Stewards of the Flame (52 page)

The five members took places before the fire, as equals rather than in the normal Ritual roles. There was already such heightened emotion among them, and among the onlookers, that no lengthy prelude would be needed. The upbeat Ritual music, amplified from the Lodge porch by remote control, was sufficient. Jesse felt himself slipping into altered consciousness, letting himself be overwhelmed by the feelings this day had stirred. Peter was right, he thought dreamily. This was a good time to do this. This was the climax they all needed.

Carla, in the front row of watchers, met his eyes and then his mind. She had recovered her balance and felt no fear for him, only love and pride. Peter, noticing, went to her and said, “Your strength too is needed, Carla. Will you be our torchbearer?”

She nodded assent, taking the unlit torch from him, and stepped forward, plunging it into the fire and then holding it steady, extended at waist level. Peter began the Ritual words: “Unfaced fear is the destroyer. We will acknowledge fear and accept it, we will go past it and live free. . . .”

The telepathic support of the onlookers was strong, tangible; Jesse found himself more sensitive to such projection than in the past. Perhaps, he now realized, he’d unconsciously perceived such support that last day in the Hospital, after he’d awakened from the dream. He knew that nothing could harm him while it continued. Into his mind came a vision of Ian . . . Ian, who had come to him telepathically when he most needed courage. Who had trusted him enough to die horribly so that he, Jesse, could take the Group to a new world. Ian: wise, unafraid, smiling—this vision was shared among them all. Each of them cherished the memory of casting aside fear when called on by Ian to touch fire. He too had done so with Ian, in the dream—just as he’d done it with Peter in reality and would now do it again. . . .

“. . . We are stewards of a flame that will illuminate future generations. And we now seal our commitment with the symbol of the mind’s power, which is fire.” Peter thrust his hand into the flame before them. Almost simultaneously, the others followed: Kira, Hari, Reiko and finally Jesse himself. The moment was removed from time, would hold for eternity, although in fact less than thirty seconds passed before the torch dropped and he was staring at his unburned fingers.

A collective sigh rose from the assembled people as they extinguished the candle flames they too had touched. The music faded. Friends crowded around Jesse again, congratulating him, questioning him about the trip to come. It was a long time before they drifted away. Alone on the dark beach with Carla, he looked up at the stars. He wondered to which of them he was heading.

Part Six

~
 
57
 
~

Jesse took Carla’s hand and together they walked toward the Lodge. “We’ve got to go at sunrise,” Carla said. “We’ll be leaving this place forever. Let’s take one more look inside, to keep in memory.”

They stood by the fireplace gazing into the embers, hearts full of all that was past, the joys and the griefs, wondering how it would seem to look back on from a new world. Peter found them there. “I’ve saved beds for you,” he said. “Best sleep while you can, since you’ll have to be up before dawn.”

They went with him to his private cottage, the one that had originally been Ian’s, which Kira was also sharing. All the cottages and bunkrooms were full, people were camping on the ground—but not, Jesse thought, in public view. Telepathic sensitivity was still so heightened that there could be no doubt this night about what most couples were doing. He wondered, briefly, if it was seemly so soon after a funeral; but it was, after all, symbolic of new life despite Undine’s suppression of that possibility. . . and life was what the Group affirmed. He decided that Ian would have approved.

Too high from the Ritual to sleep yet, the four of them talked in the cottage by lamplight. Jesse wished the night would go on and on. He wanted time to think, to absorb the momentous decisions of the past few hours, to hold Carla and not worry until tomorrow about his new responsibility. But there was no time. There were things he must say to Peter, because once he was gone from here it might be too late to say them.

“Peter,” he began, “you told me my outside perspective is valuable—”

“Yes, very much so. I wanted you on the Council even before Ian advised me to propose your election. To establish a new colony—even to escape from this one—we’ll need your courage and initiative, as well as your knowledge of Fleet policy.”

“I think you also need my offworld slant on reality,” Jesse said. “You remarked once that I’d seen too many action vids. But I’ve been on worlds where those vids aren’t far-fetched. You haven’t. Bad as the Med government is, there are things that don’t often happen here. There’s no violence to speak of. Kids prone to it are medicated, and the authorities stay on top without it, as a rule. But that doesn’t mean they won’t play rough when it serves their purpose. You say the Administration is responsible for the arsons—”

“Not collectively, except for stirring up public feeling. I suspect only Warick and whoever’s working for him was involved in setting the fires—which weren’t meant to harm anyone, at least not physically.”

