~ 44 ~
“Aliens? Extraterrestrial aliens, you mean? Come on, you don’t expect me to believe that,” Terry protested. “It won’t wash—it’s been known for a long time now that there aren’t any.”
“I realize you may need convincing,” Laesara agreed, “since you are the first person to be shown that there are.”
“That doesn’t make sense—lots of people used to claim they were shown. What does make sense is that you probed my mind and found it was an old fantasy of mine, something I wished were true even though I knew it wasn’t. I’m not that easily fooled, Laesara.”
“Why do you think this room has an airlock, Terry? Didn’t it strike you as surprising that the air pressure in a room would be different from that in the rest of the ship?”
“You might put poisonous chemicals in here sometimes. Or biohazards.”
“We might, but since there are none in here now we would leave the lock open. In fact, it is in use because the atmosphere in the rest of the ship is unbreathable for some species, including yours and mine. Many of our compartments have airlocks because we are not all of the same ancestry.”
For the first time it occurred to Terry that there might possibly be some truth is this. But . . . abducted by aliens! That surely couldn’t be happening to him. Being abducted by aliens had been dismissed as a joke for more than a hundred years, much longer than that by scientists.
“You’re not planning to invade Earth, are you?” he asked, not meaning the question to be taken seriously.
But he sensed when Laesara replied that she was deadly serious. “Our goal is to protect Earth and its colonies, which requires that we protect Maclairn—for it is the key to your people’s future. If Maclairn’s mission fails, your race will lose the place among us that has awaited you for millennia, and eventually it will die out. The stakes are high, Terry. High enough to justify sacrifices.”
He regarded her with astonishment. “As you now know, I’m pledged to protect Maclairn and its goals. If what you say is true I’m certainly not going to argue with it.”
“You may, when you find out what is ahead of you.”
“I guess that means it’s something I won’t like,” Terry said, regaining his balance. “And so I’ve got no reason to believe you’re not just feeding me a nice story to make me go along. If you were really alien you wouldn’t be so—human, or speak our language so well.”
“If you need more proof,” Laesara said, “I will remove my mask.”
He had assumed that she wore the mask and voluminous clothing so that he would be unable to identify her if the ship’s crew was ever arrested. The idea that she might be truly alien, with alien features, was somehow shocking, for she did seem human. It chilled him to think that perhaps she was not.
Slowly, Laesara pulled off first the mask and then her headscarf and gloves. “I am not green,” she said, smiling, “but as you can see, I am not of any race originally from Earth. And as you may have suspected, my voice is synthesized. My vocal chords are not like yours, and my eyes, in which I am wearing contact lenses, are gold.”
Terry gasped. Her skin too was golden—not golden brown, but a light, translucent gold that almost glowed. Her features were unmistakably inhuman, with a small flat nose, wide mouth, and receding chin. Her hair was sparse, white, and fuzzy, with gold scalp showing through. And she had seven fingers on each hand.
“I will not introduce you to the others aboard,” she said, “for I do not think you would wish to see them. Their resemblance to your species is less than mine. On the other hand, our team does include people who can pass as Earthborn. They live on your worlds as our agents, from whom we learn about your customs and your progress.”
“Agents on our worlds? For how long?” Terry demanded.
“Since the dawn of your history, Terry, from time to time. Not continuously until the twentieth century, when you first entered space.”
“The UFO reports were true, then.”
“Not literally—we shield our landers from sight. And certainly there were no abductees. But the truth became established in the collective unconscious of your race through latent psi, and metaphorical conceptions of us spread by means of unconscious telepathy.”
“I once told Aldren that the search for aliens in itself was a metaphor,” Terry recalled.
“And you were right, as far as specific ideas of us were concerned. Nevertheless, humans have always sensed that there is sapient life throughout the universe, because there is. Just as in remote viewing you perceive reality, even when the details are obscure and sometimes misleading.”
“Do your people have a name?” he inquired.
“You can refer to us as the Elders, for that is what we are. We are a federation of many races older than yours that evolved on different planets.”
“But we’ve explored thousands of solar systems, and we’ve never found any inhabited planets,” Terry protested.
“No, because our technology shields them from sight, shields whole solar systems so that your instruments cannot detect them—not only ours, but those of younger races.”
“Why? Why do you hide from us? Are you afraid we’d attack you?”
“Your technology is not sufficiently advanced to be a threat—and in any case we have been hiding from you since prehistoric times. Fear is not the reason.” Laesara’s voice was soft, but her eyes penetrated him. “Now we reach the crux of the matter, Terry. We hide because it is essential to your welfare that our existence not be known to you. Those of us who visit immature civilizations—yours, and those younger than yours—swear to die rather than reveal it. Were a young race to learn how far behind it is, it would never evolve as it should; it would make no independent progress and would have nothing to contribute to the Federation when old enough to join. Its people would not develop the qualities they need to hold their own among older races; they would be like retarded children.”
“Scientists used to believe older civilizations could teach us.”
