Stewards of the Flame (29 page)

“I’m okay, really,” she insisted. “Look, the bleeding’s already stopping.”

Incredibly, it seemed to be. Where he had wiped the blood away, little more appeared. But it wasn’t possible that it could stop! He had not even put pressure on it.

“Jesse,” she said, smiling. “I know you haven’t been taught yet. From your face, I guess nobody has even told you. We control bleeding just as we do other physical responses. If I were in the City, where outsiders could see, I wouldn’t dare do it this fast; I’d have to let them treat me. Here, I’m free to heal myself.”

“You—you’re stopping it with your
mind
?”

“Of course. The way you can control your pulse rate and your blood pressure, when you remember to do it.”

Startled, he brought the frantic racing of his heart under control. But to halt bleeding was hardly the same—it was a higher order of capability altogether, surely. And in any case, a wound that wasn’t bleeding was still an open wound. He had to get her to the infirmary downstairs in the Lodge.

“No,” Carla told him. “I don’t need the infirmary for a flesh wound. If I’d broken a bone, it would have to be set. But I can heal this easily. Just let me rest here a little while.”

“I’m taking you back,” Jesse declared grimly.

“No! I need to be still.” She sat up, bending over and gripping her leg with both hands so that the edges of the wound were pressed together. “If you want to help, hold it for me, so I don’t have to stay in this awkward position.”

Mutely he grasped her leg between his hands, and she lay back on the sun-warmed pebbles. What good this would do, he could not imagine. A wound as deep as hers would take days to heal even if it didn’t get infected. She was apparently shocked past reason; he could only trust that before much more time passed she would come to her senses and let him carry her.

There was no sound but the small waves lapping against the shore. Carla’s eyes were closed and soon she was half-asleep, yet her color was normal and she was breathing evenly. Despite his fear for her, Jesse could see no grounds for believing she was in immediate danger, certainly none strong enough to justify forcing her to move against her will. Kira could clean and stitch the wound later.

Time seemed to crawl, but looking at his watch, he saw that less than half an hour had passed when Carla sat up. “You can take your hands away now,” she said.

He did so—and stared in amazement at the dark red line of a newly-healed scar.

“Oh, Carla,” he whispered, unable to express—or even form—a coherent response. He should feel nothing but joy . . . nothing but his relief that she was all right. He cared more for Carla’s well-being than for anything in the strange new life into which he had been plunged—more by far than for the hope he’d had of a union between them. Yet all the confusion, all the doubts of the past weeks crystallized in this, and he knew it for the end of that hope. He would never be Carla’s equal, never the equal of any of them, whatever they might try to teach him. Despite Peter’s denial, they were not human, but superhuman. They could not turn him into one of them. Perhaps they’d never really believed they could; had they not admitted they were experimenting with an offworlder?

No wonder he couldn’t learn to sense her thoughts. Carla knew he could not; that was why she would not let him get close, although with the part of her that was merely human, she too had hoped. It was, he reflected, like the ancient myths of men who fell in love with goddesses—even when attraction was mutual, there was a gulf that could never be bridged.

He could not stay with the Group, he thought in despair. It would be torment for her, as well as for him, if he tried to. There was nothing else for him on Undine. Peter, somewhat mysteriously, had insisted that he leave his funds offworld; so though no liners came here, he might be able to bribe a freighter captain to grant him passage. Had Peter known it might come to that? Known that he would have too much pride to remain as a misfit if he failed to become truly one of them?

They walked slowly back to the Lodge, saying little. Carla, too, seemed subdued, troubled; Jesse wondered if she had read his mind. What he’d been thinking must have hurt her, yet how he felt wasn’t subject to choice. Guiltily, he realized he was relieved by the possibility that he might not have to put it into words.

All through dinner they sat apart, talking with others, going through the familiar routine of camaraderie at meals and around the evening fire. Now that Carla was fully dressed her leg was hidden, but the glimpse he’d had of it on their return had showed him that the scar was already fading. Its impact on his emotions, he knew, would never fade.

