“I was taught through a procedure that was developed—in secret,” he said, realizing that he was skirting the edge of a subject that must not be mentioned. “The instructor has to inflict extreme pain on the trainee, who has to be willing to tolerate it. And there has to be neurofeedback in addition to the telepathy involved.”
“You never told me about the infliction of pain,” Alison remarked. “You’ve always just said you had training.”
“Well, it never came up. It’s not at bad as it sounds—it’s harder on the instructor than on the trainee. Only a few are qualified to be merciless, yet compassionate at the same time.”
“I don’t see why you think large numbers of people will consent to go through something like that.”
“They’ll need to be taught at puberty. It’s—will be—easier for kids to absorb than adults because they don’t have years of experience in believing pain can’t be overcome. And by that time, they’ll be developing telepathic ability as children, so the rapport with the instructor will be stronger.” He would tell her later, when they were alone, that this was how it worked on Maclairn.
“You keep saying that people will have paranormal capabilities in the future,” Claudia said. “What makes you so sure?”
“I can’t answer that,” Terry replied, not saying why. “I only know that if the human race doesn’t keep moving forward, civilization will die out. I’ve been to Earth. I know how bad things already are there, and not just because it’s so crowded. What kind of future will there be even here if there’s nothing new ahead to hope for? You’re just surviving, marking time. We’re past the era where founding colonies like this one is challenging enough to be fulfilling.”
“You’re right,” Claudia said sadly. “We know that underneath, we just don’t admit it to ourselves. What good does it do to keep settling more worlds when there are already hundreds?”
“Humankind couldn’t survive without expanding—if we hadn’t done it, we’d have overrun Earth and destroyed ourselves long ago. But it’s no longer enough. There always has to be a vision of something not yet within our reach.”
Terry thought about it when, after dinner, he and Alison went to the bedroom prepared for them. Drained though he was, he spent some time with his tablet planting messages about Estel on Toliman’s Net. They would be particularly effective here because the people he’d helped in the clinic would eventually come across them and pass the word around. And there would be cross contact between this world and Centauri since they were in the same system and communicated by ordinary comm channels.
“Come to bed,” Alison said. “If you’re half as bushed as I am, you’ll need a long night before you’re ready to fly.
“In a few minutes,” Terry said. “I’ve just got to finish this.”
“Don’t wait too long now that the reaction’s setting in. It’s more than just fatigue—I feel giddy, halfway out of it, and I wasn’t under nearly as much strain as you were.”
Half an hour later he collapsed into bed for the rest his body craved, letting himself fully relax for the first time in days. Alison was already asleep.
Sometime during the night he dreamed that she was calling out to him. Terry . . . Terry . . . oh, God, Terry, I need you. . . . He came hazily awake, puzzling over it; he’d had the impression that she was frightened, begging for his help. That wasn’t like her; Alison wasn’t a dependent person. Was he subconsciously haunted by the memory of his anguish in Zach’s box, when he’d believed he might have gotten her killed? Or was what he’d experienced in the clinic coming back to him in personal terms, as insistent as the shared physical pain? He’d felt that pain again in the dream. . . .
Terry . . . please, Terry—help me! It was more like telepathy than dreaming. Their past nights in bed together had strengthened the link between them, but never to the point of silent speech. Now it was as if she had cried out aloud. He rolled over and saw that she lay motionless on her back, her eyes open and filled with tears. In dismay, he reached out to draw her into his arms.
No! Don’t touch me, it hurts too much to move! Show me how to stop hurting! The pain he’d automatically suppressed flooded into him as he grasped the fact that it was real. Alison had caught the virus, and she was in agony.
Instantly he projected comfort, aware that the intensity of the pain had completed the awakening of her latent telepathic capacity; he did not need to speak aloud. Alison, I’m here. Relax—don’t fight the pain. To make it stop you have to let yourself give way. Just relax, and follow my lead. We can feel it without suffering from it. . . . He was able to convey the idea much faster through their established bond than to the strangers he’d helped in the past. When her mind meshed with his, she came easily along with him as he switched into the state where pain didn’t hurt.
It does work! My body doesn’t feel right, but I don’t mind it! Only it’s hard to breathe. . . .
Oh, God. Claudia had said there’d been deaths when breathing muscles were involved.
He could sense that Alison was worse off than the patients he’d seen had been. Was that just because they had already begun to recover, or did she have a more serious case? They had not stopped to think that she might contract the illness—he’d been so absorbed in others’ pain at the clinic that it hadn’t crossed his mind, while she, having come from a world without contagious disease, hadn’t realized that she was vulnerable. He himself was not in danger of getting sick; his mind training gave him ongoing control of his body and his immune system was strong enough to withstand the stress that would otherwise have weakened it. Hers was not, and she too had been under great stress the past few days.
They had administered the antiviral to hundreds of people at risk, yet had not given it to her. Was there any left? There had to be—though Claudia had said they’d nearly run out, it was intolerable to think that the last dose might be gone.
~ 18 ~
He would have to wake Claudia, Terry decided; they could not afford any delay. Fumbling with his phone, he keyed her number and prayed she wasn’t a sound sleeper. At last she answered. “It’s Terry,” he said shortly. “Alison’s got it—got the virus. Can you bring me some of the pills?”
