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.
No risk was involved, Reidinger, the Rowan snapped, furious that Reidinger could startle her so badly. I'm quite capable… CAPABLE?
You're no more capable… That is quite enough of that, Reidinger, Jeff intervened in a tone that halted the Earth Prime mid-fume. The Rowan's in excellent health and the pregnancy is proceeding normally.
Not that that is YOUR business.
It is MY business if a Prime jeopardizes herself… Especially one who can breed for you and FT amp;T! the Rowan angrily shot back at him. Well, I'm NOT breeding for you and FT amp;T. This is between Jeff Raven and me.
There's nothing in my contract that says FT amp;T controls the produce of my womb! Get that straight, Reidinger. My son is not automatically indentured to FT amp;T.
A long pause. A son? You know that already? Something akin to awe replaced the bluster. It wasn't just that Reidinger had abruptly discarded anger as a useless tool against the partners he was trying to dominate. It was something more but what eluded the Rowan.
Yes, and the Rowan, too, reduced her tone to the conversational.
She didn't really want Reidinger angry with her. Or with Jeff.
You're in contact with him? The need to know came across as a painful urgency.
Jeff raised his eyebrows in surprise at the near plea.
Five months into the pregnancy, we both are, Jeff answered when he felt the Rowan was spinning out the silence too long.
Why did you tell him that? she said in a private shaft at him.
He doesn't deserve it.
We've had our fun with him, Rowan. I've been listening on another level. Reidinger's a tired, worried old man and you've just given him something to hope for at a time when he needs it.
What does he need hope for?
I don't know, and Jeff was baffled. To Reidinger he said, It's a nebulous contact, of course, at this stage of fetal development… And what do you know of fetal development? the Rowan asked again on the private level.
Jeff grinned at her. I didn't have six sisters without picking up some dribs and drabs of obstetrics!
Suddenly both realized that Reidinger had broken off contact during their swift mental exchanges.
"Well, that was sudden!" the Rowan said, piqued.
Jeff chuckled. "We gave the old boy something to mull over." The Rowan let out a long sigh then. "I'm glad it was a short inquisition. Now, whose turn is it to cook?" "Ah-ha, I decided neither of us would waste time on mundane chores so scan the list of viands made ready for your arrival!" He tapped up a menu which used such an elegant archaic script that the Rowan had trouble deciphering it.
"I could probably eat all of it!" "And grow to Siglen's size over the next few months? I won't permit it," and with the foolery that followed, it was nearly an hour before they returned to the menu again.
They were sitting in front of the artificial fire which was, as Jeff reluctantly admitted, a very good simulation, when the comunit gave a discreet burp and tripped the green flash all over the house.
Raising her eyebrows in surprise at such a discreet summons - both she and Jeff were accustomed to a direct mental inquiry - she opened the channel.
"Prime Rowan?" asked an unfamiliar feminine voice, a warm and kind voice. "I am Elizara Matheson, T-1, Medic/Oh. With all due respect, I request an interview." "Not on my day off!" The Rowan's finger was halfway to the disengage when Jeff caught her wrist. "Damn Reidinger! How dare he presume!" "What harm does it do?" Jeff asked at his most disarming. "You're going to need a T-1 during the delivery of a Talent. They can be most obstreperous about leaving their safe haven. At least Reidinger cares enough to send the very best." When the Rowan regarded him with amazement, he grinned. "I don't think you accessed the right prenatal information. And if that lad of ours is half as stubborn as either of his parents, you may need all the persuasion you can muster." He leaned across her. "By all means, Medic Elizara. Please proceed to the residence." Every now and then the Rowan came smartly up against the realization that she couldn't argue with or wheedle her way around Jeff Raven. He was steadily becoming stronger and stronger in all areas of his Talent. If sometimes a part of her resented that strength, at others she felt tremendously comforted and protected. Or, as right now, in complete rebellion. But she rebelled right now, not against his common sense, but against an intrusion of the short hours when they could share each other on the deepest possible levels, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
But she acquiesced. You give me no option, do you? she shot at him as they waited for the unsolicited visitor.
I'm far more careful of you than Reidinger gives me credit.
There was no flexibility in his gaze, or mind. You are not the obstetrician's ideal proportions for easy birthing, you know.
Let's take every precauflon.
Medic Elizara's personal appearance was a surprise to them both as she was a slender woman, no taller than the Rowan, and looked far younger. Her smile as she felt their astonishment was vastly pleased with her effect on them.
"I have heard so much about you, Prime Rowan," she said with irrepressible mischief in her wide-spaced, lightgreen eyes, "that I elbowed my way right past everyone with far more seniority than I have. Then, too, your reputation…" and her marvelous smile deprecated the Rowan's reputed temper, "made others demur. Gollee Gren solemnly warned me that you're more devious than Reidinger." At that remark, the last of the Rowan's resentment evaporated. "Gollee warned you, did he?" Reidinger's positively Machiavellian, isn't he? Jeff said to her privately. What a choice!
Oh, no, came from Elizara, the choice was mine, though when Earth Prime interviewed me, I could tell he thought that I would suit. "I shan't take more than a few moments of your time right now, Prime, but I need to update the Altairian report." "Not a moment has been wasted," the Rowan remarked sardonically.
"No!" And Elizara's eyes twinkled.
She did not indeed take more than a few moments. The Rowan had never met a T-1 in another field and was very much reassured by her competencee and deftness.
"The pregnancy is proceeding nicely. I have nothing further to add to what the Altairian medics told you," Elizara said in conclusion.
"The boy child is not far enough along for us to make a worthwhile contact. That's when my particular Talent becomes useful and I can assist you both in the preparations." "My mother had no trouble with any of us," Jeff said, and the Rowan heard the first tinge of uncertainty before he could dampen it.
"True enough," Elizara admitted, "probably because her mother was her constant companion during the final month." "How on earth did you know that?" Jeff asked, surprised but he found out before Elizara could prevent him.
"Reidinger has been very busy, has he not?" "I think you both must appreciate why and allow him his prerogatives," Elizara said with gentle dignity and a hint of reproach.
"This is our child, not Reidinger's. And he's no relation to be prying into…" Easy, love, Jeff said, reaching with hand and mind to soothe her.
The fetus will react, you know, Elizara said mildly. The calmer you remain, the easier it will be for you both! The stronger a bond of trust you make right now, the easier the birth will be. The child will need to trust you then. "But the main reason I was acceptable to the Prime, and you may find this so, too, was that I had easy births with my own two Talented children." That reassured the Rowan more than anything else about Elizara, though at that moment, she did not want to feel calm, even to reassure her unborn child, but she could not evade Jeff as easily as she could Elizara. Nor could she evade, or disobey, any of Reidinger's subsequent safeguards which she found intrusive, impudent, arrogant, unnecessarily restrictive, and too authoritarian by far.
Unfortunately, Jeff Raven was in total agreement with the Earth Prime. She was never sure if Elizara truly disagreed with the two men on the subject of her return to Altair or was "humoring the pregnant woman". The upshot was that the Rowan was not permitted to return to Altair and was reinstalled as Callisto Prime. Jeff went off to Altair until two appropriate T-2s could be found and integrated with Maharanjani and Bastian at Altair. When that task was completed, what Jeff termed his galactic peregrination began.