Stewards of the Flame (58 page)

He struggled to keep a firm hold on himself. It was dusk now; the plane was flying level on autopilot, but soon he would be close enough to the city to start watching for air traffic. A sense of impending doom hung over him. He should land quickly; that was the only safe course—and yet he still wanted to turn around and head back toward the Island. To do that would take him away from Carla. It didn’t make sense.

Jesse! Please, oh please, Jesse—I can’t bear to lose you, I want so much to go with you to the new world
. . . . It was as clear as if she were outside his apartment, as if he were not imagining it at all.

Carla? Where are you?

We’re on the Island . . . Peter and I are on the Island . . . Peter can’t fly
. . . .

Was it possible that this could be real?

All reason told Jesse it couldn’t be. If they were on the Island, they were much too far away to reach him telepathically even if he were in the state for enhanced reception—and surely he was not. He had struggled to stay in normal consciousness. The very fact that he was thinking of them as on the Island proved that the voices came from his own unconscious mind.

And yet, it didn’t feel like hallucination. It felt like true communication.

He would be a fool to listen to it. They were probably safe in the city by now, and would worry if they tried to contact him and failed. If he was late getting to the park tonight they would surely worry, yet he couldn’t get to the Island and back before the wedding. Furthermore, he was still being tracked. If he went there now, he’d be in the air so late that to be flying for practice would look suspicious. For all he knew, there could be a programmed alert that would trigger his arrest.

Besides, he hadn’t taken time to get the plane recharged tonight. He hadn’t expected to go far enough to need a full charge. On the way back he would have to put in to the recharging station on Verge Island, which might not be open until morning. If it wasn’t, he’d be unable to reach the spaceport much before the noon deadline.

Jesse, Jesse, we need you . . . we need you on the Island
.
If you don’t come the plan may fail. . . .
Peter this time, with an intensity that before, had come only with altered consciousness. How could Peter have mastered the new mind-pattern after just one dual session, despite never having experienced it while drugged? Was he in the Lodge, using feedback? Jesse wondered.

Not in the Lodge. The Lodge is gone, it burned. . . .

Startled, Jesse became aware of incongruity. The Lodge burned? Such an idea as that would never have arisen from his own unconscious. It went against all his emotion about Undine, all the memories he wished to carry away with him. If he was thinking the Lodge had burned down, the concept must have come to him from somewhere else.

Peter and Carla had gone to the Island today. He could not be sure they had returned. What if they were in some kind of trouble? They’d have phoned for help, surely—there were many Group members with planes. If necessary, now that concealing their friendship with him no longer mattered, they could even have phoned
him
. They wouldn’t need to use telepathy. Yet . . . how would he feel if they didn’t show up at the park, and he’d suspected trouble without acting? How would he feel for the rest of his life if they missed the ship?

Always before he had depended on rationality. He could not function in daily life, let alone as a Captain, without it—and rationality told him that to go to the Island tonight would jeopardize everything the Group had worked for, perhaps even its very existence. If anything were to prevent his getting aboard the starship, it would mean the end of their hopes. And yet . . . what did the Group stand for, if not belief in the larger mind, the aspects of mind that weren’t based on reason? What had he gained, if not trust in the part of him that was more than reason could explain?

Jesse . . . dearest Jesse . . . I love you—if you can’t come to me, remember always that I love you
. . . . It was Carla’s mind touching his, as he had experienced it so many times when they’d shared not only their minds, but their bodies. To doubt it would be to deny the powers that the Group had awakened in him. Either his inner knowledge was true and important, or nothing was. He could not reject it, whatever the consequences might be.

Jesse turned the plane again, and headed back out to sea.

~
 
63
 
~

Long before he reached the Island Jesse saw its dull red glow, a beacon in the moonlight-silvered expanse of water. When he descended to circle, all that remained were stone ruins. The crises of my life are marked by fire, he thought as he touched down . . . the hearthfire where he’d first made love to Carla . . . the Ritual torch . . . the burning safe house . . . and now the embers of the Lodge. . . .