“I’ll try. If there are any they’re in a locked cabinet at the clinic. I may have to call one of the doctors.”
“I think we should call a doctor anyway,” he said grimly. “She’s having trouble breathing. But she’s in too much pain to be moved.”
“They were all that way when it started,” Claudia agreed, “and the doctors couldn’t do anything after we ran out of drugs. It has to run its course. The difficulty in breathing is simply because of the pain—every breath is torture. If you can get her through that, she’ll be okay,”
Terry bent over Alison and, being careful not to move her, he squeezed her hand. “If it starts hurting again, go ahead and cry,” he said gently. “Struggling to be brave will make the pain worse. That was the first thing they taught me in training.” In this situation her usual calm self-assurance would not serve her well, yet he couldn’t induce her to give it up completely, which was the fastest way of getting the point across, for unlike the mentors he had neither the skill nor the equipment to bring her back from a breakdown.
If only they had the kind of neurofeedback helmets the mentors used! He had worked with the Maclairnan software and was sure he could recreate it; the computer they had brought from Alison’s clinic was adequate. But the helmet was not. It didn’t provide the detailed brain function output needed to transform states of consciousness into discrete mind-patterns a trainee could learn to visualize. So though he could help people temporarily when they were in pain, he could not teach them to shift mind-patterns by themselves—a process for which two helmets would be needed, since it depended on comparing the trainee’s brain state with the instructor’s. And without that training, they would never have the control over internal biochemistry that kept Maclairnans healthy.
More and more, it troubled Te
rry to think that neither Alison nor his crew could be given the same capabilities he himself had. And, he thought miserably, there was something else they would not have, something he’d never mentioned to them. . . .
The mastery of their bodily functions gave Maclairnans long life.
It was another reason the existence of Maclairn was being kept secret. If the public knew that the people of Maclairn generally lived to be a hundred twenty or older, its enemies would be more eager than ever to destroy them out of sheer envy, while its supporters would overrun the planet in search of the Fountain of Youth. Many of the people being trained by the mentors on Earth would outlive their contemporaries, but by that time, hopefully, mind training would be available widely enough for their longevity to be viewed as attainable. Meanwhile, it would not be among the promises he made as Captain of Estel. There was no guarantee of it for an individual anyway, only a strong possibility.
He did not expect that he himself would live to be much over a hundred; he hadn’t had the advanced training Maclairnans got in middle life. But if he wasn’t killed first, he might well live longer than Alison. And that meant he would be left to grieve for years after her death. He didn’t think he could bear that. Now, in terror over the possibility that she might not survive the virus, he knew he couldn’t. He had lost Kathryn; to lose Alison, even far in the future, would be too much. His heart aching, Terry lay back down beside her as renewed pain swept through them both.
The night wore on interminably. Over and over Terry let himself experience Alison’s pain, leading her out of it into a brief respite. Her breathing was shallow in between those times, and she moaned in anguish. Whenever she slipped into unconsciousness the pain came back in full force, bringing her to full awareness. He knew that a seriously ill or semiconscious person could not avoid suffering; the programming provided by nature kicked in to warn anyone incapable of judging danger.
Claudia did not appear with the antiviral until nearly morning, bringing a doctor with her who could do no more than say he believed Alison would live. “She’s strong,” he said, “and she has courage. The cowards can’t force themselves to breathe when it’s as bad as this. But there are enough antiviral pills to bring her out of the worst of it.”
There were not enough to cure her. She would be disabled for many days.
They were the hardest days Terry had known outside of prison—even worse, because there he’d had no one else’s suffering to worry about. Alison’s distress was much harder to bear than his own. He couldn’t help feeling it was his fault. He had taken her away from a safe world into trouble she shouldn’t have had to endure. Underneath, he knew this wasn’t true; she hadn’t been safe on Ciencia, she had been subject to arrest and happy to leave. Her life could no more be ruled by excess caution than his could. But sharing her pain took a toll on him, and he was too weary to be rational.
There was no lack of volunteer nurses; the people of Toliman felt nothing was too good for Terry, on whom they looked with awe as well as gratitude. More came to help than Claudia’s house could accommodate, and she herself was kept busy tending to their needs. He was brought meals for which he had no appetite, and—in a genuinely helpful move—his phone was patched through the spaceport comm link so that he could talk to Jon aboard Coralie. Except for bathroom breaks, he was unwilling to leave Alison’s bedside.
He had to sleep, of course, but allowed himself to do so for barely an hour at a time, unwilling to let Alison go too long without joining his mind to hers. Gradually, as she became experienced in shifting consciousness, she was able to maintain freedom from suffering for awhile; but she still needed his help in initiating it. The telepathy between them grew stronger, and they shared memories when her mind was clear enough. They rarely talked aloud; speaking was hard for her and had become unnecessary.
Eventually, she began to recover. Once she could sit up with assistance and could eat, Terry was impatient to get her back to the starship where the gravity could be lowered to make her more comfortable. Furthermore, the neurofeedback equipment they had, though inadequate, would be better than nothing. But he knew he was in no shape to fly.
