Slowly Noren replied, “Perhaps not. To most Scholars the Mother Star means more than the Six Worlds’ sun. It’s become a sort of symbol.”
Brek looked up, surprised. “A symbol of what?”
“That’s the strange thing . . . I can’t tell you. I don’t understand it at all. The private rituals leave me cold.”
“What private rituals?”
“Orison, mainly. It’s like the Benison held each morning outside the Gates, only there’s much more to it than reading from the Book of the Prophecy—references to the Six Worlds’ traditions, for instance, and a liturgy that seems to convey something I can’t grasp. I’ve tried to analyze it, but I don’t get anywhere.”
“Can’t Stefred explain?”
“You know Stefred; he likes people to find their own answers, especially about anything serious. And he takes Orison seriously. He goes himself.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“No, and most of the time I don’t.”
Soberly Brek asked, “Will you go with me, Noren?”
Fighting an odd reluctance, Noren nodded. If Brek felt that he’d lost something, something akin to what ordinary people got from believing the Mother Star was magic, Stefred must know, he realized; the psychiatric examination a candidate underwent was very thorough. Perhaps that was one reason the subject of Orison had been raised that morning. Perhaps Stefred had been hinting that since he’d been given the responsibility of initiating Brek into the Inner City, he should be prepared to enlighten him about its religious observances.
Was it possible, he wondered suddenly, that in this Brek didn’t need enlightenment? Inside, was he afraid that Brek would make sense of the symbols and consider him blind? For the first time it occurred to Noren that they might be intended to learn from each other.
* * *
The computer room was built into the foundation of the Hall of Scholars; Stefred’s study was on an upper level of that tower, which, having been designed as a starship rather than a building, was a baffling maze of compartments, jury-rigged lifts, and passageways leading off at odd angles. Its interior partitioning had been altered by the Founders, of course, since in space the outer walls had been “down” in terms of the artificial gravity.
Noren knew all the shortcuts. Hurrying to keep his appointment, he passed through the narrow corridor off which the Dream Machine was located, and to his surprise, overtook Stefred. “We’ve no need to go back to the office,” Stefred told him, “I’d have asked you to come here in the first place, Noren, but I didn’t want you anticipating a dream.”
“A dream—now?” Under ordinary circumstances, for controlled dreaming one reported at bedtime and slept through the night. Moreover, Stefred’s presence indicated that he had just dismissed another dreamer, and it was rare for him to operate the Dream Machine personally. Routine sessions didn’t require the attendance of a skilled psychiatrist.
As he entered the cubicle, Noren smiled, remembering how terrifying it had seemed the first time, when he’d been allowed to give his imagination free reign as to the sinister purpose of the equipment. He would never be afraid in that way again, not of anything!
He settled himself in the reclining chair and leaned back against the padded headrest, awaiting the hypnotic preparation that would send him into receptive sleep. During his dream sessions before recantation, drugs had been used, but these were scarce and precious; a Scholar—who trusted the therapist as an unenlightened heretic could not—had no need of them. Hypnosis was employed for various purposes in training, and one learned early to be a good subject.
But this time Stefred did not proceed in the usual way. “I have reasons for not describing this dream to you in advance,” he said evenly, “and also for plunging you directly into it without any type of sedation. It will be rather frightening, in some respects a nightmare, but I think you’ll find the experience interesting.”
Normally one was unconscious when the Dream Machine’s electrodes were applied to one’s head. Despite himself, Noren tensed during the process, wondering what new challenge lay in store for him. It was apparent that what was ahead could not be merely educative. Only once before had he been awake at the time the machine was switched on, and that had been a deliberate test of his susceptibility to panic. No doubt he was again to undergo an evaluation of some sort. Yet the surrounding array of wires, control knobs and dials was no longer dismaying to him, nor was he likely to be thrown by the abrupt shift of location and identity that would occur when the sensory inputs to his mind were replaced by electronic ones. The point at issue must be his ability to adapt to the conditions of the dream world itself: to adapt quickly, unassisted by the relaxing effects of a preliminary sleep phase. Then why not get it over with? he thought irritably. Stefred could have started the machine long ago, and the delay was nerve-wearing. . . .
It was meant to be, Noren realized. Reason told him that he had nothing to be apprehensive about, yet an attempt was being made to arouse apprehension through subtle forms of stress. That wouldn’t be done without a constructive aim. He willed himself to remain calm, to enter into the game with confidence; and in the next instant he heard the switch close. There was an explosion of colors before his eyes, followed unexpectedly by total blackness.
Everything around him was black—he was adrift in blackness, falling endlessly into a pit that had neither sides nor bottom. In desperation Noren groped for something to catch hold of. Failing to find it, he reached out with his mind, attempting to draw on the knowledge of the person from whose memories the dream had been recorded. To his dismay, he could grasp no such knowledge. He did not share the man’s thoughts as he had the First Scholar’s, and, to a lesser extent, the thoughts of the recorders of dream visits to the Six Worlds. His personal identity, however, remained stronger than usual, strong enough to reason that the limitations imposed on him must be the result of drastic editing. The recording was composed less of ideas and emotions than of pure physical sensation; his mental reaction to it would be almost entirely his own.
