Stewards of the Flame (36 page)

“I miss what I once expected from space,” he told Peter. “But not what it turned out to be. Not ferrying freighters, never seeing anything beyond spaceports that all look alike.”

“But the command—you liked that, I think.”

“I did, but freighter crews aren’t large, you know. There’s not a lot to do in space, even for the Captain; it’s all automated except for departures and arrivals in orbit. You can do only so many of those before it gets to be routine. For a long time I hoped for promotion to a liner; when I was young I dreamed of someday commanding a colonizer. That, I’d have liked! But the time came when I knew it wasn’t going to happen.”

Peter seemed about to say more; Jesse could sense that he had thoughts on the subject—but abruptly, they were cut off. His mind was closed to probing. Perhaps, Jesse thought, he was hiding private pain. Peter, too, might have had dreams when he was young. He hated his job at the Hospital, though his work there was vital to the Group.

Apart from a few exceptions like Peter, members had fulfilling careers unrelated to their Group activities, an aspect of their lives not evident from their relaxed lifestyle at the Lodge. In the city, Jesse became all too aware of what he’d realized his first night in the colony—he would not be able to get a job. He had no documentation, no resumé. Being AWOL from Fleet, he could mention neither his education nor his experience, and in any case, as a former starship captain he would be considered overqualified for the jobs available. The only work not demanding credentials would be farm or mine labor on outlying islands.

He was fit only for retirement. It wasn’t a happy prospect.

Money would not be a problem. He had ample offworld funds against which he could borrow—not directly from Peter, who dared not maintain connections to Group members that would be traceable by the authorities in case of trouble, but from a wealthy member named Xiang Li whom he had met only once. So it wouldn’t be as if Carla were supporting him. Still, he could hardly sit alone in their apartment all day, and working out at the gym, which was compulsory for all city residents and which he hated, filled no more than an hour. At the Lodge, during offshifts, there at least was maintenance work to be done and a chance to run and swim, opportunities the canal-laced city lacked. But that wouldn’t be enough. He could not stay idle for a lifetime.

After the first week he’d tired of exploring the city. There were few streets, and therefore no land vehicles except cabs, trucks, and of course ambulances. Narrow walkways paralleled the canals, which could also be navigated by water taxis, but these were not scenic walks. The buildings were drab and functional, in contrast to the beauty of the Lodge, which had spoiled him for the efficient architecture typical of colonies. Then too, no trees had been planted in the city. It had grown from a mining camp on a barren island of a nearly-lifeless world into a crowded metropolis in which every available piece of ground was fully utilized. The public beaches were crowded and their accessible areas confined to the shallows, cordoned off by ropes from the deep water considered too dangerous for people to swim in. Recreational boating, like all other sports that might lead to injury, was prohibited. Having few other pastimes, many citizens turned to the city’s numerous gambling parlors, which were legal and heavily taxed. Jesse was no more attracted by them than by the bars that no longer drew him.

Nor had he much contact with friends. The Group members he knew were those who favored spending their free days at the Lodge or on other islands. Although he was welcomed at the safe house where others gathered, to go there without Carla, when most of the others went as couples, was awkward. Moreover he soon found that it was frequented mainly by people connected with the university—both faculty, such as Hari and Reiko, and students. Having never attended college himself, he had few interests in common with them and felt out of place. He supposed he could enroll in classes; he’d be given advanced standing for his Fleet experience and a degree would qualify him to teach math or engineering. But that wasn’t a career that appealed to him.

He met Kira for lunch several times. She was staying nights with Ian, but was relieved by other caregivers during the day and thus was free the same hours he was. Jesse found himself letting off steam to her about the Group’s inability to take action. “It’s all very well to tell ourselves we’ll have a long-range effect on human evolution even without personal descendants,” he declared. “But what if something happens to us? To most of us, I mean, if we’re ever caught?”

