Stewards of the Flame (15 page)

Again Jesse nodded. The sooner he could learn what was really going on here, the better.

“There’ll be pressure,” Peter went on, “but I think you’re up to it. Okay, Jess?”

“Okay.” Then, seeing no reason to wait, he asked directly, “Will I be seeing Carla?”

“Yes.” Peter hesitated. “Jess, you may feel it’s none of my business, but am I right in believing you want a serious relationship with Carla?”

“I guess it was obvious.”

“To me it was, so I’m obliged to speak of it. Carla is a very dear friend, and I don’t want to see her hurt more than is necessary.”

“God, Peter, I’d never hurt her—except, I suppose, if I eventually leave this world.”

“Not just that,” Peter said. “There are . . . factors you’re not aware of. You may sometimes hurt her without meaning to, and she may hurt you. If you’re not sure you want a relationship on those terms, the time to back off is now.”

Jesse frowned. “It’s up to her, isn’t it?”

“Of course. But she is fully informed, and you’re not. If she chooses to be involved emotionally, she’ll do it knowing there’ll be problems, and she’ll expect you to stick by her in spite of them.”

“I don’t suppose you can be more specific.”

“Not right now,” Peter said. “When you’re ready to understand, I will have to be. That’s part of what goes with being the professional therapist here.”

“You’re speaking professionally, then, not just as a friend.”

Peter nodded. “It’s a matter of your adjustment to our ways. Newcomers find some of them . . . disturbing. Don’t worry now, but never hesitate to come to me. Am I making myself clear?”

After a short pause Jesse said, “Yes.” It had been plain from the beginning that the sexual customs of the Group were somewhat out of the ordinary. Was that among the things he’d been warned would confuse him—
sex
? To the extent of needing to consult a therapist?

“One more thing,” Peter added in a low voice as they went on into the common room. “Don’t eat anything yet. I know you’re hungry, but stick to water for now.”

Nearly a dozen people were gathered near a spread buffet table. All eyes were on him, Jesse saw to his dismay. Peter threw his arm around Jesse’s shoulders, needing no words to convey what they’d obviously been waiting to know. Nor did the others need words—the strange sense of intimacy that had so impressed him during the past days was magnified tenfold. The air seemed charged with it.

A slender, white-haired woman, the first older person he’d seen, clasped his hand. “Welcome, Jesse,” she said, and then hugged him. Somehow it seemed natural and right, as if she were family.

“This is Kira Tarinov,” said Peter. “She’s a Council member, and she’s in charge when I’m not here.”

Others came forward, were introduced, embraced him in turn. Gradually Jesse became aware that these strangers
were
family, more in tune with him now than his own had ever been. He’d felt close to crewmates on shipboard sometimes, but never like this. Never in a way that made him feel the connection would be lasting.

A bearded man approached him, accompanied by a blonde named Michelle. “Jesse! I—I’m so happy to see you looking great,” she said, gripping his hand tightly. Her eyes glistened.

“Greg and Michelle were in the control booth,” Peter said. “Michelle’s only part way through instructor’s training. I wouldn’t have brought her in if there’d been anybody else available last night who knew the software. I spent half the time you were asleep consoling her.”

Surprised, Jesse said, “I had the impression you people are used to this sort of thing. If you do it to everyone—”

“Yes, but we don’t get seasoned Fleet officers, Jess. We rarely see anyone we have to start at high intensities. The average citizen of this world panics on green. It’s psychologically equivalent; the brain response, which we call a mind-pattern, is the same—but the effects aren’t. The pain is not really bad at that point. Typically we reduce people to tears, not screams. I meant it when I said you gave me a hell of a hard time.”

“Believe him,” Greg said. “He’s a gifted telepath; he felt what you felt,
all
of it. The sensor data doesn’t show everything.”

Speechless, Jesse could only stand and gape.

“Peter said it would turn out all right, but I couldn’t stop doubting,” Michelle told him. “With me, it took five feedback sessions to get to red.”

“But why, if the psychology works with less pain than that—”

“It has to be maximized for the breakthrough,” Peter said, “the moment in which you grasp the skill of not suffering. Such powers don’t emerge without a major shock to the mind.”

