“She didn’t feel faith had let her down,” Beris added. “It comforted her! She knew she’d lost too much blood, she’d seen such cases before—and she wanted the ritual blessing. That’s why I was sent for.”
“You gave it to her, Beris? You said those words to a dying person as if they were true?” Noren frowned.
May the spirit of the Mother Star abide with you, and with your children, and your children’s children; may you gain strength from its presence, trusting in the surety of its power
. He had conceded the words were valid when said to the living, who were concerned for the welfare of future generations. But in the context of death—death not only of oneself but of one’s only child—they took on a whole new meaning.
“I’ve never used ritual phrases lightly, not as a priest, anyway,” Beris answered. “The words do express truth, just as much as the ones you say every time you preside at Vespers. Of course I said them, and part of the service for the child, too, because she wanted to hear it.”
He turned away, realizing that though he himself could not have denied Talyra’s wish, he’d have been choking back more than tears. “A priest gives hope,” he said softly, “that’s what Stefred told me when I agreed to assume the robe. It’s a—a mockery to use the symbols where there’s nothing left to hope for.”
“But Noren—” Beris broke off, seeing Brek’s face; she did not know Noren’s mind as Brek did. “Talyra hoped for
you
,” she continued quietly. “The last thing she said to me was, ‘Tell Noren I love him.’”
Noren sat motionless, already feeling the return of the emptiness that had paralyzed him during his weeks at the research outpost. Brek and Beris seemed far away, their voices echoes of a world he no longer inhabited.
“This isn’t the time to tell you this,” Beris was saying, “but Talyra made me promise. She said you must have more children, that it’s important, because otherwise the world will lose twice as much—”
“She knew I wouldn’t want anyone’s children but hers.”
“That’s why she said it—she did know. She knew you don’t hold with custom and might not choose someone else just for duty’s sake. And there was something about what happened in the mountains that I didn’t understand, she said it would become pointless, what you suffered there.”
“I suppose she meant your drinking so little water,” Brek said. To Beris he added, “I never told you the whole story. Noren nearly died of dehydration; he couldn’t drink as much impure water as Talyra and I could because he’d already drunk some as a boy in the village.”
“You’d drunk impure water without need?” Beris was shocked.
“Just for a few days before I was taken into the City,” Noren assured her. “I didn’t believe in the High Law then, not any of it—it wasn’t only the injustice that made me a heretic. And I’d decided I’d outgrown nursery tales about stream water turning people into idiots.”
“But then how could you dare to—”
“I was tested for genetic damage, just as Brek was after we got back from the mountains. He must have explained about that, or else you wouldn’t have married him. Anyway, I’d been told how much more I could safety drink, and in the wilderness I kept within that limit for Talyra’s sake. We’d
seen
the mutants, you know. Talyra hadn’t heard of genetics, but she knew they were subhuman because their ancestors drank the water… and, well, even though I thought we’d die there, I couldn’t let her fear, while we were sleeping together—” He broke off and concluded miserably, “She was right; it’s turned out to have been pointless. I’m not likely to want another child.”
“If you say that, it’s like telling Talyra your love for her made you stop caring about the future. That it was hurtful to you.”
“To
me
?” Wretchedly he mumbled, “If it weren’t for me, Talyra might have lived a long, happy life in the village.”
“How could she have? She’d surely have tried to have children, so the same thing would have happened.”
“Would it?” Noren burst out, “Beris, my child may have killed Talyra! You’ve learned all these things about pregnancy, things they knew on the Six Worlds—hasn’t it occurred to you it may not always be the woman’s fault when things go wrong? How much do you know about genetics?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone does, beyond the fact that technology’s needed for survival here because something in the water and soil damages genes if it’s not removed.”
“There must be more detail than that in the computers—they preserve all the Six Worlds’ science, and more must have been known in the Founders’ time.” The idea came slowly; as it formed, Noren wondered why no one had ever spoken of it. “In the dreams, the Founders knew the genetic damage was unavoidable without soil and water processing. Yet there weren’t any subhuman mutants then. The mutants came later, as the offspring of rebels who fled to the mountains rather than accept the First Scholar’s rule. That means the First Scholar
predicted
the mutation, and he couldn’t have done that without understanding what genes are! What’s more, there must have been cases of genetic damage on the Six Worlds themselves, because the concept wasn’t a new one. Perhaps there were mutations that didn’t destroy the mind.”
“Genetic diseases, yes,” Beris agreed. “I did get that much from one dream. But not necessarily mutations. A lot of people had defective genes to begin with, only not all the genes a person has affect that person, or all her offspring.”
“Why aren’t some of our offspring still affected, then?”
“The Founders—women and men both—passed genetic tests,” Brek reflected. “Don’t you remember, Noren? When they knew their sun was going to nova, how they chose the people eligible to draw lots for the starships?”
“And there was something about genetics in the First Scholar’s plan, too,” Noren recalled. “It was one of the reasons he wouldn’t let Scholars’ children be reared in the City, even the Outer City. Their being sent to the villages had something to do with what he called the gene pool.”
“You’re right, there’s got to be a lot of stored information,” said Brek. “I suppose no one’s ever taken time to study it because it’s so irrelevant to our work now. Till we find a way to synthesize metal, so that soil and water processing can continue indefinitely, it doesn’t make any difference whether we understand genes or not. Understanding can’t prevent the damage, only technology can.”
True, thought Noren grimly. Still, he’d always wanted to understand things—and to him, this was no longer irrelevant.
*
*
*
It was near midnight when he returned to his own quarters. At Brek’s insistence he had accepted bread and a hot drink, knowing that one should not go more than a full day without nourishment. “Or without sleep,” Brek said worriedly. Tactfully, he avoided any direct suggestion about hypnotic sedation.
