Stewards of the Flame

by Sylvia Engdahl

  Jesse pondered this, suddenly uneasy in a way not stemming from fear. Something in that remark didn’t seem quite right, though he shrank from defining what bothered him about it.

  “Don’t misunderstand,” Peter said quickly, answering unspoken feelings. “The high isn’t derived from pain. It comes from reaching an altered state of consciousness through deliberate, volitional choice. Other skills of the mind can produce it too.”

  “An altered state?” This raised new doubts. What Jesse had heard in the past of altered states was not inviting.

  Peter said, “You may associate that term with being spaced out on drugs. But there are many altered states, of which those produced by drugs are among the least useful. That is what the visual patterns mean—they’re graphic, symbolic representations of different states of consciousness. It used to be that only a few individuals could enter such states at will, and those few generally spent years meditating before they learned how. Our sensing technology and our software, combined with the telepathic help we provide, make it possible to learn fast.”

  He called out, “Let’s have the visuals, Kira.” The wall lit up with side-by-side displays, alive now with a dot of violet at the lower left corner of each. Jesse hadn’t even felt that; he found it took concentration to feel it as the pattern began to form.

  “You might think,” Peter told him, “that it would be easiest to learn the new mind-pattern at low intensities. That’s not how it works. You can’t learn it at all until your mind’s pushed to it; otherwise this skill would have become commonplace centuries ago. If primitive man got pushed to the extent necessary, he was usually near death, or in any case occupied with the threat of death.”

  The violet patterns brightened toward blue. There was now no question about feeling the stimulus. Jesse drew in his breath and forced his mind to focus on Peter’s voice.

  “Pain is the most effective push for a novice,” Peter was saying, “because there’s no ambiguity in your mind about wanting the skill you’re aiming for. Your thoughts aren’t going to wander, and you’re not going to have unconscious conflicts over it. You want, wholeheartedly, to stop suffering. And this overrides the deep-seated fear most people have of abandoning the ‘normal’ state of consciousness in which they’ve spent their waking lives.”

  Yes, Jesse thought dizzily. If you were supposed to admit your fears—which within the Group you obviously were—he would be obliged to confess to that one. Piecing together things said earlier, he began to see what they implied.

  “Some cultures on ancient Earth did use stresses like fasting and pain to reach altered states of consciousness,” Peter went on, “but their goal was different from ours. Most of us aren’t pursuing mystical enlightenment. What we learn to do is of practical value in our daily lives.”

  The pattern of the displays was in the green range now, swirling, drawing him in, and it was getting hard to think of anything beyond pain. He wasn’t supposed to resist it, Jesse told himself. He must let it envelop him.

  “I’ll keep talking,” Peter continued. “Don’t try to carry on a conversation. Just listen. You must watch the feedback too, of course, but that has to become automatic. You can’t control it by giving your full attention to fine details any more than you can steer a car that way. Since you grew up on Earth, I assume you learned to drive. Imagine I’m beside you in a car. You have to steer; you’ll crash over a cliff if you don’t. But if you thought of that every instant, you’d start weaving. It would be more normal to hear what I’m saying, and steer with another level of your mind.”

  The analogy opened windows. “I don’t think,” Jesse said, “that primitive man would have been able to drive a car.”

  “Exactly! Nor would you, if you’d been born into a culture that had never even seen one; at least not in heavy, fast traffic. Yet before the end of the twentieth century, virtually every kid in Earth’s industrialized nations could drive sixty miles an hour a car’s length from death, with rock music blaring full blast.”

  It’s in what you learn to take for granted, Jesse thought. The shapes of the feedback were now yellow, warming into orange. He realized with awe that he was close to the level that had, last night, been unendurable. The difference lay in his control over the feedback pattern, but was that from matching or only steadiness? So far the two displays were virtually identical. Glancing at the other chair, he saw that Peter’s face, like his own, was glistening with sweat and that his fingers gripping the armrests were white.

