Stewards of the Flame Page 7

  “In other words,” said Carla, “you believe there are times not to seek treatment.”

  “Sure I do. I’d even go so far as to refuse advised treatment—” He broke off, aghast at the implications of what he was saying. He knew where they were leading him, now.

  “You’d refuse just as you refused treatment for alcoholism,” Peter agreed. “But that’s an option we don’t have here.”

  “Oh, God,” Jesse said. “You’re saying it wasn’t a matter of whether to call the ambulance. Your friend had to be hidden from one already after her.” It had become all too clear. The city’s ambulances, after all, had police powers.

  “She was due for a mandatory checkup,” Anne said, “and this time, she’d have been held permanently. Even if her condition had stabilized.”

  “You mean everyone—everyone on this world who’s not killed outright—dies slowly in that damned hospital, hooked to machines?” Jesse persisted. “You all know that’s what you’re facing? It’s not even a matter of odds?”

  “I wish that were what we meant,” Bernie said. There was an uneasy silence. Then, with irony, he went on, “But you see, we have the galaxy’s finest medical facility in this colony—”

  “So I’ve been told. That’s not quite how I’d describe it.”

  “And,” Kwame declared, “the galaxy’s finest medical facility can’t let people die.”

  “Till they’ve disintegrated from old age, you mean.” God. It might take years, with unlimited forced treatment. . . .

  “No, Jesse. It can’t let them die at all. At least not according to the Meds’ criteria.”

  He stared at Kwame. “I guess I don’t quite see.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Carla said gently, “and yet you have to, in order to live here even for a while. It’s better that you hear the facts from us than by chance, from strangers. You’re not going to like what you hear.”

  Jesse was silent.

  “Our medical facility,” Bernie told him, “really is an advanced one. From the technological standpoint it’s superb. It has developed sophisticated techniques not common elsewhere, and as you know, its funds are unlimited. The law says everyone must be treated for everything. So you see, bodies are just—maintained. Indefinitely.”

  “Even after they’re brain-dead?” Jesse asked in a low voice.

  “Yes—like bodies from which organs for transplant were taken, back in the days before cloned organs were perfected. Sometimes there’s minimal brain stem activity, but no possibility of subconscious mental functioning.”

  “Surely the goal must be to restore the mind, or perhaps someday transplant it.”

  “No. We’re not talking about coma. People in comas have an interior life, some form of consciousness, whether or not they show evidence of it. But even in principle, technology can’t restore or transplant a mind that no longer physically exists.”

  “The law holds that personhood resides in mere flesh,” Liz said. “The general public perceives maintenance as eternal life. But though some religions once held that only if a soul were still present could bodily functions be made to continue, that can hardly be said now that our technology’s so advanced.”

  “The Meds are fully aware that they’re dealing with bodies that would be pronounced dead on any other world,” Ingrid added. “And they aren’t maintaining them for religious reasons. On the contrary, they reject any concept of soul. To them the body alone is central, the definition of human life and therefore sacred. So the aim is to preserve its biological operation.”

  “You’re right that I don’t like it,” Jesse said, knowing no way to strengthen the understatement. “But aren’t they going to run out of bed space someday?”

  “Well, they don’t use regular rooms,” Carla said painfully. “The bodies are kept in stasis units, like those that were once used on slow starships. Besides the treatment floors there are maintenance floors. That’s a euphemism. The more accurate term is vaults. It’s another reason the Hospital is so large.”

  “Carla,” Jesse protested. “You work in that place! You mean all the time, while you’re working there, you know these stasis vaults are around . . . and that someday—”

  They all stared at him in clear dismay. Carla averted her face, stricken, suddenly, by feeling too deep for words. With chagrin he saw that his outburst had hurt her, touched some sensitive point that the others knew to avoid. He longed to comfort her, but he didn’t know what he could say.

  “Let’s drop it,” Peter put in quickly. “We’ve got other issues to clear up now. For one thing, Jess, we need you to be aware that what you saw tonight was a crime involving all of us—even you, should it ever become known that you witnessed it. That’s why we gave you a chance to stay out. According to the law you’re now an accessory to murder.”

