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

dreaming, he would be afraid.
    *   *   *
    He came to his senses in the Dream Machine’s small cubicle. When he opened his eyes, he could see at first only the pattern of dials, switches and colored lights that covered its walls. He was still reclining, and became aware that electrodes were taped not only to his head but to other parts of his body. Dimly, he recalled Stefred’s telling him to remove his tunic before beginning the ritual of hypnotic sedation that, during his time in the City, had become familiar to him. Stefred bent over him now, the concern in his manner all too plain.
    “Is it over?” Noren asked. “I—I don’t remember anything!”
    “It hasn’t started yet.” Stefred sat on a stool close to the reclining chair, his eyes on Noren’s. “I had to wake you; there’s something troubling you that you haven’t told me about.”
    “What makes you think so?”
    “I did some routine checking in preparation for giving you hypnotic commands and found evidence of psychological trauma that’s never been there before. It’s too risky for me to proceed without understanding it, yet I’m not willing to probe your mind without your permission.”
    “What sort of evidence?” Noren asked slowly.
    “Basically, Noren, you respect yourself,” Stefred said. “You’ve never felt guilty about being you , or about not seeing things just as other people do. That’s one of the things we go into quite deeply with heretics; the self-confidence that results in defiance of conventions has to be genuine. Yours was extraordinarily so. Now it is—shaken.”
    “Well, after what happened last year—”
    “I know you doubted yourself then. But it was never a deep-seated doubt; though it caused you pain, what lay underneath was more powerful than your conscious feelings. That was how I knew you’d come through. What I find now is a bit more serious.” Sighing, he declared, “You have the right of privacy, but not the right to force me to work in unknown territory. I must have your consent to probe, or we call this off.”
    Noren turned his face aside. “It’s nothing so complicated,” he said. “I’d rather not talk about it, but if you really need to know, I’ll tell you outright. I guess it’s true I don’t respect myself much now; I guess I never will, because I—I killed Talyra.”
    Stefred shook his head. “To feel guilt after the death of a loved one is a normal thing. Especially when a man’s wife dies in childbirth, he can’t help thinking he’s partly to blame. I would be much surprised if I found no such feelings in you. What I do find is more than that. It’s as if you are torn by a belief that you’ve done some real and avoidable wrong.”
    “Oh, it’s real enough. I did kill her, Stefred. Not just by getting her pregnant—by getting her into a situation that caused genetic damage to the child.”
    “You know better than that,” said Stefred, surprised. “You’ve been tested; your reproductive cells are undamaged. She drank far less unpurified water than you’ve drunk, and anyway, the mutation doesn’t kill.”
    “I’ve been through all this with the computers! There’s a lot of information no one ever talks about. Isn’t it in the dreams?”
    “These dreams? I’m not sure what you mean.”
    Briefly, Noren summarized what he had learned. “The Founders knew, they must have,” he concluded. “I thought you did too, that it was why you were afraid I could get hurt by knowing all the First Scholar’s thoughts.”
    For a long time Stefred was silent. “No,” he said finally, “no, the First Scholar didn’t record any thoughts about mutation beyond the basic facts in the edited recordings. That does seem strange, now that you raise the issue—you’re right that he must have known much more. As to this teratogenic damage, the danger’s never occurred to anyone. There’s nothing edible here that could cause it, after all.”
    No, thought Noren, nothing to eat but