  “The intensity’s still too low to try it,” Peter said, sounding only a little breathless. “I have to prolong this until you get into the swing of following. Don’t analyze the patterns. You can’t alter yours by force of will. Watch, visualize the two as connected, but keep your conscious mind on what I say.

  “We’ll never know how many humans developed this skill in the past,” he went on. “Some did, such as yogis and shamans. There are also recorded cases of spontaneous occurrence, but few seem to have involved volition—and that’s what’s important, not the brain activity itself. Shutting off suffering in a brief crisis is one thing, but to do it deliberately, sustain it over long periods, is another matter. Conditions in the world outside aren’t right for learning that. For one thing, pain usually can’t be isolated from harm. Injury, torture, almost always involve the fear of bodily damage. Only in rare circumstances can an untrained person deal with both fears at once. Here, we take them in sequence—”

  Without warning, Jesse’s heart seemed to burst in him. He choked, stricken by terror so agonizing that he almost cried out. The pain of his arm increased a hundredfold; it was burned through again; he could not stand it one more second. . . . “Peter!” he gasped. “Cut it—something’s gone haywire—”

  It did not stop. “Watch the patterns!” Peter commanded sharply.

  His vision was so blurred that he could scarcely see. Dimly, he made out the breaks characteristic of last night’s panic; but Peter’s feedback steadied almost immediately. He imagined his matching it, and let that slowly happen. The pain receded somewhat, though the pattern’s color did not change. Jesse found he was able to speak.

  “God . . . I thought I was past cracking up. What did I do wrong?”

  “Nothing. I led you into that, and you followed me both in and out,” Peter told him. “You couldn’t have done it if you’d had to stop and think. You couldn’t have done it even unconsciously with an unfamiliar mind-pattern, so I had to use one you knew. Also, Jess, I had to make sure you’re still able to risk losing control. It’s easy to slip back toward reliance on willpower, and if you try to manage states of consciousness that way, you’ll fail.”

  “Did you feel that break?”

  “Yes. Panic is an altered state, just like the other mind-patterns.”

  “And for you, feeling it’s—okay?”

  “Well, not when I had to bring you down with me. And even for me, a small taste of panic under stimulus goes a long way. But yes, it’s okay for me, because it takes a lot of self-control to initiate the switch, and that kind of control—the kind not achieved through willpower—is exhilarating. Just now, when you found you had the control to recover, didn’t you feel something more than relief?”

  Yes, he realized, he had. Just a brief spark, but it was something new, a feeling he hadn’t had before except perhaps in shuttles sometimes, back in the early days when piloting had challenged him.

  “That’s akin to a high,” Peter informed him. “It wasn’t a true high because you were in pain, which overwhelms less urgent feelings. But what we’re aiming for is breakthrough into a mind-pattern where the pain will no longer affect you. You will feel it in your body, but it won’t bother you. That’s a state unlike any you know. Think of it as like—well, like breaking the sound barrier. Have you ever flown an old-time jet aircraft, Jess? Twentieth-century Earth vintage?”

  “No, just ground-to-orbit birds, mostly VTOL ones. But I’ve seen vids.”

  “In the early da
ys, test pilots really feared that barrier, you know. When they hit Mach one they almost broke up. But on the other side—”

  Peter’s voice caught. How long could he keep it up? Jesse wondered. Peter was suffering agony that he could end mentally, by a simple act of volition from which he somehow managed to refrain, while at the same time talking calmly on like a professor. His feedback was beginning to show a slight, very slight, waver.

  God, Jesse thought. We have to go through the barrier. The shapes glowed dark red now. Despite control over the feedback pattern, Jesse felt nausea. The perceived pain was worse than any he’d experienced outside panic; he wasn’t sure how long he could hold on. Yet . . . he wasn’t supposed to hold on, for that would be willpower, and counterproductive . . . he must risk losing control in order to gain it. He must commit himself fully to that risk. Determinedly, he ignored rising fear and listened to Peter. The voice seemed faint, distant. . . .

