“It’s not that,” Terry told her. “I know you don’t understand, and I’m not free to explain further. But there would be serious consequences if I were near a mentor long enough for him to sense the secret I’m sworn to keep from them.”
“He can’t reveal it even to me,” Alison added. “When he asked me to leave Ciencia with him, he made me promise not to press him about it. So you mustn’t either, Gwen.”
That night when they went to their cabin, she asked, puzzled, “If a partner in a couple who hasn’t yet had mind training learns too much about it during sex, why haven’t I learned too much from you?”
“Because the training was a long time ago for me, and it wasn’t relevant to you personally. But it’s true that we can’t make love tonight, when we’ve been talking about it and you’re wondering what it will be like.” He was stricken; they had made love every night except during her illness. And they would be separated for ten days or more. It would be hard to refrain now, when they needed each other’s strength—but for her to grasp what he could no longer keep out of his mind would be worse. He couldn’t take the chance that she might fail to experience the shocks necessary to a breakthrough.
In bed she nestled close to him without sexual provocation. “Terry . . . I’m scared,” she whispered.
“Everyone is, at the beginning. That’s what makes it possible to learn—it shakes you up, forces your mind out of the rut of ordinary functioning.” Alison was normally so calm, so self-controlled, that the mentor would have to push her hard, he knew, and that wasn’t pleasant to think about. But what she’d gain would be worth it.
“It will turn out okay,” he promised. “You can trust mentors—they’ve got a lot of experience and they don’t let anyone come to harm.”
In the morning the two women went to the surface, piloted by Jon. Terry transferred enough credits to them to pay for health club memberships and live on while there, glad that Alison wouldn’t have to venture alone onto a planet new to her.
“I wish I could take you down myself,” he said sadly when they boarded the shuttle. “But I gave my word that I’d never go to a world where there are mentors, and I’ll not knowingly break it.” He took Alison in his arms, aching at the realization that he would miss her terribly and wondering if he would sense her pain remotely while she was undergoing the ordeal.
~ 26 ~
During the next few days Terry was on tenterhooks, waiting for word that Alison had been selected for mind training. They couldn’t communicate directly, but they had arranged a code whereby they could pass information to each other via the Net forum, in which they were both using new screen names. Finally the message appeared: “I’m hoping to learn more about what happened to me on Toliman,” she wrote. “I’ve met someone who has a theory about it.”
The first day, or night, would be the hard one, he knew. As the hours passed he found himself unable to focus on anything. What if it went wrong? What if she did fail—what if she didn’t agree to face more pain after discovering that she couldn’t tolerate it by means of sheer fortitude? That never happened; mentors could judge beforehand what a person was capable of, and they didn’t invite anyone to start who wouldn’t get all the way through. Nevertheless, he worried. She had not questioned his conviction that it would turn out well for her; what if it turned out that he’d misled her?
He recalled his own ordeal vividly—not so much the pain, which had receded from memory once he’d learned not to suffer, but the despair following the demonstration that endurance has limits. Only after a trainee gave up endurance as hopeless could he or she understand that the fight rather than the pain itself was what produced suffering.
At times of crisis, Terry knew, telepathy could work over long distances, even between orbit and the ground. When the moment of Alison’s agony came, he did feel it—in his own body, as he had with the clinic patients. Instinctively he switched into altered consciousness, ending the suffering, and then he remembered that he must not, just as the mentor who was instructing must not; a trainee couldn’t learn do it for herself if someone helped at this stage. She was not telepathic enough to receive aid from this far away, so it didn’t matter; all the same he refrained, and suffered with her.
“God, Terry!” Jon exclaimed from across the table where they were sitting. “What’s come over you?”
The intense pain lasted only a minute or two, of course; mentors made sure it was severe enough to preclude its being needlessly prolonged. When it passed, Terry explained as much as he could without giving away the part that a candidate for future training couldn’t be allowed to know. Jon frowned, troubled. “Will I feel it too, when Gwen—”
“No. Neither of you is consciously telepathic. Alison and I have communicated silently before, mostly in bed.”
“Then later, when Gwen is back, will I learn too much about it from her? You said people in relationships weren’t supposed to be trained before their partners.”
“That would be a real problem if either of you were psi-gifted,” Terry said. “But you’re not. A mentor who hasn’t met the partner doesn’t know, so their policy is not to take the chance; but I can tell that whatever telepathic bond you develop won’t be strong enough for her to leak information.”
Whether he actually sensed it or merely assumed, Terry wasn’t sure, but after some hours he became aware that the crisis was over and that Alison had experienced her breakthrough. From now on, she would be having regular neurofeedback sessions, to practice and to learn other skills, for as long as they could stay. He hoped Gwen would be able to begin mind training soon because every day they spent in orbit would increase their risk of being arrested for smuggling.
