From the reviews of Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains
“Engdahl has carefully worked out the social structure and ecology of a scientific society that has been transferred to a planet without metals. What’s more, she wrestles with deeply adult problems of an apparently meaningless universe and of a people’s right to know facts that may destroy everything they hold dear.” —Psychology Today
“Introspective readers will identify with Noren and his doubts and sense of despair while the general science fiction buff will appreciate the further experiences of Noren within the credibly developed society on a planet unlike Earth.” —Booklist
“Offers depth and provocative ideas for the mature reader who wants more than just action.” —Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“The well-developed characters will interest many young adolescents whose thoughts and questionings are similar to Noren’s.” —School Library Journal
“In a tribute to the intelligence of teenagers the author asks some thought-provoking questions. . . . The ideas of power, heresy, self-knowledge, and acceptance are thoroughly examined in a book that is a testimony to the human spirit.” —News-Gazette, Martinez CA
Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains
(Children of the Star, Book Two)
by
Sylvia Engdahl
Ad Stellae Books, 2010
Copyright © 1973, 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 second book of a trilogy. It is preceded by This Star Shall Abide and followed by The Doors of the Universe. It can be read independently, although doing so will eliminate the suspense of the first book.
Atheneum edition (hardcover) published in 1973
Meisha Merlin edition (with minor updating) published in 2000 in the single-volume Children of the Star trilogy
More information 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
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
The room was high in one of the City’s towers. Its window viewed a vast panorama of grain fields dappling gray-purple wilderness, and of more wilderness beyond: a vista rimmed by the jagged yellow ridges of the Tomorrow Mountains. Noren was not looking at the view, however. His back to it, he sat nervously on the edge of a low couch, eyeing the closed-circuit video built into the opposite wall and thinking of the heavy responsibility that soon would fall to him. He was too young and unskilled to conduct an interview so crucial as the one to come; he had been told that frankly—still it was deemed best that he be entrusted with it. He’d accepted the job gladly, despite his inexperience. Only now, with the time at hand, had he begun to feel other misgivings.
The screen before him showed the ceremony taking place outside the City, on the wide stone platform before the Gates. It was a public recantation. The robes of the Scholars were brilliant blue against the white pavement, a sharp contrast to the green uniforms of the Technicians and the mud-stained gray garment of the prisoner whom they guarded. The crowd in the plaza was not visible, being behind the camera, but the audio picked up hostile murmurs. The sentencing was over and the people were beginning to jeer again, though they would throw no actual dirt in the Scholars’ presence; it would not be seemly, for Scholars were High Priests and were revered.
The prisoner, Brek, knelt before the Scholars, his hands bound behind him. His hair had been cropped short, a sign of penitence and shame, but there was neither penitence nor shame in his bearing; he held his head high. Through the ordeals of the ceremony, his spirit had not faltered. The spectators might think that he’d been broken, but it was not true. On the contrary, Brek had just passed the final test of indomitability.
Noren’s heart warmed with sympathy and admiration. It took courage to do what Brek was doing. He was a heretic: he had maintained that it was wrong for the Scholars to keep their knowledge secret and that the sacred Prophecy in which the villagers and Technicians believed was a fraud, a foolish story invented to forestall rebellion against the priest caste’s supremacy. He’d refused to recant despite his assumption that refusal was punishable by death. Yet now he was recanting after all, voluntarily denying most of his former convictions, though it meant exposing himself not only to the contempt of believers, but to the abuse and scorn of fellow-rebels who would think that he had sold out.
Noren understood how hard an act that was; he had recanted himself less than a year before.
Loud music burst forth, drowning the noise of the crowd, as the attending Scholars, in solemn procession, left the platform. Noren switched off the screen; Brek had been surrounded by a protective cordon of Technicians and was no longer in sight. A few minutes later the door of the room slid open and the Scholar Stefred, Chief Inquisitor, stood in the archway, still clad in his ceremonial robe. Unfastened, it flapped open to reveal plain beige clothing like Noren’s own. “Brek’s on his way up here,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone with him; you can help him more than I can at this point. Set his mind at ease, Noren.”
Noren nodded. “I’ll try. He must have caught the symbolism of what was happening to him out there; he took it well.”
