Noren hesitated. He remembered only too well how it felt to be told nothing: to kneel on the hot shimmering pavement and hear the grim sentence, Perpetual confinement, subject to such disciplines as we shall impose. And to know that despite the Scholars’ kindness, that sentence was no more a lie than any of the earlier and more frightening warnings. “It’s hard to accept at first,” he said frankly, “but not much like what you’re expecting. You’ll be surprised.” This was not the time to mention that some of the surprises would be pleasant, since for someone in Brek’s position the wished-for things were the hardest to accept of all.
“Stefred said I’d be equal to it,” Brek reflected.
“He tells everyone that. He means it, too, because no one gets this far who isn’t. People who don’t qualify rarely get past the inquisition phase.”
“Qualify? That’s an odd way to put it.”
“You didn’t know you were being tested?”
“Well—well, yes, at some points. It was pretty clear that they wouldn’t have let me in on any secrets if I’d been willing to recant under threat, or if I’d accepted the bribe they offered.”
“It’s more complicated than that. There are still secrets to learn, Brek. So far you’ve not heard the most important one. They think I’m the best person to enlighten you.” Noren smiled, trying to seem reassuring, though he still found it incredible that he should tutor Brek: Brek, who was nearly two years older than he, who’d been born a Technician, trained in electronics instead of farming, and whom he had once addressed as “sir!”
“You enlightened me to start with,” Brek told him. “I might never have known I was a heretic if it hadn’t been for what you said at your trial.”
“That’s why you were sent to observe it,” said Noren levelly.
“You mean Stefred knew how I’d react? But then why—” He broke off, appalled. “Noren, was I led into a trap, as you were? Was the whole thing planned?”
“Yes. From the beginning.” Pausing again, Noren wondered what tactics to pursue. There were no hard-and-fast rules, but he must proceed careful, he knew; he must cushion the shock. Brek must figure out as much as he could for himself.
Brek’s eyes were anguished. “I’d come to trust them.”
“Why?” Noren asked. “You’ve known all along that Scholars watch anyone suspected of having heretical ideas.”
“They don’t like the way things are any better than we do, though,” Brek asserted. “They don’t want to keep machines away from the villagers, and they don’t want to hide their knowledge; they’re doing it only because they have no choice. And as for being venerated as High Priests—well, they hate it.”
“All of them? Or just Stefred?”
“Stefred’s the only one I’ve ever really talked to, I suppose. But in the dreams—”
“In the dreams you shared the First Scholar’s recorded memories and you knew what he believed, what the other Founders believed; you knew that they never sought power. Yet they lived long ago. What’s to prove that all their successors are like them? What’s to say some aren’t out for personal gain, as you claimed at your trial?”
“Well, I—” Brek stopped, frowning. “You weren’t at my trial.”
“I’ve heard the transcript of it.” Slowly, aware that having broached the key issue, he must say something more direct. Noren added, “I’ve also dreamed those dreams a second time, Brek, and they’re—different. There are things in the recordings that only Scholars are permitted to know.”
“Then how do you know them?”
Noren drew breath, his heart pounding. The most painful part of his job could be put off no longer. “I am a Scholar now, Brek,” he admitted steadily. “I don’t wear the robe, but I’m entitled to.”
Stunned, Brek recoiled from him, then rose and walked away. “I’ve been naive,” he declared dully. “Before revealing the truth they offered me further training in exchange for unqualified submission, and I turned them down . . . would they have gone that far if they’d wanted me enough?” With a bitter laugh he added, “You’ve a sharper mind than I have; you’ll be useful to them. I don’t wonder you could set your own price.”
Fury spread in a hot wave through Noren, but he kept his face impassive. Brek couldn’t be blamed. It occurred to him that Stefred would have foreseen this, that his own levelheadedness was no doubt being evaluated; the challenges of the training period were at times no less demanding than the qualifying ones. And if he failed to meet this one, it was Brek who would be hurt.
“My recantation was as sincere as yours.” he said quietly, “and I knew no more of what was in store for me than you did. You see, the biggest secret—the one that was edited out of the dreams—concerns the scheme of succession. The status of Scholar is neither sold nor inherited; it is earned. No man or woman attains it whose trustworthiness is unproven. If you doubt that, remember that you could not have knelt to Stefred and the others, even ceremonially, if there’d been any question in your mind about their honesty.”
Brek turned and for a long moment appraised Noren in silence, noticing the lines of weariness in his face, marks that made him seem older than his years. “There’s no question about yours,” he said finally. “I don’t understand everything yet, but one thing’s clear: somehow they recognized that, even in a former heretic, and bestowed rank and power where it was deserved.” Approaching the couch where Noren still sat motionless, he continued, “I never knelt to Stefred in private, at least not after my arrest. While I hated him I ignored the conventions, and then later I sensed that he disliked them as much as I. Before the crowd I did it simply in honor of what he stood for. But I kneel to you, sir, as I now have new cause to beg your forgiveness.” He dropped to his knees as was customary in addressing a Scholar, not subserviently but with dignity, his eyes meeting Noren’s without flinching.
