Stewards of the Flame (30 page)

Peter took his hand, gripped it. “Did you think I would let you start on a course you weren’t fit to finish?” he asked with warmth. “If you trust us, Jesse, it’s time you began trusting yourself.”

Slowly, Jesse nodded. And suddenly there was a shift within his mind, as if from black and white to color in a film, or perhaps the adding of a new dimension. He became aware of depths previously filtered from consciousness. Now that the break with his past self had come, he felt no regret. He had turned his back on Fleet; why had he feared to surpass the burned-out Captain he once had been? Why had he not known that metamorphosis would heal him? It had done so almost instantly, as the wound had been healed. In fact, he was getting high. There was no longer any barrier between him and Carla. . . .

She had sensed the change in him and, now radiant, threw her arms around his neck. As her joy blazed clear in his mind, Jesse knew he had never before guessed what conscious telepathy would be like. He looked down at her, seeing nothing but her desirability. The feelings he’d tried so long to suppress overwhelmed him; he was aroused past possibility of control. He seized her, not roughly but not gently either, not in any sense tentatively. Carla didn’t resist; her response was eager. They stood motionless by the fireplace, locked together in the kiss, as oblivious to outer concerns as if they had been alone.

I will not wait any longer, Carla, he thought. This is not a time to be held back by fear—not even the fear that I haven’t enough to offer you.

And Carla whispered, “Of course not. You’re free now. This is what we were waiting for.”

Part Four

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31
 
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Incredulous, Jesse gazed at Carla, seeing only her, as if Peter and the others did not exist—and in fact, they all seemed to have disappeared. Yet if this was some kind of dream, it didn’t seem like dreaming. It seemed more real than anything else had lately, as if he were at last awake. What had happened to his promise to do only what was best for her? he thought with chagrin. Despite his new confidence in what he’d become, he still wasn’t a true telepath. . . .

Carla smiled. “So far you’ve been mixed up about telepathy,” she informed him. “We don’t gain conscious control of it and then use it to enhance sex; it’s the other way around.”

“You mean it was meant all along for me to gain it . . . from you?’

“Yes! Sexual arousal is an altered state, you see—when are you least distracted by rational thinking, if not during sex? It releases latent psi power in a way nothing else can. Among us telepathic control’s always learned from a partner.”

Then why have we been wasting time? he wondered, kissing her again.

We didn’t waste time. It couldn’t happen until you got over the fear of being paranormal,
she told him
. You’d have found that . . . inhibiting, perhaps even physically—as you guessed earlier tonight.
They were down on the floor cushions before Jesse realized that his tongue was touching hers, that there was no way she could have spoken this aloud.

Where shall we go?
he asked silently. He still hadn’t been into the private cottages and did not know if any were empty. Yet he wasn’t quite so uncontrolled as not to realize that though the common room seemed deserted, they were still beside the fireplace, presumably in full view of everyone else in the Lodge.

They won’t come back here tonight,
Carla told him, unbuttoning her shirt.
Why do you think the circle dissolved so quickly? Committed couples lie by the Lodge fire their first time together on the Island—it’s tradition. The others have their own memories. No one will intrude on us.

He was not in a mood to doubt it, or even to question how such a strange piece of information had been imparted to him. He pulled off his clothes, fumbling with them in haste, with eyes only for Carla’s now-bare body. Her breasts were firm, tanned from the sun, perfectly formed. He had seen them when she swam, but had been careful not to notice. He noticed now. He fondled them; her flesh was cool, touching his, as he drew her closer. Yet he knew it was cool only by comparison, for he himself was burning. It was as if the fire enveloped them both, and the light in their minds merged with it. . . .

I love you, Carla,
he told her, exploring her body further.
I’ve never loved anyone before. Not like this, not feeling minds merge like this.
He knew, without words, that she loved him, would always love him, in a far deeper way than he had ever experienced. It was indeed more than physical union, and more than the ordinary union of intimates. Their minds were merged. He felt hands touch his thighs, but they were not her hands, for hers were on his back; somehow he felt
his
hands touching
her
.

That the physical sensations would be shared had not occurred to him. God, would they feel each other’s climax, too? It was possible. Nothing, no matter how strange, was impossible tonight. . . .

