This Star Shall Abide (21 page)

“That’s crazy,” objected another. “Why should they?”

“What happened on the Six Worlds?”

“All right, there was panic. Some people went mad, some killed themselves. But that was different; they were going to die anyway, and they were afraid.”

“The members of this expedition were chosen from the Interplanetary Association of Scientists,” the man reminded him. “Medical and psychological screening tests were given to eligible couples, the same tests administered to those previously sent. Of the ones who passed, all had an equal chance in the lottery; yet some of them committed suicide even before the lots were drawn.”

“I didn’t know that!” several people exclaimed in dismay. Noren was silent; the First Scholar had known, but he had tried to forget.

“It was kept quiet,” the man said. “But the fact is that most people who’ve grown up with the idea that they’re part of an advanced culture with thirty billion citizens just can’t live with the knowledge that it’s gone.”

“We’re living with it,” someone pointed out.

“That means nothing, since if we were among these who couldn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”

“There might be another explanation for those suicides,” someone else suggested. “They might have sacrificed themselves to give others a greater chance in the lottery.”

“A few, maybe. Not very many.” In a tone of unshakable certainty the man asserted, “Emotionally, the research station workers belong to the Six Worlds, not to the new world; they signed up for short tours of duty and never planned to settle there. They have no children, for they’re waiting to start their families when they get home. They’ve been getting news from home on every supply ship. When they hear that all civilized planets have been destroyed—that humanity has been wiped out except at that one alien base—their spirit will be fatally crushed. They not may kill themselves, but they won’t carry on the human race, either.”

“They’ll not have much choice once the supply of birth control drugs gives out. Besides, pioneers have always managed in the past.”

“These people didn’t choose to be pioneers. They weren’t reared in the kind of society pioneers come from; the Six Worlds’ was so complex that they never developed any independence. They had no desire to break away. Right now they’re probably scared to death because the regular ship’s late! Oh, they’ll have babies in time—but a lot of those babies will be subhuman mutants because when the people learn the truth, their hope will die, and they’ll stop bothering to avoid unpurified water.”

“You’re mistaken,” Noren contended. “Surely it will work the other way. They’ll know that they’ve got to be more careful than ever, that everything in the future depends on them.”

“I wish I could agree. But they’ll also know that there isn’t likely to be much future, and not everyone has your courage, sir.”

Noren did not feel very courageous; as the First Scholar he was tired and despondent, and he knew that a dreadful decision was soon to be made. “In any case,” he said slowly, “we seem more or less agreed that the colony is in grave peril one way or another, and that if we can’t come up with a solution, there’s little hope for it.”

“There is no solution. The colony will die, and humanity with it; and when the power goes off, humanity’s knowledge will be lost.”

“Is—is this all… futile, then?” a woman faltered. “Have we launched this expedition for nothing? I won’t believe there’s no way to save future generations!”

The time had come, Noren realized, to speak of his plan: the desperate, horrifying plan he did not wish to think of. “There may be one,” he found himself saying, “if we dare to use it—”

Across the room from him a door burst open. A man stood there, a man who quavered, “Sir, we’ve illness aboard! Three people are stricken!”

Noren jumped to his feet. “Illness? That’s impossible; we all had medical checkups and everything on this ship was disinfected.”

“It hasn’t been diagnosed yet.” With still greater distress the man added, “One of those ill is your wife, sir.”

Noren’s heart lurched; the room swirled around him and then began to dissolve. He found himself transported to another, after the manner of dreams. For a brief instant he knew he was dreaming, but he was quickly engulfed once more by the emotions of the First Scholar.

He stood by a bed upon which a woman was lying. She had long, dark hair, like Talyra’s, but he could not see her face. Only her voice came to him, the voice of the woman he loved.

“What use is there going on?” she demanded feebly. “Who are we, a mere scattering of people in a fleet of ships bound through emptiness to an alien world, to say that the human race is worth preserving? There is
nothing left
, darling! Don’t you understand? Everything’s gone; there’s nothing to look back to anymore.”

