This Star Shall Abide (14 page)

When dawn came, the trader roused himself and clambered back onto the seat to resume driving. Noren relinquished the job thankfully; the sights before him were too wondrous to claim anything less than his full attention. He was almost there! Ahead, the scalloped walls of the City stood tall behind a conglomeration of ordinary stone and brick buildings and the long, low wattle structures of the markets. As he watched, the rising sun illuminated the immense silvery barrier and the incredible spires behind it, shooting back dazzling streaks not merely from their widely-spaced windows, but from the entire surface of each tower.

Noren stared, spellbound. There, in those soaring towers, was hidden all the knowledge he sought. Was it possible that other travelers could see them without feeling the unbearable desire they aroused in him? Surely even Talyra. who must have come days ago to the training center, could not have remained unstirred!

The trader thrust the reins back into Noren’s hands momentarily and peeled off his outer tunic. “Going to swelter again,” he remarked matter-of-factly. “Say, is this your first trip to the markets?”

“Yes.”

“Quite a sight, huh?” The man waved a casual hand toward the spectacle that in Noren had evoked near-reverence. “You know someday villages’ll be like that. Ordinary folks’ll have all the stuff the Technicians’ve got, Machines of their own and everything.”

Abruptly, Noren’s head cleared. This man might be persuaded; at any rate, it could well be his last opportunity to try. “Do you believe in the Prophecy?” he asked directly.

His companion swore. “What d’you mean, do I believe it? I’m no fool heretic.”

“I mean do you think it’s right for us to wait all that time to have what the Technicians have? To be kept from knowing all there is to know? Knowledge isn’t property; it should be free! We could have Machines right away, for instance, if—”

The man studied Noren intently. “We couldn’t understand stuff like that,” he said. “Someday folks’ll be smarter than us, and then—”

“Technicians are men like other men, and so are Scholars! They understand, and we could, too, if we weren’t afraid.”

“Say, you better be careful. They way you talk, you could get yourself into a mess.” He leaned over and spat into the street.

“Yes,” admitted Noren levelly. “But if enough of us talked about it—well, maybe we could make something happen.”

The trader turned, grabbing Noren’s wrist with tense, calloused fingers. “You mean that? You don’t like being bossed by Technicians that think they know everything; you don’t fall for a bunch of phony stories about Mother Stars and sacred Laws, maybe?”

“You know they’re not true, too!”

“Sure, I know. What’s fair about them that live inside the walls having stuff the ones outside ain’t got?”

“That’s exactly what I mean! If there were only some way we could—”

Speculatively, the man asked, “Ever hear what happens to people that think your way once the Scholars get hold of ’em?”

Noren nodded slowly. The trader said nothing more, but took the reins and continued on in silence. Before long they drew to a halt in front of a wattle-and-daub shed. “This is where I unload,” he announced. “Stick with me, and I’ll introduce you to some pals of mine.” He tied the work-beast and went around to the back of the sledge, lifting out one of the crates of cackling fowl and disappearing with it into the building.

Excitement exploded in Noren. At last, someone who shared his beliefs! And it had been implied that he would meet others who shared them! There was, of course, a possibility that the trader would betray him, perhaps even try to claim a reward for doing so; but since the Technicians must already have a good idea of his whereabouts, the risk seemed worth taking. Anyway, he had no choice but to wait, for he could go nowhere without something to bandage his knee.

When the unloading was finished, the man drove on to another section of the markets. Noren surveyed the long rows of open stalls with interest. Here the traders from many villages met to bring produce from the farms, which the Technicians paid well for, and to purchase fine craftwork as well as the less common herbs, yeast, and the many commodities—glass, cloth, paper, writing styluses and the like—that came from the City alone, where they were made by Machines. Strangely enough, however, the place seemed nearly deserted. “There aren’t a lot of people around,” he observed, puzzled. “Is it always like this?”

“Most everyone’s in the plaza,” the trader said shortly. “A heretic’s going to recant this morning, and they’ll all be there to see the show. We will, too, soon’s we can get you a bandage.”

