Stewards of the Flame (40 page)

That night another unoccupied house burned, and the furor grew. Peter, Carla reported, was upset about the city’s mood. “I suppose he dreads what he’ll have to do to the guy when he’s caught,” she mused. “Treating criminals is hard on him—he doesn’t believe in turning them into zombies, but with this one in the public eye, there won’t be a chance of going easy on the drugs, as he sometimes tries to.”

“Maybe they’ll be given during a shift when he’s not working,” Jesse said.

“The maintenance dosing, yes; an arsonist will be locked up for life. But Peter will have to order the medication and administer it initially. He got himself put in charge of crime treatment so as to help as much as possible in case of—trouble.”

She shuddered, and Jesse understood why. No member of the Group except Ramón had ever been caught committing a felony, but they all knew it could happen. And people presumed guilty of violent crimes, such as murder or arson, faced consequences much worse than those of hacking. Peter would do what he could to lessen the mind damage inflicted on such a person. A member would be better off under his care than in the hands of an orthodox psychiatrist, as in fact any patient was. But he did not have the power to save a convicted criminal from being treated. He lived under constant threat of what the responsibility he bore might force him to do.

Jesse was too absorbed in flying to pay much attention to the arson news. In addition to solo hours, he continued to fly with Zeb. He became used to navigating by sight on the clear blue days, and by instruments when it was stormy. Their time in the air was counted only for his logbook; Zeb seemed even more eager than he to be airborne, and was “throwing in” far more lesson time than any paying student would expect. It seemed odd until, after a while, he saw that Zeb was saying goodbye to all that mattered in his life.

They had come to know each other well. Jesse had revealed his experience with spacecraft; his Fleet background was not secret, as the circumstances of his stranding on Undine were a matter of public record. He did not have to skirt unconventional views in discussing them, for Zeb, too, disliked the Hospital. “I’m due for a mandatory health check next week,” he finally confessed, “and after that, I won’t be allowed to fly. They’ll take my license.”

Too bad, thought Jesse sadly. Even on Earth, aging pilots eventually lost their licenses. Yet Zeb didn’t appear to be incompetent. He was a skilled pilot and his reactions were sharp. “Why don’t you think you can pass?” he asked.

“They’ll test my heart,” Zeb admitted, “and they’ll find out about the pain I sometimes have. I don’t fly charters anymore, Jesse. I’d have been scared to take you up if I hadn’t seen you could handle yourself in the air.”

So that was what was behind the early push on landings. Zeb went on, “I’m not afraid for myself, you understand. Sometimes I’ve wished . . . that it would happen when I was alone. I’d rather go down in the sea than go where they’ll send me. I thought I might even take her down on purpose.”

“Oh, God, Zeb.”

“Don’t worry. She’s yours, now. But if you hadn’t come along when you did—”

“Zeb, you’ve got a lot of good years ahead of you, even if you can’t fly anymore. They can treat heart problems, after all. They can even give you a new heart.”

“Sure they can,” Zeb said bitterly. “They’ll keep it beating even if being hooked up to machines during the surgery causes damage to my brain, which it sometimes does. Besides, you’re new here. Maybe you don’t know what they do with old folks who need treatment.”

“Life support, yes—I’ve heard about it. But you’re a long way from that. You’re fine except for pain once in a while, and that can be fixed. I know you haven’t wanted to get it checked when it meant losing your license, but once you do, you’ll be okay.”

“Once I do,” Zeb said, “I’ll be locked up.”

“Locked up?” Jesse stared at him, perplexed. “You haven’t done anything wrong, even according to the health laws.”

“You don’t think they let old people in danger of heart trouble out of their sight, do you? There’d be a chance of it happening too fast for an ambulance to get to them.”

“You could have an implanted monitor.”

“Sure, but I’m ninety-four, Jesse, so relying on that would be called risky. I might be out walking somewhere, or in somebody else’s plane, nowhere near any resuscitation gear. So I’ll be sent to a residential care unit where there’s supervision. And sooner or later, I’ll end up in on a treatment floor with no way out short of the Vaults.”

