Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains

by Sylvia Engdahl

  And the Scholars themselves could not be released, neither from the physical confines of the Inner City nor from the unsought burden of representing a system which, while indispensable to survival in the alien environment, was abhorrent to them. It was they, not the villagers, who lived in bondage.

  “It’s not easy,” Noren declared as he and Brek left the Hall of Scholars and walked through the Inner City’s enclosed courtyard toward one of the other towers, where Brek was to lodge with him.

  “Stefred warned me in the beginning that a day would come when the consequences of my choice would seem so terrible that I’d beg to be let off,” Brek admitted. “I thought he was threatening to kill me, and I scoffed. Later I thought he’d been referring to the nightmarish parts of the dreams, or to the ceremony, or to imprisonment. But this—”

  “This is worse than anything we envisioned,” agreed Noren. “We dedicated ourselves to resisting the Scholars’ authority, and now we’ve become what we most despised.”

  On leaving the lift at the level of Noren’s compartment, they paused by the passageway window. The afternoon had gone swiftly; it was dusk, and the ring of large domed structures—the Outer City—that encircled the clustered towers looked dark and forbidding, an even more impenetrable barrier from within than it had once seemed from without. “Noren,” Brek ventured, “in your village . . . there was a girl, Talyra, wasn’t there? A girl you’d planned to marry?”

  Noren lowered his eyes; it still hurt to think about that, and he did not want to speak of it. “Scholars aren’t barred from marriage,” he said. “We can even marry Technicians.”

  “But not villagers.”

  “No,” Noren replied shortly. He did not add that when certain conditions were met, villagers already married or betrothed to heretics could become Technicians, and that he’d dismissed the matter because he’d felt that in the City Talyra would be fearful and unhappy.

  For a few moments they were silent. Far away across the fields stood the sharp silhouette of the Tomorrow Mountains, now pale below three crescent moons. “‘And Cities shall rise beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, and shall have Power, and Machines, and the Scholars will no longer be their guardians,’” Brek quoted softly. “How soon, I wonder? It’s not all going to happen on the day the Star appears! If we’re to be ready by then, the Prophecy must begin to come true long before.”

  Noren, upset by Brek’s uninformed confidence, did not answer. Then, behind them, a voice said, “Maybe it will be sooner than you think, at least in a small way.”

  Turning to greet the Scholar Grenald, the oldest and most distinguished of his tutors, Noren demanded, “What do you mean? Could it start in our lifetime after all?” The Time of the Prophecy—fixed by the distance in light-years to the Six Worlds’ exploded sun and chosen by the First Scholar not only for its symbolic value, but because survival without more metal could scarcely continue long past the time the light of the nova would arrive—was still several generations in the future.

  Though Grenald smiled, the worry in his tone belied the hopefulness of his words. He looked at Noren intently, pleadingly, as if he somehow expected confirmation from a mere trainee. “It could,” he said. “You’re aware that it will start as soon as the research succeeds—”

  “Of course,” agreed Noren hastily. The old man had been engaged for years in a series of experiments that was soon to culminate, and its outcome would give an idea of how much more research was needed; some Scholars felt that the results might point the way to an impending breakthrough. “We could be close, Grenald,” Noren declared. But as he spoke undeniable fear surged up in his mind, for he knew that if they were not close, they might not be on the right path.

  And if that was the case, the Prophecy might never come true . . . yet he and Brek, like others before them, had publicly denied their heresy solely on the grounds that it would.

  * * *

  That night Noren dreamed he was the First Scholar again. It was not a controlled dream induced by the Dream Machine that fed recorded thoughts into his brain; but since experiencing those in which he’d shared the First Scholar’s thoughts, their content had recurred often in his natural dreams, particularly when he was tired or troubled. The controlled dreams of the revelation hadn’t been enjoyable; they had been nightmares. Though after the first Noren had submitted to them willingly, his hunger for the truth being stronger than his fear, the emotions they’d roused still frightened him.

  So over and over, when he slept, he watched the nova explode into a blinding sphere of intolerable fire that filled the starship’s viewport; and usually he awakened then, drenched with sweat and hoping that he had not cried out aloud. But this time he dreamed on, images from his personal past mingling with those from the controlled dreams. He was the First Scholar, weighed down with the grief of what had been and what he knew must come, yet he walked through a village the First Scholar had never seen: the village where he, Noren, had been born. He saw the place—the rough stone houses, the sanded roads marred by sledge tracks and the hoofs of plodding work-beasts, the desolate gray shrubby areas surrounding quickened fields—through a Scholar’s eyes, and it seemed even more dreary than when he’d been growing up there. He had the First Scholar’s memory of the Six Worlds, of a civilization that had built interstellar ships! He was a stranger in the world where he found himself. . . .

  Yet it had always been that way. He’d been a misfit since childhood, for most villagers were not unhappy; they did not crave the sort of knowledge he had craved, or care about truth as he had always cared. They were content with the life they had. The Technicians who brought Machines to clear the land and to quicken it never interfered with anyone’s personal freedom, and who but the impious would envy their right to handle those Machines? Who but a presumptuous fool would be concerned over why even greater wonders were reserved for the City alone?

