Stewards of the Flame (22 page)

He obeyed and struck out toward the shore, Michelle beside him. Swimming in the open bay without fins took all his attention; his stroke still wasn’t efficient and he soon tired. After what seemed a long time, they reached the rocks and climbed onto them. Half a dozen others were lounging there. “You’ve become a swimming addict, Jesse,” Dorcas laughed, “if you can’t even wait for the boat to dock to get here.”

“It’s no joking matter,” Michelle told him. “The police are at the Lodge, and Kira said they mustn’t see him.”

Instantly the group sobered. “The police? Why?” demanded Erik.

“I wish I knew,” Jesse declared. “I was legally discharged from the Hospital, or so I thought. I haven’t had a chance to commit any crimes since.” Unless, he thought grimly, being an accessory to murder counted—but they had no way of knowing he was involved in that, had they? He realized suddenly that no one else now at the Lodge had been; all those people were back in the city. Had someone been caught and forced to give names? Oh, God, could they have gotten
Carla’s
name?

That was a much more frightening thought than the possibility that they knew his. If Carla were to be arrested, they might find out about her hacking activities. It was hard to believe that having merely witnessed a burial could be proven, much less severely punished. But hacking—a lot of hacking, over a long period of time . . . That was a serious crime on most worlds. He had been uneasy ever since he’d learned that Carla regularly engaged in it. She was, he’d been told, only one of several hackers in the Group; others did what needed to be done while she was away from the city, since the Lodge didn’t have Net access and it would be too risky in any case to log on remotely. Nevertheless, she was the most active of them, and she knew many secrets that the Hospital would no doubt try to extract. . . .

Greg had said that if anyone but Peter examined her after an arrest, she’d be given truth serum. That might be true even if she was accused only as an accessory to murder. They would want to learn the source of the body. Was it certain that Peter would be permitted to deal with his employee, as long as she wasn’t considered his friend? Or was that a mere hope, based on the fact that neither he nor Carla could be replaced?

Not for the first time, Jesse wondered how the Group dared to take such risks. Did they expect to operate indefinitely without a slip somewhere?

Perhaps the slip already occurred.
Something
had happened. Kira had made plain that the arrival of the police was not normal. They were evidently conducting some sort of investigation. Though the dock was not visible from this beach, he would see the plane take off—and yet she’d said to remain here not just until it went, but until she sent word.

Time passed. Jesse, in turmoil, tried to talk casually with the others; but they were all on edge, all apparently as much in the dark as he. They were wet and, as the sun dropped lower, shivering. Finally Michelle said, “The rest of us weren’t told to hide, and none of us here today except Kira are involved in anything that requires concealing our friendship with Peter. It would look strange to stay here so long after getting out of the water. We’ve got to go back to the cottages, if not the Lodge itself.”

“Why didn’t Kira keep out of sight?” Jesse asked. “If she manages the healing house and hospices in the city—”

“Kira has been in the Group since long before any hospice work or hacking was started,” said Dorcas, “and her friendship with Ian is common knowledge. So of course it’s known that Peter is her friend, too. That’s one reason they put her in charge of the Lodge when they’re away; she has no anonymity to lose. If she were ever caught and given truth serum, we’d all go down. But the Meds aren’t likely to suspect someone over a hundred years old of being involved in crime.”

One by one the others gathered their things and left the beach. Alone, Jesse felt himself getting more and more agitated, and his nerves weren’t helped by the arrival of a second plane, identical to the first. He longed to
do
something, anything rather than simply wonder. The afternoon dragged on.

At last, when it was near sunset, Greg appeared. “Thank God,” Jesse greeted him. “I was beginning to think they had you all in handcuffs.”

“They paid no attention to us,” Greg said. “But they did arrest Valerie.”

“But why? What had she done?” Jesse wasn’t well acquainted with Valerie, a young, mousy woman who seemed the least like a potential activist of anyone he’d met.

“I don’t know,” Greg said. “I’m not sure they even told Kira. The ambulance officers will be leaving in a minute, but they locked her in their plane while they inspected the whole Lodge again, and the cottages, too.”