He did not have to ask himself whether she was ready for him, or be concerned with any of the usual things one looked for in a woman’s reactions. He knew. He knew from her mind alone that she too could bear no delay. As he entered her, he was sure; he did not even need to see her face. He knew, also, that it was his mind that had aroused her. No slow preliminaries had been required precisely because his own arousal had been projected into Carla’s mind.

Arousal did not really depend on physical stimulation, he perceived. How could it ever have, when fantasies could arouse? To depend on the purely physical was a mechanical way, a deficient way. The androids used in clinics could do that as well as a man. It would degrade Carla when she expected the arousal only a man could offer her. No wonder she’d wanted to wait until his mind was free enough to project it, sensitive enough to feel her body’s response.

Simultaneously, they climaxed. He had never experienced anything like it, never imagined such a feeling. It was all the best of sex as he’d known it previously, along with what
she
felt too . . . and it was more than physical sensation. Their minds were one, and not merely for sensing pleasure. They saw images through each other’s eyes: the fire from double perspective, faces, a starry sky. She saw space as he had seen it, and he in turn saw her world. . . .

And then, in an instant, the joy was shattered.

Abruptly Carla cried out—with anguish, not passion—as an image more vivid than the rest loomed in their joined minds. The Vaults . . . Jesse recoiled in shock. The stasis vaults . . . metallic walls, bodies in steel boxes shaped like coffins, bodies still breathing, and through the lid of one box, a man’s face. . . .
Oh God, no, not now, this wasn’t supposed to happen now! Jesse, I’ve failed you. . . .

He rolled onto his side, still holding Carla in his arms.
Don’t let it matter,
he begged.
I’m sorry, I don’t know what made me think of it. . . .
The image faded, leaving him breathless, drained.

“I’ve failed you,” she said aloud.

No, you haven’t!
He knew that he must not let the sexual release break their telepathic link, as it very well might if he were not still high. He evidently still felt subconscious fear of his new power, else why this most horrifying of images? Though he had never seen Undine’s vaults, he knew the look of stasis units from his Fleet training. Here, they’d become a metaphor for death—the death of his former self, perhaps, though he had believed himself already reborn. . . .

It’s my fault,
Carla insisted. “That came from my mind, not yours. I . . . couldn’t help it . . . I’d thought I could shut it out. . . .”

“No, how could it have been from you?”
Are you as afraid of the Vaults as that, when you’re younger than I am?
Perhaps only a few years younger, he realized; he still did not know her age. But she was a long way from the prospect of dying.

“It wasn’t fear that set it off,” she whispered. “It was memory . . . memory and grief. I couldn’t help remembering the first time I made love beside this fire.”

He pulled her closer to him, trying to suppress his dismay. “The man is . . . in the Vaults? It was his face we saw?” He had been told that she was a widow, but had not stopped to think what that must mean on this world.

She was crying. “He was young . . . his body is in the Vaults, still young, forever!”

Jesse knew he mustn’t shrink from the idea. He had seen just the overflow, the part that she, her ESP enhanced by physical arousal, had not been able to hold back. She had unconsciously projected it because she needed his comfort—she’d turned to him with love and trust. Could he be strong enough to help her confront a fact that repelled him?

He had to be. If emotion enhanced psi power, then his love for her would make him strong. “You haven’t failed me,” he insisted, feeling her tears wet against his skin. “Let’s share it all—all the things you have not told anybody in words. Let me help now, while I’m high enough to do it.”

His strength must outlast the high. Telepathy, he now saw, involved far more than mere projection and sensing of specific thoughts. It meant sharing feelings, not only during sex, but as an ongoing link between intimates whose potential for it had been fully awakened—painful feelings as well as good ones. It was this he had unconsciously feared, this the Group required of its members. The physical skills were trivial beside the need to deal not only with one’s own deep emotions, but those of lovers and friends.

Carla had perceived his most private feelings from the beginning, he realized. An hour ago he’d have been mortified by that thought. Now, he was no more shy about sharing his inner self with her than about the nakedness of his body. Yet he had never before truly loved another person, never been really close to anyone during the empty years in Fleet . . . he was not sure he knew how to respond to
her
pain. He hoped that at least he could manage not to make it worse.

