From the reviews of This Star Shall Abide
Winner of a Christopher Award, given for “affirmation of the highest values of the human spirit.”
“Tension-filled, beautiful and haunting.” —Commonweal
“Both logically and consistently suspenseful.... This Star will Abide a good deal longer than most here today, gone tomorrow sci-fi.” —Kirkus Reviews
“An excellent plot and remarkable character development make this tale of the future highly satisfying and thought-provoking.” —American Library Association Top of the News
“This is not the electronic-light-flashing-exterminate-him-thing from outer space type of science fiction. It is an allegory which poses one of the most heart-searching dilemmas of the human race, perhaps in the C. S. Lewis tradition. I mean Perelandra rather than Narnia.... This is a thought-provoking book distantly related to Lord of the Rings and The Glassbead Game, and may appeal to a similar readership.” —The Junior Bookshelf, London
“The story is noteworthy for its dramatization of the crucial meeting of man, science and the universe.” —Horn Book
“Superior future fiction concerning the fate of an idealistic misfit, Noren, who rebels against his highly repressive society.... The attention of mature sci-fi readers will be held by the skillful writing and excellent plot and character development.” —School Library Journal
“This is more than an exceptionally fine book about outer space. It is a wonderful book, perhaps telling the subtle story of many faiths. Watch for this for awards.” —Fresno Bee
This Star Shall Abide
(Children of the Star, Book One)
by
Sylvia Engdahl
Ad Stellae Books, 2010
Copyright © 1972, 2000 by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
All rights reserved. For information contact [email protected]. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be resold, given away, or altered.
This is the first book of a trilogy. It is followed by Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains and The Doors of the Universe.
Atheneum edition (hardcover) published in 1972
Gollancz edition (UK, under the title Heritage of the Star) published in 1973
Meisha Merlin edition (with minor updating) published in 2000 in the single-volume Children of the Star trilogy
Ad Stellae Books edition, 2010
Print ISBN: 978-0-615-34834-6, available at Amazon.com
Signed copies available at www.adstellaebooks.com
Author website: www.sylviaengdahl.com
Cover photo © by Ryan Pike / 123RF
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Afterword
About the Author
* * *
“. . .The land was barren, and brought forth neither food nor pure water, nor was there any metal; and no one lived upon it until the Founding. And on the day of the Founding humankind came out of the sky from the Mother Star, which is our source. But the land alone could not give us life. So the Scholars came to bless it, that it might be quickened: they built the City; and they called down from the sky Power and Machines; and they made the High Law lest we forget our origin, grow neglectful of our bounden duties, and thereby perish. Knowledge shall be kept safe within the City; it shall be held in trust until the Mother Star itself becomes visible to us. For though the Star is now beyond our seeing, it will not always be so. . . .
“There shall come a time of great exultation, when the doors of the universe shall be thrown open and everyone shall rejoice. And at that time, when the Mother Star appears in the sky, the ancient knowledge shall be free to all people, and shall be spread forth over the whole earth. And Cities shall rise beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, and shall have Power, and Machines; and the Scholars will no longer be their guardians. For the Mother Star is our source and our destiny, the wellspring of our heritage; and the spirit of this Star shall abide forever in our hearts, and in those of our children, and our children’s children, even unto countless generations. It is our guide and protector, without which we could not survive; it is our life’s bulwark. And so long as we believe in it, no force can destroy us, though the heavens themselves be consumed! Through the time of waiting we will follow the Law; but its mysteries will be made plain when the Star appears, and the children of the Star will find their own wisdom and choose their own Law.” —from the Book of the Prophecy
Chapter One
Three orange crescents hovered above the fields and Little Moon was rising over the Tomorrow Mountains when Noren and Talyra left the schoolhouse. Laughter blended with the music of flutes drifted out across the stony area as they walked toward the sledge.
“By the Mother Star, it’s hot!” exclaimed Noren as he swung himself to the wicker seat and held out a sturdy hand to the girl.
“Don’t swear,” she reproved gently, climbing in beside him. “You never used to swear.”
Frowning, Noren reproached himself for his carelessness. He hadn’t meant to offend her, but it was hard to remember sometimes that she, so spirited in other ways, still held the conventional beliefs on a subject about which he had long ago formed his own. He’d planned to discuss that subject on their way home, and he was already off to a bad start.
He jerked the reins; the work-beast snorted and headed reluctantly down the sandy road away from the village. “We’re free!” Talyra said exultantly. “How do you feel?”
Noren considered it. Their schooling was finished for good; having reached mid-adolescence, they were free citizens: free to claim new farmland or to seek any work they chose; free even to move to some other village. And they were also free to marry. So why should he feel less satisfied than ever in his life before? “I don’t know how I feel,” he told her.
