Stewards of the Flame Page 8

  Jesse nodded. Their self-possession, their vitality, their enviable ability to have fun—whatever they’d been through must be worth experiencing. He’d give a lot to learn their secrets. “I guess you know it’s a tempting proposition,” he said. “But when it comes to activism, well, I’d have to know more of the specifics.”

  “You don’t expect me to tell you, do you?”

  “No. Of course you can’t; I see that. But then we’re at an impasse, aren’t we? Because there are limits to what I’ll do, even in a good cause.”

  “We don’t plan to turn you into a hit man, if that’s what you mean,” Peter said. “You’ve seen too many of those vids, Jess.”

  “Not just vids. On Earth—on many worlds—such things happen. I’m not wholly ignorant of undercover work. Sooner or later, there’s a line to be crossed. I’m not saying no one ever needs to cross it. I just don’t see myself in that role.”

  “Do you see us in it?” Peter asked quietly.

  No, of course he didn’t; that was the absurd element in the whole business. He simply could not conceive of Peter, or any of them, turning to violence. According to reason, he could not judge; he’d known them only five days, after all—but through some uncanny sixth sense, he knew.

  If not the usual sort of operatives, then, what were they? Jesse pondered it, chilled by the suspicion that came to him. Not assassins, but angels of mercy; the burial must not have been an isolated incident. He’d given them the benefit of the doubt last night, but as a general rule they could hardly beat the ambulance to unscheduled deaths.

  “I suppose I do see part of what you’re doing,” he said with genuine regret, “and I can’t go along with it. I respect your conviction—but as I said last night, I don’t favor assisted suicide. Not even in the extreme situation you’ve got here.”

  “Suicide?” For an instant Peter seemed puzzled; then he smiled. “We don’t favor that either, Jesse. Is that how it looks, that we save people from the stasis vaults by dumping them prematurely into the bay?”

  “It would be logical. I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer the bay to the Hospital, if I were a terminal case. But I don’t think rushing death’s any more justifiable than prolonging it.”

  “If you’d argued otherwise last night, we wouldn’t be inviting you to join us.” Peter paused briefly before admitting, “As you’ve guessed, burials at sea are quite frequent. One of our jobs is to facilitate natural death for people who are already dying. Wholly natural—no drugs, no intervention. Nothing you’ll find objectionable, at least not in the ethical sense.”

  “In what other sense might I object? Not the legal one,” Jesse declared.

  “No. But there are other aspects that may be upsetting. Nursing the dying isn’t fun. What’s more, sometimes people argue for natural death in principle while insulating themselves from the reality of it. We don’t let you do that.”

  It fit. They were absolutely uncompromising; in their work as in their discussion, they’d permit no self-delusion. “I’d actually tend dying patients? But I’m not skilled. It’s not my field.”

  “You’re looking at it as Med-dominated culture does—putting death off in a corner to be dealt with by professionals, as if it were some sort of abnormality. If you believe it shouldn’t be denied or abolished, you must back up what you say.”

  “I could have a go at that, but I’ve got no aptitude—for comforting the sick, I mean.”

  “You’d be adequately trained. That’s a small part of what you’d learn, of course. Caregiving’s not our main focus and no one has to keep on participating, though many of us do from time to time.”

  Peter didn’t seem bothered by it. Yet he was a man sensitive to others’ feelings, and presumably to their suffering. That issue hadn’t been mentioned, Jesse realized. “No drugs—not even painkillers? Or are you in the drug business, too?”

  “I’d rather not answer that right now. It gets into some areas I’m not free to discuss.”

  Well, yes, Jesse thought. It would. He already had far more information than an outsider should be given. Were they that sure of him, or merely imprudent?

  “You’d never be asked to go against your conscience,” Peter said, “because that’s the whole point, after all. We’re for individual conscience. Individual decisions, even where some might say they’re not in a person’s best interests. And something else I can’t explain yet—the full empowerment of the individual mind.”

  A cold breeze drifted in from the water. Peter was silent, considering, then went on, “I can tell you a little more, things that should be obvious to you anyway. You don’t think you’re the only victim we’ve sprung from the Hospital, do you? Most cases aren’t as easy as yours. If we can’t get an official discharge, we have to hide people. That means other safe houses, some of which are used as hospices.” He eyed Jesse. “In terms of the law this is more than conspiracy, remember. When someone dies naturally in our care, it’s technically homicide. And all crime here—”

  “Is considered illness,” Jesse said. “You don’t have to spell it out. The risks aren’t what I’m worrying about.”

  “Of course not. You want to know the long-range goal, and that’s what I can’t go into yet. I’ll warn you, though, that it’s not anything like what you might imagine. Enormous demands would be made of you. My guess is that you’d like that, but the choice has to be yours.”

  Jesse drew breath, knowing that no amount of practical good sense could prevail over his feelings. Hell, he was stuck on this world, for a while if not forever. “All right,” he said with mounting enthusiasm. “If you want me, count me in.”

  Peter’s eyes met his. “It’s not as simple as that,” he declared. “There are formalities.”

  “You mean initiations, passwords, all that?”

