Stewards of the Flame (18 page)

Part Three

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19
 
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Throughout the evening, surfeited after the delayed feast and filled with happy anticipation of a reunion with Carla, Jesse sprawled beside the fireplace, thinking that never before had he felt so completely free. Free not merely of the fear just past, but of all the fears, worries, and doubts that went with ordinary living. Fears that he would always be alone . . . that life would remain empty . . . that there was nothing that really mattered to him. . . . He had been seeking something after all, he realized—and had found more.

Peter had gone back to the city with Anne, rather than in his own plane, since he’d not slept the previous night. “He wasn’t fit to fly,” Greg said. “I don’t know what’s come over Peter. I never knew him to recruit before without weeks of evaluation. I never knew him to call in sick so he could stay at the Lodge an extra day, either. And as for going on dual with a novice stressed out to the extent you were, when he himself was under that much stress—well, he wasn’t behaving rationally. Kira and I just sat there, in shock, waiting to pull you out fast if he collapsed.”

“I knew it couldn’t be as easy as he made it look,” Jesse said. “But was there real danger to him?”

“No, with hindsight we know there wasn’t. But if he’d misjudged you, if you’d not been so strong, you’d have taken him down with you; he’d—” Greg broke off, shaking his head.

“An instructor makes himself vulnerable to more than the effects of the stimulus,” Michelle said. “He had been through a lot even before he went on dual—during your first two sessions he felt your pain, literally in his own body, as he would if he were healing someone. He wasn’t suffering physically then, but the emotional strain drained him. And then to hear bad news about Ian—”

Chagrined, Jesse said, “That’s why you urged me to wait for breakthrough.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Greg assured him. “He did not misjudge. He never does, actually. You’ll be pushed hard and fast—Peter’s even talking about trying to get you ready for the Ritual before Ian dies, which is another sign of how far gone he is from normal caution. But he will not endanger you. He’s too good at the job for that.”

“He seems young for the responsibilities he has,” Jesse reflected. “But it looks as if the Group consists entirely of young people. Am I the only exception besides Kira?”

There was an awkward silence. Finally Michelle said, “I guess there’s no reason we can’t be frank now that you’re one of us. How old do I think I am, Jesse?”

He hesitated, deciding on the most tactful answer. Like most of the others, she appeared to be in her early twenties, though perhaps a year or two beyond. “I’d say about twenty,” he replied.

“I’m twice that,” Michelle confessed, “and some of us that you’ve met are older.”

“Oh, you mean in local years. I meant Earth years, the way ages are counted most places.”

“I do mean Earth years,” Michelle said.

“That’s not possible!” None of them wore makeup, and on the beach they went topless; there was no way they could conceal normal aging. “I thought you people didn’t go in for things like cosmetic surgery,” he said.

“Of course we don’t. We control our physical reactions to stress, that’s all. It’s ongoing stress that causes aging—within limits, of course.”

“We won’t live forever,” Greg said. “Ian’s a hundred and thirty, now, and he’s about to go. But we have to hack the Net to adjust some of our birthdates, so they won’t lead to questions. Needless to say, outsiders would hunt us down trying to find our secret.”

Open-mouthed, Jesse ventured, “How old is Kira?”

“She is over a hundred,” Michelle replied. “She’s been in the Group since its early days, when it was just a small gathering of Ian’s friends.”

“And Peter?”

“About forty-five, I think. I haven’t asked him.”

Stunned, Jesse struggled to readjust. Peter, whose youth and vitality he had envied from the beginning—three years older than he himself was? Kira, who despite white hair was trim, energetic, who swam topless like the others—over a
hundred
?

How old was Carla? Perhaps after all, there wasn’t a large gap between her age and his own.

“There are no guarantees,” Greg said. “The Group hasn’t existed long enough for us to know if we’ll all have extended lifespans. But we can pretty much count on not disintegrating from age before we die.”

Jesse stared into the fire, slowly absorbing this. He’d been told there would be personal gain. It had been implied that this would include good health. But a longer lifespan . . . freedom from aging . . . it was beyond anything he had envisioned, despite all he’d sensed about the specialness of these people he’d come to care about. I’m still high, he thought. I shouldn’t take seriously what I hear while I’m high. In the morning I’ll find out I’ve been delusional.

After awhile he said, “It’s a paradox, isn’t it? We aim toward lengthened lives, yet at the same time toward acceptance of death.”

“It’s outsiders who are confused,” Greg said. “They deny death, cling to pseudo-life, because they never get all they should out of living.”

“But what
is
natural death,” Jesse questioned, “if not the result of aging? What is Ian dying of, if all diseases are curable here and he’s not disintegrating from age?”

“Ah, that’s the big question. In the twenty-first century, many scientists hoped genetic engineering could eventually cure aging itself. Some believed humans could become literally immortal. The conservatives who thought physical immortality would be a bad thing wanted research that might lead to it banned. They didn’t need to worry. Such research has never gotten anywhere. Life expectancy is longer than it used to be—most people are active well into their nineties—but no matter how thoroughly bodies are repaired, old age remains 100 percent fatal. That’s never been adequately explained in terms of biology. Something within the human mind controls it—the deep, unconscious part of the mind that’s often called spirit.”

“Are you saying that underneath old people
want
to die?” Jesse protested.

“Underneath, they seek something more than can be attained in life, something beyond, without which the struggle of living would have no meaning. Not necessarily the sort of afterlife depicted by religious metaphors. A person doesn’t have to believe consciously in any form of continued existence—I’m not even sure whether I do. But there’s a built-in human longing for a state of being we can’t put a name to, a yearning that extra years can’t satisfy. Eventually, everyone comes to a point where there’s nothing more to be gained from living, even if the awareness of that fact is buried deep inside.”