“Is there anything around for them to find?” Jesse asked. “I mean, even if they got downstairs, they wouldn’t discover—”

“Oh, no, not the door to the lab. There’s not a chance they’d see that; all the food in the freezer is legal and they’d merely glance at it. You’d be safe if you could get down there, but you’d be seen trying to reach the elevator. The workmen from the second plane are apparently going to stay a while; they brought in boxes of stuff.”

“Stuff? What sort of stuff?”

“I have no idea. Kira couldn’t talk to me privately,” Greg went on, “but telepathically, she made me aware of what you’re to do.”

Telepathy again . . . even for specific instructions? No doubt, Jesse thought, he would have to get used to the idea, uncomfortable though it was. “So, am I going to be on this beach all night?”

“You may have to stay away longer—but not here. Did you climb the hill above the Lodge last week? Peter usually takes guests there.”

“Yes, the place with the view,” Jesse replied. “I guess I can find it again—the trail was well worn.”

“Okay, you’re to wait there until someone comes for you. That might not be until tomorrow. I’ve brought your clothes and something to eat.” Greg produced a small duffle bag of the sort used to hold beach towels. “Don’t open it until you’re far out of sight. It’s your Fleet uniform, which fortunately I found in the bunkroom you’ve been using when I went to get you something to wear. If they found
that
, they’d know for sure that you’re staying here, and they’d remember.”

“I take it they haven’t asked for me by name.”

“Not as far as I know.” Greg gripped his hand, and smiled. “Cheer up, Jesse! None of us believe they’re going to arrest you—Kira’s just following her instructions to keep your presence here secret. Peter may be thinking that since he was the doctor who discharged you from the Hospital, for you to be seen among his friends might lead his colleagues to ask questions. He’s not admired by them, you know, especially not by his boss, the head of the Psych department. The man’s an ass, and he’s always accusing Peter of being too quick to release the patients under his care.”

That made sense. Peter’s early discharge of a patient he knew socially might indeed look suspicious. For him to be seen here could put them both at risk. He might be picked up and sent back to the substance abuse unit . . . and worse, Peter’s cover would be jeopardized. Jesse headed for the trail, chagrined that he had not figured this out sooner and determined to stay well hidden.

But there remained the question of what the police were doing here, why they’d arrested Valerie and what sort of “stuff” they were now foisting on the occupants of a peaceful private retreat. Surveillance equipment? This seemed the sort of world on which it would be employed if they had any reason for suspicion. He would have to leave the Lodge permanently if there was a camera. And, Jesse realized, he did not like that thought at all.

When he was well into the woods, jogging not only for speed but to work off the chill, he got out of his wet swim trunks and put on the clothes Greg had brought. The familiar Fleet uniform was welcome for its warmth and the protection it offered against the branches intruding on the narrow trail—and yet it no longer seemed his own. For twenty years he had worn it, or variations of it, and had considered it part of his identity. Now in less than ten days he had become a different person. The change frightened him a little, not the danger into which he’d fallen but the strangeness of the powers the Group seemed to think he might develop. Nevertheless, he
had
changed. It would do no good to worry, for he did not doubt that belonging to the Group was worth whatever might be asked of him.

At the top of the hill he sat and watched the sun sink into the sea. He could see the roof of the Lodge from here. Strange, he hadn’t noticed that satellite dish when he’d come here before . . . no, not strange! It hadn’t been there before. The Lodge had had neither Net nor phone service, which, people had assured him, wasn’t missed when the whole idea of the place was to isolate themselves from the world outside. Why would Peter suddenly go to the expense of installing it?

He wouldn’t. The authorities had evidently just done so. What was it Carla had said, there was no medical telemetry from outlying islands because they had no satellite uplinks? This one did now, and it was the answer to a lot of things. For some reason, the police had had a warrant for Valerie, and they had found her. In the process, they had discovered that there were too many people at the Lodge to be without health oversight. As soon as they’d radioed that information, the second plane had brought men to work overtime outfitting the place with retinal scanners and high-tech toilets.

The next morning, after a rough night sleeping on the ground with nothing to eat but the chocolate he found in the duffle bag, he saw the official plane take off, followed shortly by one of the Group members’ smaller ones. Soon thereafter Erik and Dorcas appeared carrying breakfast, which they shared with him before all three hiked down the trail. Greg, they said, had gone back to the city early to inform Peter; personal phones now worked, but it wouldn’t be safe to discuss yesterday’s developments on the phone.

