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.
Slowly, carefully, tentatively, because the massive power was braked only by her conscious control, she reached out to Deneb.
She spun on in grandeur, astounded by the limitless force she had become. She passed the small black dwarf that was the midway point.
Then she felt the mind she searched for: a tired mind, its periphery wincing with weariness but doggedly persevering in nearly automatic reactions.
Oh, Deneb, Deneb! She was so relieved, so grateful to find him fighting his desperate battle, that tears merged before her ego could offer even a token resistance. She abandoned her most guarded serf to him and, with the surrender, the massed power she held flowed into him.
The tired mind of the man grew, healed, strengthened, and blossomed until she was a mere fraction of the total, lost in the great pain of this immense mental whole.
Suddenly she saw with his eyes, heard with his ears, and felt with his touch, was immersed in the titanic struggle.
The greenish sky above was pitted with mushroom puffs, and the raw young hills around him were scarred with missile craters that had been deflected from targets.
Easily now, he was turning aside the barrage of warheads from three immense vessels.
Let's go up there and find out what they are, the Reidinger segment said. Now!
Deneb approached the three enormous marauding ships. The mass-mind took indelible note of the intruders, spidery forms that scrabbled about interiors resembling intricate webs. Then, off handedly, Deneb broke the hulls of two, spilling the contents into space. To the occupants of the survivor, he gave a searing impression of the Primes and the indestructability of the worlds in this section of space. With one great heave, he threw the lone ship away from his exhausted planet, sent it hurtling farther than it had come, into uncharted black immensity. He thanked the Primes for the incomplete complement of an ego-merge and extended in a millisecond the tremendous gratitude of an entire planet which had been so nearly obliterated.
This incredible battle could never be forgotten, and future generations would celebrate the incomparable victory.
The Rowan felt the links dissolving as the other Primes, murmuring withdrawal courtesies, left him. Deneb caught her mind fast to his and held on. When they were alone, he opened all his thoughts to her, so that now she knew him as intimately as he knew her.
Sweet Rowan. Look around you. It'll take a while for Deneb to be beautiful again, but we'll make it lovelier than ever. Come live with me, my love.
The Rowan's wracked cry of protest reverberated cruelly in both naked minds.
I can't. I'm not able! She cringed against her own outburst and closed off her inner heart so that he couldn't see the pitiful why.
Mind and heart were more than willing: frail flesh bound her. In the moment of his confusion, she retreated back to that treacherous body, arched in the anguish of rejection. Then she curled into a tight knot, her body quivering with the backlash of effort and denial.
Rowan! came his cry. Rowan! I love you!
She deadened the outer fringe of her perceptions to everything, curled forward in her chair. Afra, who had watched patiently over her while her mind was far away, touched her shoulder.
Oh, Afra! To be so close and so far away. Our minds were one.
Our bodies are forever separate. Deneb! Deneb!
The Rowan forced on her bruised self the oblivion of sleep. Afra picked her up gently and carried her to the couch in the Tower room.
He shut the door and went silently down the stairs. He positioned a chair so that he could prop his feet on the bottom step and settled down to wait, his handsome face dark with sorrow, his yellow eyes blinking away moisture.
Afra and Ackerman reached the only possible conclusion: the Rowan had burned herself out. They'd have to tell Reidinger. Forty-eight hours had elapsed since they'd had a single contact with her mind. She had not heard, or had ignored, their tentative requests for her assistance. Afra and Ackerman could handle some of the routine freight with generator support but two liners were due in and that required her. She was alive but that was alclass="underline" her mind was blank to any touch.
At first Ackerman had assumed that she was recuperating. Afra had known better and, for that forty-eight hours, he'd hoped fervently that she would accept the irreconcilable situation.
"I'm gonna have to tell Reidinger," Ackerman said to Afra, wincing with reluctance.
Well, where's Rowan? Reidinger asked. A moment's touch with Afra told him. He, too, sighed. We'll just have to rouse her some way.
She isn't burned out; that's one miracle.
Is it? replied Afra bitterly. If you'd paid attention to her in the first place… Yes, I'm sure, Reidinger cut him off brusquely. If I'd gotten her light of love his patrol squadrons when she wanted me to, she wouldn't have thought of a merge with him. I put as much pressure on her as I dared. But when that cocky young rooster on Deneb started lobbing deflected ET missiles at us… Well, I hadn't counted on that development. At least we managed to spur her to act. And off-planet at that. He sighed. I was hoping that love might make at least one Prime fly.
Whaaat? Afra roared. You mean that boule was staged?
Hardly. As I said, we hadn't anticipated the ETs. Deneb presumably had only a mutating virus plague to cope with. Not ETs.
Then you didn't know about them?
Of course not! Reidinger sounded disgusted. Oh, the original contact with Deneb for biological assistance was sheer chance. I took it as providential, an opportunity to see if I couldn't break the agoraphobia psychosis we all have.
Rowan's the youngest of us. If I could get her to go to him physically - but I failed. Reidinger's resignation saddened Afra, too.
One didn't consider the Central Prime as fallibly human. Love isn't as strong as it's supposed to be. And where I'll get new Primes if I can't breed 'em, I don't know. I'd hoped that Rowan and Deneb.
As a matchmaker I should resign… Afra broke the contact abruptly as the Tower door opened and the Rowan, a wan, pale, very quiet Rowan, came down.
She smiled apologetically. "I've been asleep a long time."
"You had a tiring day," Afra said gently, "day before yesterday." She winced and then smiled to ease Afra's instant concern. "I still am a little frazzled." Then she frowned.
"Did I hear you two talking to Reidinger just now?" "We got worried," Ackerman replied. "There're two liners coming in, and Afra and I just plain don't care to handle human cargo, you know." The Rowan gave a rueful smile. "I know. I'm all set." She walked slowly back up to her Tower.
Ackerman shook his head sadly. "She sure has taken it hard." Her chastened attitude wasn't the relief that her staff had once considered it might be. The work that day went on with monotonous efficiency, with none of the byplay and freakish temperament that had previously kept them on their toes. The men moved around automatically, depressed by this gently tragic Rowan. That might have been one reason why no-one particularly noticed a visitor.
Only when Ackerman rose from his desk for more coffee did he notice the young man in plain travel gear, sitting there quietly.
"You come up in that last shuttle?" "Well, sort of." He spoke with a modest diffidence, rising to his feet. "I was told to see the Rowan. Reidinger signed me on in his office late this morning." Then he smiled.
Fleetingly Ackerman was reminded of the miracle of the Rowan's sudden smiles that could heat the very soul of you. This man's smile was full of uninhibited magnetic vigor, while his brilliant blue eyes danced with good humor and friendliness. Ackerman found himself grinning back like a fool and stepping forward to shake the man's hand stoutly.