Stewards of the Flame (44 page)

“Ian dreamed of Jesse? Before he’d even met him?”

“Before he knew of his existence. From information I later shared with him, he made the connection. Perhaps I should have told Jesse. Yet it would have been unfair to lay it on him before the Ritual, and afterward, I feared he hadn’t yet developed enough telepathic control to keep the secret. If only I’d confided in him, he might have seen how important it was not to risk himself. I failed to realize that in preparing him for a job demanding strength, I would make him too strong to sit back and wait to be given one.”

“He was strong underneath to begin with, Peter. He’d never have avoided risk.”

“I know that, really. Yet now I can’t help wondering if I could have done something differently, somehow avoided this end to all we’ve been striving for.”

“Did the dream show specifically what Jesse accomplished?” Carla asked.

“Yes. But it’s best forgotten now that it can never come true.”

“Peter,” she said with excitement, “if it was a precognitive dream . . . doesn’t that mean that whatever Jesse did in it is going to happen? That there’s some way we can free him we don’t yet know about?”

“Precognition isn’t predestination, Carla. The future shown by a dream can always be changed. And we don’t even know that it was real precognition. The content made us believe that it was. But there is never any proof beforehand.”

She bowed her head. For a moment her despair had lifted; and now, to know Jesse had lost not only everything he’d had, but some mysterious destiny. . . .

“I’ve always had faith in providence,” Peter said slowly. “Jesse’s detention in this colony seemed more than coincidental—”

“Synchronicity, you once said to me.”

“Yes, and this doesn’t change that; the dream occurred the very night he arrived on Undine. Statistically, the odds against that are incalculable. If fate didn’t send him to us for a purpose, what’s left to believe in?”

“We believe what we say in the Ritual, Peter.”

“That we are ‘stewards of a flame that will illuminate future generations’? Those are hollow words if the Group can’t continue.”

“That we trust in the power of the mind,” Carla said, hoping she still trusted it. “Our own minds, as long as we’re alive—even if Jesse must lose his.”

“You put me to shame,” Peter murmured. “For it to be me whose faith is faltering, when you’ve faced Ramón’s destruction and now Jesse’s—”

“The burden you bear is greater than mine. Not only because of what you’ll be forced to do to Jesse, but because you’ve got to lead the Group.”

“I’ll be no good as a leader if I lose faith in our future.”

“What does Ian say?” she asked, grasping for something to hold to. Ian always had answers; he was not one to let Peter give up in despair.

“I haven’t told Ian about Jesse’s arrest,” Peter said, “and I don’t intend to. Why inform him on his deathbed that what he’s worked for all his life is going to be wiped out, that even the paranormal dream he believed in was mere illusion? It would be cruel. We mustn’t let him find out, Carla. I think it would kill him.”

~
 
47
 
~

Jesse lay in a room much like the one in which he’d awakened many weeks ago, when his life on Undine had begun. But the window of this one was barred. This time, there would be no escape from the Hospital. Though he’d offered no resistance to arrest —had even invited it—he’d acted fast, conscious only of need to protect the others. He had not, until now, let himself think of what it was going to mean.

At first, the reality of what had happened to him had not sunk in. It was simply not believable that within the space of a few minutes he could have lost all that he had gained on this world . . . friends, the Lodge, flight in the plane he had possessed so short a time . . . and Carla. The rest faded to nothing when he thought of losing Carla. Never again to lie in her arms, or in anyone’s, for that matter . . . never to be fully a man again. . . .

Never even to be master of his own mind. If any doctor but Peter got control of his treatment, he might lose not merely the new control of mind and body in which he’d acquired confidence, but the mental capacity he’d taken for granted as a starship captain and indeed, as a normal human being. The psychiatric drugs used on criminals would reduce him to a childlike parody of a thinking adult.

He was terrified.

So far, the pain of his burned hands and forearms had not bothered him much; since recovering from smoke inhalation he had been able to control his perception of it. But his ability to do so was slipping as the panic in him grew.
Be willing to lose control, to accept the worst that can happen
. . . volitional management of pain, as of other brain functions, depended on that outlook. But he could not accept the prospect of brain damage! It would deprive him of volition, and the fear of this had begun to make it happen. Pain was beginning to overwhelm him. He was almost glad; unavoidable focus on his body drew his attention from the anguish of thinking.