She stared at him, surprised and a little hurt. Suddenly Noren was ashamed. This was not a time to worry about freedom, or knowledge, or the Prophecy. He let the reins fall slack and drew Talyra toward him, kissing her. But there was a restlessness in his mind that refused to slip aside. Talyra felt it, too. “You’re angry,” she accused. “Is it because of the Technician?”
“I’m not angry.”
“You fume whenever you catch a glimpse of one of them,” she said sadly, sliding over on the seat. “I wish he’d never shown up at the dance. I can’t imagine what he’s doing in the village tonight, anyway.”
“What does a Technician ever do?” Noren retorted with undisguised bitterness. “He comes either to inspect something or to inform us of some duty to the High Law that we may not have noticed.”
“That’s not true. More often the Technicians come with Machines, or to hold devotions, or cure someone who’s ill—”
“No one was ill at the schoolhouse.” Noren’s voice was sharp, for inwardly he knew she was right; the High Law was enforced not by men of the Technician caste, but by the village council.
“You’re funny, Noren,” Talyra said. “Technicians aren’t unkind, ever; why do you hate them?”
He paused; it was a hard thing to explain. “They give no reasons for what they do. They have knowledge we’re not allowed to share.”
“Reasons? They are Technicians!”
“Why are they Technicians? They’re men and women like us, I think.”
Talyra withdrew her hand from his, shocked. “Noren, they’re not; it’s blasphemy to think of them so! They have abilities we can’t even imagine. They can control Machines for cleari
ng land, and quickening it, or for building roadbeds, or—or anything. They talk to radiophonists from a long way off; they travel through the air from village to village . . . it’s been said they can go to the other side of the world! And they’ve got all sorts of marvelous things in the City. Why, they know nearly as much as the Scholars, who know everything.”
“And tell us almost nothing.”
“What would you expect them to tell us?” asked Talyra in surprise. The Scholars, as High Priests, were the acknowledged guardians of all mysteries. “We know all we’ll ever need to,” she continued. “You wouldn’t want to go to school any more, would you?”
“No, I already know what the teacher knows,” Noren agreed. “I’ve read all the books, and Talyra, I’ve worked out math problems the teacher couldn’t even follow. But there is more knowledge than that. I want to know different things, like—like what Power is, and why crops can’t be grown till a Machine’s quickened the soil, and what good it does for Technicians to put clay into a purifying Machine before the potter’s allowed to shape it.”
“People aren’t meant to know things like that! Not yet.”
“Yet? You mean before the time given in the Prophecy?”
“Of course. The time when the Mother Star appears.”
“Talyra,” Noren said hesitantly, “do you believe that?”
“Believe in the Prophecy?” she gasped, her shock deepening. “Noren . . . don’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” he temporized. “Why should there be a time, generations in the future, when our descendants will suddenly know all the secrets? Why should knowledge be reserved for them? I want to know now.”
“There isn’t any ‘why’ about it; that’s just the way it is. ‘At that time, when the Mother Star appears in the sky, the ancient knowledge shall be free to all people, and shall be spread forth over the whole earth. And Cities shall rise beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, and shall have Power, and Machines; and the Scholars will no longer be their guardians.’”
“How do you know that’s true?”
“It’s in the Book of the Prophecy.”
Noren didn’t answer. What he’d been thinking during the past years would horrify Talyra, but if they were to marry, he must not conceal it any longer. He was firmly convinced of that, though such an idea was no less contrary to custom than many of his other unconventional ones. Girls promised themselves to men they respected, and if they were loved and returned that love, so much the better; they did not expect to be told of a prospective husband’s feelings on other subjects. Yet because he did love Talyra, he’d decided that he owed her the truth. He had also decided that this was the night on which he would have to tell her.
At the edge of an open field he reined the work-beast to a halt and threw himself flat on the straw that filled the sledge, pulling Talyra down beside him. For a while neither of them said anything; they lay looking up at the stars, the faint but familiar constellations with puzzling names from the old myths: the Steed, the Soldier, the Sky-ship. . . .
It was very still. A slow breeze rustled the grain and mingled dust with the warm, rich odor of growing things.
Soberly Talyra ventured, “Why couldn’t you be happy tonight? Even before the Technician came you weren’t having fun. Everyone at the dance was happy except you. I kept trying to get you to laugh—”
“I’m very happy.” He fingered her dark curls.
“Don’t you care enough for me to share what’s bothering you?”
“It’s not easy to put into words, that’s all.” He must proceed slowly, Noren knew; he would frighten her if he came out with the thing before explaining the reasoning behind it. Probably he would frighten her anyway. “You say everybody at the dance was happy,” he went on. “Well, I guess they were. They’re usually happy; they’ve got plenty to eat and comfortable homes and that’s all they care about. They don’t think.”
“Think about what?”
