Stewards of the Flame (19 page)

“Good God. Why don’t they just cut everyone’s tubes while they’re at it, then?”

“They would, if League law didn’t prohibit sterilization on colony worlds.” Sadly, Dorcas added, “The screening of embryos isn’t the only reason we choose not to have children. If we had them, you see, we’d want them brought up according to our beliefs. We wouldn’t want them conditioned by Med propaganda.”

Conditioned? Puzzled, a bit frightened, Jesse asked, “What harm would the Meds do to a normal child?” It occurred to him that he might not yet have been informed of all the horrors.

“Nothing as sinister as you’re imagining,” she assured him. “Only what happens everywhere, even on Earth. Except that here, it’s more stifling. Kids aren’t allowed much fun—no sports that could lead to injury, no exercise that’s not supervised in gyms. No time free to just hang out. Never anything to eat that doesn’t meet nutritional standards. And medication for every minor problem, so that they come to believe drugs are the answer to stress. Besides, we wouldn’t even see them except during offshifts—”

“Not see them? Why not?”

“Everyone works on Undine,” Erik explained, “just as in most colonies. Here, the Meds provide us with free child care, and for efficiency, kids live and are schooled in crèches during the five days of their parents’ workweek. They can be taken home only during the five offshift days, and not even then if the parents have other plans.”

“Crèches run by the Meds, I suppose.”

“They’re part of the Hospital complex,” Dorcas said. “Newborns are taken directly to them and stay full time until they’re old enough for untrained mothers to be trusted with. The crèche counselors are kind and loving, you understand. We have fond memories of our caregivers, just as kids often did in societies on Earth where it was the custom for upper-class children to be turned over to nannies and boarding schools. But here, there’s no option. Child-rearing is considered the business of professionals, a matter of ensuring children’s health. And if we tried to instill different values while our kids were home or prevent their receiving medical treatment we think is damaging, we would lose custody. There’s less heartbreak not having them at all.”

“I’m surprised they don’t force you to have them. Most colonies want population growth, and Undine is closed to immigration.” It had been explained to Jesse that if it were not, hordes of the rich would come from Earth seeking eventual preservation of their bodies in stasis. He himself had escaped deportation only because Fleet personnel had the right to remain on any planet to which they traveled.

“Oh, we contribute DNA,” said Erik. “That’s the main reason our germ cells are stored—in the year we turn twenty our contraceptive implants are temporarily removed for it, first the men and then the women later so both sexes won’t be fertile at the same time. Since all conception is by IVF anyway, it makes no difference to population growth whether a child’s biological parents are also social parents. The government’s happy when people relinquish parenting rights. It means their eggs and sperm are banked anonymously and the Meds can decide which genomes to combine. Surrogate mothers are employed by the Hospital; it’s a respected career.”

“You mean there are kids in the crèches without social parents, kids with no families?”

“Yes, lots of them,” Dorcas told him. “Their surnames are assigned by the computer from a list of traditional Earth surnames that haven’t been used here before—that’s why not everyone on Undine has one of the surnames of the original colonists.” At Jesse’s frown she added hastily, “There’s no stigma attached to it. Peter was a crèche child. I don’t know how many other Group members were.”

“I thought Peter inherited wealth,” Jesse said, more bewildered than ever by the local culture’s oddities.

“Just his share of the pool, so far, though all Ian’s assets will pass to him. When citizens go into stasis without descendants or adopted heirs, their funds are pooled and the income is divided among the crèche children. Since the highest-paid people are the least apt to have devoted time to child rearing, pool shares tend to be worth more than the average direct inheritance.”

Well, he hadn’t been close to his own family, Jesse thought. He hadn’t missed it after leaving Earth for Fleet. The weakening of family ties on Undine nevertheless struck him as unnatural. But not so unnatural that the public would object, he realized with dismay. People who wanted their own kids could rear them five days out of ten. If it were forbidden entirely in favor of the government-favored crèche system, the voters would rebel.