“So we too once thought, long ago. But it does not work like contact between different cultures of a single human species.” Laesara’s feelings became very intense. “It is important—tremendously important—that you understand this. Are you absorbing it?”
Terry nodded. With awe, he was absorbing more than she was saying aloud. Telepathically, she was projecting her conviction that revelation of the Elders’ existence would bring about the extinction of humankind.
“There are worlds where civilization has died or is dying because we made ourselves known to them too soon,” she went on. “It is the heaviest burden on our conscience and it must never happen again. We never interfere with the progress of a young race; we only observe. We take no action unless its actual survival is threatened by some external force, and then only subtly, so its people never know we did so.”
“Yet you say you’re guarding Maclairn.”
“Yes. You see, Terry, we observe younger worlds throughout their people’s evolution and never provide any assistance, because that would do more harm than good. But obviously, for each human species there comes a time when it is mature—when it is ready to join the Federation on equal terms. And for Earth that time is not far off.”
“You’re about to—contact us?” Excitement rose in Terry. Was he the first real contactee? Had fate chosen him to serve as their ambassador, as Kathryn had become ambassador to the League?
“Soon, as we reckon time,” Laesara said, “though it is still several of your generations away. The final criterion has not yet been met anywhere but on Maclairn.”
“Our mind powers? Psi?” That was understandable; the public wouldn’t be able to deal with the existence of the Maclairnans, let alone of Elders with even greater powers. Besides, until the majority became telepathic enough to sense the feelings of aliens, they couldn’t be trusted to mingle peacefully with them.
“Without those powers you would be viewed as dangerously deficient by the citizens of our wor
lds,” Laesara agreed. “What Maclairn is doing by spreading acceptance of psi is essential. Yet as you know, there is opposition that means danger both to the Maclairnans and to the plan. If that plan fails, your people’s evolution will be set back for centuries, and may even be permanently halted, because Earth’s civilization is now dying and the colonies are not strong enough to forge ahead alone. In many, their desire to progress has been lost.”
Puzzled, Terry protested, “How can you know anything about Maclairn? You can’t have an agent in place; it wasn’t discovered until a short time ago and you couldn’t have guessed what was going on there any sooner. And the colonists have known each other for generations; they would recognize a stranger even if one could have been gotten in.”
Laesara explained, “We investigate odd occurrences, such as the crew of a private starship claiming it has been hunting for aliens. We traced Promise to the Maclairn Foundation and our agent at League headquarters probed the returnees from the first expedition, posing as a psychiatrist verifying their report of what they had seen. He also observed Aldren and Roanna, though it would have been too risky to let himself be noticed by them; and later he monitored the contract negotiations.”
“Did Kathryn—our ambassador—meet him?” Terry asked in surprise.
“Yes, but neither she nor anyone else suspected that he was not what he seemed. That you are Kathryn’s lifemate and captain of Promise came as a shock to me when I probed you—it makes what I must do even more painful for me than it would have been otherwise. But I am sworn to put the best interests of Earth and its colonies above all personal considerations.”
Terry frowned. Several times she had implied that some mysterious ordeal awaited him, and by now he realized that she was not threatening him, but trying to soften the blow. Quickly, wanting to learn as much as possible about the Elders’ interest in Maclairn, he asked, “Aren’t there any people elsewhere with psi powers?”
“Yes, but they are scattered, as they have been throughout history. Only Maclairn has a psi-based culture at Earth’s technological level that can thrive and lead. A major step in evolution must start somewhere, and for your people it has started there. Ian Maclairn’s vision was on target. The Stewards of the Flame are indeed stewards of the key—the determining factor in Earth’s eligibility to join us and claim its rightful heritage.”
“You know even about the Stewards of the Flame?”
“Our agent saw records of the starship that Maclairn’s founders hijacked, so we know it was originally chartered to transport a group by that name from Undine. We did not know the name is still used until I drew it from your mind.” Soberly she added, “I sensed then that you are worthy of it, both by Maclairn’s standards and by ours.”
God, Terry thought, Aldren had been right about his extraordinary destiny, if it was his role to be the go-between. How excited the mentors were going to be. . . .
Laesara, grasping his thought, looked at him sorrowfully. “You have not understood what I’ve been telling you, Terry. The mentors must not know. No one must know, the mentors least of all since it would affect their actions and thus constitute interference on our part.”
Reluctantly Terry conceded, “I guess I do see. I won’t tell them yet, if it would do harm.”
“But they would draw it from your mind sooner or later, however hard you tried to conceal it. This would be true if you knew no more of us than the existence of our ship, else I would not have burdened you with additional knowledge.”
“I don’t think they’d believe me anyway if I said I’d been in contact with aliens.”
“They know you, and know you are not mentally ill, and unconscious telepathy would reveal that what they sensed in your mind was authentic. Nor could you keep it from Kathryn, and she too would be unable to hide it from the mentors. Even our agents dare not interact with them.”
“What can I do, then? I don’t want to upset the process you say is necessary.”
