Stewards of the Flame (16 page)

“Oh, come on—” It was one thing to say that Peter and perhaps others were telepaths . . . but millions of people, unconsciously. . . .

“Jesse, you haven’t enough background to understand this yet,” Kira said. “But it’s why the old metaphors are not viable except on Earth. Though in principle telepathy is not limited by space or time, human minds can link only at close range. Even unconscious influences don’t extend over interplanetary distances. And deliberately-chosen metaphor is not nearly as powerful as that which rises from an unconscious source. So in our own Ritual, we don’t use metaphor at all; we communicate concepts directly and emotionally reinforce them through one awesome concrete symbol.”

“You’re making it sound like the sort of staged production I’ve learned you don’t employ,” Jesse said, dubious.

“Oh, but we do,” Michelle said. “For pragmatic reasons. This particular event needs a dramatic setting for buildup or else it won’t come off. We’ll see that you’re psyched up to it—you’ll be high, and the rest of us will get high, too. It’s a peak for us all.”

“High?” This, Jesse had not expected. It didn’t seem quite their style.

Greg, seeing his face, laughed aloud. “This talk is premature, people. Jesse just finished his first feedback session, remember? He hasn’t experienced any high at all yet. He’s got no idea what we mean.” To Jesse he said, “Not drugs. Among ourselves we don’t even use legal drugs. We don’t have to.”

“Illegality wasn’t what bothered me,” Jesse said. “I’ve shipped my share of contraband. I don’t know why I reacted.”

“You should,” Greg said. “The premises underlying drug use come from Med culture. We reject those premises and everything that follows from them.”

Beginning with anesthetics, Jesse thought, awestricken. But that meant . . . healing! They could not reject all drugs unless they possessed the power to heal by mind. Peter had claimed that they did possess it. At least a few of them were telepaths. His head swam. What else did they have? He had not interpreted mind power in quite such broad terms, even while calling them supermen.

God, what had he gotten into? “From what Peter said, I assumed I’d be taught to control my perceptions, perhaps my own health,” he said. “Now what I’m hearing suggests something—paranormal.”

“That’s a relative term,” Greg said gravely.

Peter, his dark mood overcome, faced Jesse. “I couldn’t warn you yesterday,” he said. “This secret has to stay within the Group. Our so-called paranormal powers are a threat to the Meds and would be viewed as unhealthy. We’d be labeled mentally unbalanced—even delusional—in the world outside, and we’d be medicated to suppress the very capabilities that represent an advance in human evolution. You’re a true experiment for us, because you’re not the type usually attracted to such things.”

“I always thought people interested in that stuff were kooks,” Jesse confessed.

“Many are,” Kira said. “But there are sincere seekers mixed in with them. We run a front group. We play harmless games that show us whom to approach.”

“This is why we make sure of your trust in us,” Peter said, “not only when it’s talk, but under pressure. There will be pressure later when without the trust, there would be danger. You might truly—drown.” He watched Jesse’s face. “Yes, I sense thoughts as well as feelings. I can’t do it against your will, but when there’s emotion behind them I get the gist. You’ve known that underneath for quite a while, haven’t you?”

He hadn’t wanted to know it. He hadn’t let himself think of what Peter’s uncanny ability to answer unspoken thoughts might imply.

“It works both ways,” Peter continued. “I can project my own feelings. You’d have been a fool to take what you did from me on the basis of talk alone.”

“You . . .
made
me trust you? With
telepathy
?”

“Not forcibly. They have to be genuine feelings, and you’re free to shut me out. One of the things I was checking this past week was whether you’d be receptive. You’ll need to be, to learn our skills.”

Near the end last night, Jesse realized, he
had
shut Peter out. His trust in him had evaporated, only to return with puzzling intensity this morning.

“That’s what panic does,” Peter agreed, “which we make sure you learn from day one. There will be times when your future well-being, even your safety, depend on that kind of receptivity.”

“We have objective proof of the usefulness of psi powers,” Greg declared. “The Meds won’t ever accept it. Our premises conflict with theirs, and when has presence of anomalous data ever interfered with Establishment science’s premises? But the future belongs to us. In time, our ways will spread.”

“That would scare the hell out of some people,” Jesse said. “I—I’m not sure it doesn’t scare me.”

