Stewards of the Flame (50 page)

“That’s what you were gambling on at the hearing?” Jesse asked.

“At the time I was simply desperate,” Peter admitted, “but the reaction I got, then and later, made me realize Warick had more to hide than I’d sensed. Moreover, though only some of us on the Hospital staff know, the tampering with the wiring was done from outside, where it entered through the meter. That’s why Ingrid didn’t hear anyone enter the safe house. And it means an electrician’s tools and knowledge were required.”

“But Ian couldn’t have done it that way,” someone protested.

“No—and so whether or not Warick hired the arsonist, when he examined Ian he must have known he was lying. He may have rushed the execution to prevent anyone else aware of the details from hearing Ian’s claim to have set the fire. The confession of intentional killing alone, after all, was enough to condemn him.”

“Then why didn’t he suspect that there was some connection between Ian and Jesse—that Ian lied about that, too?”

“Perhaps he did, but he wouldn’t have pursued it; he’d have wanted to avoid an investigation.”

“On the other hand,” Kira said, “he may have thought Ian was simply trying to make sure of being judged calculating rather than insane. Ian was a neurologist under no illusions about the effects of psychiatric drugs. In his case, when he was already near death, avoiding treatment with them would be seen as ample motive for lying.”

Jesse frowned. “Peter—Warick must be aware that
you
know Ian didn’t start the fire. In fact, he must have realized when you examined me with truth serum that you knew I didn’t start it.”

“Yes. So I suspect that he won’t cross me at all from now on, at least not until after the election. That may be why I was allowed to discharge you without a longer period of observation. Ian’s confession cleared you of first-degree murder, but you’re still considered sick.”

“He may be simply giving you rope, hoping I’ll provide an excuse to fire you.”

“Possibly,” Peter agreed. “But since you’re not going to commit any more crimes, there’s little he can accuse me of.”

Concerned, Jesse bit back a reply that he knew this wasn’t the time for. Peter was so overcome by shock and grief right now that he hadn’t thought the situation through. It was all too likely that if his suspicion was on target, he would be silenced. This wasn’t Earth; considering the prevalent attitude toward death in the colony, he might not need to worry about violence. But Warick would look for some way to discredit him.

“Every time one of us has been arrested, someone has died,” Hari reflected. “First Ramón, then Valerie, and now Ian. Perhaps we were always deluding ourselves in hoping to continue indefinitely.”

“Ian wasn’t one to foster delusions,” Reiko reminded him.

“Yet Peter’s saying that if we go on we’re bound to be caught. That we must give up our work and our expectation of an eventual peaceful death. That we can’t even train new recruits to acquire our powers . . . so that in the long run, all we’ve accomplished will be wiped out. Isn’t that so, Peter?”

“Yes, it is,” Peter said gravely.

“Peter, you don’t mean that,” Kira declared. “The burden you must take on is very great, yes. But you have been under a tremendous strain since Jesse’s arrest, and now you’re further burdened by grief. This pessimism goes against all you have ever stood for. Your judgment is not reliable right now.”

“I am judging as Ian did when he sacrificed himself for us,” Peter replied. “He and I had agreed that when the time was ripe, I must say these things. But we did not give in to pessimism. In the dream we kept secret, you see, Ian saw us founding a new culture, not in this colony but on a world where we were free. A world where we could pass what we’ve gained on to children and grandchildren.”

“We’ve all talked of that from time to time,” Reiko said. “But we know, after all, that we couldn’t live as we choose on
any
world. We might not be subject to arrest elsewhere—we wouldn’t be tracked by microchips—but we couldn’t raise children in our ways. We would always be a persecuted minority.”

“Not,” Peter said, “if we were to establish a colony of our own.”

“Of course,” said Kira. “That’s always been the goal for future generations. Certainly he dreamed of it, in the sense of daydreaming, and no doubt in his nocturnal dreams, too; he spoke of it often enough. But it doesn’t help our present situation.”

“You misunderstand, Kira. Ian dreamed very vividly of us doing it personally, not in the future, but now.”

“Well, but that’s impossible,” Hari stated. “We’re too few to establish a colony. Besides, we learned long ago that there’s no way for us to get to a new planet. Even if we could pay for passage, and were willing to face all the dangers and hardships of starting from scratch in the wilderness, we’d fail to meet the legal qualifications.”