“Very well indeed, and it was a greater triumph for him than for you; he lacks your natural self-confidence. But as you know, the next step’s difficult, and Brek has suffered more than you did. You had nothing in your past life to feel guilty about.”
“Neither does he.”
“No, but he thinks he does, and I couldn’t let him know otherwise. In the early stages of his inquisition I had to pl
ay on it.” Stefred sighed, troubled. “I was ruthless with Brek. I manipulated him more cruelly than I do most heretics; that’s necessary in the case of a Technician. I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been sure of him, and even surer of you. How you handle the next few days will determine whether it leaves lasting scars.”
Alone once more, Noren paced back and forth with growing apprehension. He hoped fervently that Stefred’s confidence would prove justified, for he owed Brek a great deal. The two had met only briefly, some time back, when as a villager Noren had never imagined friendship with a Technician; Technicians, who lived in the enclosed City and were permitted to handle machines, were of a higher caste than villagers and were viewed by most of them with awe, though Noren himself had felt bitter envy. Yet Brek had defied both custom and religious law in an attempt to save him from the heretic’s supposed fate: punishment, perhaps torture, at the hands of the Chief Inquisitor. In those days neither of them had shared the prevailing trust in the Scholars’ goodness.
Once actually in Stefred’s hands, one learned to trust, but the trust developed gradually. Terror had to come first. At the outset Stefred concealed his true sympathies, not only to test the prisoner’s resolution but because he knew that no committed heretic who doubted his own ability to withstand terror would be able to make an objective decision about voluntary recantation. During the inquisition, before learning the secret facts about the Prophecy, a heretic must feel real fear: worse fear than of the rumored death sentence to which he was resigned. With Noren there’d been no need to generate that fear; as a villager to whom the forbidden City was awesomely mysterious and who had never before seen a Scholar at close range, he had been sufficiently terrified by his mere surroundings. For a Technician it was different. Noren knew what had been done to make Brek afraid, and he did not like to think about it; it was a grim piece of deception. Not that any lies had been told—but Brek’s imagination must have tormented him in more ways than one during the solitary confinement he’d experienced.
Again the door opened, and this time it was Brek who appeared. His wrist manacles had been removed, but he still wore the gray penitent’s garb; he’d had no opportunity to remove it or to wash the mud from his face and arms. Though at one time Noren would have raged at the idea of a person’s being subjected to such degradation, he knew that what Brek had undergone had not been degrading. Stefred never degraded anyone. Heretics who agreed to recant under pressure were not exposed to the abuse of the crowd. Those permitted to face such abuse did not suffer from it; one mark of a person ready to share the Scholars’ secrets was the ability to endure outward humiliation without loss of inner dignity.
Brek’s difficulties weren’t over, to be sure—nor, for that matter, were Noren’s. The consequences of heresy were grave. They changed the course of one’s whole life, and the interval since Noren’s own recantation was still relatively short. During that interval he had acquired both privileges and burdens; to these he must now introduce Brek. Set his mind at ease, Stefred had said . . . yet, Noren reflected ruefully, he himself felt no peace of mind. There were certain things he dared not let himself contemplate, and it would be hard to keep them out of the coming discussion. In the past half-hour uncertainty had stricken him. Was it right to keep such things out, to conceal from Brek his recent fear that the Prophecy’s fulfillment was less sure than one believed when, in recanting, one affirmed it?
The escort of Technicians withdrew. Brek stepped forward into the room, his drawn face lighting with startled recognition. “I didn’t know whether they’d let me see you,” he said, his voice low but steady. “I wanted to, Noren, though I don’t suppose you can ever forgive me.”
“No, I can’t,” said Noren, determined to keep worry from his smile. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“But you were condemned because of me! You were living a normal life back in your village until I tricked you into a public admission of heresy.”
“You did the job assigned to you, as you were bound to under the High Law. And then after the village council convicted me, you helped me to escape from jail; you gave me your Technician’s uniform and stayed behind in my place! You claimed you weren’t risking anything, but I know better now.”
“I wasn’t arrested for that,” protested Brek. “Oh, I was accused of it later, but not until I’d balked at setting a trap for somebody else.”
