The sight of it was familiar as he approached—a rugged mass nearly covered with rock crags. There was the level place where he had landed, the marks left by the shuttle still visible on the reddish surface. But now he was not in a shuttle, and although he might be able to land Venture as he had landed Picard on Five-C, that was not what he was going to do. There must be no chance of rescue for the terrorists. He could not land; he must crash.
He made no attempt to orbit, but went straight in. Venture was moving along the same path as the asteroid, however, and its relative speed was not great enough to cause its total destruction, considering the asteroid’s low gravity. At least part of it would remain intact. He used thrusters to make sure that it wouldn’t be the terrorists’ part.
Memories of all that was past surged through Terry as the rocky surface loomed ahead of him, though the descent wasn’t long enough for him to ponder them. Kathryn, he cried out silently, Oh, God, Kathryn— But then in the last moment before impact, the face that flashed into his mind was not Kathryn’s but Alison’s.
~ 72 ~
Terry regained consciousness slowly amid the wreckage of Venture. It was on its side, tilted at an odd angle, and he was pinned under a portion of the captain’s console; but the pressure seal of the bridge must have held since he was still breathing. The pain in his back told him he was seriously injured, but as his mind cleared he was able to shift into the appropriate state of consciousness to do away with suffering. He found he was able to move. Seeing that his shoulder was gashed, he stopped the flow of blood. Then he managed to lift the fallen console desk enough to free himself.
The bridge hatch was still locked, and of course he couldn’t open it anyway if the rest of the ship was exposed to vacuum. The AI wasn’t functional so the air on the bridge would soon be contaminated by carbon dioxide. He would die here trapped inside, without a last look at the stars.
It was an extraordinary destiny after all, he reflected—not the encounter with the Elders, not the long exile under a false identity on a world he despised, not even the legendary status he seemed to have acquired on that world, but the astonishing fact that if it had not been for these events he would not have been in the right place at the right time to save Maclairn from a disaster no one could have foreseen.
After a while he noticed that the captain’s locker had fallen open and there was a spacesuit inside. He might be able to put it on, he supposed. Then he could get into the rest of the ship and perhaps crawl outside. The air tank would last for a little while. But why should he bother? What good would it do to live for a few more hours when he was dying anyway? No ship from Maclairn could reach him in time even if they knew where he was, and of course they didn’t know. The patrollers hadn’t enough range to have followed him and though Fleet knew the initial alert had come from the asteroid’s sensor station, they would not expect an intruder to head for it.
Maclairn . . . it would be visible from here! Suddenly he knew that he could not let himself die without one more look at Maclairn.
At least not if he could get outside. In a moment of panic he feared there might be no power for unlocking the hatch, but when he pulled himself up to reach the switch he saw that some of the LEDs were still glowing. With difficulty, he stretched far enough to press it, and the green one over the hatch came on. Then, ignoring the suppressed pain intended by nature to warn of injury, he managed to stand up long enough to struggle into the suit and helmet. As soon as got it on he collapsed again and lay motionless, exhausted, for more minutes than he could count; but eventually he crept to the hatch and opened it. The remaining air on the bridge rushed out explosively and was wasted. It didn’t matter; he would not need air very much longer. His trained sensitivity to his physical condition told him that his internal injuries would be fatal.
The bodies of the two terrorists, wearing suits but not helmets, lay sprawled on what had been a wall of the lounge. It had cracked open on impact and the gap was wide enough to see black sky outside. There was no knowing what had become of the vials, but even if accidentally opened their content could do no harm in the vacuum of space. It need no longer concern him. Slowly, by supreme effort, he crawled through the lounge area and out onto the surface of the asteroid.
Maclairn hung low over the horizon, a golden ball about the size of a full moon as seen from Earth—gold studded with azure jewels, surrounded by an infinity of sparkling diamonds. He stared at it, remembering how he had first seen it from a viewport aboard Shepard almost fourteen years ago in what now seemed another lifetime. From that moment it had been the focus of his inmost feelings, and it was still there, real, far more real than in the dreams since then during which he’d longed for it. And he had almost reached it. He had returned from exile to the threshold of the one place in the universe he had ever cared about, only to turn away. Having been forced to do so, he did not mind dying. There was nothing left to hope for, nothing to regret.
He had been wrong to curse the fate that placed him in the hands of the Elders, Terry realized. Fate had been kind, for it brought him beyond all foreseeing to the one point in space and time where he needed to be in order to save Maclairn from destruction. Nothing else could have saved it. If Quaid had not believed his following on Ciencia posed a threat, he would not have been taken aboard Venture. Had he not been aware both of Maclairn’s ruthless enemies and of Ciencia’s corrupt uses of biochemistry, he would not have perceived what the terrorists were doing. And had he not been so obsessed with desire to come home that he ignored his clear duty to reject the opportunity, they would have found another pilot and he would not have been present to thwart them. What would the Elders think if they knew of this second irony: only his defiance of their decree had given him a key role in the cause they’d believed it would serve.
