Stewards of the Flame (12 page)

“Tell me what I need to know,” he said.

“The control booth is back of you, behind the window,” Peter said. “There are two staff people there. I’ll stay with you and communicate with them by arm signals; I’ll have a handheld data readout.”

The most unnerving thing about it all, Jesse thought, was that it wasn’t arranged merely to unnerve him. Peter’s own feelings seemed genuinely mixed. That was odd; procedures of this kind were fairly routine in psych labs.

“These are sensors,” Peter continued calmly, proceeding to attach electrodes to his chest and fingers. “The wireless brain scan data from the headpiece goes to a machine like the one in the Hospital, from which I got a baseline—but the programming of ours is much more sophisticated.”

“What’s the heart monitor for?” Jesse eyed the machine with growing apprehension.

“Just a standard safety precaution. Needless to say, if a monitor with a tracking chip had been implanted in you, we couldn’t be doing this at all.”

“Was I ever in real danger of that?”

“No. I was on top of the scheduling; I wouldn’t have allowed it to happen. Tracking would be a serious hindrance to our way of life.” Peter seemed suddenly troubled, as if struck by a thought he would rather not have recalled.

The most obvious question had not yet been answered. Jesse knew that Peter knew he had too much pride to ask it. He sat impassively, allowing straps to be buckled around his body.

“All right, now, Jess,” Peter said at last, fastening an odd-looking metal device to the chair’s left armrest. “Put your arm into the cradle, way in. Let me adjust it. It’s got to make contact at the right points.” The underside of the forearm, Jesse perceived, feeling the cold steel. The elbow. Thick pads were placed over his arm; he realized this was so the metal bands holding it immobile could not cut flesh, however much strain was placed upon them.

“You’ve had some experience,” continued Peter, “so I don’t have to explain to you that the size of the area stimulated makes no difference in the severity of pain. Many subjects assume that using one arm will hurt only half as much as using both would. You know better. This is very fine-tuned; it affects specific nerves. It’s a constant stimulus, not intermittent. I have full control over the intensity.”

Jesse nodded. There was a clear-cut limit to the intensity of pain; that had been defined long ago. It could not get worse than that, and volunteers had experienced it. Briefly, to be sure . . . anything not brief would have been considered torture rather than psych testing. Despite himself, he felt fear rise in him. This elaborate setup had not been designed for brief experiments.

“It’s harmless,” Peter said matter-of-factly. “You’ll think your arm is burned through or perhaps broken, but that’s illusion. There will be no tissue damage.”

He stepped back, glanced toward the control booth. Jesse’s resolve not to question broke down. He burst out, “What’s the criterion for ending this?”

“Certain characteristics of the sensor data,” Peter replied. “I can’t tell you what they mean. If I did, you’d no longer be a naive subject.”

“It’s an objective test, then—not just a way of measuring motivation?”

“Yes. You can stop it at any time, of course. But if you choose to quit, that’s a final choice, as far as the Group’s concerned.”

Jesse swallowed. In a standard tolerance test, he’d be asked to say when he’d had enough. It should not really matter, since Peter was surely competent to judge—but the psychological difference was immense.

“We’re evaluating response to extreme stress,” Peter said. “It would not be truly extreme if there weren’t a high price for quitting, nor would we get valid results from a second trial. Once we start the process, we have to see it through step by step, letting each phase build on the one before.”

“Damn it, Peter, it would help if I knew what the steps are.”

“I know that. I’ve been through this as a subject, remember. Both of the people in the control booth have been subjects. So has Carla. You have to take it as it comes.” Peter bent over him, pierced him with his eyes. “Jess,” he said fervently. “This is
necessary,
necessary for reasons beyond anything you can guess. It’s not a mere trial of courage. It does demand courage, but it involves much, much more. Believe that.”

He stood and raised his hand toward the lighted window. The room lights dimmed.

Pain blazed through Jesse’s arm. He gasped at the shock of it, but recovered quickly. Grimly, he told himself that he’d been making too much of the entire business. It would be a sorry state of affairs if an experienced Fleet officer let himself be thrown off balance by a little pain.

