Stewards of the Flame (37 page)

“Oh, that’s right,” Valerie agreed. But now her underlying thought came through:
Does it really matter? I don’t think anything matters much anymore. . . .

Carla knew enough about psychiatry to realize that this was a classic symptom of major depression. Valerie had not really forgotten her Ritual pledges; she was simply incapable, in her present state, of seeing significance in them or in anything else. Somehow, she had to be jolted out of it. That was precisely what electroshock was alleged to do, albeit at far too high a cost to be justifiable. If only it were possible to consult Peter . . . but he had left early today and wouldn’t be back until morning. By morning, it might be too late.

Carla’s mind whirled. The hysterectomy . . . what if Valerie talked about
that
? Her surgical scar would still be evident; though Peter or Kira could have erased it after her release, it had to be visible during future checkups. If Valerie, disoriented, mentioned that she hadn’t really had a uterine tumor, someone might look at the MRI scan. Then there would be hell to pay. What possible conclusion could the authorities draw other than that hacking had been done?

They would see no motive for it. But they would try to find one. They would investigate everyone who had access to the database, herself included. And they would press Valerie for information. The hypnotic protection Peter had given her wouldn’t hold up against direct questioning. If she was drugged with truth serum, she would talk, and there would be no hope for the Group to remain hidden; but even if she wasn’t, she might say enough to doom those directly involved.

Like Susan Gerrold, the surgeon who had operated. They would call her in. And she would be trapped—there was just no explanation she could give for having operated on a woman whose MRI showed no abnormalities. To get to the bottom of it, they might use truth serum on
her
.

That risk could not be allowed to remain, Carla realized. Better a mysteriously-lost MRI than conclusive evidence against Susan. Her mouse poised over the exit icon, she prepared to log off her own ID and log back on again with the backdoor password she used for hacking.

The door opened and the intake nurse appeared. “You can go back to the front desk now, Carla,” she said. “I’ll take over.”

At the front desk there were too many people around; she could not hack there, nor would she have an excuse for looking at Valerie’s chart—the points from which it had been accessed under legal IDs could be traced. Hastily Carla brought up a file directory window, located the MRI image, and hit Delete.

“What are you doing there?” demanded the nurse. “This patient’s no longer one of Dr. Kelstrom’s, so you’re not authorized to add notes.”

“Just entering the time of readmission,” Carla replied evenly, doing so. There hadn’t been time to switch IDs. Which meant that the deletion of the MRI would be recorded under her own ID until such time as she could get back on in private and repair the log entry.

In all years she’d been hacking, she had never before done anything illegal under her own ID.

And she had accomplished nothing beyond protecting Susan. There was still the much larger danger of what Valerie might reveal. There had to be a way to make her grasp what could happen to the Group if she wasn’t careful! She was devoted to Peter and would never bring harm to him while she had free choice. . . .

Telepathy might do it, if she could get through to her. Even if Valerie wasn’t responsive, she had been taught to unconsciously absorb the telepathic projections of her instructors. That was a large part of Peter’s success with patients. Carla didn’t have the gift he and Kira did, nor had she received instructor’s training. But her emotion now might be strong enough to override Valerie’s withdrawal.

They would have to be in the same room, and she must be sure no doctor would walk in on them. Carla called up the staff schedule. God, they’d assigned her to Dr. Warick, the department head! Peter despised Warick, who not only favored aggressive treatment methods, but was heavily involved in Hospital politics. For Valerie to be examined personally by him was the worst thing that could happen. Warick would be on the defensive, angry because a bipolar patient had slipped out of Psych’s clutches and had been allowed to relapse. He would want to know why. And he would want to gain credit in the eyes of the Administration for restoring her to health, which by his definition, meant replacing any vestige of disturbance in her mind with the compliant, unthinking serenity of a zombie.