Resolutely he mastered his initial fright. It was impossible that he could be falling; it had gone on too long. There was no such thing as a pit with no bottom. Besides, there wasn’t any sense of motion. Yet his body felt very peculiar, as if it had no weight, and his most basic subconscious instincts interpreted that as a fall. Perhaps he was failing to detect motion merely because he had nothing to relate to, not even the rush of air. . . .
No air? But that was impossible He was breathing, after all . . . or was he? The second onslaught of terror was worse than the first; he wondered whether this was death. Could one dream of death—not of dying, but of death itself? Obviously a dead person could not record any thoughts. But this was unlike former dreams, for he had no real alternate identity; maybe it had not been recorded and then edited, but had instead been simulated from the beginning. It was technically possible to do that. Once, some weeks after his recantation, when his growing comprehension of science had led him to conclude that he had no objective grounds for belief in the authenticity of the original dreams, Stefred had let him sample one induced by a faked recording. The difference had been indisputable, and a major part of that difference had been the lack of genuine emotions separate from his own—just what was most noticeable now.
There had been another distinction, however. In the faked dream, the sights and sensations too had seemed unreal. He had been confined to a narrow segment of normal perception, sure that what was apparently taking place could not be happening, could never have happened—yet unable to escape. This was not like that. Unnatural though it was, it had happened, somewhere, to someone! It was true . . . so true that it occurred to him that he might actually have died. Perhaps he was no longer dreaming at all.
The truth isn’t to be feared, Noren told himself, clinging to the one principle that to him was beyond question or compromise. Slowly the wave of panic passed. There was no doubt that he was breathing; he inhaled and exhaled naturally e
nough, although no wind touched any part of his body. And his inability to see was probably caused by blindness. He had supposed that the blind knew a softer dark, more like the closing of one’s eyes at night than the jet-black expanse before him, but that evidently had not been the case with whoever had made this recording.
Noren resigned himself, surrendering to the realities of the dream. Suddenly he became aware that he had begun to move—though his fall continued, he was also moving by his own effort. There was purpose in the movement; though he still had no external reference points, his muscles worked and he was going somewhere. . . A dazzling flash of light hit him. He was not blind; the darkness really existed! In its midst was radiance so bright he could scarcely bear to look upon it. He turned aside and for the first time observed his own body, encased in a thick white garment that covered even his hands. Incredibly, he found himself close to one of the City’s massive towers . . . but the tower lay on its side. It had no ground beneath it, or any sky overhead.
Something had gone wrong, Noren decided. This dream must be natural, not controlled; only in natural dreams could the disorientation be so extreme. Controlled dreams had logic. One met the unknown, the incomprehensible, but never the incongruities that arose spontaneously while one slept. He had been neither drugged nor hypnotized; he could will himself awake if the dream was indeed natural . . . yet he wasn’t sure he wanted to. The weightless feeling, now that he had gotten used to it, was really quite pleasant.
He put out his hand to touch the silvery surface of the horizontal tower, feeling a kind of wonder. Disoriented he might be, but his mind was clear; the impressions he was gathering were sharp, detailed—not hazy as they’d been in dreams where he had struggled with abstractions that were beyond him. He was near the tower’s top, at least what would have been the top had it been standing. Seizing a handhold that projected from the wall, he reached for another above and began to pull himself around—“up” in terms of his present position, though there was little of the effort involved in climbing—curious as to what might be visible from greater height. To his astonishment, he got no higher. He passed handhold after handhold, only to see the convex wall stretch on and on above him as if its span had become infinite.
Once again fear stirred in Noren. A black shadow cut sharply across the wall, coming ever closer; if he kept going he would soon re-enter darkness. And he had no choice. He had no volition as far as the actions of his body were concerned; when he tried to control them, he discovered that the Dream Machine was doing so after all. His only freedom was in his personal inner response. To be sure, that had been the case in the previous dreams, but always before there had been the compensation of shared thought. He had not been compelled to proceed into the unknown with no idea of what his alter ego’s goal had been. Then too, he had not been so alone. There had been people around, talking to him, listening to words that came from his lips and by their reaction guiding his adjustment. Here he was isolated; it was all taking place in utter silence.
He approached the shadow, thinking how very odd it was that the tower, when first seen from a short distance, had been fully illuminated. Something behind him must be casting that shadow, some monstrous thing that was advancing. . . If only he could turn his head! His heart thudded painfully and he felt chills permeate his flesh, yet his hands were firm as he moved them from grip to grip. The physical symptoms of fear must be his own, he realized; they were occurring in his sleeping body, while the recording contained only the confident motions of a man who had not trembled. He held to that thought as his right arm disappeared into the dark.
