And then one morning as he raised his hands for the hundredth time in the formal gesture of benison, Noren froze, seeing an upturned face so like Lianne’s that he must be dreaming.
It was not Lianne, of course; it was not even a woman. The man who knelt before him had . . . what? Not piercing blue eyes—though the eyes were what drew him, they were green, not blue. Not white hair or near-white skin. The impression of resemblance had been an instant, instinctive thing that didn’t bear up under analysis. Or . . . could it have been a purely mental resemblance? Yes—not likeness, but the touch of a mind similarly trained. A powerful telepathic touch. He knew, in less time than it took to say the blessing, that the skill behind it was greater than Lianne’s and would be used at a far deeper level. Don’t panic, he told himself. Reach as you would in controlled dreaming, open your mind to whatever experience may come; nothing will happen to which you have not consented. And in the next moment he realized he’d not told himself this at all, but had been wordlessly informed.
They paused only a brief time; no one nearby noticed anything strange. But to Noren it seemed that hours were passing. There were no words, it was not silent conversation. He sensed none of the man’s thoughts as he had sensed Lianne’s, and though he reached out for knowledge, he was given none. Instead, all he felt—all the pain and uncertainty and longing, the anguish of exile, the hunger to search out truth, all the fears and regrets of his past, the grief for those he had lost . . . and, too, all his hopes for the future, all his faith born of commitment to them—rose to the surface at once. He was engulfed, overwhelmed. His head roared and light blazed behind his eyelids; he was reeling. . . .
He opened his eyes and met calm green ones that held not reverence, but something quite like it: a mixture of sympathy and awed, startled admiration. “Reverend Sir, I am honored by your blessing,” the stranger said with sincerity.
Struggling to maintain his balance, Noren repeated it. “May the spirit of the Star go with you—wherever you may travel.”
“May it abide with you also,” replied the man softly, rising from his knees, “and with all people of this earth, until the Star’s light falls upon them and the Prophecy comes to fulfillment.”
It was a farewell. This could be no one but an alien from the starship, which meant the starship had returned for Lianne. They would be leaving: in mere days, or even hours, they would leave this world forever. Noren knew he had been examined and found equal to his task; he knew, as he had long known, that he would receive no help with it. He had not expected them to relent, had not even wanted them to, in view of the cost—the decision had been his, and he did not wish to alter it. He should now rejoice, for he had just been told specifically that his sacrifices were not vain, that not only survival, but fulfillment of the Prophecy, was judged assured.
But he did not feel like rejoicing. When the stranger had gone, Noren retired into his house and threw himself down on his moss pallet; and for the first time since leaving the City, he wept.
* * *
Several days passed. Noren got through them with set face and level voice, but his hard-won, precarious peace had been shattered. No fire of hope warmed his words of blessing. He felt no joy at the sight of the flourishing green seedlings that meant salvation of the world. For him the light had gone out, as in due course, the lights of the City would flicker and then fail. He had saved his people—but he was no longer able to care.
He was not sure why this was so. He had learned nothing from the alien’s visit that he’d not been expecting, and the only words said to him had been a confirmation of faith in his world’s future. Furthermore, he’d received clear assurance that he need not doubt his fitness to fill the role in which fate had cast him. Why then did he doubt more than ever? Why did he not just fear, but know, that his strength would not last a lifetime?
Lianne’s departure? But he had known for years that she must leave his world. His last night in the City, he had faced how much that mattered to him; still he had risen from their bed and walked out through the Gates alone. He should be buoyed by that memory, not crushed, for if he had done that, he’d have courage for all lesser things—only he did not think he’d be able to do it twice. It was a foolish point to be unnerved by, Noren thought miserably. That was one test to which he would not be brought again. Lianne was gone.
No. He was not certain she had gone yet; the starship had arrived, but had not necessarily departed . . . and before it left, Lianne might come to say goodbye.
That was the source of his despair, Noren perceived suddenly. She might come, thinking him strong, and he would not be strong enough. He had the power to make her people stay. He had only to say he was quitting; that he was not a prophet, not a savior, but human; that it was their job to save worlds, not his. They were not gods, but neither was he—and he was alone while they were many. He’d done all that could be asked of him. He could return to the City with Lianne and let them finish what he had started.
As he thought this, lying sleepless on his pallet while dawn brightened the stone casing of his window, he looked up and Lianne was there.
It was telepathy, he realized, not coincidence; he’d never have guessed she might come had he not sensed that she was close. She had left the City by darkness, and under cover of darkness the alien shuttlecraft had brought her here. It must be waiting nearby to return to the starship. They’d hardly deny her a brief visit; Lianne too was human, and in love.
As she stood in the doorway, her hand white against the matting she’d drawn back, he felt her love sweep over him: a far more powerful mental radiance than she’d loosed within the City’s walls. He understood that this was the telepathic mode natural to her, and that love heightened it, that physical love would heighten it still more. She had suppressed it to spare him, even during their one night together; she hadn’t wanted him to glimpse what he was giving up. She had not wanted to show him what true intimacy was among her kind, what powers his own mind could attain, through love, that no less intense experience could awaken.
