He must be careful, Terry realized, or the man would pick up the truth from his mind. Regretfully he closed it to sensing, and immediately perceived a trace of bewilderment in Deion’s, as if suppression of telepathy was something he’d encountered before and found troubling.
“Are you from Earth?” Deion asked. “I thought I knew all the refugees, but there may be some here I’m not aware of.”
“Refugees?”
“Yes, people interested in the paranormal who’ve emigrated to escape persecution. Many have come to New Afrika, some of them families who lost their homes to fire. We have a sort of community, a support group. You’ll be welcomed into it whether or not you’ve been a victim.”
“I haven’t been to Earth for many years,” Terry said, “but it’s true that I’ve just arrived here.” He did not say how; though these people surely wouldn’t report him for smuggling, if he should be caught anyone he’d associated with might be placed under suspicion.
“That’s a little surprising,” Deion observed, “because you seem to have knowledge about the mind that’s not widely disseminated. I’d thought that only here and on Earth were there people from whom you might have gained it.”
“Maybe it’s just instinct,” Terry suggested. “If the time has come for humankind to start developing these abilities, wouldn’t it happen in many places at once? For instance, if there’s really a Captain of Estel, couldn’t he be doing what apparently some on Earth have been doing?”
“Yes, I suppose he could. If so, his counterparts on Earth would be eager to meet him.”
No doubt, Terry realized suddenly. He hadn’t given any thought to how the mentors would react if the Estel rumor reached them, as of course it would. They would want to track it down. And it was quite possible that Deion was in contact with one of them; it was becoming more and more evident that he, at least, must have had mind training.
How long, Terry thought, could he himself conceal the fact that he too had been formally trained? Long enough to enjoy a few days of fellowship with the community of emigrés? It would be awkward if they found out, but not disastrous; not knowing about Maclairn, they would not suspect he was anything but a trainee like themselves. They would not press him to say where and by whom he’d been taught; it was understood among them that these details were not to be spread around.
They sat down to dinner and went on talking, Terry oblivious to everything but his joy in finding friends who fully understood the ideas he’d been trying to convey. When the meal was over, Deion said quietly, “What if it were possible to actually gain some of the mind faculties we’ve been discussing—would you want to?”
“Yes, of course,” Terry replied. Was this a subtle approach to the issue of whether he already had?
“You’re aware of what happened on Toliman. The man rumored to have helped the patients there obviously had such skills, including an ability to feel pain without suffering and to draw others into the same state of mind. To have acquired that, he must have gone through considerable pain while learning.”
“I imagine he did. It could hardly have been inborn because children who don’t mind pain would be in danger of injuring themselves.”
Deion nodded. “If learning of that kind were essential to gaining other mind capabilities—if it involved a painful ordeal—would you be willing to go through it yourself?”
Terry nodded, confused. Perhaps Deion hadn’t guessed after all; it didn’t sound like a rhetorical question. But why ask, when the training was available nowhere but on Earth?
“This may surprise you, but I think you have faculties you’re not conscious of,” Deion continued. “That often happens when a person has a natural gift, and suppressing it can lead to emotional problems—”
Yes, Terry thought. He’d had his share of them in youth without knowing why.
“And so I think you would benefit from the kind of training I mentioned. I tell you this in strict confidence, of course—what I’m saying must never be passed on to anyone. But if you decide you want to pursue it, come to the Bramfield Health Club on Kenya Street and ask for me by name.”
Bramfield Club? In shock, Terry was struck by vertigo and Deion’s voice sounded hollow and far away. The Bramfield Clubs on Earth were where the mentors from Maclairn worked. They had been founded and financed by Arthur Bramfield, Kathryn’s grandfather, for that purpose, though they also offered standard health club facilities to the public. If there was now a Bramfield Club in New Afrika, and Deion could choose people for special training there. . . .
That meant Deion was a Maclairnan. A mentor. And he, Terry, had given his word to the Elders that he would never visit a world where mentors might be encountered.
~ 25 ~
Could Deion have already learned about the Elders from his mind? Terry wondered in panic. The man had not probed; he would have felt that. And his mind had been closed to casual pickup of information so as to conceal the truth about Estel. But mentors were far more perceptive than people with less psi capability. The Elders had insisted that he could not hide his awareness of their existence from mentors; the course of his life—exile, the loss of his career in Fleet, his separation from Kathryn—had been determined by that assumption. It would be unbearable if because of one unplanned visit to a friend’s home, that turned out to have been for nothing.
He calmed the pounding of his heart and with effort steadied himself, aware that Deion was waiting for a reply. Of course the man could not have grasped such an incredible fact during a mere hour or two! The ban on contact had been meant to apply to ongoing interaction with mentors who knew Terry and were accustomed to communicating with him, people who could tell that he was not deluded. Mentors who would absorb the secret unconsciously even if there was no sudden revelation. His terror that he might have betrayed it had arisen from turbulent emotion rather than rational fear.
But he must leave quickly. And he could not come to the surface of New Afrika ever again.
