“I didn’t realize it was a long-term arrangement.”
“Oh yes, some Maclairnans have the same mentor from the time they’re thirteen until middle age. You’d have liked it to last with Aldren, wouldn’t you?”
Yes, he would have; Aldren was the closest friend he’d ever had. He’d liked Corwin, too, during their brief meeting, but Corwin would soon be leaving for Earth. Now, apparently, he was to choose someone he would be working with for as long as he was with Shepard—and he hoped that would be a long time. How would he know in a few hours which stranger he liked best?
You’ll know. You’ll choose each other, telepathically, just as you and I did before we became lovers. Mental compatibility doesn’t depend on physical attraction.
Dinner was served in the great room at a long low table around which people sat on cushions, as they had done in Japan on ancient Earth. It was set with elaborately-decorated glazed pottery dishes and strikingly beautiful glassware that Kathryn said was hand-blown. The food was simple: roast chicken again, accompanied this time by baked potatoes, fresh vegetables, and iced herbal tea. As only chicken and fish embryos had been brought by the founding starship, the Maclairnans had never tasted red meat, but then neither had he until he joined Fleet and visited large agricultural colonies; on Earth few could afford such luxuries. Here, however, synthetics were also unavailable, as were dairy products and fruits. Kathryn had missed variety at first, she’d told him, but she didn’t notice anymore.
Terry didn’t notice what he was eating, either; he was absorbed in getting acquainted with his companions. There were three couples, one or both members of which were mentors, plus Jessica’s daughter and son-in-law, who lived in another wing of the house along with several younger generations who weren’t present. All were warm and friendly; he was more comfortable with them than he had ever been with crewmates—was that because mentors were chosen for an ability to put people at ease, or because he himself had changed?
After the meal they gathered around the fireplace, lounging on the floor cushions, and talked for several hours. Terry was aware that they were drawing him out, not so much to evaluate him as because they had never before met anyone who had seen other worlds. All their knowledge of Earth and its customs had been gained from the knowledgebase brought by the colony’s founders and thus was two hundred years out of date. “It’s even worse there now,” he said, “as I guess Kathryn has told you. Government regulations are so restrictive that nobody bothers to achieve anything—and if they earned enough money to save any, thieves and rioters would take whatever was left after taxes. And of course, there’s no room left for building homes. So most of the planet looks like the slums in the pictures you’ve seen. The wealthy live in enclaves, and conditions everywhere else slide downhill—people don’t know how things used to be. I do only because as a kid I liked poking around the Net, seeing stuff that hasn’t been accessed for years.”
“Someone who wants to help the less fortunate doesn’t get very far,” Kathryn added. “I tried, as an attorney, but there was so much red tape in the way that I couldn’t accomplish anything.”
She seemed embarrassed, as if there were some reason she should have done more. Terry realized that he knew little about her background; she seemed not to want to talk about it, and she didn’t allow it to surface when their minds merged.
“We don’t have any hope of changing conditions on Earth,” Jessica said, “only of teaching individual people ways to cope with them—and of gradually influencing the collective unconscious so that in time, human capabilities will increase. It will never be possible to create a better society on Earth itself. The future lies in the colonies those with psi powers will found.”
“Collective unconscious?” Terry asked. “What’s that?”
“The undercurrent of unconscious telepathy through which the people of a world come to share similar ideas and attitudes,” said one of the mentors. “It has shaped history, which we’ve been studying in that light since Ian Maclairn’s time. It doesn’t extend beyond a single planet, which is why each colony’s culture, including ours, is somewhat different from the rest.”
“And why we believe we can spread acceptance of psi to more people than we actually contact,” someone added. “When a critical number of individuals who believe in it is reached on a given world, recognition of new mind powers as natural phenomena will be extended without action on anyone’s part—and will reduce the fear that causes resistance. That’s far in the future, of course. We are merely setting the process in motion.”
