The Rowan had no time to do more than try to reduce the surge of her emotional response to an acceptable level. The past few hours had awakened many emotions long kept under strict control. To have contained them all would have had serious repercussions. She’d have enough, and so would the unsuspecting Turian, if she wasn’t careful. And she didn’t want to have to BE careful for once in her life. Sensuality flared into full awareness in mind, heart, and body and as Turian responded, she received his attentions with wholehearted honesty.
He did not expect her to have been untouched and she was aware of both anger at her deception and his inability to slacken the incandescent desire which now consumed him. So she encouraged him with body and mind, with her hands and her lips. The hurt was minimal to the blaze of passion that overwhelmed him which she experienced through his mind and touch. She cursed her own ineptitude which kept her from matching his release but the glory which awaited her the next time she made love with him was vividly seared in her mind.
The Rowan awoke suddenly, aware that the comforting, warm length of Turian was missing from the narrow bunk on which they had fallen asleep. It hadn’t been the gentle slip-slop of waves against the sides of the Miraki which had roused her. It was Turian’s mental distress. He was suffering intense feelings of guilt, self-castigating himself for the loss of control which had resulted in deflowering a virgin, anger with her for what he thought was a studied attempt to seduce him, and a terrible longing to repeat the act of love which had overwhelmed him with its intensity.
The Rowan felt keen remorse for his state of mind. What had begun for her as half-game, half-challenge had backfired with disastrous effect on an honest man, well content with his work and his life-style. She was little better than Moria!
She rose, dressed rapidly but the cold was pervasive so she wrapped the blanket firmly around her as she quickly made two mugs of a steaming stimulant. Securing the blanket about her with one hand while balancing both mugs with a touch of mental assistance, she went topside. Turian was slouched in the cockpit in a mind funk, shivering convulsively in a mental and physical chill of devastating proportions. His mind kept inexorably returning to the intense sexuality of their spontaneous union and his inability to control his participation.
‘We need to talk, Turian,’ she said quietly, startling him. She handed him a mug and, throwing part of the blanket over his shoulders, deliberately sat close beside him. ‘You’ve no cause at all to feel guilty about last night.’
He shot her a furious glance. ‘How do you know how I feel?’
‘Why else would you be sitting out on a freezing deck looking as if you’d committed a major crime. Drink up, you need the warmth.’ She used the firm tone Lusena often adopted with her and he took a judicious sip.
‘Now,’ she said firmly, giving it a mental accent, ‘let’s come to an understanding. I didn’t set out to have you seduce me.’ He snorted disbelief, hauling the blanket around his right shoulder, but he did not move his chilled body from her warmth. ‘But I did want you to stop looking at me as a kid, a young girl, an unperson. I wanted very much for you to see me! Me, the Rowan.’
Slowly he turned his head toward her, the whites of his eyes more visible in the dark as they widened in the surprise of recognition.
‘I remember that name. I did meet you before. I knew your face was somehow familiar.’
‘I was with a party of four, three girls and my guardian, four summers ago. You sailed us about. At the sea gardens, one of the girls, a terrible flirt, got badly stung because she didn’t listen to your warning.’
‘And you had, and treated the little bitch.’ Then he cocked his head a bit. ‘How old are you, Rowan?’
‘I’m eighteen,’ she said, facetiously adding, ‘going on eighty. So I’m old enough to have an affair and to know when I should. But honestly, it just happened. I liked helping you fix up the Miraki. It’s such a change from the sort of work I do all year long. That alone will make this the most memorable holiday I’ve ever had, Turian, and last night was pure serendipity. I don’t see much of that, I assure you.’
She was reaching him with her quiet explanation, for he was basically a sensible man. A hand, warm from the mug he’d been holding, covered hers. She could feel the tautness of body and mind through that contact and tried to find in his mind a clue to reduce that stress. He was still thinking in a circle that went from her youth to last night’s eroticism.
