The Rowan

by Anne McCaffrey

  In the second place, she wasn’t at all sure that she was sufficiently confident enough to push herself, cold-mindedly, out on such a long kinetic haul. She wondered if she could try Reidinger’s patience enough to wait until Jeff could handle gestalt again.

  If you don’t have a generator, Reidinger said with dangerous logic, how can you expect to catch a shipment?

  My immediate need is light stuff. I’ve access to a small generator. Toss it out to reach here at 0300 Deneb time, and I’ll catch.

  If you’re trying an unpowered catch, you little …

  Burning my mind out is the last thing I want, I assure you, Reidinger, but I must have those parts or we don’t get the tower functioning. If there isn’t a proper tower here, you don’t get me back at Callisto! Understand?

  I’ll deal with you later, you may be damned sure of that, Rowan child!

  Despite her valiant words, the Rowan shivered delicately at the malice in those last two words. A Reidinger threat was never idle. But no threat could be severe enough to remove her from Deneb right now. Besides Jeff Raven, the planet was eminently worth any effort on her part. Like her devoted team of scroungers, Isthia, and other intangible things, like sunsets.

  For ten years, she had seen none. Here, Deneb’s primary went down with blazing red and orange clouds, the hectic colors fading slowly to a bleached-blue sky until the sharp peaks of the mountains that ringed the plain stood out with incredible clarity. Though starscapes were nothing new to her, the night sky was equally brilliant. Deneb VIII had three small moons whipping about it and an asteroid belt beyond their orbits that was the remains of a fourth. But it was the crispness of the night air, scented with pungent and unfamiliar fragrances when the wind blew down from the mountains, which the Rowan found truly remarkable. She liked the feel of it riffling her hair, caressing her face, pressing gently against her raised hands. Callisto had no breezes. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed them until now.

  So she didn’t mind standing out in the dark, waiting for the shipment, ready to gestalt with the hospital’s generator, taking an atavistic pleasure in the night.

  Reidinger sent exactly what she ordered: not a brush, bar, or board more. It took the Rowan and her team a long day to get the generator cleaned and repaired, to reconfigure the control-panel, and strengthen an adequate link to the Kenesaw hydroplant. Scarcely an aesthetic installation when finished, but it worked. Zathran Abita worried about the drain on the City’s power. As the electronics expert had no notion of how Talent worked, she had to explain that the tight focus of gestalt required a short burst of power: Flow rate and pressure altered slightly with the distance and/or the weight of the object ’ported, but the actual ‘use’ of power was split-second.

  Finishing the Tower gave Deneb one more short step toward independence. The Rowan’s team had broadcast her efforts so that she was greeted wherever she went on the streets or in the hospital. She was both slightly embarrassed – since Talents preferred nonentity – and delighted. Morfanu followed her about, which could have been a nuisance, except that it allowed the Rowan more opportunities to train the girl’s innate Talent.

  Had every single Talent instructor been killed? Or was it a result of Deneb’s rather offhand colonial mind-set? On Central Worlds, parents had their children tested at birth for any sign of viable Talent. (Birth trauma often produced a measurable spark even if the ability did not mature until adolescence.) Talented children were assiduously guided and trained, even as she had been.

  So far only Jeff Raven was formally contracted to the FT&T, and the Rowan knew that he was determined to keep it that way. It was also obvious to her that Deneb needed to keep every useful citizen on the planet, to ensure its revitalization. But they ought to be trained.

  Was it fear of the exploitation by FT&T that Jeff had mentioned to her which inhibited training? But if you liked what you were doing, did it well, was that really exploitation? She had everything she wanted, anything she asked for, including tonnes of generator parts and comm equipment. Apart from her intense loneliness and isolation – which had always been with her – as Callisto Prime, she enjoyed enviable privileges along with her responsibilities.

  Once Jeff was in a private room, he had almost nonstop visitors: additional workspace had to be sent for to accommodate files and monitors. He seemed always to be conferring with some group or other.

  ‘I thought Makil was Governor,’ the Rowan remarked acidly to Isthia, seething with worry that Jeff would work himself sick again. ‘Can’t you do anything to curb him?’

