Stewards of the Flame

by Sylvia Engdahl

  He gripped the controls, his knuckles white, struggling to hold on long enough to land. That proved impossible. With a sharp cry he fell forward, clutching his chest, and lay slumped against the yoke in front of him, prevented only by his shoulder strap from pushing the plane into a dive.

  Jesse reacted fast. He hauled back hard on the copilot’s yoke, at the same time putting on power. The plane shuddered, almost stalled, as it grazed the water. Then it lifted and began to climb. He could not turn from the controls to see, but he knew Zeb hadn’t lost consciousness. Pain filled him, radiated from his mind with the magnified force of emotion. It didn’t matter that Zeb wasn’t a trained telepath; in a situation such as this, Jesse’s own sensitivity more than compensated. The man was in agony. But there was no underlying fear. In spite of the pain, Zeb was feeling almost relieved at the thought that he was about to die in the air after all.

  Reducing throttle, Jesse trimmed the nose of the plane lower, focusing on flying until he got enough altitude to level off. When he was sure the area was clear of traffic, he switched on the autopilot and leaned over, reaching between Zeb’s legs for the handle to push back the seat. After managing to get his feet off the pedals, he felt for a pulse; it was faint, irregular. Zeb’s eyes were closed and he was breathing erratically. There was nothing he could do for him as long as they were strapped in. He was not sure that there was anything he should do. Certainly Zeb would not want to go to the Hospital, not when he’d never again be allowed to leave it. Maybe, Jesse thought, it would be best to keep flying for awhile. . . .

  But the moon wasn’t up yet. In a few more minutes it would be too dark to land. He had no choice but to do so, hoping no one would be near enough on the pier to see Zeb’s condition. Somehow he’d have to get him to a hospice.

  The landing was rough; Jesse was too preoccupied to concentrate on touching down smoothly. The jolt as they hit the water revived Zeb to point of speech. “Jesse,” he gasped as they taxied in. “Don’t . . . call the ambulance. Please don’t.”

  “Are you sure?” Jesse asked, knowing the answer but feeling obliged to verify it. “You might die if you’re not treated quickly, Zeb.”

  “I . . . know. Maybe it’s . . . just as well. Never be locked up, not before going to the Vaults, anyhow.”

  You’re never going to the Vaults! Jesse wanted to say. Now he could prevent that, at least. It was unlikely that Zeb would recover without immediate treatment. But it was his choice to refuse it, and to make that choice was a basic human right.

  For a moment he considered taking off again and going directly to the Island; there would be moonlight by the time they reached it. The Group would surely accept a body, even without prearrangement. But he could not be sure that Zeb would die before they got there, and he could not take him to the Lodge while alive. In theory, he was not even authorized to take him to a hospice, but to hell with that. He couldn’t stay all night in the plane with a dying man, certainly. He would have to get him into one of the safe houses across the street.

  Not the one Ian was in, of course. No outsider must know of Ian’s involvement, and in any case, there was a policy of not keeping more than one hospice patient in the same place. He hoped the house next door was empty at present; if it wasn’t, Zeb would have to be moved later. For now, there was no alternative. But he did not see how he was going to get him there. Zeb was in too much pain to walk. . . .

  Yet, Jesse thought, he was supposed to be able to relieve others’ pain! Could he possibly do that? He had practiced it only in the lab, with Group members. Healers could do it for outsiders, but it had been acknowledged that he had no talent for healing. All the same, he had to try. Even without the need for walking, he’d have had to—he cared too much for Zeb to let him suffer.

  Gripping Zeb’s hand, he reached out as he would to a fellow telepath, making an effort to share what the man was feeling. All at once, the pain came. It nearly swamped him. Instinctively he recoiled, almost slipped into the mind-pattern for pain control—but then, pressing his free hand against his own chest, he let himself experience it. Zeb, oh Zeb, it doesn’t have to hurt so much . . . I can ease it if you let your mind merge with mine. . . . He knew his skill wouldn’t be sufficient to guide someone who was terrified, but Zeb had no fear of death. Only the physical sensations had to be handled.

