This Star Shall Abide (2 page)

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is? Technicians don’t interfere, they only give; but no matter what they did, it would be right. Keeping the High Law’s a sacred duty, and the Scholars were appointed at the time of the Founding to see that it’s kept. The Technicians are their representatives.”

Noren hesitated a moment, then plunged. “Talyra, I don’t believe any of that,” he stated. “I don’t believe that the earth was empty and that people simply sprang out of the sky on the day of the Founding. It’s not—well, it’s just not the way things happen. It’s not natural. I think people must have been here for much, much longer than the Book of the Prophecy says, and to begin with they knew as little as the savages that live in the mountains—the ones we studied about, you remember; the teacher said they were once like us, but lost everything, even their intelligence, because they refused to obey the High Law?”

“Yes, but—”

“Let me finish. I think it was the other way around. You don’t forget something you once knew, but you can always learn more. I think we were like the savages until someone, maybe one of the Scholars, found out how to get knowledge. Only he didn’t tell anybody except his friends. He told the rest just enough to make them afraid of him, and made the High Law so that they’d obey.”

Talyra sat up, edging away from him. “Noren, don’t! That isn’t true; that—that’s heresy.”

“Yes, it’s contrary to the Book of the Prophecy. But don’t you see, the Scholars wrote the Prophecy themselves because they wanted power; it didn’t come from the Mother Star at all.”

“Oh, Noren!” Talyra whispered. “You mustn’t say such things.” Raising her eyes devoutly, she began, “
‘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. It is our guide and protector, without which we could not survive; it is our life’s bulwark… We will follow the Law until the time when the Mother Star itself shall blaze as bright as little Moon—’”

Noren seized her angrily, swinging her around to face him. “Stop quoting empty phrases and listen! How could a new star appear when the constellations have been the same since before anyone can remember? And even if it could, how could the man who wrote the Prophecy know beforehand? How did he know there was a Mother Star if he’d never seen it?”

“Of course it’s invisible now; the Prophecy says so.”

“We don’t need a prophecy to tell us
that
. We do need one to tell us that it will someday be as bright as Little Moon, since common sense tells us that can never happen.”

“But the Prophecy gives the exact date.”

“When the date arrives, there will be a new Prophecy to explain the failure of the old one. Can’t you see, Talyra? It’s the Scholars’ scheme to make us think that their supremacy’s only temporary, so that we won’t oppose it. As long as we accept the story, they can keep their knowledge all to themselves and no one will protest; but if we rebel against it, we can make them give knowledge to everyone! We could have Cities and Power and Machines now; there’s no point in waiting several more generations only to find that there’ll be no changes after all.”

“I don’t want you to talk that way! What if someone should hear?”

“Perhaps they’d believe me. If enough people did—”

“They wouldn’t, any more than I do. They’d despise you for your irreverence, They’d report you—” Her dark eyes grew large with fear. “Noren, you’d be tried for heresy! You’d be convicted!”

He met her gaze gravely, glad that she had not forced him to say it himself. “I—I know that, Talyra.”

It was something he had known for a long time. He was a heretic. Decent people would despise him if he was found out. And eventually he would no longer be able to keep silent; to do so as a boy was one thing, but now that he was a man, his search for truth would take him beyond the safe confines of his private thoughts. Then, inevitably, he’d be accused; he would stand trial before the village Council and would be found guilty, for when put to the question, he would not lie to save himself.

And once convicted, he would be turned over to the Scholars. Under the High Law, the religious law that overrode anything village law might say, all heretics were taken into the custody of the Scholars, taken away to the City where mysterious and terrible things were done to them. No one really knew what things. No one had ever entered the City where all the Scholars and Technicians lived; no one had ever seen a Scholar except from a distance, during one of the various ceremonies held before the City Gates. Noren longed to go there, but he was not anxious to go as a condemned prisoner. He’d awakened in the middle of the night sometimes, drenched with sweat, wondering what that would be like.

