It was not just that he’d unwittingly affirmed a promise that might not be kept. As matters stood, the Scholars intended to keep it; they were struggling toward that end; they were not deceiving the people for any reason but to attain the end. If it was attained, there would have been no deceit. But what if at some time in the future they were to learn that the Prophecy could never be fulfilled? What if the research were to end in utter failure? There would then be no justification for secrecy, no justification for withholding either machines or knowledge from anyone. The First Scholar himself would not have justified such policies on lesser grounds than saving humankind from extinction; he wouldn’t have concealed truth from people to uphold a vain hope any more than the Six Worlds’ leaders had concealed news of the impending nova. He had assured his companions that he was not asking them to establish a false religion. But the religion he’d created had been the center of people’s lives for generations now, and somehow Noren couldn’t picture its High Priests abolishing it if it proved invalid, although the restrictions it placed on the villagers would then be unwarranted.
The ritual words went on:
“For there is no surety save in the light that sustained our for forebears; no hope but in that which lies beyond our sphere; and our future is vain except as we have faith… .”
He had heard them before, but he hadn’t grasped them. He had thought them a reference to the necessity for preserving the knowledge of the Six Worlds. Yet they weren’t that at all! The Scholars knew such knowledge was insufficient, that research based on it might fail, and that hard work wasn’t enough to ensure that the Prophecy would come true. The words were an admission of these things. No wonder even the scientists clung to religious symbolism; it kept them from having to say in plain words that their own hope might be a delusion.
Noren wrenched his mind away from the thought. It didn’t matter now, not now, when there had evidently been some unexpected new development, when there were plans to retrieve the starships… . And yet, he realized suddenly, Stefred had not acted as if he knew that a breakthrough was close. He’d been clearly aware of what was to be discussed at the meeting, but he had not been happy—he’d been troubled. Even about the starships he’d been troubled. In no way had he behaved like a man who was privy to good news.
As the solemn ritual proceeded, Noren stood transfixed, his eyes uplifted less from custom than from inability to look away. The Mother Star… symbol of a delusion? All at once he swayed giddily, gripped by an intangible terror unlike any he had ever encountered. If there was delusion, it concerned not merely the Prophecy, but survival itself. In theory he had known that survival could not continue unless metal became available. Yet he hadn’t followed his fears to their logical conclusion. He had never imagined the death of the human race occurring not through anyone’s lack of effort, but because synthesization of metallic elements turned out to be inherently impossible.
There were more words, but he did not hear them. The sunburst blurred, and in its place the desolate planet, alien and inhospitable as he’d seen it in the dream, swam before his eyes. Trembling, he lowered them and slowly, deliberately, surveyed the people around him. Brek’s face was grave, reverent; that was understandable because Brek did not yet know that the nuclear physicists had no proof that their work would ever succeed. But the older Scholars surely knew, whether they were scientists themselves or mere observers. And they did not seem afraid. Some showed no emotion at all; the rest appeared at peace with the world, as if there were indeed something in which they could trust.
“Noren?” At the touch of Brek’s hand on his arm, Noren was jolted back from the precipice. He noticed that the lights had brightened and that most of the people were now sitting down, awaiting the start of the meeting. The rite of Orison was over.
A hush fell as the chairman of the executive council rose to speak. “I’ll come right to the point,” he said quietly. “As some of you already know, we face a crucial decision. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss whether or not we should make an immediate attempt to found a new city on the other side of the Tomorrow Mountains.”
Chapter Four
Afterward, whenever he recalled that meeting, Noren found it hard to believe that he could have sat through it so impassively. Yet impassive he was. Already in shock from the impact of the fear that had overpowered him during Orison, he was incapable of feeling the shock that the prospect of another city would otherwise have aroused in him—and did arouse in those of his fellow Scholars who weren’t on the committee that had engaged in advance discussion. A new city had not been thought possible prior to the success of the research. They had barely enough equipment to keep the existing one going; how could any be diverted? There was nothing most Scholars would like better than to be in on such a project, but how could it be justified?
“As heretics, you were warned before the secrets were revealed to you that you would be confined here for life,” the council chairman reminded them. “It was repeated at your sentencing and again later, when the conditions of your confinement were explained. No release was anticipated. Never since the First Scholar’s expedition arrived has a Scholar been farther than the platform outside the Gates: at first because the risk of disclosing the Six Worlds’ destruction was too great, and then because for us to mingle with the villagers—even when we wouldn’t be recognized as former heretics—would rob us of the remoteness we need both for maintaining general respect and for recruiting people with inquiring minds. And those weren’t the only reasons.”
The traditional sacrifice of physical freedom could not be abandoned lightly, they knew. For one thing, it prevented distraction from the desperate urgency of human dependence on timeworn machines and the vital need to solve basic technological problems. And there had been no constructive purpose in abandoning it. Technicians had been exploring beyond the Tomorrow Mountains since soon after the Founding, using as many of the precious aircars as could be spared from the top-priority task of transporting land treatment machines to the villages. Scholars might have gone along, since no contact with villagers was involved, but they had not done so, not only because of tradition but because they couldn’t take time from their own vital work in the City. It was more efficient for Technicians to survey the land, verifying the detailed orbital surveys that had been made prior to the Founding, and bringing back minerals for analysis. Never till now had there been talk of a permanent outpost.
Like anything involving a major policy change, the idea must be put to a vote among all the fully committed. Even relatively small matters, like whether a particular tool should be melted down and its elements allocated to research, were so decided; for such things were of far-reaching significance. The disposition of one kilo of metal might conceivably determine whether future generations lived or died. The disposition of enough materials to set up an outpost could very easily determine it. Yet no one could be sure, Noren thought in horror. How could they dare to vote on an issue when they were not sure? It was fortunate that he, as an uncommitted novice, had neither the right nor the responsibility to do so.