  “Murder? All I got a glimpse of was a wrapped body, already dead. That’s all any of you saw, except maybe Anne.”

  “But officially, you see, there is no death from natural causes here. This world has no cemeteries. To bury a body is murder, unless it’s been in an accident and is not intact.”

  “We could all be arrested for this? Imprisoned?” There were no prisons, Jesse recalled in horror. There was only the Hospital, which no doubt had methods for dealing with murderers. How could they have dared to take such a chance? The whole group—a formal ceremony—when a single boat with two men would have been sufficient. . . .

  Peter nodded. He leaned across the table, held Jesse with his eyes. “Jess, I’d guess that at this point you’ve got some serious doubts in your mind about the wisdom of our legal system. Am I right?”

  “Damned right,” Jesse declared grimly. “I wouldn’t ordinarily mix in colonial politics, but this—”

  “This is not a political issue, except in the sense that any government, anywhere, seeks to reinforce and extend its own power. The Meds are in control because they’re supported by the public. No form of political action could help matters.”

  “Why not? If enough others were willing to confront reality as you people do, the law or the constitution or whatever could be changed. You do have free elections—”

  “And if we held one, even after raising the public’s consciousness, the vast majority would vote against change. People don’t want to die. They may not like to discuss the Vaults, still they see them as a form of immortality.”

  “You don’t. I don’t.”

  “But we are exceptions. Our particular group of friends is composed of exceptions. Would you have us impose our view on the public by force? Should we be trying to run the government in the name of what we think is good for people, instead of what the Meds think is good for them?”

  Jesse shook his head. “That would be self-defeating,” he conceded, “if you’re for freedom. But there should be individual choice.”

  “There should be, but again, people will not vote for that. Not on a matter of health policy.”

  True enough, thought Jesse. He’d seen that himself, even before hearing of this far more disturbing issue. Not to be treated might be crime here; elsewhere, it was sin. People would not vote to permit what they’d been taught to feel guilty about, whatever they might do privately by themselves.

  “Furthermore,” Kwame said, “they won’t vote to cut off their income. The people in the Vaults, you see, are legally alive. Their accounts in offworld banks still earn interest. That’s why we’re all relatively wealthy here—though we can’t touch the principal, we get steady income on money inherited from our forebears, generations back, starting with those who got rich on homesteaders’ diamond-mining rights. The government takes most of it in taxes, but it knows better than to confiscate it all. It won’t risk jeopardizing a system that not only pays the cost of preserving bodies, but fills the treasury as well.”

  “I’d think the banks would have caught on by now,” Jesse protested.

  “Banks don’t turn away depositors,” Ingrid pointed out, “not without official death certificat
es, which they’ll never receive from Undine.”

  “The banks are heavily invested in the pharmaceutical companies,” Nathan added, “and for obvious reasons, Undine is the pharmaceutical companies’ model of heaven. No way will its policies ever be criticized.”

  Jesse clenched his fingers. “There’s got to be some answer,” he insisted. “Laws aren’t like this everywhere. This is just one colony.”

  “But it’s an advanced colony,” Peter said. “We here are forerunners, Jess. You know in your heart that when our technological advances spread, so will the system derived from them: first to more colonies and ultimately, perhaps, to Earth itself. It would not make any difference if we changed our laws. The trend will be in favor of more like them.”

  “Oh, God, Peter!” Jesse burst out. “The way you’re putting it, we’d end up with a galaxy full of vaults. Life can’t be meant to end that way. There has to be a better goal than that.”

  “We think so, too,” Peter said. To Jesse’s amazement, he smiled as he said it. Suddenly they were all smiling—in dead earnest, untouched by fear or despair. It was if the meaning that had always eluded him were not an illusion, as if they somehow had an inside track on it.

  Carla, her normal spirits restored, caught his hand and squeezed it. “We go in for this sort of discussion,” she said. “It’s a bit like jumping in over your head—you develop a taste for it. We’re alive, as you said, Jesse! We don’t worry about the future. We’re living.”

