The fire exit sign was in plain sight when he left the elevator, and seeing no people around, Terry rushed it, throwing his weight against the door so as to push through fast when the inevitable alarm bell began to ring.
Nothing happened. The door was locked.
In horrified desperation, he tried again, feeling the handle this time—maybe there was some particular place to press? Fire doors weren’t locked. Even aboard starships it was against regulations to seal fire doors.
Except in prisons. Of course they’d be locked in buildings used as prisons. They would be programmed to open only if there was a fire.
So there was no way out. Common sense told him that fire detectors would not be placed in such a way that prisoners could fool them by setting things on fire. They would be in ceilings, too high up for anyone to reach, and there would be no combustibles left around.
Terry slumped down against the wall, slipping his hands up the front of his sweatshirt to check the taping of the helmets. The corridor remained deserted; evidently it was not public and was used only between shifts by employees going to and from work areas. Sooner or later, he supposed, he would be found. There was no place he could hide and why bother, when in a few hours the shuttle was going to depart without him?
He stared up at the ceiling. There was indeed a fire detector there, out of reach. He had nothing to start a fire with anyway. . . or did he?
He could set candles alight, after all.
Long ago on Maclairn his mentor Tristan had taught him to light and extinguish flame by means of psi. Terry had been initially reluctant to acquire that ability; it had frightened him to think how much power it might give him. Some Maclairnans could melt metal with their minds. He suspected that all mentors could; certainly they could light torches in the Ritual. He was psi-gifted and might well be able to do the same, but he had chosen not to pursue that path—a choice that had given him some understanding of the public’s widespread fear of psi in general. He’d become confident, however, about lighting candles.
“It may someday prove useful to you,” Tristan had said. Was that true? There was no magic in the generation of fire; it was simply an intensified form of controlling temperature. Something combustible was needed, and if it got hot enough through use of psi it would burst into flame just as it would if heated some other way. There was nothing combustible here that would make enough of a blaze to set off a fire alarm—but fire detectors didn’t detect fire directly. They simply sensed smoke or heat.
Which type was this one? He had no way to create smoke, but if heat was all that was needed, he might be able to trigger it.
He closed his eyes and visualized the pattern, the indelible mind-pattern for generating heat that he’d been taught. As with any form of psi, emotion would intensify his power, though paradoxically it would be necessary to set aside—but not fight—all conscious doubt and fear. This was what the training had been for. It was why he’d risked so much to get the helmets, so that Alison and others could have the training, too. If he could not make use of his own training when he needed it, what good had it done to take that risk? How could he claim that the beliefs he was spreading were valid?
He focused on the fire detector, seeing it not with his closed eyes but through clairvoyance. He imagined the air around it getting hotter, and hotter. . . .
And then suddenly the alarm was ringing and he was soaking wet from the stream of the automatic sprinklers. Jumping to his feet, clutching the helmets, Terry threw himself against the fire door again. It burst open and he ran down the stairs to the now-unlatched outer door, and freedom.
~ 32 ~
He did not tell Captain Garick the details of his adventure; aboard Peregrine, Terry merely thanked him for his help and accepted his share of the sugar sale proceeds. Garick, however, informed him that monitoring of Undine’s Net from orbit had revealed that comments about his Estel postings were now circulating there. He didn’t seem surprised or displeased.
Terry bade him farewell and returned triumphant to Estel and reunion with his crew. He didn’t like to think how close he had come to losing everything, to betraying their trust in his ability to keep them going. But of course they insisted on knowing how he’d gotten hold of the helmets, and Alison grasped enough telepathically to make hiding the facts pointless.
They were nearly out of provisions, so they would have to jump soon, and he had no plan as to where to go. Only two more jumps could be made before it would be necessary to service the hyperdrive engine and replenish its fuel, the second of them to the starport where it would be done. And, since he had split the money from sale of the sugar with Garick, he had barely enough to pay the cost. If he had to spend all his credit on ship maintenance they’d be destitute and unable to acquire more cargo. He and Jon would therefore need to invest in something that could be profitably sold at the starport.
More sugar would be ideal, but returning to New Afrika was out of the question. Terry couldn’t land there, nor could they count on being lucky with the police again if they reappeared so soon. The colony Stelo Haveno, where the port was located, had a thriving electronics industry and was in no need of high-tech imports. So it would have to be some other luxury food.
Wine, maybe? Almost all wine traffic was handled by smugglers, as the few worlds with climates suitable for growing grapes didn’t produce enough to be included on regular Fleet trade routes. Being agricultural colonies, they didn’t need to import food and couldn’t afford to import much else. So they welcomed free traders, who bought wine from them legally; but importing it legally was impractical everywhere—the tax was higher than all but the wealthiest free traders could pay. Could he sneak it past the Fleet starport controllers? Terry wondered. He would be taking a serious risk of arrest by Fleet for the first time, and it still made him uncomfortable to set himself against the organization to which he had once sworn loyalty. But wine was a harmless commodity, and he could not see any other way to earn enough money to keep flying.
