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.
While he could also understand the necessity of pumping men and material out to the other Primes, and the naval units, and whatever else was on tomorrow's dockets, why hadn't Reidinger sent out some T-2s or a few well integrated T-3 teams to assist Deneb. Why couldn't FT amp;T have given the Rowan and Jeff a few days together?
Was Reidinger still playing games with the Rowan's space afare?
Reidinger might just find his strategy backfiring.
Though Afra had little clairvoyant capability, he had a sickening uneasy-making hunch that Reidinger was wrong to proceed as he did. The trouble with an undeveloped prescience was that it was so fecking nebulous. He intended to push against it until something did clarify.
Forewarned was forearmed. Or was it?
He was tired enough so that, when he got to his own quarters, he drank a formula meal and went imediately to bed.
Rowan, love!
Jeff's rich voice was tender and soft, gently rousing her from sleep. Phantom lips laid pressure on hers, and a phantom touch caressed her lovingly in other places.
She so much desired his presence, was convinced that he had somehow returned, that when she realized that she was still alone in her bed, she almost wept.
Oh, Rowan, lovey. I am so sorry! I devoutly wish I was really there. And she experienced a jolt of his own sexual tension and was a little dismayed at its intensity.
The debris is still falling?
She caught the grimness - and the fatigue - in his mind.
Like rain! He was also disgusted. If any of us in that merge had had the sense God gave little green apples… He gave them some?
We'd have made sure we scattered those hulks sunward!
Oversight!
Overhead, too. At least we have equipment now to man:tar falls.
The squadron's on twenty-four-hour duty lassoing the big stuff, packing it into drones for shipment back. We may think we're tired now, but you wait. She felt the unruly humor.
Our basket's entirely full of eggs.
Eggs?
Eggs, I said. Our biologists say that the beetles were reproducing for 1) a generation-type voyage 2) shortlived workers that had to be periodically replaced, or 3) stocking up for a population explosion on our planet. They want to do an in-depth examination and extrapolation of the life cycle. So don't make an omelette.
Not with frozen eggs. Jeff… Wouldn't it be a lot easier and more work- and cost effective to examine everything there?
The Rowan felt tired just thinking about the effort involved. Was Jeff warning her or complaining?
They "say" they have to do it in the big Moon labs - to prevent contamination or something. I think they don't want Deneb to get such a juicy contract so early in its career as a colony. We could pay off our Central Worlds' Start-up debt if we'd that kind of investagatory work here.
The Rowan thought about that. The Armed Services, naval and military, regarded Talent with deep suspicion since generally speaking, those of a mind to make war were too prosaic to understand minds which eschewed physical violence. Except, of course, she reminded herself, when they needed an entire squadron dispatched to a far corner of the galaxy. THEN they remembered Talent quite well! She didn't trust bureaucracy either but regulations and rules did reduce chaos to mere confusion. She had come to respect regulations: she would never condone restrictions. Not being of an acquisitive nature, she also did not understand the economics involved: she had all the possessions she needed: she could purchase whatever she liked - within reason - and she was not covetous.
Jeff was another matter. And all that happened to Jeff.
How badly is your colony in debt to Central Worlds? And how HAD your governors decided to pay it off?
This planet's mineral rich: we're miners and engineers, with enough farmers thrown in to keep us locally supplied.
The Rowan pondered a moment, permitting the peripheral information she had absorbed in that merge to surface to her public mind. She knew he was an engineer in a farming family. She knew he had six brothers and four sisters, since increases in Deneb's population were as important as any other occupation. She knew that his oldest brother and his two older sisters with young families had been wiped out by the aliens, as well as his father and the two youngest siblings: that two younger brothers were medical personnel, that his mother would soon deliver a posthumous child. He had uncles, aunts, and cousins unto the third degree, and half of them had minor Talents. But Deneb, which was not scheduled to achieve full status in Central Worlds nor slated to receive a Prime in the next hundred years, had not organized its Talents until the imminent invasion had forced them into maturity.
Yes, you picked up a lot about us, didn't you, sweeting? Jeff sounded pleased and she felt him stretching… the stretch of someone relieving aching, strained muscles. She sent soothing impulses, phantom hands to knead and smooth. She would much rather have had the genuine warm flesh beneath equally fleshy fingers. I, too, and the longing in Jeff's tone ran as deep as her own.
This can't continue!
That's for sure, but I also cannot leave Deneb. Jeff's tone took on an irritated resignation. There's just no way I can permit myself personal time if my absence results in more destruction. Like right now. Be back!
His presence in her mind was gone: not so much as an echo remained. She felt more bereft than ever, deeply dissatisfied. If she applauded his principles, she fumed at the circumstances. Which brought her to the nub of the problem: Siglen's imposed space fear. If Jeff could not, in honor, leave Deneb at this critical moment, it was up to her to break down her own resistance to space travel.
Afra!
The Capellan's mind-touch was instantly available. He always was, she realized. Afra was like a shadow - a loving shadow she also perceived with her newly expanded perceptions of loving and caring.
She squashed that observation to save Afra's sensitivity.
I'll need to practice in my shell.
Not in the middle of the night, Rowan, he came back, not bothering to mask his exasperation. Believe me, I'm all for helping the course of true love, but trying to crack a trauma of such long standing is irrational when you - and I - are exhausted. Tomorrow morning. We'll have a few hours before Callisto clears Jupiter and Earth shipments arrive. This humble T-4 needs all the rest he can get to cope with you on the best of days and I don't count today one of them! Go to sleep, Rowan. I need mine!
It was so seldom that Afra was adamant that the Rowan meekly broke the contact. He was right. It would be crazy to try anything in her state of mind.
How did Siglen manage to condition her thoroughly? Why hadn't anyone noticed it? Lusena had been so common sensible: why hadn't she spotted the neurosis?
BECAUSE Siglen harped on it so often, moaned about the Curse of the Primes so that no-one thought to question her. And both David and Capella had been woefully stressed on their flights. Who would have dared question Altair's biggest asset?
Ass was right, the Rowan thought, spotting anomalies that refuted Siglen's contention. She'd always been able to teleport herself about Port City and the Tower. She'd never experienced agoraphobia. The mechanics of teleporting oneself on a planet were no different than teleporting oneself from one planet to another. The Rowan was disgusted. YEARS had been wasted because of Siglen's stupid inner ear imbalance!
And yet, the Rowan distinctly remembered her own terror when, as a very little girl, Lusena was taking her into the shuttle that would have transported her to Earth.
She had been so terrified at the sight of that portal she had even dropped Purza to teleport to the only place of safety she knew. Siglen had been raving then about the horrors of space travel, and sparing the poor child any further anguish. Just as she had in the act of teleporting the Rowan to Callisto! The Rowan shuddered remembering that nightmare: why did Talents have to have such perfect recall?