These stemmed from various motives. The religious opponents maintained that psi was the work of the devil; many of them apparently believed this literally, as Becka’s father had, rather than recognizing it as a metaphor. Terry found this hard to comprehend, though he knew from his reading that some people’s minds really did perceive ideas in terms of concrete images rather than in abstract form. What they feared, they projected onto an external entity they felt justified in hating, and while in principle this was better than hating psi-gifted humans, all too many of them used it to excuse abuse of humans they considered “possessed.” Because the idea of strange new abilities involved strong emotion, they were easily led into action they would never have taken under normal circumstances—which was why Becka had been beaten and why otherwise-ordinary people joined the Ku Klux Klan.
Sickening as it was, this reaction was at least sincere. The rants of the men who promoted it were much worse. Some of the preachers, he suspected, had had no true religious objections to psi, but merely wanted the power—and sometimes money—that could be acquired by exploiting people’s fear of what was different and their natural wish to combat evil. Such exploitation had gone on throughout history; there was nothing new about it. But psi and related mind faculties were new to most people, so there was greater scope for it than in the recent past, and technology enabled it to be spread more widely. Moreover, the conspirators in the government were undoubtedly behind it.
To his dismay, Terry saw that there was more going on than a mere attempt to suppress awareness of individual mind-powers. The conspirators had always been a small minority within the government, working in secret without any wish to gain open support. Now, they appeared to have political ambitions. He suspected that they were aiming to influence the outcome of elections, and perhaps to eventually attain high office—even to take over the actual administration of the League. If the voters could be stirred up enough. . . . Chilled, he realized that it would mean a plunge from bureaucracy into an oppressive regime that would be impossible to overcome without widespread violence, a regime under which Maclairn’s plan might not survive.
Not all the rabble-rousers used religion as an excuse; some took the opposite line of attack and maintained that belief in psi was objectionable on scientific grounds. Just as on Ciencia, they claimed that any form of unscientific thinking was not only foolish but harmful. “Centuries of effort have been expended to defeat superstition,” declared one orator, speaking live on the Net. “Yet still it infects society. You wonder why civilization is on the verge of collapse? You wonder why no authoritative leadership has succeeded in eliminating sickness and poverty? It is because superstition has been allowed to encroach on reason again, and fools have listened to those who would drag us back into the Dark Ages. This infection must be expunged. We must drive out the purveyors of false notions about mind and spirit before they contaminate young people who know no better than to fall for such nonsense, put an end to these pernicious lies before it’s too late. . . . ”
Terry forced himself to watch tirades of this sort in the hope of learning how the conspiracy operated. They were familiar, even this man’s voice was familiar . . . He had been listening with half his mind and his eyes weren’t on the screen, but at the word “contaminate,” which rang a bell, he looked up—and saw, with shock, the speaker’s face.
It was Quaid.
Quaid, on Earth! He must have escaped retribution on Ciencia by persuading his contacts among the government conspirators to send a charter ship for him, perhaps by threatening to expose their part in the the plot to destroy Maclairn. No wonder he’d been in a position to induce them to offer a bounty for the man he no doubt suspected was responsible for its failure. Oh, God, Terry thought—Jon had been right. He shouldn’t have made that broadcast denouncing Quaid; it had backfired.
Jon . . . Quaid had known very well that Terry was Jon Darrow’s friend, that he had allowed himself to be arrested in order to save him from prison. Had he guessed that Jon’s presumed death in space had been faked? If so, he might well have offered a bounty for Jon, too, intending to use him as bait. And Jon was missing. . . .
But Jon and Gwen had new names; Quaid could not possibly know them. Even if word had gotten to him that they’d been members of Estel’s crew at Stelo Haveno, he couldn’t connect them with the identities they had now. Unless . . . unless bounty hunters had connections in Fleet through which they’d learned what ship carried the deportees. They could have monitored its comm, watched its shuttle dock at the transit station to see if anyone of Jon’s description disembarked.