  ‘He’s one of the best engineers we have,’ Isthia said, though her thoughts echoed the Rowan’s worry about Jeff’s stamina. ‘So much needs to be organized for us to get through this winter. You know how short his time is.’

  Short? The Rowan demanded of Isthia with sudden panic, probing to comprehend her qualification.

  Easy, girl, and Isthia bounced the probe back. You know he’s under contract to FT&T. When the Fleet is satisfied they’ve swept sky and surface clear of alien artifacts, they’ll go and Jeff will be transferred elsewhere. Deneb’s not due for a Prime. Reidinger made that clear to Jeff in their initial interview.

  The Rowan had forgotten about that. If he’s trying to work himself into a relapse to stay here longer, Reidinger can invoke punitive measures. He wouldn’t like that. I wouldn’t like that for him.

  Then make him stop working, my dear. I’m only his mother! And, grinning at the Rowan’s astonishment, Isthia left the room. And you have measures that I can’t use! Then her laugh echoed merrily in the Rowan’s ears as the girl suddenly realized what she meant.

  The Rowan waited until the current delegation left, then she closed and locked the door.

  ‘Now don’t start on me again, Rowan,’ Jeff said, looking up from the files he was scanning preparatory for his next appointment.

  ‘You have ten minutes free-time right now,’ she began, affecting a provocative posture, ‘and it’s mine!’ She snuggled up to him in the bed. ‘Everyone on this planet gets a piece of the action but me,’ she went on, ‘and I protest.’

  ‘Rowan,’ he began, not quite masking irritation at her form of interruption. Then, he took a deep breath and smiled. ‘I do have a lot to do.’

  ‘You’d do more if you give yourself a chance to rest …’

  Was rest what you had in mind? His startingly blue eyes began to sparkle.

  Well, it’s plain you’ve got your mind on many things far more important …

  He laughed then, and dropped the films on to the bedside table, putting his good right arm about her.

  And while cerebral activity is all you’re able for …

  ‘We’ve got ten minutes alone and I’ll just prove what I’m able for, my dearling,’ and that is just what he did, with considerable invention to overcome the handicap of his injuries.

  When he was totally relaxed, she subtly nudged his mind into a sleep pattern and postponed his next appointment. His nap was brief but he ruefully admitted that it had done him so much good, he wouldn’t fight her on that point again.

  By the end of that week, healing had progressed so well that Jeff was allowed to move to the Ravens’ accommodation. The Rowan was amazed to see so many people living so congenially in such cramped quarters. The room she shared with Jeff was smaller even than the one she had occupied in Lusena’s neat apartment. There was space for the bed, a workspace and monitors, and one had to step around the foot of the bed to get in and out of the room.

  ‘Of course, we don’t need much space,’ Isthia remarked as she easily read the Rowan’s dismay despite a quick shield to hide it. ‘We don’t have much in the way of possessions at the moment,’ and she gave a wry laugh. ‘Except for Ian, none of us have more than one change of clothes right now.’

  At the best of times the Rowan rarely paid much attention to what she wore, but footwear, appropriate for walking between Tower and her quarters on Callisto, was coming apart at the seams.

/>   ‘I think I can help you there,’ Isthia said and passed Ian over to the Rowan who had never held a baby in her life. The child regarded her with solemn wide eyes and his fist crept up to his mouth.

  You can trust me, the Rowan said carefully, wondering how you reassured a nonverbal infant. She was rewarded by an astonishingly jubilant smile so infectious that she grinned back in an idiotic fashion.

  ‘Yes, he has that effect on one,’ Isthia remarked, rummaging in a small chest that also served as seating. ‘Ah. You’ve small enough feet. Maybe these will fit.’

  The Rowan had grown accustomed to Isthia’s openness so that when it shut down completely, as Isthia handed her a pair of country boots, she looked at her questioningly.

  ‘A granddaughter’s,’ was Isthia’s terse response. Then she repossessed Ian, who squirmed about to watch the Rowan try on the boots. ‘She’d be thrilled to think her beloved uncle’s wife could use them. Put them on.’ The moment of closure passed, but the grief behind it had not.

