The Doors Of The Universe by Sylvia Engdahl Read Free Book Online

realize the Founders’ hope of synthesizing metal through nuclear fusion. All efforts of past generations to achieve this had been proven vain by last year’s experiments; a flaw had appeared at the level of basic scientific theory. The computers now said the task was impossible. The priests, however, maintained that it could not be impossible—that since nothing else could enable their species to survive, an unforeseen breakthrough would occur if they kept working. Noren was viewed as the most likely person to make it.
    He did not share this confidence. He himself had never been deluded about the chances of his talent producing such an outcome. His very gift for the work showed him, with a clarity not apparent to others, that the limits imposed by available facilities were absolute. More and more, since his return from the outpost where future experimentation was to be tried, he had seen that the research would be fruitless. Study, like priesthood, was for him a gesture—a gesture that sustained people’s hope, unlike the destructive one through which he’d sought to deny life by declaring all hope fraudulent. He had acknowledged the value of faith and had even felt its power, but he’d found it couldn’t alter his scientific pessimism.
    At times, with Talyra, he had forgotten all this. The end would not come in his lifetime, and he’d lived as if long-term survival of his people were indeed assured. He’d been on his way to becoming like everyone else. But he couldn’t have gone on with that forever, he thought, suddenly overcome by a sadness that was more than grief. He was not like everyone else; he never had been… .
    The door slid aside, and Stefred stood for a moment in the lighted opening. Noren rose to greet him, and they gripped hands. “Noren,” he said quietly. “I—I’ve no words.”
    “They aren’t needed,” Noren replied. With Stefred this was true; he had an uncanny ability to convey the warmth of his feelings even when forced to speak words not easy to hear.
    “I can’t tell you it will stop hurting. I’ve been through it, and I know better. But in time—”
    “You’ve never remarried.”
    “That’s different.”
    “How?” demanded Noren. Stefred wasn’t an old man—more than old enough to be his father, no doubt, but in a world where most married in adolescence, that did not make him old in years. Furthermore, everyone who knew Stefred liked and admired him; he’d scarcely have had trouble finding another wife.
    “My position’s awkward,” he replied painfully. “There is a—a bond that develops between me and each candidate I examine; you know that. With the men it means lasting friendship. With the women it could mean more; ethics require me to suppress all such thoughts while acting in my professional role. Later… there’ve been several women I might have approached later, but by then they’d chosen others.”
    “You could marry a Technician, though.”
    “Could I? Noren, every Technician who enters the Inner City kneels to me in a formal audience during application for admission, seeks my blessing, thinking me of supernatural stature! I can’t hide my rank while getting acquainted with the newcomers, as the rest of you can.” His voice dropped as he added with bitterness, “No Technician woman would refuse me; she would feel awed by the thought of bearing my child. It goes without saying that I don’t want love on that basis.”
    Of course not, Noren realized. Because in the villages most heretics were men, the balance between sexes would not be equal in the Inner City if Technician women weren’t brought in; but the religious devotion of these girls, who considered it a high honor to be accepted for lifelong confinement within the walls, was not exploited. They assumed they were to be courted by their peers. Stefred, who must appear robed at the admission interview and accept the near-worship accorded High Priests, was doomed to a unique sort of