“No!” exclaimed Noren hastily, sliding to the floor himself and gripping Brek’s outstretched hands. “Not to me, and never again to Stefred. And you don’t call me ‘sir,’ either. Those customs don’t apply; we’re equals.”
“Stefred’s acknowledged me his equal in all the ways that matter. If Scholars must pass some special test of worthiness, that makes them all the more entitled to the courtesy due their rank. Do you think I’d want such status myself?”
“You have it whether you want it or not,” said Noren gently, “since you too have earned it.”
Brek drew back with incredulous dismay. “Scholar rank? But that’s awful; it can’t possibly work like that! I wouldn’t have recanted if I’d known there’d be any such reward.”
“Nor would the rest of us; that’s one reason we weren’t told.”
“The rest of us . . . there are others?”
“All the others, even Stefred, when he was young! He wasn’t born a Scholar; no one is. Scholars’ children are given up for adoption. All candidates prove themselves in the same way.”
Outraged, Brek persisted, “You mean the whole system’s a sham—those chosen must demonstrate their outlook toward this setup, with all its evils, by humbly submitting to a ceremony of recantation?”
“No,” Noren assured him. “Not by recantation, but by unrepented heresy.”
* * *
It was past noon, and there was barely time left for Brek to bathe and dress before the refectory closed. That was just as well, Noren thought; there would be fewer people to confront than had greeted him during his own first meal as a Scholar. One was not permitted to retreat from one’s new status; however great the strain, one was plunged immediately into the regular routine of Inner City life, and the adjustment was trying. It was supposed to be. Villagers and Outer City Technicians assumed that Scholars knew no hardship; the sooner a heretic learned that this was not the case, the sooner he could overcome his natural resistance to membership in a “privileged” caste. All the same, the traditional requirement that he appear in the Hall of Scholars’ refectory shortly after recantation, maintaining his poise whi
le receiving with bewildered embarrassment the congratulations of men and women hitherto viewed as a class apart, imposed arduous demands.
Brek bore up well, though his face was set and he spoke little as he and Noren made the rounds of the occupied tables. “The first few days are rough,” Noren told him when they were settled with their food at a small table in a corner. “But once you get started on your training, you won’t have time to worry about anything else. And you’ll like it. Stefred says you’re well-fitted to become a scientist; you always wanted to do such work, didn’t you, even before you learned what the Scholars’ main job is?”
“Not at the price of outranking people who have no chance to learn.”
“We don’t. Anyone on this planet is eligible to earn Scholar status; scientific aptitude has nothing to do with it. Some of us study other fields, or choose work that doesn’t require study. The old lady who filled our trays, for instance—she was a basket-weaver in her village, and a grandmother; the council that convicted her of heresy thought she was a witch. Most women like that turn out to have no real heretical convictions, and they become Inner City Technicians without being required to recant, but not this one. She had her doubts about the justice of the High Law, and Stefred couldn’t shake her. So he took her the whole way: the dreams, recantation in its most difficult form, everything. She works in the refectory kitchen now, but she ranks the same as a fully trained scientist and her vote has equal weight.”
“Maybe so,” Brek protested, “still, I’m never going to feel right about the system.”
“Naturally you’re not,” agreed Noren. “Don’t you see, Brek? A person who doesn’t think anything’s the matter with it isn’t fit to hold power! The caste system necessary to human survival here is evil. The system whereby Scholars control all machines and all knowledge is evil, even though the villagers run their own affairs and enforce the High Law themselves through their elected councils. We who were heretics knew it was, and said so; we got ourselves tried and convicted and we refused to recant, believing we’d die for it. No one who’s not that strongly opposed to such evils can qualify.”
“But in the end we did recant.”
“We’re impenitent, though. We still have the same values, the same goals; we recanted only when we found that the other Scholars share them.” Noren spoke firmly, doing his best not to rouse the conflicting feelings he’d suppressed during nearly a year of concentration on study. He had allowed the thrill of absorbing knowledge he’d always craved to engross him, but some of that knowledge had been disturbing. Some of it had raised questions that had not occurred to him at the time of his recantation, questions he did not want to think of, much less discuss with Brek.
He was still sure, of course, that the sealing of the City was necessary to human survival. Without its irreplaceable life-support machines, everyone on this colony planet would suffer chromosome damage; future generations would be subhuman. The First Scholar had not allowed that to happen. He’d set himself up as an apparent dictator, knowing that the villagers would hate him and eventually kill him for it. To preserve their hope, he’d kept silent about the nova that had destroyed the Six Worlds of their home system and deprived them of all that the City must safeguard for posterity. Even when he lay dying—when he recorded his idea for the religion through which an abiding hope was to be sustained—his wish had been that the truth about him should never be known to any but those judged fit for stewardship. He had not wanted to be idolized as prophet and martyr.
“What went on before the ceremony this morning was—arranged, wasn’t it?” Brek asked. “I relived the dream where the First Scholar was killed; I stood in the same spot outside the Gates while people threw mud at me, just as they’d thrown stones and knives at him. At first I was so stunned I thought I’d lose control of myself, and then it dawned on me that Stefred meant me to feel—well, honored.”
