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.
You're needed now, Jeff told his mother. By me, if no one else.
I thought it was the Rowan who wanted me, she replied teasingly.
You know perfectly well that she and your son will be all right.
How many clairvoyant Talents have you asked already?
I see no reason not to avail myself of professional courtesies, Jeff said in a testy tone.
Isthia chuckled and changed the subject, arranging with him to bring her to Callisto a few days before the Rowan's due date. Her own worries ceased the moment she saw the mother to be, radiant and, as the Rowan put it, bulging in all forward directions at this late stage of pregnancy. Isthia sincerely admired their living quarters, remarking drily that she had never expected dome living to be quite so spacious.
She paid very close attention when the Rowan and Jeff explained all the safety features, and held a drill for her.
"Planets at least give you lots of places to hide," she remarked in her droll fashion. "Could be awkward if there was an emergency just when Jeran chooses to arrive," she added, as she peered into one of the safety chambers. She made a pantomime of the Rowan attempting to fit inside.
"The house has triple seals," Jeff remarked. "The Prime cannot be risked." "I'll stay very close to you then, daughter," Isthia said.
"But you certainly have an elegant residence. Ah, well, we'll soon set matters right on Deneb." "Doesn't that ever bother you, Rowan?" she asked after dinner when Jupiter rose, filling the skyview.
She eyed the massive planet warily.
"What? Him? I'm accustomed to it now," the Rowan replied, trying to settle herself on the comfortable couch in front of the fire.
"Levitation?" Isthia suggested, glancing at Elizara for her opinion.
"We've tried that, too," Jeff answered with a rueful grin for the Rowan's dilemma. "Not much longer, love." The Rowan gave a skeptical grunt.
"Elizara, if you're a T-1 Medical, can't you establish a time, or at least a day?" Isthia asked.
"We have been able to improve prenatal care to insure almost one-hundred per cent normal healthy babies," Elizara said with a slight smile, "and we can induce labor if the term runs over a normal gestation, but we're still unable to dictate the ETA." "I wish this one would consider an early appearance," the Rowan remarked wearily.
"It's your first," Isthia said in a dry tone. "The way out is not so obvious." "I've told him and told him," the Rowan replied, "to get…" "Had any effect?" Isthia asked, amused.
"He responds with sentiments of complete satisfaction in his present environment and sees no need to make any alteration." "In that many words?" The Rowan laughed, delighted to have startled Isthia.
"Hardly. I just get an impression of complete contentment." Isthia turned to Elizara. "What about a hands-on? Of course, Rowan isn't overdue…"
Elizara smiled gently. "We wait. Time enough for hands-on if labor stops and we sense a complete reluctance to leave the womb." Then, abruptly, Isthia sat straight up in the lounger which hastily rearranged itself to her change of position.
She cocked her head, listening.
"What's the matter? What do you hear?" The Rowan asked. "Ian?" They might tease Isthia for her "long ear" from time to time but it was always respectful.
"I thought I…" Isthia faltered and looked keenly at Elizara.
"Did you catch anything?" Elizara frowned but she was patently sharpening her senses, listening with that other sensitivity which all three women had in generous measure.
There! Isthia said.
The Rowan had felt something, just at the very edge of her own deep range. Too distant. Anger! Pain!
Whose? Isthia added in a very thoughtful tone. The source defeats me. I don't think it was human!
Elizara regarded her with surprise. How could you hear it, then?
"I heard it, too," the Rowan reminded the medic. She grimaced.
"None of our kin at least," she added to reassure Isthia. Or shall I give a shout and be sure for you?
Slowly Isthia shook her head, frowning with puzzlement. Then, shaking off the brief thrall determinedly, she smiled at the other two.
"If it had been you, Rowan, we could put it down to prenatal nerves."
The Rowan sighed with deep exasperation, and stroked her extended abdomen. "C'mon, now, son, get in to position and let's end this waiting. You're old enough to be born now."
Two days later, as splendid Jupiter rose to obscure deep space from those in the Callisto dome, Jeran Raven decided to take his mother's advice. The baby dropped his head into the birth canal, precipitating the breaking of the Rowan's waters, and almost before Elizara could help the Rowan block the pain, long and intense contractions began.
Just off duty from the Tower, Jeff arrived as Isthia and Elizara were making the Rowan as comfortable as possible.
"Now is the time for hands-on," Elizara told him, "to reassure your son. This is the difficult part for him and he must not draw back or resist." It comforted the Rowan tremendously to have Jeff's strong body supporting her, his hands stroking her; to join mental forces in urging their son to endure this brief discomfort and be made welcome in the world of the living.
Isn't it a shade hypocritical of us, the Rowan said very privately to Jeff, to require him to leave the safety of the womb, for how can we promise him safety when we've never known it?
So you want to stay pregnant for the rest of your life? Was Jeff's reply as he smoothed back silver hair already damp with sweat.
NO!
Then push! Elizara urged. Take Isthia's hands!
Isthia's strong hands anchored her through the massive contractions that followed: hands that also soothed and eased the involuntary spasms.
"Those contractions are fierce," Isthia remarked.
"Not unusually so," Elizara replied, "and at five minute intervals." "Is he resisting or is it me?" The Rowan asked, panting with relief as a particularly severe contraction ended.
"A little of both," Elizara replied, and the Rowan could find no qualification in the Talent's mind. I never lie to my patients!
Not to this one, you couldn't!
Nor in the present company she's keeping, Elizara added, her tone amused. "All right, now, here comes another one." They all sensed the child's sudden reluctance as the pressures of his mother's womb caught him in an inexorable rhythum. He disliked the sensation: it frightened him. He was instantly reassured of warmth and love and comfort if he did not falter. He did not like this experience at all.
I'm not much enjoying it right now myself, my son, the Rowan told him and then could not even think as a particularly hard contraction seized her. She clasped Isthia's hands in a grip that she feared would bruise the flesh.
Hold hard!
To the Rowan, caught by the inexorable process of birthing, the struggle with her son seemed to go on interminably. The contractions came more frequently, lasted longer and but for the nerve blocks she would have been in some agony. As it was, the muscular strain wearied her.
Please, Jeran, please! she cried, wondering how much more of this she could endure.
Gripped by yet another massive contraction, she felt Elizara and Isthia place hands on her heaving abdomen, and this contraction seemed to be abetted by their minds, overruling Jeran's resistance. As the boy's head passed out of the birth canal, he gave a terrible cry, mental and physical, of protest, of resentment, of fear.
"You are born, my son," the Rowan cried with mind and mouth as she opened her eyes to see Elizara receive the baby's wet and wriggling body in her hands.
Jeran wailed again, a confused and angry cry at the difference of environment, the noise, the cold, the disorientation.
There, there! three adult minds consoled him. There, there. You are loved, you are wanted. Here, now, you will be warm. You will be comforted.