“I hate to tell you, Jesse,” Erik said as they approached the Lodge, “but you can’t use the bathrooms anymore, except for the one downstairs.”

“I suppose not. My DNA is on record and Carla can’t hack a steady stream of data from the Island, day and night. I guess when I’m not down where the lab is, I’ll have to keep on visiting the woods.”

~
 
24
 
~

Kira called them all together at lunch, speaking seriously and sternly. “Valerie meant no harm,” she said, “but she behaved foolishly. She failed to answer the summons for her mandatory health checkup, even after the second notice. She’s fairly new to the Group and perhaps she didn’t realize that by inviting arrest and calling attention to herself, she might put us all in danger. But everybody needs to be clear about this: we do
not
openly disobey the health laws. We circumvent them when we can, when there’s small chance of being caught, but we can’t afford to do so merely out of defiance. Only to help the sick or dying do we put ourselves at risk.”

“What will happen to Valerie?” Jesse asked.

“She’ll be fined, and she’ll get the exam, of course—probably an intensive one like yours, because they assume that anyone who evades a checkup must be hiding symptoms. We hope she’ll be in the Hospital only a few days, but—” Kira frowned. “In her case there’s a chance she may be kept longer because of her past history. I can’t tell you more than that; it would violate medical confidentiality. But Peter may have to take action, which is another reason why her recklessness has hurt us.”

Jesse scowled. By nature he wasn’t hot-tempered and he had never been inclined to resist authority, but he’d never before been in a situation where there was much to rebel against. The more he saw of this world’s government, the more he felt like telling it to go to hell . . . and yet it was clear why they couldn’t do that.

“Another thing,” Kira went on, “who left chocolate in the upstairs pantry? If I hadn’t come across it and sent it to Jesse, it might have been discovered—and that would have been more than a health violation. It would have been proof of smuggling.”

“I think it must have been Valerie,” Michelle said. “She’s not used to the Lodge, and she was in charge of cleanup after dinner the night we brought it up for dessert.”

Was importing chocolate the equivalent of drug smuggling here? Jesse wondered. Had he eaten a small fortune last night, munching whole bars of it out of hunger?

That afternoon Kira took him to the lab again. “I’ll be teaching you a new mind-pattern today,” she said once the sensors were in place and she was settled in her chair. “While you’re watching the feedback, I’ll talk. Just focus on what I’m saying and leave matching to your unconscious mind.”

The visual patterns of the feedback, now that no dimension for intensity of stimulus was involved, were multicolored and of great complexity. They were hypnotic. Kira had told him that though actual hypnosis was one of the states into which he could be led, that particular mind-pattern would—for obvious reasons—not appear while they were working on dual. Nevertheless the huge wall-filling display drew him in, making him giddy and sometimes slightly nauseous.

Jesse was still uneasy at the thought of going into altered states of consciousness. It didn’t seem to have happened to him yet, unless you counted the state of not minding pain, and he couldn’t help wondering what it was going to feel like. Still, all the others, even Carla, had apparently experienced such states repeatedly—not to mention Kira herself, who despite old age seemed to consider it routine. He hoped she wasn’t sensing his apprehension. Resolutely, he focused on the feedback pattern, determined not to shrink from whatever was about to happen to him.

“Oh dear,” Kira said, all too aware of his nervousness. “I’d not stopped to think what you must have seen in spacers’ hangouts during shore leaves. There are many kinds of altered states, Jesse. Those useful to us aren’t as disruptive as the ones you’re worrying about.”

“Not like tripping out, then?”

“At this stage, no. Later, we’ll teach you to deal with that sort of thing as a protection, in case you experience it spontaneously, and in the future you might choose to seek mystical illumination. But basically, an altered state of consciousness is simply a state of mind in which your perceptions are altered. There’s an infinite variety, counting the ways they overlap—our software filters them, so you see only the mind-patterns we’re concerned with. There isn’t anything deeply mysterious about such states, even undesirable ones. As I’m sure you know from past experience.”