Stewards of the Flame (25 page)

Jesse approached him after dinner, finding that he needed no words to convey that he wanted to talk privately. They went out into the dusk and walked along the beach. “You’re doing great, according to Kira,” Peter said.

“With the training, yes, I guess so. It—bothers me sometimes.”

“That’s okay, Jess. New ways of using your mind are bound to throw you off balance, but you are making progress. I hear you can manage pain by yourself, now.”

“I’m not quite comfortable getting elated by those sessions,” Jesse confessed. “Isn’t it akin to masochism?” He had not known he was going to say this, had not consciously thought about it, but realized as he spoke that it did concern him.

“No. Masochists get pleasure from suffering; you feel none till you are past it. You’re elated by achieving full control with your mind.”

“I’m—not sure there aren’t sexual feelings attached to this.”

Peter shook his head. “Not the unhealthy kind. Believe me, I know. I got as far as dual with a masochist once, through carelessness in checking him out beforehand. It was not an experience I’d care to repeat. Incidentally, he could not learn the new mind-pattern. He did not really want to.”

“I’ll take your word, but—damn it, Peter, there’s something wrong.”

Frowning, Peter asked, “You haven’t been on dual with anyone but Kira, have you?”

“With Michelle, once. I was—in trouble, and she pulled me out.”

“Oh, God. I should have warned her. She’s not fully trained and she hasn’t the background to predict misinterpretations.”

“It wasn’t her fault. I was overtired and she told me to quit, but I was stubborn. She came out of the control booth and went on dual, using the arm stimulators—”

“So then, I suppose, you got aroused without knowing why, which led to this line of speculation.” Peter sighed. “It was a reasonable concern, but it happens to be off base. Given a choice, would you have played kinky games with Michelle or gone to bed?”

“I see your point.” Jesse flushed with relieved embarrassment. He had indeed felt like taking Michelle to bed; if she’d been someone he’d met in a bar, before meeting Carla, he might have suggested it. And yet . . . it hadn’t been like seeing a woman in a bar. There’d been something more, something disturbing, though at the time it had seemed as if it would be better than any encounter, ever.

Peter appraised him. “You’re still troubled.”

With a psychiatrist you couldn’t hide anything. What the hell, with a psychiatrist of Peter’s caliber, why should he try? “It’s not just the masochism thing. I don’t know what it is. My—reactions, maybe. To people I’ve only just met.” He wet his lips.

“Yes,” said Peter gravely. “Jess, you are going to have some confused feelings for a while. I can assure you they’re nothing to worry about.”

“I’ve never worried about things like this before.”

“Don’t start. Your reactions are normal. Among us relationships are not quite like those in the society you’re used to, that’s all. They’re more—intense. And where no serious commitment is intended, things happen more quickly.”

Jesse stared at him, grasping, as he often did, more than had been said. “God, Peter, you know! It’s not only when I’m on dual. It’s all the time. When I first came here I felt like I’d known you people for years; now I’m starting to feel some sort of a current between us. Don’t get me wrong, but even with you—”

He broke off, horrified. He had felt this with Peter when they got the high. He still felt it. He had not admitted it to himself until now.

“It’s not what you think,” Peter said. “You’re not changing your orientation or anything like that. We do get people who’re bi and don’t know it, but you’re not one of them. I have your psych record, and in any case I can usually sense it.” Seeing the look on Jesse’s face he added, “I’m not, myself—bi, I mean. You’ll be able to sense it too, in time.”

“I always heard there’s no way for an observer to tell.”

“There are a great many things we sense that outsiders don’t. We have more senses.”

Jesse frowned. “You’re talking about ESP,” he concluded. “You and Kira read thoughts and project feelings. Are you saying all the others—”

“Yes. And to you, at first, those feelings may seem like sexual feelings, because they involve a closeness between people that comes only through sex in the culture familiar to you.”

“But Peter,
I
don’t have ESP.”

“Yes, you do. Most people do, and I certainly wouldn’t bring in anyone I couldn’t establish a two-way rapport with. I can pick up your thoughts and project concepts to you; you know that.”