“Yes,” Peter agreed. “But that was before fate sent us a Captain.”

“One unemployed starship captain, at your service,” Jesse said, matching what he took to be forced levity—and then, too late, he observed Peter’s face. It was dead serious.

“At first Ian thought his dream was fantasy, mere wish fulfillment,” Peter said, “for in it, a Fleet officer led us, and the few Fleet officers stationed here rarely mix with the public. Neither of us had ever met one. And then, several days later, I learned that you had been taken to the Hospital the very night the dream occurred. When I viewed your chart I was in awe of what I knew was too improbable to be mere coincidence. I showed a print of your file photo to Ian. He recognized your face. He knew you for the Captain who will take us to a new world.”

~
 
55
 
~

Jesse froze. Was that what his own dream had meant, if in fact it had been telepathic? Had the image of crossing space originated with Ian, rather than being drawn from his shipboard memories?
Oh Jesse,
he’d said,
I wish I could go where you are going. . . .
But to take the Group to a new world would be impossible.

“Peter,” he said quickly, “There’s been some misunderstanding! I’m not that sort of Captain. Fleet wouldn’t let me near a colonizer even if I were somehow reinstated with a clean record. I know freighters, not colony setup, and there’s a big difference.”

“As far as the technology’s concerned, you could manage any starship, couldn’t you? You could astrogate?”

“We don’t have a starship,” Jesse pointed out.

“We can get one. There’d have been nothing to gain by considering it without someone qualified to take command—but when you joined us, Ian instructed one of our contacts on Earth to check for colonizers available to charter. There’s a long waiting list, but we’re a small party by colony standards, and old ships haven’t enough room for the bigger groups. We were lucky. There is an obsolete but still-commissioned ship available—if we move fast. The Group’s combined funds can swing it with hacking to gain access to our dead ancestors’ principal, which is rightfully ours, and to circumvent the restriction on spending our money offworld. Ian and I sent in the application, and by supreme irony, we received approval the day you were arrested. That was why I was afraid that learning of your condemnation might kill him.”

Oh, God. It was true, then—Ian had sacrificed himself for a false hope, not knowing enough to realize it couldn’t be done. “I don’t think you understand how it works,” Jesse protested. “When you charter a colonizer, it comes with a Captain and crew—they don’t let you pick your own. It goes to a world Fleet has already opened up. Since we’re too few to qualify for first world rights, our settlement would be subject to the sovereignty of the original colony placed there. We’d escape the Vaults and perhaps the worst of the health laws, but as you’ve often said, Peter, the system on this world is only a few steps beyond the trends everywhere. We’d still need clandestine healing houses and hospices. There’d be no chance of establishing anything approaching a culture based on what we believe.”

“I know that,” Peter agreed. “Which is why we would not let the crew sent by Fleet choose our site. They would, after all, be considerably outnumbered, and legality has never been of prime concern to us.”

“But Fleet would send more ships. They would put down any rebellion very quickly, just as they would if we tried to settle elsewhere on Undine. Don’t think there isn’t precedent.”

“They could not send more ships,” Peter declared, “if they didn’t know where we’d gone.”

Jesse drew breath. “Hijack the ship in space, you mean? Take it to an unopened world?”
You could astrogate,
Peter had said. And he could, of course. There were many charted worlds that would not be considered worth opening for centuries. A colonizer would have complete charts on board. The chances of their being located on such a world were slim; Fleet wouldn’t be likely to launch a costly search for an obsolete ship.

Such a plan was preposterous, and yet . . . it might not be hard to pull off. The crew wouldn’t be expecting such a move from colonists and unlike a freighter or explorer crew, would not be armed—probably there wouldn’t even be a fight. No harm need come to them. They could be put aboard a shuttle before the starship went into hyperdrive, and in hyperdrive, it would be past pursuit. Fleet would assume it had been lost in a miscalculated jump. As it very well might be, he thought grimly. Still, if Ian’s dream had any validity, it would eventually land somewhere. . . .

