Sylvia Engdahl - Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains

From the reviews of Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains

Engdahl has carefully worked out the social structure and ecology of a scientific society that has been transferred to a planet without metals. Whats more, she wrestles with deeply adult problems of an apparently meaningless universe and of a peoples right to know facts that may destroy everything they hold dear. Psychology Today

Introspective readers will identify with Noren and his doubts and sense of despair while the general science fiction buff will appreciate the further experiences of Noren within the credibly developed society on a planet unlike Earth. Booklist

Offers depth and provocative ideas for the mature reader who wants more than just action. Bulletin of the Center for Childrens Books

The well-developed characters will interest many young adolescents whose thoughts and questionings are similar to Norens. School Library Journal

In a tribute to the intelligence of teenagers the author asks some thought-provoking questions.... The ideas of power, heresy, self-knowledge, and acceptance are thoroughly examined in a book that is a testimony to the human spirit. News-Gazette, Martinez CA

Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains

(Children of the Star, Book Two)

by

Sylvia Engdahl

Ad Stellae Books, 2010

Copyright 1973, 2000 by Sylvia Louise Engdahl

All rights reserved. For information contact sle@sylviaengdahl.com. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be resold, given away, or altered.

This is the second book of a trilogy. It is preceded by This Star Shall Abide and followed by The Doors of the Universe . It can be read independently, although doing so will eliminate the suspense of the first book.

Atheneum edition (hardcover) published in 1973

Meisha Merlin edition (with minor updating) published in 2000 in the single-volume Children of the Star trilogy

More information available at www.adstellaebooks.com

Author website: www.sylviaengdahl.com

Cover photo by Ryan Pike / 123RF

...The land was barren, and brought forth neither food nor pure water, nor was there any metal; and no one lived upon it until the Founding. And on the day of the Founding humankind came out of the sky from the Mother Star, which is our source. But the land alone could not give us life. So the Scholars came to bless it, that it might be quickened: they built the City; and they called down from the sky Power and Machines; and they made the High Law lest we forget our origin, grow neglectful of our bounden duties, and thereby perish. Knowledge shall be kept safe within the City; it shall be held in trust until the Mother Star itself becomes visible to us. For though the Star is now beyond our seeing, it will not always be so....

There shall come a time of great exultation, when the doors of the universe shall be thrown open and everyone shall rejoice. And at that time, when the Mother Star appears in the sky, the ancient knowledge shall be free to all people, and shall be spread forth over the whole earth. And Cities shall rise beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, and shall have Power, and Machines; and the Scholars will no longer be their guardians. For the Mother Star is our source and our destiny, the wellspring of our heritage; and the spirit of this Star shall abide forever in our hearts, and in those of our children, and our childrens children, even unto countless generations. It is our guide and protector, without which we could not survive; it is our lifes bulwark. And so long as we believe in it, no force can destroy us, though the heavens themselves be consumed! Through the time of waiting we will follow the Law; but its mysteries will be made plain when the Star appears, and the children of the Star will find their own wisdom and choose their own Law. from the Book of the Prophecy

Chapter One

The room was high in one of the Citys towers. Its window viewed a vast panorama of grain fields dappling gray-purple wilderness, and of more wilderness beyond: a vista rimmed by the jagged yellow ridges of the Tomorrow Mountains. Noren was not looking at the view, however. His back to it, he sat nervously on the edge of a low couch, eyeing the closed-circuit video built into the opposite wall and thinking of the heavy responsibility that soon would fall to him. He was too young and unskilled to conduct an interview so crucial as the one to come; he had been told that franklystill it was deemed best that he be entrusted with it. Hed accepted the job gladly, despite his inexperience. Only now, with the time at hand, had he begun to feel other misgivings.

The screen before him showed the ceremony taking place outside the City, on the wide stone platform before the Gates. It was a public recantation. The robes of the Scholars were brilliant blue against the white pavement, a sharp contrast to the green uniforms of the Technicians and the mud-stained gray garment of the prisoner whom they guarded. The crowd in the plaza was not visible, being behind the camera, but the audio picked up hostile murmurs. The sentencing was over and the people were beginning to jeer again, though they would throw no actual dirt in the Scholars presence; it would not be seemly, for Scholars were High Priests and were revered.

The prisoner, Brek, knelt before the Scholars, his hands bound behind him. His hair had been cropped short, a sign of penitence and shame, but there was neither penitence nor shame in his bearing; he held his head high. Through the ordeals of the ceremony, his spirit had not faltered. The spectators might think that hed been broken, but it was not true. On the contrary, Brek had just passed the final test of indomitability.

Norens heart warmed with sympathy and admiration. It took courage to do what Brek was doing. He was a heretic: he had maintained that it was wrong for the Scholars to keep their knowledge secret and that the sacred Prophecy in which the villagers and Technicians believed was a fraud, a foolish story invented to forestall rebellion against the priest castes supremacy. Hed refused to recant despite his assumption that refusal was punishable by death. Yet now he was recanting after all, voluntarily denying most of his former convictions, though it meant exposing himself not only to the contempt of believers, but to the abuse and scorn of fellow-rebels who would think that he had sold out.

Noren understood how hard an act that was; he had recanted himself less than a year before.

Loud music burst forth, drowning the noise of the crowd, as the attending Scholars, in solemn procession, left the platform. Noren switched off the screen; Brek had been surrounded by a protective cordon of Technicians and was no longer in sight. A few minutes later the door of the room slid open and the Scholar Stefred, Chief Inquisitor, stood in the archway, still clad in his ceremonial robe. Unfastened, it flapped open to reveal plain beige clothing like Norens own. Breks on his way up here, he said. Ill leave you alone with him; you can help him more than I can at this point. Set his mind at ease, Noren.

Noren nodded. Ill try. He must have caught the symbolism of what was happening to him out there; he took it well.

Very well indeed, and it was a greater triumph for him than for you; he lacks your natural self-confidence. But as you know, the next steps difficult, and Brek has suffered more than you did. You had nothing in your past life to feel guilty about.

Neither does he.

No, but he thinks he does, and I couldnt let him know otherwise. In the early stages of his inquisition I had to play on it. Stefred sighed, troubled. I was ruthless with Brek. I manipulated him more cruelly than I do most heretics; thats necessary in the case of a Technician. I wouldnt have done it if I hadnt been sure of him, and even surer of you. How you handle the next few days will determine whether it leaves lasting scars.