“Will we go to Earth?” Alison asked.
“No—that’s one of the only two places I can’t go." He could never again go to Earth because he had promised the Elders to avoid any world where there were mentors who might draw their secret from his mind. Unlike his pledge to stay away from Maclairn, this was not a grief to him; Earth wasn’t a pleasant place to be. "We’ll just visit colony worlds,” he told her.
“I’d like that—traveling, seeing new places, being free instead of confined.”
Terry smiled. “I hope so. A ship’s confining in its way, but not like this planet where you’ve never had a look at the stars or even the sun.” Sensing her exultation at the prospect, he reminded himself that he hadn’t yet told them about the biggest danger they’d be facing, a far more serious threat than pirates. “There’s a lot more you need to hear, but first—Jon, you said you’re meeting a cargo courier. How much do you have invested in what he’s selling you?”
“All I could swing except for some platinum ingots I’m holding for the next starship to show up. I wish I could have bought more from him—he’s supplying legitimate pharmaceuticals not affordable on worlds where biochemistry’s less advanced. I’m told patients who can’t pay what the legal importers demand generally get stuck with counterfeits.”
“Are you positive that they’re the real thing?”
“Absolutely. I wouldn’t touch them if I didn’t trust my source; you know how I feel about the drug traffic.”
Terry hesitated. It was ironic—Maclairn had been founded by colonists who rejected all medication, and most other medical care, because it was imposed by force on the planet they were escaping. It was the antithesis of their belief that humans aren’t machines. But people in other colonies didn’t have the mind training the Maclairnans did; in many cases prescription drugs were essential for them.
“What sort of pharmaceuticals are they?” he persisted.
“Antibiotics, antivirals mostly—more versatile than what’s produced for specific environments. The biochemists here have developed things nobody else has.”
Terry shuddered. He knew that all too well. “Okay,” he said. “Drugs to combat infectious disease, or cancer, or anything chronic such as heart problems. But no psychiatric drugs; I won’t carry those on my ship.”
“Not even those meant for treating mental illness?”
“Mental illness,” Terry declared, “has different definitions in different societies, and when real psychosis does exist, drugs do more harm than good. I’d just as soon push cocaine. Can you pick and choose from what he’s offering?”
“Sure, if you want me to.”
“All right, then. Call him and tell him you’ve raised more cash. We won’t be able to access our funds where we’re going, so spend the rest of what you’ve got, and most of Alison’s, too.”
“And yours,” Alison added. “I still have what your backup hackers put in my name to prevent its being confiscated when you went to prison.”
“Great—leave just enough money in your account to make it took as if you hadn’t planned to leave. The government knows Jon invests in cargo, but for you to draw out too much would raise questions.” He turned back to Jon. “About that platinum—is it hidden aboard your ship?”
“It’s not concealed like stash was; I wouldn’t dare try that again. The inspector inventoried it when I landed, but as long as I won’t be coming back maybe I can risk adding it to what I pay for the pharmaceuticals.”
“No,” said Terry. “Bring it along; we may need cash before we can arrange a sale. Just transfer our credits.”
Jon nodded. “I’ll call him now.”
“Is this guy totally reliable?” Terry asked.
“Yes. He’s an Estelan activist.”
“Then when you see him, arrange for him to pick up your personal stuff, and Alison’s, before he makes the delivery. Whatever won’t fit into his van we’ll have to leave behind.” Control tower agents would be watching the cargo van cross the field to Bonanza while pretending not to know about it, and would be suspicious if it went back for a second load. They might assume that Darrow intended to sell more than he planned to report to the government racketeers.
“How are we going to get onto the ship ourselves?” Alison asked. “If the police see us, and ask questions—”
“You and Terry will have to be disguised as miners,” Jon said, “and I’ll tell my regular mining crew not to show up. I’ll say I’m postponing the trip because of some mechanical glitch.”
Terry said, “You realize that you’ll have to abandon Bonanza in space? You can’t transfer ownership to anyone; not only would that give us away, but whoever you left it to would be accused of complicity in our escape.”
“Can’t be helped,” Jon agreed. “And it makes no difference since whoever gets it, either from me or by salvage, will be roped into smuggling for the government just as I was. Much as I love that ship, I don’t mind trading it for a berth on a starship. Which reminds me, Terry, I still don’t know how you got hold of a starship and why you’re so sure it’s where you left it. If it’s not, we’ll be in big trouble.”
He was sure because he trusted the Elders to guard it, but he could not tell them that. The time had come when he had to tell them something, Terry knew, and he hoped he would not have to lie too much to the only two friends he now had.
~ 4 ~
Alison fixed breakfast while Jon called the cargo courier and the mining crew. When they sat down to eat Alison said, “I’m waiting to hear how you got out of prison and into space.”
“Well,” Terry began, “while I was in there my interrogator was a man named Quaid. We despised each other, I for obvious reasons and he because he was afraid of me, not only on account of the influence I’d had at the trial but because he saw I really was able to turn off pain and bleeding. He’d assumed that my reputation for healing pain at the clinic was a scam, as the prosecutor claimed, and he was horrified by finding out that it wasn’t. People like Quaid are scared by evidence that so-called paranormal mind-powers exist.