  His left arm was on fire, the hand clutching Zeb’s . . . the arm through which he’d learned to deal with pain . . . but no, it was Zeb’s arm, wasn’t it? The pain of a heart attack was often felt in the left arm; that must be where it was coming from. Zeb, just let the arm float, it doesn’t matter, the chest pain doesn’t matter either, we won’t suffer anymore. . . . For an instant they were in full contact. Jesse was in control; he felt the pain abate as he shifted into the state where it did not bother him. And he knew that Zeb was following.

  After a few minutes of deep breathing he unfastened his seat straps, then Zeb’s. “Zeb,” he said softly, continuing to project the mind-pattern, gradually allowing it to become automatic enough for him to talk. “It’s not so bad, now, is it?”

  “Seems to have let up,” Zeb agreed. “I still feel it but I’m—used to it, I guess. I don’t think it’s going away.”

  “No. But could you walk a little way?”

  “I’m shaky as hell, Jesse. Sick to my stomach, too. I can’t get home. Have to wait till I feel better—or else, till it’s over. Here in the plane’s as good a place for that as any.”

  “I know a better place. Some friends just across the street.”

  “They’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  “It’s the law, Jesse. They have to.”

  “Trust me, Zeb!” The pain was really bad; he still felt it, although he himself was no longer suffering from it and for Zeb it was partially attenuated. “Come on, lean on me,” he said. “We’ve got to go now.”

  He managed to get Zeb out of the plane and, holding most of his weight, started slowly along the lighted pier. God, if anyone should see—this wasn’t a world where pretending Zeb was drunk would be helpful. If he was found with a man so obviously sick when he hadn’t phoned for help, he would indeed be in violation of the law. It was near dark on a moonless evening, however. There would be no air traffic now, and it was late for strollers along the esplanade.

  All at once, the silence was broken by the sound of sirens.

  “God! They’re coming for me,” Zeb burst out.

  “They couldn’t be,” Jesse assured him. “I didn’t call, and nobody else knows you’re sick. No planes have come over; we couldn’t have been spotted.”

  “But if they drive by here, they’ll see.”

  This was all too true. Desperately Jesse looked around for something they could sit on, as if they’d been merely enjoying the view of the stars, perhaps. There was nothing. The sirens were coming closer. As they approached, he did the only thing he could think of—he grabbed Zeb and threw both arms around him, turning him face to face in what he hoped would look like a lovers’ embrace.

  The ambulance drove on past.

  But there were more sirens coming, more vehicles. At first terrified, close to losing his focus on the pain he had to control, Jesse let out a breath of relief. They were fire trucks! Looking to his left, in the direction they were headed, he saw that a house half a block down was on fire. The serial arsonist, apparently, was still active.

  “It’s our lucky day,” he said. “Nobody’s going to notice us; anyone around will be watching the fire. So come on, while we’ve got a good chance.”

  Supporting Zeb, who was gasping for breath but able, with effort, to walk, they crossed the esplanade and street, then stumbled around the safe house onto its back porch. There were no lights in the windows and Jesse dared not knock. He could not be sure there were never outsiders there. The only thing he could do was leave Zeb concealed and go to the back door of the adjacent house, where, he hoped, Kira would have arrived to stay with Ian. If she wasn
’t there, it would be some other Group member, perhaps one he didn’t know. He did have a password, and if worst came to worst, Ian could identify him—but Peter would not be happy if he disturbed Ian. Peter wasn’t going to be happy anyway when he heard about the risk he had taken.

  To his relief, it was Kira who answered his knock. “Jesse!” she said in surprise.

  “I’ve got Zeb Hennesy out in back next door,” he said. “He had a heart attack in the plane, and he doesn’t want the ambulance.”

  “What have you told him?” she asked brusquely.

  “Nothing! Nothing except that the people here won’t call the Meds. God, Kira, surely you’ll take him in—he’s dying.”

  She frowned. “It’s a terrible thing to say, but I hope you’re right. The rules aren’t meant to keep out dying people—the problem is what we’ll do with him if he recovers. That’s why we don’t reveal our safe houses to anyone who hasn’t been examined.”

