The Rowan

Torrents of rain covered the western side of the great Tranh mountain range of Altair, streaming in muddy runnels down slopes already saturated with nine days of steady precipitation. The sturdy minta trees were bloated and their root systems bulging to the surface, adding the slime of their overload of sap to the rivulets which increasingly dislodged the shallower root systems of the few brush varieties that could flourish in such rocky soil.

Little brooks matured into streams, then rivers, into cascades of increasing volume and force, filling up blind canyons until such deposits also overflowed. And the minta slime seemed to grease the watery ways.

After seven people had slipped and broken bones on the main street of the Rowan Mining Company's small settlement, the manager had ordered miners and their dependents to curtail all outdoor activities and arranged door-to-door deliveries for supplies, using the Company's sturdy hopper vehicles. Operations in the several producing shafts had already been suspended when the pits began filling. When the unceasing torrents began to interfere with transmissions, there weren't even entertainment circuits to amuse those immured in ever-dampening and cramped quarters.

In the same lugubrious vein, met reports gave no hope of an alteration in the deplorable conditions. The records show that, on the tenth day, the mine's manager asked his home office in Altair Port for permission to evacuate all nonessential personnel until the weather improved. His report pointed out that the accommodations were rather primitive and had not been constructed with excessive rainfall in mind.

He cited an alarming number of respiratory ailments among his people, almost epidemic in proportion. Enforced idleness and substandard conditions had also seriously undermined morale. He put in an urgent order for pumps to drain the shafts when, and if, the rain ever did stop.

The records showed that the directors debated withdrawal. That particular installation of the Rowan Company was only just showing some profit which would be wiped out by the cost of a perhaps unnecessary expense.

Meteorology was duly consulted and long-range satellite forecasts indicated that the rains were to abate within the next seventy-two hours, though arctic and antarctic pole conditions did not suggest any break in generally overcast weather, much less sunny intervals, within the next ten days. Approval to evacuate was withheld but advice on treatment of the respiratory complaints and appropriate medication was dispatched immediately to the Rowan Company's coordinates by the FT amp;T Prime.

It was early morning when the mudslide began, so high above the plateau on which the Rowan camp stood that it was not detected. A few people were already cautiously abroad, using their assigned hour with a hopper to do necessary errands, to the small infirmary for medicine for their sick, to the commissary for supplies. By the time the instrumentation in Operations registered the incident, it was already too late. The entire western face of the mintaclad slope was in motion, like a tsunami of mud, rock, and pulpy vegetation. Those outside saw their fate bearing down on them. Those inside their homes mercifully were unaware. Only one, a child still in the hopper while her mother carried her parcels quickly through the unabating rain to the house, escaped the disaster.

The sturdy little hopper was borne up on the lip of the sludge river, its ovoid shape an advantage, its heavy plastic hull slipping over, under, and along the inexorable slide of heavy, wet mud. Its occupant was bounced about, bruised, and knocked unconscious as the hopper rolled and caught, was freed and carried over a precipice, its fall cushioned by the mud that had preceded it. Nearly a hundred kilometers from the Rowan camp, it became wedged on an outcropping, covered by the vast river of sludge as the slide flowed on until its impetus was dissipated into the long deep Oshoni valley.

The crying began sometime after the mud ceased its downward flow.

A pleading, quavering appeal to a mother who did not answer. An announcement of hunger and hurt, sporadic at first, then increasingly insistent.

Abruptly the cry was cut off, and a whimpering took its place, a whimpering which rose in volume and intensity.

Was silenced again, during which time everyone with a psi rating of 9 or more experienced relief, for the nondirectional sound grated on the mental ears of the sensitive.

Throughout the settlements of Altair, a search was conducted to discover the injured, abandoned, or abused child whose distress was being broadcast planet wide.

"I've children of my own," the Secretary of the Interior Camella told the Police Commissioner as the Colonial officials met in the Governor's office in emergency session, "and that is the cry of a frightened, hurt, hungry child. It's got to be somewhere on Altair."

"We've done street searches, checked the hospital records of any potential psi children born within the last five years…" He shook his head over failure. He didn't himself have any Talent but he had a great respect and admiration for those who did.

"The crying pattern, the incoherency, the repetition, suggests an infant of two or three years," said the Chief Medical Officer. "Every sensitive on my staff has been trying to make contact." "What I don't understand is why it cuts off so suddenly," the Commissioner said, riffling through the reports he'd brought with him to show the extent of the search.

Opened for colonization a scant hundred years before, Altair did not have a large population - the present density surrounding Altair Port and City amounted to some five million, two hundred and fifty-three thousand, four hundred and two people. Another one million, seven hundred thousand and eighty-nine people were beginning to carve additional settlements, generally mining concerns exploiting the mineral and ore wealth of the great planet, across the planet's immense main continent.