After consulting Estel’s knowledgebase, he decided on Eden as the most promising destination. It was one of the first worlds discovered that had a temperate climate and soil that could support terragenic crops, which accounted for its preemption of a name expressing the hopes of all pastoral colonies. But from what he read about it, he gathered that its society was far from Edenic. Pleasant though their surroundings might be, its people apparently clung to an outdated form of religion based on literal interpretation of ancient texts, a dogmatic interpretation that allowed no room for new ideas—which explained why it hadn’t attracted more settlers despite its favorable environment. He could see that it wouldn’t be a place where he could promote belief in psi or other mind-powers. It had vineyards, however, and it could be reached without depleting the ship’s power reserve. He had little choice but to head there.
During the days of transit in normal space after the jump, Terry continued his work on the software for processing input from the newly-acquired neurofeedback helmets, an absorbing task that left him no time to worry about the obstacles ahead. He remembered the design well from having studied what the mentors had shown him on Titan and on Maclairn; it was just a matter of implementing it. He could hardly wait to try it out with Alison, but that would have to come later.
Eden didn’t have a real spaceport; like Maclairn, it offered merely a few pads for shuttles surrounded by open ground, in this case grass-covered. There wasn’t even a controller on duty. He was guided in by an automated beacon and met on the ground by a small committee of farmers. For a moment Terry came close to panic; what if they didn’t have any cargo to offer? Estel didn’t have enough power to go somewhere else; he must head for the starport directly. He’d seen flourishing green vineyards from the air, but maybe no aged wine was available. . . .
The farmers didn’t seem too friendly; they didn’t introduce themselves and Terry decided that although he doubted that bounty hunters would come here, it would be best not to give his own name unl
ess pressed. “I assume you’re wanting to buy wine,” said one of the farmers brusquely. “My own stock’s gone, but I’ll put out the word to nearby settlements.”
“Thanks,” said Jon, still playing the role of captain. “We’re in the market for it, yes. Do you have ground transport to a place where we’re likely to find some?” Terry wondered what kind of transportation they had on Eden; it looked like something out of a history book and he half-expected to see horses—though of course there were no horses on colonized worlds. It would depend on their source of power, which evidently wasn’t space-based. And he had seen no wind turbines.
They turned out to have a standard power grid, fed by a fusion reactor like any large colony that lacked satellite power. The people weren’t the hypocrites he’d feared they might be; though they lived simply due to limited imports, they understood that survival on new planets required technology and didn’t pretend that high-tech facilities could be rejected. They wouldn’t have lasted this long if they did, he realized. There had been many failed colonies whose residents had tried to duplicate ancient lifestyles.
“Whoever has wine to offer will phone here,” the farmer told them, “and after you arrange terms, his truck will bring it to your ship. I’m afraid we can’t allow you to leave it, though we’ll provide food and camping equipment if necessary. The last traders here caused some trouble, and I don’t want any more outsiders mingling with our people.”
“Trouble?” Terry was astonished; traders who were rowdy or rude to a colony’s residents would not stay in business long. If they wanted to get drunk they would wait until back aboard their starship. “I assure you that we’ll behave ourselves,” he said.
“That may be, but I’m taking no chances, not after what was done to my daughter,” the farmer replied grimly.
Shocked, Terry protested, “You can’t judge all of us by one man’s offense! If your daughter was harmed by a trader you should have called on Fleet; they’re tough on offworlders who commit violent crimes. Don’t you have an ansible here?”
“We do, but her contamination was not the result of violence. She was exposed to evil ideas, and we may never be able to drive the devil out of her, though God knows we’ve tried.” Sorrowfully, he said, “I’ve been cruelly hard on my own daughter, but it’s failed to restore her soul. All I can do is make sure that no one else is lost.”
“Well, they won’t be through us,” Jon declared. “We have our own partners aboard our starship and we’ve no interest in seducing local women.”
“You misunderstand. For her to take a lover would be sinful, but in time the sin might be forgiven. To be seduced by the devil is worse, since if she never renounces him she will be doomed to hell for all eternity—as are outsiders who have fallen for his lies and aspired to his powers.”
Terry did not know quite what to make of this. He was aware that some religious minorities believed literally in a personified devil, but what evil had the girl been exposed to if not illicit sex? An evil with which any outsider might contaminate others? It didn’t really matter when the father was adamant about not letting them near the settlement, but he was curious.
They were given a locally-programmed phone and settled on the grass near the landing pad to wait for a call. After several hours it came, and Jon negotiated the price of the wine they were offered, which was to be delivered at dawn the next day. Though they could have gone back to Vagabond to sleep, Terry decided that camping out would be less effort and a rather pleasant novelty. They didn’t need shelter; it was a warm, cloudless night and Jon had had too few opportunities to see the stars from a planet’s surface.
Late in the night, they were wakened by a soft voice only a few meters from them. “Please, traders—wake up! Wake up!”