“About how things really are—the world, I mean. They don’t mind not knowing everything the Technicians know. The Technicians bring the Machines we need and help us if we’re in trouble, so they think it’s all right for them to run things. They’re content with being dependent.”
“What’s wrong with it? It’s part of the High Law.”
“Suppose we knew how to build our own Machines?”
“We couldn’t,” Talyra objected. “Machines aren’t built, they just are. Noren, you’re mixed up. Technicians don’t run things in the village; our own councilmen do that.”
“We elect councilmen to make village laws,” admitted Noren, “but the Scholars are supreme, and the Technicians act in their name, not the council’s. They’re outside village law entirely.”
“Has a Technician ever interfered with anything you wanted to do?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is? Technicians don’t interfere, they only give; but no matter what they did, it would be right. Keeping the High Law’s a sacred duty, and the Scholars were appointed at the time of the Founding to see that it’s kept. The Technicians are their representatives.”
Noren hesitated a moment, then plunged. “Talyra, I don’t believe any of that,” he stated. “I don’t believe that the earth was empty and that people simply sprang out of the sky on the day of the Founding. It’s not—well, it’s just not the way things happen. It’s not natural. I think people must have been here for much, much longer than the Book of the Prophecy says, and to begin with they knew as little as the savages that live in the mountains—the ones we studied about, you remember; the teacher said they were once like us, but lost everything, even their intelligence, because they refused to obey the High Law?”
“Yes, but—”
“Let me finish. I think it was the other way around. You don’t forget something you once knew, but you can always learn more. I think we were like the savages until someone, maybe one of the Scholars, found out how to get knowledge. Only he didn’t tell anybody except his friends. He told the rest just enough to make them afraid of him, and made the High Law so that they’d obey.”
Talyra sat up, edging away from him. “Noren, don’t! That isn’t true; that—that’s heresy.”
“Yes, it’s contrary to the Book of the Prophecy. But don’t you see, the Scholars wrote the Prophecy themselves because they wanted power; it didn’t come from the Mother Star at all.”
“Oh, Noren!” Talyra whispered. “You mustn’t say such things.” Raising her eyes devoutly, she began, “‘The Mother Star is our source and our destiny, the wellspring of our heritage; and the spirit of this Star shall abide forever in our hearts, and in those of our children, and our children’s children, even unto countless generations. It is our guide and protector, without which we could not survive; it is our life’s bulwark. . . We will follow the Law until the time when the Mother Star itself shall blaze as bright as little Moon—’”
Noren seized her angrily, swinging her around to face him. “Stop quoting empty phrases and listen! How could a new star appear when the constellations have been the same since before anyone can remember? And even if it could, how could the man who wrote the Prophecy know beforehand? How did he know there was a Mother Star if he’d never seen it?”
“Of course it’s invisible now; the Prophecy says so.”
“We don’t need a prophecy to tell us that. We do need one to tell us that it will someday be as bright as Little Moon, since common sense tells us that can never happen.”
“But the Prophecy gives the exact date.”
“When the date arrives, there will be a new Prophecy to explain the failure of the old one. Can’t you see, Talyra? It’s the Scholars’ scheme to make us think that their supremacy’s only temporary, so that we won’t oppose it. As long as we accept the story, they can keep their knowledge all to themselves and no one will protest; but if we rebel against it, we can make them give knowledge to everyone! We could have Cities and Power and Machines now; there’s no point in wa
iting several more generations only to find that there’ll be no changes after all.”
“I don’t want you to talk that way! What if someone should hear?”
“Perhaps they’d believe me. If enough people did—”
“They wouldn’t, any more than I do. They’d despise you for your irreverence, They’d report you—” Her dark eyes grew large with fear. “Noren, you’d be tried for heresy! You’d be convicted!”
He met her gaze gravely, glad that she had not forced him to say it himself. “I—I know that, Talyra.”
It was something he had known for a long time. He was a heretic. Decent people would despise him if he was found out. And eventually he would no longer be able to keep silent; to do so as a boy was one thing, but now that he was a man, his search for truth would take him beyond the safe confines of his private thoughts. Then, inevitably, he’d be accused; he would stand trial before the village Council and would be found guilty, for when put to the question, he would not lie to save himself.
And once convicted, he would be turned over to the Scholars. Under the High Law, the religious law that overrode anything village law might say, all heretics were taken into the custody of the Scholars, taken away to the City where mysterious and terrible things were done to them. No one really knew what things. No one had ever entered the City where all the Scholars and Technicians lived; no one had ever seen a Scholar except from a distance, during one of the various ceremonies held before the City Gates. Noren longed to go there, but he was not anxious to go as a condemned prisoner. He’d awakened in the middle of the night sometimes, drenched with sweat, wondering what that would be like.
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