  “Yes, ultimately. Training in mind/body control comes first, but before that we have to verify your aptitude for it.” Peter hesitated. “This is hard to explain. You’re not the first person I’ve brought in, but I still don’t know any good way to present it without making it sound like second-rate melodrama. We test you, Jess. It’s a very challenging test, and you won’t see the necessity for it. What’s done may seem excessive, even sadistic, and at this stage I can’t tell you why it’s designed that way.”

  Jesse shrugged. There was no question of his refusing such a challenge; both Peter and Carla were aware of that. Looking back, he saw they’d taken pains to find out. “I’ve no objections,” he told Peter. “You’ve got to be careful who you accept.”

  “That’s not the issue. We already trust you, or you wouldn’t be hearing this much. The test measures how far you trust us, among other things. Usually people know us a good deal longer before undertaking it. You don’t have to commit now; you can go back to the city, wait, if you like.”

  “Maybe I’m a quick judge of character too,” Jesse said slowly. “I’m not sure why, but I trust you as much or more than crews I’ve worked with for years. There’s something—unique in you. I can’t say just what it is, but I wouldn’t hesitate to sign you on as shipmates. That’s the only criterion I know.”

  “You’ll see another side of us. I hope you won’t lose faith in your own intuition.” He paused, then went on, “I can set things up for tonight, if you want me to. You can’t stay here any longer as a guest.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Jesse said.

  “Okay, then.” Peter’s smile was a bit forced; Jesse perceived that it took effort for him to proceed. “I’ve mentioned the power of the human mind. We do a good deal of experimentation with that, much of it in a lab setting with some fairly elaborate equipment. You’re being asked to volunteer.”

  Jesse laughed. “Is that all? Evidently you’ve never heard what a person goes through to qualify for a starship crew, or you wouldn’t find it so hard to broach the subject.”

  “Stress testing? Endurance of pain?”

  “Certainly, when I was a Fleet cadet. It’s not that big of a deal.
” But it had been then, he remembered. There’d been a spice to it then; there was, when you still thought your life was leading somewhere.

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” Peter told him. “Your biggest hurdle’s going to be complacency. I’ve read a lot of what’s been published on human endurance. Fleet knows little or nothing about it.”

  “I’m ready to learn more.”

  “That’s fortunate,” Peter said dryly.

  “You’re trying to scare me. That’s an old game too, but since reason tells me I won’t be harmed in research experiments, there’s only so far you can go.” Which, he thought, might be anticlimactic after a medical workup that had approached the point of injury more than once.

  “What we do won’t harm you,” Peter agreed, with surprising intensity, “although it will scare you more than you think. There are reasons why it has to, but we can’t share them with you yet. These particular endurance studies require naive subjects.” He appraised Jesse thoughtfully. “That’s a technical term; are you familiar with it?”

  “Sure—subjects who don’t know what to expect.”

  “Yes, so you won’t be informed even of the aim. Nothing unprecedented will be done to you; the rest of us have been through the same protocol.”

  “Where is this lab?” Jesse asked, realizing that Peter had stayed after the others in order to escort him there.

  “Downstairs.” Peter pointed to the Lodge, silhouetted now against the darkening sky.

  “Here?” The place was more than a safe house, then; it was a cover. For what, exactly? An underground lab with elaborate equipment would be difficult and expensive to install anywhere, let alone on a wild island; the group obviously had vast resources. Affluent as colonial citizens might be, its members could not all be carefree young people. Those he had met perplexed him more than ever, now. Peter’s informed remarks on endurance studies were out of character, however much activism he might be involved in. Jesse remembered him on the rock, laughing, seemingly unburdened by worries; now he was indeed revealing another side.

  Yet still he was drawn. Besides, there was Carla, who evidently had planned all along to recruit him. “I guess I’ve underestimated a lot of things,” he reflected.

  “Yes. You can back out—‘volunteer’ means exactly what it says. It’s up to you to decide if you want to proceed.”

  “I think you know that decision’s already made. I—I get the feeling you knew before you approached me.” It was as if Peter had read his mind, his feelings, right from the first. . . .

  “We know a lot about people,” Peter agreed. “I would not bring you into this without believing you won’t be sorry.” He looked, Jesse thought, as if it were he who had just taken on a hard trial.

  Part Two

  ~ 12 ~

  In the plane, Carla looked down at the fading expanse of water, wishing the coming workweek behind her. When she next saw Jesse, she’d know the outcome . . . but before then, she would hear it from Peter. He had not allowed her to stay. She hadn’t argued; she wouldn’t want to watch, couldn’t bear that, though for Jesse’s sake she had offered. But her presence could not help Jesse. Only her love might help. She sent it out across the distance, a desperate, inner surge, wondering if she’d be equal to the days and weeks to come.

  Her own ordeal had begun during Jesse’s hospitalization, when she’d tried desperately to free him, not guessing the true situation. Now, aware of it, she knew harder times were ahead of them. And this night would not be the least of them. Jesse would suffer terribly—more terribly than was usual, Peter had admitted. It would not harm him. He would not regret the experience. Unless . . . unless he failed to complete the full test. Unless she’d failed to give him reason enough to see it through. . . .

