There was little cargo to be had on Skyros and no opportunity to sell it at Moonbase or on Earth, so Terry was out of the free trading business. He didn’t need it; he was now fully occupied with smuggling people. He wondered if Fleet would attempt to keep count if they knew; if so, there would be hundreds of charges against him. That would make no difference to his fate if he was caught; just a few, combined with the crimes of which he was already accused, would be enough to condemn him.
In theory, since the refugees didn’t have transit permits, they had to be smuggled onto Skyros as well as off Earth. They couldn’t be landed in broad daylight despite the forged IDs they'd been given. Since there was a community ready to aid them, this was rarely a problem. On occasions when there was a Fleet merchant ship in orbit, Terry had to be careful, and on the remote chance that his face might be recognized from “wanted” transmissions, he let Jon or Gwen, for whom he obtained a legal Class C license, fly the shuttle. But there were no serious incidents.
All of them liked Skyros. They stayed a night or two each time they came, taking turns remaining with Bright Hope, and they found good friends, good food, and comfortable beds waiting for them. Usually there was a party. And there was always a gathering where he spoke of Estelan ideas, referring to the Captain of Estel in third person, but inspiring listeners through his own growing ability to establish telepathic rapport.
He didn’t have to worry about having no time to visit other colonies. Visitors who arrived from them were familiar with Net rumors about Estel; there was no world that had not heard of its Captain and the actions taken in his name. The fact that no one had ever seen him magnified his influence. The officers at Stelo Haveno, who alone had seen him, kept quiet about it, mistakenly assuming that interest in him would increase if it were acknowledged that he was real. Presumably they had sent a report to Headquarters about his escape, but Fleet, Terry knew, was a ponderous bureaucracy, and he did not expect them to pursue his case. If they had done a full biometric search on every captain who orbited the Moon they would have him by now, but he wasn’t considered important enough for that.
The visits to Skyros were happy and the transit time in normal space was productive. On outbound trips the crew socialized with the refugees and Alison, as an experienced psychotherapist, counseled those who had suffered trauma. When by themselves, inbound to Earth, Terry used neurofeedback to teach her and the others how to preserve their health by controlling their heart rate and inner biochemistry. Probably neither he nor they would live as long as the Maclairnans did, not having developed such skills in adolescence, but at least they wouldn’t die of an illness produced by stress.
Good as life was on Skyros and in space, the time in Earth orbit was another matter. Terry dreaded it. They weren’t constantly in danger; there were only a few hours each trip when refugees were being brought aboard, after which he departed at maximum speed. It took a day or two to make contact with Zach’s agents, however, and sometimes longer for them to get the refugees off the ground. Occasionally Jon or Gwen had to take Bright Hope’s shuttle down to pick them up, and that was perilous. Terry would have preferred to go himself, but as Alison pointed out, if one of the others was arrested Bright Hope could go on saving people, whereas if he was, it couldn’t. More importantly, he felt he must stick to his vow not to land on Earth; orbiting was okay, but on the surface he might meet mentors.
This had become a more worrisome consideration, for mentors were now seeking him. When he first got a message through Zach’s friends that the Captain of Estel should be told that he had followers at Earth’s Bramfield Clubs, Terry was dismayed; he assumed they had somehow connected him with the warning he’d sent to the Maclairn Foundation. But that was impossible. There was nothing in it that could suggest a link either to Estel or to him. He soon realized that they must simply have decided that since the Captain of Estel’s ideas were so similar to theirs, it might be good to join forces. That was natural enough. They wouldn’t be planning to tell him about Maclairn—they just wanted to give him mind training and offer their support of his mission. It was ironic, since his goal had always been to support them.
It would be disastrous, of course, if Maclairnans found out that he knew what went on at the Bramfield Clubs. From the beginning he’d been careful to avoid saying anything that might imply that he did. Now he became more wary than ever. Yet the mentors didn’t stop trying to contact him. Perhaps they feared that someone who’d received training from them had given them away, and were trying to trace the leak. The more he thought about it, the more Terry felt that this was likely. It was indeed odd that a man without any connection could have come up with the same convictions about mind faculties; why had that never occurred to him? It didn’t matter, since he wouldn’t have acted differently if it had. But he was sorry they had to be kept in the dark.
The situation became critical when one day at Moonbase, waiting to enter the space dock for service on Bright Hope, Terry received a direct comm call from a woman who identified herself as a devotee of Estel. She would like to know more about it, she said. She had heard he knew how to get in touch with its Captain. Could she come over in a shuttle to talk about him?
The call came from Promise.
Oh God, Terry thought. It must be a member of its crew. That would mean a Fleet officer, but she wouldn’t necessarily know about the Captain’s crimes; they wouldn’t have been mentioned in official dispatches to Maclairn. Rumors about Estel might have reached there, and in any case would have been heard by the crew while on shore leave at Moonbase or on Earth. Or she could have been asked specifically by mentors to investigate. She could even have been asked by Kathryn!
