Lyon's Pride

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Hey, this one’s new, isn’t it?” he asked, running fingers along the suede-like covering and noticing the length of it.

  “Well, you’d hardly have fit on Clarissia’s old one.”

  “Well,” and he mimicked her tone exactly, “it’s much appreciated,” he said, sliding onto the couch and giving a sigh as his legs were supported beyond his long feet.

  “With the stuff we’ll have to shift today, Kincaid, comfort is as essential as placement. Lionasha,” and she raised her voice, “what’s first?”

  “The big daddy for the moon base…”

  Laria pointed to the placement tri-D on the screens above the couches. “We’ve more inner-system traffic than most Towers.”

  She saw Kincaid listening to the rising whine of the generators, then felt his mind touch hers.

  “It’s all of us today for one of these, Kincaid,” she said, and took first Lionasha and then Vanteer into the merge with the T-2 as backup. The generators reached the required strength and Laria pushed the merge to ’port the cargo carrier deftly to the cradle awaiting it on the moon base.

  Kincaid turned his head to grin at her. “So that’s how a real Tower handles mass.”

  “The first of many. And thank goodness we’ve got eight ’Dinis for ground handlers. They really are the best!”

  Kincaid fell into the rhythm as if he’d been a part of the Tower complement for years. Neither Vanteer nor Lionasha would have commented on how easily he fit in but Laria could nevertheless feel their relief. Almost before they knew it, they had swung the significant volume of outgoing traffic and were beginning to haul in the out-of-system. By the time Clarf’s sun reached zenith Laria called a halt. Despite the air-conditioning, the Tower room was becoming uncomfortable.

  Hey, came the cheery voice of Yoshuk from Sef Tower, anytime you want to send that guy here, he’d be welcome.

  That goes for me, too, added Nesrun.

  Don’t either of you dare poach now I’ve got someone who fits in, Laria said firmly.

  Yes, ma’am, no, sir, Yoshuk replied so cockily she could see the grin on his face.

  Kincaid was stretching and relieving the tension of muscles which had been automatically responding to the day’s “lifts.” His mind had lost the morning’s resilience and Laria hoped she hadn’t pushed him too far.

  “Lunch, and then with this sort of heat pushing down on us, we all take a siesta,” she said, certain that both Vanteer and Lionasha would fall in with her scheme. “That gives the ’Dinis time to rest, too. And don’t look out on the bright of the day without glasses!” she added as Kincaid strolled to the windows to look down at the ’Dinis scurrying about. Two were lagging somewhat behind the pace of the others. “Nil and Plus’ll notice the difference for a while but they all adjust more quickly than we do.”

  Blinking vigorously with tearing eyes, Kincaid managed a half-sided grin. “Who was it told me that Clarf was an easy Tower?”

  “Oh, it is,” Laria said, on her way down the stairs. “We’re just a little busier with all the rearrangements. Next week, we’ll hardly have a snitch to switch.”

  Sensibly they ate as lightly at midday as the ’Dinis. Nil and Plus needed some judicious eye care but when Kincaid would have performed it, the other six ’Dinis pushed him out of the way and had a great time fussing over exactly how to effect the most result in the fastest time. The three long-term residents of Clarf Tower smiled proudly at the concerted effort.

  “I’ve been away longer than I realized,” Kincaid said, slowly peeling one of the meltingly sweet bogpears that the others had recommended.

  “How long were you on that cruise?” Vanteer asked.

  Kincaid paused, frowning before he answered, “Nearly five years, I think. Basic.”

  “That long?” Laria tried to remember exactly how long Thian had been out, but it was no five years.

  “Oh,” Kincaid said with a diffident flick of his fingers, “I’d been sent out with Squadron C long before those ion trails were discovered. We picked ’em up in our quadrant. Then it was even more important for the Squadron to have a Talent.”

  “Were they trying to burn your mind out?” Vanteer demanded with heated indignation before Laria could speak.