Surely that was far-fetched, Terry told himself. But underneath he knew it wasn’t. Precognitively—or perhaps through remote sensing—he perceived that it wasn’t.
“I’m helpless!” he told Alison in agony. “I can’t leave the ship unguarded, and trying to reach Zach through the arcade wouldn’t work fast enough anyway. The police on the Moon don’t bother with missing person reports any more than they do on Earth, and even if they did—”
“If they did, you’d have to tell them how to contact you,” she pointed out, “and if it’s true that they’ve been corrupted by your enemies, you’d be walking into a trap.”
“But I can’t just do nothing.”
Alison, superficially calm as always, said quietly, “There’s nothing you can do but wait. If it’s true, you’ll get a ransom demand, and they won’t hurt Jon; he’s of no value to them if not there to be ransomed.”
“God, Alison. Of course they’ll hurt him. They don’t know how to reach me and they’ll try to make him tell them.”
She blanched. “He hasn’t had the mind training.”
“No.” Their eyes met with anguished awareness—Jon was the only one of the crew who didn’t know how to stop suffering from pain. He knew Jon wouldn’t betray him voluntarily, but anyone without some sort of preparation was vulnerable. . . .
When some hours later the comm announced a hail from an approaching shuttle, Terry was so near panic that he could scarcely respond. It was a free trader’s shuttle, as might be expected; any demand made of him wouldn’t come through official channels even if the League conspirators were back of it. And it probably wasn’t a demand. If bounty hunters already knew where he was, why would they bother to ask for his surrender?
“HS Bright Hope, this is HS Goldfire,” the voice said. “Request permission to dock our shuttle. Over.”
How had they known his ship’s new name? Had Jon been forced to tell, by a threat to Gwen if other attempts to break him had failed? “Goldfire, identify your captain and your business with us,” Terry said, steadying his voice. “Over.”
He couldn’t prevent them from docking, and in any case there was a chance they might have Jon with them. He would have to let them board. He hoped that at least Alison could hide; once they had him at their mercy, they’d have no use for her.
“Bright Hope, this is Captain López of Goldfire, aboard the shuttle,” came the reply. “I’m here to arrange for delivery of your package. Over.”
Package? That was an odd way to put it. It was probably just a ruse. “I’m not expecting any package,” he replied.
“Captain Ryan, we understood that you had agreed to accept one,” the shuttle pilot replied. “It comes from a box belonging to Zach Dyllon.”
Oh, my God, Terry thought. Zach must have contacted Jenna and learned the name he was using; the shuttle must be his agent’s, bringing refugees. “Permission to dock granted,” he said shortly. “Out.”
How could he accept refugees now, when he was sick with worry about Jon and in any case couldn’t leave the solar system without him? Yet he had promised to take them, and if they’d been brought from Earth, both they and the pilot who’d transported them might be in serious danger.
In frozen silence Terry waited for López to dock, trying to decide what to say. This might be his only chance to make a contact through which he might locate Jon—Zach had underworld contacts who migh
t know where to look. But would they be willing to, considering that it would be likely to lead to trouble?
When docking was complete and the airlock opened, only one person accompanied López into the ship, a woman with long, blond hair and heavy makeup who was dressed like a cheap hooker. Strange, Terry thought, that they’d send just one—and then in the next instant the woman rushed forward and he saw that it was Gwen.
“We were waiting to board the shuttle for Earth and three men grabbed me,” she told him. “Jon tried to fight them off but they forced us into a robocar and then a different shuttle, and took us to the Moon, the lowest underground level, and Jon—” her voice broke and she stumbled into Alison’s embrace, at the same time tearing off the disguising wig.
“Where’s Jon now?” Terry asked urgently.
“Still in their hideout,” Gwen said shakily. “When they saw they couldn’t make him talk, they let me go. They said it was so I could take you a ransom demand, but I knew they’d track me—they don’t care about ransom, they just want to find you. I couldn’t send a message, they’d be able to trace that. So I went up to the main level and bought the wig and these clothes, and dumped everything I’d been wearing they might have tagged with a tracker. And then I went to the arcade like Jenna said, and told the man behind the bar that I’d come to pick up Zach’s box. He let me see the manager and after a few hours Captain López came for me.”