There was no question of his healing the burns, though he knew that in principle his mind was capable of it. With Carla’s help or Kira’s, they could be healed quickly—but not here in the Hospital, where the nurses would observe abnormally fast growth of new skin. Probably even Peter wouldn’t dare to let that occur. He would be obliged to go through medical burn treatment, which, though much improved over the long process it had involved in earlier centuries, was nevertheless said to be painful. Jesse resigned himself to it. It would be a welcome respite; he did not think they would send him to the psych ward until he was physically recovered.

In this he was mistaken. Soon after sunrise a nurse came to change the bandages. “Your hearing will be held this afternoon,” she announced calmly, and then, her eyes meeting his, she whispered, “You can trust me—I am a steward of the flame.”

Startled, Jesse nodded. It was the Group recognition password. Peter must have sent her. Could they have worked out some means of escape, despite past warnings that for criminals it was impossible?

“Speak softly,” the nurse cautioned, “and take as much as you can from my mind in silence. Nod if you understand.” He did so. The pain receded; she was relieving it for him telepathically as she dressed the lesions. And perhaps doing more—if she was to be the only one to dress them, rapid healing under the bandages would not matter.

“My name is Olivia,” she said, “and I work in the residential ward where you’ll be taken.”
I will pass messages to you at times when Peter can’t speak to you openly. . . .

Her thought was clear. Jesse nodded, and she went on, “Dr. Kelstrom will be in charge of your case—” . . .
and it’s absolutely vital that he remain in charge. You must not appear to recognize him. . . .

He nodded again. Although Peter had supervised his case when he was held for alcoholism, he had not shown himself at that time. Officially, they had never met face to face, and any hint that they’d done so outside the Hospital would be disastrous.

“There will be other psychiatrists at the hearing,” Olivia said, “including Dr. Warick, who’s the head of the psych department. They will question you. Be prepared to answer.”
They won’t show much sympathy for you—in their eyes you’re a violent criminal. But they’re not intentionally cruel. They merely believe that you’re sick.

Warick—the man Peter despised, the one Carla feared might be getting suspicious of Peter. “Will there be anyone appointed to defend me?” he asked. Surely, even on this world, some sort of judicial system must exist.

“It will be a medical hearing, not a judicial one,” she replied. “And for what you have done, there can be no defense.” He sensed that she was implying more than that he’d been caught red-handed. There could be no defense because only by convincing them that he was guilty could he ensure that the Group would not be implicated.

Are they likely to sentence me to . . . electroshock?

No! That’s used on depressive patients, not criminals.
She did not add what he already knew, that brain damage produced by drugs could, in the long run, be just as bad.

Olivia laid her hand on his forehead.
We’re all pulling for you. We will support you in any way possible. From now on, forever, you will be in our thoughts and prayers.

Forever? Had they no hope, then, after all? He knew, of course, that they had not; there hadn’t even been hope of getting Valerie out. If they couldn’t have rescued Zeb from a residential care unit, they certainly couldn’t rescue anyone from incarceration in a ward for the criminally insane. Even so, it was chilling to sense her certainty of it. He was
 
glad to know they were behind him—and, he recalled, they were pledged to support fellow members telepathically as well as through action—but telepathy worked only at close range. . . .

Late that afternoon Jesse was taken under guard to the front desk of the psych department, where he’d unrealistically hoped to see Carla, and on through a secured door into the hearing room. Because of his bandaged forearms he was not handcuffed, but was instead strapped to a chair confronting the table behind which Peter and three other psychiatrists were sitting. Peter’s face was expressionless. He was projecting,
We must not communicate even silently. I’ll come to you later, alone.

The formidable Dr. Warick, who was presiding, called in the ambulance officers as witnesses to the circumstances under which Jesse had been apprehended. They testified that Zeb had evidently been bedridden in the house and that his body might have been revived sufficiently for preservation in stasis if Jesse had not shoved it into the burning kitchen. After they were dismissed, Warick spoke.