  “You are a fool, a lazy dreamer,” Noren’s brothers said to him as, dreaming, he found himself back in the house of his family. They were right, he suspected; he had no aptitude for crafts or trading and he was ill-suited to be a farmer, though for Talyra’s sake he was prepared to try. He must try something, for he had absorbed the meager offerings of the village school and was a grown man by his people’s standards, although on the Six Worlds he would have been thought too young to work, much less to marry. Such wasn’t the case in this land of more primitive custom. His impending marriage was the one thing to which he looked forward with pleasure. . . .

  But even Talyra could not understand the urge that drove him to question the Prophecy. And so he turned his face to the City, the impenetrable stronghold of all knowledge, compelled by some inner longing that outweighed his belief that to enter it would mean death. In the way of dreams, his view was abruptly transposed. He feared not the City, but a future that might imperil it. If there were no City everyone would die—and if none dared challenge its mysteries, there would be no Scholars to keep it functioning. The ground he trod was permeated with a substance damaging to life that had evolved elsewhere; because the mutations it caused reduced mental capacity to a subhuman level, no biological adaptation would ever be possible. Machines must continue to inactivate the substance so that imported grain could be raised. The City was needed to guard all machines: not only those used in the fields, but the more complex ones for rainmaking, for purifying additional water, for irradiating grain seed—and for generating the nuclear power upon which the other machines depended. And of course, the City must safeguard the computers. In those computers’ memories was stored the accumulated knowledge of the Six Worlds, and if that were ever lost, there could be no second beginning. There would be no chance of achieving what must be achieved if the new world was to become a place where humans could thrive. . . .

  “And the land shall remain fruitful, and the people shall multiply across the face of the earth, and at no time shall the spirit of the Mother Star die in the hearts of its children.” He, Noren, stood again at the table in
his father’s farmhouse and said the words automatically, as he’d done before every meal, disbelieving them, yet maintaining the pose because that was the way life was. Besides, had not his mother believed them? His dream-self recalled how she’d died believing, died slowly and in pain because the Technicians had not arrived in time to save her from the poisonous briars. . . .

  But it was a native poison for which there was no cure; as the First Scholar, he too was dying of it. The scene of the dream shifted once more, and he lay within the City, realizing that such poison had been on the knife that had struck him down. He’d faced the mob at the Gates knowing what would happen, and knowing also that he could nullify his people’s hatred in no other way. He had not known, however, how much pain there would be, or how long it would take to die. “There shall come a time of great exultation . . . 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. . . .” They were comforting words! True words! His friends could stop the pain, but if he allowed that, he could not record the words that were so important. Yet how had he found them? He’d tried for years to frame such words, and had failed, for he was no poet; he was only a scientist.

  “And so long as we believe in it, no force can destroy us, though the heavens themselves be consumed. . . .” It was Talyra who was saying them now, although that could not be, for had not she whom he loved died aboard the starship, died because the Six Worlds were gone and humanity was gone and she lacked the courage to live in a universe that seemed so empty? When he, the First Scholar, had looked down upon his wife’s lifeless form, the face had been Talyra’s face. . . Still Talyra stood before him, alive, believing, and her sorrow was not for herself but for him. “May the spirit of the Mother Star go with you, Noren. . . .”

  As the voice faded Noren awoke, dazed and shaken, lying still while he sorted the dream from the reality he had so recently begun to understand. “The First Scholar did not write the Prophecy,” Stefred had told him. “The idea was his, but the words are not in the recording; you supplied them yourself.” And also, much later, “The last dream was particularly dangerous for you, since as a child you watched your mother die by the same poison. I hesitated, Noren. All the rules of psychiatry said I should not let you proceed. Yet what was I to do? You had proven yourself fit to become a Scholar; was I to disqualify you on account of a tragic coincidence that had already caused you more than enough hurt?”

  That Stefred himself could be hesitant and unsure was something Noren hadn’t realized till then. Scholars, as guardians of all mysteries, were, in the villagers’ eyes, omniscient, and though he’d once thought them tyrants, he had not suspected that they were ever doubtful about anything. After coming to trust Stefred, he had assumed that the man’s wisdom was limited only in regard to the basic problem of creating metal. Gradually, however, he’d begun to discover that this was not the case. In the first place, no single Scholar knew everything that had been known on the Six Worlds. The amount of knowledge was so vast that it was necessary to specialize, and Stefred, as a specialist in psychiatry, had little training in other fields. Furthermore, in every field there were areas not thoroughly understood by the experts. The existence of such gaps amazed Noren. Truth was far more complicated than he’d supposed it to be when he had demanded free access to it; the further he got into his training, the more evident that became. On mornings like this one the thought was frightening. . . .

  His surroundings seemed somehow unfamiliar; as he came fully awake, Noren saw that it was because the room’s study desk was folded back into the wall. When it was out, there was scarcely space to turn around, so to accommodate Brek he’d put it away for the first time since entering training. That was probably why he’d dreamed as he had. In talking things over with Brek, he had allowed his worries to surface, as he had not done on previous days when study had absorbed his entire mind.

