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

nightmare, not reality. Not till later does the reality sink in. Lianne got it all. From what she said after she regained consciousness, I know she got everything the First Scholar felt—but of course, without his foreknowledge.”
    “Everything? But she couldn’t have known what populated worlds are like,”protested Noren, remembering his own slow absorption of the idea that not just one City but thousands had been wiped out in that single surge of intolerable fire.
    “I wasn’t sure she could take another session,” Stefred went on, “but she was willing, and I went ahead with close monitoring. Her physiological responses showed she was coping; I thought we’d passed the crisis. And then, when she woke, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Why have you edited it so much?’”
    “Oh, Stefred.”
    “You see what’s going to happen. She’ll stick to her refusal to recant even after finishing the sequence—precisely because she is strong, is perceptive, she’ll hold out on the grounds that I’ve kept part of the truth from her. Her very fitness to become one of us will force her into a position that deprives her of the chance.”
    “That’s awful. It’s one thing to make that choice out of real disagreement with the First Scholar’s decision, but to have to live with its consequences because of a false suspicion that you’re cheating—”
    “I know,” Stefred sighed, “especially since I have cause to believe she doesn’t disagree. The dreams wouldn’t affect her so deeply if she didn’t share his convictions. For that matter, she wouldn’t be unsatisfied by the explanation I’ve given her about the editing.”
    “Stefred,” Noren mused, “why wasn’t I unsatisfied? You told me thoughts beyond my comprehension had been removed from the recording, and I took your word.”
    “It was true in your case,” replied Stefred grimly. “With Lianne I’ve come close to lying.”
    Noren stared at him in bafflement. Stefred never lied to anyone; that was why even candidates under stress learned to trust him. “I don’t see,” he admitted, “how the partial truth can be less valid in her case than in mine.”
    “Neither do I, really. Even mature candidates don’t notice what’s absent from the First Scholar’s thoughts at first; his world is too strange and distracting. As for you, though, you were very young, Noren. You didn’t miss the deleted emotions because you’d never imagined such feelings, and they’d have been truly beyond you. That’s one reason we see to it that known heretics are brought to trial in adolescence.”
    “Is she an older woman?” Noren asked, surprised. The majority of people with heretical tendencies did reveal them early, though since opportunity to earn Scholar status was every citizen’s birthright, older candidates occasionally apeared.
    “Well, not adolescent, certainly. Oddly enough, her age is one of the things she won’t tell me. She was a stranger in the village where she was arrested, so we don’t know her real identity, and all she’ll say is that she has no children—which, barring some medical cause, means she’s unconventional in more than her opinions. She can’t have lacked suitors; she’s quite pretty, in an unusual sort of way.” He shook his head, obviously perplexed. “Her face looks young, but her mind seems as old as any I’ve encountered. The full version of the dreams would not be incomprehensible to her, and she’s well aware of that.”
    “The full version… wait a minute! Are you saying she’s concerned about things in the full version, the one I haven’t been through myself yet, not just the second version that contains the plan for the succession scheme?” Shaken from his stupor, Noren realized that he’d nearly forgotten that such a version existed. He had been told about it when in deciding to accept priesthood, he’d inquired about the First Scholar’s personal religious beliefs. But it covered much more than