The Rowan

"I think I'll introduce a fine for companies that do not keep in twenty-four contact with their field installations," muttered Interior, jotting down a note in capital italics.

"Say again?" "Look!" she said as the Company's personnel files scrolled past. "Fifteen kids between the ages of one month and five years. How much detail does your clairvoyant need?" "I don't even know if she'll help us," the Commissioner said ruefully. "She hasn't opened a connection to my calls." The crying started up again, was cut off, and continued with a desperate edge to the wail.

"That child is growing weaker," the Medic exclaimed as he barreled into the Incident room. "If she's buried in a mudslide, she's got no food or water - and maybe not much air left." The printer murmured to itself, smoothly extruding new copy. Interior bent over it, groaning with a note of despair in her voice.

"I ordered a comparison survey of the terrain before and after the slide. There're ravines fifty-meters deep now with mud and debris.

The slide is sixty-klicks wide in places. If she's buried in any depth of mud, she'll be asphyxiated soon. Particularly if she keeps crying like this, using up her oxygen.

The Commissioner moved to a console, gesturing for the others to step back. "I'm adding a Mayday to her private code but whether she'll answer or not…" "Yes?" The guttural voice dwelt on the sibilant. No picture appeared on the screen.

"Have you heard the crying?" "Who hasn't? I could have told you Siglen wouldn't help. It's beyond her capabilities. Bouncing parcels from place to place requires no finesse, since the gestalt does all the work." As there was no visual contact, the Commissioner rolled his eyes at the bite in Yegrani's tone. For years, there had been enmity between the telekinetic and the clairvoyant, though the Commissioner happened to know the original fault was more of Siglen's making than Yegrani's.

"There is fear that the child is running out of air, Yegrani. The mud is fifty-meters deep in places along a 150-klick swathe. We've plenty of…"

"Look to the left above the Oshoni valley, on a ledge, approximately two klicks from the tongue of mud. She's not deeply entrenched but the hopper skin has been fractured and sludge is oozing in. She is frantic. Siglen has done nothing to reassure the child as a sensitive, caring person would have done. Guard this one well. She has a long and lonely road to go before she travels. But she alone will be the focus that will save us from a far greater disaster than the one she has escaped. Especially guard the guardian." The connection severed but as soon as Yegrani had "sighted" the child's position, the Secretary of the Interior had forwarded a printout of the conversation to the rescue teams, waiting in their special vehicles.

The Governor himself requested the launch and gave Altair's Prime the coordinates. She did not ask how they had been obtained but faultlessly sent the mission speeding to its destination.

"Did she mean "left" looking at the bloody thing, on its left?" demanded the captain as the rescue team emerged after their journey.

Their shells had slid to a halt on the valley floor, just where the out thrusting "tongue" of mud ended. "Phaugh!" he pinched his nostrils, "the stench of minta's enough to choke you! Let me see that geo print." "The ledge should be there!" his second in command exclaimed, pointing to their right. "Solid ground, too, from which to work." "Get the two klick fIx," the captain ordered, pointing to the scan operator. Stay off that mud! Anyone who falls in has to walk home." The team scrambled to the stone out thrust above the ledge and brought their detectors to bear in careful sweeps. An intrusion was detected approximately ten meters out in the mud. The medic extended his sensitive equipment and caught vital signs. The digger boom was rigged and swung out. Two volunteers, on cables linked to the boom, descended into the ooze above the point of detection and began to shovel the muck away. As fast as they shoveled, the uncooperative sludge slid back in.

"I want that suction tube and now!" cried the captain, inwardly well satisfied with the instant obedience to that order.

The hopper, wedged on to the outcropping, was not deep and once a large enough surface was cleared, the tractor beam was attached. It fought the suction of the mud while the shovel team worked with desperate speed, muttering about kinetics never being where you needed them. Suddenly sufficient air got under the hopper to break the seal, and only the quick reflexes of those on the bank kept the craft from colliding forcefully with the tractor arm. The little vehicle swung and bumped about before finally settling to solid ground.

Mud sheeted off the hull and oozed from the fracture, as the entire team watched anxiously. How much of that stuff had seeped into the interior? Everyone was immensely relieved to hear a thin, tremulous cry, mental and physical. As one, the team attacked the battered door to wrench it open.

"Mommie?" A tattered, bruised, mud-encased child crawled to the threshold, sobbing with relief, squinting in the sudden daylight.