“It takes ESP on my part for you to do that?”

“Certainly. Logic tells you it does, but you haven’t wanted to recognize it.”

Jesse pondered this. “I would not have trusted any of you as I did, if I had not sensed more than I knew I was sensing.”

“That’s right. Even though you weren’t consciously aware of it, you judged us by ESP and found us trustworthy; otherwise you wouldn’t have agreed to join us in the first place.”

“You say I haven’t wanted to recognize this—though I could have, from what you told me the first day. Why, Peter?”

“Because it is paranormal in your eyes and therefore frightening. As you lose that fear, you’ll learn to develop the ability consciously. Even before that, though, you’ll feel currents, because you’re interacting with those of us in whom it’s already developed.”

Jesse tried to piece things together. “Then when we were on dual, when you communicated the skill to me by telepathy, I felt something I’m misinterpreting.”

“Yes, but there was more to it than the skill, and more than trust. You and I have forged a strong emotional link because of what we went through together. With us it will have no sexual component. But in the case of potential sex partners a shared high, especially following stress, often does lead to bed. Such a link plus sexual attraction is better than either one alone.”

“That’s why you wanted me to work only with Kira?”

“Kira comes across as grandmotherly. You have enough to worry about without going on dual with an attractive woman like Michelle at this stage—she should have used her common sense.” As an afterthought, Peter added, “On the other hand, Michelle doesn’t know how you feel about Carla, so she may have assumed an offworlder would be lonely. She’s no tease; I wouldn’t have her on the staff if I couldn’t trust her intentions.”

“You’re saying whatever might have happened would have been okay.”

“If you had wanted it, yes. If it weren’t for your love for Carla, it would have had advantages.”

Jesse frowned. “I’ve never been one to move too fast, not with a woman I respected. This seems a bit like, well—”

“Casual sex? It’s the exact opposite. There can be nothing casual in telepathic sharing; what you’ll lose your taste for is sex with women who can’t offer that. Sharing bodies but not minds is what you object to in quick encounters anyway, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Jesse laughed. “Did you know that on some worlds now it’s in to buy sex with androids? The idea always turned me off, and till now I didn’t know why.”

“I’d laugh too,” Peter said, “if that were not a symptom of the trends we’re fighting here. Perhaps you’re not aware that medical science now accepts androids as aides in sex clinics. In my outpatient work at the Hospital, I’m expected to employ them.”

“God, Peter. Do you?”

“You don’t want to hear about the things I do in that place.”

Though this was said lightly, Jesse perceived that something far more troubling than the use of androids lay behind it. Sorry to have stirred it up, he said quickly, “I still don’t understand. The first few days at the Lodge, before I was brought in, there was no sex between any of you. Now you’ve said there’s even more of it here than in the world outside.”

“We did hold off on your account,” Peter said, “as we always do with outsiders. It is—different, with us. You would have known there was more to it than what you’re used to, and we couldn’t have explained.”

“Different? Sex itself?” Jesse had thought he was past being surprised, but some things, after all, were basic. . . .

“Physically, it may or may not be, depending on whether you’ve previously experimented with so-called mystical practices that sometimes led to spontaneous telepathy even in ancient times. But that’s not what I mean. The real difference is what happens in the mind, Jess. You feel undercurrents between us when we’re not engaged in sex; those are nothing to what you’ll feel when we are. And that in turn is nothing to what you will feel during personal experience.”

Jesse thought about it. “Is this what Carla has been hiding from me? Why she won’t let me close?”

“Yes. It would be impossible for her to hide it if she allowed herself to become aroused to even the slightest degree. Since we live in the world outside, we do have to learn self-control in that respect. And when we bring guests to the Lodge, we sleep in bunkrooms; it makes things easier.”

“I’m not a guest anymore.”

“Don’t press her, Jess. Follow Carla’s lead; she’ll have good reasons if she holds back, and you’re not ready to understand them. But you mustn’t misunderstand, either. If you get mixed signals, bear with it, okay?”

An appalling thought struck Jesse. He burst out, “I didn’t misread her, did I? It isn’t just what you say has been going on with everyone?”