Jon had spent some time on the surface after landing with the women, finding out, in his role as ostensible captain of Vagabond, what smuggling sugar involved. It wasn’t encouraging. On Ciencia neither he nor his suppliers had needed to worry about arrest as long as they avoided displeasing the government racketeers who encouraged illegal traffic. But New Afrika’s government wasn’t corrupt. When it declared that exporting sugar without a license was prohibited, it meant exactly that. Most of its revenue was derived from the export tax, which was lucrative because the offworld demand for sugar was great enough to support a virtually unlimited number of legal exporters as well as to tempt free traders. The law against unlicensed trading was therefore strictly enforced.
“Couldn’t we just buy a license?” Terry suggested. “I don’t want to endanger Alison and Gwen if we can avoid it, and if we’re caught while they’re aboard they’ll be implicated.”
“It’s not so simple,” Jon told him. “The legal exporters have a cartel; you have to pay a high fee to join before you can apply for a license from the government. They don’t accept offworlders—if they did, they’d lose control of the interplanetary sugar trade.”
“Well, then, we haven’t much choice. How do other free traders get away with it?”
“I gather it’s more or less of a crapshoot. The police can’t board every shuttle that lifts off, day or night; we haven’t been inspected so far. Which gives us an advantage, because now they’re used to us. Smugglers don’t stick around visiting a city.”
“Besides, traffic control knows we’re in low orbit, where I assume smugglers’ starships don’t come.” After selling off their cargo of resin pellets he had descended to minimize the time spent making multiple trips to the surface.
“Yes, but even in high orbit, outside New Afrika’s jurisdiction, there’s danger because Fleet patrols the system to protect its own merchant ships from pirates. Not all sugar smugglers are honest free traders; some find piracy more profitable than dealing with a willing supplier. And Fleet treats smugglers the same as pirates except when a ship has been attacked.”
True, Terry thought—while in Fleet he had not thought there was much difference between the two. The concept of an honest free trader had been unknown to him. “What’s the penalty if the police catch us?” he inq
uired.
“A year in jail—as you probably know, according to League law no colony can hold an offworlder longer than that for anything short of murder. And confiscation of the cargo, of course.”
Terry considered it. If arrested by Fleet they would face at least three years in a penal colony. “What would happen,” he asked slowly, “if we stayed in low orbit, and took the cargo aboard here?”
“No smuggler would do that,” Jon protested.
“That’s the point. They know we’ve been here awhile, and we’ll be staying even longer, making shuttle trips back and forth. It won’t occur to them that we’d be carrying sugar while still under their jurisdiction.”
“You’re right,” Jon said. “It might be our best chance—and the women won’t be aboard while we’re loading, so if we’re caught at it they won’t be involved. How much time should we allow for them to finish their training?”
“We should pick up the cargo now, Jon,” Terry decided. “The longer the time between doing it and leaving, the less chance of being chased when we go.” To be sure, they’d be vulnerable during that time, but Alison and Gwen wouldn’t be. And breaking orbit without attracting attention would be easier.
So Jon went back down to find a supplier and make a deal, which was something in which he had long experience, while Terry stayed alone aboard Estel pondering their next move. Where to go? Sugar would bring a high price in all but a few colonies; he could take his pick of those where he was unlikely to encounter bounty hunters.
But he hated the thought of tearing Alison away before she had completed enough mind training to protect her health. This was an even greater regret than it had been before she had any training at all. Originally, he had been sad that she lacked it and had known that as she aged faster than he did, his worry would grow worse. But he had realized that even if he had access to the indispensable brain imaging helmets, he could not bring himself to inflict severe enough pain on her to produce a crisis, nor would he be qualified to lead her to a breakthrough—only a mentor possessed that skill.
Further training was another matter. Now that she’d been given the ability to consciously alter her brain’s responses, he could easily teach her to control the ongoing reactions to stress that would otherwise result in aging and illness. Complex neurofeedback software would be required, but he was familiar with the source code of that used on Maclairn and was sure he could recreate it. That is, if he had sufficient data input, he could. . . .
Adequate helmets existed only in the hands of the mentors and, as he’d told Gwen, in major medical centers on Earth; colonies had neither the population to warrant top-quality medical facilities nor the funds to acquire them. And of course, even if he could go to Earth, there would be no way to get hold of such an object. They wouldn’t be for sale and he wouldn’t want to steal from a hospital, assuming that were possible.
Only on Earth . . . but, Terry recalled suddenly, there was one exception. There was one colony that prided itself in having what it claimed was “the finest medical facility in the galaxy.” Undine, the world from which the founders of Maclairn had escaped. . . .
He had learned all about Undine when studying Maclairn’s history. The medical authorities there were literally the government, a dictatorial government that imposed treatment for all lapses from health on its citizens, whether they wanted it or not. They were under constant surveillance, even to the point of automated analysis of bodily functions by the equipment in their bathrooms. They were not allowed to do anything viewed as a health risk, nor were they even allowed to die—dead bodies were kept in stasis indefinitely.
Undine’s hospital, Terry knew, was the focal point of the colony there. It contained the seat of government as well as medical facilities; its administrators were the only public officials, just as ambulance crews were the only police. All citizens were subjected to periodic medical evaluation even if they were not sick. Examinations were far more extensive than routine ones elsewhere, involving invasive tests as well as every conceivable type of scanning. They surely involved neurological testing, using the most sophisticated brain imaging equipment available. Ian Maclairn, who had developed the methods of mind training later used by the mentors, must have obtained his helmets from that hospital in the first place. And almost certainly he must have stolen them.