“I understand,” he told her, forcing the words through trembling lips. “I watched! I saw it, you did not—and I say that there is a reason to go on! If we don’t, the colony has no chance at all.”

“Why should it have? That world was never meant for humans. Our species wasn’t meant to outlast the sun. We should have died when the others did.”

He knelt beside her, holding her close to him. “Think of those who came before us,” he insisted. “Think of all the labor, all the suffering of the generations past—”

“I am thinking of it! I’m thinking it will be better not to start that again; what end did it serve?”

“None, if we give up now. We have a responsibility.”

“To whom? To the thirty billion dead?” She began to cry hysterically.

He felt tears on his own face. “Dearest,” he murmured, “dearest, we can’t know. We can’t see what end we serve; we know only that there’s no one but us to keep up the struggle.”

“I—I
can’t,”
she sobbed. “I can’t, knowing what I do.”

“You’ve known for weeks, as we all have. Nothing has changed.”

“It has! Before, it was theory; we were told it would happen, but it wasn’t real. Now all the worlds are consumed, The universe is empty—empty! No one can live knowing that! The people on that planet will die when they find out, as I am dying now.”

“You’re not dying,” he said soothingly. “The doctors will cure you, and you’ll feel differently when you’re well. Trust me, dearest. I won’t let you die.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “Darling, there’s no cure. I… couldn’t face it… I took some pills.”

“Talyra!” he cried out. The sights and sounds of the dream were fading; he was aware only of the woman who had gone limp in his arms. Somewhere in the background he could hear voices, faint and far away: “An overdose… three people so far… if it’s affecting
us
this way, we who knew beforehand and bore the knowledge, those who didn’t know are bound to be crushed by it.”

He looked down at his wife’s colorless face, and it was Talyra’s face; Talyra’s eyes looked up at him, and she was not dying, but already dead. He wept, and the voices receded further into the distance. “The others may give up too, when they hear.”

“No!” Noren exclaimed, his own voice as remote and unreal as the others. “They will not hear; I now see that we mustn’t tell them. If we don’t, they’ll have no way of knowing, for the new world is so many light-years away that the nova will not be visible there for generations.”

*
 
*
 
*

Noren awoke wrenched by sobs, deep, silent sobs over which he had no control. Talyra… he’d been holding her in his arms and she was dead, dead because civilization was gone and humankind was gone and it was futile to go on trying. The whole human race was going to die out.

At the sight of his surroundings, he came abruptly to himself. Talyra wasn’t dead. It had been the wife of the First Scholar who had died. Moreover, the human race had somehow lasted after all. Why had it, when its doom had seemed so sure?

Stefred stood in a corner of the little room, his back turned. Noren sat up; his feet touched the floor and found it solid, though in the wrong place, somehow. “Why didn’t things happen as the people of the fleet expected?” he asked.

“Do you think there was real danger?” Stefred replied, his voice giving no clue as to what he himself thought.

“There must have been,” Noren said positively. “Even though the nova was kept secret—which I’m still not sure was right—there didn’t seem to be any way around the other problems.”

“The First Scholar found a way,” said Stefred, coming to Noren’s side. “If he hadn’t, none of us would be here.”

“It was something frightening, something he felt awful about,” Noren recalled. “He—he had the idea, but I just couldn’t get hold of it.”

“His plan was not in this particular recording,” Stefred told him. “It’s hard when you reach for a thought that won’t come; but Noren, many of the First Scholar’s thoughts are too complex for anyone who knows little of the Six Worlds. They can’t be made available until a person’s ready to understand their significance.”

“There are other dreams, aren’t there?”

“Yes. But they keep getting rougher. You need not go on unless you choose to.”

“I want to go on, sir.” Noren took deep breaths, steadying himself, and then burst out, “Why did she have Talyra’s face?”

“A dream is more than a recording,” Stefred explained gently. “Each person experiences it differently, depending on what he or she brings to it. The recording contains no sounds, no pictures, but only thoughts; and when you as the First Scholar thought of the woman you loved, her face came not from his memory, but from yours.”