“But you may live for years in shape to be active!” protested Jesse, knowing as he spoke that he shouldn’t be surprised. Replacement organs, even cloned ones, did not work reliably in people over ninety; Kira had told him that this was because bodies are not mere collections of parts. And of course the Meds would not let old people risk dying for the sake of enjoying the time that remained to them. It wouldn’t fit the policy of forced treatment.

He bit his lip, realizing for the first time what his pledge of secrecy was going cost him, what it must cost all Group members with elderly relatives and friends. He longed to assure Zeb that he didn’t have to end up on life support, that when the time came he could die naturally, that his body would be flown to a place where he would indeed be buried in the sea. His was surely the sort of case for which Group hospices existed. Yet not only was Jesse unauthorized to reveal this, but no one else would be able to say anything, either. Potential hospice patients were never informed in advance; it would be far too dangerous.

And it wasn’t as if Zeb’s death were imminent. First would come incarceration in a “residential care unit” that would hardly be a pleasant place to live. . . .

“They’re inland, on Hospital grounds,” Zeb told him. “They’ve got plenty of windows, I’m told, but you can’t see much of the sky, let alone the sea. The rooms have video and Net hookup; that’s all most folks care about, I guess. But they’re no bigger than cubicles. And the food’s terrible—the Meds don’t let you eat anything they think is bad for you, which makes no sense if all you’re there for is to mark time till you die.”

Jesse’s heart ached for Zeb. Surely the Group could do something for him. What, he couldn’t imagine. He hadn’t been informed as to how people were smuggled into hospices when they were dying, either; it was considered unsafe to spread that information among members without a specific need to know. But he resolved to consult Peter or Kira the next time he saw one of them. He had to get Zeb’s name on whatever list they kept of those to whom assistance would be offered.

At home that night, he told Carla. “Can’t you alter his records, give him more time?” he asked hopefully.

She frowned. “We’d like to do that for everybody slated for a residential care unit,” she said, “because once in, they can never get out again.”

“Never?”

“Jesse, those places are secure. People are allowed out only for the day with relatives or friends, who have to show ID and sign custody papers—and what’s more, the patients have implanted microchips that transmit heart data and track where they go. It’s worse than the treatment floors of the Hospital, where we do have insiders to forge discharges. Nobody’s ever discharged from a residential care unit.”

“Carla, that’s
prison
. For people not even sick.”

“Of course. Do you think the Group isn’t aware of that? It’s all part of the tyranny we’re fighting against.”

“We’re not fighting,” Jesse protested. “We’re just saving ourselves.”

“And a few others, when we can.”

“But not Zeb? Isn’t there some way we can hide him?”

“Oh, Jesse. Even if we could get rid of the microchip, we can’t conceal people forever! A lot of members have parents or grandparents they’d hide if it were possible,”

He had not stopped to think of that. Carla’s own parents were only in their sixties, and healthy; furthermore, they were strong supporters of the Med regime. On the one occasion when she’d taken him to meet them—introducing him merely as a friend, not as her husband—she had warned him not to criticize it. But other Group members must have loved ones facing the ills of aging. . . .

“This is a hell of a world,” he declared, close to forgetting the joy he’d taken in it the past two weeks.

Carla didn’t answer at first. Finally she said, “If I hack Zeb’s record so that he won’t be called for a mandatory check right away, can he be trusted not to mention the delay to anybody? You won’t be able to tell him why he hasn’t gotten a notice to report, you know.”

“He’ll keep quiet,” Jesse assured her. “He values his freedom.”

To Peter, two days later on the Island, Jesse expressed his misery about Zeb’s fate. It overshadowed even the uplift he’d previously felt about flying.

Peter’s own feeling, he sensed, went too deep for words. He had no solution to offer. “Jesse, I’d hoped that as an offworlder you wouldn’t have to face this,” he admitted. “We’ve armored ourselves against it, here. It’s a fact of life we’ve known since childhood. We hope, of course, to control our own health successfully enough to avoid residential care, but our loved ones—”

“At least he won’t end up on life support, or in the Vaults.”