  “No, and they didn’t,” Kincaid replied, though he began to rub his forehead in an unconscious gesture. “I’d more than enough latents among the crew personnel to draw on when I had to…”

  Waiting for some clue to his personal distress, Laria caught it. So, the long cruise had had many complications for the Talented homosexual.

  “How long have you been getting headaches like that?” Laria asked, trying to keep both dismay and concern from becoming evident.

  He dropped his hand from his forehead and met her eyes. Then managed a chuckle. “Comes and goes.”

  “Fine Prime I am,” she said, pushing back her chair and coming around behind him. She placed her fingers lightly, like a net, around his skull and gently supplied the inhibitors that would reduce both the ache and the minute swelling of the cerebral area which governed all psionic activity.

  “I’ll be fine, Laria, really I will,” he said, reaching up as if to disengage her fingers.

  “Don’t you dare,” Lionasha said, waggling a finger at him. “Laria’s one of the best at healing.”

  What Laria also felt, because Kincaid had no way to prevent it, was that his emotions were in a turmoil, more of the brew of hurt, loss, disappointment, and, yes, physical pain, that had not been resolved by the sleep and relief of bodily fatigue. His participation in today’s merge had almost wiped out the remedial affect of several days’ much-needed sleep. Considering his state, he’d been a real trooper.

  “Headache gone now, friend?” she asked casually, removing her hands since she now knew more than he did about his condition.

  He gave her as searching a stare as he could without calling attention to the exchange. Then his taut lips relaxed into a brief smile. She resumed her seat and took another bogpear from the bowl, as if her treatment had been no more than a simple pain block.

  “Yes, friend, much better. Thank you,” he said and finished eating his own pear.

  “Lionasha, it’s just the lighter stuff for the evening pushes, isn’t it?” Laria said and managed a very convincing yawn. “Won’t be that much to do when it cools down.”

  “Right-o,” Lionasha said.

  “I want to check that ping I heard before I get my nap,” Vanteer said, moving toward the stairs that led to the Tower’s machine level.

  And that was how Clarf Tower managed to deceive Kincaid until the worst of both the physical and mental fatigue began to heal.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  WHEN Rojer’s profound emotional trauma began to ease, Isthia advised that he be allowed to enroll in an engineering program which he had been so keenly interested in prior to the tragedy. He must learn to shift his concentration from his loss. She offered her beloved cottage, not so isolated any more as Deneb City was spreading ever closer to her lakeside retreat, and flattened arguments that too much solitude for the grieving boy might have an adverse effect.

  And you think that one or another of us won’t be subtly aware of his state of mind at all times, Damia? Isthia had snorted with disdain. We are always but a thought away, yours, mine, Afra’s…

  Jeff’s, added Earth Prime.

  The cottage worked for you and Afra, didn’t it? Isthia went on, ignoring her son’s interruption. We all know he needs to grieve. Let him. Right now companionship is not high on his agenda. In fact, it would only serve to remind him of his loss. We’ve done as much metamorphically as we can. Now he needs to be diverted and, if it’s engineering that he has a passion for, let’s fan those flames and put his mind to work.

  Damia and Afra drew Xexo into the discussion and the Aurigae T-8 had no hesitation in supporting Isthia’s suggestion. Rojer had a natural engineering bent and he was in the right place to get his qualifications. There were other e
ngineering candidates on Deneb, so he could have as much, or as little, social intercourse as he wished. After all, how many Towers were there for Primes to run? Xexo went further and, after a long and useful discussion with Commander Metrios of the Genesee, developed a curriculum, meticulously tailored to beguile young T-1 Rojer Lyon into studying himself out of grief.

  After a desultory and half-hearted start, Rojer began to respond to the cleverly devised study program and to spend hours on the terminal, competing with himself on Engineering Teach. His progress was duly noted. If Xexo grinned fatuously as he tended the generators at Aurigae Tower and adopted a smug smile whenever Rojer was mentioned, no one contested him when he’d allude to Rojer’s progress as one of his own better “engineering” accomplishments.

