The Rowan
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Tower and the Hive #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Rowan». Краткое содержание книги:
The kinetically gifted, trained in mind/machine gestalt, are the most valued citizens of the Nine Star League. Using mental powers alone, these few Prime Talents transport ships, cargo and people between Earth's Moon, Mars' Demos and Jupiter's Callisto.
An orphaned young girl, simply called The Rowan, is discovered to have superior telepathic potential and is trained to become Prime Talent on Callisto. After years of self-sacrificing dedication to her position, The Rowan intercepts an urgent mental call from Jeff Raven, a young Prime Talent on distant Deneb. She convinces the other Primes to merge their powers with hers to help fight off an attack by invading aliens. Her growing relationship with Jeff gives her the courage to break her status-imposed isolation, and choose the more rewarding world of love and family.
Now what the billy blue blazes are you doing, Rowan? Reidinger's base voice crackled in her skull. Have you lost what's left of your precious mind?
She's doing me a favor, Deneb said, abruptly joining them.
Who in the hell are you? demanded Reidinger. Then, in shocked surprise, Deneb? How do you get out there?
Wishful thinking. Hey, push those germdogs to my pretty end here, huh?
Now wait a minute! You're going a little too far, Deneb.
You can't burn out my best Prime with an unbiased send like this.
Oh, I'll pick up midway. Like those antibiotics this morning.
Deneb, what's this business with antibiotics and germdogs?
What are you cooking up out there in that heathenish hole?
Oh, we're merely fighting a few plagues with one hand and keeping three bogey ETs upstairs. Deneb gave them a look with his vision at an enormous hospital, a continuous stream of airborne ambulances coming in; at crowded wards, grim-faced nurses and doctors, and uncomfortably high piles of still, shrouded figures. That melded into a proximity screen showing the array of blips on an orbital hold. We haven't had the time or the technology to run IDs but our Security Chief says they're nothing he's seen before.
Well, I didn't realize. All right, you can have anything you want - within reason. But I want a full report, said Reidinger.
And patrol squadrons?
Reidinger's tone changed to impatience. You've obviously got an exaggerated idea of FT amp;T's influence. We're mailmen, not military.
I've no authority to mobilize patrol squadrons like that! There was a mental snap of fingers.
Would you perhaps drop a little word in the appropriate ear?
Those ETs may gobble Deneb tonight and go after Terra tomorrow.
I'm filing a report, of course, but you colonists agreed to the risks when you signed up!
You're all heart, said Deneb.
Reidinger was silent for a moment. Then he said, Germdogs sealed, Rowan. Pick 'em up and throw 'em out, and his touch left them.
Rowan - that's a pretty name, said Deneb.
Thanks, she said absently. She had followed along Reidinger's initial push, and picked up the two personnel carriers as they materialized beside her shell. She pressed into the station dynamos and gathered strength. The generators whined and she pushed out. The carriers disappeared.
They're coming in, Rowan. Thanks a lot!
A passionate and tender kiss was blown to her across the intervening light years of space. She tried to follow after the carriers and pick up his touch again, but he was no longer receiving.
She sank back in her couch. Deneb's sudden appearance had been immeasurably disconcerting. The strength, the vitality of his mind was magnetic. He had seemed to be inside the capsule with her, filling it with his droll humor and warmth. That was it! He was "warm" toward her and she had basked in that sensation like a sun-dodger. She had never achieved such an instant response to anyone since Turian, whom she often thought of wistfully.
Oh, she had always had rapport, contact, with others.
In fact, with anyone the Rowan chose to, but, with everyone below her own capability, there had always been an awkwardness, a reluctance that had inhibited her overtures. Siglen certainly had thrown shields across her most private thoughts, explaining them patronizingly as "no need to put old worries on young shoulders". Siglen, to this day, still considered the Rowan "a mere child" despite the fact that she'd been Callisto Prime for nearly ten years.
There were still times when the Rowan wished that Lusena had not died in that crash, days before Reidinger had appointed her to the new base on Jupiter's moon.
Lusena had been such a comfort, such a support, believing so firmly in her future, in the future promised by Yegrani: an ephemeral promise. So the Rowan had struggled to understand herself as she had earlier struggled to perfect control of her Talent.
"We who have been blessed with extraordinary powers," Siglen had been fond of declaring in a doleful tone, "cannot expect ordinary joys. We have an obligation to use our Talent to benefit all Humankind!It is our Fate to be singled out and single, the more to concentrate on our duties." There had been only Turian to prove an exception.
However, that had been ten long years ago now. And male Primes didn't have a problem fending suitable mates.
Reidinger had a score of children of varying degrees of competence. David on Betelgeuse was madly in love with his T-2 wife and concentrated on a duty to populate his system with as many high-potential Talent offspring as his wife would tolerate. The Rowan did not have any personal liking for David, though she could work with him satisfactorily. Capella was as eccentric as Siglen was conservative and her personality rubbed the Rowan the wrong way. For all the mental rapport the Rowan achieved with the other Primes, none of them were ever really "open" to her. Reidinger was usually at least sympathetic to some of her problems, but he had to be available every single moment to the myriad problems of the FT amp;T system. And the Rowan knew fully the loneliness that Yegrani had foretold with no diminution anywhere.
When the Rowan had been first assigned to Callisto Base, she had thought it was what the words of the Sight meant, for she was a focus.
After some months of the routine, the Rowan was severely disillusioned.
She was useful, yes: even essential for the smooth flow of material and messages between the Nine Star capitals, but any Prime would have done as well.
Once her enthusiasm died, she fell back on Siglen's dogmatic training and tried hard to find satisfaction, if not sublimation, in doing a difficult and taxing job well, suppressing her increasing sense of unrelieved isolation. Quite aware of her devastating loneliness, Reidinger had combed the Nine-Star League to find strong male talents, T-3s and T-4s like Afra, but she had never taken to any of them.
She liked Afra well enough, and not just because of her promise to his sister, Goswina, but not that well. The only male T-2 ever discovered in the Nine-Star League had been a confirmed homosexual.
And now, on Deneb, a T-1 had emerged, out of nowhere - and so very, very far away.
Afra, take me home now, she said, suddenly aware of physical and mental exhaustion.
Afra brought the shell down with infinite care.
After the others had left the Station, the Rowan lay for a long while in the personnel carrier. In her unsleeping consciousness she knew that Ackerman and the others had retired to their quarters until Callisto once more came out from behind Jupiter's bulk. Everyone had some place to go, someone waiting for them, except the Rowan, who made it all possible. The bitter, screaming loneliness that overcame her during her off-hours welled up - the frustration of being unable to go off-planet past Afra's sharply limited range - alone, alone with her two-edged Talent. Murky green and black swamped her mind until she remembered the blown kiss. Suddenly, completely, she fell into her first restful sleep in two weeks.
Rowan. It was Deneb's touch that roused her. Rowan, please wake up.
Hmmmm? Her response was reluctant for sleep had been deep and desirable.
Help, he said and faded. Our guests are getting rougher… since the germdogs whipped up a broad spectrum antibiotic… we thought they'd give up. No such. luck. They're… pounding us with the missiles… give my regards… to your spacelawyer friend…
Reidinger.
You're playing pitch with missiles? The Rowan came totally awake and alert. She could feel Deneb's contact cutting in and out: he must be deflecting the bombardment.
I need backup help, sweetheart, like you and… any twin sisters… you… to have… handy. Jump over… here, will you?