  The Rowan carefully put them on, folding over the flap and standing up to test the fit. A little loose but a thicker pair of socks would solve that problem.

  ‘I should have some socks around here, too,’ Isthia said and those, too, were passed on to the Rowan.

  ‘This is becoming a most salutary visit for me,’ the Rowan said. ‘One gets accustomed to taking ordinary things for granted, like socks and shoes and a change of clothes.’

  Isthia smiled warmly at her, taking Ian’s fist out of his mouth. ‘A new baby helps, too,’ she added in the same thoughtful tone. ‘A new life means continuity. In one way I’m sorry he’s the last of them. However, an even dozen was all I promised their father.’

  The Rowan felt an unexpected shaft of pure envy for Jeff. To be one of a large and, from what she’d now seen, extremely congenial, loving family was truly enviable. Lusena’s two children, Bardy and Finnan, had been much older, so she’d missed a true sense of family. Turian had also had a similar deep familial attachment.

  ‘You had no family at all?’ Isthia asked, surprised.

  Shaking her head, the Rowan dropped the eye contact.

  ‘I was the sole survivor of a mining camp that was buried in a freak mud avalanche,’ the Rowan said quietly. ‘The Company office narrowed it down to three possible sets of parents …’

  ‘But surely, you’d remember?’

  ‘I was three. When I cried for my mother, an entire planet heard me.’ The Rowan managed a weak chuckle. ‘They had to shut me up so all memory of the tragedy was blocked out.’

  ‘And no-one’s removed the block?’

  ‘Yes, they tried once,’ the Rowan said, frowning as she remembered the occasion. ‘The block was well constructed. I resisted and they couldn’t go deep enough. So,’ and she firmly changed mood, ‘that’s it.’

  ‘Is it?’ Isthia remarked cryptically as she left the room. Startled, the Rowan probed but she came smack up against Isthia’s formidable shield.

  It took the concerted effort of his entire remaining family to get Jeff, complaining that he had a lot of catching up to do, to retire at a reasonable hour. But he surrendered gracefully. ‘Not that I had any choice,’ he muttered to the Rowan as she preceded him into their room. ‘At that, we’re lucky,’ he added.

  ‘We are?’ and the Rowan heard the faint sibilant shushes and loud whispers for ‘silence’.

  ‘We’ve got a room with a lock.’ He yawned mightily, wincing. The wounds across chest and ribs remained tender. Cautiously he lay down on the bed, then negligently reached out to draw her close to him. ‘I made them all promise to knock, too.’

  ‘Will they?’ the Rowan asked, experiencing a sudden inhibition. She’d been looking forward to some privacy after the comings and goings of the hospital. ‘Will they, Jeff?’

  A gentle snore informed her that the convalescent was already asleep.

  Living in the boisterous Raven household was at first a novelty for the Rowan, totally foreign to anything in her experience. His various brothers and sisters, their mates, children, occasionally in-laws, orphaned nieces, nephews, and some elderly relations of both Isthia and Josh Raven lived happily in each other’s pockets. The accommodation wasn’t even quiet late at night since some of the residents worked late shifts. While there may have been an understanding about knocking on the door, in practice a knock was usually immediately followed by the door being opened to admit anyone who wished to speak to Jeff.

  The first day, the Rowan took it in good part: she remembered what Isthia had said about ‘sharing’. But she was unused to continual babble and certainly all the touching that went on, friendly though it was and meant in the nicest possible way, made her edgy. She firmly suppressed the irritation and sublimated it into hard work.

  Along with manning the Tower for ’porting men and supplies out to the platinum mine, the Rowan did some judicious investigation into what could not be found in the salvage sheds. No-one had fully inventoried what had been saved from the ruins so, when she learned from Rences that he had spent fruitless hours trying to find certain unusual bolts and fasteners, when she heard Rakella complaining about the lack of some surgical instruments, or from Isthia which size of work boot was no longer available, she discreetly contacted other Primes and, pledging her credit, made up the shortages. She respected the fierce independence of the Denebians but they could carry it too far, even if the planet was poor. A few bits and pieces could be added without offending anyone’s pride.