“We have refugees in hiding who need to get out,” López said, “and there’s no time to waste. But I figured you’d want to know about your copilot first.”
“I’m not leaving without him,” Terry declared. “Do you know where the hideout is?”
“From what Gwen told us, I can guess. Guys in the bounty business—and I admit I’m one of them—keep tabs on the competition. There’s just one scumbag active at Moonbase right now who’d have the connections to learn what ship to meet, and I know where he hangs out.” He added scornfully, “Me, I go after criminals, and when I turn them over to the law I collect what’s due me. I don’t try to extort more cash from their friends.”
“They’re not aiming for ransom,” Terry said grimly. “They want me, because I’m worth more than Jon—if there’s a bounty on him at all, it’s just to get at me.”
“That fits what Zach said—he put the word out that there’s a still bigger bounty on this Captain of Estel everyone’s talking about, and that you know how to reach the guy. He made damn sure we heard that anyone who wants to stay friends with him had better keep hands off both of you.”
Gwen, fighting back tears, said “Jon made me promise not to come to you—he was afraid I’d be watched, and that if I did get through, you’d try to rescue him. He doesn’t want that; it’s too risky. But oh, God, Terry—”
Terry’s heart contracted. It would be not merely risky, but suicidal. Yet he couldn’t leave Jon in a bounty hunter’s hands. . . .
“At least if he’s wanted for bait they won’t kill him,” said López, “and if they were going to sell him to someone higher up, they’d have done it by now. But as for rescue, it doesn’t look good. We’d need more men to have any hope of it, and I’m in no position to call in favors.”
“I’ll pay all I’ve got,” Terry said, realizing that even if he kept only what was needed for supplies to maintain Estel’s life support, it wouldn’t be enough
“What do you know about where the bounty’s coming from?” López asked. “Is the boss likely to move in fast if he hears someone’s holding out on him?”
“If I know Quaid, whoever holds out on him will be made sorry.”
“Quaid? My God, that’s the guy from nowhere who’s muscling his way into the Klan. Is the Klan after you specifically, Ryan? Because if it is, you’d better jump as far as your ship can go while you still have the chance.”
“Quaid’s interest in me is personal. I wouldn’t have thought he’d had time to get any sway over the Klan, though he shares its sick aims—but if he’s got influence there, then yes, I’ve been targeted by it, as well as by his government cronies. If they get us both, they’re likely to kill Jon in front of me, slowly.” Seeing Gwen’s face, Terry tried too late to bite back the words.
“Then you’ve got to face facts and get out of here. You can’t help him by staying and you could do him harm.”
López was right, Terry knew. He bowed his head, at a loss for where to turn. Logic told him he should go, yet he couldn’t bring himself to do that.
~ 46 ~
Seeing that Terry wouldn’t budge, López agreed to ask around and see if he could verify Jon’s location and recruit men willing to aid a potential Klan victim. They helped the refugees, Terry thought hopefully, and that involved risk. But not as much risk as an armed confrontation.
Somehow, he got through the rest of the day and the night that followed. Alison persuaded Gwen to use neurofeedback for relaxing tension and he did what he could to refresh their mind training, which momentarily distracted him from his own agony. Jon, he thought—steady, reliable Jon, who had lived for years in peril of arrest on Ciencia yet had gone on defying its corrupt government, who had never wanted anything more than a ship to fly and the freedom to use it as he chose, who had at last been happy when he became copilot of Estel, thinking the future was now bright for him . . . and who had offered to take the blame for the crime of helping Becka, to go to prison for it, in order to repay what he unnecessarily perceived as an outstanding debt. Who had begged Gwen not to report his capture lest the others risk themselves for him . . .
The next morning López returned, again without the refugees, which was a good sign because they had agreed that he would bring them if there was no chance of achieving anything by waiting.