Peter looked away, staring out across the bay to the horizon. “Carla told you, didn’t she, that the people in residential care units have implanted microchips that send out heart monitor data and a location signal? Don’t you realize what that means?”

“I know we couldn’t hide him even if we could help him escape. How will we arrange hospice care, then, when the time comes?”

“We can’t, Jess,” Peter said sadly. “Not for anyone in a residential care unit. Our hospice patients are people who’ve been living independently. Even if it were possible to hide escapees from care units, we couldn’t bury their bodies. The microchips would go on transmitting unless destroyed, and if we destroyed them, the authorities would know when and where it had happened.”

“Oh, God.” It was obvious, of course, but he’d resisted thinking it through. “Damn it, Peter, I don’t see how you tolerate what we’re up against here.”

“We’ve had no choice—and things are going to get worse.” He hesitated, measuring Jesse. “I’m going to tell you something I haven’t told the others yet. It will be on the news in a few weeks, and I’d rather put off discussion until then. So can I rely on you not to mention it even to Carla?”

At Jesse’s nod, Peter went on, “I know through my Hospital position that the government is planning to implant such chips in everyone on Undine—that was why they were in such a hurry to install our satellite uplink. Universal tracking has been the Administration’s aim for a long time, and now, when the public’s worked up about an arsonist on the loose, is deemed a favorable time for calling an election. There’s little doubt that the measure will pass. The voters will see it as a reasonable safety measure, both for protecting their health through ongoing heart monitoring and for preventing crime.” Bitterly he added, “The original colonists had too much independence to go to such lengths for the sake of preventing the few heart attacks not predictable through regular checkups. But in our enlightened era, all traces of respect for privacy have died out.”

Jesse stared at him, horrified. “That will mean we can’t hide
anyone
in a hospice, or bury any bodies at all.”

“Yes. Our hospice work will come to an end. What’s more, in our own old age we won’t be able to die naturally ourselves. The implications are even greater than that. The authorities may start keeping records of people’s movements, who goes to the Island and how often, for instance. Once information like that gets into a computer, it generally stays there, and of course it will defeat the purpose of hiding who my friends are. Whether or not our conspiracy is suspected, we’ll be vulnerable.”

“God, Peter. We’re vulnerable already—we’ve been living on borrowed time. If we can’t even hope to be examined by you if we’re caught, the risk will be just too great. Besides, it’s going to be almost impossible to train recruits. The heart rate variations in our lab work alone might attract notice.”

“Unfortunately, yes. I’ve known about this since the week before you arrived. It’s one reason I rushed you through your training.”

“So what’s to become of us?” No wonder Peter had seemed troubled. As leader, he might be unable to do more than preside over the Group’s demise.

Peter didn’t answer immediately. Then, seriously, he asked, “Jess, do you believe our goals are too important to abandon?”

“Of course. I’ve always thought we should be politically active, and now we’re going to have to be. There’ll be no alternative if we can’t stay underground.”

“But since we can’t win through politics—and there’s no hope that we ever can—how far should we go to preserve our own way of life? Would you be for giving up many of the good things we enjoy to gamble on a better future, and more freedom, for ourselves and those who come after us?”

“I would, but I don’t see what you’re driving at,” Jesse said.

“No, and I can’t explain yet,” Peter said slowly. “Ian and I have a contingency plan, but we’ve agreed not to reveal it until we’re sure it can be attempted. Even the other Council members haven’t been told. All I’m looking for right now is an idea of whether you’ll back it when the time comes.”

“You can count on me,” Jesse assured him. He felt a pang of regret—just as he’d found a lifestyle with which he was happy, it looked as though he wouldn’t have it long. But that would be true regardless of what Peter might propose. He would not stand for being perpetually tracked by an implanted heart monitor without taking action—if necessary, dangerous and possibly futile action. Nor could he sit quietly back and resign himself and his friends to an eventual end like the one Zeb Hennesy was facing.

~
 
44
 
~

When Jesse got back from the Island, he found Zeb in a state of agitation. “My notice to report for a checkup was due while you were gone,” he said “It hasn’t come yet. I don’t know what to do.”

“Be grateful for whatever glitch in the system’s holding it up,” Jesse suggested.