“They were meant to reinforce political power over people, Peter.”

“Yes. Warick has an eye on the future; he intends to run for Administrator next year. Like the other Meds, he sincerely believes it’s in people’s best interests for their hearts to be monitored continuously. But he may envision more extensive use of the tracking data.”

“And he’s assumed the whistle-blowers, if any, could be labeled mentally ill. But you, Peter—he could hardly condemn you to treatment in your own psych ward. So what do you think he’s going to do about you?”

“I don’t see that there’s much he can do.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken. For starters, he can bug your office. You don’t really believe he’ll be held back by legalities such as doctor/patient privilege, do you? We were damned lucky he hadn’t bugged it by the time you gave me the truth serum. Carla told me you said my having to report to you every week as an outpatient will give us a chance to discuss our plans in private. Forgive me, but I think that’s naive.”

Peter was silent. After a long pause he admitted, “I suppose it is.”

“Another thing. You are Ian’s heir, and Ian will be publicly denounced as a criminal. You think he won’t watch your every move, hoping to discover a connection he can exploit? Ian owned the Island, and now you do. A lot of people have been coming here regularly. He won’t wait for them to be microchipped before he puts it under surveillance.”

Both Carla and Kira were staring at him in horrified dismay. “Jesse’s right, Peter,” Kira said. “We’ve been blinded by our past success. We’re used to getting away with what’s called murder; we’ve assumed that as long as none of us were given truth serum, only the discovery of a body would bring about an investigation. But if someone wants to discredit you, that no longer holds.”

“They don’t need evidence of actual crime,” Jesse added. “Ian and I both admitted that we believed failure to prevent death isn’t always an evil. That goes against the premise that ensures public support for the Med government. If Warick could say you’re associated with others who share that belief, perhaps even without guessing that you really are, he could brand you as unreliable and throw you off the Hospital staff. So he will try to find something damaging in your private life. If his investigators look hard enough, they’ll succeed. They might even learn that you’re interested in the paranormal.”

“Oh, God,” said Carla. “They couldn’t have been spying on us tonight, could they? No planes came over, but the Ritual could have been seen from a boat.”

“What’s worse, you explained the whole plan for our future through a wireless mike. That could have been picked up from a boat if they had the right equipment.”

“I don’t think so,” Peter said. “The gathering might have been observed, but from a distance no one could guess what we were doing with the torch. A candlelight memorial for Ian at the lodge he owned would be considered natural. As for remote listening, the technology’s not been imported to Undine; there’s been no use for it. But Jesse’s point is well taken. There can be no more Rituals or firewalks here, and certainly not burials.”

“This is the last night on the Island for almost everyone, not just for me,” Jesse said sadly. “You have to tell them in the morning before they go, Peter. Only a few of your known friends should spend offshifts at the Lodge. It should be put out that an open invitation was Ian’s policy, not yours.”

“I agree,” said Kira. “It will be a blow to us all, yet it would have happened anyway if we were microchipped—and soon we’ll be leaving this whole world.”

“Dear God, what have I done?” murmured Peter. “It didn’t occur to me that I was putting the Group in danger by what I insinuated—”

“You had no choice,” Jesse declared. “They were about to give me truth serum, and that would have meant our immediate exposure. But be careful not to say anything more that suggests you’re a threat.”

He decided not to extend the warning any further. Peter, despite his wisdom concerning the mind’s power, was an innocent. He still hadn’t perceived that an official who resorted to serial arson for political reasons might be capable of arranging some sort of accident for a man he wanted to eliminate. If it were me, Jesse thought, I’d be damned thorough with my preflight inspections from now on. But that wasn’t something Peter needed to hear on top of all he’d been through today.

“You and I can’t talk freely in your office anymore,” Carla pointed out. “We’ll have to rely on telepathy for anything secret, just as you and Jesse will.”

“Yes. That’s fine for sharing feelings and general ideas, but it’s going to complicate the planning of our escape. Jesse and I can’t meet anywhere that’s not safe for him to be tracked to—and I can’t be seen going to places he’s known to be.”

“I think I’m more of a telepath than before,” Jesse reflected. “I never used to be good at it, except in bed with Carla. But because of what happened to me in the Hospital, I’ve . . . changed. Permanently, maybe. Tonight during the Ritual I noticed.”

“Kira told me you and Carla were able to make sustained contact over a distance,” Peter said. “I hadn’t foreseen that. It’s logical, I suppose, that suppressing the higher brain functions would free deeper ones from the psi filtering that limits the range of conscious telepathy. Yet the last time you and I were in touch, I noticed no change in you—”

“That was before Ian taught me how to do it,” Jesse said.