“Of course it does. It will scare you more and more as you get in deeper. That’s one of the things we’re preparing you for by subjecting you to what may have seemed an unnecessarily harsh ordeal.”

“Fear of physical pain is normal and unavoidable,” Peter pointed out. “You can acknowledge it in yourself, confront it, because you know that. Learning to deal with it will give you the skills and confidence you’ll need to face other fears you can’t even put a name to.”

Jesse sat silent, not knowing how to respond. Things were moving too fast.

Michelle stood up, saying, “Forget this serious stuff—let’s celebrate! I’m going to get some wine. Jesse, you haven’t drunk yours, you’re not even eating—”

“Peter said I shouldn’t.”

They all looked at him in astonishment. Kira said, “You must have misunderstood. There’s no reason now not to eat. You need to—you’re depleted.”

“No,” said Peter, with some reluctance. “Jesse got it right.”

“But Peter, why? As Michelle says, this is an occasion to celebrate. Jesse’s earned a chance to relax and enjoy himself.”

“It will be a bigger occasion later this evening,” Peter said, “and a better celebration than we could have now. Wait and see.”

“But why?” Kira repeated.

“Because,” Peter announced, “Jesse and I are going back downstairs in a little while, and we’re going to aim for breakthrough. He’s capable of it, and now is as good a time as any.”

Greg stared at him in disbelief. “Breakthrough? Peter, are you insane?”

Jesse found himself holding his breath.
Breakthrough . . . the moment when you grasp the skill of not suffering.
He had not thought this would be tried so soon. And evidently nobody else had thought so, either.

Kira was shaking her head. “Peter, did what I said about Ian have anything to do with this? Because if it did—”

“It did not, Kira. I told Jesse not to eat before we even came in here.”

“All the same, are you sure—”

“There are valid reasons for speeding up Jesse’s training. Not the least of them is that he’s had no taste of our skills, no grounds for believing that they can be awakened in him—or for that matter in anyone—other than my word. He won’t feel like celebrating until it has been proven to him. Isn’t that right, Jess?”

“Yes,” Jesse affirmed, glad that it had been stated openly. He had not felt like celebrating, warm though the Group’s welcome had been. And yet . . . “I may not be up to this,” he said. “Frankly, I’m wiped out. I’m not sure I can hold myself together.”

“That’s all to the good,” Peter reminded him, “when what you need to do is
let go.
Besides, I’ve got to work in the city tonight, and I don’t want to put it off until my next offshift. We’d have to build up the stress level all over again.”

“I’ll have no part in this,” Michelle declared.

“I won’t ask you to. Kira is here now, and she’s better qualified as backup.”

“She’s also in better shape than you are,” Greg said to Peter, in whom the toll of a stressful, sleepless night had become evident. “Is it wise for you to go on dual?”

“Yes,” Peter said shortly. “To hand this over might prolong it, and Jess deserves a fast breakthrough.”

“Surely there’s no need to push it,” Greg persisted, evidently troubled. “You wouldn’t need to hand it over, your next offshift would be soon enough. Nobody’s ever moved ahead this fast. What’s the point in setting a record?” To Jesse he said, “You can refuse, you know. I advise you to call time out, if Peter won’t.”

Peter turned away from him, meeting Jesse’s eyes. “Jess, there’s no risk in this for you,” he said. “That’s not why Greg is objecting. Of course you’re free to wait till next week, or even longer—but I hope you won’t do that.”

Jesse felt lightheaded, reckless. “What the hell,” he heard himself saying. “Let’s give it a try.”

~
 
18
 
~

The feeling of unreality that had carried Jesse through the past few hours gave way to terror as they reentered the lab. What in God’s name had he been thinking of, assenting to this? Less than a day ago he had sat by the shore, enjoying the peace and quiet of a Lodge he believed to be a restful haven. Now, weakened both by trauma and by fasting, he was letting himself in for what promised to be an even more agonizing experience—culminating in the acquisition of superhuman powers? Perhaps, he thought, he had lost his sanity after all. Perhaps the whole thing had been a hallucination.

