The Doors Of The Universe by Sylvia Engdahl Page A

in. The Founders had been wise to provide only one kind of food. They had also been wise, perhaps, not to encourage even the Scholars to learn that if it were not for the limitation imposed by the machines’ durability span—which had been calculated on the basis of necessary population increase—more variety would be possible.
    The Founders had made just one practical use of genetic knowledge: they had developed the work-beasts. Everyone knew that, of course; even the villagers said that the work-beasts had been created by the Scholars at the time of the Founding. It was one of the notions he had scorned during his boyhood, but from the dreams of his enlightenment as a Scholar candidate, he had learned to his astonishment that it was true. Animal embryos had been brought from the Six Worlds and had been genetically altered so that they could eat native vegetation and drink from streams. They were essential to the villagers as beasts of burden as well as for hides, tallow and bone… what a pity that there wasn’t a way to make the meat usable, too. But genetic alteration couldn’t accomplish that. Work-beast flesh, like any creature’s, contained chemical traces of the food and water that had nourished it; the High Law decreed that it must be burned or buried. You couldn’t deal with the damaging substance in the soil and water by biological modification of what people consumed. The problem—the biological problem—was not in the food sources, but in people themselves… .
    Noren sat upright, his heart pounding. Why wasn’t it possible to make biological modifications to people ?
    It was all too possible in nature. That was the trouble. The mutants were biologically changed. They ate native vegetation and drank from streams as work-beasts did; what had been accomplished with the work-beasts was called controlled mutation. It had been detrimental to their intelligence, not as seriously as in the case of the mutants descended from humans, since the beasts hadn’t been very intelligent to begin with, but a similar type of brain damage had been involved. Only it needn’t have been . He had studied the research done by the Founders, and he knew—with hindsight it had been recognized that the brain damage could have been avoided. The world had needed strong work-beasts, fast, more than it had needed smart ones. The researchers had been working against time and they had not tried to deal with the complexities of the genes that regulated brain development. Later on, they could not retrace their steps, for the inherited brain damage was irreversible.
    But if that damage had been needless, if it could be averted if controlled mutation were done in the right way, why couldn’t mutation in people also be controlled? Biologically, genetically, people were animals… .
    He fumbled for the lamp, suddenly unable to bear the darkness. He knew he would not sleep until he had discovered the answer.
    There must be an answer, of course. The Founders were not stupid; they could scarcely have failed to perceive what he had just perceived. They would hardly have established a system they loathed, a caste system they knew to be evil, if there had been any alternate means of human survival—they had maintained over and over again that they would not. They’d experienced heartbreak during their decision and its implementation. The factors in the decision had been considered in full and painful detail by the First Scholar, who had suffered most agonizingly over it. Noren knew, beyond any possible question, that the First Scholar would not have done the things he did if there had been any choice. Nor would he have overlooked any conceivable future way of saving humanity from extinction.
    But it was surely very strange that his recorded memories hadn’t included any regret about whatever it was that precluded controlled genetic alteration of humans.
    Noren pulled on his clothes, his hands shaking, and took a small lantern; it was so