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 with a snort: Moscow and London are bracketing the intruder and have launched their first salvos.
Isthia: They have to be seen to try, Jeff. Stop that pacing. My nerves are bad enough without you clamping about like that.
The Rowan: Save your energy, love. Talent has the big guns and you're the bombardier!
Jeff's eyes sparkled and his grin was pure malice. I figured it out. A bit slow, perhaps, but this local yokel finally caught on.
I think, and the Rowan paused dramatically, you got past Reidinger's shield and sneaked a peek.
Jeff, wearing an innocent expression: I? Invade our Master's privacy? I'm good but I'm not that good!
The Rowan laughed aloud. "I think you're better than good, love. If you'd waited, you'd've figured out what Reidinger has in mind." It wasn't easy for anyone in the Tower to wait, watching the invader making its way deeper and deeper into Denebian space, knowing that the intersection of the planet's orbit and Leviathan's path was steadily approaching. Isthia sent people home to rest, ordered food brought in, revised the Watch rota, sent Jeff and the Rowan to the Farm to sleep.
She arrived at the Farm and sent them back to assume command.
Additional squadrons were dispatched to harry Leviathan. Though many strikes were made on the surface of the planetoid, the hits had no discernible effect on its inexorable path.
The Rowan, on a thin band to Isthia: Those mothers must feel pretty invincible by now.
Isthia: I sense that they are aware of the attacks.
The Rowan: And smug! I dislike that attitude.
Besseva: It will suit our purpose.
The hours dragged and the Rowan began to realize subjectively how Jeff must have felt during that first contact.
Jeff: Bloody useless is how I felt.
The Rowan: That's not how you came across to me.
Jeff, giving her his special smile as he swiveled his chair around to her: And how did I come across to you?
The Rowan regarded him for a long moment, smiling tantalizingly.
Busy. Preoccupied. Annoyed with bureaucratic inefficiency.
Jeff said aloud, fidgeting, "I wish I was busy right now! Even a little bureaucratic inefficiency to maul would be a relief!" He sat bolt upright when he glanced at the monitor. "Hey, that thing has slowed. It's going to go into orbit around us!" "Why?" Isthia wanted to know. "I will not believe its intentions are pacific!" Jeff was busily adding equations to the graph. "No, not in that orbit. Just far enough away for its missiles to be effective and too far for any retaliation from the ground if we had any missiles of any kind. Ruddy bitches are going to pound hell out of us again!" No, they're not! Reidinger's mental alert was almost anticlimactic when it echoed through the minds of everyone in the Tower. Angharad Gwin-Raven, the A focus is yours. Gather it! Jeff Raven, collect the B focus, Prepare!
With a single look of exchanged love, the Rowan and Jeff lay supine on their conformable couches and relaxed their bodies. They didn't notice Rakella motioning for medical orderlies to attend them.
Capella came querulously into the Rowan's mind first: This is becoming a habit: twice in as many years. Really! I do trust that we can dispose of this intrusive type for once and all.
The Rowan: That is the intention! The Rowan also read how nervous Capella was under the guise of complaint.
She felt vulnerable, a sensation which the Talented rarely entertained. To herself, the Rowan realized how much she had learned of herself, and others, in the two years since the first merge.
With Capella came the surge of all the female Talents of her system. Then the T-2 Jedizaira at the Betelgeuse Station added her strength; Maharanjani from Altair and, among those who joined from her native planet, the Rowan felt the touch of her stepsister and welcomed her.
Earth's Talents, Elizara leading as she was familiar with the Rowan's mind, swelled the force greater. Procyon sort of stumbled into the focus, apologizing but Piastera was a T-3 and, with Guzman as Prime, had had little chance to do much merging off-planet.
Other minds joined in large and small groupings, led by T-2s or T-4s, tentatively at first, then melding in more comfort as they were integrated into the whole of female Talent throughout the Nine-Star League. Their determination to halt the invaders vibrated more fiercely than the force that opposed them. The Denebians came in last, Isthia, Rakella, and Besseva down to young Sarjie, thrilled to be admitted into this experience. Then all were swallowed up in the final consolidation of the Rowan merge.
Reidinger, and his voice seemed nearly a whisper to the totality that the Rowan had become: Now, Angharad, now!
The Raven merge is available!
Blazoned in the mass mind was the graph on the Tower's screen and steadily the Rowan merge moved out toward the invader. Like a laser stabbing through space, the Rowan-mind gathered speed and reached the planetoid. Various elements of the Rowan-mind noted composition, mass, confirmed that Leviathan had been made from a dead world, now a darkness reverberating with noisy machinery and the scuttling of myriad creatures, whose minimal understanding responded to commands directed at them from the central point in the cavernous vessel.
The Rowan-mind: The "Many" are sixteen but some do not emanate much strength. We interrupt and distract the "Many" NOW!
There could be no defense against such a shaft of pure mental energy and the "Many" struggled briefly, withered and collapsed into mindlessness under the intensity of the force directed against them.
The Jeff-focus shouted: NOW! And every kinetic male Talent was joined with full gestalt from all available generators to divert Leviathan on to its final trajectory straight toward Deneb's primary.
Later, in the many years of discussion provoked by an event which lasted six hours, it would be seen as the most perfect example of mind over matter: ineluctably simple when compared to weapon technology or the complexity of spaceship drives. Once the Rowan-mind merge distracted and destroyed the minds of the huge, female reproducers, Leviathan lost its directive force: the diverse subordinates aimlessly continued in the routines for which they had been genetically designed, movements that had become pointless.
Then the Jeff-mind merge exerted the kinetic energy to deflect Leviathan from its intended orbit above Deneb VIII. Together both mind merges concentrated on speeding Leviathan on its new course. When the gravitic pull of Deneb's sun caught the planetoid, the mind merges released it.
Leviathan's plunge into the solar incandescence created a brief flare in the corona, recorded as the finale to this astounding exercise.
The Raven-merge: That's what we should have done with the first attackers.
The Rowan-merge: We did warn them!
Slowly the individual minds retreated from their focus slowly because the mass elation of success had bordered on exquisite ecstasy, too sweet not to savor; slowly because the communion of so many minds was in itself a rare and unique experience. Thanks were given and received.
Farewells were tender between those who had just met; reluctant between old friends, united once again. The last withdrawals were almost painful and the Rowan felt totally drained, her mind barren and echoing after such a surfeit.
"Easy, Rowan," said Rakella in a muted voice. Even so the Rowan winced weakly. "Just drift. Jeff's fine. Dean's with him. You'll both recover after a good, long sleep." I'm here," Jeff said and although he was still on the couch not a scant half meter from her, his tone was a whisper.
This was a much longer affair than the first one. Sleep! I'll love you later.
"I want the pair of you asleep by the time I count three," Isthia said, her doughty self.
That's not fair, the Rowan thought despite a hideous pounding in her reverberatingly empty head.
Why's fair?! One, two, three!