At the fireside Peter spoke quietly to him. “It’s still bothering you,” he observed. Carla had evidently—perhaps telepathically?—made him aware of what had happened.

“No, I—” Jesse broke off, knowing that he would not be allowed to get away with less than frankness. “Yes,” he said in a low voice. “It’s awesome, too awesome to be true. I can’t quite believe that it’s entirely human. That someone I care about is more, physically, than flesh and blood. That we could ever be—normal together, when I’m not on her level. There’s too wide a gap . . . as if she were alien.”

“All right,” Peter declared. “This has to be cleared up, here and now.” He turned to Anne, beside him, and spoke louder. “Do me a favor, Anne. Go down to the infirmary and bring back a sterile knife.”

Carla, across the circle, burst out, “Please don’t, Peter! Not for my sake!”

“We can’t let it ride,” Peter said. “The problem’s dragged on too long.”

“Maybe that’s true,” she admitted through tears. “Maybe we have to accept that not everyone can adapt to our ways. Not even everyone’s who’s strong! We knew from the start that Jesse’s background is different, that he would never have sought us out of his own accord. I love him for what he is, not for being like us! I’d rather see him go than try to make him change.”

“It’s not for your sake, Carla—it’s for his. We need Jesse, and he wouldn’t be happy now as an outsider. He’s seen too much.”

Jesse nodded. “I have,” he agreed miserably. “It’s true that I won’t be happy. But I’d only hurt Carla by staying, Peter. Another demonstration won’t help. I don’t doubt that you can cut yourself and heal instantly. Probably a lot of you can; I know you heal other people. But that just makes it worse. I’m . . . out of my element here. I’m doing my best to learn what you’re teaching me, but I’m never going to have paranormal powers myself, in spite of what you’ve said—even in spite of having walked on hot coals. I can consciously control normal functions that used to be unconscious, and that’s as far as I’ll be able to go.”

“Self-healing
is
a normal function,” Peter pointed out. “You had cuts and scrapes as a kid, didn’t you, and they healed?”

“Sure, minor things. It didn’t happen overnight.”

“So we simply speed up the process. The real miracle is that the human body has this capability—a capability people take so much for granted that they don’t notice how truly incredible it would seem if they had never heard of it before.”

“Well, it’s not just speed, Peter. A really serious, deep wound—profuse bleeding, like what Carla had—wouldn’t heal naturally.”

“No? What about surgery? How do you think people heal from that?”

“They have medical care—” Jesse bit his lip. He could hardly fall back on the Meds without denying the Group’s most fundamental convictions. What did medics actually
do,
to heal a surgical wound?

“They stitch it up,” said Kira, “because in nature healing does take time and during that time, the edges of the wound must be held together. They stop the bleeding faster than would happen naturally, so that too much blood won’t be lost. They make sure the wound doesn’t get infected. None of these things in themselves bring about healing. Only the body can do so, under the control of unconscious processes.”

“You’re saying these can be made conscious, like the others I’ve been learning? Surely there’s more to it than that.”

“Nothing more,” Peter said. “Bleeding can be consciously controlled; that’s an ancient skill that will be taught to you in the lab, in due course. The knitting of flesh can also be controlled when there’s need. Even by you.”

“I don’t believe so, Peter.”

“No, because you’re thinking someone who heals rapidly is ‘more than flesh and blood,’ as you say. Fundamentally different from yourself.”

Jesse didn’t reply, and for some time no one spoke. He sat listening to the music, the thrilling synthesized music that normally elated him, knowing he could no longer feel comfortable in the Group even if Peter urged him to stay. It had been so good. He had learned so much. He’d had friends he cared about, a woman he’d hoped to marry, everything he’d always wanted and more. And yet he could never really fit in. There would always be the knowledge that there was power in the others—in Carla—beyond anything a normal man could aspire to.

Anne returned; she handed a surgical scalpel silently to Peter, who said, “You’ve got to get past that feeling, Jess. We can show you there’s nothing weird about healing.”

“Watching again can’t change anything,” Jesse protested, and then wished he had kept quiet. Though he knew Peter wouldn’t suffer pain or be permanently harmed, the prospect of observing a deliberately-inflicted injury wasn’t appealing. But that was why he would be required to watch. In the Group, all the things you shrank from were to be faced unflinchingly.