  “. . . have to push you. You will reach a point when your mind won’t tolerate any more. Several things can happen. You can dissociate, which I’d have to . . . deal with. You can lose consciousness, but I think you have too much stamina for that. Or slide back into panic . . . if you feel it happening, watch the patterns . . . watch the patterns. . . .”

  “Jess! Watch the patterns, Jess! Match with mine, now!”

  He was cracking up again. He could see the breaks starting, and he could no longer get the rhythm back. He had to stop this! Nothing else mattered. He could not think; the need for escape dominated his mind completely. . . .

  “. . . the patterns, Jess! Watch mine!” Peter’s voice had become strong, commanding. Red shapes loomed in front of Jesse. The display on the left stood out, magnified, in clear focus. It was not broken, nor was the rhythm regular. It was slowly changing shape. Below, his own was changing with it.

  The pain was still there, but it didn’t seem important. Why had he thought he couldn’t take more of it? Jesse stared at the feedback in silence. Suddenly, incongruously, he became aware that he was very hungry.

  “That was a close call,” Peter said. “I almost had to cut. I do, sometimes, when a person can’t follow the first time we try. Then we have to go through the buildup all over again.”

  He was keeping something back. Jesse turned to see Peter’s face; it shone. His eyes were alight with unspoken elation. It was more than absence of suffering—it was more as if there had never been any suffering in the universe, as if Peter had forgotten the very concept. There was a new gulf between them, and Jesse wanted to bridge it more than he had ever wanted anything.

  The patterns of the feedback had stabilized. “How do you feel?” Peter asked, in a voice that made plain that he knew.

  “Good. Great. Like nothing I’ve imagined, only—”

  “Only I’m high and you’re not. I hoped it would be both of us, but achieving that on a first try is a bit too much to expect.”

  “Why didn’t I make it?”

  “You didn’t get here by your own volition. Your control was too good in the normal mind-pattern; you held it so long you nearly passed out, and then followed me at the unconscious level.”

  “Would it be hard on you if we gave it another shot?”

  “Now? No, but you’re overtired. It might be hard on you.”

  “Hell, Peter!”

  “I’m a fool to let you try it,” Peter said. “Still, you’ve already come further in three sessions than most people do in six. I’d hate for you to miss the chance—a shared high’s more intense than what you’ll feel spontaneously during practice.”

  “How much practice will I need to gain full control?” Jesse asked, beginning to realize that it would be grueling. Already, in these few minutes, he’d perceived that holding his mind to a new pattern took considerable effort, more than he’d be able to exert without the built-in incentive.

  “A good deal, but most of it will be with other skills. Pain is a spur needed only till you’ve learned the knack of matching mind-patterns.”

  “What sort of skills?” He supposed this was what had been meant by the claim that health could be ensured by mind training, but he still couldn’t imagine how that was accomplished.

  “You’ll learn to control the neurological processes you were born with—processes that in time would damage your body, as they do most people’s,” Peter explained. “The key to such control is the ability to consciously choose your brain’s response to stress instead of being limited to instinctive reactions. Which you’ve now proven that you possess.” He said this last with evident elation, more profound elation than could be accounted for by the high he was experiencing. Jesse perceived that for some reason his success was terribly important to Peter, as if he had some personal stake in it beyond the satisfaction an instructor might naturally take in the performance of a trainee.

  Grasping the remote in his right hand, Peter continued, “Okay. I’m going to cut, then come back in the normal pattern. Be ready to follow, and we’ll make this brief.”

  “Can’t I follow you without a cut?”

  “No. Dropping back into suffering is too advanced to attempt at this stage—you want to practice shifting up, not down. We’ll do it on orange; the hard push isn’t necessary after the new mind-pattern’s familiar.”

  “I don’t think I even notice intensity now. It’s become—irrelevant.”

  “You’ll notice in the normal mind-pattern, and you can’t take any more of that on red today. You would pass out this time.”

