“That really was why you got those Technicians to trick me into getting myself arrested!” exclaimed Noren, realizing that despite the suspicions of the young man who’d switched places with him, Stefred had told them the literal truth.
“Yes. It was necessary for your safety that the time and place be of our choosing, but the decision to respond as you did was yours alone.”
Noren frowned. “What if a Technician doesn’t like the orders he’s given?” he inquired, unable to forget the man’s anguished remorse.
“It’s a violation of the High Law to disobey. He is free to become a villager if he wishes, but otherwise he’s subject to our authority and can be convicted by the Council of Technicians if he defies it.”
But that was awful, Noren thought. And then he saw the implications of what Stefred was saying. Technicians too could be heretics, and could therefore go on to become Scholars! There must be more than one of them who opposed the system. Yet like the villagers they were reared to believe in the Prophecy and the High Law, and by the same token must believe that they could be killed for refusing to recant—which was as it should be if offering one’s life was the only way to qualify.
“The men sent on such missions are very carefully chosen,” Stefred went on. “Often the encouragement of heresy is intended to be mutual. You may have thought you weren’t convincing anyone at your trial, but I suspect you convinced the Technician whose clothes you took; it was evident afterwards that he was tormented by the thought that he’d betrayed you. Someday soon, Noren, you’ll be able to tell him that you weren’t harmed by what he did, for the next time I give him such orders, he’ll refuse them.”
Stefred had painstakingly avoided the question of what that Technician had been doing in his cell in the middle of the night, Noren noticed. No doubt he’d guessed the truth from the beginning. Probably the man had never been given any instructions to pretend, but had simply not known how else to interpret the Chief Inquisitor’s suggestion that he sympathize.
Torn, Noren struggled inwardly with the significance of what he had just heard. If Scholar status could be attained by anyone with the right sense of values, the scheme of succession was fair; and yet . . .
“I’m not trying to soften this,” Stefred said, “because you want and need to face all its implications. But actually you are not going to be plunged abruptly into a position where people will worship you. I have not urged you to wear the robe, for the obligations it represents can’t be imposed on anyone. The blue robe is a symbol of full commitment. It’s your right to assume it whenever you choose, provided you’re ready to make such a commitment formally. Most Scholars don’t do that until they’ve passed through the first phases of training and seen what our work is really like. A few never do it at all.”
“You mean I needn’t become a High Priest?” asked Noren, relieved and yet confused.
“That’s up to you to decide. You’ll be ineligible for certain types of work unless you commit yourself; you will not even have a vote—and we Scholars vote not only to elect leaders, but on many issues that affect fulfillment of the Prophecy. Your fitness to participate is conditional on your being willing to share the accountability.”
There was another distinction between novice Scholars and fully committed ones, Noren learned. A novice’s true status was not revealed to the Technicians. He hadn’t realized that there were Technicians who lived permanently in the Inner City. Stefred, however, explained that since they did not wear uniforms except for special duties, any more than committed Scholars wore their robes, and since everybody mingled freely outside the Hall of Scholars itself, people’s rank could not be determined by looking at them. Nor could it be determined by the kinds of jobs they did, for not all heretics who earned Scholar status had desire or aptitude either for scientific research or any other field of study—some did less skilled work than some of the Technicians, who also had opportunity for education. The difference lay in knowledge of the secrets. Technicians admitted to the Inner City had to remain because they knew Scholar rank wasn’t hereditary; yet because they didn’t know anything about the process whereby it was conferred, they too were eligible to attain it.
“You realize, don’t you,” Stefred said, “that that’s what would have happened to you if you’d recanted before learning the truth?”
“I’d have become an Inner City Technician?”
“Yes.”
“What if I’d refused to recant after I learned? Or if I’d been penitent?”
“It very rarely happens, Noren. We don’t enlighten anyone we’re not sure of. Still, we’re fallible, and your freedom of choice was real.”
“You’d have had to isolate me.”
“Unfortunately we would. The conditions wouldn’t have been harsh—you’d have had our companionship whenever possible—and you’d have retained eligibility for a second chance, as does any person who’s disqualified, for that matter.”
“I might not have wanted one if I’d known what was ahead.”
“No candidate knows. Incorruptibility can be proven only by taking all the steps without expectation of personal gain.”
“That still doesn’t make accepting a Scholar’s role right,” Noren insisted.
“The question’s not whether it’s right for a special group of people to control the knowledge and equipment brought from the Six Worlds,” Stefred said. “We’re agreed that it isn’t. Yet you conceded, when you decided to recant, that for the time being that’s how it’s got to be. You did so only because you’d been convinced that the Founders didn’t want the job, and that those of us who are like them would prefer to be rid of it. Would you throw the whole burden on us—on me? Is it to be condoned only as long as you yourself can wash your hands of any involvement?”
Wretchedly Noren admitted, “If I refuse an active part. I’m condemning you all; I’m right back where I started. What’s wrong with me, Stefred? Why do I feel this way, when only this morning I was willing to do anything that might be required of me?”
“If you don’t know, you’ve less honesty than I’ve been giving you credit for.”