Kathryn. She undoubtedly knew of the rumors. As Maclairn’s ambassador, she might be behind the entire effort to find the Captain of Estel, might even be hoping to meet him.
It would be so simple. He had been made physically unrecognizable; he could see her, ask about her son, and she would not guess. He didn’t want to reopen that chapter of his life, and yet . . . all he’d have to do was tell this officer that he’d be willing to visit Promise. . . .
But no. His face wasn’t recognizable, but his mind-touch would be. Even if Kathryn didn’t grasp who he was, she would sense that he knew about Maclairn. And because their bond had been close, she would probably sense his knowledge of the Elders just as a mentor would.
“I’m sorry,” he told the woman who had called, “but there’s really no more I can tell you than what’s already on the Net, and right now I’m on my way into the space dock.” When the work on Bright Hope was finished he moved quickly to Earth orbit and, once his passengers were aboard, headed with relief out to Skyros.
After that he was nervous when near Earth or the Moon, adding to the discomfort he always felt when watching the news from there. The Klan was becoming bolder. This, Terry felt, was related to the ever more offensive diatribes of Quaid, whose Net show was quite popular. As López had said, Quaid had become a leader within the Klan and although this was not publicly acknowledged, everyone with leanings in that direction knew it.
And an increasing number of people did have such leanings. It wasn’t just that they feared psi. The government conspirators had succeeded in making it a scapegoat for all the ills of Earth’s depressing, decaying civilization. Quaid had imported from Ciencia the notion that unscientific thinking was responsible for the failure to eliminate pollution, poverty and squalor, and the enemies of Maclairn had seized that notion with zeal. As on pre-reformation Ciencia, the concept of the “supernatural” was extended beyond psi and volitional control of the body to everything spiritual or imaginative—although promoters of this fallacy were not above simultaneously condemning “witchcraft” in the name of religion.
More and more, they were exploiting the growing aversion to the so-called paranormal for political ends—overtly political, not just in recognizing that suppression of personal mind-power weakens resistance to authority. To Terry’s horror, he arrived
at Earth near the end of his second year of refugee rescue to discover that Commissioner Hiller was running for the position of League Premier.
Hiller was one of the original undercover enemies of Maclairn. Terry remembered him as a rather pompous bureaucrat who had once subtly threatened him with a suggestion that pirates might attack Promise, “pirates” he had undoubtedly hired. More ominously, he had very likely been among those who conspired with Quaid to attack the colony with bioweapons. He certainly wasn’t competent to assume leadership of the entire League, so no doubt he was slated to be a figurehead; and the thought of what might be behind his candidacy was frightening. It meant that the conspirators at League Headquarters would no longer be mere conspirators, but would have full control of the government.
Terry clenched his fists in anger and frustration. His deepest fear was about to be realized: if the rabid opponents of psi got complete control of Fleet, they would withdraw the cruiser Shepard from Maclairn. Then Maclairn would be at the mercy of whoever might land on it, and there was little doubt as to who that would be.
The Klan. The Klan would move in on Maclairn, secretly of course because attacks on one planet by another were prohibited by the League charter and Fleet was sworn to enforce it—but officers loyal to the charter could not enforce it when the planet being attacked was isolated and unknown to exist. They would not even be told what was happening.
The mentors on Earth could do nothing. They could read the handwriting on the wall as well as he could, and would guess that Shepard was gone even before Promise arrived to say so. They would wait helplessly, knowing their loved ones on Maclairn were in danger but unable to take any action. It wouldn’t be the danger of which he’d warned them; a government in power, unlike a small group of conspirators, could not sanction genocide, for if word got out it would be held responsible. Instead, it would let the Klan do the dirty work through its usual tactics—not bothering with white robes or a low profile, but simply unleashing violent hate. If the ruin came to light and the Klan was blamed, so be it—it had always been a tool and was expendable.
Would the Elders step in? They were guarding Maclairn, would know when the cruiser left, and would see the intruders arrive. But there would be too many intruders to deal with secretly, which was something they hadn’t anticipated. It would be self-defeating for them to take action resulting in the revelation they believed would harm humankind. They would grieve for Maclairn and for the loss of its influence on Earth, but they would not intervene.
Cold with horror at this thought, Terry knew that he had to do something—he didn’t know what, but something. He had saved Maclairn from destruction before, and it was now up to him to save it again.
~ 49 ~
Throughout the next trip to Skyros, Terry could think of little else but the dilemma he was facing. He had, of course, made plenty of comments on Earth’s Net opposing Hiller, both in public forums and, via hacking, in various other places. But that was not enough. Somehow, he decided, the Ku Klux Klan must be exposed.
He had known all along that the Klan would not be tolerated if it acted openly, in force. In ancient times like the early twentieth century it had held demonstrations and parades, but most people today abhorred hate groups—at least in public. Its strength lay in pretending it didn’t exist while letting vulnerable individuals know, through Net rumors and small-scale acts of terrorism, that it did. The police ignored such acts. They could not ignore a major public incident involving violence.