He reached out toward Talyra, more gently this time, suddenly noticing how she was shaking. “Talyra—oh, Talyra, I didn’t want to scare you—”

“How could you not scare me by such ideas? I—I thought we were going to be married, Noren.”

“We are,” he assured her, hugging her close to him again. “Of course we are.”

She wrenched away. “No, we’re not! Do you suppose I want a husband who’s a
heretic?
One I’d always be afraid for, and who—”

“Who could put you in danger,” Noren finished slowly. chilled with remorse. “Talyra, I just didn’t think—it was stupid of me—” He dropped his head in his hands, realizing that in his concern for being honest with her, he’d forgotten that if he was ever tried for heresy, she would be questioned, too. She would be called to testify. Wives always were, yet she would be called whether they were married or not, for everyone knew they were betrothed, and she could no longer say that she knew nothing. “I’ve compromised you,” he whispered in anguish. “You could be punished for not reporting me.”

Talyra gave him a pained look. “Darling, don’t you trust me? Don’t you know I’d never tell anyone? I love you, Noren!”

“Of course I trust you,” he declared. “It’s you I’m afraid for. It’s not only that you’d be suspect because you hadn’t told; it’s that I’ve said enough to open your eyes. Before, you might never have thought of doubting, but now—well, now you’re not innocent, and if you’re questioned on my account you’ll have to admit it.”

“What do you mean, I’m not innocent?” she protested. “Do you think I believe any of those awful things, Noren? Are you suggesting that I’ll become a heretic myself? I love you and I won’t betray you, but you’re wrong, so wrong; I only hope that something will restore your faith.”

Noren jumped to his feet, angry and bewildered. He had not thought she’d consider him mistaken. It had never occurred to him that Talyra wouldn’t accept the obvious once it was pointed out to her. She was brighter than most girls; he’d liked that, and only because of it had he dared to speak of his conviction that the orthodox faith was false. To be sure, not even the smartest village elders ever questioned anything connected with religion, but he’d attributed that to their being old or spineless.

“I don’t want my faith restored,” he said heatedly. “I want to know the truth. The truth is the most important thing there is, Talyra. Don’t you care about finding it?”

“I already know what’s true,” she maintained vehemently. “I’m happy—I was happy—the way we are. If I cared about anything besides you I could have it, and if you’re going to be like this—”

“What do you mean, you could have it?”

She faced him, sitting back on her heels. “I kept something from you. I know why the Technician came tonight. He spoke to me; he said I could be more than the wife of a farmer or a craftsman. He asked if I wanted to be more.”

“Well, so there are rewards for blind faith in the righteousness of Technicians!”

“He said,” she went on, “that if I liked, I could go to the training center and become a schoolteacher or a nurse-midwife.”

Noren’s thoughts raged. If he were to ask for even a little knowledge beyond that taught in the school, he’d be rebuffed, as he had been so many times, times when his harmless, eager questions had been turned aside by the Technicians who’d come to work their Machines in his father’s fields. But Talyra, who seldom used her mind for wondering, had been offered the one sort of opportunity open to a villager who wanted to learn! To be sure, the training center vocations were semi-religious, and he was known to be anything but devout; yet it did not seem at all fair.

“I knew you’d be furious; that’s why I didn’t plan to mention it.” She got up, brushing the straw from her skirt, and climbed back onto the seat. “When I told him I was pledged to marry, he said I was free to be whatever I chose.”

“Even a Technician or a Scholar, maybe?” Noren said bitterly.

“That’s blasphemous; I won’t listen.”

“No, I don’t suppose you will. I can see how fraud has greater appeal than truth from your standpoint.”

“
You’re
questioning
my
piety, when you’re calling the High Law a fraud? You had better take back what you’ve said if you expect to go on seeing me!”

“I’m sorry,” he conceded. “That was unfair, and I apologize.”

“Apologizing’s not enough. I don’t mean just the angry things.”

Slowly Noren said, “I guess if I were to swear by the Mother Star never again to talk of the heretical ones, you’d be satisfied.”