Noren pondered it. “Some of the people hated me this morning,” he said slowly, “because they thought I’d sold out. I could face that because I knew it wasn’t true . . . but now I’m afraid it is true.”
Stefred nodded, understanding. “You don’t have to be,” he said. “Why do you suppose we waited until after the ceremony to tell you, if not to spare you that fear? We were already sure of you; our final decision had been made; you were, in fact, a Scholar when you were exposed alone to the crowd, for we don’t allow disqualified candidates to become targets of abuse. The final tests were not for our benefit but for yours, Noren! Would we have let you suffer them without good cause?”
“I thought maybe you wanted to see how much I could take before rewarding me with honor.”
“This is not a reward. We kept you unaware because we knew you could accept nothing from us that was offered as payment.”
“Sometimes I think you read my mind,” Noren confessed ruefully.
“You forget that we’ve all traveled the same route. Every one of us, having refused to back down under pressure, has recanted for the sake of the future we’re working toward—and that experience is just the beginning, for when we reenact the dream, we assume all the responsibility it implies. I took part in this morning’s pageant, too, after all. I stood there and let the villagers kneel to me, pay me homage, while they despised and reviled you; and I well knew that the one was no more deserved than the other. Did you think I was enjoying myself?” Stefred’s voice was sorrowful as he continued, “Noren, I watched you and looked back on my own recantation almost with nostalgia, thinking how simple life was for me then. Yes, we were judging you. No one who was secretly longing for my role could have borne yours as you did. But we never stop judging our own motives.”
He rose and walked to the window, looking out across the shining towers of the City.
“Before I revealed the secret of the Prophecy to you, I asked if you would accept the consequences without protest; and when you declared you would, I predicted that a day would come when you’d go back on those words. I warned you that in the end the consequences would seem so terrible that you’d be willing to give up all the things you cared most for in order to escape them—that you would stand here in this room and tell me so. You laughed. Even this morning you’d have laughed; you felt that by your voluntary participation in that ceremony you were proving me wrong. But you can’t laugh now, Noren, for you have just fulfilled my prediction. If I’d made a bet with you, you would have to pay off.”
“You meant—these consequences? All along?”
“Yes,” Stefred said gently, “all along. They are the consequences not merely of your acts, Noren, but of everything you are.”
“I—I can’t escape, can I?” Noren said resignedly. It was more a discovery than a question, and Stefred did not reply; no reply was needed. Both of them already knew the answer.
* * *
For a while it was as though he were still in the dreams: he was himself no longer, but a Scholar; and he would be a Scholar forever. The idea was overwhelming, yet not entirely unwelcome. Looking around Stefred’s familiar study, with its shelves of books and its many still-incomprehensible Machines, Noren felt a tremendous surge of excitement. All the mysteries were to be revealed to him! Whether or not he ever chose to wear the robe, he had both the right and the duty to understand them and someday to pass them on.
The training would be more challenging than anything he could imagine, Stefred warned. It would not be like the village school; there would indeed be discipline, rigorous discipline, for he would be given tasks that would tax his mind to the utmost. “There will be problems beyond any you’ve yet conceived,” the Scholar concluded, “but though our life’s far from easy, I think you’ll find that it suits you.”
Noren nodded. Knowledge was what he’d longed for, and he could not believe that the process of absorbing it would be anything but a joy.
“It is not a life of comfort. Like the Founders, we endure greater hardships than the people whose heritage we hold in trust, and we are confined here, remember. The decree that you can’t leave the City still stands; that is one of the things we renounce. There are others.”
“Marriage,” murmured Noren, thinking again of Talyra.
“Not at all,” Stefred assured him. “We are free to marry among ourselves, and fully committed Scholars, who have revealed their rank, can even marry Technicians.”
“I—I won’t ever want to marry anyone, Stefred.”
“You don’t mean that. You mean you don’t want to marry anyone but the girl you’re in love with.” At Noren’s astonished look he went on, “Yes, I know how you feel about Talyra, but even if I didn’t, it would be easy enough to guess. The situation’s not exactly unusual. Many of us, both men and women, have been very deeply hurt by it.”
“I could bear that myself,” Noren said unhappily, “but when I think of her— She was there this morning. She suffered more than I did; that was the worst part of the whole thing.”
“I saw,” Stefred said. “Her instructors forbade her to attend, but she disobeyed them.” He hesitated, then added with abrupt candor, “Noren, there is one more fact you must know. There’s no need for Talyra to go on suffering on your account. If she loves you enough to share your confinement, she can become a Technician.”
Noren drew a breath of surprise. “Is that what happens to the people who vanish from the training center?” he asked, beginning to piece things together.
“Yes. That’s one reason I appointed her to go there: so that if it worked out as I hoped, her disappearance from the village could be explained.”
“But . . . we can’t marry unless I accept the robe?”
“Would it be fair to make her your wife without telling her that a barrier of secrecy must always stand between you?”
No, reflected Noren, and certainly not without letting her know that they’d be unable to rear their own children. Besides, Talyra wouldn’t want to be a Technician! The idea would shock her. She had been happy in the village, but in the City she’d be terrified and miserable. “Don’t bring her here,” he said resolutely.