As for operating the ship, the departure from Undine would be handled by the original crew. Once in space, there was no essential job other than the Captain’s that he could not teach to bright people like Peter. Many in the Group had technical training. Some were experienced pilots, and, starting as his copilots, could learn to fly the orbit-to-ground shuttles needed for landing on the new world. Only the atmospheric portion of such flights required manual control.

But hijacking . . . it would mean lifelong exile to a penal colony if it failed, if they were caught attempting it. And he himself, as a renegade Fleet officer, would be charged with mutiny—which meant the death penalty, though he doubted if Peter knew that. There would be no possible defense.

Carla, sensing this thought, rose and faced Peter. “You
used
Jesse for this, from the beginning!” she accused. “From the very first day, when you put him through hell to make him hate the Meds. When you persuaded me to—” She broke off, not wanting him to hear it, but Jesse caught what was in her mind. Before he’d even left the Hospital, Peter had persuaded Carla to entrap him with her love.

“The speedup of his training, weeks of normal preparation bypassed—and all the talk about how it didn’t really matter that he had no natural bent toward ESP or other psi skills—” She glared at him in fury. “You set him up!”

“It’s for Jesse to decide,” said Peter quietly. “I’ve never forced him; he has always been, and still is, free to say no.”

“How can he say no, now? After what Ian did?”

Peter bowed his head. “That wasn’t planned, of course. We assumed the choice would be Jesse’s. It’s true that now, saying no isn’t really an option.”

“It never was,” said Carla bitterly. “He’s in too deep; you knew he wouldn’t leave the Group, yet wouldn’t be respected if he refused the role you recruited him for. When you threw us together, when you pushed him so fast into committing himself in the Ritual, you put him in an impossible position.”

“Carla.” Jesse said, rising and drawing her to him. “All that’s beside the point. I don’t want to say no. I never would have wanted to.”

She was close to tears again. “I couldn’t bear it if this crazy scheme failed, as it probably would, and you were killed because of me.”

“It wouldn’t be because of anything you did. I’d have loved you anyway, Carla, whether we were thrown together or not. I’d have hated the Meds anyway, and the setup on this world. But I wouldn’t have been able to marry you without the commitment. I wouldn’t have gained the powers of my mind. What I’ve already had would be worth any danger that comes of it—but what we
could
have is worth more! Do you think I don’t want a new world? A world where we could have kids, build a society free of this one’s restrictions? Don’t
you
want that? You’ve never shied from risk, after all—”

“But you’ve just now been given the chance to live again—”

“If it comes to the worst, I’d rather die for commandeering a starship than end up in the Vaults,” he told her. “As far as that goes, I’d have chosen that risk over ferrying freighters till I was grounded by age. I was burned out, Carla—I was more than halfway to becoming an alcoholic! Have you forgotten?”

“No,” she whispered. “Of course you have to be Captain. If there’s any such thing as destiny, that’s yours. I just hate the way Peter manipulated you.”

“I hated it too,” Peter said. “I pushed you harder than most trainees, Jesse—I had to find out, fast, whether you were strong enough to entrust with our lives. Your stalled career implied you might not be, yet it did seem as if fate had sent you. And you truly wanted to become one us.”

“I did,” Jesse agreed. “You know I did, Carla.”

“We didn’t tell you of our plan because we didn’t want it to influence your decision,” Peter explained. “Your psych profile showed you would favor the idea; we did not want you to serve as Captain and then find yourself forced to live the rest of your life among us without our full powers or a true commitment to our ways. Even after the Ritual, we dared not tell you—you’d become telepathic but weren’t yet skilled enough to close your mind to the others. We didn’t want to raise anyone’s hopes until we were sure we could charter a ship. And in the meantime you were happy with your seaplane—”

Giving that up would be hard, Jesse realized. Much as he wanted to go back to space command, he would hate losing the freedom of the air. Barely more than an hour ago he’d envisioned a bright future island-hopping with Carla. On a raw planet with no imports, it would be generations before anyone would fly again.

“Then when you were arrested,” Peter went on, “when I believed you would be destroyed, it seemed the end of everything. Ian and I had let ourselves face the truth, you see. We’d acknowledged that the Group can’t survive here, and had seen a way out. I couldn’t get back the acceptance I’d had before. And when Ian found out, he knew that what he’d worked for all his life couldn’t outlast him unless he saved you.”