“Once you have tended dying people you will see, Jesse,” said Michelle. “It’s not like premature death. And it’s not an escape from pain, either—you know now that it need never be that among our own people or those we serve as caregivers. Ian was well until a few weeks ago; now his body is shutting down. People simply die when it’s their time to pass on.”

Kira, joining them, said, “In the words of a very ancient poem, to everything there is a season . . . a time to be born and a time to die. And that’s why the Vaults are such a travesty of life. Why stasis is the one end we ourselves can’t bear to contemplate.”

Yes, Jesse thought. They feared nothing except that. Tonight, he too feared nothing. Had he not become one of them?

But the next morning the elation was gone. He felt unreal, disconnected from the world around him, and his nerves were on edge; when people greeted him warmly at breakfast it was hard to respond. His head ached. Well, this was only to be expected after getting high, he told himself. The fact that it hadn’t been a chemical high apparently had nothing to do with the immediate aftereffects.

Life at the Lodge went on as usual. The current residents took pleasure in it, as had those of the week before, seemingly oblivious to the dangers Jesse now knew they faced. He was awed by them. Collectively and in some cases individually, they were in peril of arrest for almost every crime in the book. Hacking, smuggling, conspiracy, evasion of monetary laws, involvement in the paranormal, maybe even fraud . . . and of course, murder. So too was he, Jesse realized. But the edginess he felt wasn’t due to that. The carefree joy that the others displayed, that he’d felt briefly himself the night before, he now sensed was hard-won. So far he had experienced only the beginning of what it might take to win it.

In the afternoon Kira took him down to the lab for what she said was the first of regular sessions on dual. No pain was involved; he was simply told to watch the feedback and match the mind-patterns she created. It was harder to do than it had been with the spur of pain. His mind did wander. Not knowing the significance of the patterns made it tougher, but Kira said that at this stage, explanations would only confuse him. And perhaps frighten him, Jesse guessed—they represented altered states of consciousness, didn’t they? He didn’t feel as if he were in an altered state, but then, he wasn’t asked to match any specific pattern for very long.

“It’s natural for you to be uneasy for a while,” she told him. “Your mind’s been shaken up more than you realize. What you went through yesterday set things in motion that you won’t be consciously aware of for some time. But you’re going to be fine. Peter tells me you show great promise.”

The second day he rose feeling no better. He was still sleeping in the bunkroom, but most others were not. More people had arrived, and for the first time, he’d noticed couples leaving the fireside together, headed, presumably, for the cottages widely separated among trees far back from the shore. Meals continued to be served potluck-style in the Lodge. Nobody treated him as a stranger; it was simply taken for granted that he belonged. But he missed Carla. Without her, the place wasn’t as much fun.

Personal questions were no longer taboo, and by this time he’d learned more about the Group’s members. There were about three hundred, only a few of whom came to the Island—which was owned by Ian and labeled Maclairn Island on maps—during any given offshift. There were other gathering places more convenient for some, including a safe house in the city where leisure hours could be spent in the company of fellow-members. All were welcome at the Lodge, however, except when the red pennant was flying. That meant a guest was present and it was open only by invitation.

The Group included adults of all ages, but because it was growing, those in their twenties did predominate. “Don’t any of you have families?” he asked during breakfast.

“A few of the older people do,” said Dorcas, who sat next to him. “In several cases their grown children are members. But it’s rare among those of us who joined young. That’s the catch, of course. It’s the one way in which our life’s unsatisfying.” In a low voice she added, “It would be nice if we could have kids.”

Was the Group so demanding, then, that they must abandon every facet of normal living? For himself he did not care; he had given up hope of a family long ago. But the young people should care. “I don’t see why you can’t,” he confessed. “Peter said we’re not asked to renounce attachments.”

“Oh, it’s not that,” Dorcas said. “Not the Group, though that’s what woke most of us up. The trouble is, we’re unwilling to be bound by this world’s rules. In the first place, natural conception isn’t allowed here. In vitro fertilization isn’t just an option, as it is everywhere—on Undine it’s mandatory. And embryos are screened for a lot more alleged defects than we’re willing to discard.”

“Not only major problems that would cause suffering or mental incapacity,” her husband Erik added. “We have no objection in principle to the destruction of embryos that don’t yet have brains, any more than we view brain-dead bodies as persons. But the Meds’ selection criteria are warped. They won’t accept a genetic predisposition for
any
disease, or even for characteristics that aren’t ‘defects’ at all, like shortness or obesity. They stick to an arbitrary standard of physical perfection; if it weren’t for the Colonial League ban on germline genetic engineering, they’d be altering genomes to fit their narrow concept of what’s ideal. Or trying to, at any rate—God knows what havoc that would create with personality. Most abilities can’t be predicted by genetic analysis, so no one knows precisely what’s lost in the screening process. But something surely is.”

Jesse had noticed that the population of Undine seemed lacking in natural diversity; though skin color varied, virtually everybody was tall, slim and athletic. The thought of the uniformity being planned was disturbing. He’d heard that no prejudice existed in the colony. Now he saw that no one against whom prejudice might arise was allowed to be born.

“What if a woman gets pregnant accidentally?” he inquired, thinking that forced abortion, common as it was on overpopulated Earth, would be inconsistent with the Meds’ policy of keeping bodies on life support indefinitely.

“That can’t happen. Though women’s contraceptive implants have to be taken out prior to IVF for hormone balancing, men’s IVDs aren’t removed. We’re all required to have our eggs or sperm stored cryogenically, so they’re available to use.”