You’ve got to rest, Alison told him silently. My muscles just ache now—it’s not unendurable. And there are plenty of people here to take care of me. So at last he went to another room that Claudia vacated for him and, letting go of the conscious control of wakefulness that had kept him alert for all but brief naps during the past ten days, he slept for twenty-two hours in one stretch.
The next day helpers carried Alison to a van and from there to the shuttle, staying with her while Terry performed a thorough preflight check. With a feeling of relief he lifted off, rising gently from the pad and using as little acceleration as possible to reach orbit. It felt great to be in space again and he was eager to be back aboard Estel. Kind though the people of Toliman had been, he had felt trapped on the surface. Now, with Alison feeling better, it was like waking from a bad dream.
Jon and Gwen welcomed them aboard and helped Alison settle on the couch in the tiny lounge. Terry went immediately to the bridge and lowered the artificial gravity to a level just sufficient for stable orientation to the floor. It would ease the strain on Alison’s muscles, and could be gradually raised as she continued to improve.
Next, he asked Jon and Gwen to move everything out of the spare stateroom and find someplace else to store stuff; he wanted to set up the neurofeedback equipment in there. “We needn’t bother,” said Gwen. “There’s an extra stateroom you can use.”
“An extra stateroom?” Confused, he failed to see what she meant until he saw her blush. Then it dawned on him: Gwen had moved into Jon’s stateroom, and they intended to share it permanently.
He was glad. He had worried that they would be lonely and bored stuck in an orbiting ship for ten days with nothing to do. Evidently they had found something.
For the long term, a crew was better off with two couples than with one couple and two unattached singles. Jon was a lot older than Gwen, but that shouldn’t matter. On Maclairn, where physical aging was slowed, people didn’t know each other’s ages unless they had been acquainted as children. It was considered impolite to mention the age of any adult under a hundred.
They had made good use of their time during his absence; between the knowledgebase and inspection of the ship they had become thoroughly familiar with its design and control board. Gwen was now qualified to make any necessary repairs not involving the hyperdrive engine, and Jon was ready to pilot it anywhere in normal space. So Terry let him handle the flight back to Centauri while he himself stuck close to Alison. When they arrived, he transferred the credits he’d received from Claudia to Jon and sent him to the surface in the shuttle to buy needed supplies and a cargo of plastic resin pellets to be sold at their next destination.
Terry set up the neurofeedback equipment in the stateroom vacated by Gwen, using the mattress from the folded upper bunk to turn the main bed into a couch with a back that Alison could lean against. He had only what they’d used in her clinic on Ciencia, but incomplete though it was, it had helped patients there, and here she could have several long sessions a day to speed her recovery. Through showing her how her brain was reacting, he taught her to perceive and maintain a relaxed state of mind despite pain, so that she was more open to his telepathic assistance than when merely trying to relax, and did not fall back into suffering as quickly when without it. “All those years when I watched you help others, I couldn’t grasp how changes in the neurofeedback display felt,” she said. “At last I know.”
He had not been alone with Alison in the daytime since before his imprisonment, and their new telepathic intimacy was a joy to him. Now that she could speak easily again, they did converse aloud; but the wordless undercurrent was there—the deep ongoing contact he’d craved desperately ever since his exile from Maclairn. He had gotten used to doing without it, but had nevertheless felt isolated and withdrawn. The lack of it had seemed an insurmountable barrier
to union with Alison during his years on Ciencia, as he now confessed to her, admitting that he’d been paralyzed by fear of his own inability to love.
“Dearest, you don’t need to explain,” she assured him. “I understand so much more now about the void you felt, the torment it must have been to have this kind of contact with people and then lose it. And about why you want so much to make the whole human race aware that it’s possible. It was almost worth my getting sick to gain the ability to join our minds.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Terry told her. “But since it did happen, let’s make the most of it. In bed it will be even better, you know—sex between telepaths leads to a fuller merging of minds than what you’ve experienced so far.”
“Then I’ll hurry and get well fast,” she said, smiling. They had to wait, Terry knew, until movement no longer caused her pain. But there was plenty of time ahead. He had Alison, he had Estel, and he was no longer in danger of imminent arrest. Life seemed totally good for the first time since he’d left Maclairn.
After several days on the surface Jon and Gwen returned and all three labored to transfer sacks of pellets into the cargo bay, after which Jon went back to pick up another load; he had bought more than the shuttle could carry. As exporting them was not illegal on Centauri, they could do so openly. Importing them elsewhere might be another matter. Terry had no idea how to locate a buyer, or even what planet to head for. But this time he knew where he could find out. He would visit Zach again, which he wanted to do anyway to get news of the situation on Earth.
“Be careful, Terry,” Jon advised. “There are already rumors down there about what happened on Toliman, and some of them are exaggerated—you know what happens to stories when they spread. And if Zach guesses that you’re the Captain of Estel, it may get around to this crime network you say he has.”
“Why would he or anyone guess?” Terry asked. “Nobody on Toliman has heard of Estel except the patients and staff of the clinic; there’s hardly been time for it to spread from the comments I planted on the Net.”
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 56