The fire had spread to the cottages, consuming them, and the Island’s trees, too, had burned. The tide was low, and the beach shone white in the moonlight. It had been a buffer between the flames and the dock on which Carla and Peter were huddled together, shivering in the chill night air of autumn.

He had been in full contact with them for several minutes, since approaching within range of conversational telepathy, and already knew the basic facts of what had happened. As he taxied to the dock, Carla ran to meet him. Embracing her, sharing the despair and terror she had felt when she’d feared he would not come, Jesse was horrified at the knowledge of how close he’d been to losing her. To denying all that he had learned in the Group for the sake of what outsiders viewed as sanity. He held her close, wanting not to think of anything beyond.

But the time had come to be practical. They were not out of trouble yet. All three of them would miss the ship—the plan might even be exposed—unless he kept his head.

Peter sat propped against a piling; he could not stand, nor could he communicate telepathically on mundane matters. He was vaguely conscious of what went on; he had felt pain while watching the Lodge burn, agony when he realized that if taken to the Hospital he might be forced to reveal the Group’s secrets. But he was very weak. His drugged mind was in a haze; for him to take part in decisions would be impossible. There was no knowing how soon whatever he’d been given would wear off.

“The worst of it is that I haven’t enough of a charge to fly back,” Jesse said. “We’ll have to detour to Verge Island and probably wait there till morning. It doesn’t leave us much time.”

“Peter’s plane is charged,” said Carla, “and we’ve got to use it in any case because of the boxes. There’s not room for them in yours.”

He had not thought about that. Peter’s was a six-place plane, while his had only four seats—it could not hold three people along with the irreplaceable boxes of equipment. He supposed he could fly Peter’s plane, which was otherwise similar to his own. Still, considering what he was going to have to do with it . . .

“The only trouble,” Carla went on, “is that we’ve missed the connection with the trucker Peter bribed. Do you know how to get in touch with him?”

“Even if I did, he probably wouldn’t be available on short notice. Anyway, we can’t land Peter’s plane in the city, Carla. They will track it and be waiting to meet it.”

“Oh, God. I suppose they will.” All planes had identifiable transponders; they weren’t routinely monitored, but Warick would certainly have Peter’s watched. “How are we going to get past them?”

“I see just one solution,” Jesse said. “We’ve got to fly directly to the spaceport.”

“But we can’t land there either—there’s no water.”

“We can land. There won’t be much left of the floats afterward, but Peter’s not going to be using the plane again, after all.”

“Put a floatplane down on dry land?”

“According to my flight manual it’s been done on Earth. It would be less risky on grass or soft ground than on concrete, but we don’t have a choice.” He didn’t look forward to doing it in a plane he had never handled before, carrying a heavier load than he was used to. But it would be better to crash than to let the starship depart without them.

Carla nodded. “We’d better get going, then.”

“Not yet, not unless we hear an air ambulance coming. The last thing we want is to attract attention to the spaceport before all our people have gotten there. So we mustn’t arrive before dawn.”

“I suppose we should try to sleep for a few hours.”

“In a while, maybe.” Jesse pondered the thought that had just struck him. “There’s another problem. Warick will send a crew to see what’s happened here when we take off, since that’s a move he won’t be expecting from Peter—and official planes are much faster than ours. They’ll find my plane moored at the dock while we’re still airborne.”

“Maybe they’ll decide you flew past and saw the fire, and rescued him without having come on purpose.”

“No, they won’t. I’d have no reason to pass by late at night, and besides, why would I rescue him in his plane instead of my own? In any case, they’ll realize that I’m with him. If they suspect conspiracy between us it will be too late to matter. But they may not; they may simply assume I was stalking him. They still believe I’m mentally ill and potentially violent. They may think he tried to fly and I took over when I found him weakened—that I may kill him because I hate him for drugging me in the Hospital.”

“Well, let them think that. We’ll be gone before they can do anything about it.”