And if that incident occurred just before the election, and Hiller was known to have instigated it, he would lose.
But how could Hiller be induced to instigate it? And if he could, how could violence occur without actually endangering anyone?
Hiller might be dealing with the Klan behind closed doors, just as he had dealt with the thugs he’d hired to pose as pirates. But he wasn’t compelling enough to be among its leaders. Quaid, on the other hand—Quaid was known to be one of them, and he had a large Net following. He was actively campaigning for Hiller, which might well be payback for the commissioner’s surreptitious support of Klan activity. He was motivated by fanaticism rather than politics, he had no scruples, and if he was confronted with accusations he would not hesitate to shift the blame.
Quaid, to be sure, was too smart to instigate a major public incident. He surely knew that it would arouse opposition to the Klan. But his antipathy to all things “unscientific” was so great that it overwhelmed the dictates of reason. In his tirades, he got carried away by repressed fear and hatred. And what, or who, was he likely to hate most of all?
The Captain of Estel.
Terry, calling himself Captain of Estel before there was such a ship, had bested Quaid during interrogation in prison, had frightened him by his mysterious ability to resist torture, had thwarted his plan for a biochemical attack on Maclairn—and later, had denounced him to the colleagues he had cheated, necessitating his escape from Ciencia. Since then the Captain of Estel had become a public symbol of all that he most despised. Quaid had put a price on his head yet he’d managed to elude all the bounty hunters. To say the man hated him was a colossal understatement. And he would therefore be easily provoked.
A plan began to form in Terry’s mind. It was a desperate plan, a horrifyingly dangerous plan, one he dared not confide to Alison or even to Jon. It might well require sacrificing more than he had in defeating the two terrorists, for now he had more to lose. And it would mean breaking his vow not to land on Earth. But it was the only way he could see to save Maclairn from the Klan.
He would need help and money, and these could come only from Zach. His idea was too complicated to be discussed through ansible messages, so he would have to go to Centauri. The Fleet officers at Centauri’s spaceport might recognize him; if they did, they would arrest him. And what excuse could he give to his crew for going there?
No excuse was possible. He would have to tell them part of the truth.
He waited until they’d left Skyros and were near the end of the normal-space transit to jump distance. Then he called them together in the lounge. “Look,” he said, “there’s something I’ve got to do, and I can’t say much about it. All I can tell you is why I have to act.”
They looked at him in bewilderment, and Alison said, “I know there’s something wrong, Terry—I’ve known since before we left Earth. You haven’t been yourself, even when we’re alone together.”
That was true; he hadn’t made love because he couldn’t let their minds merge, which during sex was inevitable. “I told you all at the beginning that there’d be things I had to hide,” he reminded them. “Well, this is connected to Maclairn, and you do know how I feel about that, how much I care what happens to it—”
“Of course. You found a way to send the warning; it wasn’t—too late, was it?” Oh, God, Terry, don’t more terrorists got there!”
“No, but the Klan will if Hiller wins the election. He’ll recall the cruiser that’s protecting Maclairn. It’s a small colony with no defenses and no police; they’ll burn everything in sight, and kill, too, because Hiller and his friends want it neutralized.”
“Then he mustn’t win,” Jon declared. “The colonies won’t vote for him, but from what I’ve heard, he’s got Earth sewed up, at least among people who bother to vote at all.”
“That’s what I’ve got to change,” Terry said. “I know it sounds impossible and maybe it is, but I have to try.”
“To fix an election? That does seem dicey, even given your hacking skills,” Gwen said.
“Hacking alone can’t do it,” Terry agreed, “though that will be involved. The first step is to go to Centauri and talk to Zach, so that’s where we’re going to jump now.”
They didn’t contest it, and during the days of approach in normal space after the jump, they respected his evident unwillingness to talk about his plan. At night in bed Alison lay silent in his arms, understanding why he went no further, and the worry Terry sensed in her tore at his
heart. She had a right to be worried. Without knowing any of the facts, she perceived that they might soon be separated.
The landing on Centauri went smoothly enough; Spaceport Control had no reason to connect Bright Hope with Estel or with Coralie, the name under which they’d known it. The only risky part lay in being recognized by someone on the field, and since he didn’t land until well after dark, that was unlikely. It wasn’t until he was through the gate and into the city that it dawned on him that people on the street might recognize him. It had been over two years since he’d been mobbed, yet there had been the newscasts, too, which might have made an impression. He pulled a skull cap down over his face and reached Zach’s Emporium as fast as could get there.
He’d messaged Zach from orbit that he was coming, which was, naturally, a big surprise to him. “I’m glad to see you, Steward—or is it Ryan, now, for more than just ansible addressing? The report I got from Jenna wasn’t too clear.”
“In private it’s still Steward, or rather, Terry. But Tom Ryan anywhere Fleet or the Klan might hear of me. I’ve got a long list of felonies on my record.”
“You need a place to hide out away from your ship?”
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 75