  All his life he’d sought opportunity to study; and, Noren reflected, this aspect of being a Scholar had surpassed his greatest hopes. He had natural talent for it—especially for mathematics, on which he had so far concentrated as the first step toward specialization in nuclear physics—and though he’d been told he was progressing much faster than average, the days were not long enough for all he wanted to learn. Much of his time was occupied with more sophisticated training techniques than the reading of study discs; still he always kept a disc on hand to use in spare moments. Brek, on the upper bunk that had until now been unoccupied, was still asleep. Noren rose and restored the study desk to its normal position before even putting on his clothes. It made the cramped room more comfortable, for any link to the Six Worlds’ huge store of knowledge was, to him, a marvel that compensated for all the difficulties and confusions of his strange new life.

  But as he settled himself silently before the desk’s screen, the mood of his dream failed to pass. Talyra’s face loomed between him and the information he was perusing; Talyra’s voice echoed in his ears. Irritably, he blamed Brek for having raised the subject. Brek had been persistent, unwilling to let it drop; they had talked on after bidding Grenald goodnight. “She was the one who got you clothes after you left the jail, wasn’t she?” Brek had said. “After watching her at the trial, I guessed she would, though I saw why you couldn’t trust me enough to say so.”

  “I’m the one who should be asking your forgiveness,” Noren had muttered, recalling his unfounded suspicion that a trap might be laid for Talyra also. “Yes, she gave me clothes and money, too, in spite of believing that to aid an escaped heretic was sinful.”

  Talyra was very devout; they’d quarreled bitterly when he had first told her of his heresy. She had broken their betrothal then, declaring that she would marry no man who did not revere the Mother Star, and when at his trial he had denied the Star’s very existence, she had been genuinely horrified. But she had grieved for him, knowing that he would not back down to save himself, and had gone counter to all she’d been taught in order to help him. “Talyra believed every word of the Prophecy,” he’d remarked to Brek, “and she was right! I just wish I could tell her that.”

  Brek had looked at him, frowning. “Without telling her why? You were both right, but she would still think you’d been wrong to question! And anyway, she may well have heard that you recanted.”

  “She didn’t hear,” Noren had said grimly. “She saw. She was there, and she must have thought what you thought when you were shown the films.” In anguish he remembered the pain that had filled her eyes when the public sentence was passed upon him. The harshest consequence of heresy was that one could not comfort one’s loved ones.

  To be sure, a reunion might be arranged at the price of permanent Inner City residence for Talyra, but Noren had told Stefred that he would prefer separation. Talyra had her own life to live. After his arrest she had accepted the Scholars’ appointment to the training center where she was preparing for the semi-religious and highly respected vocation of a village nurse-midwife. Though that appointment had been made partly so that her disappearance from home could be explained if she chose to share his confinement—a fact of which she herself was unaware—he couldn’t ask her to make the sacrifices entrance to the Inner City would entail. It was better that she should suppose him broken and condemned to prison.

  Noren dropped his head in his arms, too disconsolate to turn back to the normally fascinating study screen. All thought of seeing Talyra again was foolish in any case, for the decision was not his; a villager not convicted of heresy could gain entrance to the City only by requesting audience to plead the cause of someone who was imprisoned. Stefred had
seemed to think Talyra might do that, but Noren knew she would never question the rightness of the High Priests’ decision.

  There was a knock at the door; hurriedly Noren opened it and stepped into the corridor, greeting in a low voice the man who stood there. He did not want Brek disturbed, not when the ordeals of the previous day had been so great and when other demanding things lay ahead.

  The man, a casual acquaintance, had merely stopped by with a message. “Stefred wants to see you,” he told Noren. “Right away.”

  “Right away? That’s funny; yesterday he said not till I’d gotten Brek initiated into our routines. We had the whole schedule planned.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, but he spoke to me at breakfast and asked me to send you over to his office. It sounded urgent; maybe it’s something to do with tonight’s meeting.”

  “What meeting?”

  “You haven’t heard? I suppose not, if you haven’t been downstairs yet, but there’s a notice posted. We’re to assemble right after Orison—all Scholars, even the uncommitted—in one general session. And from the look of the executive council people, I’d say something important’s come up.”

  Chapter Two

  Noren was always glad of a chance to talk with Stefred, who, as head of recruiting and training, maintained close friendships with all the people he had guided through the steps leading to Scholar status. He had little free time; still Noren had dropped by to see him occasionally, and had often felt the better for it, although he was invariably offered not consolation, but challenge. And of course, they had had several discussions within the past few days about Brek.

  On his way up in the Hall of Scholars’ lift, Noren recalled what had taken place during the last of those discussions. Stefred had been quieter than usual, and there had been something in his manner reminiscent of their early interviews, before any of the secrets had been revealed. “You’re hiding something,” Noren had accused finally. “If I’m to help Brek, I’ve got to know all the facts.”