  “I’m sorry, Kira, but there wasn’t anywhere else I could take him. We barely made it this far. He’s in a lot of pain. I—I relieved it some, but now—”

  “You were able to do that for an outsider?” She seemed surprised.

  “Well, he’s a pretty close friend. Maybe that makes a difference.”

  “It does. An emotional tie makes a big difference.” Kira sighed. “I suppose you had no choice about bringing him here. Do you vouch for him, Jesse?”

  “Yes. He hates the Meds; even if he does recover, he’ll never betray us.”

  “All right. Go back and do the best you can with his pain while I get the key.”

  Jesse went back to Zeb, who had collapsed on the steps, obviously in intense pain again. He put an arm around him and repeated the process of sensing it, letting himself feel it fully, and then trying to project the shift in consciousness toward not minding. It was harder this time; he perceived that the pressure of crisis had helped before. Kira would do it much better than he could. “Hold on, Zeb,” he said. “A friend is coming. She’s a retired doctor. She’ll make you feel better, even if she can’t cure you.”

  Kira came with the house key and together they got Zeb indoors and into a clean bed. He was slipping in and out of consciousness. “Have you got what you need to examine him here?” Jesse asked.

  “I’m doing it with my mind,” Kira said. “Telepathy, plus my healer’s senses combined with my background in cardiology. You were right; his heart is damaged past repair. He hasn’t long to live.”

  “There’s no way you can—heal him?”

  “No, no more than I can heal Ian. All a healer does is enhance a person’s deep self-healing power. Zeb no longer has that power; he feels it’s his time to go.”

  “Can he hear us?”

  “Not at the moment. I’ll bring him around in a little while; I need his consent to keep him here.”

  “It’s damned ironic,” Jesse said, “for it to happen now. He’s worried about his heart for some time, and feared the summons from the Hospital that’s due—but Carla just fixed it so that it’s not going to come.”

  “You didn’t tell him that!”

  “Of course not. He still thinks it’s coming any day. That they’ll send him to a residential care unit when it does.”

  “Then it’s not coincidence, Jesse. The unconscious mind controls these things. I can tell that he’d rather not recover—now I know why.”

  Jesse protested, “As I’ve heard it, the residential care units are full of people waiting to die. Certainly the nursing homes on Earth are; it’s often talked about. So the unconscious mind is hardly a reliable control on how long anyone lives.”

  “It is when the body’s not interfered with.” Kira told him. “It’s nature’s provision for dying when the time comes. But the drugs the Meds use override its influence on biochemistry, which is one of the worst tragedies of their system as far as old people are concerned.”

  “I’d say the worst tragedy is that Zeb can’t live out his old age in freedom.”

  “Yes, certainly. But since he can’t, it’s understandable that he doesn’t want to live it out in prison, not when he’s been an active man with no interest in vids or reading.”

  “Kira,” Jesse said reproachfully, “that sounds as if you’re condoning suicide. I thought the Group believes it’s wrong.”

  “We do. But why is it wrong, Jesse?”

  He pondered it. Neither he nor the Group had religious objections. Peter had endorsed Jesse’s own assertion that it seemed like cheating, that suffering was no excuse. He could not say why he felt this so strongly.

  Kira said, “You don’t believe refusing medical treatment is the same as suicide, though that’s what the Meds would claim. You didn’t try to talk Zeb into going to the Hospital, yet you wouldn’t have let him ditch his plane on purpose.” Whether she’d absorbed this thought from his mind or Zeb’s, Jesse was not sure. “So underneath,” she continued, “you do understand that there’s a time to die. And it’s the unconscious mind that makes that decision, Jesse. Suicide is wrong because to accomplish it, one must defy one’s own unconscious mind, one’s inner integrity. Someone who really wants to die doesn’t need to take action. It happens naturally, as it is happening now with Zeb.”

  “It didn’t happen that way with Valerie.”

  “And what she did would have violated her true self if it hadn’t been for her wish to save Peter.”

  “You mean that as long as a person’s alive, he or she unconsciously wants to be—whatever that person may think consciously.”