‘I’ve made love to a lot of women since I first learned how but I’ve never had it quite like you!’ He let his breath out heavily. ‘Never like that before!’ His mind paused once more on that unexpected blazing intensity that caused his frame to tremble at its recall. ‘You’ve about ruined me for anyone else.’ He resented that. He liked his affairs short and sweet and uncomplicated, affairs in which he was always the dominant partner and in complete control as he had not been last night.
‘Me? the kid, ruining you, Captain Turian?’ she asked, with humorous skepticism. ‘I doubt that, though that’s quite a compliment you’ve paid me. I’d no idea what to expect once we got started. You’re a marvelously tender lover. Even if I have no other experience for comparison, I could appreciate that. And I know you for an honest, decent, caring man. But ruined? Highly unlikely. You couldn’t ever settle to just one woman, or one port and one reach of the Altairian seas. If you want my opinion,’ and she had to phrase this carefully or give away her illegal prying into his personal files, ‘I don’t see you as a family man though your kin mean much to you. But I just can’t see you staying on the land to raise kids. The Miraki’s wife and child to you. I’m right, aren’t I?’ She rather hoped her sly cajolery would work and was immensely relieved to feel the shift in his thoughts at her candid remarks. ‘Even if we had a chance of some sort of an association, this ship would win in the end, and I’d be the one left high and dry.’
He gave a wry laugh. She knew that he was within an inch of reaching up to ruffle her hair in that casually affectionate gesture, but his mental state was still inhibiting him. She took his hand and laid her cheek against it, to allow a healing anodyne of respect and abiding friendliness to seep through the touching.
‘I shall never forget how you comforted me, Turian, coming through the Straits, and that you knew I needed comfort. That was so generous of you and it was a kindliness with which I am totally unfamiliar. It disarmed me completely, you know.’
He nodded, understanding at several levels in his mind what she was trying to convey to him.
‘What are you really, Rowan?’
‘I’m an orphan, I’m eighteen, I’m a Talent, and I serve in Altair’s Tower.’
She heard the sudden intake of his breath and felt awe color his mental image of her.
‘Like Prime Siglen?’ For though he knew what Tower personnel did and how they did it, he couldn’t quite place his companion in that context.
‘Well, I’m not a Prime,’ she said with a laugh, hiding the half-truth. ‘But it’s a lonely job and I’ve got to isolate myself from the people I work with. I can’t be the sort of informal captain you are. Being your crew has been such a marvelous experience all by itself. Working with you to set the Miraki to rights, just the two of us, was as far from my life in the Tower as you can get. I haven’t ever had such a wonderful week. I certainly didn’t intend to repay your friendship with a sexual imposition.’
‘Imposition?’ He almost shouted at her, and she knew she had struck just the right note. ‘I’ve heard it called many things, but not an imposition!’ He gave a bark of laughter and suddenly all the tension and dismay dissolved from his thoughts. ‘Imposition, indeed.’
The dawn was brightening the sky and she could see the amused expression on his face, echoing the recovery of his mental equilibrium.
‘Well, then,’ she began in a meek voice though she was emboldened by his resilience, ‘without prejudice and seeing that this is a unique opportunity, unlikely to recur, could we impose on each other again?’
It was late afternoon when they reached the wharf at Favor Bay. The Rowan could, and did, make certain that an easy companionship had grown up between them on the return voyage. He had talked a good deal about previous voyages around the planet, about his many relations, and, sitting as close to him as possible, she had learned more about her native planet than she had ever thought to know.
They were both silent as they moored the ship and did the final chores, setting the ship to rights, cleaning the galley, but there wasn’t much more, or too much, to be said. She stuffed her salty clothes into her backpack, climbed on to the wharf, and collected her cycle. Turian stood in her way for a long moment and she knew he was equally loath for this idyll to end.
‘I must leave, Turian. Clear skies and good sailing.’
‘Good luck, Rowan,’ he said in a low voice, heart and mind reaching out to her but he stepped aside and she cycled past him, feeling his regret as sharp as her own.
