“Surely no one on Earth can have picked up on the local rumors already!” Gwen exclaimed.
“No. News spreads fast by ansible, but nothing in them suggests I’m a threat to take seriously. And there’s too much money involved for it to come from anyone but the League government insiders. Which means someone on Ciencia got word to them about my broadcast there.”
“Quaid,” said Jon. “Just as I feared at the time.”
“Probably. I didn’t think he’d survive the wrath of his colleagues once they knew he’d held out on them, but he must have sent a message that convinced his League contacts that I’m dangerous. I guess I should be glad they think I may have an impact.”
Alison’s worry flooded into Terry’s mind despite her effort to hide it. “You mentioned to Ciencia’s controller before your speech that you were headed for Centauri,” she reminded him.
Jon nodded. “If Quaid checked the traffic control recording, he’ll have passed that information on, and they’ll question the port authorities here. We’d better get away soon.”
“Can you change the name of the ship again?” Alison asked.
“No, because I can’t go back to the Fleet base to hack the records.”
“What would happen if we just changed the name anyway?” Gwen asked. “Will they check it against the registration at the next colony we visit?”
“Not if it’s a small one. They check here because Fleet’s records are on-site; they don’t have to do it by ansible. But a backwater colony might not bother.”
“They’ll recognize your name, though,” Alison said, “if the news about what you said on Toliman has spread.”
“You could use a false name yourself, maybe,” suggested Gwen, “except it’s too late to get Zach to alter your ID—”
“I wouldn’t want to do that even if it weren’t,” Terry said. “I’m already on my third identity, and the name Steward—means something to me. Besides, if it was changed again I could never prove in the future that Estel is mine.”
After a long moment of thought he added, “It’s a common name, so if I’d chartered a ship other than Coralie an outlying colony’s officials might not report my presence to anyone likely to investigate. Zach said some of those places are friendly to smugglers. If I hadn’t been so stunned I’d have asked him to change the name on our false registration when he informed me about the bounty.”
“But wouldn’t he have wondered why?” Alison objected.
“He told me I’m being misidentified as the Captain of Estel. He’s sharp, and he could figure out the need to rename the ship—even now, if I texted him with a hint about it.”
“It seems to me you’re placing a lot of trust in a man who’s involved with a crime ring,” Jon cautioned. “I suppose you’re relying on this telepathic sense you’ve got, but when it comes right down to it, he breaks the law for money, doesn’t he? Why would he do anything you can’t offer cash for?”
“I have good reason to trust him,” Terry pointed out. “I was with him all afternoon, in his car and in his back room—yet he advised me to warn Estel’s captain instead of trying to extract information that might give him a chance to collect the bounty himself.”
“That’s true,” Jon admitted. “Why, I wonder? Not that you’re not likeable enough to make friends with all sorts, but a professional forger—”
“Zach was fascinated by what I told him about the Estel idea,” Terry said slowly, “and about my mind training, which I explained without any hint of where I got it. He hates the League government and the regimentation it imposes, so he shares the hope for the future I’m trying to spread. I owe him a lot, and his underworld connections may prove invaluable to us.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with your being indebted to him,” Alison said. “He’s an outlaw, after all.”
“We’re outlaws ourselves,” said Gwen.
“Yes,” Terry agreed. “And it may be that Zach will someday ask me to do him some favor in violation of the law. But I have a feeling that it will be a matter of helping Estel supporters that I’d want to help anyway.”
Part Three: Vagabond
23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - 33
~ 23 ~
Estel left Centauri as Coralie and arrived at New Afrika, a colony in the Epsilon Eridani system, under the name Vagabond. Terry had decided to use a name so familiar that it was unlikely to attract notice and told Zach to pick something else common if that one was already in use. There had been countless ships named Vagabond in the past, both on Earth’s oceans and in space; but fortunately it was currently available. Although text messages were less likely to be intercepted than voice comm, he would have hated to exchange several even though he’d worded his request for forgery subtly.
Once landing was authorized, Terry took Jon with him to sell their cargo of plastic resin pellets. This was possible because on his last visit to Zach he had obtained a Class D pilot’s license for Gwen, which permitted her to serve as caretaker for a ship in a stable orbit although not to break out of it. An engineer was fully capable of this, and she had thoroughly familiarized herself with the ship at the same time Jon had. He knew she had always wanted to be a pilot; she’d been kept from it only because relatively few of the young people who applied for pilot trainee jobs on Ciencia were hired. The Class D license would permit her to fly the shuttle as a student, and since his unrestricted license qualified him to instruct, he could eventually get her a legal upgrade.
The other major change in their roles was that to traffic control and on the surface, Jon was named as Vagabond’s captain. This, Terry hoped, would mean that his own name would never have to be mentioned and the bounty hunters would have no way of locating him in an attempt to extract information about Estel. By delegating all financial transactions, too, he could avoid allowing his ID to be scanned. To be sure, Quaid had known of his friendship with Jon Darrow and if Darrow’s death in the explosion of Bonanza had been questioned, a connection could conceivably be made; but that wasn’t likely to happen.