“Of course. He honored you by recognizing that you look at things the way Scholars do, that you’d understand the symbolism, as well as the fact that if people like the ones in the crowd were given no outlet for their hatreds there’d eventually be bloodshed. But he meant you to feel something more, Brek.”
Noren glanced around the smooth windowless walls of the refectory—ancient walls that had been constructed on one of the Six Worlds, since the Hall of Scholars, like all the Inner City’s towers, was in reality a converted starship. He raised his eyes to the prismatic glass sunburst, symbol of the Mother Star, that was fixed to the center of the ceiling. “We agreed to go through that ceremony,” he continued slowly, “because we’d learned not only that the prophesied appearance of the Mother Star is based on fact, but that changes are honestly expected to occur when the Star does appear. The Prophecy is what keeps people hoping. It’s the only means of telling them that the world won’t always be as it is now. In time, when the light of the nova reaches this planet and the real Mother Star becomes visible, the Prophecy’s promises must come true; yet they can’t be fulfilled if we don’t manage to synthesize usable metal by then, so that we can build enough machines for everybody.”
Brek frowned. “Is there any question about it? The starships that escaped the nova got here generations ago and Scholars have been working ever since to create metallic elements through nuclear fusion. Haven’t they been making progress?”
“Brek,” Noren said sadly, “you can’t say they any more; you’ve got to say we. We’re working under terrible handicaps—even worse handicaps than you could guess from the dreams—and if those of us who’ve proven ourselves fit for the job don’t do it, the Prophecy will become as false and empty as we thought it was when we laughed at what sounded like a silly legend.”
The words seemed stiff. Was it really possible, mused Noren, that he was not giving Brek the whole truth? Was he hiding not merely fear, but fact? He was repeating what he himself had once been told; he’d been utterly convinced of its validity; yet deep inside, he sensed that dreadful doubts were stirring. Pushing them back, he went on, “When we re-enact the dream, we take on all the responsibility it implies. That’s what we’re meant to feel, not so much during the ceremony as afterward, when it seems that we’ve been duped into selling out.”
Thoughtfully Brek said, “I’m willing to do any work I’m given, just as I was willing to do what had to be done to uphold people’s respect for the Prophecy and the High Law. But becoming a Scholar is something else again. It means giving the impression that I’m in favor of the way things are.”
“You’ve already done that; you made your decision when you consented to the ceremony. What’s the difference now?” Noren averted his face as he spoke, for he knew perfectly well what the difference was; night after night he had lain awake for hours on end, unable to come to terms with it. He wondered if he was hoping that Brek would tell him that no real difference existed.
“The difference,” declared Brek bluntly, “is that during my recantation I was hated, but most people don’t hate Scholars nowadays. They worship them.”
Their eyes met, and there was no need to say anything further; neither of them was wearing the blue robe of priesthood, and that was not merely because the occasion wasn’t formal enough to warrant it. “It’s rightfully yours,” Noren had said when he’d given Brek the clean clothes set aside for him, “but you need not put it on unless you choose to. The robe’s a symbol; among us it represents full commitment. Scholar status was conferred on us without our knowledge or consent, but we are free to decide how we’ll use that status, and whether we’ll reveal it to anyone besides our fellow Scholars. So far I’m committed only to scientific training.”
He had agreed to train for the research work that must be done if synthesization of metal was to be achieved, for Stefred had convinced him that he’d betray his own principles if he refused to contribute actively toward the Prophecy’s fulfillment. It had been a difficult step to take, since like Brek he’d longed desperately for the training and had been incensed at the idea of receiv
ing such an incredibly high privilege as the result of having conceded that the world could not be transformed overnight; still, reason had told him that it was the only course. The work was an obligation, not a reward, and the fact that he would enjoy it did not make it any less vital. But to assume the role of High Priest—to share responsibility for the control of the City’s contents, or to appear in public, when he was old enough not to be recognized as a former villager, and receive people’s homage—of that he wasn’t at all sure. Yet somebody had to do it. Stefred hated it, and for that matter, so had the First Scholar. And the First Scholar had been wise enough to arrange things so that nobody who wanted that kind of power would ever have it.
The First Scholar had been wise in many ways, but his greatest accomplishment had been the creation of a scheme under which power could be held only by those who, under pressure, had proven themselves incorruptible. Never in the history of the Six Worlds had there been such a scheme. Authoritarian systems, benevolent or otherwise, had always selected leaders from among their supporters instead of their opponents. The First Scholar had loathed the forced stratification of society he’d established. While he’d been aware that without it, the human race would be unable to preserve the essential life-support equipment during the generations when the growing population must live and farm by Stone Age methods, his plans had centered on the day when the system could be abolished. He had had the wisdom to know that it would never be abolished if people who approved of it wound up on top.
So through the years, the secret truths had been passed to those who approved least: those who had offered their lives in opposition to the supposed tyranny. To be sure, some heretics failed to qualify; they were motivated by desire to seize power for themselves or they weakened during the stress of the inquisition and its aftermath. But these people suffered no harm. Though they could not be released, they had the status of Technicians and did work of their own choosing.
Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains Page 2