Terry sat up, startled, and saw a young man—really no more than a boy—crouched next to the tarp on which they’d been sleeping. “I snuck out,” he said. “Becka’s dad will kill me if he finds out. But he’s killing her already—he’s beaten her with a belt every day since the last traders left, and she won’t give in. I’ve got to get her away from here.”
“Beaten her!” Terry exclaimed in horror. “Why?”
“To cast out the devil. I–I think he really might kill her sometime, because the Bible says ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’”
“You mean he thinks his daughter is a witch? Why does he believe such nonsense?” Surely, in a colony with technology as modern as this one’s, the people knew better.
“She can tell what people are thinking,” the boy said. “She always could—it didn’t feel like the devil’s doing but everyone says he deceives people, so she didn’t tell anybody but me. Then the traders came, a man and a woman, and we went to look at their ship. We asked about Earth, and the man said there’s trouble there over people being attacked because they can hear silent thoughts, or believe others can. And then the woman said she read on the Net that a prophecy says someday more people will be able to do it—that it’s a good thing that will make the world better.”
Oh, my God, Terry thought.
The boy went on, “I told Becka her parents wouldn’t believe that, and she’d better keep quiet, but she insisted she’d known inside it wasn’t evil and now she had proof. She got the traders to talk about it when they came to her house for dinner, and her dad got into a rage. He made them leave and locked Becka in her room, and he says he’ll keep on beating her until she admits she’s possessed by the devil—but I know she won’t. She told me that if other people are suffering for the same thing, she’s not going to be the one to lie.”
With a sinking heart, Terry realized what had to be done. Indirectly, he was responsible for this girl’s plight, and even if he hadn’t been, he couldn’t let a psi-gifted young woman—or any young woman—be beaten to death. Yet if he found a way to help her escape, she’d have no place to go . . . and the boy who’d helped might be in danger, too. He would have to take them both offworld.
~ 33 ~
No interstellar travel regulation was taken more seriously than the law against transporting unauthorized persons from one world to another, Terry knew. A starship captain who violated it would lose his license and, in most cases, would serve time in a penal colony; that was why he’d needed forged crew status for Jon, Alison and Gwen. All passengers without such status must have transit permits. No colony was willing to accept tourists or immigrants who might be fleeing the consequences of crimes committed elsewhere, and many did not allow their own citizens to emigrate. A transit permit must therefore be obtained from Fleet, by ansible if there was no local base, before a traveler could embark. No exceptions were made.
Obviously, these young people could not get transit permits. They might not even have IDs; some colonies didn’t register anyone but those who did business with offworlders. So he'd have to not only get them onto the shuttle unobserved, but sneak them off it in Stelo Haveno—and what would they do after they were there? Without IDs they’d be arrested. He didn’t know anybody who could hide them. . . . And all this presupposed that he could somehow get Becka out of the room in which she was locked without alerting her father.
Inwardly, Terry cursed the traders who’d had no more sense than to talk about psi powers to people in a colony such as this one. Still, they couldn’t have known the girl was psi-gifted, and in any case they’d probably had no idea how the adults would react; he had read much more widely than most people and knew more about ancient beliefs and customs. In any case he had been actively spreading rumors about the “prophecy” symbolized by Estel; he couldn’t complain when someone followed his lead.
To the boy, Josh, he said, “Do you know what room Becka is in? From the outside of her house, I mean.”
“Sure. I’ve talked to her from under her window, that’s how I know what’s happening to her.”
“Is it big enough for her to get out through?”
“Yes, but somebody’s got to help her, or hold me up while I do—I can’t reach it.
And she’s hurt. I don’t think she’s strong enough to jump.”
Well, he and Jon could handle that, Terry thought, but they’d be taking their lives in their hands if the farmer was within hearing distance. “What kind of place is it?” he asked. “Just vineyards, or are there outbuildings?”
“There’s the one where they process the grapes. And a chicken coop.”
“How close to the house? Can you see the coop from Becka’s window?”
“No, it’s around back on the other side of the driveway.”
Frowning, Terry considered it. He hated to do any real damage, but a man who beat his daughter with a belt repeatedly had it coming, and the chickens were destined to be killed anyway. “If the coop caught fire,” he said slowly, “her parents would try to put it out, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t go back inside until they did.”
“There’s a fence around it with a locked gate. We couldn’t get close enough to set it on fire.”
“Well, I think I could.” A chicken coop was full of dry straw that would be easy to ignite with his mind, even from outside a fence. “Do they suspect that you’ve been in contact with her, Josh, or that you’d try to help her escape?”
“No, I made a big show of asking to see her and slinking off defeated when they wouldn’t let me. Her dad doesn’t think anybody would dare defy him, even about other things. He’s used to being obeyed.”
“I won’t insult you by asking if you’re willing to take a risk,” Terry said, “because you already have, by coming to us. But I’ve got to be sure you realize that you may have to leave here for good, and you may not be safe from trouble where we’re going.”
“That’s okay,” Josh said. “I don’t like this place much. I don’t want to be a winegrower, I want to see other worlds.”
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 65