Or superhuman.
Faintness came on him as the blood drained from his face. “Set out to become a prophet, you mean? Lianne, I couldn’t!”
She remained silent, waiting; he sensed her sympathy, but not whether the thing he was now thinking was what she’d foreseen all along. “I couldn’t,” he repeated. “You didn’t grow up here yourself; maybe you don’t know how villagers feel about us. They’d worship me! It would be everything the First Scholar wanted to avoid when he set up our anonymity—why, they’d follow me around, treat every word I uttered as holy.”
“Well, yes, that would be the idea,” she agreed. “They would accept what you said in personal contact with them when they’d never tolerate it as a sudden ceremonial proclamation. They’d get used to the idea of a coming change, over the years—”
“Years!”
“Oh… I assumed, that is, I was thinking in terms of the preparation years being the main point. The genetic testing of crops will take a long time, too, and you could handle it yourself—” She bit her lip, hesitant, unsure how far he had gone in the perception of something obviously well-developed in her own mind.
“We won’t be able to delay more years after we prove the change is safe to implement,” Noren protested. “It’s bad enough having to wait for the first generation of babies to grow up.”
“You don’t have to wait shut inside the City.”
“Start talking to villagers
now
, not knowing for certain that implementation’s going to become possible?”
“You’re confident of the vaccine now.”
“Three normal babies, yes, I’m confident enough to use it on as many Scholars as will accept it. But I’m not ready to risk the entire species. And—and if I promised such a change, people would want a demonstration. That would mean human experimentation on villagers, which is unthinkable.”
“If it’s unthinkable, Noren,” Lianne said bluntly, “you had best say so before Veldry’s baby is adopted. When that boy matures, you will have human experimentation among villagers whether you like it or not, with the first child he begets. The gene pool of the species will be permanently affected. Surely you weren’t counting on his being convicted of heresy before ever touching a girl.”
He had been. Without thinking it through, he’d pictured the children becoming heretical enough to reach the City before they married, while remaining conventional enough to abstain from earlier involvements—which was of course an unreasonable assumption. It was true that with their adoption he’d be committed to tests involving non-Scholars. Perhaps a small-scale experiment with village volunteers would be no worse.
That paled, however, beside the other issue. To personally visit the villages… but of course, it would be impossible. “Stefred wouldn’t let me go outside the City,” he said, ashamed of the inward relief that swept through him at remembrance of the obstacle.
“Stefred can’t keep you from going,” Lianne argued, “any more than he can stop me when I go.”
“Not from walking out the Gates, no—but if I spoke to villagers he’d have me brought back and lock me up from then on.” The Technicians who reported to Stefred kept in touch by radiophone and aircar. Village affairs were quickly known in the City, and Stefred would not hesitate to use force if he believed the people’s welfare was at stake.
“I think you’re mistaken,” said Lianne slowly. “Noren—Stefred knows human experimentation has gone on.”
“Knows? You told him?”
“Of course not, but do you think anyone as perceptive as he could remain blind so long, when we recruit all the novices?”
“But if he knew, he’d have put a stop to it.”
“No. Interference would be an even worse threat to the Inner City than supporting you would be—social interaction here is founded on the right of each Scholar to make his or her own decisions. Stefred can’t override that when the experimentation does no harm to people not involved in it. If he felt that there was danger of children with defective genes being sent to the villages, he’d act, but he trusts your scientific competence.”
“Have you—discussed it with him?” Noren asked, appalled.
“No! Never—and I haven’t picked up much from his mind, either; he shields more than when I first knew him, as if he has secrets of his own. But he’s an excellent psychologist, after all. On that basis I can predict his reactions, even his reaction to the idea of your speaking out publicly.”
“He left me free to do that before because he judged me bound to fail,” Noren said. “If he kept his hands off again—well, I wouldn’t be willing to do such a thing as a mere gesture. I’d have to believe I could succeed. Yet if in principle I could, he’d be duty-bound to prevent it. The Council would force him to.”
“You underestimate Stefred. He has more independence than you give him credit for—and more courage.” Lianne’s eyes filled with tears. “More courage than I have, Noren.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Because there’s so much you don’t yet see, and I—I’m not brave enough to tell you. Stefred will be. Since he can stop you anyway if he wants, you have nothing to lose by talking it over with him. As a favor to me, will you do that?”
“Yes,” Noren promised, putting his arm around her, realizing from her trembling that she was even more upset than he himself. “If a time comes when I feel I should talk to villagers, I’ll talk to Stefred first.”
*
*
*
He tried to drive the idea from his mind, but it would not let him be. The more he thought of it, the more he knew it could work. It would demand unprecedented personal sacrifice, as Lianne had foreseen—the idea of receiving homage was repugnant to him. The prospect of doing so in official ceremonies when he got older was bad enough; this other would be infinitely worse. He had never liked villages in any case and would despise whatever time he spent there, all the more so because his role would encompass all the most difficult aspects of priesthood. Yet several ends would be served by it: not only alteration of the villagers’ attitude, but the crop testing—which he could accomplish with the aid of Technicians under his orders—and continuous observation of the children through successive visits.
The one thing he did not see was how Stefred could let it happen. But he had never known Lianne to be wrong. And he’d promised her to discuss it with Stefred, rash though that seemed. She avoided him during his days of deliberation; she seemed afraid to confront him, afraid even to meet his eyes. Noren knew he must get the decision over with.
“Yes,” Stefred admitted when Noren asked, “I’ve known for some time you are experimenting. I don’t know exactly who’s involved, and I don’t want to. It’s a matter for individual consciences.”