“There’s a mind-pattern you haven’t seen yet,” Greg added. “You have to be pushed into it. After the first time, it’s easier. Once you gain full volitional control, that equips you to handle any level of pain, in yourself and ultimately in others.”

“Equips
me
? Are you saying that I, personally, will be able to ease suffering in other people?”

“Oh, yes. There are degrees of talent; we can’t yet tell how much you have. At the least, you’ll be fit to assist in emergencies.”

“But—but how can
my
mind-patterns affect anyone else?” Jesse protested, puzzled. “It would have to be their own brains controlling their perceptions—” This logical flaw had existed in what Peter had told him earlier, though he’d been in no condition to spot it then. Hearing that Carla could have eased his pain, he had been quick to believe—but that was crazy. There was no way it could happen, no mechanism for it.

Yet there had been a moment, in the Hospital, just after he’d drunk the brandy. She had touched his hand. The effect of the drug had hit him, he’d been in agony—and then for an instant before he passed out, the pain had receded.

Was Carla, too, a telepath? Was ESP what enabled them to ease pain in people who lacked their skills? No, that didn’t fit. He himself had no such weird gift, would certainly not want it. . . .

They moved to the floor cushions where people were settling, plates and glasses in hand; one was given to him before he could refuse. Though shaky with hunger, Jesse set it down beside him. Peter’s instructions, he’d found, were never without purpose.

No one had answered his question. Wanting to change the subject, he said, “There’s a lot more I’ve been wondering. Such as how you get away with hiding people the authorities want kept in the Hospital—even dead people. I mean, doesn’t anybody miss them? And what about the daily telemetry from their bathrooms?”

“The files are all electronic,” Greg answered. “And according to the Net, dead or dying people we’ve helped are in the stasis vaults. Nobody’s going to go in and visually check.”

“But how can the Net— Oh. Hacking, you mean.”

“Of course. Carla’s one of our experts.”

“She’ll enter fake telemetry data for you, since you’ll be here longer than the legal maximum without transmission,” Peter told him. “She doctors it on a regular basis for members who have conditions they don’t want treated.”

“That’s why she works in the Hospital as a data technician,” Michelle explained. “Actually she’s a talented programmer—she wrote some of our neurofeedback software.”

Well, Jesse thought, that explained the mystery of why an intelligent woman like Carla hadn’t sought a better job. But the danger . . . “What would happen if she got caught?” he asked.

“She’d be medicated for mental illness—be hospitalized awhile, then on probation for life—and her inherited income would be confiscated.”

“Provided her examination was handled by Peter,” Greg added. “Any other doctor might give her truth serum, and then our whole operation would be exposed. That’s why none of us with illegal city activities can let it be known that we’re Peter’s friends. He wouldn’t be allowed to treat a criminal he knew personally; it would be conflict of interest.”

“But you’re Carla’s supervisor at work,” Jesse protested to Peter.

“Yes, so I treat her as a mere employee when outsiders are around to overhear. Not that I’m expecting trouble on account of her hacking. There’s a low level of security here; this world doesn’t have hackers who do it for thrills, as Earth still does. And the reason
we
do it wouldn’t occur to the authorities.”

“I thought there were kids into hacking on every world. Just because some kids are rebels.”

“You’re forgetting the mandatory health checks in this colony,” Kira said. “They begin at birth, and medication takes care of the potential troublemakers.”

“Psychoactive drugs. By force.” Jesse cringed.

“Force really isn’t needed. Parents welcome the advice of the medical authorities. They want their children to have the best possible care. Forced drugging of kids isn’t new, you know—it’s been done on Earth ever since such drugs were developed. It’s just more systematic here.”

“How did you people escape it, then?”

“Most of us weren’t born rebels,” Michelle told him. “We came into the Group for other reasons.”

“Reasons?” Jesse looked around at them, puzzled.

“Jesse isn’t yet aware of the reasons,” said Kira. “His route to us has been the reverse of the usual one. I’m told he had cause to hate the Hospital to start with. He’s rebelling, not seeking, so far.”