“I’ll certainly think about it,” he told Deion. “I’ve got commitments that will keep me tied up for the next few days, though; in fact I’m running late, I’m supposed to be somewhere else right now—”
Deion looked at him closely. Obviously he was not fooled, and Terry knew that he’d sensed his dismay although not the truth that led to it. “It can be frightening to open your mind to new faculties, even when you believe they’re good to have—especially if you’re in the habit of repressing them. But it can also be a very exciting experience.”
“Maybe so,” Terry said. He would have to offer some excuse to break away, though the only one available was humiliating. “But I’m not sure I can take much physical pain. To do it in theory is one thing, but basically I’m a coward.”
“It’s not the prospect of pain that’s bothering you,” Deion declared.
“No,” Terry admitted. So much for thinking he could get away with a lie.
“I’m a good judge of people,” Deion told him, “and I believe you have great aptitude for the kind of training I can offer you—more than you suspect. That may account for your deep interest in the Estel rumor. Perhaps you feel such capabilities are just for the future you’ve written about, or for superheroes like the Captain of Estel who may be only a fantasy. Don’t let that keep you from seeking them in real life.”
Terry’s heart ached at the need to deceive this man who was so much like the mentors whose friendship he’d valued in the past. To walk out on the only psi-gifted person he’d met since leaving Maclairn, letting him think he was too weak to act on what he’d claimed to believe. Would his Net forum continue? he wondered. He could never post there again, at least not under his existing screen name; would Jamar and others who’d valued his comments now be disillusioned by his apparent failure to follow through? He turned away from Deion to thank Jamar and his wife for their hospitality, and barely managed to get out the door before his eyes blurred with tears.
He was on his way back to the spaceport before i
t occurred to him that there was a more pressing reason to have left in a hurry than the remote possibility that Deion would instantly learn about the Elders. It was much more likely that he would have sensed that Terry knew about Maclairn. The mentors kept their origin strictly secret, sharing it only with the few observers who had been taken to their world—not counting the Fleet crew there and the handful of government officials who knew. If they thought that secret had gotten out, they would be justifiably worried, and so Deion might have probed him to discover the source of the leak. It had been a narrow escape.
He had not been aware that Maclairn intended to expand its network of training centers beyond Earth as soon as this. Were they being established in all large colonies? Would he have to find out before landing on a world whether it had a Bramfield Club? No, he decided. Undoubtedly, mentors had come to New Afrika to go on teaching the emigrés from Earth, whose training would have been incomplete at the time they fled. Advanced instruction often went on for years.
Sadly, Terry looked around at the New Afrikan city where he had planned to stay awhile, thinking it might be a long time before he came upon another colony as pleasant. Passing the park that Alison would now never see, he grieved for her. She had never been to a physically attractive world. He had promised her a look at this one, yet they must leave when she wouldn’t be in any danger here. . . .
His heart jumped as, suddenly, he was struck by what that implied. He could never set foot on New Afrika again—but Alison could. It wouldn’t matter if she met mentors if he was not with her. She could spend as much time with them as she liked. Alison could get the training he so desperately wanted her to have.
It would be easy to arrange. The training, secret from the public, was offered only by invitation; ordinarily someone simply walking into a Bramfield Club would be observed for weeks before being approached by a mentor. But Alison had a good excuse to go there and to request neurofeedback treatment—her muscles weren’t completely recovered from her illness and she still had some pain. Since Deion knew that a man with extraordinary ability to relieve pain had helped the virus patients on Toliman, there was no reason why she couldn’t admit that she had been one of them, expressing interest in how he’d done it. She could also mention that she had operated a neurofeedback clinic of her own in the past. It would thus be entirely natural for the mentors to consider her a good candidate for mind training.
She couldn’t get enough of it to protect her health and lengthen her life, of course; that took many weeks of practice with the advanced neurofeedback equipment mentors used. But she would have the beginning, the breakthrough. She would be free of physical suffering for the rest of her life, and would be able to control simple things like body temperature and heart rate. And her latent telepathic ability would be further enhanced.
Terry was so happy at this thought that it almost overshadowed his dismay at his own close call and his sorrow about the loss of the lasting friendships he’d hoped to form in New Afrika.
Aboard Estel, he called the crew together and explained the situation. “I don’t see any problem with your going,” he said with enthusiasm. “That is, if you want to, Alison.” Belatedly it dawned on him that she might not be eager to undergo the painful stage of training.
“Of course I do,” Alison said. “I’ve wished for years that I had abilities like yours. Will I be able to relieve patients’ pain as well as my own?”
“Maybe. You’re not psi-gifted, but just knowing how it feels to control your mind’s reactions should enable you to help people.”
“Are you—sure I’m qualified to learn?” she asked hesitantly. “If I don’t have a gift for it—”
He realized that he’d confused her. “Anyone who’s willing can gain control of their own unconscious processes. Psi capability, if it develops, comes later, from having telepathic contact with the mentor during the training. A mentor’s gift is strong enough for unconscious communication even with someone who lacks natural aptitude.”