“I’ll sleep,” Noren said quickly. He did not see how he could do so in the bed he’d shared with Talyra, but the Inner City was crowded; barring the infirmary, there was nowhere else to sleep. And after all, rooms were nearly identical, having once been cabins aboard the Founders’ starships. There were no personal furnishings, for such materials as could be manufactured were allocated to the Outer City, while the Inner City practiced an austerity that even to villagers, who had wicker and colored cloth, would have seemed strange. Talyra had kept her few belongings neatly stored in a compartment beneath the bunk; none would be in evidence to torment him.
“Noren,” Brek continued hesitantly, “the service tomorrow—”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Will you preside?”
“I—I can’t, Brek.”
“I understand, of course. So will everyone. But it’s your right, so I had to ask.”
“You don’t understand at all,” Noren told him. “I wouldn’t crack up. I’d like to be the one to speak about Talyra, what she was, what her life meant to us. It’s the ritual part I can’t do.”
He thought back to the first such service he had ever attended, the one for his mother, and how awful he’d felt hearing the Technicians, who in the villages performed priests’ functions by proxy, read the false, hollow phrases over her body. His mother had
believed
those things. She’d believed her life and death served some mystical power, the power of a star not yet even visible in the sky.
He had since learned it was not all a lie. But the service for the dead was not part of the Prophecy that science might fulfill. Nor did it deal only with the Mother Star. It was one thing to accept the Star as a symbol of the unknowable—as he’d done when he assumed priesthood—as well as of the heritage from the Six Worlds. Symbols no longer bothered him. But in this ceremony alone, the Founders had gone further. “I’m not like you and Beris,” he told Brek. “I can’t feel the words about death symbolize truth.”
The night dragged on. Noren could not cry any more, even when alone; he did not believe any emotion would return to him. He’d been right, perhaps, when despair had first gripped him, the year before at the outpost. His marriage had been only a brief reprieve.
Toward dawn he drifted into sleep and was immediately caught up in nightmare, the old nightmare induced by the controlled dreams through which Scholar candidates learned of the Founding. He was the First Scholar, yet at the same time, himself; the woman dying in his arms had Talyra’s face, Talyra’s voice… He surfaced, telling himself as always that it was just a dream, Talyra still lived, in experiencing the First Scholar’s emotions he had drawn images from his own memory. But when fully conscious, he knew that never again would it be a dream from which he could wake up.
The First Scholar too had lost his wife. She had killed herself because she could not bear the knowledge that the Six Worlds were destroyed. That had been what convinced the First Scholar that the secret of the nova must be kept; it was a key episode, so despite its pain it was one new Scholars had to go through. What kind of woman would prefer death to serving the future? Noren wondered. Talyra wouldn’t have! Why then had Talyra died? There was no sense in any of it… the First Scholar’s wife had served the future after all, for her husband’s decision had hinged on hers, the symbolic interpretation of the Mother Star itself had hinged on it. How could the future be served by senseless tragedy?
In the morning he viewed the bodies privately, dry-eyed, before they were shrouded and moved to the open courtyard. Because Talyra had been a Technician, the service was not held within the Hall of Scholars. Except for the absence of kinfolk, with whom all Inner City people sacrificed contact, it was more like a village ceremony; and for this Noren was thankful. Ritual of one sort or another could be more easily dismissed as routine in mixed groups than when only Scholars were present.
Alone, for Brek had quietly assumed the presiding priest’s place, Noren joined the gathered mourners as they began the traditional hymn. He was too much a loner to want others’ sympathy, though there were many present who would offer it. The ceremony was a thing to live through. So, perhaps, would be all his days to come. Reason told him his work in nuclear physics was futile, and without Talyra to bolster his faith…
How proud she’d been when he first put on the blue robe, and how needless his fear that it would turn her love to a deference he would abhor. Not till he was much older would he be required to assume the burden of appearing at public ceremonies outside the Gates, where villagers and Technicians would kneel to him. In the Inner City such customs were not observed; the robes, in fact, were rarely worn except for formal officiation. But like the other acknowledged Scholars in attendance, he wore his now, as befitted the solemnity of the occasion.
He had steeled himself to the words of committal; the shock of understanding them had worn off since he’d first heard them as a Scholar. Recycling of bodies with the ancient converters from the starships was necessary to future generations in an alien world that did not provide enough of the trace elements on which biological existence depended. In any case, he had never shared the villagers’ reverent awe at the thought that when one’s body was taken into the City, one somehow became part of the life cycle only Scholars could comprehend. He’d long since resigned himself to the fact that the physical side of this holy mystery was all too earthly.
It was the other part that still disturbed him.
“For as this spirit abides with us, so shall it with her; it will be made manifest in ways beyond our vision… .”
Sunlight beat down between the glistening towers onto Noren’s uplifted face; he closed his eyes, marveling at the sincerity in Brek’s voice.
Villagers and Technicians believed that Scholars were omniscient, that they
knew
what happened after death. Did not the Scholars know the answers to all other mysteries: why crops would not grew in unquickened soil, how impure water could turn sane men into idiots, and even how Machines had come into the world? Having been enlightened as to these latter things, Noren himself had not, at first, doubted that the former was equally explicable. He grew hot at the memory of his naivete when he’d queried the computer complex about death, and of his stunned disillusionment at its inability to provide any information. He’d been a mere adolescent then, of course. The past year had taught him much. His emotions had become less involved, at least as far as his own fate was concerned. But now, Talyra…
“Her place is assured among those who lived before her and those who will come after, those by whom the Star is seen and their children’s children’s children, even unto infinite and unending time. And not in memory alone does she survive, for the universe is vast. Were the doors now closed to us reopened, as in time they shall be, still there would remain that wall through which there is no door save that through which she has passed… .”