  “Exactly. If ongoing medical treatment isn’t messing up the process, that is. But of course,” she added, “the reverse isn’t true. People can die without wanting to, and those who seek treatment voluntarily are apt to need it. That’s why we have healers.”

  Zeb stirred, and Kira turned her attention to him. “Been dreaming I was home in bed,” he murmured.

  “You are in bed,” Jesse said, taking his hand. “I’m here, Zeb.”

  “You didn’t call the ambulance?”

  “No. We won’t ever call it. This is my friend Kira, and she’ll find somebody to stay here with you.”

  “The pain’s almost gone. But I’m—weak. Don’t think I can get up.”

  “You don’t have to get up,” said Kira, “and you won’t suffer from pain anymore. But Zeb, you might die. In the Hospital they could give you a new heart. Would you rather die here than go where they’d put you afterward?”

  “Sure I would! But they won’t let you keep me here, wherever this is.”

  “They won’t know. No one will know—we can’t even tell your family, if you have one. Do you?”

  “I’ve got a sister. If she can’t get me on the phone after a few days, she might call the Hospital. Then they’d search.”

  “If your sister calls the Hospital, Zeb, she’ll be told you’re in the Vaults. You won’t have a chance to say goodbye to her. Is that okay with you?”

  “Yes. Has to be. But what if I’m not dead by then?”

  “The Hospital will think you are,” said Jesse. “But when you do die, you won’t be sent to the Vaults. I’ll take your body in the plane and bury it in the sea.”

  Zeb struggled to raise his head. “Can’t let you risk that, Jesse,” he said, “but that you’d offer—” Tears welled into his eyes.

  Kira said, “We don’t approve of the Vaults. We don’t send anyone’s body there.”

  “Who are you people?”

  “We can’t tell you that. And you must promise never to tell where you’ve been or what we’ve said, even if you recover.”

  “Sure . . . I promise. You’d be in a hell of a lot of trouble if anybody found out.”

  “We would,” Jesse agreed, “so I’m trusting you, Zeb.”

  “Jesse—you’ve been more than just an offworlder all along, haven’t you? I could tell there was something about you . . . something you weren’t saying—”

  God, had he been as transparent as that? Zeb was the
only outsider he’d known well since joining the Group, and though he had tried to keep his thoughts to himself, shielding them hadn’t been easy. He had wondered how the others managed it for a lifetime, working side by side with outsiders.

  “It’s all right, Jesse,” Kira said. “Zeb wouldn’t have been conscious of questions if you hadn’t helped with his pain. That sensitized him to your mind.”

  “I won’t ask questions,” Zeb said. “I’ll just say thanks . . . while I can. I can’t thank you enough for any of it, Jesse. For taking the plane, or for—this.”

  “Just sleep,” Jesse said. “I’ll stay here for now. Kira has to leave, but tomorrow someone else will come. You won’t be alone.”

  In the next room, he pulled out his phone and called Carla. He could not tell her where he was—Group secrets were never mentioned on the phone—but he made clear that she shouldn’t worry about his absence.

  As Kira opened the door to leave, the smell of smoke blew in. “I forgot to tell you,” he said. “A house down the street’s burning; the arsonist has struck again.”

  “I don’t like it,” Kira said. “There have been too many in this neighborhood, for no reason, and who can say where he’ll hit next?”

  “Well, tonight, at least, I’m glad it was close,” Jesse said, “because it was the diversion we needed to get here from the pier. Is it true, I wonder, that fate watches out for us?”

  Seriously, Kira replied, “So far it seems to have been. Peter talks a lot about fate; I think he really believes in it. But we can’t rely on it for protection, Jesse. You took a risk tonight—you had to. Just don’t ever do it without real need.”

  ~ 45 ~

  It was taken for granted that Jesse would be the one to fly Zeb’s body to the Island for sea burial. That would be his normal role as a friend even if he had not promised Zeb to do it personally. Neither Carla nor Peter was happy about it, but they knew better than to argue. Carla’s fear for him was understandable. Peter’s continued to perplex him. Why should Peter be more concerned about his safety than that of anyone else in the Group?