“If that’s true,” declared Gwen, “then I want to be trained, too.”
Terry hesitated. It would increase the risk if two people with knowledge of Maclairn went to the Bramfield Center, yet neither of them could be connected to him in any way. And though she had never felt the kind of pain relief he’d given Alison on Toliman, the training didn’t depend on prior experience. All the Fleet personnel assigned to Maclairn had gone through it successfully, and Gwen was certainly as brave as any young Fleet officer.
“I need to be sure you understand what it involves,” he told her. Unlike Alison, she hadn’t heard him talk about it before. “You have to go through a crisis intense enough to override your inborn genetic programming, the mental reaction to pain that evolved to prevent animals from ignoring injury. As a human adult, you can learn to turn that reaction off so that you don’t suffer. But it’s possible only if an instructor has shown you how, telepathically and through neurofeedback that displays details about how your brain is reacting. And for that to happen he has to subject you to very extreme pain at the beginning.”
“Well, if other people endure it, so can I.”
“I’m sure you can—but don’t expect it to be easy. Some steps in the training are worse than what you’ll anticipate.” He couldn’t offer a warning more specific than that; there was one step all trainees swore to keep secret from anyone who hadn’t been through it, since its effectiveness depended on surprise. He cringed at the thought of Alison, or Gwen either, being purposely led to believe for a while that she had failed to qualify, yet only in that way could a person stop fighting the pain long enough to discover that doing so was counterproductive.
“Once you’re past the bad part, the rest is fun,” he assured them. “It’s a wonderful feeling to be in control of your body’s reactions. The only problem is that we can’t stay here long enough for you to get much practice with neurofeedback.”
“But you have a neurofeedback setup aboard,” Gwen protested.
“Yes, but not the right kind of helmet. Ours doesn’t show brain reactions in enough detail.”
“Can’t you get one?”
“I wish to God I could. But aside from those manufactured on Maclairn, they exist only in major medical centers. League doctors use them just for diagnosing neurological disorders.”
He went on to emphasize how careful they must be not to let anyone find out that they knew about Maclairn, or were aware beforehand of the nature of the training—it would lead to questions that could not be answered. And especially, they must not reveal that they’d had personal contact with someone who’d written in the Net forum, or that they’d been told about the Bramfield Club by a newcomer to New Afrika. “Just say you’ve heard it offers neurofeedback and are interested because you’ve worked with it before,” he said to Alison. “And that Gwen comes with you to work out at the health club simply as your friend. You’ll be offered special training before she is, but after you’re through the first of it, you can ask that she be invited.”
“But if there’s danger that the mentors could learn your secret telepathically, why can’t they learn ours?”
“Because I’m concealing something major that’s relevant to Maclairn, facts that would startle them. They won’t sense commonplace information you want to hide—mentors respect privacy. For you, the danger is simply in what you might let slip in talking to them.” He recalled how while getting acquainted with his first mentor Aldren, he’d been carried away by his liking for him and had said more personal things about himself than he’d intended.
“Will the man you met, Deion, teach us himself?” asked Gwen.
“Perhaps, but more likely it will be his lifemate—his wife, though marriage on Maclairn isn’t formal. They work as couples and usually teach trainees of their own sex.”
“Weren’t you formally married to Kathryn?” Alison asked in surprise.
“We were married under League law by the captain of the Fleet ship. But that was only so we could
share a cabin on Promise without shocking passengers from conservative cultures on Earth. Maclairnans don’t believe personal commitments are any of the government’s business.”
He suddenly remembered one policy he’d neglected to mention. “Don’t let on, either of you, that you’re in relationships,” he told the women. “Mentors won’t train half a couple—during sex an untrained partner with latent psi capability might perceive things that would interfere with being trained later. Couples have to get the training at the same time.”
“Won’t Jon be coming soon, though?” Gwen asked.
Oh, God, Terry thought, she’d been assuming more than they’d realized. Nothing had been said about Jon getting the training, and he had been silent throughout the discussion. Naturally he would want it, but he had known without being told that it wouldn’t be possible.
Brusquely Jon said, “I can’t go, Gwen. Terry and I have been seen together; the dealer we sold the cargo to knows us.”
“Does the dealer know Deion?” Gwen demanded.
“We can’t be sure,” Terry said. “He may know some of the emigrés and if he met Jon in their company, might mention that another man had come onworld with him. Not many ships arrive here, and it’s important that it not be guessed that I’m from Vagabond. Deion sensed some mystery about me and might very well try to trace me.”
“I would have to disappear suddenly when we leave, just as you will,” Jon pointed out, “and if it were known that I’d had a companion matching Terry’s description, a connection with his disappearance might be made. Maybe some time in the future we’ll be back here, and enough time will have passed for me to get the training without risk. But it’s more important for you young people to have it, anyway.”
“I don’t see the risk,” Gwen persisted. “Surely none of the people who believe in Estel would turn Terry over to the bounty hunters, even if they identified him with its captain.”
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