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The fire burned low, now. They lay in the dark, uncovered both physically and emotionally, aware only of their concern for each other’s distress.

“You couldn’t understand just from thoughts,” Carla said with sorrow. “There are things you still don’t know about this world.”

Jesse pressed closer to her, feeling her heart beat in rhythm with his own. Peter had warned that her husband had died tragically, that he must not ask her how—but did that apply, now that she had revealed what haunted her? It would be better for her to talk about it than to keep it bottled up inside.

“I’ve got to tell you someday,” she agreed. “We can’t keep secrets from each other anymore. Besides, you need to be aware of what can happen.”

He waited, cold despite the warmth of her body next to his. He had begun to sense some horror too terrible for comfort.

Carla turned her face toward him, white, stained with tears. “Ramón was—executed,” she said. “For aggravated murder.”

“Executed!” Jesse could not conceal his astonishment. He’d been on enough worlds where execution hadn’t been outlawed not to be bothered by the thought of its existence, and in fact Fleet had been known to execute mutineers. But here, where death was not even recognized . . .

“Of course they didn’t call it execution,” Carla said. “Killing someone would be beyond the pale as far as our law’s concerned. But that’s what it was.”

“But if they didn’t kill him—”

“The world outside doesn’t look at entry to the stasis vaults as death,” she said bitterly. “It’s maintenance. It’s immortality. It is not capital punishment to send someone to the Vaults prematurely; it’s simply a matter of not wasting treatment on those beyond benefit.”

“Oh, my God,” said Jesse. “Healthy people?”

“Only those who commit the worst crimes—aggravated murder, or some major financial crime resulting not from sickness but from greed. It’s thought to be a deterrent, so the victims . . . aren’t even sedated . . . though they die right away, of course. . . .”

“You mean he was put in there
conscious
?” Jesse whispered, sickened. To bury condemned men alive was beyond any atrocity he had imagined could occur on a civilized world.

“Peter says consciousness is lost almost immediately when the stasis maintenance AI takes over,” Carla said. “Only we don’t really know how long some sort of altered state lasts in stasis.”

“But Carla,” Jesse said, trying to absorb this, “people unconscious in stasis aren’t dead! On the old starships they used to travel for years in stasis—this colony was founded that way. The stasis units from the founding ship were transferred to the Hospital, and more like them were added. Surely he—your husband—could be wakened someday, if we could find a way to rescue him—” What had Peter been thinking of, not to tell her this? he wondered. Or did he himself know only because of the history he’d learned in Fleet?

“No,” she told him. “The AI isn’t programmed the same as it used to be on starships. Bodies normally put into stasis are already brain-dead, after all, and can’t breathe without ventilator tubes. The mix used doesn’t supply enough oxygen to the brain for it to live. People who have been executed are just as dead as the others.”

“Oh, Carla.” How, Jesse wondered, had she managed to retain her vitality, her usual joyous spirit, when burdened by this unspeakable memory? Her husband surely had been innocent. Peter had called him a fine man; he could not have been a real murderer. Burying a body would be called murder, but the consequence of that was treatment—not execution. . . .

She lay silent in his embrace for a while, then pulled away, propping herself up on one elbow while she told him the details. “Ramón was a doctor who specialized in treating old people,” she said. “He hated what his job required of him—when his patients neared death he had to put them on life support, and eventually authorize sending them to the Vaults. He kept on because it gave him a chance to get some of them into our hospices, and to help others telepathically before they died. Just as Peter’s job enables him to help the criminals he has to drug—”

Jesse cringed. He hadn’t known Peter was forced to do that.

Carla continued, “Ramón made a point of getting to know his patients, and when he found someone who didn’t want to die on life support, he steered that person to a hospice before it was too late. If the person was already in the Hospital, he faked the chart so he could arrange a discharge. We still do it that way—we have other insiders—and of course it’s dangerous. Without telepathy, we’d never know which patients can be trusted not to reveal that the hospices exist. They have to abandon their families, after all. When they disappear, we have to say they’re in the Vaults.”