As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long. The first task for Shepard’s crew was construction of a ground base for a satellite communications system, which the colony lacked because their original comm satellite had failed only a few years after their arrival. Technical experts were sent down with the equipment, and to his joy, Terry was assigned as their shuttle pilot.
Before leaving, they were given the briefing that would be required of every crew member prior to his or her first trip to the surface. “You’ll be treated as honored guests by the Maclairnans,” Captain Vargas said, “but Aldren and Admiral Derham warned me that some of their customs are unlike ours. I don’t want any of our people showing surprise or disapproval.”
The landing pad for the shuttle was ancient but recently resurfaced, Terry saw as he hovered over it. It was flanked by two others occupied by ships that belonged in a museum. One of these, he saw to his surprise, was a grounded explorer, apparently the source of the automated beacon he had homed in on. Explorers were the only jump ships that could land; he had done it for practice, though shuttles were used except in emergencies where a long-term ground base was needed. He recalled that once, long ago, an explorer had come to Maclairn—and he realized with mixed feelings that its crew had been stranded. The colonists would not have allowed them to leave, any more than future intruders would be released if they got close enough to see habitation. But the colony had had no weapons; this ship couldn’t have been forced down. Why had it landed? Was it disabled, so that not even the officer on watch could have escaped? That seemed unlikely; explorers rarely failed in flight.
Slowly he settled the shuttle vertically onto the pad, an easy landing compared to those he had made on the rough ground of undeveloped worlds. Once assured of the ship’s stability he gave the okay for his passengers to unstrap, wishing, as he did so himself, that he didn’t have to wait for them all to disembark before setting foot on the surface. When the hatch opened, a wave of heat struck. Maclairn’s climate was intolerably hot in the daytime, Captain Vargas had warned. One of the main reasons they had been given mind training was so that they could adjust their body temperature, as even small Maclairnan children were able to do. Otherwise they couldn’t be outdoors without flight suits.
By the time Terry had secured the ship, Commander Chiang, the officer in charge of the landing party, had introduced himself and the team to the group of people that had come to meet them. Terry noticed that the Maclairnans were all quite tall and slender, distinguished from each other mainly by hair and skin coloring; he knew from the briefing that this was an inheritance from the genetic perfection enforced by law on their ancestral planet Undine. All appeared to be young—but, he realized, that might be merely because of slowed aging. Age was not an appropriate topic for conversation, the captain had said; until a person was over a hundred, as many were, it was considered an entirely private matter.
Immediately he was aware of the warmth of these people, just as he had been impressed by Aldren’s. As he joined the group a distinguished-looking older couple turned to him and smiled. “Welcome,” the man said. “I’m Corwin, and this is Kamila. That was a smooth landing you made.” He spoke with a slight accent like Aldren’s, which Terry now knew to be due to the long isolation of Maclairn from the League.
“Thanks,” he replied. “I’m Terry.” He didn’t add “Radnor,” for it had been decided that with Maclairnans crew members would use only given names, in accord with local custom. The colonists didn’t omit surnames just for informality—they didn’t have them. Aldren’s name was his only one, just as Roanna’s was hers. In the first generation many IVF children had been born to single women, and because of the small population there had been relatively few surnames in any case, most of them arbitrarily assigned by the crèche system on Undine; so it had been decided that family names would be pointless. A computer kept track of names to prevent duplication, though recently it had been decided that reusing a name would be allowed if it had been at least twenty years since its former bearer’s death.
There wasn’t a lot of talking in the group, which seemed unnatural until Terry realized that speech wasn’t needed. Telepaths didn’t make conversation just to fill silence; their friendliness didn’t have to be demonstrated with words. Though no specific telepathic communication with him was occurring, he found that he felt more comfortable among them than he had ever felt among his fellow Fleet officers. There was no need to ponder what he thought of them or what they might think of him, and he turned his attention to his surroundings.
This, Corwin explained, was the Old Settlement, the area where the colony had originally been established. It was on a high plateau between the mountains and Lake Hari, a long narrow body of water that had been created by damming the river at the bottom of the adjacent canyon. Terry had seen this from the air, and had seen the canyon’s terraced wall with many planted levels, green against the yellowish rock that covered most of the planet’s surface. “The terraces were the only place they could grow crops in the early years,” Corwin said, “after a flash flood wiped out their first field on the canyon floor. They’d lost most of their robotic farm equipment and had to plant and cultivate by hand.”
They had also built stone huts by hand, he continued, since originally there was neither wood for lumber nor straw for making brick. Clusters of such huts remained in the level area near the landing pad, domed like beehives, but augmented now by wood and brick additions. Groves of trees surrounded them, terragenic trees that had not been there originally. They were genetically engineered to be fast growers, but wood had been needed for too many purposes to let them stand while the settlement was young.
“Of course no one lives here now,” Kamila said. “The wells have run dry, so the old homes and prefab shelters are preserved only for their historic value. But your captain decided this is the best place for Fleet’s base. The power plant is operational, and a limited supply of water can be piped up from the lake. The land around our towns is all cultivated; there’d be no place near them for a spaceport.”