“How can you teach a critical number of people if they’re afraid?’ Terry protested.
“We won’t be teaching psi skills directly,” Jessica explained. “We will simply teach control of pain and of health by volition, just as Aldren did on Titan. But as you know, Terry, that’s done through unconscious telepathy, so trainees gain experience with psi whether they’re aware of it or not. In most of them consciousness of it will emerge more slowly than it did with you; yet in the meantime underlying knowledge that it exists will be unconsciously passed on to all their close contacts—in other words, introduced into the collective unconscious. In effect that knowledge will be contagious.”
“Historically, on Earth, this happened often,” added someone else. “In primitive cultures where psi was viewed as real, and even where it wasn’t, mass hysteria sometimes arose by this means with disastrous effects—for example, the persecution of witches, some of whom had real psi powers. Society wasn’t yet ready to deal with the innate fear of such capabilities.”
“There’s no denying that the promotion of psi can be dangerous,” Jessica said. “When the time is ripe for it, as it is now, it’s a step forward, but the people who act as catalysts need to be very careful. We’ve spent two hundred years preparing for that role, and we believe we can avoid the pitfalls. For one thing, public demonstrations of psi that could draw antagonism will be avoided.”
“We’ll be doing the opposite of what evil manipulators did,” Kathryn pointed out. “Our teaching is designed to help individuals gain confidence in their own volition, not to make them conform. Lack of trust in volition is the root of the fear of psi—people aren’t sure that they could control psi powers if they had them. So the mind training we provide has direct bearing on overcoming that fear besides enabling trainees to maintain their health.”
The conversation turned to Terry’s experiences in the colonies. By the time the evening was over he perceived that the mentors were absorbing his impressions telepathically as well as from his words, but that didn’t disturb him; it seemed natural to share with them. Especially with the gray-bearded one named Tristan. It was a while before he realized that he had exchanged more thoughts with Tristan than with the others, both aloud and silently. But when he did, he knew they had formed a friendship that would last.
It was near midnight when they rose to go. Tristan took him aside as the rest were saying goodnight to Jessica. “I’ll be your mentor, if you agree, Terry,” he said, smiling. This was a formality, Terry knew; it was already silently understood between them. He nodded, feeling no hesitation.
“I’ll see you in the morning, then, at the neurofeedback center,” Tristan said, and then added, “I believe what Aldren told us about you is true.”
Later, in Kathryn’s room, she said, “I’m glad you chose Tristan. He reminds me of my grandfather, though he doesn’t look anything like him.”
“I’d like to meet your grandfather. Will he ever come here, do you think?”
“Perhaps, if he can, but he has—responsibilities. Besides the Maclairn Foundation, I mean.” As if sorry she had raised the subject, she quickly changed it. “Did you always plan to leave Earth, Terry?”
“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to fly in space. The dreariness of Earth didn’t bother me much because I never doubted that I could get into Fleet—by hacking the academy entrance exam results, if it came to that. But of course it didn’t; I sc
ored high all the way through training. I thought I had everything I could ever want when I got my commission.” But, he added as he embraced Kathryn, I never guessed what it would be like to have you.
Terry knew, when they joined in love, that he had lived his entire life until now without any idea of how it felt to be happy.
~ 20 ~
At breakfast, Jessica seemed tired and somewhat uneasy. “I didn’t sleep well,” she confessed. “I lay awake a long time, and then used my mind training to drop off—but I had dreams again that I don’t remember.”
“Her dreams bother me,” Kathryn said as she and Terry walked to the neurofeedback center. “The other mentors think she’s unreasonably worried about the possibility of Maclairn being discovered. That’s not really likely to happen soon, after all. It would be too much of a coincidence for a ship to come upon this system a few months after we got here, since it’s been nearly two hundred years since Picard did. And there’s no chance of the secret getting out until a lot of people on other worlds have been trained. Yet she was in a great hurry to get the contract signed and the arrangements made for Fleet to come. Look at the way she appointed me ambassador when I’d just arrived and hadn’t yet had mind training, and knew very little about Maclairn.”
