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.
Reidinger sent him to each of the other Prime Stations on various errands of high security importance.
"I don't know what could be more secure than a mind to-mind contact or why he has to shoot you all over the place." "Oh, I find it incredibly fascinating, love. I've met all the Primes, now, and I really did pick the best of the lot of you," he said with an outrageous glint in his eye. "That Capella!" He raised eyes and hands in such comic dismay over that confrontation that he made her laugh.
While the Rowan could appreciate just how valuable Jeff was to FT amp;T as the only peripatetic Prime, she resented his absences even though Jeff always took several days rest on Callisto between jaunts.
On the other hand, Jeff returned, stimulated, excited, and highly pleased by his reception at every tower. She did like listening to him discuss his perceptions of the other Primes, the diversity of the planets linked in the Central Worlds: once she would have envied him his fearless ability to transverse those immense distances, but she formed a secret intention, when her pregnancy was over, to join him in these tours. But the traveling, despite Jeff's innate strength, took a noticeable toil of his energy. She worried about the alarming signs of deep fatigue which he dismissed lightly.
"Sure it takes effort, love," Jeff told her as they sprawled together in their favorite spot in the lounge before the artificial fire. For the Rowan, being close to him physically was in many ways far more satisfying than the more intimate mental contact. As much, she thought, because she had had so few physical relationships that she found their intimacies especially rewarding. "And it's tiring, but a few days with you and I'm rarin' to go again. This galactic touring's quite an eyeopener for this poor little ole Denebian farmboy." "Don't you say that about yourself!" The Rowan bridled at his phrase, punching his upper arm to emphasize her annoyance.
"Darling, I am poor," he reminded her. "Mind you, the bonuses I've been extorting from Reidinger for doing these leapfroggings is bringing me out of debt much faster than if I just drew stationary Tower pay." "Nor are you little…" The Rowan was not letting him belittle himself in any way.
Jeff let out a hoot of laughter. "Honey, I love your sense of loyalty but have you seen the guys they grow on Procyon? And Betelgeuse?" He shot her a glance for comparison's sake and she saw that he had felt dwarfed in their presence. "And I AM a Denebian farmboy." He grinned in his roguish way. "Keeps me from getting above myself." "Oh, was David being difficult again?" Jeff ran a few scenes of the Betelgeuse Talent's arrogance through her mind and she was both appalled and amused.
"If I'd ever met Siglen, I'd've had a few cogent remarks to make to her about her notions of "training" Talent," he said, serious for a moment. "And Primes are unquestionably the vital links between Central Worlds, but there are T-1 ratings in every other Talent that make some of us stevedores look rather limited. Still," and he sighed for he was at heart a generous and forgiving person, "she got the basics right but we'll train our own kids the way they ought to go." "Indeed we will!" Jeff tightened his arms about her, kissing the side of her neck tenderly. "And none of our kids will need a Purza." "Was the pukha on my mind again?" "She keeps lurking there, where you can't see her." "I can't imagine why. Not after I've been back to Altair, and the Rowan mining campsite. Not with you doing far more for me than any construct could ever do." "I can't read why she keeps surfacing, love, except that Purza was the most important thing in your young life. I'm not exactly sure I like competing with a…" No way! Then Rowan let out an exaggerated sigh and then a self-deprecating chuckle. "But for ages there, that pukha was the only thing in the world that truly understood the young Rowan child… or so she thought." She paused, frowning. "You know it's very odd, your mother asked me who Purza was, too. That caught me off-balance." "I think we ought to get Mother to train her mind." "Oh, she wasn't being intrusive. It's as you said, she has a long ear. I've never met anyone quite like her before. She was so calm and reassuring, even when…"
"When everyone thought I was dying?" "You were never dying…" But a shiver caught the Rowan even as she repudiated the mention.
Jeff cocked his right eyebrow, a droll expression on his face.
"Not the way Asaph and Rakella tell it, my love. Well, I suppose Purza would surface at a time like that. When you need support the most." The Rowan nodded, nestling as close to him as her altered shape permitted.
"I think we, all of us, have someone," Jeff went on, "or some place, we retreat to in times of stress: a known comforter, adviser, confidante, who never fails us." "You never needed one." Rowan was beginning to wonder about the odd resurgences of Purza. She felt the unexpected embarrassment in Jeff's mind.
"I haven't got you fooled, too, have I, love?" And Jeff gave her a quick hug, laughing. "Believe me, dear heart, the only advantage I have over others is that I learned to read minds quick enough to correct my follies before they got out of hand. That's all." "But did you?" She needed to delve into that curious embarrassment, so unusual in her self-possessed and reliant love.
"Yes, I did," and he gave a funny chuckle. "Your Purza was at least a visible creature, properly programmed to respond to certain infant and pre-adolescent needs…" "What's wrong with an invisible friend?" The Rowan now plucked that easily from his mind.
"Nothing. Until your younger sister fends out about it and the whole family gives you an unmerciful ragging." Does your friend have a name?
Jeff stroked her head. Bagheera.
Oh?
It's been so long, love, but you know, it's rather odd that he was also a feline, like your Purza. Big, black, powerful, he loved to lie on branches high up in trees which was not surprising as I was always climbing trees myself, or lurk on sunny rock ledges because I used to hide from chores on such places, and he hated water! Which I did not, actually. I loved to swim but I could never get him to join me. He had yellow eyes - like Afra… Jeff's tone was amused/amazed that he had found one point of resemblance with anyone of his acquaintance.
We spent a lot of time discovering unexpected treasures in caverns and mines and other unlikely places. He was good protection against all the terrors of wild, raw Deneb.
And we'd make fortunes for our planet and bring it in to the Central Worlds Autonomy faster than any world had ever been admitted.
Jeff chuckled. "You know, I haven't thought of Bagheera for years! He was, I think, a character in a children's story. I preempted him for my own special use. He was invincible." Hey, are you falling asleep on me again?
"Not really," and yet a massive yawn caught her. "We don't need to move from here, do we?" She snuggled up against him, fending the right hollow in his shoulder for her head. He brought a warm blanket from their bed to cover them so there was no need to rearrange themselves.
Despite what the Rowan saw as Reidinger's intrusiveness, she looked forward to Elizara's visits. Gradually the T-1 Medic appeared on Callisto twice a month and then weekly. At the beginning of the last semester of the pregnancy, Elizara came to stay until the delivery.
"But I'm fine, and the baby is developing perfectly," the Rowan protested, "or so you've told me." Elizara grinned. "You know it to be so yourself, Rowan. Call it an old man's foibles. A young man's too, considering Jeff's state of mind." The Rowan grunted and felt her baby react. To save herself violent convulsions of her womb, she had learned to restrain untoward responses to each new imposition.