The six original prefab shelters, like all colonial structures carried by Fleet colonizers, were of virtually indestructible material and were still standing after two hundred years. Terry marveled at the fortitude of the people who had first settled here on a desolate rocky plateau, with nothing at all for life support but what they brought with them. During the past few days he had heard the outlines of their story—their hijacked ship had been so low on air that they’d had to land fast, without exploring, and had been stuck with the inadequate site onto which their supply pods had been dropped. They’d had only one qualified shuttle pilot; the courage it must have taken for him to set down time after time near the rim of a canyon, knowing that any damage to his ship would mean the death of them all, was awesome. And the hardships they must have endured when forced to devote years to hard manual labor while facing starvation did not bear thinking about. The brief dangers and discomforts of his own explorer missions paled beside what Maclairn’s founders had gone through.
“We’ll be staying in one of the prefabs while working here,” Commander Chiang announced. “But on leaves, we’ll be guests in the modern towns, and we’re invited to a cookout tonight here by the lake.”
Terry set to work helping to unload equipment from the shuttle. The Maclairnans had offered one of the historic stone huts as a foundation for a satellite tower. Primitive as they were, they had electric wiring; the early settlers had had power, beamed from their starship and later from windmills like those still in use.
Carrying heavy boxes in the intense heat was an effort at first, though before long he had gotten so used to adjusting his body temperature that he didn’t need to keep thinking about it. At dusk it got cooler, and before long, cold; the relatively thin atmosphere of Maclairn made for extremes. The team had brought flight jackets, but that wouldn’t have been enough protection for long exposure without the ability to physically adapt.
Just before d
ark Corwin escorted them down the terraces to the lowest one, which formed a pebbly beach by the lake. A row of standing torches at the water’s edge illuminated the area, casting rippled reflections. Maclairnans were there tending cookfires, evidently having come in the boats tied up at the nearby dock; and a larger boat was approaching. Its lighted upper deck was crowded with people, including some older children—though, Terry realized, they might not be children by the local standard, for Captain Vargas had said that Maclairnans were considered adults at thirteen. As it came in to the dock, Terry sensed the happy mood of the group and felt his own soar to match it. To be here, within a gathering of telepaths, exceeded all he had wished for during his lonely times.
He watched the new arrivals come off the boat. Again, they were uniformly tall and slender—except for one. His eyes were drawn to her because she was different; at first he’d assumed she was one of the teenagers, but when she was closer he realized that despite her lesser height she was a woman somewhere near his own age. She was blond, with short wavy hair, and as she passed, the light of a torch shone briefly on her face. Though he could not see her expression, he somehow sensed that she had noticed him.
Terry knew at once that this was a woman he wanted very much to meet.
~ 13 ~
When they gathered informally around the cookfires, Terry held back until he saw where the blond woman went. To his relief, unlike most of the Maclairnans she did not appear to be with anyone in particular—even the teens had paired off, but her group was composed of older people and members of his team. As he was debating whether it would be permissible to sit beside her uninvited, a vibrant white-haired woman approached him and motioned him to it. “Join us, Terry,” she said warmly. He wondered how she knew his name.
Once the circle was formed and the members introduced themselves, it became apparent that these were some of Maclairn’s leaders. The woman who’d spoken to him, the first person he’d seen who despite her vitality looked truly old, turned out to be Jessica, head of the Council. The Council was the ruling body, he knew; that meant that in League terminology she was Head of State, the equivalent of a monarch or planetary president. Yet she was sitting on the ground with the rest of them, and no one appeared to be paying her any special respect.
Terry did not spend long thinking about it, and scarcely heard the other people’s positions. He was waiting for the woman beside him to speak. Finally when her turn came she said, “I’m Kathryn, ambassador to the League.” Ambassador! She couldn’t be as young as she looked, then. But did it matter, when ages weren’t supposed to be mentioned?
There was a silence, and she turned to him, smiling expectantly. It was a moment before it dawned on him that it was his own turn. “Terry, pilot for the landing party,” he said, finding his mouth so dry he could scarcely form the words. Her eyes met his, and now he could see that they were blue.
Mugs of ale were passed around, then plates, and the chickens roasting over the fire were carved and served along with thick slices of bread. “It’s good to have you here,” Kathryn said to him. “Fleet, I mean. For a while I was afraid the League wasn’t going to agree to the terms.”
“Why wouldn’t they? It’s not as if there were too many other jobs for cruisers.”
“They wanted Maclairn to join the League and be subject to its government. To all the bureaucracy other worlds have to put up with. They weren’t happy about the first colonists having gotten away with hijacking a ship and establishing an unauthorized colony.”
Well, that was no surprise, the central government of the League being what it was. “Why did they give in?” he inquired.
“When we held out for independence, they decided to grab the chance to keep an eye on us. They were torn between not wanting to acknowledge that psi powers exist and fearing what Maclairnans might do with them. I didn’t go out of my way to be reassuring.”