“I did wonder, when you’re so young,” Terry said. Kathryn had practiced law for several years on Earth so she must be older than he was, but not by much.
“She sent Aldren and Roanna to Earth without giving them time to learn anything about the League, too—they went back with the original expedition, to prove that the people here have psi powers, instead of waiting for a delegation to be sent. And when it did come, she made a lot of detailed plans with Admiral Derham before there was any official discussion of protection by Fleet. I got the feeling that she may have used telepathic persuasion to influence him, and that’s not ethical when a person’s too inexperienced to recognize it.”
“Well, she’s the leader. I guess she feels responsible for Maclairn’s safety, even if there’s no immediate danger.”
“Terry . . . I think it may be more than that. I’ve wondered if she may have had precognitive dreams. Ian Maclairn did—he dreamed about his people coming here, with Jesse as Captain. He saw Jesse’s face in a dream before he’d even met him.”
Terry drew breath. Aldren saw my face in a dream, though he wasn’t sure it was precognitive . . . he said he’d sensed that I may have some extraordinary destiny. . . .
He did? Oh, Terry! Aloud she asked, “Does Jessica know? Because if she does, it would explain why she was so eager for me to meet you, and arranged that cookout . . . and why she told Corwin to—”
“Jessica told him to speak to Commander Chiang?”
“To judge our feelings for each other, and take action if he believed they were deeper than physical attraction. She didn’t inform me till afterward, of course.”
“I don’t know whether Aldren sent her a private message. There was nothing about his dream in the one the other mentors heard, because I could tell Corwin was surprised when he sensed me thinking about it. And Kathryn, why would it make Jessica think I can protect Maclairn from danger? If I can, which isn’t likely, that wouldn’t be an extraordinary destiny. It’s what I was sent here for, the job Shepard has been given.”
“This whole plan for training you to sense intruders through remote viewing is extraordinary,” Kathryn said. “The mentors are doubtful that it can be done; most of them think Jessica is grasping at straws. And I don’t like the idea of her exploiting you.”
“I’m not being exploited,” Terry assured her. “I want to learn whether I ever sense an incoming ship or not. And it’s giving me a chance to be here with you for a while, isn’t it?”
“There’s that,” Kathryn said, her frown fading. “We should just be happy she talked your captain into it, I guess. Still . . . I hope ‘extraordinary destiny’ means a pleasant destiny.”
Chilled, he quieted a suddenly-queasy stomach. It had not occurred to him that it might not be pleasant.
The neurofeedback center was a brick building containing many small compartments equipped with dual setups where young people came for mind training. There were many instructors, Kathryn explained, only a few of whom were mentors—although only mentors could conduct the stressful sessions, most later ones were handled by less skilled teachers. She herself was now working with an instructor named Elbra, who had become a close friend and who was teaching her to close her mind when necessary to keep important secrets from being unconsciously leaked. After telling him where to find Tristan, she went to keep her appointment.
Tristan’s office, like Aldren’s, had comfortable floor seating, but there was also a small table and bench at which Terry sat, with paper and pen before him, during his remote viewing sessions. He found he was able to quickly enter the necessary stage of consciousness simply by recalling the appropriate mind-pattern. “Our neurofeedback training makes this much easier than it was on Earth for people without it,” Tristan said. “They had to spend a lot of time learning to alter consciousness by more traditional techniques that were hard for most people to master. Here, we progress directly to viewing, and trainees advance rapidly.”
On the first morning, after explaining that remote viewing was simply one form of a psi faculty called clairvoyance, Tristan tested Terry’s ability to perceive not only concealed pictures, but nearby hidden objects such as the contents of a cabinet. From then on he was asked to view actual places. Tristan arranged with other mentors to select the targets without telling him where they were, being careful not to reveal them to him telepathically. Terry was not introduced to these assistants, nor, contrary to the training procedure often advocated in old writings from Earth, did they go there on the appointed day.