  Was it simply courage he saw in them, then? Jesse wondered. They had a form of it he’d never encountered—they’d led him to an impassable abyss and stopped just short of the edge. They had stopped on his account; he sensed there had been more to say. He found himself wishing that he were fit to follow them.

  ~ 11 ~

  Late the next afternoon Carla sought Jesse on the porch, where he sat reveling in onworld sunlight. “I’m going now,” she said, “in Bernie’s plane. You can wait for Peter.”

  “I’d rather come with you,” he said, torn between desire to prolong what might end soon in any case, and an irrational wish to stay at the Lodge until the last possible moment.

  “Bernie hasn’t room. We will see each other again, Jesse—at least I hope so.” She smiled, but it seemed a struggle.

  Jesse rose and put his arms around her. “Carla, you know I want to see you. You know I want more than that. Is there any good reason why we have to wait for more?”

  “Yes,” she said gravely. “You’ll know soon enough, one way or the other. Oh, Jesse, I—” She pulled away, to his dismay blinking back tears. “Please don’t ever hate me, however things turn out.” Before he recovered enough to answer her, she was running down the path toward the dock.

  Jesse followed slowly. The plane took off, circling the Lodge and disappearing into a cloudless sky. One by one others went; he sat at the water’s edge and watched them. It was like being aboard a flagship, he thought, when all the shuttles were leaving: there were people you’d served with, been close to, and they were going separate ways now; you would probably never see them again. You did not yet know where you yourself would be sent. And there was a centeredness to the base, simply because it was a base, and you clung to that. You clung to what it stood for, and to the memories.

  It was almost dusk; evidently Peter planned to fly by moonlight. When Jesse saw him on the path, he started toward the dock. But Peter came to him instead. “I’m not leaving till tomorrow,” he said, sitting down on a flat rock beside him. “I can get you transport, but I was wondering if you might want to stay on for a while.”

  Reprieve, Jesse thought, amused by his own surge of gladness. “Overnight, you mean?” he asked.

  “Longer than that. Maybe quite a bit longer.”

  Jesse shook his head. “I can’t impose on your hospitality,” he said with reluctance. “Or somebody’s hospitality—I’m still not clear about who owns this place. What is it, a co-op of some sort?” He wondered, suddenly, whether he might be allowed to buy in; it would be worth it even for a short stay onworld.

  Peter hesitated, searching for words. “Does the term ‘safe house’ mean anything to you?” he asked slowly. “That’s the closest thing I can think of that you might have come across in bigger colonies.”

  Turning, Jesse stared at Peter in sheer astonishment. “Maybe we don’t have the same vocabulary,” he said. “If this were what I know of as a safe house, I wouldn’t have been invited here.”

  “You might. I’m a quick judge of character. So is Carla.”

  “Would it be out of line to ask who you need to be safe from?” It was just not possible, he thought, that they were on the same wavelength. A safe house would imply covert operations of some sort. This colony had no nations, no political conflicts; its government was monolithic, unopposed, and in the eyes of virtually all citizens, benevolent.

  “We like to explore ideas, as you know,” Peter said. “We have more such ideas than you’ve yet heard. Some of them are—unpopular. Some might even be considered irrational.”

  “But League law guarantees freedom of speech,” Jesse protested.

  “Does it? Or does that apply only to mentally competent citizens, those not in need of help from Med therapists?”

  Jesse went cold. He should have known, perhaps, considering his own experience; but he’d assumed his view of the Hospital was biased. “I’ve heard of places where psychiatry’s abused, where hospitals are used as political prisons,” he acknowledged. “But you said the problem here’s not political.”

  “Well, Jess, it works a little differently here,” Peter said. “It’s true there are no political uprisings, and we’ve no wish to start one. What I’m getting at is a bit more subtle. The Med government isn’t corrupt. The worst thing about the authorities is that they’re sincere. They really believe they’re helping everybody. Some of us happen to disagree.”

