Finally, shortly after Terry had finished a more adequate meal than usual, Quaid came to his cell. “Get up, Rivera,” he said, motioning with his gun. “You’re about to be useful to me.”
~ 69 ~
So they were going to use him for biochemical experimentation after all. Sick with fear, Terry followed, wondering why he had not been escorted by a guard, as before when taken anywhere, instead of by Quaid himself. To his surprise, they proceeded not to the medical laboratory he was dreading but to a narrow door in a deserted part of the prison, locked but not guarded. Quaid, who was wearing a flight jacket, handed him one like it and ordered him to put it on. Then, after handcuffing him, he unlocked the door and opened it. Astonished, Terry found himself looking out into a dark night and breathing cold outside air.
There was a groundcar parked near the door. Quaid told him to get in, and Terry complied with rising apprehension. No one else was around; obviously whatever Quaid was doing had not been officially authorized, and he certainly was not doing it out of kindness. Most likely it had been decided, either by Quaid alone or by the government in secret, that a prisoner around whom a legend had arisen should be quietly eliminated.
He expected that they would head for the wilderness, perhaps the logging road by which he had arrived all those years ago. It would be a fitting exit, he supposed. Instead, Quaid drove to the spaceport and on out to a pad in its most distant corner. It was long after midnight, Terry judged, because he saw no lights in the hotel and there was little activity on the field—but not so little that a liftoff would be considered abnormal if observed. The ship on the pad was an ordinary shuttle of the type used by large mining companies; no name appeared on it.
Quaid, who had been silent during the drive, turned to Terry. “I’m willing to grant that you’re a competent pilot,” he said. “I have need to reach a starship tonight, and I don’t want it known that I went there. So you are going to take me and bring me back.”
Speechless, Terry nodded his assent. “Just so you know,” Quaid went on, “if you ever suggest to anyone, in any way, that this trip ever happened, you will die in the most unpleasant way our biochemists can devise. Is that understood?”
Again Terry nodded. It needed no elaboration. Inside he was bursting with joy at the thought of flying again, even under these less than inviting circumstances. God, he realized, past all hope he was going into space one more time!
After turning on the pad lights and convincing Quaid that no pilot could lift off without a preflight check, he performed it while still in handcuffs with his captor, gun in hand, still at his side. All appeared to be in order. “But I don’t know anything about the condition of the engines, or how well this ship has been maintained,” he warned. “If anything goes wrong with it, that’s beyond my control.”
“I’ve been assured that it’s spaceworthy. I assume you won’t do anything to make it less so, seeing as your life is as much at stake as mine.”
Quaid overestimated the value of life to condemned prisoners, Terry thought. He had half a mind to head for deep space and just keep going. That might be something to think about on the return trip—but perhaps there wouldn’t have to be a return trip. Perhaps he could reach a different starship from the one designated and ask for sanctuary; Quaid didn’t know anything about astrogation, after all.
“In case you’ve got any idea of fooling me,” Quaid said, “you should know that this ship has only a few hours of air, no food or water, and no long-range comm. Therefore it’s not going anywhere except where I say it is.”
“I can’t locate your starship without long-range comm capability,” Terry pointed out.
“You don’t have to—it will locate you. Just get us off the ground and into the right orbit.” He handed over orbital specifications, which Terry gave to the AI. Quaid must have agreed on an approximate time and attached a tracking device, he realized; once they were within range of each other, rendezvous and docking would be automated. He sealed the airlock, strapped himself into the captain’s seat with Quaid in the copilot’s, and lifted off.
They were not in orbit long before the AI announced the presence of a nearby ship. The rendezvous was totally silent; Quaid would not allow him to use the short-range comm. There was no need for it, but it was customary for approaching pilots to greet each other and Terry found himself wondering what sort of errand would demand such extreme secrecy. And then, amused by his own denseness, he knew.
It was not unusual for the government racketeers to deal directly with smugglers without using a local captain as a go-between. Darrow had mentioned occasions on which he had not negotiated or even known the price, but had simply delivered sealed cargo for a fee very little larger than his expenses. Normally this was done openly, or at least as openly as the rest of the theoretically-illegal smuggling business. But in this case Quaid was apparently selling something without the knowledge of his associates, something so unique and valuable that he did not intend to cut them in on the deal. He feared, probably with justification, that he’d be in some danger if they found out about it.
Terry got a good look at the other ship on the viewscreen. The name on it was HS Venture. It was a small starship, about the size of Picard, but newer and more pleasingly designed, a beautiful ship that reminded him in some ways of Skywalker. He looked at it wistfully, thinking that it was just the sort of ship he would like to own if he were rich and free.
When the two ships were joined and the “docked” light came on, Terry asked, “Will you need my help unloading cargo?”
“There is no cargo,” Quaid said, “I’m just delivering a message that I couldn’t send through the ansible.”