He had come so close to seeing Kathryn again. He had thought that to die without seeing her would be the worst thing that could happen. But to his surprise, now in the face of death he found himself thinking more about Alison than about Kathryn. Kathryn belonged to a dream from the past—a dream he would always treasure were he alive to do so, but no longer part of his everyday reality. He had sworn that their bond would last beyond death, and perhaps it would; he supposed he was about to find out. And yet he’d stopped truly grieving the loss of it long ago. With surprise he realized that the finality of that loss caused him no anguish.
But Alison! His eyes stinging with tears, Terry became aware that the most unbearable part of dying was that he had left Alison without their having experienced what they should have had together.
What a fool he’d been to think they could not bond! Had there not been a link all along, no less real because she was not conscious of its telepathic basis? Why had he assumed she could not become a telepath without a mentor to teach her and the stress essential to formal training? Given their close companionship, would not sexual union alone have been enough to awaken her latent power? It had been he who resisted, not letting himself be aware that the barrier to full intimacy was a matter not of Alison’s mind powers but of his own. That it was based on fear, fear that those powers would preclude an ordinary relationship and if they made love it would turn out like the brief liaisons of his youth, leaving him physically satisfied but with painfully frustrated emotions. Yet it could never be like that with Alison! He was sure it couldn’t, now that it was too late.
He watched Maclairn drop below the close horizon, knowing that he hadn’t much air left and would not live long enough to see it rise. He was alone under the stars he had sought all his life and had once believed he was destined to explore. And then, out of the darkness, another light appeared, and brightened.
It was a lander from the Elders’ starship.
~ 73 ~
At first Terry did not believe it was real. Very likely he was hallucinating; the gauge on his air tank might not be quite accurate, and he might already be experiencing oxygen deprivation. They wouldn’t have been stationed closer than the orbit of Corwin
; how could they possibly have found him in the short time since he crashed? Then he realized that they must have been tracking Venture after all, and unaware of what it contained, have decided to let Fleet’s patrollers deal with it when they saw it had been intercepted. They must have identified him through remote viewing, for they would not have intervened in the imminent death of someone who didn’t already know about them—after all, they could prevent thousands of deaths if their overriding concern for humankind’s future did not bar them from revealing themselves.
The landing was swift and silent. Two figures—suited, of course—carried him to the lander, and he knew that he would neither see them nor hear their voices, for they would not be as humanlike as Laesara had been. Was she still among those guarding Maclairn, he wondered, after more than twelve years? He had no idea how her people measured time; if they had a long lifespan she might not have aged at all.
He had long ago stopped hating them for what they had done to him. By their strict standard of nondisclosure it had been necessary; though he had kept their secret from Alison, he was not at all sure he could have kept it from Kathryn or the mentors. As they took him aboard the starship, which was smaller than the one he remembered, he felt no emotion—not anger about the past, and not even thankfulness for the rescue. He was past feeling anything at all.
They healed his injuries and gave him clothing to wear while his own was being restored, and someone—a powerful telepath whose face was hidden—silently asked permission to probe his mind. Terry consented, not caring whether the experience would overwhelm him or not. It did, for the Elder drew the details of everything that had happened from him. Afterward they left him alone to recuperate.
He was stunned, numb. He had not expected to live, and was not sure he wanted to. What was left for him now? He had come home to Maclairn, only to find that it was out of reach; they would take him somewhere else. Probably not to Ciencia, for he was a convict there and after rescuing him they would not doom him to lifelong incarceration. Wherever it was, he would have to start over again from scratch—perhaps be stuck forever in a routine dead-end job. And he would no longer have a purpose to keep him sane.
He would not try to get back to Maclairn a second time. That part of his life was over; he’d been foolish to think he could regain the feeling of belonging that had meant so much to him. Jessica and even Tristan—and Aldren, if he had returned—might well be dead. His friends in Fleet would no longer recognize him, so never again could he fly. He would be a stranger to his son and as for Kathryn, if she was with someone else his reappearance would only cause her pain. All these years he had envisioned her as she’d been when they were young, but both of them had been changed irrevocably. He was painfully aware that it was Alison he now loved . . . Alison, whom he would never see again either.
He slept for a long time, and when he woke he was told that the Elders’ flagship had arrived from another solar system and that he had been moved to it. He ate the food they brought him. Then, when he had recovered as much as he felt he would ever recover, they gave him a face mask and oxygen tank for passage through the alien air and took him to the familiar room in which he had once been imprisoned. And Laesara, now commander of their fleet, was there to greet him.
“I had not thought we would meet again, Terry Radnor,” she said.
“Just Terry,” he said. “I gave the name Radnor to my son long ago, even before you took it from me, and Rivera was never more than a pseudonym. Maclairnans use single names, as you no doubt know.”
“And you still think of yourself as Maclairnan?”
“I don’t know what I am,” he admitted.
“You are a defender of humanity,” she declared. “What world you happen to be on no longer matters.”
