After the ceremony there was a reception in the wardroom complete with toasts, followed by dancing and merriment on the mess deck that promised to go on for a long time. But Terry and Kathryn, along with members of the wedding party, soon left aboard a shuttle and were met at the Old Settlement by a crowd of well-wishers who accompanied them to the boat landing. It was lit with torches, as it had been on the night when they first saw each other. As they boarded the boat Terry thought of how much his life had changed since then. He had more than he had ever dreamed of having—it seemed almost too good to be true. For a moment, he felt a chill, which surely couldn’t be precognition. . . .
He had not believed Captain Vargas’s warning about separations ahead; he would not allow himself to contemplate it. And yet, suddenly recalling Aldren’s prediction about an extraordinary destiny, he was struck by fear of what that might mean. Around him celebration had begun; a fleet of small boats accompanied the large one down the lake, with everyone calling back and forth and sometimes singing. Still he shivered from the cold night air despite the cloak that had been provided to cover his dress uniform—or was it the cold, when controlling his body temperature was second nature to him now? In their seat on the boat’s top deck he held Kathryn close, repeating to himself, nothing can ever part us. Whatever happens in the future, we have that to hold to. . . .
In Jessica’s house there was a roaring fire in the great room’s huge central fireplace; there had been no economizing on wood, scarce though it was on Maclairn. The feast was laid out buffet style—decorated cakes and other baked goods, with the ubiquitous chicken ground into a pastry filling. People helped themselves, then sat as always on mattresses and floor cushions, many of which had been brought in for the occasion. There was more warm laughter, more singing. With his arm around Kathryn and a mug of ale in his other hand, Terry forgot the shadow that had briefly come over him, and soon he was too busy receiving the congratulations of Jessica, Tristan and other friends to give any thought to the distant future.
The festivities lasted till dawn. Since nothing had been said about a honeymoon retreat, Terry assumed they would sleep in Kathryn’s bedroom, as usual. But as the sun was rising, after the last of the guests had left and Jessica had gone to her own wing of the house, Kathryn lingered by the dying fire in the great room. “There’s an old tradition,” she said, “that began on the founders’ birthworld. Couples formalized their commitment by making love by the lodge fireplace, which had symbolic meaning there because it was the center of the Group’s fellowship and the place where the Ritual was held—it was a reminder that they shared a special bond beyond what legally-defined marriage meant to outsiders. Of course nowadays only a few people have opportunity to spend the night in this room, the one patterned after the lodge on Undine where the idea for Maclairn began. But since we do—well, when Jessica told me about it, it seemed sort of romantic, Terry.”
It’s very romantic, he agreed, pulling one of the floor mattresses close to the hearth. It was more than that. Like the rings, it meant that their love for each other and for Maclairn were intertwined, that the linking of their minds during lovemaking was in some way a symbol of the mind powers that would be offered to the rest of humankind. They did not need to put this into words. They simply knew that it was the bedrock of their marriage, far more than the League paperwork they had signed.
Silently they took off their wedding clothes. Seeing Kathryn’s familiar body in the firelight, Terry felt as if he were looking upon it for the first time. There had never been anything furtive in their union, but now, as husband and wife—lifemates—they came together in a different way, not with the excitement of mounting feelings, but with the comfort of love that was stable and lasting. He joined his own body and mind to hers, knowing as they merged that there could never be a better time for them than this.
~ 31 ~
Promise broke orbit two days after the wedding with two returning observer couples and a mentor couple aboard, plus the former civilian copilot and engineer, who had to be transported back to Earth as passengers. The captain had decided to stay on Maclairn, for which Terry was glad; he didn’t want there to be any doubt in their minds about who was in command.
Since Maclairn was relatively close to its sun, more than a day was required to get far enough out to jump. Terry looked forward to the climactic moment with a mixture of eagerness and trepidation. He had never had full responsibility for a jump before, though as copilot on his previous explorer missions he had programmed the hyperdrive many times under supervision. This was, of course, the sole difference between a starship and a mere interplanetary ship, and Picard, since its resurrection from grounding on Maclairn, had operated only as the latter. Little action was involved in piloting either ship, since the AI handled most maneuvers; but the command to jump was too critical to be entrusted to anyone but the captain.