“Will it work that way with other things?”

“It may.” Stefred looked at him with sympathy. “Perhaps you’ve wondered, Noren, why it was necessary for me to give you drugs during your inquisition; perhaps you felt it an indignity. I had no choice. It wasn’t that I suspected you of lying, but merely that I had to know more about what’s buried deep in your mind than you could have told me while you were fully conscious. There is an element of risk in these dreams, for with some people they can stir memories better left untouched, and I don’t want you to be harmed.”

He spoke as if he cared, Noren noticed with wonder. Why should he care whether a heretic was harmed or not?

Another thought hit him, an appalling thought. “Sir, I—I’ve drunk impure water! I didn’t believe before—”

“How often, Noren?” asked Stefred gravely.

“Five or six times, maybe.”

“Don’t worry about it. The damage is done only if you drink more than that.”

Noren sighed with relief before he recalled that he was not going to live long enough to father children in any event. Somehow, despite his grim prospects, he had stopped thinking of what lay ahead. He even found Stefred’s prediction that he wouldn’t mind sharing the feelings of the First Scholar to be quite true. “What… became of him?” he faltered, as Stefred took his arm for another injection.

“You must experience it in order to understand. We’ll proceed now; you’re taking this well, and I see no reason to delay.”

After that Noren lost track of time. He was never fed, but neither was he hungry; they controlled all bodily needs with injections as they controlled sleep. He was not plunged directly into the dreams without sedation as he had been the first time when, Stefred admitted, they had been making one last attempt to see if he could be panicked into capitulation. Since then they’d attached no apparatus to his head until he was unconscious. During his periods of awareness they questioned him searchingly as to his impressions; he was required to think the experiences through. Then he would sleep again, and dream again.

Someone was always with him when he awoke: usually Stefred, but occasionally the young woman who operated the Dream Machine. She was a Scholar, he was sure, for she knew what was in the dreams and discussed them. He no longer saw any Technicians; that seemed strange until it occurred to him that it was feared that he, who disapproved of secrets, might give some away.

At first he was puzzled because the woman Scholar wore no robe; but since Stefred rarely wore his either, he concluded that the robes, which he’d learned were mere outer garments that covered ordinary clothes, were put on primarily when it was necessary to impress someone. Except for the sexes dressing alike, Scholars looked just like anybody else. Noren had once thought them ageless, as did all villagers, but this woman seemed very little older than he was; and when he stopped to think about it, he realized that within the City there must be other young ones, even children. How did they feel about things? he wondered. Were they, too, frightened when they were first made to dream?

He was still frightened; he grew cold with apprehension every time he was given an injection, for being the First Scholar was not at all enjoyable; yet he wanted to keep dreaming. Stefred would grant him respite if he asked, Noren knew, but he couldn’t do that. It was not just a matter of pride. It was more a matter of an unquenchable desire to know all that had happened, however dreadful those happenings might have been.

He understood, of course, that dreams were proving certain aspects of the Prophecy; that had become evident when he’d absorbed the truth about the Mother Star. Gradually, Noren became aware that they were also proving something else. This awareness was painful, but the pain of giving up long-cherished theories was overshadowed by the First Scholar’s suffering, which he found bearable only because of his knowledge that others—including the young woman—had borne it and had survived. If they could, so could he! After all, the First Scholar himself had borne it, and as Stefred had pointed out, for him it hadn’t been a dream from which he could wake up.

But the First Scholar had not survived. Somehow, without being told, Noren knew that the final dream would end with the First Scholar’s death.

*
 
*
 
*

He was back in the room with the white table, again surrounded by the members of his staff, and this time he knew he must present the plan. He must make them accept it, though he was well aware that they would not like it any better than he did himself.

“It’s easy enough not to tell the research station people about the nova,” someone was saying, “but it’ll be a good deal harder to explain why no more supply ships are going to arrive.”