“No, Jess! With you and Carla it’s real! But among us, more happens in a long-term relationship than sex. The bond it creates makes things possible that could not happen otherwise. It’s not all pleasure at first, and needless to say, Carla’s not an experienced teacher. Besides that . . . the past will haunt her. She’s a widow, you know, though there’s no such legal status here.”

“I didn’t,” said Jesse, wondering why Carla had never mentioned a former husband.

“She came to us young,” Peter went on, “and married a fine man, one of our leaders, with whom she was deeply in love. For many years they were happy together. Then, five years ago, he died in very terrible circumstances. It’s not my place to tell you about it; maybe she will someday, but I wouldn’t advise you to ask her, because it’s a painful subject. She has shown great courage in carrying on as well as she has. But she’s never considered a new relationship until now, and for both of you it will be extremely demanding. You will have to make allowances, Jess, and perhaps take a kind of responsibility you can’t yet imagine.”

“I’ll do whatever’s best for Carla,” Jesse declared.

“I know you will,” Peter agreed. “If you had not assured me that your interest in her is serious, I wouldn’t have allowed her to come here last offshift, perhaps not for several weeks.”

“Meaning that if I’m serious, I can wait even for a simple kiss?”

“Exactly. Absorb what you’ve heard so far. Before I leave for the city again, I’ll tell you more.”

But Peter was already telling more, telepathically, Jesse guessed. Or was what he’d now grasped merely his own double take on what had been said?

These people had paranormal powers to a far greater degree than he did, if in fact he possessed them at all. Carla expected a partner to have them. She would not be satisfied by ordinary sex; she would want mind-to-mind contact he did not know how offer. Would it be, for her, like making love with an android? Not quite that bad, yet there was a gulf between them after all, and he did not see how he could ever bridge it.

Michelle, evidently, had been willing to accept an amateur, had perhaps thought even to extend her instructor’s role! Was that how most of them did it? It was not his way; he could not imagine himself doing that . . . yet he sure as hell was not going to practice at Carla’s expense. And besides, it was all too true that he feared such powers. Fear and love were not a good mixture, not in bed, certainly. . . .

He wondered why Peter seemed so sure that in time, things would work out.

 
~
 
27
 
~

When he met Carla at the dock the next morning, Jesse found himself shy and awkward. He looked at her with longing, torn between an impulse to abandon all restraint and kiss her, and a foreboding that the relationship he’d expected was never going to be possible. Throughout the day, as they took part in the usual relaxed routine of the Lodge, he reached out with his mind, hoping that by some miracle he’d be able to sense her thought as she had so often sensed his. He felt nothing. Even the easy companionship they’d had was gone.

Carla was obviously keeping herself under rigid control. He did not doubt that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. After awhile it occurred to him that she too was painfully frustrated, that he was failing her, hurting her, by not being what she must have hoped he’d become. Then too, she still suffered from a tragedy in her past, Peter had said. He wanted desperately to take her into his arms and comfort her, yet knew he could not. It was true enough that they couldn’t embrace like mere friends anymore. It would have to be all or nothing now, and for the foreseeable future it was apparently going to be nothing.

Ironically, he no longer felt any conscious fear of the paranormal. If an ability to sense minds had made him trust the Group from the beginning, then it must be a good thing. If all of them possessed ESP, then how could he not want it for himself? Yet despite Peter’s assurance that he had such abilities, he could find no trace of them within—not even enough to sense the currents he’d been feeling the past few weeks. The closeness he’d felt to new friends seemed to have lessened.

To Kira, as they came up from the lab one evening, he finally confessed this. “Is there any way I can learn to be . . . telepathic, like the rest of you?” he asked, without much hope. If there were a mind-pattern for that skill, it would surely have been offered before now.

“The first step is wanting to,” Kira replied. “You have to really want it, Jesse—want to go further than receiving unconscious projections, as you do in lab training.”

“Damn it, Kira, I do want it! I’ll do anything you think will help,” he declared. He found himself less embarrassed to admit worries to her than to Peter, and he’d come to rely on her wisdom in such matters.