He was beginning to get the hang of how things worked in the colony and how hopeless it was to think that political action could bring about any change. “Have you—the Group, I mean—ever thought of emigrating?” he asked.

“There’s no way for us to become a true subculture on any world,” Erik said. “We’ve investigated. It seems that we ought to qualify under freedom of religion laws, in principle anyway, if we posed as a religious cult. But no, the high priesthood of the medical experts is well established throughout the galaxy. Even where they’re not the only government, their pronouncements override all issues of conscience.”

Jesse’s frown deepened. He had never thought about it that way, but it was true enough that no one, anywhere, would be permitted to raise children in a way considered bad for health. There were indeed conflicts between religious groups and health care authorities, and the latter always won. You never questioned that. You assumed the authorities knew best, just as religious dogma had once been considered infallible.

The medical authorities here were so far from infallible that he’d agreed with enthusiasm to take criminal action in opposition to them. For the first time he wondered, are they any wiser elsewhere? Is the only difference here that they’ve got police power?

“There are uninhabited islands on the other side of this planet,” he ventured. “Couldn’t you establish a new colony there?”

“We’ve no way to get there, let alone transport supplies,” Erik pointed out. “Small boats and planes haven’t the range, even assuming a one-way trip for lack of a power source for recharging—and since there’s no native land life, we couldn’t survive on an island that hadn’t been terraformed. What’s more, it wouldn’t be allowed. The present government holds the charter for Undine, and surveillance from weather satellites would detect any attempt at unauthorized settlement.”

Yes, and Fleet would soon put an end to it, Jesse realized. He had momentarily forgotten that independent colonies on the same world were prohibited. The Colonial League was determined to ensure that never again could a situation exist that might, in the future, lead to a global war. Thus the government established by the first colonists to arrive had legal sovereignty over the entire planet. He had never doubted that policy; now he decided that he’d been fortunate to have been assigned to freighter duty rather than Fleet’s enforcement patrol.

It had not previously occurred to him that sometimes the only way to create a better society might be to start a new one.

~
 
20
 
~

For Carla the workweek seemed endless before it had barely begun. She could scarcely focus on the hacking required to alter Group members’ telemetry data, much less on the duller, if safer, routine of her official job.

She had taken an extra shift the first night so as to be at the Hospital when Peter returned, had been waiting in his office, in fact. Though when he came in she’d known instantly, telepathically, that all had gone well with Jesse, she’d needed to hear him put it into words.

“He’s everything I hoped for, and more,” Peter had said. “The ways of fortune are very strange, Carla. Despite all we know, all we believe beyond established science, we’ll never understand the miracle of synchronicity. We could never have foreseen the fate that brought this man to us—”

Carla stared at him in bewilderment. “Synchronicity? Fate?” This was not at all what she had expected him to say. It made no sense.

Startled, Peter came back as if from trance. “Forget I said that,” he told her. “I’m tired. I haven’t slept since the night before last and I’ve got a night shift ahead of me.”

“You haven’t rested?” She’d assumed he’d have gotten back to the city by noon.

“I stayed at the Lodge longer than I planned.” In reply to her unspoken question he explained, “Jesse has an ability rare among people who choose technical careers such as space work; he’s highly intelligent but not so analytical that he feels he’s got to calculate every move. He’s willing to let things play out, even when he doesn’t fully understand what’s happening. That means he has natural aptitude for our training—so much, in fact, that this afternoon we went all the way to breakthrough.”

“Breakthrough? Oh, Peter—you haven’t pushed him too hard, have you? He’s all right?” Peter, at times, was prone to demand more of people than was prudent.

“He’s fine,” Peter assured her. “He got high. He’s having a great night at the Lodge. I got high too, and then flying back with Anne, I crashed—me, that is, not the plane. I’m running on empty, Carla. There’s more I haven’t yet told you; Ian is dying.”

