staggering, especially for someone in as much pain as he was. And it seems so unnecessary. No one would have thought less of him for failing to hide his private worries.”

  He had not intended to make such a recording. Faced with an impelling reason to make it, he’d been obliged to guard this secret.

  At that time, had he indeed thought of the successor to whom the secret would be passed? In the deathbed dream one’s thoughts were framed in the symbolic language of the Prophecy, since one had known those words all one’s life. But they had not been written till after the First Scholar’s time; the recording itself contained only the concepts, later translated into poetic phrasing. There was controversy over the interpretation of some passages. We are strong in the faith that as those of the past were sustained, so shall we be also: what must be sought shall be found, what was lost shall be regained, what is needful to life will not be denied us. . . . That was usually taken to mean that the First Scholar had been absolutely positive that somehow or other, the synthesization of metal would be achieved. But could the underlying idea have been a less specific one?

  Had the First Scholar, dying, believed that some future priest might find a different solution?

  Chapter Four

  The outer city, except for the dome containing the power plant, was normally off limits to Scholars, certainly to Scholars young enough to be recognized by Technicians as former heretics. For those who’d grown up there and were known, like Brek and Beris, there could be no exceptions; it was lucky, Noren thought, that the task of finding the secret recording hadn’t fallen to one of them. He himself took little risk. In the oldest dome, which was partitioned into areas for what few pieces of manufacturing equipment existed in the world, he would not even attract much attention. To go there was a violation of policy, but priests were expected to evaluate policy in the light of circumstances. He did not need to ask anyone’s permission.

  But he would have to go robed. That fundamental rule couldn’t he set aside. Only Inner City Technicians knew that Scholars were ordinary mortals; the Outer City ones viewed them as villagers did. As a small boy, Noren had assumed they wore only robes, with no clothes underneath! Thinking them ageless and sexless, it had not occurred to him to wonder if they ever took them off. He’d devoted some thought to this later, to be sure, but it was one of his more heretical speculations—his mother would have labeled it blasphemy.

  He carried the blue robe, folded, from his room to the gates of the exit dome. Then, passing through them into the corridor that led to the City’s main Gates, he slipped it on and secured the fastenings. Never before had he appeared robed to anyone but Inner City people, and it was not a milestone he looked forward to. Ceremonial appearances, on the platform outside the Gates or in audience chambers, were demanded only of older Scholars. He’d rather hoped, as did many young initiates, that a research breakthrough would make it possible to eliminate the caste system before he got that old. Was this now conceivable, perhaps, if research in genetics could bring about long-term survival?

  Though he hadn’t explored the Outer City, he had studied a map. A corridor intersecting the one to the Gates connected the domes in the ring, which had no openings to the Inner City courtyard they enclosed. The oldest dome, the one built before the Founding, was adjacent to the one he’d first entered. It was silent there; work did not begin this soon after dawn. But Technicians were on duty in the radiophone room. All the villages had radiophone links to the City, not only for the transaction of routine business, but for requesting emergency medical aid. Noren thought back to the night when he himself had been viewed with awe by a village radiophonist simply for managing, to his own surprise, to replace a dead power cell. How long ago that seemed!

  He stepped into the compartment and resolutely approached the main control board. The man and woman sitting there rose from their chairs and, turning to him in deference, they knelt.

  Noren froze. He had known, of course, that it would happen, but he’d not let himself remember. It was so wrong. . . .

  Wrong, but necessary—as his abhorrence of it, too, was necessary. He was not supposed to enjoy it. Anybody who might enjoy it would have been screened out during the inquisition Scholar candidates underwent. The blue robe helped, at least. The robes were identical; they, not their wearers, inspired reverence. To these Technicians he was not a man, but a symbol. He was not receiving personal homage. A High Priest does not receive, Stefred had assured him. He gives. . . .

  “May the spirit of the Star be with you,” he said quietly. “Please return to your duties; I only wish to inspect the equipment.”

  He walked around the control board, which was set out from the wall; behind it were cabinets, and one did indeed have a combination lock. Rapidly he opened it, feeling awe at the thought that the last fingers to touch it had been those of the First Scholar, generations ago. There was no dust in the domes, for prolonged exposure to the planet’s atmosphere was corrosive to most Six Worlds alloys and the air was therefore filtered. No Technician would have questioned the strange device, any more than the two now present questioned his need to inspect it. The panel swung open. Noren removed a sealed plastic container and re-locked the cache.