Peter rose, holding the scalpel. Kira came from the kitchen with an armload of towels, which she piled on top of a cushion placed front of him. The others moved in close, forming a tight circle. Carla, on the far side of the fireplace, was white-faced; Jesse wondered why she was so upset. She could hardly be expecting him to faint at the sight of more blood, even if she’d come to realize he could never adapt.

“Okay,” said Peter, turning to Jesse, on his right. “Hold your left arm over the towels there, and grip the wrist with your right hand.”

Jesse froze. Peter could not mean . . . But of course he did. His projected thought was clear, probably had been clear all along. How, thought Jesse, could I have been so afraid as to close my mind to him?

“It won’t hurt, you know,” said Kira gently, “unless you let it.”

Something Peter had said at the time of the first breakthrough echoed in Jesse’s mind:
Pain usually can’t be isolated from harm. Injury, torture, almost always involve the fear of bodily damage. Only in rare circumstances can an untrained person deal with both fears at once. Here, we take them in sequence.
He had not stopped to think, then, what “sequence” implied.

“We don’t expect to you initiate healing by volition at this stage,” Peter said. “We will guide you telepathically, all of us, as we would an outsider unaware of what was happening. You will be aware, and you’ll feel, in your own body, that it’s possible—that you are not different from Carla after all.” He smiled encouragingly.

Jesse got to his feet. Oh, what the hell, he thought, trying to maintain that attitude as he thrust his arm out and held it steady. This was like everything else he’d been led to do, most recently at last night’s firewalk. He must be willing to accept whatever happened, that was the only way to stave off panic . . . panic would interfere with telepathic reception. At the same time, he must turn off pain . . . but he must be willing to accept pain, too, if it came, because to resist would mean losing control . . . except that he mustn’t resist loss of control either. . . . He couldn’t remember it all in words, but the lessons had been burned into his mind. Stressed again, he felt the unconscious memory surge up in him. You didn’t have to reason it out! You just
knew.
Just as you knew how to fly a fast ship without thinking through every touch of the controls.

Peter’s knife slashed through flesh, a long cut from forearm to elbow, almost as deep as the bone. The arm, too, remembered; with a detached part of his mind Jesse realized that pain there, having been repeatedly dealt with, was easier to manage than it would have been in some other part of his body. He felt the slash, but it didn’t bother him. Blood spurted and then flowed freely, dripping on the towels. For a moment he was gripped by instinctive terror. But then other feelings overrode it. Superimposed on the memories and on the instinct was the knowledge that he was already healing, of how it felt to heal. He was drawing the power to activate healing from the focused minds of his friends.

As if from a distance he heard Peter’s voice saying, “Move your right hand from your wrist and press the wound together—it can’t heal while it’s gaping open.” He did so, finding it easy; his hand was not even shaking. Within moments the bleeding stopped, just as it had with Carla. The flesh began to knit. It didn’t hurt, but he wasn’t disengaged from the process. He was aware that he was
doing
something, with guidance from outside, but nevertheless something that demanded his full attention. It was an indescribable feeling, just as the control over pain was indescribable—a feeling that, once experienced, would never again be beyond reach.

In a little while he glanced down at the arm and saw only an angry red scar.

“It will fade,” Kira told him, wiping dried blood from his skin with a damp towel. “Perhaps not as fast as Carla’s, but by tomorrow you won’t know by looking that it was ever there.”

“But I’ll know in my mind.”

“I hope it will be reassuring knowledge, Jess,” said Peter.

“I—I don’t think I can say right now.” He was shaking with released tension, with the aftermath of fear, and he knew that the knife hadn’t been what frightened him.

He’d been lying to himself before. He had not been depressed because he was different from the others. On the contrary, he’d been afraid that he was
not
different. That he was truly . . . paranormal, as they were. That the transformation set in motion was a matter not just of learning skills, but of freeing something in his mind—something that would separate him forever from all he’d known of himself in the past.