What had been done once might be done again! The hospital was wealthy, for Undine’s citizens were heavily taxed to support it, and it possessed far more equipment than could be put to legitimate use. Undoubtedly it had many such helmets and employed them in “diagnosing” the rebellious tendencies of anyone considered politically unreliable. Terry knew he would feel no guilt whatsoever about stealing from such an institution if he could get away with it.
But could he? Could he even get to the surface of Undine?
The information he’d been given was, of course, more than two hundred years old; but the colony’s government had been a stable one supported by the vast majority of its citizens, who wanted their health protected regardless of cost. Quickly he turned to the ship’s knowledgebase and found that nothing had changed. What little it said about Undine confirmed what he already knew.
The world was closed to immigration; otherwise it would be overrun by people seeking free medical care who’d fallen for the claim that its population “lived” forever. Tourism was likewise forbidden, as was travel by citizens, which was legal but precluded by monetary restrictions that prevented them from spending any funds offworld. It was not as isolated as Ciencia, however. Messages got in and out by ansible, and they were not censored. Fleet’s freighters brought imports paid for in diamonds from the planet’s rich mines. Whether other ships went there was doubtful, since it was off the beaten track; still, he knew that the Maclairn group had smuggled in equipment for their hidden lab. It would be a prime market for smuggled sugar, certainly, since the people of Undine could not legally consume “unhealthy” food.
Underneath, Terry was aware that attempting to land there would involve high risk with little chance of achieving his goal. Still, it wasn’t a place where bounty hunters would look for him. And like Ciencia, it was desperately in need of faith in the power of the human mind. Ian Maclairn’s followers had spread belief in that power as best they could and had won converts; perhaps not all of them had escaped with the group. Perhaps they’d left descendants hoping they were not alone in their faith that people were more than machines requiring medical repair. He could confirm that hope, whether he got his hands on neurofeedback helmets or not. And so, he decided, Undine would be his next port of call.
~ 27 ~
More than a week passed, during which Jon brought up several loads of sugar without incident. If they had been anywhere but New Afrika, Terry would have made at least half of these risky trips himself; but he dared not take a chance of being caught on the surface of a world he was sworn to stay away from. One pilot had to remain aboard Estel in any case, though they shared the job of moving the sugar sacks out of the shuttle.
Jon, who had formerly been in the habit of stashing refined platinum within Bonanza’s cabin so the inspectors wouldn’t know he’d mined more than was in its hold, suggested that they conceal some sugar sacks in the same way. “As insurance,” he said.
“Against what?” Terry protested. “If they board us they’ll check the cargo bay and arrest us. Even if they don’t search the whole ship, we won’t get a chance to use what’s hidden.” But there was no downside to the suggestion, so he went along with it.
He kept his plan for their next destination to himself. There was enough to worry about without explaining to Jon why he’d chosen a course that meant asking for trouble.
Alison and Gwen sent regular coded messages through the Net forum, letting him know how their training was progressing, and once they reported that they were confident of their ability to turn off suffering at will, Terry reluctantly sent word that it was time to leave. It would be unwise to wait any longer in orbit, loaded as the
y were with illicit cargo.
On the night before the women were due to come aboard, the police arrived.
“HS Vagabond, this is New Afrika Control,” the comm announced. “Stand by for routine inspection.”
Keeping shock out of his voice, Terry responded, “New Afrika Control, this is Vagabond. We have been in orbit for many days now, as you know. What reason is there to inspect us now?”
“It’s routine,” the controller repeated. “Our policy is to make spot checks. We have a problem with smuggling here.”
Argument was impossible, of course; it would only arouse suspicion that might not yet exist. If he and Jon were friendly to the inspectors, Terry wondered, could they possibly be talked out of entering the cargo bay? Was their work routine enough that they might be tempted to save themselves effort by cutting corners?
Helplessly they waited while the police ship approached and docked. A year in jail, Terry thought in despair. He could endure it; he’d experienced worse. Undoubtedly Jon could, too; but what would happen to Alison, to Gwen? New Afrika was a better colony to be stranded in than most, at least—Alison might get a job as a neurofeedback therapist at the health club and Gwen would have no trouble finding work at the spaceport, for maintenance engineers were in demand everywhere. But later . . . after losing the cargo he wouldn’t have enough money for upkeep on Estel. What then?
“Terry,” Jon said hurriedly, “you can tell what people are thinking, right?”
“Not specifically, unless they’re telepaths and want to communicate. With others I can just sense feelings, attitudes.”
“Well then, find out how these inspectors feel about their job. Are they strong for law and order, or might they be open to collecting side benefits?”
“A bribe, you mean? I thought New Afrika’s government wasn’t corrupt.”
“It’s not, but that doesn’t prevent individual officers from taking advantage of their opportunities. You’re used to being with people committed to upholding the honor of Fleet. I’ve been living in the real world since I was a kid.”
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 61