  She thought back to the point of decision, the moment when she had burst into Peter Kelstrom’s hospital office, frantic, ready to fight fiercely once more for Jesse’s release—only to find that he’d already signed the discharge order. “Tell me why you waited so long,” she’d demanded. “Tell me you didn’t order the truth serum.”

  “Carla, the stakes are very high here. I did what was necessary. Jesse Sanders wasn’t damaged by it.”

  “Like hell he wasn’t! You, a therapist, are saying that a man like Jesse is not damaged by forced extraction of God knows what thoughts are buried deep in his mind—by fearing he’s revealed more than he actually has, believing he will never again have any shred of privacy? By knowing it’s in his file?”

  “It’s not in his file. I did it by keyboard, using a synthesized voice he couldn’t recognize later, and I wiped it immediately. In due course I’ll tell him that.”

  “You’ll tell him? Peter, you surely don’t think he’ll be picked up again?”

  Astonishingly, Peter broke into a radiant smile, the smile reserved for exciting ideas far removed from his somber job setting. “Forgive me for not leveling with you about Jesse’s case,” he said. “But it worked, didn’t it?”

  “Worked?” At first, she was too confused to grasp what he meant. Peter sometimes played ruthless games; he was very clever at it, and they were always effective. But whatever he’d meant to accomplish, he would not have involved an innocent bystander. Members of the Group could and did volunteer for unpleasant roles in schemes designed to protect Peter’s cover. To use a real patient that way would be unthinkable.

  “He has to hate the Hospital, and yet trust you,” Peter explained. “If I’d told you ahead of time why I was stressing him, you’d have given too much away. You’re not well enough trained to hide your thoughts.”

  “But Peter, he already hated it, and anyway, why does it matter? He’ll be leaving soon.”

  “No. That’s one of the things I found out the night I viewed his chart at home. He’s listed as an alcoholic; the report had already gone to Fleet—for which I was grateful, since I was spared the anguish of feeling I ought to correct it. He won’t be able to get transport, not without undercover intervention, anyway.”

  “You don’t plan to intervene?” It seemed an odd lapse of Peter’s empathy.

  “Not by sending him offworld. I got the impression that you’d be happy to keep seeing him.”

  “Yes . . . but you know it can’t come to anything between us.” How, Carla thought, could this be troubling her? Her life was defined by the powers she’d gained, by what she had become; and she did not in any sense regret that, though it did limit future relationships. “I can’t love that way outside the Group, after all.”

  “Carla, we’re not going to leave him outside.”

  She drew breath. “You mean—make him one of us? Is that possible?”

  “It should be. He has the potential. If I had no other evidence, your attraction to him would be proof enough. And we need him. We—we need to see how our way of life will work for an offworlder.”

  “You turned him against the Meds just to recruit him!” she accused, suddenly understanding. “It wasn’t fair.” Despite her outrage, Carla’s heart beat faster. Perhaps, after all . . .

  “Certainly it was fair. He had to learn first hand what we’re up against. He hated the authorities here on grounds of his arrest, but had no strong reason to distrust medics in general. Not having seen the logical conclusion of their policies, he might have remained under the impression that maximum medical care is a good thing.”

  “The recapture, days of brutal therapy . . . was all that really warranted?”

  “It was harsh,” Peter admitted. “I would not, of course, have let it go far enough for a tracking chip to be implanted; that’s a handicap the Group can’t cope with. But I did have to know how he’d react to stress, Carla.”

  “How do we know he’ll want to come in? He hasn’t any of the special talents we usually look for. Even with those who do have, it takes weeks of observation, weeks of interaction with us, before you’re ready to recruit—” She broke off, frowning, “Is that why you used truth serum? To find out if our powers are latent in him?”


  “And to judge whether he’s susceptible to the dangers they involve.”

  “You don’t drug other trainees. It’s against all our principles—”

  “There are rare cases where it’s justified, just as there are in medical situations. I need to be absolutely sure of him.” Reluctantly he added, “Not only for his safety, but for another reason I can’t explain to you right now.”

  On the verge of asking why not, Carla stopped. Something strange was going on here. Peter’s mind had been closed to her for days; it still was, despite his admissions about past tactics. Within the Group that was not normal.

  “Jesse won’t even begin to suspect what we are,” she protested. “You can’t be candid when you talk him into the initial testing. Will keeping him in the dark about us be justified, too?”

  “You know why I can’t reveal all he stands to gain.”

  “I didn’t mean everything. Not the bonus that would attract the wrong people, for the wrong reasons. But recruits from our front group have at least some idea of what they’re getting into. Jesse may not even want all our skills.”

  “Not at first,” Peter agreed. “He’ll find them frightening, unconsciously if not consciously. With our help he can overcome that. The rewards are very great, after all, even apart from the potential bonus.”

  “He won’t know that when he’s asked to endure pain,” she said unhappily. “It will seem arbitrary, as if we were just testing his commitment.”

  Peter rose from his desk and came to her. “Carla, here is a strong, capable man who’s been nearly ruined by years of insufficient challenge. Was he happy in Fleet? Will he be less happy after undergoing an ordeal that will open doors for him? Have any of us been sorry we went through it?”