  Occasionally, his uncle Jeran, Deneb’s Prime, called Rojer to assist in the Tower, “to keep his hand in.” There he met cousins with varying degrees of Talent who were also pressed into service. Though he had never much liked his cousin Rhodri, he found himself drawn to the youngest of the Eagles, the shy and self-effacing Asia, who was also in the Engineering program.

  He was constantly receiving invitations from the cluster of relatives, Eagles, Ravens, Sparrows, but he rejected all, with the excuse that he had to study, keep up the garden and keep down the fish population in the lake. At first he had railed at what he considered their tactless disregard of his loss. Except for Asia, whose deep blue-grey eyes always saddened whenever he caught her looking at him in the monthly tutorial sessions. But that attitude was difficult to maintain when, empathic as he was, he sensed a supportive presence when the black moments descended on him. Never the same person, and never an intrusive one, but someone there when something sharpened the pain of his loss. Damia was most often there, or his father; once it was his grandmother, several times Elizara, particularly at the beginning; but mostly his great-grandmother Isthia, or his aunt Besseva, supplied the solace. Once he was sure it was Asia who reached him one very black night, but then definitely the presence was his grandmother. He could not avoid knowing how deeply they were willing to share his pain, his sense of loss—especially when their thoughts became inadvertently specific in their own personal experiences with loss and grief. While he was left to himself to heal, he was never truly alone and that, all by itself, was the greatest balm.

  Then, about six weeks after his installation in the cottage, either Isthia or Besseva—both women insisted he drop the familial titles—started taking him out to dinner and an evening’s company. At first he suspected some sort of “kind” conspiracy when he noticed no ’Dinis present but his female relations, having so many homes to choose from, adroitly picked those which had no Mrdini associations. He often rode with Asia to her house because she’d listen to him sounding off on engineering theories. She often had some very adroit suggestions.

  “Why don’t you speak out at the tutorials? Anyone would think you were just being tolerated in the class?” he asked one day when she startled him with her grasp of jo-junctions.

  “Oh,” and she waved her free hand nervously, “I might be wrong and then they’d all laugh at me.”

  “You haven’t been wrong once with me,” Rojer said, annoyed at her diffidence.

  “Yes, but you’re different from everyone else in my family,” she replied. “You listen to me.”

  Rojer kept his annoyance to himself, remembering all too well how much of a bully Roddie had been: probably the reason his sister wouldn’t speak up for herself.

  “Would you care for a fish dinner? Say tomorrow night?” he asked her several weeks later. “Only,” and he grinned broadly at her, “you have to catch your own fish.”

  She had a rippling kind of laugh and, rather than send her scuttling back into herself, he grinned back.

  “I am, however, a very good cook so you don’t have to cook it.”

  “I really ought to study the quantums…” she said, already retreating from that moment of amusement.

  “So do I. We’ll make it a work evening: catch fish, eat fish and discuss quantums while we eat.”

  He knew Asia was a T-4—she’d been tested—but it didn’t hurt to reinforce her and he was deft enough to do so. Like so many Denebians, she was lackadaisical about honing the ability she had. That made it all the easier for him to make a few adjustments, to help her think better of herself.

  “You do understand the quantums better than I do…”

  “We’ll find out whether or not I do tomorrow. Right? Gotta get on home now,” he said, as they came to her turn-off. He kicked his pony, Koto, into a lope and waved one hand in an airy farewell.

  They got together once or twice during the next few weeks. By then his studies had begun to intrigue him into making voluntary forays into the various aspects of spatial engineering. Such problems were the best meat to feed a healing mind. Many Ravens had been of an engineering bent and Rojer had caught his share of it, as well as a keen sense of spatial relationships. The math was soothing, too, and, over the next four months, he advanced as fast as the computer Teach would let him. When he and Asia shared tutorials, he realized that her grasp of the fundamentals was as firm as his own, because she would volunteer answers if he was the only other student present.

  Some days, when he had worked to total mental fugue, his great-grandmother would suddenly require some item of hers from the cottage and he’d have to ride Koto to wherever she was. He knew, and she knew that he knew, that either of them could have ’ported the item to her if she needed it urgently but they both knew he was the better for the exercise. He submitted to her careful bullying with good grace. Isthia never had cause to call him a cocky boy and she approved of his friendship with Asia.