“Don’t try to hide your fear of this,” Peter said. “It’s not only normal, but beneficial. Skills of this kind can be learned only under the influence of strong emotion. Later, for some of the other skills, we’ll use pleasant emotions, but for obvious reasons we don’t mix those with pain. So the more fear you feel, the better—just so you remember what you learned this morning. If you shrink from it, fight it, you’ll be back to square one.”

Kira had come into the lab with them; it was she who attached the sensors with quiet efficiency. It seemed incongruous. Kira, white-haired, probably retired, who’d welcomed him like a grandmother—well-qualified, it had been said, to take part in sessions of this kind? Looking up at her, Jesse wondered how old she was. Her eyes were wise, but her skin, her body, her stance showed no more aging than those of anyone in the Group. For the first time, he began to wonder if he’d misjudged their ages. With women, after all, you couldn’t always tell.

He liked Kira, felt comfortable with her. Was she doing something to him telepathically, as Peter had, to bring that about? He didn’t relish the thought. Yet Peter had maintained that projected feelings must be genuine. . . .

“From here on out we do this a bit differently,” Peter said. “So far Greg’s been handling the controls on my commands, but I’m taking over now with a dual hookup.” To Jesse’s astonishment, he sat down in the second contour chair and allowed Kira to attach an all-too-familiar metal device, twin to Jesse’s, to its left armrest. Deftly, he placed his arm into the cradle and fastened the bands with his right hand, not bothering with padding.

“The stimulators are cross-connected,” he explained, as Kira fitted a headpiece onto his head. “I’ll control the intensity directly, using a remote. We’ll see both sets of feedback. The aim is for you to match yours to mine.”

Jesse stared at him. “I’d think there’d be too wide a gap for that, if your mind perceives pain in some new way.”

“There would be, if I were not a trained instructor. There’s an art to it; I’ll stay close enough for you to follow.”

“But that means—” Jesse pressed his lips together, recognizing what it did mean. Peter was relaxed, unafraid; he’d assumed this was because there would be literally no suffering for Peter. Yet if the state of not suffering produced a different pattern in the feedback . . . “Can’t the computer generate model mind-patterns?” he protested.

“No,” Peter told him. “It’s been tried, but it doesn’t work. A novice can’t match with a computerized model or even a recording. There has to be a live mind behind it in real time.”

“For—thought transference?” Jesse ventured. Good God, he thought, this was
real!
They used ESP systematically.

“Not on a level you’ll be aware of,” replied Peter, “but yes, that’s involved.” He smiled. “It was involved this morning, too. You’ll always have support to draw on, Jess. This is the good part of instructing, the part that makes sessions like last night’s worth going through.”

Kira had left them, closing the control room door behind her; the lights dimmed. Peter reached over with his free hand, touched Jesse’s shoulder. “Hey, Jess, loosen up! We’re heading for a high this time. It’s going to take a while. I may have to bring you close to panic more than once. But when it comes, I’ll get it too, using the dual—and I don’t anymore when I go straight into a mind-pattern and stay there unconsciously.”

Jesse pondered this, suddenly uneasy in a way not stemming from fear. Something in that remark didn’t seem quite right, though he shrank from defining what bothered him about it.

“Don’t misunderstand,” Peter said quickly, answering unspoken feelings. “The high isn’t derived from pain. It comes from reaching an altered state of consciousness through deliberate, volitional choice. Other skills of the mind can produce it too.”

“An altered state?” This raised new doubts. What Jesse had heard in the past of altered states was not inviting.

Peter said, “You may associate that term with being spaced out on drugs. But there are many altered states, of which those produced by drugs are among the least useful. That is what the visual patterns mean—they’re graphic, symbolic representations of different states of consciousness. It used to be that only a few individuals could enter such states at will, and those few generally spent years meditating before they learned how. Our sensing technology and our software, combined with the telepathic help we provide, make it possible to learn fast.”

He called out, “Let’s have the visuals, Kira.” The wall lit up with side-by-side displays, alive now with a dot of violet at the lower left corner of each. Jesse hadn’t even felt that; he found it took concentration to feel it as the pattern began to form.

“You might think,” Peter told him, “that it would be easiest to learn the new mind-pattern at low intensities. That’s not how it works. You can’t learn it at all until your mind’s pushed to it; otherwise this skill would have become commonplace centuries ago. If primitive man got pushed to the extent necessary, he was usually near death, or in any case occupied with the threat of death.”