Free The Doors Of The Universe by Sylvia Engdahl Page B

sense.
    Lianne’s eyes met his again. “You’re afraid of something past what will happen in the dreams,” she declared, as if her mind and his could somehow touch.
    “Of what will happen in the world, perhaps.”
    She said softly, with soberness that was not fear, “I think you and I have much in common.”
    “We both have ordeals ahead,” he agreed.
    “May the spirit of the Star be with you in yours.” The conventional words, as she spoke them, sounded rehearsed and yet deeply sincere; it was odd, he thought, that a heretic not yet fully enlightened could impart so much meaning to them. Noren was still wondering at it when Stefred took his hand, and at his silent nod of assent, put him into deep trance. Afterward, Lianne’s voice was the last he remembered hearing.
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    The nightmare was unlike anything one might imagine; he knew of no words that could convey its content. There were no thoughts: not his, not the First Scholar’s, not anyone’s. There was only horror and revulsion. This horror… nameless, shapeless… was part of him, or he of it; the scope of it had no boundaries. He knew it not from sight or sound but as pure emotion. It was as if he’d fallen into another dimension… no, as if he’d created such a dimension and had been trapped there. Its evil was of his own making, yet he’d meant no evil; he had tried to achieve something good. He must not stop trying, though he knew he would be punished for it by this unbearable deprivation of all rational connection to the universe he knew, to the form of life he knew… .
    There were no concrete images in the nightmare itself, but just before waking he saw the mutant—not an adult mutant such as he’d killed in the mountains, but a hideous mutant child. Its body was like that of a human child just able to walk, but it was not human. It was mindless. There was only emptiness behind its eyes. Noren came to himself with long gasps, not sure if he’d been sobbing or retching. By the Star , he thought, not again! I can’t take it again . . . .
    Gradually his head cleared. He sat up, finding himself as always in his own quarters, his own bed, knowing that many weeks had passed since his first waking from this agony. Knowing, too, that more weeks—perhaps years—might go by before he’d be free of it, if indeed he ever would be. He wondered how long his courage would last.
    It was not a recollection of anything in the controlled dreams. Those had been all right: terrible at times, of course, but also uplifting. Though he’d shared depths of the First Scholar’s feelings that surpassed anything in the edited versions, the heights, too, had been correspondingly more intense. He had begun to grasp what it meant to come to terms with depression and fear that couldn’t be banished, evil that was part of a world from which no escape existed. He’d felt the rising of a faith that was more than escape, and pondering it, he knew why the full version of the recording was considered worth going through. It would be a long time, he realized, before he could consciously understand all he had learned from the First Scholar.
    About the controlled dreams he had no regrets, except for disappointment at the fact that they’d indeed contained no additional ideas on the subject of genetic damage. But the ensuing nightmare was another matter.
    Even Stefred was puzzled. It wasn’t the kind of problem he’d anticipated; and at first, during the long, deep follow-up discussions they’d had after the completion of the machine-induced dream sequence, he had said Noren had reacted remarkably well to the ordeal. There had been no signs of trouble then. Even the inexplicable guilt feelings of the First Scholar’s later years—which Noren perceived less as remorse than as a grief too dark and too personal for any dreamer’s comprehension—had not been unduly disturbing.
    He had gone back to his own quarters, resigned to a return to