The Doors Of The Universe by Sylvia Engdahl Page B

late that the corridor lamps had been turned off. Outside, only the lights at the tower pinnacles still burned. He strode across the courtyard to the Hall of Scholars. The computers could tell him what he needed to know. They preserved all knowledge, and the answers he now sought had once been known. They must have been.
    He looked up at the dazzling tower lights and the faint stars that showed between them. Off to his left was the red-gold glow of Little Moon, now rising. As bright as Little Moon , said the Prophecy; the Mother Star, when it appeared in the sky, would outshine any other. He would not live to see that, but his people must… his descendants must. Talyra had been right, he knew—he must eventually have other children. He did not feel he would want love again, not for itself, but he did want to believe that his offspring would live after him. She’d understood that, and her last thought for him had been to send word that she understood.
    The towers… the City… to him they had always been a symbol. Of the future. Of the knowledge he craved. Outside, as a heretic, he’d gazed at them with more longing than he could bear. Had he offered his life for conviction’s sake alone, or only because without access to knowledge it had meant little to him? City confinement had been no more a hardship for him than separation from his family had. In his very arrest he’d had nothing to lose, though he’d believed himself soon to die. Had it been right to accept priesthood when he’d made no real sacrifice?
    Approaching the computer room, he knew again that it had been. The essence of priesthood, for him at least, was guardianship of knowledge and extension of it—only by that means could knowledge ultimately be made free to all people. Only through its use could metal become available. Yes, that aim might fail, probably would fail; in the end everything would be lost… but the human race must die striving for life.
    Suppose, just suppose, it had been possible to alter humans genetically so that the species need not die. Noren realized, with his hand poised above a console keyboard, that he did not want to crush this fantasy yet. The replies to his questions were going to crush it. But suppose that option had been open to the Founders—the Prophecy’s promises would already have been fulfilled! He would be living in the era all Scholars wished to see. The City would long since have been thrown open, knowledge and machines would be available to everyone… .
    Or would they?
    No! There would be no more metal than there already was. Its synthesization wouldn’t have been achieved, and in fact it wouldn’t need to be achieved—people wouldn’t even have kept working toward it. If people could drink unpurified water and eat plants grown in untreated soil, they could survive without metal, without machines!
    But the knowledge in the computers could not.
    Computers depended on metal parts and on a supply of nuclear power. The knowledge in them could not be accessed without those essentials. If the power failed, if the electronically stored data could never again be retrieved, then that knowledge would be lost. The Founders had known this; it had been one of their main reasons for sealing the City, for if the knowledge were to be lost, the machines essential to survival would be lost too, along with any chance of ever obtaining the metal for more machines.
    It was a circle. If it was broken, humanity would die. Yet if it had been broken in another way, a way that had enabled humans to live without the City… then the City would no longer exist. He would be living the Stone Age life of the villagers, and without metal resources, without people trained to preserve even the remnants of a metal-based technology, there would be no possibility of regaining such a technology in the future.
    The universe would be closed to his race. Forever.
    The accumulated knowledge of the Six Worlds would be lost forever.
    And the First