  Jesse struggled with the concepts. “You’re saying that right now, I’m still receiving enough stimulus to knock me out, and only my brain pattern is preventing it?”

  “What does control level of consciousness, if not the brain? The high you feel will be produced by brain chemistry, too. The breakthrough here is that you, by volition, can control what your brain does.”

  “I don’t see how. I thought only physical factors influence brain functioning.”

  “That’s what Med science says,” Peter agreed. “Now you are getting into deep waters, Jess. We could sit here all night discussing this, and some of us frequently do. But as to operating premises, which one pulled you out of trouble just now?”

  Jesse didn’t bother to reply. He sat back, feeling oddly lighthearted, and turned his attention to the feedback. The shapes froze, then after a dizzying moment without stimulus, fierce agony swept through him. It wasn’t gradual this time; the new shapes brightened from blue through green and yellow to orange almost instantly. But he was not caught off guard. Though Peter took the lead in switching mind-patterns, Jesse followed deliberately, consciously visualizing the match.

  It was a feeling beside which all past experience meant nothing. The pain ebbed to insignificance. And he was high, higher than he had ever conceived of being, and Peter was high too, and it seemed that nothing within imagination lay beyond reach. It seemed they joined somewhere in space, their contact closer than bodily touch. Kira and Greg too, who had been in the control booth, who were still there, perhaps, though their minds were linked with his, with Peter’s, there was no distance between any of them. . . .

  As the stimulus ceased, Jesse soared, mind now free from the effort of control; he was one with his body yet indifferent to its sensations. He was scarcely aware when they left the little room and went up, through the storerooms, into sunlit brilliance, into the warmth and laughter of friends’ welcome, into a joy that would be his forever.

  People grabbed his arms, embraced him, their exuberance reflecting and heightening his emotion. He was home now, one of them, never to be alone again anywhere. This was his Lodge, his world, his galaxy. Feeling an overwhelming surge of energy, Jesse seized Peter’s hand, and Michelle’s, as they ran with the others to the waterfront and dove headlong from the rock into the bay.

  Part Three

  ~ 19 ~

  Throughout the evening, surfeited after the delayed feast and filled with happy anticipation of a reunion with Carla, Jesse sprawled besid
e the fireplace, thinking that never before had he felt so completely free. Free not merely of the fear just past, but of all the fears, worries, and doubts that went with ordinary living. Fears that he would always be alone . . . that life would remain empty . . . that there was nothing that really mattered to him. . . . He had been seeking something after all, he realized—and had found more.

  Peter had gone back to the city with Anne, rather than in his own plane, since he’d not slept the previous night. “He wasn’t fit to fly,” Greg said. “I don’t know what’s come over Peter. I never knew him to recruit before without weeks of evaluation. I never knew him to call in sick so he could stay at the Lodge an extra day, either. And as for going on dual with a novice stressed out to the extent you were, when he himself was under that much stress—well, he wasn’t behaving rationally. Kira and I just sat there, in shock, waiting to pull you out fast if he collapsed.”

  “I knew it couldn’t be as easy as he made it look,” Jesse said. “But was there real danger to him?”

  “No, with hindsight we know there wasn’t. But if he’d misjudged you, if you’d not been so strong, you’d have taken him down with you; he’d—” Greg broke off, shaking his head.

  “An instructor makes himself vulnerable to more than the effects of the stimulus,” Michelle said. “He had been through a lot even before he went on dual—during your first two sessions he felt your pain, literally in his own body, as he would if he were healing someone. He wasn’t suffering physically then, but the emotional strain drained him. And then to hear bad news about Ian—”

  Chagrined, Jesse said, “That’s why you urged me to wait for breakthrough.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Greg assured him. “He did not misjudge. He never does, actually. You’ll be pushed hard and fast—Peter’s even talking about trying to get you ready for the Ritual before Ian dies, which is another sign of how far gone he is from normal caution. But he will not endanger you. He’s too good at the job for that.”