However, it was late in the day and Warick would not see Valerie until tomorrow. She would be locked in a room alone, terrifyingly alone, for the night. Possibly Peter could find some way for her to escape before morning, despite the fact that escape from the psych ward had always been deemed physically impossible. In any case, Carla saw with relief, she would be able to visit Valerie uninterrupted. Like other staff personnel, she knew the keypad code for the rooms in the main ward, although it wouldn’t get her past the security of the locked ward where violent criminals were kept.

She waited until the end of her workday, knowing that in the confusion of the shift change nobody was likely to notice who belonged where in the maze of corridors. Then she moved fast. There was a master chart showing patients’ room numbers; Valerie’s was at the far end of a hall. Closing the door quickly behind her, she found the woman huddled on the bed, with her knees drawn up and her face buried in her hands.
Valerie?
Carla probed.
It’s just me, Carla. I’m Peter’s friend, you know. . . .

“Is Peter coming?” Valerie whispered, raising her head.

“He won’t be able to come. Peter is in danger, Valerie. You have to help him.”

“Me? I can’t—I’m no good at anything. He’d be better off if he’d never tried to cure me.”

The element of truth in this made it all the more tragic. Low self-esteem was another symptom of depression; Carla knew better than to argue. But she saw that she had struck the right note. Peter’s welfare was the one thing Valerie still cared about, the one concern that could rouse her out of her apathy.
Valerie, you have to remember!
she insisted, throwing all the force of her own turmoil, her own fear, into the projection.
Remember the Ritual, your hand touching Peter’s and not being burned, remember what you promised then. . . .
Though Ian had presided at Valerie’s Ritual, Peter had been her sponsor. It was likely that she was attracted to him—many of the young, unattached members were, although he tried to discourage that.

What can I do to help when I’m locked in here?
Valerie ventured.

Remember your pledge to keep the Group secret! If you let anyone find out about that secret, Peter will be arrested . . . he might even die.

I don’t want him to die!

No, of course you don’t. So you must keep his secret, the secret of all of us who are his friends. Most of the other doctors aren’t his friends. Promise me, Valerie, that you won’t tell the other doctors anything about Peter.

I promise. . . .

And you won’t even tell them his name. No matter what happens, you won’t mention Peter’s name.

Valerie nodded.
I won’t say his name.
Carla hoped she would hold to that.

~
 
40
 
~

As Jesse waited for Carla to get home from work, apprehension rose in him. She was late. She had never been late before without calling. He could not help remembering what the long-term Group members seemed not to mind: they were in danger, all of them, always. And especially Carla, because of the hacking she did.

When she came in, one look at her face told him his fears weren’t groundless.

He took her in his arms, sharing thought without words. They no longer needed sex for their minds to be open to each other when in the grip of strong emotion. Carla didn’t attempt to hide anything from him. He knew, with despair, that the event he had dreaded—that they had all dreaded without letting themselves believe it could happen—had finally caught up with them. They were on the verge of exposure. By tomorrow, the Group’s existence might be known to the authorities.

And if not tomorrow, then some day in the not-too-distant future. Whether Valerie was given truth serum or merely subjected to repeated electroshock, no promise she had made would have any bearing on the outcome.

After a few minutes Carla broke away. “I have to warn Peter,” she said.

She used the Group’s emergency password, alerting Peter to circumstances worse than she could reveal on the phone. After talking to him she was more scared than ever. Peter, she said, had understood the message, but hadn’t implied that he would take action beyond informing the other Council members. That meant he didn’t know of any action he could take. If he’d had a backup plan, he would have said something reassuring.

They waited. As a staff doctor, Peter could call up Valerie’s chart remotely; he would know if anything happened during the night. It wouldn’t, of course. Nothing would happen until morning, when he was on site, and then it might happen all too quickly. Jesse realized, somewhat to his surprise, that Carla loved Peter—as a brother, to be sure, but nevertheless as deeply as she had loved Ramón. He, too, cared about Peter. He could not bear the thought of his being arrested. But that thought was obscured by his overwhelming fear for Carla.