This had begun to worry him during the daytime hours, when he had too much time to think. As an offworlder he could see what the Group, inured to risk, seemed blind to—its very existence was at best precarious. Sooner or later, some member would be caught and forced to expose others; it was admitted that the hypnotic protection provided could not withstand psychiatric probing, much less investigation of suspected conspiracy. “If they ever searched the Lodge thoroughly and found the lab—”

“That won’t happen,” said Kira. “Someone’s always there who knows where the hot switch is.”

“The hot switch?”

“To destroy the lab and infirmary. Did you think we leave them unprotected?”

Jesse winced. The precaution was wise, of course. But the Lodge was a sacred place, a sanctuary, and it pained him to think that it too was in danger. An explosion large enough to take out the lab would bring the whole building down. And after that, how could they go on training new recruits?

“If we die out,” he insisted, “we can’t have any mysterious telepathic influence on the future.”

“We do keep written records,” Kira told him, “not only here in the lab, but with a contact on Earth to whom they’re transmitted in code. If we fail, our effort won’t be totally lost. Someday, somewhere, others will benefit from it.”

“Peter mentioned offworld contacts. I don’t see how the Group enlists them when no one can leave the planet.”

“Ian studied on Earth when he was young,” Kira explained. “He won a scholarship that paid his passage and living expenses, which was how he got around the restriction against spending his own money offworld. That was long before he founded the Group, of course. But he made friends there that he’s kept up with. Several of them are deeply committed to our cause and are entrusted with our secrets. Only the Council knows their identity.”

Jesse tried picturing Ian as a college student on Earth, and found the image incongruous. “What field did he study?” he asked, curious. Scholarships covering the cost of interstellar passage were not lightly awarded.

“Neuroscience. He became a research neurologist, not a practicing physician, and was considered brilliant; he could have had his pick of positions on Earth. But after taking some time off to investigate spiritual healing traditions, he chose to come back here and teach at Undine’s medical school. That gave him time to privately pursue his own unorthodox insights into the relationship between the brain and the mind, and ultimately to establish our neurofeedback lab.”

That accounted for the difference between the Group’s view of mind power and the more common vague, metaphysical view, Jesse reflected. It was based on accurate knowledge of the brain. Yet even so, mainstream science wouldn’t accept it, despite Ian’s recognized brilliance. And there was nothing he or anyone could do to change that. . . .

“It’s time you started seeing the positive side,” Kira said. “The healing. Though it’s on a small scale, we do help people.”

With enthusiasm, he agreed to accompany her to the Group’s city healing house the next morning as an observer. But before morning came, Valerie was arrested again, and he could give thought to little else.

~
 
39
 
~

Carla was working at the Psych Department’s front desk that afternoon when Valerie was brought in. Sometimes she substituted when the admissions clerk went on break; it was pure luck that she was doing so now. The ambulance officer had Valerie in handcuffs. The girl was pale, her eyes despairing, with uncombed hair obscuring part of her face. She seemed really not to recognize Carla—if she had merely been concealing the connection between them, she’d have made telepathic contact.

Valerie?
Carla gasped in dismay, knowing she mustn’t speak to her aloud. No one here was aware that she knew this woman. For more than one reason, it must remain that way. “What’s the charge?” she asked the officer crisply. If it were a purely medical arrest they would not have used cuffs.

“Attempted escape. We had a warrant for completion of her last checkup—there was some kind of foul-up and she was released too soon, before Psych signed off on her chart. But when we picked her up, she tried to run.”

“Okay. You can take the cuffs off; I’ll confine her,” Carla said, in as level a voice as she could manage. Inwardly she tried again to reach Valerie, who was enough of a trained telepath to have gotten through the Ritual last year.
Valerie, respond to me! You can’t go to pieces now! We have to plan. . . .