“According to the books, they went during the viewing session and intentionally focused on what they were seeing—on all their sensory impressions—and attributed the trainee’s success in getting a feel for the place to remote viewing,” Tristan said, “when actually there were no grounds for thinking it wasn’t merely unconscious telepathy. Unknowingly, they went out of their way to encourage telepathy. Here, our assistants will place markers at several locations and let a computer pick which one you will target, giving you only a description of the marker. After your viewing session has been recorded, you and I will be told by the computer the location it chose, and we will go together to see what’s there.”
In this way, during the course of the next week, Terry saw a good deal of Petersville and its surroundings. Most of his sessions produced at least a vague resemblance to the target, and some were astonishingly accurate. He sketched a circular shape that turned out to be a water tower. He described the inner courtyard of a low stone apartment complex. He wrote “Low roof, no windows, noisy” and was taken to a manufacturing plant that produced robocarts.
Once, he froze up and laid down the pen, suddenly struck by a foreboding he could not explain. For some reason he did not want to sense the target, which Tristan grasped even before he did from the feelings he was broadcasting. “Write something down,” he urged, “anything. Don’t worry about whether it’s related to the target or not.” And Terry wrote, “Hot. Melting.”
He was reluctant to visit the target and protested that it wasn’t necessary since he hadn’t seen anything, but Tristan persisted. It proved to be a craftworker’s shop where a young woman was making pewter tableware, the molten pewter beside her in a small cauldron. “I don’t understand,” Terry said. “There isn’t anything wrong here—why does it give me the jitters?”
“Don’t you know, Terry?” Tristan said quietly. “Relax, see what impressions you pick up from her mind, not specific thoughts, but her awareness of what she does.”
Terry let himself perceive impressions. After a pause he said, “She—she melted that pewter with her mind. The way Ivana destroyed Picard’s hyperdrive.”
“Yes, talented craftworkers sometimes do that. Psychokinesis is also u
sed in a few industrial processes where it’s the simplest way to deal with small quantities. In time the idea won’t upset you, once you realize your mind won’t do anything destructive against your will.”
During what free time Terry had, Kathryn showed him more of Maclairn and talked more about the society she had enthusiastically adopted as her own. Its goal from the beginning, she said, had been to create an example of what human civilization might someday become. There was no sickness, since everyone had mind training in how to prevent it and there were healers to deal with such serious conditions as did arise. There was no poverty because anyone who lacked income could do work for the community and receive credits—one credit per hour regardless of the job’s nature, a tradition begun in the early days when everyone worked together to survive. There was no crime, for telepaths empathized with each other and in any case, criminal intent would be impossible to conceal.
“The key to making it applicable to humankind’s future,” she told him, “is that we’ve integrated our focus on inner development with high technology. No society on Earth ever did that. Believers in enhanced human potential blamed technology for the world’s problems and wanted to revert to an earlier stage of evolution instead of moving ahead. That would have been fatal, of course. Resources would have run out with no way to replenish them and the people still alive would have fought over what remained. Fortunately, instinct assured that technology kept progressing to the point where we could establish interstellar colonies, even though it resulted in other aspects of human evolution being ignored. But now, for civilization to survive, we need balance.”
He and Kathryn traveled by rail to other nearby towns, passing through green farmland and sometimes through vast fields of the tall sunflowers grown for oil and seeds, fields that from the shuttle he had seen as brilliant patches of yellow against the duller gold of native vegetation. There were also forests of the fast-growing genetically engineered trees planted regularly and systematically harvested as soon as they were large enough to provide lumber. The trains were crowded with agricultural workers who commuted from the towns to supervise the robotic machines that did the actual labor; all of them seemed cheerful and content.
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 13