“Normally, so great a decision as this would demand many weeks of deliberation,” the chairman said. “For reasons I’ll explain presently, we must hold the vote tonight—”
An astonished gasp from the assembled Scholars made him pause. Then, calmly, he continued, “But before I go into that, I think we should consider the less urgent factors, those related to the status of our work.”
Noren had not yet acquired the technical background to follow the discussion fully. The emphasis of his study had been on understanding the fundamental basis of the research, for details, when needed, could be quickly memorized under hypnosis. He’d been told that to be creative, one must have a thorough comprehension of a task’s nature—and that had to be gained slowly.
At first he had been impatient with the slowness of the way the work had progressed over the years. He hadn’t been able to see why the current experimentation was designed not to produce metal, but simply to verify certain aspects of the theory that seemed most promising. Wasn’t there some shortcut? he’d demanded. Wouldn’t it be quicker to try out the theory by actually attempting fusion of heavy elements?
It would not, Grenald had explained. If they proceeded that way and failed, no one would be able to tell what had gone wrong. The various ideas involved must be tested separately. Moreover, having no materials to waste, they could not build the equipment for a full-scale experiment until they were sure that the theory was sound. Everything done so far showed that it was, for it had been developed gradually as, one by one, the conflicting theories had been eliminated. All the same, no matter how many things pointed to a theory’s accuracy, a single demonstrated fact that didn’t fit would be enough to disprove it.
Although Noren did not have a full grasp of the theory itself, he was familiar with the mathematics involved in it; he always absorbed rapidly any math he encountered. And he was well aware of what was at stake in the experimentation in progress. If it verified everything it had been planned to verify, an attempt to achieve fusion might conceivably be made soon. Experiments rarely worked out that well, however. It was likely that more would be needed. To progress directly to the synthesization of usable metal would require a true breakthrough: an outcome even better than could be foreseen, one that revealed facts nobody had guessed. And if by any chance some facet of the theory proved to be not merely unverified, but definitely wrong, then the theory would have to be modified. That could take years of work. No one talked about that.
At least they hadn’t talked about it until the meeting.
As he listened to the discussion, Noren soon saw that the Scholars were divided into three factions: one that favored sticking to the Founders’ original plan; one that felt a breakthrough might be close enough to justify getting a head start on another city; and one that feared a setback would occur, a setback too serious to be dealt with except by drastic measures. It was this last group that had first proposed that preparation for the establishment of a distant outpost should begin. “We must be ready,” its spokesmen declared, “because if our current theory proves inadequate, there is only one way we can turn—toward techniques that will eventually entail experimentation too risky to be tried in an inhabited area.”
That nuclear fusion was potentially dangerous was something that had astonished Noren when, soon after beginning his studies, he had been shown a film of something called a “thermonuclear bomb.” It had been quite horrifying, especially when the purpose of the bomb—for which nothing in his own world had prepared him—had become clear. He’d been thankful that he had not been introduced to it through a dream. There were no such dreams, since thermonuclear bombs had not existed in the time of the Founders and had in fact been abolished long before thought recording had been invented. But the film had been preserved, for there were lessons in it, and among them one of particular importance to potential experimenters: extreme care must be taken lest in the effort to achieve controlled nuclear reactions they produce an uncontrolled one.
The danger had not been great so far. Long ago the scientists of the Six Worlds had learned to control nuclear fusion and had harnessed it for the generation of power. The City’s main power plant was a fusion reactor, as those of the mother world had been after its supply of organic fuel was exhausted. Fusion power was clean and safe; it did not even create radioactive wastes. But nuclear fusion of heavy elements was far more difficult and complex than the type of fusion employed in a power plant. If it could be achieved at all, it would be achieved only through methods unlike the proven ones, and the approaches as yet untried were not without peril.
To men of the Six Worlds, it would have seemed obvious that all nuclear experimentation ought to be done far away from the City. It wasn’t that simple, however. The facilities necessary for such experimentation did not exist anywhere but in the City, and they couldn’t be moved without dangerous depletion of its reserves. The villagers were dependent upon the City for weather control, purified water to supplement rain catchment, and the periodic soil treatment and seed irradiation—without those things they would perish. The hazards of splitting the City’s resources had until now been greater than the chances of a serious accident. Yet if new failures were to affect those odds… .
The Founders had expected failures. They had realized that they and their successors were facing a task considered impossible by the science of their own era. This, after all, was why they’d set up a social system that was in most respects morally repugnant to them. It had been the only way to buy time, enough time for the impossible to be accomplished.
Transmutation of the elements… it was an old dream; before the dawn of science, men had tried to transform base metals into gold. Later men had laughed. No one had imagined a situation in which human survival would hinge upon a variation of the alchemists’ laughable, impossible goal: the changing of other elements into metals.
The very existence of a planet without usable metals had been a surprise to the Six Worlds’ scientists when, after the initial fruitless explorations that had followed the perfection of the stardrive, they had come upon it. They’d been looking for worlds to colonize, and had previously found none with suitable gravity, climate and atmosphere. At first, this one had elated them. Its soil contained poisons, but technology could deal with poisons. There had been no expectation of discovering planets where advanced technology would be unnecessary—it had been assumed that if such planets existed, intelligent life forms would have evolved upon them, making them unavailable for claim. A species that had fully populated its own solar system could continue to survive only by means of technology: the technology to build starships, and the technology to utilize otherwise-uninhabitable worlds. That was the natural way of things. When survival was threatened, technology developed to meet the threat. Even the nova could not have endangered the survival of a starfaring race, had it not been for the unfortunate chance that the sole refuge located before tragedy struck lacked the metal on which all technology depended.