This Star Shall Abide (24 page)

Yet despite these handicaps they continued to work unceasingly, and their work wasn’t simple. Top priority, after the enlargement of the power and water purification plants, was given to the guardianship of knowledge. The starships’ computers were installed with extreme care at the heart of the City, in the first tower to be erected. Data stored in those computers encompassed all the past achievements of humankind, and was vital to the research work that in turn was vital to the ultimate survival of the colony. But the knowledge had wider significance. Like the equipment, it was held in trust; and to the Scholars, that trust was sacred.

Future villagers, however, would have to do without such knowledge—to children born and reared in a society shaped by the world’s scant resources, it would seem irrelevant, meaningless. Since that could not be prevented, it was best that the break come soon, for only thus could the colony lose its dependence on the culture of the Six Worlds. For the time being, therefore, no books were provided. It was to be a Dark Age indeed; though the First Scholar knew that after a while books could be restored, his heart ached for the people of generations to come, whose education would remain limited. From time to time, when he felt especially depressed and discouraged, he tried to think of some way to give those people an abiding hope. In the recesses of his mind an idea glimmered, but always it eluded his grasp.

Dream followed dream. The plan was working. Technological capability was being preserved where mastery of the alien environment demanded it, but people were learning to do without technology in their daily lives. They were turning to the land; despite its lacks, it was a good land, a spacious land, and it was giving them something more basic than anything shut away in the City. They were creating a culture of their own. Though that culture would be unavoidably static, their children would thrive.

He had not deprived anyone of personal freedom, Noren perceived, nor had he robbed people of the right to develop their own kind of society. The limitations were imposed by the world itself, and not by him. He’d merely withheld the material things that could not have endured had he not guarded them.

Yet he had also withheld the truth, he reflected in anguish. To violate the right to truth was evil. Not everyone cared about knowledge as he did, yet for those few who did care, he must provide an avenue.

But there’s still no avenue,
thought Noren, waking.
We’re still barred from knowledge!
And then he realized that that wasn’t true. The avenue existed; wasn’t he experiencing the dreams?

*
 
*
 
*

There came a moment—he was not sure whether he was awake at the time—when Stefred’s eyes looked into his and Stefred’s voice repeated softly, over and over, “You must not be afraid, Noren. What you face now will be frightening, but you must not give in to fear… .” And the voice stayed with him until he was so much the First Scholar that he no longer had any knowledge of whose voice it had been.

He was standing at the entrance of a tower, the tall central one called the Hall of Scholars, which like the others opened into the courtyard of the Inner City. With the part of his mind that was still Noren, he realized that there had not been so many towers when last he dreamed; and looking into the First Scholar’s memories, he found that years had passed. He was older and more weary. He was also more unhappy, though indeed he could not recall anything that had ever brought the First Scholar happiness.

Except perhaps one thing. He had been happy that the colony had been saved. And now, he knew, it was once again endangered, although the danger was one he’d anticipated and had arranged to deal with.

As always, he was surrounded by people, people whose faces weren’t clear in the dreams and whose voices sounded alike. “We will not deceive you, sir,” they said. “The situation is bad. You have been burned in effigy in the village squares, and this morning there’s a mob assembling before the gates! The villagers will not accept our supremacy much longer; soon they’ll be killing the Technicians who represent us.”

Noren found he could reach no information about these Technicians’ origin; there was a gap he couldn’t fill. “But they can’t live without the Technicians!” he heard someone object. “They know that!”

“Yes, but people don’t always act reasonably, not when they’re filled with hate,” he replied. He had made the villagers hate him in order to unite them, to arouse their hopes and their will to strive; but the need for that was past. If they started killing Technicians, all that had been done would have been for nothing. The Technicians would have to fight back, some people would defend them, and the villagers would fight among themselves. Whoever won, the colony would be fatally weakened, for it was still very small. The City was impregnable to attack. Within it, equipment and knowledge could be preserved; but what good were those things if the people themselves failed to survive?

The City’s people couldn’t survive without the farmers, and the farmers couldn’t survive without the Technicians’ aid. When hate prevented them from accepting aid, the hate must be discharged; he had realized that since the very beginning, and had made plans, plans kept secret even from his closest friends. “If I were no longer dictator,” he said slowly, “their hatred would subside.”

“They would merely transfer it to your successor.”

“Suppose I had no successor, suppose Scholars stopped pretending to be tyrants and became—well, High Priests? Suppose we were viewed as figures of mystery and awe instead of as ordinary men who’ve seized power? By now enough’s been forgotten for us to achieve that, for the emigrant generation is growing old; the native-born villagers hate me without knowing why. To them, stories of the Six Worlds seem mere legends.” With sorrow, he thought of the grief this was causing the older people, who had tried hard to pass on their heritage to a generation that neither understood nor cared. Most of the native-born were truly content with village life, and for that their elders hated him most of all.

“High Priests?” echoed his companions. “Priests of what? Surely you would not establish a false religion!”

At their tone, he wondered if perhaps they thought him senile; he was, after all, a very old man who had outlived his time for leadership. Yet they had always supported him. He had not ruled as an autocrat; once the plan was underway, the other Founders had had equal voice in the decisions; still they had honored him and followed his advice.

“No,” he assured them gravely. “Not a false religion, but a real one.” He looked back on the years he had pondered it. This part of the design, too, had been in his mind for a long, long time, though he had told no one.