Peter stared at him. “
Ian
taught you?”

“Yes, I’m sure he did, now that I know he was in the Hospital, though at the time I thought it was only a dream.” He went on to describe what had happened in it. “I think he must have showed me snatches of his own dream, along with . . . other things. And at the end, he sent me to Carla. I called silently to her after I woke, and I
knew how
.”

“In all the years he trained me, he never gave me that.” Peter looked almost envious.

“Well, you weren’t drugged, Peter. He probably couldn’t have reached me if I hadn’t been.”

“But you reached Carla.”

“Because we’re closely bonded, and in any case
I
was still drugged. I wonder if maybe it isn’t an altered state even Ian hadn’t encountered before. Did they give him any kind of sedative?”

“Undoubtedly. He hated drugs, would never have taken anything voluntarily, but in the Hospital it’s routine. He was an exceptionally powerful telepath to begin with; if he felt himself going into an unfamiliar state, he was strong enough to take advantage of it, and concern for you was uppermost in his thoughts, after all. Since your condition caused you to be receptive . . . the two of you may have made a discovery. An advance toward the goal the Group exists for, terrible though the circumstances were.”

“Now that Carla and I have done it once, maybe we could again, even without my being medicated,” Jesse said. “I’ve been told things are done in the lab that outsiders do only while stoned.”

“Yes, in advanced training. There are mind-patterns you haven’t been exposed to yet.”

“Then if we could record this new pattern, others might be able to match it?”

“Perhaps. But I don’t have the facilities in the Hospital; it would be too risky to run our software there. And you can’t come here again.”

“I’m here now,” declared Jesse. “As you say, this is the sort of thing we exist for. The risks we take are meaningless if we throw away chances to pass on what we learn.”

“It’s a lot to ask of you, after all you’ve just been through,” Peter replied, obviously tempted. “But if you’re up to it—”

“Peter,” Carla protested, “Jesse has to fly at dawn! To get into that state again he’d have to recall all the worst moments. It would wipe him out.”

“Don’t worry—I’m not about to risk losing our Captain in a seaplane accident. There are plenty of pilots here tonight and one of them can go with you when you leave. I can pick him up from Verge Island tomorrow; it will give me an excuse to go there so that Jesse and I can make specific plans for arranging the starship charter.”

~
 
58
 
~

With Kira to handle the computer, they returned to the Lodge. For the last time Jesse went downstairs, through the storeroom and freezer compartment, into the hidden room where his introduction to the powers of mind had begun. He would miss it, he realized as Peter fitted the headpiece. They would, of course, take the lab equipment with them; it would be essential to new generations. But reassembling it might not be their top priority on a wilderness world.

Recalling how he’d felt while drugged would be grueling, he knew. Yet tonight he was past apprehension. The Ritual’s afterglow would enhance their telepathic power, too. This was an ideal time to try it. Though perhaps, since he was high, it would be impossible to enter a state dependent on diminished mind . . . such a state was incompatible, after all. . . .

No. To his surprise, Jesse found that he knew something he had not known before, something even Peter had not known, and
should
know. . . .

“Peter,” he said. “Go on dual with me! You have to experience this, not just record it as an observer. And besides, you and I might be able to establish a link we could use in an emergency—”

Kira broke in quickly, “Don’t even think of it! Peter, you’ve been through far more than the rest of us today. There are limits to what you can endure; an experience of how Jesse felt while his mind was being destroyed is outside them.”

“No, it’s not,” Jesse said. “The mental debility in itself, not just the long-distance telepathy, is an altered state like all the others. It’s not harmful,
Kira, not before there’s brain damage—at least not to anyone with enough training to keep from involuntarily slipping back into it later on. It’s . . . a tradeoff. No one would want to be stuck in that state permanently, but Peter needs to know it’s not as bad as he’s been assuming it is. He can’t learn that from a recording, or even from ordinary telepathic sharing. We need dual feedback from live minds to learn the other states, don’t we?”

“Let me try it with you, then,” Kira said. “Peter’s not in shape for it, not now.”

Peter had been standing transfixed as Jesse spoke. “God, I’ve been blind!” he said. “I suppose because nobody ever came out of the stupor before, and the patients I had to drug weren’t trained to deal with altered states in the first place, I never looked for a positive side to it. I just took it for granted that it was wholly destructive.”