The Maclairn-to-Earth jumps had been made three times, and Promise retained those calculations in its memory. Nevertheless, with the lives of eleven people in his hands, Terry spent a good share of the hours of passage to his chosen jump point going over and over them, as if he had to program from scratch. Even the best astrogators sometimes miscalculated, he knew, and it did not help to recall that even Maclairn’s founding hero Jesse had done so, resulting in the founders’ ship emerging so far out from the sun that they’d had to go into stasis to make their life support last. Jesse, to be sure, had been forced to jump too hurriedly because the ship was being pursued. But it could also happen through carelessness. Too far from the destination sun was better than coming too close and falling into that sun, though running out of life support would be equally disastrous on modern ships, where no stasis facilities were available. And of course, a seriously miscalculated jump could mean the ship might end up in some entirely different solar system, or even in empty space far from any sun, with no known stars as reference points, making it impossible to get back. Starships did occasionally disappear.
Kathryn, who had taken the jumps during her previous trips aboard Promise for granted, was somewhat dismayed when she sensed these concerns in Terry’s mind, and in reassuring her, he managed to calm himself. But as zero hour approached he began to get nervous again. He had given the instructions to the AI well in advance; he would merely have to speak the command to execute. Much as he wanted her presence for support he knew that the bridge was always off-limits to passengers during a jump, and so he sent her away.
The AI, which was programmed to recognize his voice, began the countdown: “Forty seconds until jump . . . thirty . . . please authorize, Captain Radnor.”
He drew a deep breath. “Proceed.”
“Twenty seconds . . . ten . . . five, four, three, two, one, executing.”
There was the usual moment of disorientation, as if the compartment were whirling around him, though actually it was not. “Report our position!” he commanded.
“We are approximately 1.2 billion klicks out from New Tahiti, ETA 87 hours.”
He had done it. His calculations had been on target and the hyperdrive had functioned. The most time-consuming part of this leg of the trip was yet to come, as it would have been unwise to jump in any closer to the sun; but the flight to the planet itself would be routine. Feeling shaky from released tension, he went to tell the passengers that they were now more than sixty light-years away from where they had been ten minutes ago.
The stopover in New Tahiti’s solar system was necessary because on reaching Earth they’d be unable to get through customs without evidence of where they had come from. New Tahiti was a tourist colony that asked no questions of arriving passengers, whereas overcrowded Earth demanded documented records of a ship’s point of origin. Though everyone aboard Promise had Terran citizenship—except the mentors, for whom false identity details had to be provided in any case—they would be suspected of smuggling if they admitted to having visited unnamed, unopened worlds; the first expedition’s claim of having searched for aliens would not
work a second time.
And so Terry and Kathryn looked forward to a few days of honeymooning at the most expensive vacation spot in the galaxy. Along with the passengers, they would sleep aboard Promise; Maclairn Foundation funds would cover the landing fees but would not stretch to resort hotels. The scenic unspoiled wilderness and white sand beaches of New Tahiti, however, could be enjoyed without cost by anyone with the means to get there. Not enough people could afford interstellar passage for it to become overcrowded.
Nearly four days were spent on the way. In ships too small to carry service personnel it was customary for the passengers to take turns preparing meals, but since Kathryn was officially hosting the observers she felt it was her place to do it. On the first night Terry started to help, as on explorer missions this duty was shared by the entire crew; but he quickly realized that for the captain of a passenger ship it would be inappropriate. His job, she informed him, was to make conversation. Meals were formal, as on a liner; it was a way to pass the time, and civilians liked to sit with an officer in a classy uniform. There were two round tables that seated six in the mess room, which doubled as a lounge. He headed one with Kathryn, one of the observer couples—who would rotate—and the mentors; a somewhat reluctant Drew and Amir were assigned to alternately head the second while the other stood watch on the bridge.