But now it seemed she herself was weakening; her thought was more for him than for his world’s welfare, or even for the bright realm to which she’d soon return. Their loss of each other was a grief that would be with her always. And Noren found that what hurt most was not anything he had sacrificed, but the heartbreak he had caused her.
He lay motionless, not daring to go to her. “Lianne,” he said, his voice flat and remote. “Don’t come in. Don’t even speak to me. Leave quickly, while there’s still a chance.”
She moved close, ignoring the words. A blue blur brushed his cheek as she bent down, the sleeve of her robe . . . how odd that was; he’d never seen Lianne robed before. All these years, despite Stefred’s puzzled disappointment, she’d been adamant about refusing priesthood. She had remained unwilling to make a sham commitment lacking permanence. Now, he supposed, she’d had to wear a robe in case people saw her enter his house, and after all, no Scholars would ever know. Yet if she did encounter people, they’d kneel to her! That would be still worse than it was for him. She would feel she had no right to pronounce the blessing.
“Please go,” he repeated, not looking at her face.
“Don’t you want me here?” It wasn’t really a question, and her voice was light; in the emotion he sensed, love overpowered all pain.
Noren sat up, resisting the urge to take her in his arms, knowing that even to kiss her would mean defeat of the cause to which he’d given himself. “You know how much I want you, how much I’ll always love you,” he said tonelessly. “But you don’t know, I guess, that I have limits. Maybe you think I’m as superhuman as the villagers do. By the Star, Lianne—” He broke off, aware that the phrase, in this case, was not profanity; he meant it seriously. “In the name of the Star, I ask you to leave this world before all that’s behind us loses its point. I’m on the verge of cracking up right now. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get my nerve back after you’re gone; but if you tempt me to keep yo
u here, I’ll do it—at the cost of everything we both believe.”
She dropped to the pallet beside him and took his face between her hands. “You won’t have to,” she said. “I’m staying.”
Stunned, afraid of the thoughts that idea roused in him, Noren drew away from her touch. “Staying? You’d let the ship go and come back for you another time?”
Very quietly Lianne said, “It won’t be coming back, Noren.”
He stared at her, appalled. “That’s not possible. Your people wouldn’t abandon you.” He wanted her to stay, yes, but not at that price. Not if she’d be exiled from her heritage, as he was from his.
“They haven’t abandoned me,” she told him. “I chose.”
“Chose this world, when you could have the whole universe?”
“Not quite the whole universe. There’s a lot more to it than this galaxy, after all. Everybody’s got boundaries, and life is life, on one world or a thousand.”
“I—I can’t look at it that way,” confessed Noren dazedly.
“I know you can’t. That’s one reason I’m here.”
“To enlarge my prison by sharing it? Lianne, what good would it do me to know you were suffering, too?”
“Oh, Noren. I’m not going to suffer, not as long as we have love.”
Abruptly, he grasped the whole of what she was offering. She would not stay in the City; she was no more free to return there now than he was, for she’d have told Stefred she was joining him so as to spare Stefred’s feelings by not disappearing unaccountably. She meant to live here, in Futurity. She would share not only the exile, but the commitment—that was why she had assumed the robe.
But how could she? “Your oath to the Service—” Noren protested.
“I won’t violate it. The Oath demands that I put the best interests of your people above all else, but my being with you isn’t contrary to them. I won’t be intervening. I’ll be living just as you do.”
As he did. Years without respite from the oppressive heat she found so taxing outside the towers; hard physical labor in the fields, using Stone Age tools she’d never before handled; isolation not merely from her heritage but from such sources of knowledge as she’d had in the City, poor as they were by her own civilization’s standards. . . . And, too, the burden of priesthood among people not even her biological kin: people who, once they discovered the healing powers she wouldn’t deny them, would venerate her in a way not merely symbolic. Whatever she said now, she would suffer. And she might not always have his love, for there was still danger that the genetic change would prove unsafe, still a possibility that he might fail and die for it. If the people turned against him, Lianne might die too. Or she might be left to grieve—she might outlive him in any case, for the lifespan of their species wasn’t the same; she’d already lived more years than he had, perhaps many more, and yet she didn’t age as fast. For her to stay with him awhile was one thing, a thing she evidently wanted to do. But she must not send her people away forever.
“Surely someday they’ll come back for you,” he said.
“No. Besides, I don’t want them to. I couldn’t bear to have you come to hate me.”
“I could never hate you.”
“You could, and would, in time, Noren—if the starship were going to return for me, yet not for you.”
He was silent. She was right, of course; he wouldn’t be able to suppress envy—but he wouldn’t have let her know. . . .
“I’d know. I’m telepathic, remember? But even if I weren’t, I’d have known, whatever worlds I went to, all the rest of my life.”
Noren drew Lianne to him, embracing her, no longer doubting his own self-control. He had feared he’d not be strong; now he knew better. He loved her too much to be anything else. His destiny demanded sacrifice, but hers did not, and he would not let her suffer for his sake. If she must go with the ship or remain permanently, then he must make her go.