“I lined up some pals of Zach’s willing to take on bounty hunters,” he said. “We’ll show up in force claiming to be Quaid’s men and scare the hell out of the losers stupid enough to hold out on him. But there will be a price, Ryan. It’s not the kind of job guys do for nothing.”
“I don’t expect them to,” Terry said, “but I haven’t got much to offer, short of my ship.” Would he give up Estel to save Jon? he thought in anguish. It would be worse than dying, yet he couldn’t not save him. . . .
“They don’t want your ship,” López said. “What they do want is passage on it for a guy named Nelson. He wants to get to Skyros, which is a long way from here.”
“Is that all? Of course I’ll take him. It means I can carry one less refugee, that’s all.”
“Well, you see, Nelson’s had some trouble with the law. He’s hot.”
“So am I,” Terry pointed out.
“Not for aiding and abetting the escape of a killer, which is what you’ll be guilty of once you let him onto your ship. He’s wanted for murder—it was a righteous killing, I think, but that doesn’t let you off the hook. If he’s caught and goes to trial you’ll go with him, and if you’ve already got other charges against you, you’re not likely to be released.”
“If I’m caught I won’t be released anyway; I’ve already escaped from custody twice, and Fleet’s got enough on me to convict, though they don’t yet know about half my so-called crimes.” Terry drew a breath of relief; it was like escaping a third time to know that Jon would have a chance.
He wanted to confront Jon’s captors personally, but López vetoed that. “One look at you shows you’re not experienced in this kind of work,” he said flatly.
“I know how to handle a gun.” He hadn’t actually used one in Fleet but he’d had considerable practice and had proved to be a good shot.
“No doubt, but we’re not planning to shoot these lowlifes and get ourselves charged with homicide. The idea is to scare them into thinking we’re from whoever’s paying the bounty, that he’s in a rage and will do worse things than shoot them if they don’t turn the captive over to us without a fight.”
It was true, Terry thought with chagrin, that he didn’t look like a man accustomed to violence and was not likely to be perceiv
ed as a threat apart from any weapon he might brandish. Latent telepathy would tell them he wasn’t a hireling of someone like Quaid, and in fact it might also tell them that he wouldn’t kill in cold blood. He wondered for a moment why the same couldn’t be said of López, but decided that he didn’t want to know.
“What if something went wrong?” Alison asked. “If you were killed or captured in freeing him, it would destroy Jon! He was devastated when you went to prison on Ciencia for his sake, and if the same thing happened again he’d never get over it.”
That too was true. Moreover, López pointed out that he’d agreed to transport Nelson and had to have Bright Hope ready to move out fast as soon as he and Jon were on board. So reluctantly he conceded that he couldn’t take part in the rescue.
The refugees, who had been hiding in Goldfire since escaping from Earth, were brought aboard first. There were two couples with two children each, all past preschool age. With the crew and Nelson, that would make thirteen people, but considering that none of the passengers had transit permits, being over the legal maximum would make the penalty no worse. Alison got them settled in the spare staterooms with the young girls sharing their parents’ quarters and the boys assigned to couches in the lounge. Nelson would also have to sleep there; Terry hoped he wasn’t really a murderer.
The story of what had happened to these people was horrifying. They had been members of a small church less dogmatic than some in which the congregation had been divided over the issue of whether the use of psi was sinful, and were among those who believed it wasn’t. Two of the kids had joined a group of teens who were fascinated by such faculties and were trying to learn about them—a sign, Terry thought, that the possibility was beginning to spread through the collective unconscious of new generations. The defenders of psi had prevailed in the congregation and had dismissed the pastor who’d been preaching against it, but his followers had been unwilling to accept the majority decision. Evidently some had been Klansmen, because one night the Klan had arrived during a meeting of the teen group and burned the church to the ground. One boy had died and others had been hospitalized for burns. The next day, vids of burning crosses had been sent to their parents’ Net addresses.
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 73