  As he returned to the corridor, he found he was shaking less from possession of a sacred relic than from the turmoil that the kneeling of the Technicians had stirred in him. Necessary, yes . . . but it should not have to be!
The First Scholar would not have designed it, given choice! If by genetic change people could be enabled to live without the City, he would not have perpetuated the caste system any longer than was necessary to effect such change—even if it meant the City’s ultimate destruction. Even if it meant loss of the computers’ knowledge. And he, Noren, could not do so either, he thought in agony. Would the recording he now carried give him power to abolish the castes, power that for some reason hadn’t been available to the First Scholar?

  He had been psychologically tested. He had been warned of difficulties past imagining. And it had been made clear that for the recording to fall into the wrong hands would be disastrous. Abruptly, Noren saw what might lie beneath these measures.

  All Scholars were trustworthy; the selection process ensured that. All were honest. But they did not all agree on matters of policy . . . and to eliminate need for the City would not only cause knowledge to be lost, but would leave the Prophecy unfulfilled. Priesthood meant affirmation of the Prophecy. If its promises came into conflict with the more basic issue of human survival . . .

  He held the recording under the folds of his robe, wishing there were a duplicate copy back in the cache.

  For the present, the big problem was how to experience the dream secretly. Thought recordings weren’t private property, and they were not carried around; he couldn’t simply walk into the dream room and hand it to the person on duty. Nor did he know how to operate the Dream Machine himself, even if it should be unattended long enough. And it wouldn’t be. He might have to wait weeks for a time slot without priority authorization from Stefred—yet he could not tell Stefred, excited though Stefred would be by an ancient recording’s discovery.

  It was still early; the past night’s scheduled dreamer might just be waking. Right now would be best! The prospect of prolonged delay was more than Noren could stand. Stefred wouldn’t be around at this hour when he wasn’t working with a candidate. Who would be?

  Lianne, probably. All at once he recalled Stefred’s words: Lianne owes a great deal to you, Noren. She has said so. And Lianne was so new at the job that she might not know that such a request was unprecedented. Even if she did realize, somehow he knew she wouldn’t feel bound by the rule book . . . not Lianne. She was too mysterious a person to refuse involvement in further mystery.

  His pace quickened as he crossed the Inner City courtyard, his priest’s robe once again folded over his arm. The upper level of the Hall of Scholars was deserted; most people were at breakfast. Noren had no appetite, nor did he feel lethargic from lack of sleep—which was fortunate, he thought with detachment, since the coming sleep of controlled dreaming would be anything but restful.

  Lianne was in the dreamer’s chair, the headband nearly covering her cropped curls. At first, thinking her unconscious, he turned away in disappointment. Then to his astonishment she sat upright, smiling not only with recognition but with welcome. She reached out for the switch on the panel beside her; a blue light turned to yellow.

  Noren stared at her. “You were getting input while you were awake?” Stefred could do that; it was a step in the editing process and must also have been done by his professional predecessors. Not by other people, however.

  “Just sampling the library. There are so many dreams I want to experience, and not nearly enough time—I was trying to choose one.”

  “For your next scheduled session, you mean?”

  “It’s this morning. There’s no one else due until noon.”

  Then he must take a quick plunge. “Lianne,” he asked bluntly, “can you keep a secret?”

  Her smile became unreadable. “I’m rather good at that, actually.”

  “Even from Stefred?” Too late, he recalled that Stefred was attracted to this woman and that weeks had passed since his professional relationship to her had ended; conceivably they were already lovers.

  No hint of that showed in her expression. “Especially from Stefred,” she told him. “Because I’ve had practice.” She raised the reclining chair and removed the wired band from her head. “It’s hard, isn’t it, with Stefred—once you know him well, you want to tell him everything. But when you’ve an earlier commitment to keep quiet—”

  “A commitment to other heretics?” It was the only thing he could imagine a candidate being obliged to conceal, and he had been told she’d concealed a great deal during her inquisition. “Stefred doesn’t probe for that. He wouldn’t want you to betray anyone’s confidence. At the beginning, though, when he’s testing you, he lets you worry about it.”

  “Stefred and I understand each other,” Lianne agreed. “He knows I’ve kept something from him, yet he’s never tried to pry it out of me. I’m told past lives aren’t mentioned in the City. I suppose everyone must be curious about mine.”

  “Well, we’re human. And there were rumors about your reaction to the dreams, so that when you chose to work here, despite how bad it had been for you at first—”

  “But you’ve all experienced them; you know . . . oh, maybe you don’t. You, though, Noren—” She broke off, embarrassed. “I guess I’ve heard rumors, too.”