She went to him, embraced him, sensing his need for consolation. Ian had been like a father to Peter ever since his college days. A retired professor then already over a hundred, he had sought paranormally-gifted young people to train as future leaders. He’d helped both Ramón and Peter through medical school—Ramón specializing in geriatrics, Peter in psychiatry—and after Ramón died, his bond with Peter had grown even stronger; he had adopted him legally as his heir. Everyone in the Group would grieve for Ian, but for Peter it would be the hardest, especially as it hadn’t been long since the death of his wife, Lesley. Yet while still mourning the double loss, he would have to take on the full burden of leadership. Ian’s wishes had been made clear. The Council could not possibly choose anyone else to succeed him.

It was no wonder Peter didn’t seem quite himself. Still, what could he have meant by saying that fate had brought Jesse? From Jesse’s standpoint, his detention on Undine had turned out to be a stroke of good fortune. But was it that important for the Group to include an offworlder? Or did he have some special talent of which only Peter knew?

Proceeding to breakthrough on the same day as testing was unheard of. That, on top of the unprecedented speed with which Jesse had been recruited, meant Peter was hiding something. Which of course she knew in any case, from the way his mind was closed to her. Among telepaths there was normally free exchange between close friends.

Suddenly a thought occurred to her. “Peter—your hurry to accept Jesse hasn’t anything to do with me, has it?” she ventured. “I know that for years you’ve been thinking I should stop mourning, that only in a sexual relationship can I recover—” She flushed; this was a topic she would never before have discussed openly with him. She’d had to guard her own feelings, those she’d long known that she might have developed for Peter, were it not that until recently he’d been married. What she now felt for Jesse had set her free.

With brotherly affection, he stroked her hair. “You can never stop mourning the manner of Ramón’s death,” he said, “nor can any of us, as far as that goes. But it’s true that there’s only one bond powerful enough to heal you. I felt joy when I saw it might form between you and Jesse. The sooner it becomes possible, the better, though that’s not my main reason for fast action.”

She was silent. After a moment he continued, “In due course you’ll know what’s at stake with Jesse. I can’t tell you, or anyone, until it’s time for
him
to know, to make a deep and irrevocable commitment to the Group that I’ve no right to ask for until he’s better acquainted with us and has made the Ritual pledges.”

Carla’s heart lurched. “Peter! You wouldn’t put him in danger—”

“Not in the way you’re thinking. Not of dying as Ramón did, I promise you.”

She relaxed, chagrined at having allowed herself to fight the sensation of fear. She knew how to handle it—that was what Group training focused on, after all. Coming to terms with fear was the key to controlling effects of stress on the body. You must inwardly consent to the worst possible outcome in order to live free of worry. But there was one thing she could
never
consent to, never again dare to love anyone to whom it might happen. Was that why she’d held back even after Lesley was gone?

“For now,” Peter was saying, “Jesse’s welfare does have a great deal to do with you. Am I right in assuming you want a long-term relationship?”

“Well, Peter, I don’t know if it’s what
he
wants.”

“I have every reason to think it will be.” Peter looked away. “This is awkward. I don’t like intervening in people’s private lives. But—well, you remember how it was with you and Ramón—”

At the beginning, he meant, before their marriage . . . the long-ago time of her own induction into the Group. Ramón had sponsored her in the Ritual. Earlier, he had taught her not only Group skills but the nature of physical love itself. She’d been a virgin until then, and had not known how different it was for outsiders. She was not sure she knew now, despite the explanations she’d been given.

“It can’t be as it was Ramón,” she acknowledged. “I’m the experienced one, now. That will be hard for Jesse, I suppose.”

“You realize, don’t you, that so far he has no comprehension at all of what an intimate relationship within the Group entails?”

“But you’ll tell him, surely, now that he’s through the test.”

“He’s not ready to understand quite this soon. It has to be absorbed gradually. If it comes up I’ll tell him; but telling isn’t the important part. He must be shown, Carla—if not by you, then by someone else. A lot depends on it.”

Underneath she had known this was coming. She had blocked it out; she had not wanted to speculate about who would teach Jesse the things mere lab sessions could not. There were trained instructors, and she was not one of them. She was not qualified. . . .