By the time she had cycled up the long hill from the anchorage, she was sweating so it didn’t matter if some of what poured down her cheeks happened to be tears. It had been a beautiful interlude. Lusena had been right to suggest it, however obliquely. Would Lusena know what had happened? Lusena knew just about everything else about her. Such a magical incident would take a lot of camouflage from her eagle-eyed guardian. Did she really want to cover it all up? Wouldn’t Lusena rejoice that she had met such a lovely lover?
She had entered the cottage, slung her backpack down the corridor to the laundry room before the sustained squeal of the answerphone penetrated her self-absorption. There was a sheaf of messages, curling down from the machine to the floor. So many in just thirty-six hours?
‘Now what?’ The Rowan resented the return of the pressures she had been able to forget. She tore off the final sheet and bundled the whole screed up, settling herself first in a chair before reading any.
The first, from Lusena, had arrived just after she had left the cottage for the Miraki’s journey and announced the triumphant arrival of twin girls and the prognosis of a speedy recovery of their mother from a prolonged and complicated labor. A second, also from Lusena, was a confirmation of Lusena’s opinion that both babies had recorded high-potential Talent at birth. The third was her pleasure that Finnan had come to view his nieces and there had been a marvelous family reunion. The fourth was a query from Gerolaman about her lack of response to messages. The fifth which had come in the previous evening was an order from Siglen to contact the Tower immediately. The sixth, and the first words made the Rowan yearn for Turian’s supportive presence, burst the fragile bubble of the idyll.
MUST INFORM YOU THAT LUSENA SHEV ALLOWAY KILLED IN GROUND VEHICLE COLLISION. REPORT IMMEDIATELY. SIGLEN.
The dateline was 1220 today as the Miraki had been plowing across the Southerly Current under full canvas through the seas still running high from the previous night’s storms. She and Turian had been side by side in the cockpit, warm with companionship and shared love.
The tears streamed down the Rowan’s face. ‘Must inform,’ she muttered. ‘No regrets, Siglen? No regrets at all that a fine loving woman is gone?’
She let grief take her then, vainly searching for a mind touch that was lost forever to her, lost as the comfort of the woman who had cared for her with such dedication. The ache expanded, closing her throat, pushing down into her belly, shoving upward to crowd into her brain and press behind her eyes. Tears flowed and the sobs wracked her body. Turian would comfort her. Surely she had the right to ask that of him. But why involve him in a private grief? It was something one had to live through; the ache of the heart, the fruitless searching of the mind, and the sorrow of the spirit. Lusena! Lusena! Lusena!
The comunit’s piercing summons was a harsh intrusion. Irritably, she ’ported the connection open and the screen lit up. Fortunately it displayed a worried Gerolaman.
‘Rowan! Where have you been?’
‘I was sailing. We were weathered in last night in a deserted anchorage. I’m only just in the door. What’s happening with …’
‘Siglen had a fit when the accident report came in. She was positive you were with Lusena and she was in some state.’
‘Thought she’d got rid of me, huh?’
Gerolaman’s scowl reproved her. ‘We were all worried, Rowan. Especially after Finnan said you hadn’t accompanied her.’
‘Bardy needed her mother. She didn’t need me hanging about and at eighteen I’m well able to take care of myself for a few days of holiday.’ She knew she sounded querulous but she couldn’t help it. ‘Oh, Gerolaman, Lusena was …’ and she covered her face with her hands, weeping bitterly.
‘I know, honey, I know. It won’t be the same. It’s just that … we didn’t know where you were. And you had to know.’
‘Siglen herself broke the news.’
‘Give her some credit, Rowan,’ and Gerolaman’s voice was rough, ‘she was upset, too. And got worse thinking you might have been killed. Secretary Camella’s handling arrangements which is very good of her. Now I know where you are, I’ll come and get you.’
The Rowan smeared the tears off her cheeks with both hands. ‘I appreciate it, Gerry, but there’s no need. I’ll be there as soon as I can close up this place.’ She cut the line before he could protest.