Seeking what? he wondered. These people all seemed to
have
something, something he still couldn’t define. It was more than the ability to control their perception of pain. And it was not something mere training was likely to give him.

~
 
17
 
~

“Peter,” Kira said as Peter sat down, “I visited Ian this week, as you asked me to. He thinks he can make the flight once more. But personally, I am not so sure. It will soon be time for us to move him to a hospice.”

Peter’s eyes darkened. “Not yet! Not just when—” He broke off, bowing his head.

“Death comes when it comes, Peter.”

“Surely, if that’s imminent, he would rather be here. He loves the Lodge. He built it.” To Jesse, Peter explained, “Ian Maclairn is our founder, the head of our Council. He is a very old man now and hasn’t long to live. We will be with him, of course, at the end.”

“It’s not a matter of where he’d rather die,” Kira said sadly. “It now depends on whether he’s strong enough for the journey. I think not. We must face the fact what comes home to us here will be his body—and even that may not be easy to arrange.”

“Kira! To fail in that would be unthinkable—”

Everyone else stopped talking, stopped eating. It was very quiet. Jesse sensed their dismay as plainly as, before, he’d sensed their elation. The Group’s founder, he thought, near death—in danger, perhaps, of being found by an ambulance before they could retrieve his body for burial? Of ending up in the stasis vaults, the symbol of all they abhorred?

To fill the silence Michelle said, “Peter was hoping you could meet Ian. We have a ceremony of commitment for new people, at which he’s normally present.”

“Is that the formal initiation?”

“Well, we don’t use that term,” Greg said. “It’s been devalued by silly connotations. Every occult or pseudo-occult organization for centuries has had an initiation, along with a lot of mere social groups. Ours is the real thing.”

“What do you mean by real?” Jesse asked, curious.

“A rite of true transformation. Actually we have two. What you’ve just been through was an initiatory rite in the classic anthropological sense of the word: you felt you were being destroyed and awoke to new life. The Ritual’s a more formal occasion. We don’t use the metaphors traditional rites on Earth did; metaphor wouldn’t work here, as on this planet we lack the long-established psychic environment that would unconsciously validate it for us. But the ceremony Ian created for us serves the same purpose. Words, symbolism—all very uplifting. The climax is a bit of a shocker, but plenty of Group members will be on hand to support you.”

“Metaphors? Psychic environment? You’ve lost me,” Jesse admitted. “What has that got to do with what planet we’re on?”

“Have you ever wondered why Earth’s religious and spiritual groups don’t thrive on other worlds, except for the few they colonize themselves?” Michelle asked.

“I assume it’s because people who choose to emigrate aren’t inclined that way, and don’t teach their kids to be. They’re too aware of scientific facts to cling to incompatible superstition.”

“No,” said Greg. “The human impulse toward spirituality is universal and the proportion of people strongly drawn to it is the same everywhere. What the rest call superstition is something else entirely—it is metaphor, a way of expressing abstract, inexplicable ideas in concrete terms. Whether metaphors are believed literally or not doesn’t matter. Even in primitive societies—and certainly in modern ones—adherents of traditional religions don’t all believe in the literal existence of gods or goddesses, for instance. Yet the language they use, in and out of ritual, has deep meaning for them.”

“Well, that’s always puzzled me. Long before interstellar travel existed, nearly everybody knew enough about the universe to write off myths based on ancient descriptions of it. Yet my sister hung out with people who talked about Earth, and particular locations on Earth, being sacred in some mystical way. Some of them even believed in astrology, as if the position of stars relative to one planet could influence individual lives when people are being born on dozens of worlds, not to mention starships. I used to argue with her about it, but she couldn’t come up with answers that made sense, any more than Christian fundamentalists could.”

“It’s not a matter for logical argument, Jesse,” Michelle said. “Metaphorical statements stand for concepts, not facts, and the underlying concepts they reflect are often true. Specific metaphors are associated with those concepts through unconscious transmission from the minds of thousands, often millions, of people, one generation to the next, over long periods of time.”

“How can transmission of concepts be unconscious?”

“Telepathically, of course. Most telepathy is unconscious, after all.”