The Doors Of The Universe Read Online Free PDF

that certainty could be engendered only through extreme measures, Stefred would use them; but he would not enjoy the process.
    “The odd thing,” Brek went on, “is that she’s a village woman. Yet at first, I’m told, she was fearless. Everyone who saw her noticed—she was as self-composed as an experienced initiate. It was almost unnatural.”
    Slowly, Noren nodded. It was indeed odd that a villager, brought straight from a Stone Age environment into the awesome City—believing she’d be put to death there for her convictions—could be so cool under questioning that Stefred would have to employ unusual tactics. But they would learn nothing of her background. Not only were closed-door sessions with Stefred treated as confidential, but no questions were asked in the Inner City about newcomers’ past lives. This convention had been established because the true significance of heresy must be concealed from the uninitiated, but it was also a matter of courtesy. Former heretics, who were by nature nonconformists, had not always behaved admirably in youth; it would be tactless to risk embarrassing anyone, or to stir up memories better left to fade.
    “What’s strangest,” Noren reflected, “is that someone strong-willed enough to need special handling would be endangered by the dreams. They’re hard for everybody at first. A person who wasn’t bothered by what the Founders did wouldn’t be a fit successor. But close monitoring—that’s used only for the most terrifying ones, the ones that could induce physical shock. I never heard of monitoring the whole series.”
    “Could he have put her under too much stress beforehand, maybe?”
    “Stefred? He’s never miscalculated; you know that!”
    “I do know,” Brek replied. “Yet now he’s worried. No one’s seen him since Orison the night before last, and then he looked—well, as if he needed that kind of reassurance. Since he’s willing to talk to you—”
    “I’ll find out what I can.” It was true enough, Noren realized, that only pride had made him resolve not to go to Stefred, the one person in the City to whom he could speak freely of sorrow.
    But there was another encounter that had priority. On the verge of taking the lift up to the tower suite in which he’d met so many past crises, Noren moved his hand instead to the button for “down.”
    At the foundation of the Hall of Scholars was the computer complex, most sacred of all places in the City because there alone the accumulated knowledge of the Six Worlds was preserved. To Noren, knowledge had seemed sacred from his earliest boyhood; to all Scholars, its guardianship was a holy responsibility. The information stored in the computers was irreplaceable. If lost, it could not be regained, and without that information, human survival would become impossible. Unrestricted access to it was the right of every Scholar. Priesthood wasn’t a condition—but it was in contact with the computer complex that Noren felt most nearly as he supposed a priest ought to feel. The computers held such truth as was knowable. He knew better, now, than to think that they held all truth, but they held all his human race had uncovered, all he was likely to find in his own world.
    In this only, there was happiness he had not shared with Talyra. It was the single aspect of his life her loss would not diminish. But he could not accept the joys of learning without also accepting the demands. I care more for truth than for comfort , he’d declared at his trial. He’d been a mere boy, fresh from the village school; it sounded naively melodramatic now. He had known even then that most people would think it foolish. The village councilmen who condemned him had been appalled by his blasphemous presumption. During the subsequent inquisition, however, Stefred had not thought it foolish; he’d called it the key point in his defense. Stefred, who knew more than any village council about uncomfortable truths, had challenged him