“Jesse Sanders, you are guilty of the murder of Zeb Hennesy and of arson. Do you deny this?”

“No,” Jesse said steadily. “I was responsible, though I wouldn’t call it murder.”

“We’re aware that your mind is sick and you may not realize the import of what you’ve done,” Warick informed him. “But for the record, if it did not seem like murder, what do you think it was?”

Jesse had decided to tell the literal truth about Zeb’s death. As long as he could present it as a personal opinion not shared with confederates, it wouldn’t endanger the Group—and it would give him some satisfaction to inform these self-righteous medics that on other worlds, at least, views unlike theirs did exist. “As you must know, I’m new to Undine,” he said. “Where I came from, natural death is the choice of many people. Zeb Hennesy was my friend. He was ninety-four, and he knew his heart would soon fail. He didn’t want to be locked up in a residential care unit.”

“So you helped him to die. Assisted suicide may be an accepted practice in uncivilized societies—”

“This was not suicide. Zeb had a heart attack while we were flying. All I did was take him to place where he could die naturally in peace.”

“Death is not natural. It happens only when medical care is denied. Do you mean to say you thought it peaceful for your friend to suffer the aftermath of a heart attack without even pain medication?”

“He was not in pain,” Jesse stated, realizing that this wouldn’t seem credible.

“Deficient in empathy,” observed one of the other psychiatrists. “Typical—psychotics have no awareness of the feelings of others.”

Nodding, Warick said, “You took him to an unoccupied house instead of calling the ambulance. A normal person would have known that he needed care.”

“I cared for him myself. For several days.” This was self-damning evidence, Jesse knew, but if the time of the plane’s last flight was checked, they would realize that some caregiver must have stayed in the house. Providentially, his choice of hiding place could be legitimately explained. “The house we were in belongs to a man from whom I’ve borrowed money,” he added. “I had previously agreed to rent it from him, though he wasn’t aware that I’d moved in.” Xiang Li, he knew, would back this story if he was questioned; Peter would see that he was warned.

“The fact remains,” Warick admonished, “that you expected Zeb Hennesy to die and either persuaded him to adopt your warped view of death, or ignored his pleas to receive medical help. Whether you knew it or not, that was murder. And it’s apparent that you did know it, because you set the house on fire to conceal your crime. You were so obsessed with the thought of covering it up that you attempted to burn the body, thereby depriving him of his last chance to live on indefinitely.”

“We may be jumping to conclusions about this man’s motive for arson,” said the third psychiatrist, a hard-faced woman. “Anyone who pushes a revivable body into flames instead of pulling it out, burning his own arms in the process, is deranged, possibly a pyromaniac. After all, the other recent fires were in the same neighborhood, and Jesse Sanders’ whereabouts at the time they occurred are unknown.”

Jesse stared at her in horror. The other fires? That he would actually be blamed for them had not occurred to him, despite the casual remark of the ambulance officer during his arrest. Yet he was vulnerable. No one knew where he had been. He could not reveal that he’d been living with Carla, much less that he’d ever gone to the Island.

Peter spoke for the first time. “There is no evidence that this man set the other fires,” he said. “If he were the arsonist, why would he rent a house he planned to burn?”

The woman turned to him. “He’s unstable,” she said. “You know that better than anyone, Kelstrom—wasn’t he under your care when he was brought in weeks ago after resisting treatment for alcoholism? He’s an AWOL Fleet officer, abandoned on this world and probably desperate. And his experience in Fleet would have given him the technical skill to sabotage power circuits. They were all electrical fires; what are the odds that someone else started them?”

“He’s an intelligent man, and as you say, he does have technical skills. Obviously it was a copycat crime that he hoped would be blamed on the serial arsonist—a mere ruse to dispose of the body.”

“Perhaps,” said the second psychiatrist. “Perhaps, in that case, he knows the arsonist; how else could he have copied the method when no details of it have been made public? We can’t be sure without a full examination under drugs. I suggest that we perform it here and now.”