They were alone in the study, in the old way, the old atmosphere of trust strong between them; it was as if there had never been any rift. Never again, Noren thought, would he stay away from the one person with whom he felt free to express his deepest thoughts. Even with Lianne he was not as free as he was with Stefred. Between Lianne and himself, on both sides, was the tension of holding back feelings. And he feared hurting Lianne, whereas Stefred, as she’d perceived, had unlimited strength to face whatever needing facing.
“I’ve hated deceiving you,” Noren said, knowing the words weren’t necessary, knowing too that one deceit must continue. He could never reveal Lianne’s identity or the fact of her people’s existence—but with the reasons for that restriction, Stefred would concur.
“You’ve had to deceive me,” Stefred acknowledged. “As I’ve deceived you, pretending not to know.”
“I’ll spare us both and tell you the next step outright.” He did so, finding the words came easily. Stefred’s face, listening, was unreadable.
For a long time after Noren finished he was silent. Then, wonderingly, he said, “It… might work. It’s bolder than anything that’s occurred to me, further from the principles I’ve spent my life upholding. Strict isolation from the villagers is indispensable to their freedom under our system, yet while we hold to it, the High Law can’t be altered. In contact with villagers… there would be a chance. We’d have a chance, while otherwise there is none.”
“You’re saying you’d
support
me?” Noren asked, incredulous. To his chagrin, he felt more dread at the thought than elation.
“No,” Stefred told him. “If we should commit ourselves to your plan and fail, the morale of the Inner City would be destroyed just as surely as if I had supported you all along—and without the Inner City’s stability, the villages would be doomed. I can’t risk that, even knowing this change may be the only means of saving our remote descendants. I have a responsibility to the intervening generations.”
Noren found himself tongue-tied, unable, somehow, to argue. Had he come to Stefred hoping that he’d be overruled and would thus escape the burden of carrying out a plan he hated?
There was another pause. Then in a low voice Stefred said, “It’s impossible for me to support you. But if you take it upon yourself to act, I will look the other way, Noren.”
“I—thought you might. The idea depends on your treating it as you have the experimentation. Yet in this case, how can you get away with that?”
“The Gates are unlocked; we are held here only by our freely accepted obligation to follow the First Scholar’s rules. If you decide your conscience leads you elsewhere, no one will hear that the issue was discussed between us.”
“But wouldn’t tolerance on your part be the same as support as far as most Scholars are concerned? If I’m allowed to come and go, they’ll see you’re letting me do it.”
Stefred’s eyes widened with surprise that faded into evident pain. “By the Star,” he murmured, “I’ve been wondering how you of all people could propose this scheme so calmly. I assumed you understood what you’d be taking on.” He rose and came to Noren, laying a steady hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t say I could permit you to come and go,” he said quietly. “Only to go once, with the assurance that as long as you incite no violence you won’t be brought back by force.”
Stunned, Noren formed words with difficulty; his mouth was so dry he wondered if they were audible. “Leave the City—permanently?”
“You’d best think in those terms. Many years from now, after the genetic change has been accomplished, you might be able to return. But our society will be so altered that neither you nor I can make sure predictions.”
It hardly mattered. Years… enough years for the babies to grow up and have babies of their own, then for inoculation of the whole population… and then the cutoff of the purified water supply; if he made people accept that through their trust in him, he would have to stay with them while it was happening. Yes, to be exiled that long would be the same as permanence.
He had never imagined that kind of exile. From the morning he’d first seen the City, its bright towers dazzling with reflected sunrise, he had believed he would live and die within its walls. That thought had uplifted him even while he’d assumed he would die soon. He’d invited capture for the sake of one brief glimpse of such existence! There had been disillusionment; the City was not the Citadel of All Truth he’d envisioned, shouting his heresy before the Gates in defiance of the Law that barred them. It did not hold all he’d expected to find—not, he now knew, all he might find elsewhere in the universe. It was nevertheless the sole repository of knowledge in his world, and its contents had been ample compensation for what was formally termed “perpetual confinement.” How could he give up that sustenance? Access to knowledge was his life’s core. He’d contemplated eventual exile at the research outpost, but only with the supposition that stored knowledge would be transferred there, that it would become the last bastion of knowledge when the City’s technology wore out. To leave the City now, to live in a Stone Age culture among people with whom he could never speak of matters not taught in the village schools, without the computer complex, without discs or even books apart from village tales and the Book of the Prophecy… .
This was the step to which he’d been blind, blind because he could not face the thought of it. The thing of which Lianne had warned, seeing it far in advance—from the beginning, perhaps?—yet lacking the courage to open his eyes. This was the thing she’d known only Stefred could tell him.
“I can’t make it easy for you,” Stefred said, “and harsh though it may sound, I wouldn’t at this moment even if I could.”
“Because you want me to fail,” Noren said, not bitterly but in simple acknowledgment that Stefred’s compassion and his duty were at odds. “You’ve always opposed genetic change, apart from believing it couldn’t be brought about safely. You don’t think it’s the lesser of evils.”
“I do think it is. I must be ruthless with you because I want you to succeed.”
Noren turned in his chair, looking up at Stefred in utter astonishment. He could not speak.
“I look far ahead, as you do, Noren,” Stefred went on. “I can’t say it’s wrong to put survival of our species ahead of all other goals, important though they are. I oppose you only because it would be self-defeating to put short-term survival at risk for the sake of long-term survival. Now for the first time you’ve come to me with a plan that entails no such risk. Of course I want you to succeed in it. But it’s more demanding than you realize, and you must face that from the start—only by doing so can you become strong enough to deal with the problems you’ll meet.”
No doubt, Noren thought numbly. If he could find courage to accept exile from the City, he’d have courage to do anything; as usual, Stefred understood him perfectly. “I’m… not sure I can,” he confessed. “I’ve borne everything else so far without cursing fate, without asking why it has to be me who gets hurt. Yet this is so ironic—I’m just about the only person in here who doesn’t look at City confinement as a sacrifice—”