The sledge lurched ahead, its runners grating on sand already marred by countless tracks. Near the stable where they left it was a fabric stall, and Noren, in producing the money for a stout strip of cut cloth, could not avoid displaying his entire kerchief full of smooth white coins. The trader eyed them, but made no comment; he simply went ahead and wrapped Noren’s leg tightly until it was stiffened by many layers of bandaging. When it was finished, Noren stood clumsily, his knee hurting fiercely as he shifted his weight, and hobbled along without objection. The last thing he wanted was to watch some other heretic being forced to go through the degrading ceremony to which he himself had sworn never to submit, but his companion seemed insistent, and the man was his only link to people who might prove kindred spirits.

They reached the plaza late, for the stabling of the work-beast had taken time and Noren was unable to walk fast; the ceremony was already in progress. Little of it could be heard, since they stood at the outer fringes of a vast, muttering crowd, so far back that to Noren’s relief he was not made conspicuous by his failure to kneel. Though the majority of the spectators had done so, others like themselves had abandoned propriety for the sake of getting a good view.

The plaza faced a stretch of unobstructed City wall, in the center of which were the tall, majestic Gates. In front of them a white-paved platform surmounted a wide flight of steps. The backdrop of glittering towers, rising so high above the walls that Noren had to tip his head to glimpse their tops, was awesome, but he could devote little thought to it; his attention was focused on the occupants of the platform. They were Scholars. He knew they were because of the brilliant blue robes they wore, robes he’d seen in the paintings that adorned the village hall and schoolhouse: longer than women’s skirts, but less full, with flowing sleeves that in the case of the center Priest were trimmed with bands of white. A number of Technicians were also present, and between them knelt the prisoner.

He faced the Scholars, his profile to the assembled people, with his hands bound behind him. His gray penitent’s garments looked filthy; if his captors had any decency at all, he could at least have been given new ones! But there was no reason to suppose that they were that humane, Noren thought in sick despair. How could anyone who’d opposed them be so contemptible as to buy his life with obeisance?

This man had been convicted of heresy, which meant that he once had believed at least some things contrary to the Prophecy or the High Law. Yet he knelt there, unabashedly declaring that he acknowledged the Book of the Prophecy to be “true in its entirety” and retracting “all criticisms” that he might ever have made of anything! Either he was the lowest sort of coward or… or they had done something awful to him, something past any stretch of the imagination. Though no signs of injury were apparent, Scholars might well have more subtle means of inflicting pain.

Shuddering, Noren watched with growing contempt both for the High Priests and for their victim. He was not close enough to see faces, but the man’s bearing was shameless. He spoke with seeming conviction rather than with reluctance. The Scholars were silent, impassive, accepting this submission as if it were no more than their just due. What had they done to change someone who’d once defied them into a consenting tool of their authority?

They will never change me,
Noren promised himself grimly.
No matter what they do or what they threaten, I will not deny the truth; I will not become like that man; I will not recant!

There was an atmosphere in the crowd that he did not like; it was akin to the temper of the people in the village who’d taunted him at the time of his own arrest. Only the presence of the Scholars, he guessed, prevented it from erupting into something uglier. The animosity was directed not toward them, but toward the heretic. And Noren could not help sharing it. He could not help feeling more scorn than pity: not, as with the majority, because of the prisoner’s heresy, but because he had sold out.

“We missed the best part,” the trader remarked cryptically during a pause in the ceremony. He had, Noren noticed, been talking to a friend who’d approached him some time back. “All that’s left now is the sentencing, and that’s always the same. Come on.”

“Where?” questioned Noren.

“A bunch of us are getting together to eat,” the man answered in his brusque, decisive way. “I’m taking you along; but by the Mother Star, you’ll be sorry if you’ve lied to me.”

*
 
*
 
*

The place to which the trader’s friend took them was a ramshackle shed behind one of the market buildings. It was dark and dingy and smelled like a stable; in fact it probably had been a stable at one time. “Sometimes we sleep here when we haven’t the price of a room at an inn,” the trader said. “You can stay if you like, only don’t repeat what you hear.”