That was odd. Unless Venture regularly picked up cargo although he’d never heard it mentioned among those that did, Quaid must already have used the ansible to arrange the time and place of the meeting; so it wasn’t that he lacked access to it—despite his disapproval of offworld contacts, he evidently had one himself. For a ship to be sent specifically to receive a further message on physical media seemed unlikely, to say the least, so probably Quaid was lying. But it was hard to imagine what could be carried on his person that would be worth enough to warrant a special interstellar flight.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Quaid continued. “I don’t want to be stranded up here. So come along.”
They passed through to Venture, where Quaid was met by two men who were obviously in charge. They did not look like typical smugglers—they lacked the rough edge of outlaws and seemed far too young to have the necessary bargaining experience. There was a sort of nervous intensity about them that Terry immediately sensed. These were men with a mission, and his psi faculties told him that it was not an altruistic one. At the sight of them he felt a foreboding that felt almost precognitive.
Immediately, they escorted Quaid to a stateroom, where all three remained for some time; evidently the transaction required discussion they didn’t want overheard. As soon as they emerged they were joined by Venture’s captain, who appeared from the direction of the bridge. “The AI has processed the coordinates you gave me,” he said to the tallest, a darkly handsome young man called Rafe. “There’s something wrong with them—they point to a solar system that hasn’t been visited for centuries. It’s marked as worthless. There’s nothing there unless you’re prospecting, and we’re not equipped for that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Rafe. “You don’t need to know why we’re going there.”
“Now hold on,” retorted the captain. “You hired me to take you to Ciencia and back. Nothing was said about a side trip to some distant uncharted solar system with no inhabited worlds. I’d need a crew for a trip like that. I’d need extra consumables and people experienced enough to find more if necessary. It would be suicide to go without them, and I won’t do it.”
“You’ll do what we tell you to do,” declared Rafe. “It would be suicide not to.”
“If by that you mean what I think you do, forg
et it. We’re in high orbit above a planet that won’t let us land, and without me you’d stay here till your life support ran out.”
“Wrong,” said the second young man, Yuri. “This guy Quaid brought along is a pilot. If you won’t cooperate, he will.”
“He’s a local pilot—he can’t jump through hyperspace.”
This was an opportunity to be seized. Terry put in quickly, “I can jump. I’ve had a lot of experience at it. And I’ve explored uninhabited solar systems.”
Rafe turned to him, looking thoughtful. “He might be our best bet, at that. He doesn’t know where we came from or who our contact was. If anything went wrong, he couldn’t trace us back.”
“The man is a braggart with illusions about his own powers,” Quaid warned. “He’s a convict and we’d like to be rid of him, but he’s got a following demanding his release and killing him would create a martyr. Frankly, I doubt that he’s ever piloted a starship, certainly not as captain. But if you want to gamble, he’s yours—just so your pilot takes me back to the surface.”
“I’d rather do that than take these idiots on a suicide mission,” said the captain. “But I understand that your world doesn’t allow starships to come or go. I sure as hell don’t want to get stuck there.”
“Well, there are exceptional cases of contact with starships,” Quaid said, “just as I’ve reached this one. Passage with a free trader could be arranged.”
“A smuggler, you mean? What assurance do I have that I wouldn’t be arrested when I got where he was going? And what about my ship? How am I going to get it back?”
“What we paid you up front for falsifying your flight plan would buy your ship twice over,” Yuri declared. “We weren’t planning to give it back. After our final jump we’d have rendezvoused with friends and turned you loose in a shuttle.”
Terry felt for the captain, whose avarice had apparently led him to make what from the beginning had been a bad bargain; no matter how much he’d been paid it was unlikely that he could replace the ship. There weren’t many to be had in anywhere near as good shape as this one. But his loss was Terry’s gain. The two men were obviously up to no good and he’d have to watch his back, but as long he was their only starship pilot they couldn’t dispose of him—and if they eventually turned him loose in a shuttle, he’d be free! In any case, whatever happened would be preferable to going back to prison. To escape Ciencia would have been worth whatever risk was involved, even if he weren’t a prisoner.
Sensing the men’s satisfaction, it dawned on him that the exchange might have been prearranged. Despite his expressed skepticism, Quaid could have believed him when during interrogation he’d claimed to have flown starships. Hoping to get him permanently out of the picture without making a martyr of him, he might well have realized that the men would want to get rid of the captain who knew their identity and origin. Terry wondered if they were really going to a system with no inhabited planets—where it was hard to see what business they could possibly have—or if they had handed the captain false coordinates to trick him into giving up his ship without a fight. Telepathically, he sensed more and more that they had some dark purpose no legitimate captain would have sanctioned.
Terry’s heart swelled with excitement. Incredibly, his life—even perhaps something approaching his old life—had been given back to him. It would take a while to sink in, he knew. He felt as if he were waking from a bad dream, or perhaps sliding into one too good to be true.
“Let’s get going, Rivera,” the first man said after Quaid and the captain had departed. “You’d better have told us the truth when you said you can program jumps, because it’s true that our destination’s an uncommon one and we’re in a hurry.”
Terry went to the bridge. As he sat down at the captain’s console, he was still dazed; to be at the controls of a starship again made him feel as if he had stepped backward in time into a memory. When he saw the figures still displayed on the screen, he was sure he had.