The observers were full of enthusiasm for what they had seen on Maclairn, where they had been lodged in the homes of Council members. They had all gone through the first phase of mind training while there, as had the former crew members during their layovers, so it was permissible to talk about it. No secrets were kept from observers except the identity and astrogational position of Maclairn’s star. That was known to no one, apart from a few Foundation and League officials, except Admiral Derham, Captain Vargas, the original captain of Promise, and now Terry.
There had been ten observers before these: six on the first trip—Admiral Derham and his wife as representatives of Fleet, a couple representing the League, and Kathryn’s aunt and uncle representing the Foundation—plus four on the trip from which she had recently returned. They had been carefully selected by her grandfather, Arthur Bramfield, from among people he personally knew and trusted. Most of them were doctors or psychologists, and their role would be to run the health clubs that would be established in various cities as fronts for the mentors’ work. The mentors now aboard were headed for Los Angeles, which was the current observers’ home.
“You aren’t going to like it,” Dr. Schroeder warned. “Los Angeles is one of the worst places on Earth to live—compared to Maclairn, it’s pure hell. But it serves our purpose. Nobody in Los Angeles will question or even notice one more health club that promotes wacky ideas. You can even discuss psychic phenomena openly—though of course it would be professional suicide for me to acknowledge any awareness that you’re doing so.”
His wife Dr. Lewis, who for many years had studied what was known of parapsychology on Earth, agreed. “It was unpopular to take such ideas seriously two hundred years ago, as you know from the knowledgebase that’s been available to you,” she said. “But now it’s not just that they’re ridiculed; there’s even stronger antagonism than the reaction that set in after the successful psi experiments of the twenty-first century. No respectable publication will touch the subject anymore, not even from a historical standpoint. In some places the opposition gets ugly.”
Terry frowned. “People keep telling me that, but I still don’t understand it.”
“Well, Captain Radnor, I’ve heard that you are both a deep space explorer and psi-gifted, so it’s not surprising that the narrow-mindedness of the average scientist is incomprehensible to you. To someone whose whole life—whose very identity—has been founded on a materialistic picture of how the universe works, any suggestion that this picture might be wrong is threatening, and the brighter such people are, the greater their fear, because their very intelligence leads to an underlying suspicion that there might be some truth in it. That’s why actual evidence of psi makes most scientists less, rather than more, willing to grant the possibility of its existence, and why some feel impelled not merely to deny but to destroy the evidence.”
Fyodor, one of the mentors, said quietly, “Lucine and I don’t expect finding converts to be easy. But there will be individuals who are drawn to psi, those who don’t have professional reputations to lose.”
“Of course,” Dr. Schroeder agreed. “And we will back you all the way in reaching out to them. We must be very careful, though, even in Los Angeles, or the authorities will find some pretext to shut us down. There’s more regimentation and less tolerance of unorthodox opinion than there used to be before the overcrowding of Earth got bad enough to make everyone edgy.”
“Yes, that’s a major factor,” added Dr. Lewis. “There’s more to the opposition than the innate fear psi often arouses. You see, Captain Radnor, to believe in psi is to acknowledge the power of the individual human mind—the primacy of mind over mere physical bodies. And that’s something the authorities of a regimented society don’t want to see acknowledged.”
Kathryn stared at her. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” she said. “But in the meetings with League officials about the contract, I could tell that some of them weren’t happy about the discovery of Maclairn. They wanted to keep it secret not just because the public would demand access, but because they wished it hadn’t happened. Are you saying the government has a hidden agenda?”
“Undoubtedly,” Dr. Schroeder declared. “I would be very much surprised if either your grandfather or Jessica is unaware of that. Probably Ian Maclairn was aware of it two hundred years ago when he made his plan to keep the colony isolated while it gained strength.”
Fyodor nodded. “Why else would our supporters have pushed for a Fleet cruiser to protect Maclairn? Admiral Derham certainly knows, and Captain Vargas, as well as all the mentors. But there are no specific accusations that can be made, so nothing was said to you; it was felt that as ambassador you should be left free to form your own unbiased conclusions.”