  But, oh, in the night, how he missed the feel of warm ’Dini bodies snuggled against his. And oh, how often he was about to ask Gil’s opinion or share a wry notion with Kat. He’d still wake to find his pillow damp but Isthia insisted that tears were well spent.

  I’m over five times your age, Rojer Lyon, and I still cry! Isthia had told him rather forcefully the first time he protested that he was too old for weeping.

  It gave him a headache but he’d usually feel better inside.

  Then there was the morning when Jeran required help to bring in a large ship of Mrdini specialists who wanted to prowl through all the bits and pieces that Denebians had found of the original two Hive scout ships. As Jeran had no ’Dini language skills, Rojer had to perform the landing courtesies. That gave him his first contact since the tragedy and, to his surprise, he slipped easily into the required formalities of body and language. Then, too, these were ’Dinis he’d never met before nor would be likely to meet again so there was no real personal involvement.

  Isthia had been right, Rojer decided on his return home. Time did heal. He recognized that he had taken one more large step out of mourning. He began to spend more time with Asia and managed to teach her to fry her own fish without burning it.

  * * *

  Rojer? His uncle Jeran’s voice was unmistakable. ’Port yourself here.

  Rojer had also learned over the last year not to expect explanations from Jeran, so he saved the problem he was working on the Engineering Teach and checked to see if his clothes were clean enough for a Tower appearance. He’d depilated his face that morning and had had a recent trim, though today’s scrutiny in the mirror made him realize that the Gwyn silver lock seemed to have broadened. Finger-combing it back from his forehead, he exhaled a deep breath and ’ported himself to the plascrete apron at the foot of the Deneb City Tower.

  It was as well he picked the spot he did, for there were quite a few vehicles parked just beyond him, and several of the ubiquitous Denebian ponies in the turn-out field. He wondered what was up.

  By the time he had assessed the population of the large Tower room and “felt” the agitated presence of his cousin, Asia Eagle, he decided that today was Test Day for the several engineering students of Deneb City. He took the Tower steps three at a time. Jeran welc
omed his breathless nephew with a solemn nod—his uncle could be more methody than his father ever was—and pointed to the one free workstation. There were six, back to back and arranged so no one could see into another. Asia was in the workstation opposite him. He gave her an encouraging grin because her complexion had an odd green tinge to it.

  “Maybe he shouldn’t have sprung the test on you so suddenly?” he whispered as he sat down.

  “He knows how I’d fret,” Asia said, looking sicker than ever.

  “You’ll do grand, Asia. You’re faster’n’me in jo-junctions and quantums.”

  She cast him a dire look. “No one’s faster’n you at quantums, Ro…”

  NO TALKING! “Of any kind,” Jeran added aloud. “I’m the monitor.”

  Asia made a sorrowful grimace.

  “Your stations will display the test questions in precisely one minute four seconds. Two hours are allowed for the first section, to be followed by a break of fifteen minutes during which you may move about or relieve yourselves. There are four papers, with a half-hour break for lunch. You may, of course, leave the test station whenever a paper is finished.” A mixture of groans and guffaws met that statement. Jeran permitted a small smile. “It has been known to happen. Is everyone prepared?” Deeper groans greeted that query.

  The dark screen before Rojer suddenly lit and the initial page of the first paper presented him with a problem he knew he could answer easily. That gave him considerable self-confidence. He’d show them all…

  * * *

  “There’s no way I’ve passed,” Rojer heard Asia groan in a tone of abject defeat at the end of the examination day.

  “Don’t come on like that with me, Asia,” he said as sternly as he dared. Even with him, she’d sometimes retreat into a silent unresisting victim. “I’ve been working with you too long. I know your abilities. And I won’t have you belittling yourself.” He did a little “tinkering” to encourage more optimism. “There wasn’t a single problem we haven’t gone over and you know all the structural ones because we’ve gone over them together. So, we’ll just wait and see if I failed, too.”