She ignored the comunit while she gathered up her belongings, showered and dressed, phoned the caretaker that she was vacating. From the porch she could make out the Miraki, moored to the wharf. She had that memory at least!
Then, for the first time, she ’ported herself directly to her quarters at the Tower. She’d had the range and strength to do so for several years but this was the first time she’d had occasion to make use of that ability. Rascal launched himself at her from the bookcase, muttering imprecations at her as he clung to her shoulder. She turned her head to bury her face in his soft fur, and felt the sting of tears again. She bit her lip and walked toward the kitchen to give him a treat for his welcome. She couldn’t bear to look down the corridor to Lusena’s empty room.
The comunit rang imperatively. ‘I’m back, Gerry,’ she said.
‘It is not Gerolaman,’ Siglen’s thick voice answered her. ‘Where have you been, you irresponsible child? Stand where I can view you. This instant.’
‘In a moment, Prime, I’m presently indisposed.’ The Rowan stroked Rascal as he happily munched his morsel before she complied.
‘Where have you …’ Siglen’s protuberant eyes bulged still further as she took in the Rowan’s altered appearance. ‘Your hair? You cut your hair? And it’s the wrong color! What have you been doing? Where have you been? Do you not realize that Lusena is to be interred today and you must, in decency, attend.’
‘I’ll go as soon as I’ve changed and as soon as I know where the ceremony will be.’
‘Secretary Camella is representing the Council and you will have to hurry to be ready. And really, you must do something about your hair before attending an interment.’
‘Why? My hair was Lusena’s idea. Excuse me, Prime. If haste is the order, I have things to do.’
‘And you will report to me the instant you return, do you hear me, Rowan? You have tried my patience beyond all bounds …’
Unable to bear such recriminations, the Rowan cut and closed down the connection. Gerry, tell me where. I want to go on my own!
Gerolaman was not a sender but she felt him receive her message and knew he was acting on it. She didn’t need another shower but after she had changed to suitable clothing for the sad duty, she bathed her face in cold water until he arrived. Rascal coughed a warning of his entry.
There was great pity in the stationmaster’s face for her, and a sorrow of his own for t
he loss of a dear and valued colleague.
‘Can I say anything to help, Rowan?’ he asked, his hands held open in a gesture of helplessness. He was dressed with appropriate sobriety, his usually unkempt hair parted and flat on his skull. His eyes were red, too.
She shook her head. ‘You’ll come with me?’
‘The Secretary of the Interior …’
‘Camella will be in floods: she was very close to Lusena …’ it hurt even to speak her name. ‘I can’t stand more emotional backlash, not all the way to the interment. If we can get to your office where I can use gestalt, I’ll get us both there. I’ll want to see Bardy and Finnan. At least, she was there when Bardy needed her.’
‘Now wait a minute, Rowan, you can’t tap the gestalt without Siglen’s permission?’
‘Scared I’ll misjump us?’
‘No, trying to keep you acting sensibly!’
‘There is nothing sensible about grief,’ she flashed at him. Then grimaced and added in an affected tone, a hand to her forehead, ‘I’m grief-stricken. I don’t quite know what I’m doing. Will you come with me?’
‘I’d better!’ He turned and led the way down the corridor toward his office. She followed.
Once inside, she placed both hands on his shoulders. ‘Is there anything medium large in the cradles right now?’
‘No. Not right now. Siglen is upset, you know,’ and his fierce expression surprised the Rowan. Gerolaman had several loyalties but the Tower was the top priority. ‘She hasn’t been working well today.’
‘I can see that,’ the Rowan remarked flatly, glancing at the pressure idling in the generators. ‘What are the coordinates?’
Gerolaman hesitated but she hooked her fingers sharply into his flesh and he gave them in a grating voice. She leaned into the leashed power of the Tower’s generators as she had done time and again over the past three years. She felt the surge through her and, making sure of her grip on Gerolaman, she ’ported them both.
The Rowan Page 11