He realized, to his astonishment, that this was true. He had thought he would not care to live, coming so close to the world he longed for yet unable to set foot on it. But now he felt no pain, only a kind of emptiness. From this day on, when he pictured Maclairn he would dream of his youth and of Kathryn, his first love; and it would always be his most cherished memory. But he couldn’t go back—not just because the Elders would not allow it, but because it wasn’t possible to reverse time.
There was only one thing he wished he could have regained. Recalling the Ritual, remembering that magical night, his last on Maclairn, when he had touched flame unharmed and joyfully pledged to serve an important cause, he said, “I would have liked to remain a Steward of the Flame.”
Laesara’s surprise surged into his mind. “But Terry, you did. Surely you know—”
“I suppose saving Maclairn from the terrorists counts,” he agreed. “But being a Steward meant something more than acting fast in a crisis. It was a long-term commitment, the same as the mentors made, to further the plan for giving mind powers to humankind.”
She met his eyes. “It goes without saying that what you did a few days ago saved not only countless Maclairnans but the plan itself, which could not have outlasted the destruction of their colony. But that is not what I meant. Do you not realize that your work on Ciencia contributed more toward the achievement of Maclairn’s goal than any mentor accomplished elsewhere? You lived in exile, as they do, and you opened the minds of many not only to psi but to the whole human heritage that is prerequisite to it. And besides that you had influence as a healer. In effect you were a mentor—and certainly as much a Steward as the rest.”
“I didn’t think of it like that,” he protested in amazement. “I thought only of wanting to escape.”
“But you cared about more than escaping, and you achieved what no one with less courage and capability could have. As I expected.”
“You expected me to have an effect on Ciencia?” he burst out.
“We made the best of a bad situation, Terry,” Laesara said. “We had to confine you somewhere, and where better than a world where you could further the cause to which you had committed yourself? We had recently observed Ciencia. We knew that the repression there was an even greater evil than the government’s corruption and that it would delay the maturation of your civilization—even threaten it if their culture grew strong enough to spread—and we also knew that its secret exportation of deadly biochemicals under cover of isolation might present a danger. Yet to break our policy of not interfering with younger worlds would have been harmful. Then fate sent you to us. And when you revealed that Aldren sensed you had some extraordinary destiny, I knew that your coming had meaning, though I did not foresee anything as extraordinary as the saving of two worlds.”
“I suppose telling me that losing everything might serve my true purpose would have been interference,” Terry said bitterly. “You used me—I was just an unwitting tool.”
“Only in the sense that we all are tools of circumstance; that is how human progress works.” Laesara reached into a pocket of her tunic and drew something out. Against the golden skin of her hand he saw the gleam of copper—incredibly, it was a flame pin like those the Stewards wore.
“It is yours,” she told him, “the one you swallowed long ago. It was recovered while you were unconscious and I kept it to remember you by, for I knew that you should be remembered.”
His eyes blurred with tears as she pinned it to his shirt. “Wear it always, save in the presence of those who might know its meaning and seek to learn how you came by it,” she said. “You have as much right to it as anyone else who honors what it stands for.”
Though he intended to put the past behind him, he found he could not leave her without knowing one thing more. “Laesara—have you ever heard anything about my son?”
“I was wondering if you would ask. Your son Radnor is psi-gifted and hopes to someday become a mentor like his foster father, with whom Kathryn has lived for the past six years. She mentioned this to our agent, whom she believes to be Earthborn, the last time she visited League headquarters.”
“She’s still ambassador, then. And happy?”
“We have every rea
son to believe she is. Grief never completely passes; but like you, she has moved on.”
He nodded. Aware now that the years of exile had not been wasted, he was free to look forward. “Must I keep working to enlighten Ciencia?” he asked, not liking the thought. “I’m an escaped convict there now, but I suppose you could alter my face and biometrics again.”
“Is that what you want, Terry?”
“It’s not. I want to go once, to see a woman named Alison, but not to stay. And I’m not sure she would recognize me if I were changed.”
“She would recognize your mind-touch even if she is only latently telepathic. But there is no need. We observed Ciencia a short while ago; it can get along without you from now on, for a political party called the Estelans has arisen—you have inspired others to finish what you started. We will take you wherever you wish, as long as there are no mentors there; I think we can trust you not to seek them out.”
“Then repair my ship,” he said, “and give me a clear title and license under the name HS Estel, which I’m sure your agents can arrange. And change my ID as you did before, making me Terry Steward, a worldless star pilot. Flying is what I always wanted to do, and the task of a Steward is to spread belief in mind power throughout the worlds of humankind. I think perhaps Alison will agree to come with me. We may occasionally orbit Ciencia, but there must be many colonies where new ideas can be promoted along with merchandise, and smuggling is a less dishonorable trade than I once thought.”
“One that ensures that you’ll steer clear of Fleet,” said Laesara with a smile. “Will you need help getting Alison away from Ciencia?”
“Well,” Terry said, “it would be nice if your lander could put me down near the city in disguise and guard Estel while it waits in high orbit. We can ride back with a local captain who owes me a favor, and who may even want to sell us some cargo.”
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 44