Then, without any foreknowledge of the intent, he did turn for an instant, looking back over his shoulder toward the source of light he was leaving behind; and it so startled Noren that he felt he was not only falling, but spinning. Though the tower was still there, he was sure that he’d lost contact with it, that he would fall forever toward a fire that was worse than darkness. There was no shape to cast a shadow. There was only a vast black sky dominated by a sun, immense and horribly brilliant, that looked much as it had on film and in his first controlled dream and in all too many of his natural ones; but he had no shelter from it now. He was in the presence of the nova. . .
One glance was enough. It was a relief to creep on into the dark where that intolerable flame could not reach him. Why couldn’t it? Noren wondered, momentarily baffled. A sun, when it shone, shone everywhere. Why wasn’t it shining on the whole tower? His head and shoulders were by this time enveloped in blackness; he raised his free hand to turn a knob on the helmet he hadn’t realized he was wearing. Instantly there was light again: not sunlight, but innumerable swarms of blazing points that could be nothing but stars.
Awestruck, Noren clung to the wall of the tower, facing outward, while comprehension flooded into his mind. It came not from the recorder’s thoughts, to which he still had no access, but from his own power of reason; the pieces at last began to fit. He’d been climbing not up, but around—around the circular tower to the side opposite from the sun. And it wasn’t really a tower yet; it was still a starship. He was in space!
Noren had seen space from the viewport of the First Scholar’s starship during the first controlled dreams he had experienced, but that was not at all the same as being outside such a ship. Aboard the starship there had been artificial gravity; he had encountered neither weightlessness nor the absence of “up” and “down,” although he’d since been told of these conditions. He had also been told that stars would appear abnormally bright outside the atmosphere of the planet on which he’d been born, which was even thicker than the Six Worlds’ atmospheres, and that the sun, too, would be brighter—but mere words had not prepared him for the actuality.
It was not the nova he’d just glimpsed, he perceived. The nova had been observed only from the escaping fleet, which had gone into stardrive minutes after the explosion; no one could have been outside a ship then. He must have seen the Mother Star at some time before it went nova. Yet he had never heard of thought recordings having been brought from the Six Worlds, and this dream seemed so real, so immediate, that he felt sure it had been recorded in real time rather than from memory.
The stars . . . he could not grasp what it meant to be seeing the stars this way! Obscured by the polarization that had protected his eyes from the naked sun, they’d burst into visibility when he, the astronaut, had changed the filter setting of his helmet. The astronaut had no doubt seen them often, but Noren did not share his thoughts and was still overpowered as he clambered further around the ship—and came face to face with the most awesome sight of all.
It was a planet, a huge planet half-filling his field of vision, that except for some yellow splotches was shrouded in grayish-white. Noren turned cold. Not one of the Six Worlds had looked like that! He had seen films showing all of them; most had been predominantly green or blue, with their white areas forming clear, though shifting, patterns. Was this then an alien solar system, one judged unsuitable for use and quickly abandoned? There had been many such. The planet looked inhospitable enough; some deep, racial instinct told him that it was not right for colonizing, that it could not support life of his kind. As a human refuge it would indeed be useless. . .
No, he thought suddenly. Inhospitable, yes, but not quite useless. It was not an abandoned planet. It was his own.
* * *
The waking was as it had frequently been in recent weeks: slowly, naturally, Noren slipped back into the real world, feeling not the relief of escape from nightmare, but a sense of loss, of exile from a place he had not wished to leave. Before he reached full consciousness, there were flashes of memory from other dreams—a surging ocean, a broad green meadow dotted with shade trees, a city without walls where men and women partook freely of wonders past description—but he clung longest to the glory of the unveiled stars.
“You adapted.” Stefred’s approval seemed tinged, somewhat, by a trace of feeling Noren couldn’t identify. Turning from the panel
of dials that enabled him to monitor a dreamer’s well-being, he continued, “If I asked you to go through that again, with some variations—perhaps to do so repeatedly—would it bother you?”
“No,” Noren replied confidently. “It’s only a dream, after all. Besides, I understand it now, and there were parts that were—exciting.”
Stefred smiled ruefully. “Some people find them so, others don’t. I was practically certain that you would.”
“Who recorded it?” asked Noren. “The other dreams, except the First Scholar’s, were of the Six Worlds, but this was here. I looked down on this world.”
“We don’t know his name. He was one of the shuttlecraft pilots who dismantled the starships and brought them down to be reassembled as towers.” With odd hesitancy, as if it was painful to go on, Stefred added, “For him, of course, it was more than a dream.”
“It was his job, and he—he must have liked it,” Noren commented, making a guess as to Stefred’s own immediate job and resolving to face what must be faced squarely.
“Would you like it if it were yours?”
To consider that was frustrating, but Noren made no attempt to evade the question. Part of the discipline of a Scholar’s education, he knew, lay in coming to terms with the fact that the vast universe beyond this one deficient planet—the universe accessible to his forefathers—could not be reached outside of dreams. This was necessary. Scholars were not supposed to be content with what they had; they were supposed to long for the unattainable, since only in that way could the goal of restoring the Six Worlds’ lost riches be kept constantly in view. People who want what they don’t have progress faster than those who are satisfied. The Prophecy itself had been created to ensure that they would never stop wanting the changes it promised.
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