Oh, my God, thought Terry. The chance of stray explorers or smugglers wandering into Maclairn’s solar system in the near future had always seemed too small to justify the expense and risk of deploying such an extensive early warning system. If there was another worry—if there might be danger of covert action by people who knew the secret—the captain, as an official representative of the League, could scarcely have informed Shepard’s crew.
But Vargas must have realized that aboard Promise he, Terry, would hear about it sooner or later. Had he wanted to alert him to what guarding Maclairn might involve? He and Jessica might have planned it together; they might even have had more reasons for encouraging the development of his psi capabilities than the vague hope that he could remote-view an intruding ship.
They might have sent him to League headquarters as a spy.
~ 32 ~
The interlude on New Tahiti was idyllic, though brief. They stayed several days, long enough to give the guest couples, who had told friends they’d won the trip in a sweepstakes, sufficient familiarity with the place to explain their absence when they got home. Terry could not go down to the surface every day, of course, since one pilot had to stay with the ship. But while there he and Kathryn enjoyed the glorious views of forested mountains, lounged on the uncrowded sandy beaches, and swam in a sea so calm and clear that it was hard to believe that it hadn’t been constructed by terraforming. This world alone, of all that had been discovered, was blessed with a climate and natural features reminiscent of how tropical areas of Earth had looked four centuries ago. It was like going back in time.
Since the stopover would be included in every outbound trip, leaving wasn’t difficult, and Terry’s thoughts quickly turned to the challenges ahead. The jump to Earth’s solar system went smoothly, as did the remaining days of travel, which he spent teaching Amir and Drew how to maintain Promise in orbit while he was absent. Arrival at the customs stati
on near Earth’s moon, would, he knew, be his first test of imperturbability. He had often hidden his activities during his hacking days, but never before had he put across outright lies.
“Terran Control, this is civilian hyperdrive spacecraft HS Promise, inbound from New Tahiti, requesting permission to approach, over.”
“Promise, state your business and persons on board, over.”
“This is Lieutenant Commander Terry Radnor in command. I am carrying two more Fleet officers, a civilian attorney, and eight returning tourists, all citizens of Earth.” Kathryn, of course, was not an official ambassador with diplomatic privileges since she did not represent a known world.
“Have any of these persons landed on any world other than New Tahiti since leaving Earth?”
“Negative,” replied Terry firmly.
“Roger, Promise. Establish lunar holding orbit at 50 km and prepare for boarding.”
In due course two officers in a small shuttle docked, ran their wand over the passengers’ identity chips—which in the case of the mentors had been implanted aboard Shepard, showing a false birthplace and residence address as authorized under the secret contract—and inspected the ship thoroughly for persons or cargo unaccounted for. Terry held his breath, fearing that they might check the content of personal data bracelets, as he and Kathryn carried coded dispatches for Fleet headquarters and for the Foundation. In what he hoped was a casual tone he affirmed again that his ship had not visited any undeclared planets, whereupon, after long delays, Promise was given a certified trip transponder and cleared to proceed to Earth.
He had been to Earth fairly recently, during his leave before reporting to Titan. Nevertheless, after Maclairn, he was struck anew by its teeming cities and its decadence. Earth had once been beautiful, he knew. There had been stretches of unpopulated land other than the parks in which he had occasionally—by hacking the reservation system—been able to obtain camping permits. But rural areas had been history since long before he was born. The vast agricultural complexes that had taken over bore no resemblance to farms, and in the endless suburbs too many people were crowded into too few square meters per head. Violence on the streets was rampant. The wealthy lived in high-rise apartments, isolated from the squalor below; there was little need to descend below the interconnecting bridges when most contacts were electronic anyway. Terry’s family had not been wealthy. He had grown up in a typical middle-class neighborhood of Greater Denver, where there might have been a view of the mountains on the rare occasions when the air was clear had not mile after mile of run-down town houses stood in the way.
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 20