Most of the new world’s people had no formal religion, for by and large neither the research station workers nor the scientists of the fleet had been strong adherents of the Six Worlds’ traditional faiths. Now, however, their children and grandchildren were developing the kind of culture where a central religion would be needed and would be bound to flourish. It would be needed to sustain people’s hope. It would be needed to make them follow rules of survival they could not fully comprehend, rules previously enforced by the elders: not using stream water or letting untreated clay come into contact with food or drink; delivering the grainseed to be irradiated; having respect for machines; all the things for which their daily lives offered no rational explanation. There were other reasons Noren couldn’t grasp. But above all, it would be needed to keep the Scholars from becoming dictators in fact rather than as a mere pretense; he, the First Scholar, was sure of that.

“If we don’t give people symbols for the truths we cannot express openly,” he explained, “in time they’ll fall prey to superstition. Their descendants may worship idols or practice barbaric rites of some sort. They won’t look toward a changing future, since the inadequate resources of this planet permit them to make no progress—so they won’t be prepared for the renaissance the completion of our research will bring. What’s more, once the elder generation dies, we alone can ensure that the taboos essential to survival are observed. If we’re not to employ any force, we can do it only by gaining the villagers’ respect.”

“That’s all very well to say,” his fellow-Scholars protested, “but not so simple to accomplish! We can’t win people’s allegiance by proclaiming ourselves High Priests; and even if we could, we wouldn’t want such a role. It would be worse than the deceit we began with. What you suggest is impossible.”

“There’ll be no more deceit,” he promised, feeling a strange elation mixed with his sadness. “Trust me in this; haven’t I achieved things that were thought impossible before?”

They spoke warmly to him, nodding. “You have, sir. Without you we’d have failed long ago; who else could have founded a system like this without terror, without bloodshed?”

“It must remain without bloodshed,” he declared grimly, “which it will not do if the villagers are in a mood to kill Technicians.”

Noren knew inwardly that he had reached a decision, but he dared not probe deeply for it; it was one of the First Scholar’s more frightening ideas. He let the words come to him without thought. “I will address the people,” he stated.

“Very well, sir. We will prepare the radiophone.”

“I will address them in person from the platform outside the gates.”

“Have you lost your senses? Those people are violent, sir! We could not protect you even if we had weapons, and we have only a few tranquilizing guns.”

“If you have any idea of abdicating, sir,” one of the men added, “it won’t work. The people will not be placated while you live.”

He did not answer, since that was something he already knew and did not wish to discuss. Instead, he walked rapidly across the courtyard and into the exit dome’s wide corridor, his companions following. “Please, sir—” they begged.

Turning to them, he said softly, “Did we do right, my friends? Was all this justified, as we believed, or were those who died aboard the starship wiser after all?”

“We did the only thing we could have done. The people are freer than they know, and someday there will be no more secrets. Someday there will be many cities, unlimited resources, education for everyone. This world will be like the mother world; someday we may even need spaceships again!”

They were the words he wanted to hear; he hoped they had not been said merely to humor an old man. Reaching the gates, he spoke solemnly to the others. “I have never asked you for unquestioning obedience,” he said. “I do so now—” There was a break in his train of thought; Noren perceived that the First Scholar had given instructions that were inaccessible to him. “I must go out alone,” he found himself concluding.

“Alone!” they cried, horror-stricken, but he ignored them. The next thing he knew the gates were open and he had stepped through; he was on a white-paved platform, and before him was the crowd. There was a roaring in his ears, and it was more than the outraged tumult of the people. It was the roar of his own fear.

The crowd was murderous. He raised his hand, hoping for silence in which to speak, but it had small effect. The villagers in that crowd did not want to hear anything from the hated, almost legendary “dictator;” upon recognizing his voice, they wanted only to kill him. For a few moments, stunned by his unprecedented appearance, they made no move; but their disbelief did not last long. They started up the steps, brandishing makeshift weapons—not only stones, but sharp stone knives—and though there was a newly-erected barrier at the top to keep people back, those weapons could be thrown over. Noren’s terror was more intense than any he had ever experienced.
I’m dreaming,
he thought in cold panic,
and I’ll wake up… before they can touch me I’ll wake up
. . . .

But he saw that he would not wake up. He was frozen in the dream. The blinding sunlight, the shouts of the faceless mob, the almost tangible hatred that assailed him—those would last until he died. His only recourse was to reach deep into the mind of the First Scholar, drawing out courage, for the First Scholar was stronger than he.

And the First Scholar had known what would happen.

He had known, Noren realized, from the time he’d first formulated his plan; and he had done this deliberately. The knife that struck him down was no surprise. It was not even unwelcome, for though he wanted to live, he knew that only his death could reconcile these people to the Scholars’ supremacy. By this means alone could he prepare them for the new kind of leadership that must follow.

He fell, yet was still conscious; and the people went on hurling things while his blood spread onto the white pavement and he writhed under the pain of the blows. The pain was worse than he had expected. He had not really anticipated pain; he’d thought he would die quickly, the target of many knives. After he fell, however, most of the weapons that came over the barrier missed their mark, and within moments his friends pulled him back through the gates. Noren could not hear what they said. He felt himself dropping into a pit of silence and darkness, aware only of how much wounds could hurt before killing.

Then, desperately, he was fighting his way to the surface. He’d forgotten something; he had acted too soon! He should not have gone out while there was one thing left undone.

Time had passed. He lay on a couch, and people bent over him. “The knives were poisoned,” they said gently. “It’s a poison native to this planet; we can do no more than ease the pain.” Someone held out a syringe.

Noren’s own memories engulfed him, more powerful than the superimposed emotions of the dream. A native contact poison… it was thus his mother had died… she had felt such pain as this while he, a helpless boy, looked on. He wanted only escape—whether to wakefulness or death did not matter—but a voice within him kept repeating,
You must not give in to fear
. . . . By tremendous effort he reached once more for the thoughts of the First Scholar.

“No,” he protested. “No opiates; did we not agree to save what we have for injured villagers? Besides, there is a job I have not finished.”