“I won’t,” promised Noren, with mounting excitement at this clear indication of the men’s sentiments. It amazed him that heresy could be spoken aloud at any sort of gathering. But, he reflected, the Technicians weren’t empowered to arrest anyone who hadn’t been convicted in a civil trial, and though the people who lived permanently at the markets had a village government of sorts, they probably did not go out of their way to watch travelers.

The earlier arrivals had brought food and ale, which they proceeded to share informally. There were five or six of them, an ill-assorted lot, most of them men Noren would never have suspected of caring for the things that mattered; he had to remind himself that if they disbelieved the Prophecy and risked open criticism of the High Law, they must care. And it was evident that they did take such risks, for though the trader vouched for him, he himself was eyed with hostile suspicion.

A big, rough man clutched Noren’s shoulders in a viselike grip. “What did you think of that weakling?” he demanded, in obvious reference to the heretic whose recantation they had all observed.

“He sold out,” Noren declared.

“And you wouldn’t?”

“No!”

The man released him. “You sound as if you mean it,” he conceded. “They all do before they’re caught, of course; but you’ve as much backbone as any. He did, too, once—used to be a friend of ours.” He grinned unpleasantly. “Well, he got what he had coming, and don’t think we didn’t give him our share.”

“Are you trying to scare me?” said Noren, covering his confusion with a laugh.

“Just making sure you know what you’ve gotten into,” the big man said. “Lots of farm boys don’t.”

“I know, all right,” Noren assured him. He wondered what these men would think if they knew he had already been tried and convicted; for some reason he couldn’t explain, he felt that it would be unwise to tell them yet.

He sat silent, eating food he scarcely tasted and listening to the discussion of the others with elation that was tinged, somehow, by an uneasiness he did not understand. He didn’t need to convince this group, for its members were saying just what he’d despaired of ever getting across to anyone! They hated the Scholars; they considered the Prophecy a fraud; and above all, they resented the exclusive rights of the Technicians. There was a great deal of talk, much of it lewd, on all these topics; and not until it had gone on for some time did Noren see what disturbed him about it.

There was nothing these men did believe in. They spoke of Power and Machines, but never of knowledge; and not once had anyone mentioned truth. Nor had they any plan for improving matters. To be sure, Noren had no plan himself; but he had always supposed that if this many heretics ever got together, their first move would be to form one. “Mightn’t there be some way we could change things?” he ventured during a lull in the conversation.

One of the men gave a bitter laugh. “Change things, he says! Why, there’s nothing we or anybody else can do against Scholars.”

“All you traders ever do is talk,” protested a younger man. “We should rebel openly, that’s what we should do.”

“And get arrested for it? What would that buy us?”

“I’ve told you before, the Scholars will have to deal with us in public. There’ll be none of this nonsense about civil trials then! They’ll show their hand, and people will begin to see them for what they really are.”

“I haven’t noticed
you
doing any rebelling.”

“It won’t work unless a lot of us take action at the same time.”

“It won’t work anyway.”

“It might!” Noren argued. “If enough people would oppose the High Law—”

“Aw, people won’t listen,” said the trader. “Guys that quote the Prophecy at you every time you start to talk to ’em—they don’t deserve no Machines anyhow. It’s men like us should be getting that stuff.”

“Knowledge and Machines should be for everyone!”

“Even the ones too dumb to care? What for? You and me, now— Well, no use talking about it. There aren’t enough smart guys in the world. I heard once the Scholars have a way to blow the whole City up into clouds. Burn every last thing, all at once, see, so’s the Technicians’d have nothing left better’n what the villagers got. If we could grab hold of
that—”

“Destroy the City?” Noren was shocked. “That wouldn’t be right; it wouldn’t do any good at all. What we want is to have more Cities, Cities for everybody.”

“We can’t,” said the young man with frightening intensity. “The Scholars and Technicians will be too powerful as long as anything of theirs remains. We can’t have the kind of world we want without destroying this one; it’s corrupt, evil.”