The arm began to burn. Jesse closed his eyes and held on, stoically. There was no real threat, after all. If a whole group of untrained people on a colony world had been through this, there was no possible question about his own ability to withstand it.

What aim could there be, if not just to verify that? As the intensity mounted, he found himself struggling for breath. He knew that if he were able to feel anything besides pain, he would feel the accelerated beat of his heart. If this were a vid that beat would be audible, he thought, trying to keep seeing it as melodrama. It was a game, a challenge—he had wanted challenge, hadn’t he? Well, maybe not quite this much. . . .

Definitely
not this much. Swift sickness struck him; his stomach heaved as his body rebelled against the sustained neural assault. He was engulfed by a wave of agony, suddenly aware that he had never felt anything like this, never imagined anything like it. You heard about pain, you experienced tastes of it, but there were things you did not know beforehand.

Jesse fought for clarity, compelled to open his eyes by the abrupt conviction that his arm had indeed been burned away. Sweat poured into them, but he could see enough to make out that it was still there. Something was there, under the padding, anyway. He found himself grateful for the straps; he knew he would not be able to sit still, much less hold the arm still, without them. His body strained against them of its own accord. He clenched his teeth, for the first time afraid that he might scream.

He stared at the wall ahead of him. The light from the control booth window threw a shadow against it: Peter’s rising arm. God, Jesse thought, he’s upping it again . . . he can’t! No one can take more than this. He lied to me, they couldn’t all have come through something like this. . . .

The pain surged, molten steel penetrating bone. Time passed, but he could not measure it; it could not really be a matter of hours. Relativity, he thought crazily. Like a relativistic ship, the time distortion . . . but no, that’s backwards . . . it’s slowing for me, not speeding. . . . He could not reason it out. His mind was getting muddled, and that realization was more terrifying than any of the rest of it. He wasn’t blacking out. He would lose sanity before he lost consciousness. He would crack up.

Peter’s blue shirt blurred above him, seeming dim and far away. The pain was a huge, tangible thing. All other perceptions shrank. Against his will, Jesse forced out words. “Peter . . . I—I’m coming apart . . . how much longer?” There had to be an end point. It could not go on all night. . . .

“Do you want to stop here?”

“Not—for good, but—”

“It has to be yes or no, Jesse.”

“No.” He was lying, and he was sure Peter knew it. What point was there in forcing him to surrender verbally? He’d had enough; the wish that had brought him this far no longer seemed so urgent . . . yet to withdraw would mean losing Carla. After one more breath, surely, Peter would relent. . . .

But what if he didn’t?
Twists you can’t anticipate,
Peter had said, and those were yet to come. Was suffering in itself the object of the study? Could these people be perverts . . . or alien beings in disguise, maybe, they were
different,
certainly. . . . He knew this thought was ludicrous, that he would have laughed aloud at it even ten minutes ago. Trust, he remembered suddenly. Peter had warned that they would test his trust in them, and he’d been sure it would remain unshaken.

What did they really want of him? A surrender, perhaps, not of his commitment but merely of his pride?

“I’ve . . . had it,” he whispered. “I won’t tell you to stop, but—but if you’re looking for my limit . . . you’ve found it.”

“Is that a plea for mercy, Jess?”

“Yes, if I have to admit it.”

Peter shook his head. “You haven’t reached your limit. There are objective criteria apart from what you tell me. Unless you choose to stop short of it, we have to go all the way.”

“What if I . . . pass out?” Jesse asked, hoping for it to happen.

“I’ll revive you and go on. I get data only while you’re conscious.”

But I’ll crack up, Jesse thought in desperation. I’m being driven past sanity! What will they gain by destroying my mind?

They were admittedly experimenting with the mind’s limits. It was obvious what they stood to gain.

Jesse felt himself sinking, falling through infinite depths of black water, unable to breathe, unable to fight free. He must already be insane to want any part in this . . . to trust Peter, who was all cold scientist now, without emotion or compassion. It was no longer a matter of pride; he’d already abandoned that, abandoned even the determination not to scream. Dimly, he became aware that he was already screaming; he had not known it until the sound struck him as if from some outside source.