Her face softening, Talyra pleaded, “Oh, Noren—will you? We could forget this ever happened.”

He knew then that she had not understood any of what he had revealed. In a low voice he replied, “I can’t do that, Talyra. It wouldn’t be honest, since I’d still be thinking them, and besides, an oath like that wouldn’t mean anything from me. You see, I wouldn’t consider it—sacred.”

Talyra turned away. Her eyes were wet, and Noren saw with sadness that it was not merely because their marriage plans were in ruins, but because she really thought him irreverent. She did not put a reverence for truth in the same category as her own sort of faith.

“T–take me home,” she faltered, not letting herself give way to tears.

He took his seat, giving the reins a yank, and the work-beast plodded on, the only sound the steady whish of the sledge’s stone runners over sand. Neither of them said anything more. Noren concentrated on keeping to the road; two of the crescent moons had set, and the dim light of the third wasn’t enough to illuminate the way ahead.

What now? he wondered. He had intended to go to the radiophonist’s office the next morning and submit his claim for a farm, but without Talyra that would be pointless. He did not want to be a farmer; he’d worked more than half each year, between school sessions, on his father’s land, and he had always hated it. Since he didn’t want to be a trader or craftsworker either, he had thought farming as good a life as any; a man with a wife must work at something. He had planned it for her sake. Now he had no plans left.

None, that is, but an idea he scarcely dared frame, the exciting, irrepressible idea that although there was no way to get more knowledge himself, he might someday manage to convince people—as many as possible, but at least
some
people—that knowledge should be made free to everyone without delay. He was not sure how to put such an idea into action, much less how to avoid arrest while doing so. He was not sure that arrest could be avoided. Noren was sure of only one thing: if and when he was convicted of heresy, he was not going to recant.

Most heretics did, he knew. Most of them, after a week or two in the City, knelt before the Scholars in a ceremony outside the Gates and publicly repudiated every heretical belief they’d ever held. And that was no great surprise, Noren thought, cold despite the oppressive heat of the evening. It was all too understandable, when the penalty for not recanting was reputed to be death.

*
 
*
 
*

It was close to dawn when Noren unhitched the work-beast in his father’s barn and went in to bed, undressing silently to avoid waking his brothers. He did not sleep. Talyra… it was hard to accept what had happened with Talyra. He had never been close to other people; he had always felt different, a misfit; but he’d had Talyra, whom he loved, and for the past year he had looked forward increasingly to the day when he would have her as his wife. Now, with the day almost upon him, his one hope for the future had been dashed. If only he’d been less honest!

But he could not have been. It was not in him to live as a hypocrite, Noren realized ruefully. The only thing in the world that meant more to him than Talyra was… Truth. He thought about it that way sometimes—Truth, with a capital letter—knowing that people would laugh at him if they knew. That was the difference between himself and the others: he
cared
about the truth, and they did not.

Looking back, he could not remember just when he’d started to reject the conventional beliefs; he was aware of much he had not known in the beginning, and could not trace the development of his doubts, which at first had been only a vague resentment at the fact that knowledge existed that was unavailable to him. Perhaps he’d begun to formulate them on the evening the Technician had come unannounced to his father’s farm.

That had been before his childish admiration of Technicians had turned to inexplicable dislike; he’d been quite a young boy, and the sight of the aircar floating down over his own family’s grainfield had thrilled him. The Technicians who quickened the soil at the start of each growing season seldom arrived in aircars, for they simply moved on from the adjacent farm, pushing their noisy Machines back and forth over the continuous strip of cleared land. So, with his brothers, Noren had run excitedly to meet the descending craft.

The man had asked lodging for the night, and had offered to pay well for it; Technicians never took anything without paying. Noren’s father would have been within his rights to refuse the request. But of course it would never have occurred to him to do that, any more than it would have occurred to him to wonder why a Technician needed lodging when the aircar could have taken him back to the City in no time at all. Nobody ever questioned the ways of Technicians.