“I couldn’t even if you wished it,” Stefred told him. “Those admitted must come of their own accord; they must request audience to plead clemency for someone who’s imprisoned. A village-reared woman must show herself spirited enough to adapt to the Inner City, where women’s roles are less restricted, as well as to see justification in the past actions of the man she loves. As a Technician, she’ll always believe that we made him a Scholar not because of his heresy, but in spite of it; yet she must sense that he has proven himself worthy.”
Then it was hopeless, Noren thought. He must put it out of his mind. Talyra was so very devout, so unwilling to question; she would never challenge the Chief Inquisitor! As he sat silent, remembering things she’d said, a new doubt came to him.
“Stefred,” he began hesitantly, “there’s something that bothers me. Lots of people believe in the Mother Star and it—well, comforts them. They’ve got the idea that it’s a power that takes care of things. If they knew the truth, they might feel . . . lost. There’d be nothing up there any more. Mightn’t that happen when the Time of the Prophecy comes?”
There was a long pause; Stefred, for the first time in Noren’s memory, seemed at a loss for an answer. “That’s a complicated question,” he said finally, “and a very serious one. People have always looked toward something above and beyond them; they always will. They’ve called it by different names. Throughout the history of the Six Worlds there were many, and by the time of the Founding the right of all individuals to choose their own was almost universally accepted. The High Law still grants that right, but few villagers exercise it; most of them have forgotten all names but that of the Mother Star—which, used in such a way, would have seemed blasphemous to people of the First Scholar’s day.”
“I don’t understand,” Noren admitted.
“No, and you won’t until you have studied much of the wisdom that is preserved here. What you can grasp now is that it’s the idea that’s important, not what it’s called: the idea that there is something higher and more significant than we are. You, I think, would call it Truth. Later you may find another name more meaningful, as many of us do.”
Comprehension stirred in Noren, making him glance again at the blue robe set aside. Stefred smiled. “Don’t try to solve everything at once. You have quite a few surprises coming—even Talyra may surprise you—and in the meantime, there’s plenty of work to get started on.”
Noren raised his eyes to the window. Beyond the wall of glass, beyond the bright towers and beacons of the City, he could see the far-off rim of the Tomorrow Mountains. A whole new earth, and beyond the earth, a universe! One day, above those ridges, the Mother Star would appear in radiant splendor, and the annunciation of the old worlds’ tragedy would become the confirmation of the new one’s faith. “And the spirit of this Star shall abide forever in our hearts. . . .” What did it matter if the truth was cloaked in a little symbolism? The idea behind it was the same! With sudden elation, he found himself looking forward to the tasks ahead.
#
Afterword
Today’s readers may perhaps think of a way that the people of Noren’s world might have been enabled to survive without the drastic system imposed by the Scholars. But in 1972, when this book was first published, science was not as far advanced as it is now, and I myself was unaware of any other way. I believed that there was no alternative to what the Scholars did; if I had not, I wouldn’t have written two novels (this one and its sequel Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains) that endorsed it—for of course, I would not have sanctioned it on any lesser basis than my conviction that the extinction of their human race would have been worse. So when, some years later, I learned of a new possibility, I was dismayed. I fe
ared that new readers would assume that I had ignored it for plot reasons and had knowingly justified the social evils in the story on false grounds.
For that reason, I then wrote another novel, The Doors of the Universe, to explain why the Scholars’ knowledge had been incomplete. I won’t spoil the suspense of the second and third books in the Children of the Star trilogy by stating here what they’d not known, and what Noren ultimately does about it. But rest assured that the story doesn’t end with this first book.
Because of the possibility that readers might think it does end here, I have been reluctant to reissue the three novels separately. I was happy that Meisha Merlin put all three together in one volume, Children of the Star, when they were republished. However, I have found that many people hesitate to choose such a long book as that. Furthermore, This Star Shall Abide can be enjoyed by younger readers than the other two, which are rarely of interest to those below high school age—the third one is about Noren’s adult life. (Though all three were originally marketed as Young Adult books, the single-volume edition was issued as adult science fiction.) Teachers and others who wanted a story suitable for middle-school kids didn’t want to buy the whole trilogy. I have therefore issued its three parts simultaneously but separately as ebooks and this book alone in paperback. There are no present plans for paper editions of the other two.
However, although Meisha Merlin has gone out of business and Children of the Star is officially out of print, new copies can still be obtained from me and at Amazon.com. So while they last, you can get a paper edition of the whole trilogy if you want one. All three ebooks will remain available in EPUB, MOBI and PDF formats as well as for Amazon’s Kindle.
There is a detailed FAQ page about the trilogy at www.sylviaengdahl.com/noren.htm. Parts of it contain major spoilers, but it’s clearly marked so that you won’t see them before you’ve read This Star Shall Abide. I hope you’ll go there, as it deals with questions that are often raised by the story. It includes the commentary that was given to librarians at the time this book was first published, which offers some ideas for discussion.
This Star Shall Abide Page 24