It was no use; all she sensed was a dark cloud of apathy pushing down terror. Valerie was evidently in her depressive phase. She was bipolar, and would have been diagnosed as mentally ill even on Earth. Peter had brought her out of it; he had doctored her chart to make it appear that she’d completely recovered—which she would have done in time under his guidance, if only she hadn’t panicked when summoned for a routine health check. She had been okay during her lab training, which Peter had found often enabled unbalanced people to function. For the Ritual she had been high, in her manic phase, so none of the other members had guessed that she’d been one of his true patients. That was confidential information, of course; Carla had not told Jesse, who had never been informed that he frequently recruited them.

In Peter’s view, so-called mental illness was not really illness at all unless the patient was violent. Especially in the case of schizophrenics, it was often merely a matter of spontaneously falling into altered states of consciousness, which could indeed be helped by training in volitional control over such states. Moreover, schizophrenics were often psi-gifted. Sometimes indiscretion in the use of psi was the only thing that had labeled them psychotic. Bipolar disorder, however, was another matter. Peter could cure that, too, given time—but he was rarely given time. Unless he happened to be the first doctor assigned to a case, a bipolar patient was usually halfway destroyed by drugs or electroshock before he could take action.

That was what had happened to Valerie. That was why she was so afraid of the Hospital that she’d made futile attempts to evade capture, why she’d agreed to undergo unnecessary surgery in order to escape psych examination. She would never be wholly normal, no matter how good the therapy Peter gave, because her brain had been damaged by electroshock. Underneath she knew that, and was terrified by the prospect of more.

“It’s a ruinous, barbaric practice that should have been outlawed centuries ago,” Peter had declared. “Attempts were made to outlaw it on Earth. They didn’t succeed because ostensibly, the process was improved—opponents had objected to the pain it involved, the horrifying seizures, and when those problems were eliminated, they were lulled into thinking it isn’t harmful. That as long as anesthetics and muscle paralyzers are used, shock treatment is a legitimate medical procedure. But of course brain damage never does anyone any good; it simply makes its victims too confused to be depressed.”

Among the effects of electroshock, Carla knew, were permanent memory loss, reduced intelligence, and sometimes suicide. Not to mention disorientation. Sick with dread, she realized that if Valerie was subjected to it again, she might be too disoriented afterward to keep the Group’s secrets. What, for instance, if she called out to Peter for help? What if she begged for his help beforehand, in the hope of rescue?

They would not let him treat her now that it was on record that she’d been staying at the Lodge. Her case would be assigned to another doctor, and if Peter tried to release her she would simply be brought back. Worse, his discharges of other inpatients might be reevaluated—even Jesse’s. That might happen anyway if the discrepancies in her chart were noticed. Damn it, why had Peter gambled by recruiting her?

Carla knew why—he’d thought Valerie would be safer within the Group than free in the city without lab training or the support of friends. Peter would do
anything
to save someone from electroshock. He would risk his own life . . . as perhaps he had, if she should let slip any remark about the hospices. The memory of Ramón’s execution welled into Carla’s thoughts, momentarily overwhelming her. It would not matter that Peter had not been caught in possession of a body. If they found out about the hospices and traced deaths to them, he would be held responsible—he would make sure that he was, to protect Kira and other caregivers. Whether or not anyone else was implicated, he would be condemned.

Forcing herself to seem casual, she rose and took Valerie’s arm. “You’ll be okay,” she lied. “We just need you to check with the nurse.”

Valerie, trembling, followed her mutely into an exam room, where Carla pulled up her chart on the monitor. Was there any way to fix it so that her history would be overlooked? She didn’t usually hack from exam-room consoles, but it was technically possible; the only extra danger was that a staff member would come in before she could clear the screen. There was nothing she could alter that would help, however. She had already hacked this chart extensively in arranging for the surgery, but had not dared to remove the original diagnosis. Its absence would be questioned, especially since Valerie was all too obviously depressive right now.

Sitting down on the edge of the chair to which Carla had guided her, Valerie mumbled, “Peter said I wouldn’t have to come here again.”

“Valerie! You mustn’t speak of Peter by his first name—he’s Dr. Kelstrom here, remember. You can’t talk about having seen him anywhere else.”