The coordinates the two men had provided were those of Maclairn’s star.
~ 70 ~
During the hours it took to get far enough from Ciencia’s star to execute the jump, Terry struggled to stay in touch with reality. Reason told him they could not be going to Maclairn. For it to be a coincidence was just too incredible—yet no one on Ciencia had known that was where he had come from, even apart from the fact that only a select few had ever possessed its star’s coordinates. And why would Quaid, who hated him, send him back? As hard as he tried, he could not make sense of it.
Yet here it was. The figures were in the computer, and real. He ran a number of tests to make sure there was no error, and everything checked out. Or did it? Perhaps the drugs he’d been given in prison had produced false perceptions. Perhaps it was all some horrible experiment to see if he could be rendered incapable of distinguishing between inner wishes and objective fact. The figures might have come from his memory along with the knowledge of how to pilot a starship. The men could be Ciencian agents in disguise, observing the result of their sinister research. He might not be in space at all—he might be strapped to a table in some laboratory with wires inserted into his brain.
But even if that were true, he had the ability to choose his course of action. They had not turned him into an automaton. He could go ahead as if this was really happening, or he could deny it and tell them to go to hell. It was a gamble either way. And looking back as cloud-shrouded Ciencia receded into the distance, he knew that he would go ahead. If it was all in his mind, it was better than what would be in it otherwise. It was better to believe in something, even a mere illusion, than to believe the human mind was a machine that could be manipulated. Was not Estel an illusion, and had not that symbol of hope done as much for people as a real Estel would have done?
He calculated the jump and recalculated it. He listened to the countdown with racing heart, too overcome with emotion to alter his pulse rate through volition. When the count reached zero, he gave the command to execute; and Venture was suddenly within a day’s range of Maclairn.
The two men were in their staterooms by that time; Terry reported that the jump had been successful, then went to his own. He was too excited to sleep. Maclairn! He had believed he would never see it again. He couldn’t imagine how he had endured the thought of never seeing it. Through all the years he had agonized over his exile, he had somehow managed to hold back the fullest, most concrete awareness of what he had left behind. Now it was as if a light had come on, flooding scenes that had been mercifully veiled in mist. He walked through the streets of Petersville, entered Jessica’s house, went hand in hand with Kathryn to their room. . . .
Kathryn. He was about to see Kathryn—and their son!
In his heart he knew that Kathryn was probably with someone else by now, and that meeting him, especially with his appearance altered beyond recognition, would be a major shock to her. It didn’t matter. Just to see her, feel the touch of her mind, would soothe the pain that had paralyzed him so long. To love, even if there could be no physical expression of that love . . . Though on Maclairn, he recalled, love need not always be exclusive. Maclairnans felt no jealousy; as telepaths they were too sensitive to each others’ feelings. He would not be jealous of anyone Kathryn loved—he wouldn’t want her to be hurt by such a conflict. But he and Kathryn were still married. They had committed themselves to each other forever as lifemates. That didn’t necessarily mean excluding others, but it shouldn’t mean denying their desire for each other, either. . . .
And his son—Radnor. He had so often imagined what he looked like as he grew . . . now he would be twelve years old, only a year away from adulthood on Maclairn. He would soon begin his mind training. What did the boy want from life? Terry wondered. Did he admire Fleet officers and want to fly? Since he had been born to League citizens he could apply to the Fleet academy if he wished, though probably he would prefer to stay on Maclairn. Would he perhaps, like his parents, become a Steward of the Flame?
A Steward of the Flame—it was a long time since Terry had thought of himself as that, yet it had meant more to him than any of his other experiences on Maclairn, excepting only his love for Kathryn. He had been a Steward for less than a day, but the commitment he had made still overrode all others, despite all that had happened to him since. Fate had torn him away and had offered no opportunity to prove that commitment, but his life wasn’t over yet. Against all probability, all hope of reprieve, he was coming home.
To be sure, he could not act openly as a Steward or attend the Ritual, because that would require close contact with mentors. The Elders had believed he couldn’t conceal what he knew from the mentors, and that for them to learn of it would be harmful to human evolution; and on the latter point he had been convinced. At least he had told himself that he had, but that might have been just because he couldn’t bear the thought that his exile was meaningless. Since it had turned out not to be permanent, maybe he should reconsider the necessity for revealing his identity only to Kathryn and his son. He longed to resume his friendship with Tristan and with Aldren . . . surely they could keep the secret even if he couldn’t. . . .
The questions whirled in Terry’s mind, and the anticipation energized him so that he could not lie in bed any longer, could not keep still. He went to the bridge and sat in the captain’s chair to check their position. The AI told him that they had passed the gas giant Five and he recalled the earthquake on Five-C, the loss of Picard, his first ship—a ship much like Venture, as it happened—and the rescue of his crew. Where were they now, he wondered? Were they still with Shepard? Had Drew and Mikaela married? They would have Commander rank by now, as he himself would have had. . . .
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 42