  Then Jeff paid her a surprise visit at the Tower while she was shifting some internal freight, including two crates of tools which she had discreetly brought in from Capella. The kinetics she was training for in-planet freight never questioned what she asked them to ’port. Jeff was another matter entirely. Unfortunately, not only was the origin of the crates clearly stenciled on the side, but also they were far too fresh-looking to have been miraculously ‘unearthed’. There were also two inbound shipments still in their cradles, waiting to be dispersed.

  Where did all that came from? Jeff wanted to know, striding into the Tower room. He halted, staring about a facility which bore little resemblance to its previous appearance. He whistled in apparent appreciation which made the three youngsters grin, but the Rowan had no trouble sensing a growing concern and anger.

  ‘All right, Tony, you and Seb link and send Cradle 4 to the mine,’ she said, continuing the procedure. ‘Good,’ she added as Seb punched the appropriate coordinates up on the screen. ‘Touch the gestalt …’ The generator’s whine peaked. ‘No, don’t look at me for the go. You have to know yourself when it’s go … that’s right. On the button! Good transfer!’

  Jeff found himself a seat and, if he seemed to be interested in how the three trainees were teleporting, the Rowan was all too aware of the tension building in him. His eyes were brilliant with what she identified as suppressed outrage.

  ‘That’s all for today, crew,’ she said. ‘Now, why don’t you take all you’ve learned ’porting inanimate objects, and take yourselves back to the City while the generator’s still running sweetly.’ She added that impudently.

  ‘You’ll never know until you try,’ Jeff added with a hearty enthusiasm for them to be well gone from the tower. ‘Out you go. You’ve thrown heavier stuff than yourselves. And you ought to know where home is by now. Off with you.’

  One by one they managed the feat, echoes of astonished delight from each of the three minds before their touches dissolved.

  ‘And why are you annoyed, anxious, outraged?’ the Rowan demanded because she couldn’t bear his displeasure.

  ‘Deneb’s bankrupt!’ The words exploded from him and his eyes seemed to shoot sparks at her. ‘How’re we going to pay for all this? Hire more kids out to FT&T when we need every survivor we’ve got to rebuild?’

  ‘It’s all paid for,’ she said, clamping down but not quickly enough for someone as swift to see an opening as Jeff Raven. Why not? I never use half my contractual monies anyway. I called in
a few favors …

  Deneb isn’t your planet, isn’t your problem …

  Don’t be so damned proprietarial! It’s my problem if I make it mine. I’ve great respect for this planet’s people. I admire your family tremendously …

  Family’s the keyword, isn’t it? Jeff’s tone had abruptly altered and his eyes narrowed. He caught her by the shoulders then and before she guessed his intention, he had pierced through every layer of privacy in her mind. She cried out at the force of his mental penetration as he also broke through the block that had remained intact against every other invasion.

  Trembling violently, she clung to him as his intrusion restored the memory of that horrendous time. Then slowly, with infinite tenderness, he withdrew, soothing away forever the terrors of a three-year-old girl, battered about in the dark of a rolling, plunging vehicle.

  They stood a long while locked in each other’s arms, until the glorious sunset colored the sky and they realized just how long this passage of restoration had taken. Rowan’s tears were dry on her cheeks and she was no longer racked by shudders.

  ‘I was named Angharad Gwyn. My father was a shaft supervisor and my mother was a teacher. I had a brother named Ian …’ She looked up in amazement.

  ‘We have something else in common then.’ He tucked her head under his chin again, holding her more firmly now. ‘It was a rough trip all right, enough for one small, lonely girl.’ He pressed her tightly when he felt her begin to shudder again. ‘You know, I don’t think that it was all Siglen’s fault that you were afraid of big, black holes in space. Not after that trip!’

  ‘You know, you might be right,’ the Rowan said slowly, for she remembered all too clearly her terror at being propelled toward the shuttle that was to have taken her to Earth for training. She’d been so frightened that she’d even dropped Purza as she ’ported herself back to the one safe place she knew. ‘I couldn’t think of anything but you on my way here.’ She gave a convulsive shake at the memory of her first glimpse of Jeff.