  “And this is the only sort of place you can talk about it?” Good lord, he thought, were there microphones in restaurants? Was that why Carla had switched subjects so abruptly the first night?

  “We can talk anywhere, except on phones, with reasonable caution. But we often do more than talk, you see.” Peter’s gaze was suddenly very penetrating. Jesse knew the key point had been made.

  “God,” he said. “Are you—recruiting me, Peter?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” Peter admitted. “One of the things I do in the world outside is keep my eyes open for people who might be interested.”

  Jesse stared out across the bay, letting the shock settle. Despite all the speculation he’d done about these people, despite even their acceptance of criminal liability for the burial of a friend, such a thing as this had never entered his mind. Now . . . well, yes, the fire was there, the intensity; he could see them as ideological fanatics. But activists? Undercover operatives? They weren’t hard enough, not unless they were new at the game. “Interested in what?” he asked slowly.

  “In the power of the individual human mind. In the primacy of that, not only over oppression but over all the well-meant limits society imposes on it. And in a future Med policy can’t dominate.”

  “I’m for that,” Jesse declared. “I’d be interested if I were free to make a commitment. But Peter, if Fleet will take me back I’ve got to go.”

  “We don’t ask for a commitment that would interfere,” Peter said. “You’d make binding pledges, yes, but you wouldn’t be bound to this planet. As I explained last night, the real problem affects the whole galaxy.”

  “I’d be expected to act—elsewhere, you mean? As an agent, a courier?”

  “Not exactly. Our offworld contacts deal mostly with getting around this colony’s monetary restrictions—hacking and so forth; I doubt if that’s your thing. You wouldn’t be taking on any specific responsibilities by coming in with us, at least not now. If later you were asked to assume one, you’d be free to say no.”

  “But I’d be committed as long as I’m here.”

&
nbsp; “Not in the sense you mean, except with regard to secrecy. We aren’t quite the sort of group you see in the average action vid.” Peter spoke slowly, with deliberation. “We don’t expect anyone to renounce loyalties or attachments, except to this planet’s government, which you have no allegiance to in any case. It’s more a matter of outlook. There are certain premises you’d find yourself questioning, possibly some you’ve not questioned before. Some might prove hard to give up. The alternatives we offer might prove frightening. All we’d ask of you is willingness to learn.”

  “It’s just philosophy, then? Reshaping of minds?”

  “More than that. We act on our beliefs, develop skills outsiders don’t have.”

  “What sort of skills?”

  “For one, controlling our bodies to the extent that medical intervention’s rarely necessary.”

  “Through fitness, you mean.” This didn’t ring true; the assortment of food eaten at the Lodge, unlike what he’d been served in the city, was hardly the fare of health fanatics.

  “No,” Peter said. “We control our bodies’ reactions with our minds, consciously, just as you control your legs with your mind when you decide to walk.”

  “That’s not possible,” Jesse objected.

  “So the Meds tell you. Need I point out that they’ve got a vested interest in making you believe it?”

  “You—you boycott them, then?”

  “Insofar as we can without getting caught. There are physicians among us, and whatever real treatment we need, short of limb or organ replacement, is given in covert healing houses. We take steps to escape the medication we’d otherwise receive for emotional reactions, alleged risk factors, and other conditions that interfere less with living than therapy would.”

  “I’m happy to hear it. What I’ve seen so far in this colony makes me think the priority given to health precautions over enjoyment of life has been carried to ridiculous lengths.”

  “The public’s sense of values is distorted,” Peter agreed. “It’s true everywhere; historically, whenever health authorities succeed in overcoming some actual problem, such as contagion, they are left with a bureaucracy that must justify its existence by medicalizing more and more aspects of simply being human. Here, where it’s combined with the natural tendency of government to encroach on personal liberty, that process has been unrestrained. We can’t combat it directly. We’ve developed other ways of ensuring our own well-being. There’s a price—the initial training’s not a pleasant process. But I think you can see we’re none the worse for it.”