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.
Though and now his tone altered suggestively, it doesn't help when I am trying to get some rest. Sleep well, love.
She sent a light kiss for his cheek, laughing as she did so and tried to calm his mind to the sleep pattern.
Granny! I can do that for myself!
Tired as she was, she was not quite ready for sleep yet herself.
So often she used sleep as a method of interrupting negative mental patterns, of unproductive and circular thinking. Sometimes she could gain an insight into a problem by going over and over it again then wake the next morning with the solution.
Tonight Purza appeared, not the remains that Moria had vandalized, but the comfort creature that had been her mainstay. The Rowan paused, thinking back to those last days of her childhood, of all the conversations she carried on with Purza, of the silly things they'd discuss… They?
The Rowan caught herself up. She had believed, for many years, that Purza was sentient, despite the unalterable fact that the Rowan knew the pukha was NOT. She had imbued many qualities and characteristics into the comfort… toy, say it, Rowan, toy!…
No, not a toy.
Device! Monitor! Surrogate! The pukha had certainly been the receptacle of more confidences than any human being, even of matters she never could have discussed with Lusena. Yet the Rowan distinctly remembered Purza advising her against things which she, the Rowan, had particularly wanted to do. How could the pukha have such discretion?
The loss still rankled in the Rowan's mind and heart.
She had succumbed to a deep melancholia which Lusena had been unable to lift despite metamorphic treatment.
Siglen had been irritated, having realized just how much she was beginning to rely on her apprentice, but she was far more fearful of contracting even the merest sniffle.
Then Gerolaman had acquired the barquecat. And that ungrateful scamp whom the Rowan had counted on as a companion in her Callisto quarters had refused to leave the tibooti passenger vessel, to the intense delight of the crew.
She'd had to let him stay, more angered than dismayed by his defection.
"When I was a child, I played with childish things!" That phrase, which had been well dinned into her head during that painful readjustment time, now came to mind.
The Rowan tossed restlessly in her bed, hating the phrase, and all the memories it evoked.
Why would Purza come to mind now, tonight? Except that Jeff had queried the memory. Jeff was more than a substitute for a surrogate…
…except that he couldn't even do his courting of her in person!
Why Purza? Why not Rascal? She had truly outgrown the need for the comfort surrogate! Or had she?
Puzzling through that, the Rowan fell asleep. In the morning, searching her waking thoughts for an answer, she found none. Instead she had an overpowering urge to seek Jeff. And resisted. She had set an additional clock to Denebian time and he would be hard at work. She had overslept her usual waking hour but Jupiter did not clear Callisto for three hours.
Listlessly she rose to face the day's routine. She and Jeff might have their lifetimes to get to know each other, but she'd rather start in earnest. Damn Reidinger! How could he! She'd like to tell him a thing or two!
In person.
Watch out! she heard Afra warn the Station staff. She wasn't sure if she was annoyed or amused that caution was given. She palmed open the door into the Tower and let it whoosh shut behind her as she observed the wary expressions.
I don't think you're ready for a jaunt to Earth yet, Afra said.
"Good morning, Rowan. We've got some pretty heavy stuff to shift." She glared at the Capellan, knowing he was right. And yet, if she didn't take the plunge, when would she? Why shouldn't she - if she was only reacting to a conditioning?
But his caution, and his obvious concern, deflated her impetus.
She was not all that sure of her reconditioning not just after one swing to Demos. Her glare was the signal for everyone to become intensely interested in lists or keyboards or any task that took them out of her immediate vicinity.
"Now listen up, you lot. There's two hours and fifty minutes before Callisto clears Jupiter. You all know how to set up the day's shifts without Afra and me. Afra," and she intensified her glare, "I want to go back to Demos again. Now!" "As you wish," he said in an unexpected capitulation.
She caught a very suspicious glint in his yellow eyes before he turned his head away. And his shields were up tight as air-lock seals.
She decided to ignore him and marched back out of the Tower and down to the launch.
This time, though she strained her eyes wide to catch any motion, Afra's lift was so smooth that she had the bulk of Demos before her eyes again. This time she did look about her, and if her breathing quickened, she initiated control and steadied herself. The view was rather spectacular.
Is Earth visible from his position? she asked Afra. She caught her breath again as her capsule altered direction.
Cut in the visual magnification. Second position on your right fingerboard, Afra told her.
Four taps and the cloud-swirled marble of Mankind's world became clearly visible. Its moon hung like a milky pebble, fully lit by the distant sun. Awesome to think that the insignificant speck in the vast space-black panorama had spawned those now inhabiting the planets of far distant suns.
Suddenly she became very conscious of the blackness around her: too much dark and she was confined in a very small space… And she didn't even have Purza for comfort!
Easy, Rowan! And abruptly she was back in the launch site on Callisto, Afra unsealing the lid of her personnel carrier, his yellow skin sallow with anxiety.
Shaking, she held her arms out to him. He lifted her out of the capsule and ran with her back into the Tower, yelling vocally and mentally for a stimulant.
Blackness! Why blackness, Afra? I was all right, truly all right, until I thought of the blackness… And claustrophobia, Afra added. He took the glass Ray offered and held it to her lips. She was shaking too much to hold it herself.
ROWAN! Jeff's anxious shout made her wince.
I'm all right, Jeff I'm all right.
Blackness. Why are you reacting to blackness, Rowan?
Why do I see the pukha in your mind?
I don't know, Jeff I don't know. I'm all right. Afra's determined to get me drunk early today! She tried to lighten up her mind tone: she didn't want to upset him because she'd experienced a moment's silly panic.
Scared me half to death, you did! Jeff went on and she was as aware of the pounding of his heart as her own.
Jeff, she's all right, Afra said, initiating metamorphic massage to reduce her tension.
"It wasn't space. It was the blackness. The awful blackness." Damn it! I've had just about enough of this! Jeff Raven said, his tone incandescent with fury.
DENEB! and Reidinger's roar made even the Rowan's skull vibrate.
Afra rolled his eyes in intense mental pain, clutching at his head.
Primes don't have privileges! She's only shaken. And there'll be no more of these experiments, Rowan. YOU HEAR ME?
Even I can hear you, said David of Betelgeuse sourly.
I think you're being extremely selfish, Reidinger, came from Capella.
I told you this could be fatal, was Siglen's moan.
Leave me alone! the Rowan said, furious at being the center of so much unnecessary attention. Go away and get back to business.
Reidinger's made his point!
Jeff's parting phantom caress did not make it any easier for the Rowan to ascend to the Tower, and her couch, and try to focus her thoughts on the day's business. A steaming cup of java appeared and she reached for it gratefully. Deep inside her something was frozen, some black.
Something odorous? A whiff that she couldn't identity - a reek that was connected with the frightening blackness.