So Terry was to be in all respects the elusive Captain of Estel, no more identifiable than the ship itself. And this, Alison said, was a good thing. “You are a symbol, just as Estel is a symbol, and you will always be mysteriously hidden—not just from your enemies but from your supporters. Mystery strengthens people’s emotional response to an idea. Maybe they’ll go on crediting the Captain of Estel with supernatural powers, but it won’t matter as long as they don’t know you’re him.”
New Afrika was a promising market for resin pellets as it had no arable land free for growing the genetically-engineered plants from which plastics were produced—all fertile soil not needed for food production was used to grow sugar cane, as refined sugar was the colony’s main export. And its import tax was high. The custom here was like Ciencia’s in that smugglers’ starships remained in high orbit, beyond police jurisdiction, while local ships came up to trade; but since offworlders were permitted to land, the smugglers’ shuttles also came down. It was rare for them to carry cargo, however. There was no point in taking such a risk when the demand for contraband goods exceeded the supply. The only tricky part was making contact with a trustworthy dealer.
Zach had given Terry several phone numbers. The first man he called was unavailable; the second was suspicious, but agreed to meet. “What did you say your name is?” he inquired when he appeared at the designated café near the spaceport.
“I didn’t,” Terry said. “And I don’t plan to, as I don’t want certain people to find me. But I can tell you I’ve been in Zach’s box.” By now he understood that this was not literally true of everyone who said it; it was simply a password given to anyone Zach trusted, whether they’d had face-to-face contact with him or not.
The dealer glared at Jon. “I usually meet with only the captain.”
“This is Captain Darrow of Vagabond,” Terry said. “I came along to vouch for him because he’s not acquainted with Zach.”
<
br /> He let Jon make the deal in view of his long experience, and observed that he was as good a negotiator as he’d always claimed; they got enough more than they’d paid for the resin pellets to make a larger profit than he’d expected. Once they had arranged a time for the pickup late that night, they decided to take a look at New Afrika before returning to the shuttle.
Jon, who had been to the planet’s surface at Centauri only after dark—or what passed for dark when that system’s second sun was above the horizon—exulted in the warm red sunlight of Epsilon Eridani. Though he had often viewed Ciencia’s cold bluish sun from space, he had never before seen sunlight in an atmosphere or felt the touch of it against his skin. “And you mustn’t let it touch you now,” Terry warned, “or you’ll burn, despite having been exposed to the ship’s sunlamps.”
As he would himself if the darkening of his skin for disguise had totally faded, he thought with dismay. It was easy to forget that he was more vulnerable to sunburn than he had been after awhile on Maclairn. The sun had been hot there, glaringly hot; once his mind training had enabled him to adapt to the extreme climate, he had spent much of his free time outdoors. There had been a lake with a beach where he and Kathryn went to swim. . . . Strange that he was picturing Maclairn now, on a world unlike it, when he’d believed the flashes of memory were long past.
Something had brought it to mind, Terry perceived, some vague stirring that he couldn’t put his finger on. Not through sight; the settlement didn’t resemble Maclairn—its large buildings were of steel and glass like those of most colonies, not brick and stone. The people weren’t dressed like Maclairnans, and they were predominantly dark-skinned. It was just a feeling. . . . And then it stuck him: he sensed a presence that could only mean that there were telepaths among them.
Not many. It wasn’t the same as on Maclairn where everyone was telepathic and his awareness of interconnection was constant. But on Ciencia and Centauri, he had felt nothing, and here he knew the psi faculties of at least a few others were alive.
Zach had told him that New Afrika would be more receptive to the concept of esoteric mind-powers than the average colony world. It had been originally settled by emigrants from Africa on Earth, who had a cultural affinity for ancestral traditions passed down through the centuries since a time when belief in the so-called paranormal had been widespread. They might now, Terry thought, be ahead of the game. There might even be people in this colony who had recently emigrated to escape the predominant anti-psi attitude on Earth. Certainly the Ku Klux Klan would have no supporters here.
And so, he realized excitedly, it was fertile ground for spreading belief in Estel and what it stood for.
Was there a chance he might connect with a telepath? It had been so long since he’d done so as a normal part of his life—there had been the recent few days with the Elders, and of course his growing bond with Alison, but those were special cases. His hunger for an ongoing link to others, which on Ciencia he’d learned to suppress, came rushing back, and he knew he would not leave New Afrika without trying to make contact.
The colony had been more completely terraformed than most, and there was a public park in the city’s center that had grass and flowers as well as the fast-growing genetically designed trees found nearly everywhere with a suitable atmosphere. They settled on a bench and Terry, who had brought his tablet along, proceeded to plant his texts on the local Net. Here, it wasn’t even necessary to hack; access was public and he established a new blog linked to all the likely sites he could find, creating several identities so as to initiate a lively discussion. It would be possible to continue it from orbit, something he hadn’t dared to do when hacking because the origin of space transmissions could be traced.
Alison would be enraptured by this place—Ciencia was too cold for flowers and she had never seen any except in pictures. He could hardly wait to show them to her, but she wasn’t yet fully enough recovered to walk far or to cope with the planet’s slightly plus-standard gravity. Assuming that the cargo sale went smoothly, they would stay awhile before moving on, he decided. For the first time since escaping from prison, he had no need to hurry.