She had hacked Valerie’s chart using her own ID. If there was an investigation of the discrepancies, that would be detected. It would be unsafe, she said, to repair the log remotely. She had never hacked the database from her apartment because a record of unauthorized outside transmissions would be a sure tip-off that hacking was going on. She couldn’t go to Peter’s apartment, which he had left to consult Ian; nor could she go back to the Hospital without arousing suspicion. There might be opportunity tomorrow. Then again, by tomorrow it might not matter.

Abruptly she turned pale and ran to the bathroom. Jesse heard her being sick, heard the toilet flush repeatedly. He had never seen her like this; after all, Carla knew from her Group training how to deal with the physical effects of fear. Normally she was imperturbable. Was there something she had not told him? he wondered. His own dread grew; he was dizzy with it, sensing her agony even through the closed door. Finally, when he believed he could endure it no longer, she came back to him, wordlessly communicating the horror that had suddenly struck her.
What if Valerie does keep the secret, yet they arrest me for hacking and I’m examined by Warick because of the connection with her case . . . what if I’m given truth serum and Peter is found out through me?

Jesse held her close, soothing her as best he could. There really wasn’t any answer to that. The risk had always existed; every one them must have known underneath that they might someday involuntarily betray each other. Peter certainly had known it, and yet in the effort to forestall trouble he had rashly created a situation with more potential for betrayal than usual.

“Why did Peter ever think the surgery scheme would work?” he burst out . “I mean, it must have been obvious there was a risk of Valerie being picked up again.”

“Yes, but if she’d been normal at the time—not in a depressive phase—they’d only have questioned her. And Peter . . . he just didn’t want to believe she wasn’t yet cured. He’d promised her that she wouldn’t receive more shock treatment.”

“Yet the ruse was based on the fear that she might be treated.”

“That was Valerie’s fear, not Peter’s, except for his outrage at the whole idea of electroshock. He can’t judge objectively when that’s involved, and in any case he knew she couldn’t handle the thought of being taken back to Psych.”

“Aren’t all of us pledged to face our fears?”

“Well, but she was his patient, Jesse, not someone who joined us from strength.”

Kira had been right, Jesse thought—Peter expected much from his followers, but if they weren’t able to live up to those expectations, his empathy was so strong that it overrode all other considerations. He was torn between his commitment to advance humankind and the compassion that had led him to become a doctor. How could he survive in a world like this, where his attempts to help people only put him in danger?

Perhaps he couldn’t.

They didn’t talk much more. There was nothing left to say. Eventually they went to bed and attempted to sleep. So far Jesse hadn’t given thought to his own possible fate. Beside Carla’s and Peter’s, it hadn’t seemed to matter. He himself had not done anything illegal yet. Unless they rounded up the whole Group, the worst that could happen to him was that he’d be retreated for alcoholism. But how could he stand it if Carla was drugged and punished? How could
she
endure if Peter, like her husband, was put into stasis?

In the morning she got up and mechanically pulled on her clothes. She had to go to work, of course, to cover her hacking tracks if for no other reason. They lingered over their kiss before she left, agonizingly aware that it might be a long while before they kissed again.

After calling Kira to break his appointment for visiting the healing house, he settled on the couch, prepared for a long day with nothing to do but wait and worry.

Barely an hour later, Carla returned. “Jesse,” she said quickly, “It’s okay. Peter’s safe, and so am I. He told me to take a sick day.” But she wasn’t smiling.

Slowly Jesse asked, “How much longer will you be safe?”

“From now on, unless something else happens. I fixed the data entry log, and the missing MRI scan will never be noticed. Valerie’s file is—closed. Closed for good.”

Seeing that it was hard for her to speak, Jesse held back his questions. Finally Carla added wearily, “Valerie killed herself last night. She slit her wrists.”

“Oh, my God. Was she
that
depressed, or was it from fear?”

“Both, partly, Peter thinks. But it was more than that. She left a note. It said ‘They’re going to shock me again, and I don’t want him to die.’”