“He didn’t want to believe I was a pilot either, since according to Ciencian records I’d had no training, but as I’d gotten Bonanza to Freerunner he had to concede that I must be. He laughed at everything else I told him and I amused myself by baiting him. So when people started demonstrating outside the prison gates, demanding my release, he had to find some way to get rid of me without turning me into a martyr. And that fit right in with his own plans. You know, don’t you, Jon, that the government racketeers sometimes deal directly with smugglers’ starships?”
“I’ve carried shipments for them without being in on the negotiations,” Jon agreed.
“Well, one night Quaid led me out of the prison secretly, drove to the spaceport, and ordered me to shuttle him to a starship he’d arranged to rendezvous with. I figured out that he was selling something valuable his colleagues didn’t know about and he didn’t want to cut them in, but I thought it was odd that we took no cargo; I knew whatever it was had to be concealed in his clothes. And the starship wasn’t one of the smugglers’ ships I’d heard of—it was a little charter ship named Venture.
“Once we were aboard Quaid disappeared into a stateroom with the only two men in sight, and when they came out the captain showed up and said he wasn’t willing to go where they’d told him to because that star had no inhabited planets and he wasn’t equipped for an expedition, he didn’t even have a crew. He declared they couldn’t force him—since starship shuttles aren’t allowed to land on Ciencia, if they killed him they’d be stuck in orbit till their life support ran out. So I spoke up and told them I was a pilot and I’d go wherever they liked.”
“You mean these guys made Quaid release you to them?”
“He was glad to see the last of me. He’d said he didn’t believe I’d ever piloted a jump ship, but I don’t think that was true. I’m now convinced he wanted the men to get where they were headed and wanted me to be the one to
take them. Anyway, he let Venture’s captain fly him down in the shuttle we came in. And the two passengers ordered me to proceed to the uninhabited solar system.”
“What a lucky break!” Jon exclaimed. “You’ve always managed to pull off things nobody else could—I assume you overpowered them and took the ship.”
“It wasn’t as simple as that,” Terry said. “To explain what happened next I’ve got to fill in some background.” He drew breath. This was the big revelation, the thing he had kept from them through all the years they’d been his friends.
“What I’m about to say is secret,” he went on, leaning forward. “I’m sworn three times over never to reveal it, but if you’re going with me on Estel you have to know. Will you give me your word not to repeat it to anyone?”
Surprised by his intensity, they nodded, and Alison said, “I have a feeling this is what you’ve been hiding as long as I’ve known you, the thing that made you so sad.”
“Yes, part of it. There is another part I can’t reveal under any circumstances, the identity of the group that brought me here. But no harm will be done by filling you in on what I was doing before that, something known to just a few people in the League. When I was a young officer in Fleet, it transformed my life.”
They waited expectantly. “There is a world that’s not on the charts,” Terry continued, “not shown as an inhabited one at least, though it was colonized more than two hundred years ago. And on that world, everyone—the whole population—has the mind faculties in which I’ve been trained. Its people maintain their health by voluntary control of inner biochemical reactions, and they are able to feel physical pain without suffering. And they also have psi gifts, some greater than mine. Because they’re all telepathic there’s no misunderstanding among them—no unawareness of each other’s feelings—so they get along without having to conform to rules. The name of that planet is Maclairn. It is the world where I lived with Kathryn, and though I can never go there again, I will always think of it as home.”
He would, Terry realized with a pang, in spite of the fact that he had resigned himself to permanent absence. It was the only place he had ever felt any attachment to, and its mark on his heart was indelible. Maclairn, a golden world as seen from space, arid and inhospitable on its surface except for the oases of its few small settlements, yet the focus of everything that had mattered in his life apart from flying. . . .
“Why can’t you go there if you have your own starship?” Alison said with sympathy.
“Because of the other secret I know. The strongest telepaths would sense it in my mind, though they wouldn’t intentionally pry; it’s too fundamental for them not to. Kathryn surely would if we slept together, and then they’d sense it in her mind, too. That’s why I was sent here by the people involved, and I don’t blame them anymore. At first I was bitter, but now I see that they had no other choice.”
“Did you come from Maclairn, then?” Jon asked. “I thought you said once that you were born on Earth.”
“I was, but I left when I finished school and joined Fleet. Maclairn wasn’t discovered by the League until shortly before I arrived there. At that time I was pulled off explorer duty and given the mind training I’ve mentioned before, but I wasn’t told why. None of us assigned to the project were informed until we were aboard the cruiser enroute to it. Only high officials knew it existed, and Fleet’s job was to make sure that no ship got close enough to find out.”
“I don’t see why it’s so secret,” Alison protested. “Proof of such capabilities is a wonderful thing that people should rejoice in! Are the authorities trying to profit somehow by keeping a monopoly on the healers’ services?”