“Lianne,” he said slowly, “you once said I was born to be apart. That’s true. I am what I am, and you can’t soften it. Maybe it all has meaning, I don’t know—I guess neither of us knows the why of things. Maybe my losing everything, everything, is in some way necessary to the future of this world; anyway so far it’s seemed to be, and I don’t mind paying that price. I’m not paying it for nothing. The man who came from the starship affirmed the Prophecy—”
“From the ship? When?” Lianne broke in, obviously startled.
He told her, perplexed by her surprise. “That was before I told them I want to stay,” she said, frowning. “There was no need for such a mind probe, certainly not then. And that man, he’s senior to most of us, he deals with basic policy; he rarely leaves the ship personally. I didn’t know probes of that kind were ever tried with people of immature species. Was it . . . painful, Noren?”
“In a way. He warned me not to panic; I assumed it was something telepaths do routinely.”
“Not like that. Deep wordless communication is used privately between people close to each other, but a full one-way scrutiny of motives done by a stranger, fast, and in public—very few untrained people could stand up under that. It’s a technique we reserve for special occasions. It has been done to me in Service rituals, was done yesterday by the same man, in fact, during my formal leave-taking aboard the starship.” She shook her head, puzzled. “I wondered why he didn’t argue more against my choice; now I see. But why didn’t he tell me he’d met you, or even that he’d been down to the surface?”
“What did he tell you about the Prophecy, about how our civilization will regain technology?” Noren asked. “He knows our evolution won’t stop, I could sense that. And anyway, they couldn’t have made a decision to withdraw unless they knew the answer.”
“He knew,” she agreed. “But he didn’t inform me; he said that by staying here, I’d forfeit my right to hear what they expect.”
“Not even whether the key will appear in your lifetime?” Noren protested indignantly. “Why would they be so merciless?”
“Because they realized that I love you,” Lianne told him, “and that I’d pass all my knowledge on to you.”
“They didn’t trust me not to tell anyone about them, then.”
“Oh, yes. If they hadn’t trusted you, they wouldn’t have allowed me to stay as living evidence. They withheld what they did for my sake—to make sure I really wanted to spend my life with you and wasn’t doing it merely to buy knowledge for you that your task doesn’t require.”
“I couldn’t endure having you give up the stars for my benefit,” he declared, trying to steady his voice.
“They realized that, too,” she said. “They aren’t merciless; they simply take a long view of mercy.”
Then they were waiting for her. They had trusted him not only with future generations’ welfare, but with hers, and had known he would say what must be said to send her back to them. Unless . . .
“Lianne,” he asked, trying to contain the sudden hope, “you told me subtle intervention’s permitted, sometimes. If there were a way we could keep our technology without synthesizing metal, some way we can’t ever discover, and they could give me a clue to it—would they?”
“Yes. Yes, and knowing you were probed before I left the City makes me wonder . . . only it doesn’t fit. They don’t lie, and they did tell me specifically that my decision was final, that no ship will return here for any reason in our era.”
A cold thrill, excitement mixed with dread, came over Noren, and he smiled. “It does fit! There’s still a chance, in the time before they leave orbit—they knew you’d want to be with me when the clue is offered. They’ll surprise you too, or perhaps you’ll even be needed to interpret, I know they won’t make it simple for either of us—”
She pulled away from him, staring. “Noren, I thought you understood. They’ve already left orbit. They’re light-years away by now.”
Shock drained him. “Are you sure?” he whispered, disbelieving.
“Of course I’m sure. If a
n agent decides to stay on a planet, there are—formalities. They aren’t painless because there’s got to be a guarantee that it’s an informed choice, and not a hasty one; I knew in advance what I’d have to do. I watched the ship go last night. The point of light was there and then it was gone, and the special links with me were just—cut off. Instantly, when the ship went into hyperdrive.”
He couldn’t speak, but his horror reached her silently. “Noren,” she pleaded, stroking his hand, “Noren, don’t lose heart now. They didn’t tell me the answer, but when they said farewell they weren’t grieving, not even for me. Telepathically, I could tell they weren’t; and if they’d believed us doomed to live out our lives in tragic futility, they would have been. What we do will lead somewhere, even if we never know where.”
“It’s not that,” he said, “not the thing I’d already come to terms with. It’s you, Lianne. Don’t you see, I wouldn’t have let you stay behind.”
“Why do you think I didn’t come here till they were gone?” She settled back against his shoulder, her white hair soft against his skin. “I wouldn’t have let you decide, and I wasn’t sure how to make you believe it’ll be all right for me—only now that’s easy. You’ve been probed by one of the most skilled elders of my people, and you know he grasped all your feelings. Remember that he probed me, too.”
Slowly, Noren absorbed it. Life is life, on one world or a thousand. She did not need to see more worlds; her life was here. The rest of the universe existed; it was full of wonders—and just knowing that was enough. Enough even for him, now that he did know. This world was not a prison, but a base: one might choose one’s base freely, but one could not escape the necessity of choosing. Might some even, perhaps, on the level veiled in mystery, choose worlds in which to be born?
The Doors of the Universe Page 35