Do with them? What harm could they do, except perhaps spy on undercover operations? Terry wondered. And why had this attractive young woman been chosen as their ambassador when the other leaders were obviously much older? “You must be a good diplomat, especially since you couldn’t have known anything about League affairs beyond what you’d studied in texts over two hundred years old,” he said. “Nowadays colonies don’t usually get much say about their status.”
“I’m not a native Maclairnan,” Kathryn said. “I was a member of the Foundation’s first expedition. My grandfather’s the CEO of the Foundation and as an attorney I specialized in League law, so he sent me to negotiate the contract.”
“You won’t be staying?” Terry was surprised by the depth of his disappointment. Even in these few minutes, he had felt she was someone he could truly connect with.
“Not all the time, but I’m a citizen of Maclairn now. I didn’t return with the expedition—I chose to receive mind training, and then went back to Earth with the first group of observers, the one that included your admiral. I’ll be taking messages to and from the mentors who go to teach. I don’t want to be away from here, but I believe in what they’re trying to do, and considering the sacrifice they’ll be making—”
“Sacrifice? Don’t they like teaching?” Aldren had seemed to enjoy it, except for the painful stage.
“Earth’s society is a mess compared to this one. Besides, to be exiled for years from their homes, their friends and relatives, unable to communicate with anyone except their partners in the way they’ve been doing since they were born—”
God, was it like that for Aldren and Roanna? They’d shown no signs of being unhappy on Titan, even though nearly everybody else there had hated it.
“We all cried the night before Aldren and Roanna went,” Kathryn told him. “I was new here then; they left on Promise, the first time it returned, and I didn’t understand why everyone was grieving for them—or why, if it was such a sad parting, they wanted to go. They did want to, of course. They’d been preparing for nearly a century—”
“A century?”
“Yes, they’d known since they were kids when the two hundred years would be up, and mentors are exceptionally psi-gifted in childhood. The best ones all hoped they’d be chosen when the time came, after a lifetime of serving as ordinary mentors here.”
“But Aldren can’t be older than seventy at the most,” Terry protested.
“Oh Terry, he’s over a hundred, and Roanna is nearly that. Maclairnans don’t age, remember. The average age at death is a hundred and twenty, and it comes on quite suddenly. Some who go to Earth won’t live to see Maclairn again.”
Then why? Terry wondered, trying to adjust to his astonishment. Why does anyone go to teach on other worlds, when the League doesn’t appreciate it and they have to keep it secret so as not to put Maclairn in danger?
“Because that’s what it’s all been for, the creation of a psi-based culture here that will someday advance the evolution of humankind. That was Ian Maclairn’s dream. Without that goal the early colonists couldn’t have survived.” There was an intensity in her reply that he sensed rather than heard . . . and she had answered his unspoken thought.
Yes, I’m beginning to pick up thoughts, though only with Maclairnans . . . never before with anyone else. I didn’t know I could do it with people not born telepathic.
“Aldren said I’m psi-gifted,” he confided. “But so far I’ve only been able to communicate with him and with Roanna.”
“That’s it, then. For it to be conscious, both people have to be sensitive.” They told me I wouldn’t become a full telepath until . . . She broke off, for some reason flustered, and he sensed that this thought hadn’t been meant to reach him.
To cover her unexplained embarrassment Kathryn said quickly, “It wasn’t just that Aldren and Roanna knew they’d be homesick. They were terrified that it might not work out, despite all they’d studied in the old records.”
“Aldren was terrified?” She must be mistaken, Terry thought. If there was anyone immune to fear, it was Aldren. Though he
did mention some future danger. . . .
“Not that. Of course it’s terribly dangerous, what we’re doing, for the long term—we’re inviting opposition that may eventually turn violent. But what scared Aldren was not knowing whether he could get adults through the stressful phase of training. Jessica hadn’t yet done it with me, you see. I was the first adult given the mind training since almost two centuries ago—and even then, it was done only by Ian Maclairn and his successor Peter, who was the first leader here and the first mentor. Peter recorded his advice, but there was no knowing if anyone else would be good enough to pull it off.”
“I don’t understand,” Terry said. “Aldren seemed to have had plenty of experience.”
“Yes, but with the kids—starting with the first generation born on Maclairn, everyone has received the initial training at thirteen. It’s easier than with adults because the kids are telepathic from birth and because they don’t have years of past experience telling them that volitional control of their perceptions is impossible. And they look forward to the ordeal because it’s how they gain adult status. So though the steps are the same, they don’t suffer as much as an adult does. Especially,” she added, “not as much as a Fleet officer. It must have been much worse for you than for me.”
He had been told that it was permissible to discuss the training with anyone on Maclairn except children too young to have been through it, from whom it was vital that the secret of the second session be kept. “Well,” he said, “I suppose Fleet officers do suffer more from thinking they’ve failed than civilians—we’re not used to failing.”
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 8