Noren sat down on the couch, offering a place to Brek, who after slight hesitation joined him. “You’ve gotten to know Stefred, and you’ve learned that he was sincere when he told you that it’s better for a heretic to be trapped than to be caught accidentally when there are no Technicians around to protect him from his fellow villagers,” Noren said. The High Law required anyone convicted of heresy to be turned over to the Scholars unharmed; but without Technicians to enforce this, there was real peril, for people who blasphemed against the Prophecy—or worse, against the Mother Star itself—were deeply despised by villagers and were occasionally murdered.
“I know Stefred tries to suppress heresy without hurting anybody,” Brek agreed. “I know he doesn’t torture or kill those who won’t recant. But I didn’t know it then.”
“So the second time, you defied him openly and were brought to trial for it?”
“Yes. Originally I was charged only with disobeying orders, but when the Council of Technicians asked me why I’d done it—well, I told them. From then on it was a full-scale heresy trial, though not much like the farce you went through with that self-righteous village council. Afterward, during the inquisition, the emphasis was on what I believe, not how I’d acted.”
“Was it rough?” Noren inquired, knowing that it had been, and that talking about it would help to heal the wounds.
“No rougher than I deserved,” Brek answered grimly. “It seemed ironic the way the punishment fit the crime: not heresy, which is no real crime at all, but the part I’d played in your conviction. You see, there was a time when they let me think they’d broken you.”
“Stefred told me,” said Noren. The stress of a heretic’s inquisition was not intended as punishment, and Brek must be made to realize that. “I’d convinced you that I’d never recant, no matter what they did; you honestly believed that I could hold out despite the rumors that nobody ever has. So they showed you films of my recantation—edited films, the worst parts—without any comment at all, and then they locked you up to think it over.”
In agony, Brek confessed, “I almost cracked up, Noren. I hadn’t even known that you’d been recaptured! I’d been clinging to the hope that you’d escaped, that I hadn’t really brought you any harm. But after those films, I could only think that heretics must be subjected to something more terrible than either of us imagined. I knew you wouldn’t have given in to save your life, or even to spare yourself pain, at least not beforehand—”
“Neither would you,” Noren interrupted. “That’s why it was done: to prove that you wouldn’t.”
“To Stefred?”
“No. He was already sure; if he hadn’t been, he’d never have risked using that kind of pressure. His aim was to prove it to you.”
“But Noren,” Brek admitted unhappily, “I wasn’t sure at all! I was shaking so hard I could hardly stand when I was taken to see him again. I didn’t know how I’d answer until I heard my own voice.”
“That’s the point. Stefred knew you weren’t going to crack—but you didn’t, not till the moment came. And you needed to know. You wouldn’t have felt right about recanting if you hadn’t been shown that you could have held out if you’d chosen to.”
Brek nodded slowly, “That’s true. He never did try to force me to do anything against my will! I got the feeling that he respected me for defying him, even for disobeying his orders in the first place; I just wish I’d done it sooner.” Bowing his head, he added miserably, “Nothing can change the fact that you’d be free now if I had.”
Noren regarded him, concerned. This must be settled quickly, for his mai
n task was to bring Brek face to face with a more difficult dilemma. “Brek,” he asked seriously, “are you sorry you became a heretic? Do you regret speaking out against the Prophecy and the High Law when you were tried?”
“Of course not. They wanted me to say I was during the ceremony, but I drew the line there and was pronounced impenitent, though I was warned that that’ll affect what becomes of me.” He faced Noren with returning pride. “I don’t care! I recanted because they proved that the High Law is necessary to keep people alive on this planet until the Prophecy can be fulfilled, but I’m not sorry for having challenged it.”
“That isn’t what I mean,” Noren said. “I refused to fake penitence, too, and as a matter of fact that’s what Stefred hoped we’d do. The official script we were offered was designed to give us the satisfaction of rejecting it. But are you sorry all this happened, that you’ve been told secrets that will keep you confined here in the Inner City for the rest of your life?”
“No,” Brek declared. “It—it’s worth whatever comes, I guess, to know the truth.”
“Then don’t you suppose it’s worth it for me? Truth was what I cared most about, what I set out to find, and I couldn’t have found it back in the village.”
Brek stared at him. “I haven’t looked at it that way. I thought only of your being imprisoned.” He glanced around the room, with its comfortable though austere furnishings and its breathtaking view, for the first time aware of the strangeness of a prisoner’s being left unguarded in such a place. “What’s it like, Noren? I’ve been told nothing.”
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