  “What rumors?”

  “That you’re a lot like the First Scholar.”

  “You mean because I’m supposed to turn into some sort of scientific genius? That isn’t going to happen, Lianne. Oh, I’ll work toward it, but I’m not going to come up with any radical new nuclear theory; it’s not possible.” This was the sort of thing he’d resolved not to say to people, but with the situation now about to change . . .

  Surprisingly, Lianne didn’t argue. “I’m not talking about what you’ll accomplish. I meant outlook, strength—knowing life’s not as simple as most people try to make it. That sort of likeness.”

  “I didn’t realize there were any rumors about that. Stefred knows, but he wouldn’t talk about me that way.”

  She didn’t meet his eyes. “He wouldn’t—he hasn’t! I suppose it . . . it must be what he calls my gift of empathy.”

  “Empathy?”

  “Sensing people’s feelings. That’s why he’s training me in psychiatry.” She caught his wordless surprise and went on, “You didn’t know? Of course not, most of the women who take shifts in the dream room aren’t his personal students, they’re just temporary assistants. I’m to study medicine and psychology, help with interviewing and so forth.”

  “I didn’t know Stefred wanted any help.”

  “Noren—I’m a lot younger than he is. Someday he’ll have to choose a successor. He’s waited—”

  “For someone with the right talents. I see.” I see more than she’s saying, he thought.

  Though he had not spoken this aloud, she blushed. “Maybe you’ve heard—other things. They’re not true. It’s not that I don’t like Stefred, I do! He’s one of the most admirable men I’ve ever known. I’m truly sorry I can’t feel as he wishes I did. When he asked me to marry him, though, I had to say no. I don’t plan ever to marry.”

  How sad, Noren thought, for both of them. She must have loved someone in the village, someone she’d never see again. “You’re being trained as Stefred’s heir,” he said slowly, “and you know he wants to marry you—yet still you keep secrets from him?”

  “I told you, he’s aware of that.”

  “All the same, I shouldn’t have come to you with mine.”

  “Is it against Stefred’s best interests?”

  “No. No, it’s more like what you said—a prior commitment. A—a higher loyalty, if you like. But he’d give almost anything, personally, to know it.”

  “He’d feel that way about some of my secrets, too. That’s why it hurts to keep them.” Beyond doubt she was sincere; Noren perceived that it hurt her with an intensity he couldn’t account for.

  “I can’t tell you everything,” he began, wondering why he dared tell her anything at all. “I never planned to; I thought you’d be too inexperienced to realize how much I was holding back. I see you aren’t. But if you’re willing to be s
tuck with something else that’ll be hard to hide—”

  “For you, I’m willing,” she said softly, again averting her eyes.

  He pulled the recording from his tunic. “I’m not free to say where I got this,” he declared, “and I can’t pretend it’s normal for me to be carrying it around. But it’s a dream I have to go through. Soon.”

  She took the container and broke the seal to examine the cylinder within. “How long is it?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “You haven’t experienced it before, then.”

  “I’m not even sure what’s in it, except that it’s—significant.”

  She studied him, once more seeming to grasp thoughts he hadn’t expressed. “You’ve got mixed feelings. Is there any chance it needs monitoring?” At his hesitation she added firmly, “I have to know.”

  “I suppose you do. It’s not fair not to warn you that we could run into trouble. It—it’s probably pretty nightmarish, Lianne. Theoretically I guess it should be monitored. That’s one reason I can’t let Stefred find out; he knows me so well that if he was monitoring, he’d see it’s too important a thing for me to keep to myself. In fact under hypnosis I might talk freely to him—it’s something I’ve no deep determination to hide.”

  “So you were going to just give it to one of the untrained assistants, have her put you under and close the door on you as if it were a sightseeing tour of the Six Worlds?”

  “I hadn’t any choice.”

  Lianne frowned. “Are you sure this was prepared by someone qualified, that it’s not raw thoughts of a person who might have been emotionally disturbed?”

  “Absolutely. Whatever strong emotions are in it are there for a purpose.” In desperation he added, “Look, I wish I could explain more, but I’m bound, and I—I have to do this.”

  “I believe you. But you don’t have to do it without monitoring.” As he drew breath to protest, she rose from the chair and inserted the cylinder into the machine. Her back to him, she said, “Noren, you’re trusting me awfully far. I could do more than tell Stefred, you know. I could copy this while it’s running and experience it later myself.”