Carla . . . she couldn’t have been subjected to this! The claim that she had was surely a lie. Oh, God, perhaps it had been
all
lies; perhaps Peter
would not stop
even if told to! Black terror seized Jesse as in the grip of the restraints, he became conscious of total helplessness. Might he really have misjudged this man? Carla’s image loomed before him, her green eyes brilliant.
He’s a trained lifeguard,
she was saying,
there’s no way you can drown. . . .
She too had been deceived . . . it would go on forever unless he gave in. . . .

Peter straightened, hand poised to raise. “Sorry, Jess,” he said softly. Pain became a crescendo, blinding him, cutting off all thought, all vestige of will. Jesse made no conscious decision, but suddenly all pain ceased, and he knew, despairingly, that he had cried out for it to stop.

~
 
14
 
~

He could not stand without help; Peter half-carried him into a small room of the infirmary and got him onto a cot. Dazed, Jesse stared unbelievingly at his left arm, in which he felt no trace of lingering pain. It looked perfectly normal.

“You’re okay,” Peter told him, resting a gentle hand on his forehead. “What you need now is some sleep.”

To his own surprise, he did sleep, slipping gratefully into the oblivion it offered. But a few hours later, on waking, he found he needed a great deal more than that. His body was undamaged, but his mind’s scars would take healing. He was not sure that they would ever heal. Why the Lodge still seemed a refuge, he didn’t know, but whether it was truly one or not, he would be required to leave it. He wished there were a way to get back to the city without confronting Peter.

That, of course, was impossible. Peter appeared in the doorway before he’d even got his shirt fastened. He raised the lighting level, removing all shadows in which to hide. “We have to talk,” he said, seating himself on the narrow cot beside Jesse.

“We’ve already talked too much.” And I’ve heard too much I’ll have to forget, Jesse added silently.

“If you hate me, say so and I’ll go,” Peter said. “But if you still trust me at all, Jesse, consider how I feel. Did you think last night was easy for me?”

“I wish to God I could hate you.” If I could, he thought, maybe I wouldn’t hate myself so much. “I believe you were honest with me,” he admitted, wondering why he had become surer than ever of this. “I believe you and all the rest got through something that I just wasn’t up to. I sensed the difference in you right from the beginning, only I couldn’t put my finger on it. Now I see. You’re—supermen, aren’t you? Psych research, power of human minds . . . you are literally sifting out the supermen, the human race to come.”

“Not in the way you mean. The aptitude we look for isn’t new, and genetics plays little part in it—none at all in this particular test.”

“Then I can’t even blame my genes, can I? There’s nothing I can blame but some weakness of my own that I never knew existed.”

“You were far from weak. Most self-reliant people will do
anything
rather than let themselves lose control. You knew it was happening to you, yet you wouldn’t say the word beforehand—”

“You knew, too, Peter.”

“Yes, even before you did. I had access to sensor data. There are very strong reasons why I had to let it go that far, Jess. I can’t explain them to you now, but I’m going to tell you some other things you have a right to know.”

Jesse searched Peter’s face. It was unreadable, yet at the same time he felt utterly convinced that this man was trustworthy. He said slowly, “The stakes here are higher than I thought.”

“Higher, and more complicated. You’re right that we’re thinking in terms of human evolution. But not genetic evolution—evolution in humans now is mostly extragenetic, cultural, you know. We are not supermen, but we’re finding ways to develop what some would call superhuman powers. There’s nothing abnormal about them. We’re simply taking a different approach to some very old ideas. We hope it may, in the long run, reverse the trend that’s culminated in what goes on in this colony—may in fact lead to major advances in understanding what it means to be human. That won’t happen in our lifetime, but somebody has to be the vanguard.”

He faced Jesse, his eyes shining under the harsh overhead lights, no longer boyish, but no sense cold. “We’re a vanguard,” he continued, “but we are also stewards of something in humankind that our civilization no longer fosters: the awareness that we are more than our bodies, that the human mind and spirit is a tangible force that is no less real for being nonphysical. This awareness is a flame that must not be allowed to die. The policy of the Meds here is only a symptom. We resist not because there’s anything wrong with medical treatment where it’s truly needed, but because the right to free choice is denied us—and even that isn’t the main thing we’re fighting against. The underlying issue is that our culture’s attitude toward health is based on a distorted view of life.”