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.
"Not a minta among 'em," Interior had remarked in an aside to Lusena. "Doesn't grow in that sort of soil." An official air carrier whisked Lusena, her ecstatic nieces - Moria, Emer, and Talba - and a subdued Rowan to the resort. The driver saw the party safely installed, good-humoredly hauling in the many pieces of luggage which the nieces had brought. The Rowan managed her one small carisak, and Purza, quite handily by herself. She was, however, given the grandest room where a balcony gave her a splendid view of the sea and coastline for miles in all directions. That was the first bone of contention.
Although each child had a luxurious bedroom with adjoining bath, comparisons became inevitable as the amenities were discussed at great length over the afternoon snack. At first Lusena dismissed the arguing as part and parcel of normal maneuvering of status-conscious thirteen and fourteen-year-olds. The Rowan merely listened, more interested in the delicious foods arrayed on the table than power plays.
Until Moria remarked that she ought to have Emer's room, since the closet space was better and she really hadn't enough room for her clothes.
"Fabrics must breathe," she explained in an arch manner.
Then, seeing the Rowan's surprised expression, found a ripe target for her effusions. "Garments need to be refreshed by circulating air, you understand. That's even more important than proper cleansing and pressing, particularly with expensive gauzes." Moria shifted her attention to her aunt. "Is there someone to tend to our wardrobe?" Lusena was nonplussed by such a question. Her brother was exceedingly well connected with the mercantile bankers of Port Altair, and the girl was accustomed to a more sophisticated life than Rowan, whose social life was nonexistent. Lusena had no idea if Moria's household included any indentured colonists, working out the expense of their transportation to Altair in menial capacities but, judging by Moria's question, there probably were.
"Did you bring any gauzes with you, Moria?" was what Lusena asked to give herself time to think. "I did tell your mother that this would be a low-key holiday." "I looked up the A-Z and it specifically mentions evening dances at the Regency Hotel where formal attire is de rigueur," Moria replied in a tone that suggested Lusena should know.
"We have no escorts." "There is also an agency which supplies escorts of impeccable character," Moria replied and Emer giggled.
She and her sister exchanged anticipatory looks. Their parents did not entertain on the same level as Moria's but that was by choice, certainly not necessity.
"Who are unlikely to wish to escort a thirteen," Lusena said severely.
"I'll be fourteen in three weeks' time…" Moria was persistent.
"Thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds to any Regency ambience." "I was certain that Rowan would want to dance," Moria retorted, eyeing the Rowan with a penetrating stare. "She's old enough to know how." Her tone implied that anyone who didn't was deprived, underprivileged, and asocial.
"Talba and I can dance," Emer hastily put in.
Lusena was beginning to regret the notion that her nieces would be suitable as friends for the Rowan.
"Dancing is not a recreation in which I have any interest," the Rowan replied casually, with a mild hauteur and indifference that quite shot the wind out of Moria's sails. "I am here to enjoy the sportive, not the cultural aspects of the resort. You did bring appropriate attire for swimming and boating, did you not?" The Rowan's tone was more coolly dismissive than Moria's, but then, Lusena thought, Siglen was a mistress of the put-down.
Emer and Talba goggled but Moria blushed and sulked for the rest of the meal. Lusena wondered what was going through the Rowan's mind.
Would she make an adjustment or might she, tempted by Moria's example, respond by manipulating the others: something the Rowan was quite able to do, consciously or unconsciously. And that was not what this holiday effort was about.
Lusena sighed. Her timing was wrong. A year or two at this age could produce such astounding swings in attitudes and standards. The Rowan had left her schoolmates as a child with childish interests and concerns. Now, hovering at the edge of the major physiological and psychological adjustments in a young girl's life, a perilous rite of passage might be forced.
Lusena pressed briefly, cautiously, against the Rowan's mind but the girl's immediate thoughts were of satiety with the excellent meal just served and a mental debate over which area of the resort to explore first.
"I see no reason," Lusena began briskly, hoping to alter the mood of the afternoon, "why you can't all change into swimsuits. We can explore the beach while our lunch is being digested and then we'll be ready for a dip. Moria, as the oldest, you're in charge of water safety. I know your family often holidays by the sea whereas Emer, Talba, and Rowan haven't done very much sea bathing." Moria's manner altered with the possession of even this nebulous superiority and, forgetting her sulk, she ran up the stairs well ahead of the others in order to be the first changed.
It turned out to be a very pleasant afternoon for the water was cool enough to give a brisk tingle, the sun warming, and the beach deserted. Having marshaled her young charges into the water until they were exhausted with their exercise, Moria stripped to allow the sun full access to her already tanned skin. The Rowan watched with discreetly averted eyes. Moria had a splendid start on a feminine body. The still juvenile Emer and Talba also slipped out of their suits, oiling their paler skins with a sun block and then, suddenly, the Rowan was lying supine on the beach blanket as if she was a frequent sunbather. While Moria chattered away about the merits of various tanning preparations, Lusena was positive that the Rowan must be making some bizarre internal adjustments for in the space of about fifteen minutes, she acquired a nice sun-burnishing.
Moria stopped mid-spate and stared at the young Prime.
"I don't recall you having a tan, Rowan?" "Oh," and the Rowan opened one eye drowsily to regard the older girl, "I've always tanned easily."
"Now that, my girl, is coming on too strong!" Lusena said, for once bending the Talent's rule not to communicate telepathically.
"You might even say I was doing it up too brown, Luse?" and, eyes closed, the Rowan smiled ever so slightly.
That evening when the girls had settled to sleep, Lusena opened the line to Purza.
"I think she's a spoiled snob of a prig," the Rowan was saying to her pukha. "She apes mannerisms and pretends to be far more mature than she is. Trouble is, Purz, she believes she's acting properly.
"Acting is exactly what she's doing. Acting. Silly bouzma!" Lusena wondered where the Rowan had acquired that term until she remembered that some of the cargo handlers around the Tower facility came from mixed cultural backgrounds. The Rowan had been eavesdropping again.
"Emer's OK and Talba'll do whatever she's told," the Rowan went on, more musingly than critically. "I'm glad I'm not Moria's kid sister. She'd be a pain in the arse! Yes, yes, I know that's cant language and Siglen would have a fit. But she's not here and I am, and Moria would be a pain in the arse!" A giggle came through clearly.
"And I got a better tan than she has and it took me a lot less time and perspiration at no cost. Imagine having to smear such expensive gunk on my skin. All I had to do was alter the absorption level of the epidermis. Simple! I wonder how tan I should get! Don't be silly, Purza! Pukhas don't need tans. You'd scorch your fur and blow all the circuits." That sentence caused Lusena some intense cogitation.
In the mention of its circuits, was the Rowan accepting the fact that the pukha was only a therapeutic device? But by being concerned that "you'd scorch your fur" was she attributing some degree of anthropomorphism to it?