“They can force our plane down, Carla. Maybe hoping to save him from me—or maybe not. If Warick is planning to run for office, Peter’s potentially a long-term threat. He might welcome a chance to eliminate him permanently and blame it on a mental patient.”

“Oh, Jesse. Would he murder us, really?”

“I was right in fearing that he’d try something. I can’t be sure he’ll stop with drugging; he won’t know you’re aboard, after all. But for them to pick us up at sea would be just as bad—he’d have us in custody before the starship leaves orbit, and he’d surely use truth serum on me this time, even if not on Peter.”

He felt Carla’s surge of horrified dismay. “God help us,” she whispered. “They’d uncover everything, even the facts about Zeb’s death.”

“I wouldn’t let them pick me up,” Jesse declared, “or Peter, either.” He would sink the plane after getting Carla out, not to avoid permanent imprisonment in the psych ward, though he didn’t believe he could face that a second time, but for the sake of the others. The ship would be recalled and three hundred people would be convicted of crimes—financial if not their earlier ones—if either he or Peter were given truth serum. That must not happen. The Group must escape to Liberty, even if he could not take them to a new world.

Carla clutched his hand with icy fingers, needing to hear no verbal elaboration. In a small voice she said, “They wouldn’t need to find your plane. The tracking system already shows you’re on the Island.”

“An ambulance would be here by now if they were monitoring me in real time. I’m not a high priority case; they won’t check routine tracking data before morning unless they have some reason to suspect that I’m with Peter.”

“So if we go in your plane, we’ll be safe? But the neurofeedback equipment . . . the cryogenic bank—”

“Are too important to give up. Besides, mine would have to be charged. I have a better idea. Let’s cut the tracking chip out of me and throw it into the ruins to make them think I died in the explosion.”

“How can we? We don’t have a knife—I don’t think we can salvage anything that used to be in the infirmary.”

“I’ve got one.” Jesse pulled a small well-wrapped blade from his pocket.

“What do you carry that for?” Carla asked, mystified. “Wherever did you get it?”

“Kira gave it to me,” he replied shortly. This was not the time to point out that you couldn’t hijack a ship without displaying a weapon of some kind, even if you didn’t intend to kill anybody. This morning Kira had provided surgical scalpels from the healing house for the members of the takeover team; she was carrying one herself.

“It’s not sterile,” Carla noted, “but Kira can check tomorrow to make sure there’s no infection. You’re sure you want me to do this?”

“I’ll be glad to be rid of the damned tracking device just as a matter of principle,” Jesse said. He removed his shirt and lay prone on the dock while Carla probed with her healer’s sense. The chip was small but there was a faint scar to guide her to its exact position between his shoulder blades; she had seen it in bed just after his release from the Hospital. She now used a flashlight from the plane to locate it, and without flinching, thrust the scalpel into his flesh, of necessity cutting out more than the tiny chip itself.
It won’t hurt unless you let it
, he remembered—Kira had told him that, the night Peter had cut his arm, and it was true. The mind-pattern for pain control came easily to him now. He was even able to control his own bleeding.

Carla stayed down beside him, cuddling against him, as she healed the wound. After a few minutes he turned onto his back and gazed at the stars. With her free hand Carla reached out to Peter, so that the three of them were in contact, sharing a deep, semi-conscious awareness of all that was behind them, all that lay ahead.

They tried not to look at the desolation of the smoldering Island. Yet the emotions it stirred were too fresh to be shut out. Jesse knew that inside, Peter was mourning, would continue to mourn until he reached a new world.
It’s all right, Peter,
he declared silently, slipping into the mind-pattern they’d entered during their last time on dual.
Ian would say it’s fitting for it to end in fire . . . fire is our symbol, isn’t it? First the hearthfire within the Lodge, lighting the flame of the torch—and then spreading . . . spreading until our old life is consumed and we go on, carrying that flame into a better one
. . . .

Yes. He did say something like that, when he came to tell me I should reach out to you. . . .
It was as before: no words were formed, yet only with words could the projected concepts be registered in memory.