~ 24 ~
Back aboard the ship, Terry couldn’t keep his mind off the hope of telepathic contact. It wasn’t long before he began getting responses to his postings, which he had worded as an observer’s comments on the rumors that were circulating in the Centauri system. A few people, he found, had already heard them by ansible or from other traders. Interest in Estel among New Afrikans was evidently high.
In the middle of the night, as planned, a shuttle—much larger than Estel’s own—docked and took on the cargo of resin pellets. If this was all there was to smuggling, he thought, it would be an easy life. But he knew that on some worlds it would involve more action and more danger, as might acquiring a new cargo even here. Unauthorized export of New Afrika’s sugar was illegal and demand for it was insatiable nearly everywhere; suppliers had no need to risk themselves by delivering it to free traders. He and Jon would have to pick up a load without attracting the attention of the port authorities.
Since Alison wasn’t quite well enough to go to the surface, Terry stayed aboard to let Jon and Gwen go there together for a few days. He kept busy conversing via the Net with people curious about Estel. There was a good deal of wild speculation about the abilities the Captain of Estel had declared would become common; he was dismayed by the extent to which his original postings had been exaggerated. But there were also hints that some of the commentators knew more than what was in the rumors. A few of them implied that they were well aware that esoteric mind-powers already existed.
Were they simply basing this on reports of the persecution on Earth? Terry wondered. Most of the other writers who had heard about it seemed not to take the idea of psi seriously; they thought the actions of the Ku Klux Klan were a literal witch hunt. Yet he was sure that in the city he had sensed the presence of at least one nearby telepath. . . .
Finally, after three days, someone who identified himself as Jamar wrote, “Do you want to continue this discussion by private message? Or get together, maybe?”
Terry had not given his real name, of course, nor had he provided a messaging address for his screen name. He had not even revealed that he was in space. He hesitated. This could be a trap if the Klan had agents in New Afrika. But he’d seen no evidence that it did, and if he was ever going to contact anyone telepathically, he had to follow up every possible lead.
“I’ll be in the city the day after tomorrow,” he replied, and arranged to meet Jamar in the park. To his surprise he found that he was looking forward to it with boyish excitement.
Jamar proved to be a young man, dark-skinned like most New Afrikans, whom he immediately liked. He wasn’t telepathic, or if he was, he didn’t let it show; but he had poise and self-possession of the kind people got from mind training, making Terry wonder if perhaps he’d been taught by the mentors on Earth. Such people weren’t informed about Maclairn, of course, and they didn’t gain psi capability unless they were naturally gifted. But they had immunity to physical suffering and ill health—the capabilities he wished could be given to Alison. Not for the first time, he mourned his debarment from Earth, not for his own sake but for hers.
After a brief conversation Jamar said, “I wanted to warn you in case you don’t know what you’re getting into. On Earth what you’ve said online would be dangerous. A lot of the people in your forum are just repeating rumors, but your posts go beyond that, and I got the impression that you didn’t set it up just for entertainment.”
“I’d like to think,” Terry said cautiously, “that the rumors are based on fact. Not literal fact, of course—not a real ship with a captain who’s got supernatural powers. But a symbol of something that’s not so far out as we may assume.”
“Well,” said Jamar, “it’s been said for centuries that ESP exists. And if there are people who have it, maybe they should keep quiet about their talents, as I’m sur
e they do on Earth, because what’s happening there might spread.”
“Yet if it’s true that such talents will become more common in the future, is it right to hide knowledge of them? Shouldn’t the public be learning to accept the idea, so that in time hate groups will be squelched?”
Jamar paused, and then said with warmth, “Come home with me for dinner. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Terry had flown to the surface alone once Jon and Gwen were back, not wanting to involve Alison in something that might prove dangerous; so he accepted the invitation gladly. He was welcomed into a modest apartment in one of the city’s large buildings, where Jamar’s wife offered him a tall sugary drink—something he’d not had since last on Earth—while Jamar made a phone call. After a few minutes of casual conversation, another guest arrived.
“This is my friend Deion,” his host said, and Terry scarcely heard, overcome by the presence of the tall white-haired gentleman to whom he was being introduced. His first impression was that he must surely be one of the New Afrika’s leaders, but that was not what mattered most. The man was telepathic! This, or someone like him, was the person he had sensed on his first day in the colony. Their silent communication was wordless, but within moments they knew without speaking that they shared a similar outlook on life and could trust each other implicitly. It was the sort of connection he had felt with Maclairnans, and now that he was experiencing it again, he did not see how he had borne the years without it.
Deion smiled. “I’ve read your postings,” he said, “though I don’t often write online myself. We seem to agree that there’s hope for future progress, and that’s something too rarely found these days.”
“People seem to crave it, though,” Terry said. “Look at the interest they’ve shown in the rumor about a ship named Estel.”
“Yes, that’s certainly encouraging. I’m impressed by the way it’s taken hold, and I’m wondering how such a rumor got started.”
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 59