There were tears in Laesara’s eyes. “The problem is what you cannot do, Terry Radnor,” she said sadly. “You cannot be allowed to go back to Maclairn, ever again.”
~ 45 ~
Stunned, Terry stared at her. Laesara had seemed so gentle, so concerned with ethics, that he had stopped fearing for his life. If the future of humankind depended on sacrificing it he supposed he’d be willing, but he couldn’t see that it did. “Are you just going to kill me in cold blood?” he demanded incredulously.
“Kill you? Of course not,” Laesara said, obviously horrified. “We do not kill, except when it can save innocent lives that are clearly endangered.”
“Well, you’ll have to,” Terry declared, “if you want to stop me from going back to Maclairn. It’s my world now, the place where I belong. I’m pledged twice over to defend it. Kathryn is there, and she’s carrying my child.”
“I know,” Laesara said unhappily. “That is why the irony of our seeking each other was so tragic. But you have no choice—you have had none since you sighted our ship, nor have we. I do not expect you to renounce your life on Maclairn willingly, but it is not up to you.”
“You can’t confine me in this sealed compartment forever.” Privately, he wondered. The ship was large enough to contain many compartments; they could easily spare one, and with a poisonous atmosphere outside, he could not escape from it. His suit and helmet had been removed.
“We can’t,” she agreed. “You will be taken to another world.”
“One of yours?”
“No, we have an inviolable policy against that, for your own good. Great though your psi powers are in comparison to the majority of your people, they are not yet sufficiently developed. You would be viewed as handicapped.”
“Where, then? You can’t keep me on a human world in anything short of a hidden high-security prison. Fleet has a presence everywhere, and I can prove my identity.”
“Your identity will be changed, Terry—physically, even to the level of your DNA. And the world to which you go will not offer you a chance to leave it.”
Angrily Terry protested, “You can’t do this! You said you were going to consult your colleagues about what to do, which means there were alternatives. I’ll bet not everyone agreed that I can’t keep a secret from the mentors. I believe I can, and what’s more, I believe they could—I don’t think it would create any sort of disaster if they knew about you Elders—”
“Oh, it would, Terry—absolutely, it would. It would influence all their decisions, and they would lose heart, knowing that other races surpass them. They would lose the will to work as hard as they must to move humankind ahead. Our opinion is unanimous on that, because it has been proven by past experience on worlds that didn’t make it.”
Terry was uncomfortably aware that Kathryn had speculated that the arrival of aliens would cause Earth’s civilization to collapse, and Tristan had said early theorists had thought so. It might be true of open contact, but surely not if it was secret from all but a few trustworthy people. And yet . . . what would Fleet do if they knew the Elders were guarding Maclairn with technology superior to its own? Would the crew of Shepard be as vigilant as they were now, or would it seem like pointless effort? Might not the mentors react in the same way?
Perhaps so. Yet he could not give up everything he had ever cared about when the risk was so uncertain. There had to be another answer. “What alternatives were considered for disposing of me?” he asked.
“A few people thought your memory of us should be erased.”
“If it’s the only option besides leaving Maclairn, I guess I’d pick that.”
“But it is not an option, except in the eyes of those who would countenance depriving you of all that means most to you. We can wipe memories, but not selectively—you would lose the personal ones you value, including your love for Kathryn and for Maclairn itself. To choose it would be self-defeating.”
Terry nodded miserably. “Can’t you create some sort of hypnotic compulsion to keep me from thinking ab
out you, then?”
“Not without destroying your mind. If it was made deep enough to work, you would end up insane. And in any case, to take away your free will would be worse than killing.”
He couldn’t contest that. Laesara continued, “My colleagues and I met to decide where you will be sent. The other issue was whether you should be informed about us. I maintained that you should be, because otherwise you would have found yourself forcibly transported to another world without knowing why and would think you were the victim of pointless cruelty. And also, Terry, because I believe you have a right to know the end your misfortune serves. It may be some small compensation to be aware of what lies ahead for humankind, and realize that its struggle to progress is not futile, as too many of your people suppose in view of Earth’s problems.”
“I’d rather know than not know,” Terry agreed. “But I can’t pretend I believe what you’re doing to me is unavoidable, or that it’s fair.”
“It is not a matter of fairness. Countless people over the ages have suffered greater losses than yours to get humankind this far, both your own people and ours. Some of our agents have sacrificed their lives to prevent the disclosure you think would be harmless—there was a woman several centuries back, for example, who allowed herself to be burned as a witch rather than reveal that she was alien. In the light of what is past, we cannot afford to take chances now.”
Terry was silent for a long time, coming to terms with defeat. Finally he said, “I can’t accept exile, Laesara. You can take me away from Maclairn—there’s no way I can physically resist. But as long as I’m alive, I’ll search for a way to get back. And someday, one way or another, I’ll find one.”
“You will try,” she agreed. “You are not the sort of man who would give up, which is why we must take care to eliminate all avenues of escape. But someday you will find new meaning in your life, Terry. I have talked to members of many races on hundreds of worlds, and I know an achiever when I see one. I wish you well.”
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 28