“No,” said Terry. “On the surface, they’re trying to protect Maclairn from exploitation. But underneath most of them don’t want to believe in psi—it’s too upsetting to their premises. They wish no colony where it’s normal had ever been found. Think—would most people here on Ciencia, those who agree with the banning of all unscientific literature, want to see evidence that their beliefs about the nature of the human mind are wrong? Our followers are a minority, after all.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “But I thought that in other places, where the public has access to fantasy and speculation and religion—”
“They have access, but the majority don’t take such ideas seriously. They enjoy fiction, but they view speculation as the equivalent and turn religion into mere dogma. Average human beings have a deep, innate fear of any threat to their view of reality. I found that hard to understand, too, until the Maclairnans explained it to me. In the late twenty-first century, when science had begun to establish undeniable evidence of psi, there was a backlash. The so-called paranormal was ridiculed more than ever before and it became taboo to mention the subject, even though it wasn’t illegal to read about.”
“I suspect that a lot of our recruits seek out forbidden stuff simply because it is illegal,” Jon said. “I admit that I did, at first. What attracted me to it was just the idea that I should be free to read whatever I wanted.”
“Yes. And that’s the other factor—governments and other authorities don’t like to have people discover the power of their own minds. It makes the public harder to control.”
“So they hide the fact that there’s a world where such powers are acknowledged, I see that. But you, Terry—why do you go along? I’d think you’d be spreading that secret as widely as possible, speaking out as you did at your trial.”
“To make it known,” Terry said, “would be dangerous. People often try to destroy what they fear.”
“You mean Maclairn would be placed at risk?” Alison questioned.
“Absolutely; that’s why a cruiser is needed to guard it. I’ll say more about the danger in a minute, but first you need to know the Maclairnans’ long-term goal. They intend to pass on their abilities—they believe the next step in human evolution is for everyone to have them. But it has to happen gradually.
“You’ve heard me talk about the collective unconscious,” he went on. “Well, the aim is to spread acceptance of mind-powers slowly, without arousing antagonism, until it’s so well established in the collective unconscious of Earth that the majority won’t oppose their open use. And there’s a plan for doing that.” Soberly he added, “It’s important, tremendously important, because Earth’s civilization is on the verge of collapse and if we don’t succeed in arousing hope for a changing future—one where people will have more autonomy—it may be too late to save it.”
“And you were involved in the plan?”
“In furthering it, yes. To begin with I was in command of a small ship responsible for placing sensor stations throughout Maclairn’s solar system to warn of any intruders. Only one interstellar ship, a privately-owned one named Promise, was allowed to come and go. Its role was to take Maclairnan emissaries called mentors to live in Earth’s cities and give mind training without revealing where they came from. It also brought small groups of carefully chosen observers to visit Maclairn.
“Kathryn had been a member of the private expedition that discovered Maclairn, and she was its ambassador to the League as well as the guide for the observers. When the civilian crew of Promise retired it was decided that Fleet should crew it, so I was promoted and made captain. We traveled back and forth between Maclairn and Earth many times, and I learned first-hand that Maclairn has enemies within the League government who don’t hesitate to use violence.”
“What kind of violence?” Jon inquired.
“At first, just subtle threats. As I mentioned, I encountered pirates once—not real ones but hired thugs paid to make it look like piracy.”
“Good God—what did you do?”
“I did what was necessary to save my passengers,” Terry replied, hoping not to be pressed for details. He couldn’t say that they had cut off two of his fingers and threatened to go further, since the Elders’ full restoration of his hand couldn’t be explained.
“Soon after that,
” he went on, “they murdered one of the mentors by planting a bomb in the building where he worked. And later I learned—from the message you brought me shortly after we met, Jon—that they’d murdered Kathryn’s grandfather, who was head of the foundation that owned Promise. Both those men were my close friends.”
“And so you’re looking for revenge.”
“Not revenge exactly, but I’m still pledged to defend Maclairn, and the danger has gotten worse, much worse. You’ll understand when you hear the rest of what happened to me, but first there’s more I’ve got to explain.”
~ 5 ~
They listened, fascinated, as Terry continued, “I committed myself to Maclairn’s goals in a solemn ritual there; I can’t tell you the details.” Thinking of it, Terry could barely keep back tears. “It involved magnification of psi power, and for a little while afterward I was more sensitive psychically than usual. I had been trained in remote viewing—clairvoyant perception of things at a distance, even on the other side of a planet or in space—and for weeks I’d had a feeling that there was some sort of ship in Maclairn’s solar system that the sensors hadn’t picked up. The morning after the ceremony the feeling was stronger than ever, and of course I was quite young and reckless then—”
“You’ve never stopped being reckless,” Jon remarked. “You took fantastic chances all the time I knew you, and now you’re here again, though you know damn well that if you’re caught on this world you’ll end up back in the prison you just escaped from.”
For a moment Terry sickened, thinking of the dim solitary cell in which he had expected to spend the remaining years of his life. Going back there would be intolerable; he refused to consider such an outcome. Hastily he continued, “I took off alone in a shuttle with exceptional range . . . and I found the intruding ship, or rather, it found me.
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 47