The Rowan

by Anne McCaffrey

  ‘Heard any ’scut about our Denebian friend?’ she asked with just the right degree of ‘casual’ in her voice.

  Ackerman shook his head. ‘Those planets are three generations colonized, and you came out of Altair in two.’

  ‘That could explain it, but FT&T hasn’t even projected a station for Deneb. They’re still trying to find Talents for closer systems.’

  ‘And not for want of trying,’ Afra said.

  ‘Wild Talent?’ Powers helpfully suggested.

  ‘At a Prime level? Unlikely.’ She shook her head. ‘All I can get from Center is that they received an urgent message from an inbound merchantman to help combat a planet-wide virus, including a rundown on the syndrome and symptoms. Lab came up with a serum, batched, and packed it. They were assured that there was someone capable of picking it up and taking it the rest of the way past 24.578.82 if a Prime would get it that far. Prior to this morning, what little goes to Deneb has been sent by cargo drone or rerouted. And that’s all anybody knows.’ Then she added thoughtfully, ‘Deneb VIII isn’t a very big colony.’

  Oh, we’re big enough, sweetheart, interrupted the drawling voice. Sorry to get you after hours, my dear, but I don’t really know anyone else to tag on Earth and I heard you coloring your atmosphere.

  What’s wrong? the Rowan asked. Did you smear your serum after all that proud talk?

  Smear it, hell! I’ve been drinking it. No, lovey. We’ve just discovered that we got some ET visitors who think they’re exterminators. We got a reading on three UFOs, perched four thousand miles above us. That batch of serum you wafted out to me this morning was for the sixth virus we’ve been socked with in the last two weeks, so there’re no bets on coincidence. Someone’s trying to kill us off. You can practically time the onset of a new nasty by the digital. We’ve lost twenty-five per cent of our population already and this last virus is a beaut. I want two top germdogs out here on the double and, say, two naval squadrons. I doubt our friends will hover about viral dusting much longer. They’ve softened us up plenty. They’re moving in now and once they get in position they’ll start blowing holes in us real soon. So send the word along to Fleet Headquarters, will you, sweetheart, to mobilize us a heavy-duty retaliation fleet?

  I’ll relay, naturally. But why didn’t you contact direct?

  Contact whom? What? I don’t know your Terran organization. You’re the only one I can hear.

  Not for much longer if I know my bosses.

  You may know your bosses, but you don’t know me.

  That can always be arranged.

  This is no time for flirting. Get that message through for me like a good girl.

  Which message?

  The one I just gave you.

  That old one? They say you can have two germdogs in the morning as soon as we clear Jupiter. But Earth says no squadrons. No armed attack.

  You can double-talk, too, huh? You’re talented. But the morning does us no good. NOW is when we need them. We’ve got to have as many healthy bodies as possible. Can’t you sling the medics … no, you can’t, can you, not with Jupiter’s mass in the way. Sorry, I just found the data on your station. Filed under Miscellaneous Space Installations. But, look, if six viruses don’t constitute armed attack, what does?

  Missiles constitute armed attack, the Rowan said primly.

  Frankly, missiles would be preferable. Them I can see. I need those germdogs NOW. Can’t you turn your sweet little mind to a solution?

  As you mentioned, it’s after hours.

  By the Horsehead, woman! the drawl was replaced by a cutting mental roar. My family, my friends, my planet are dying.

  Look, after hours here means we’re behind Jupiter. But … wait! How deep is your range?

  I don’t honestly know. And the firm mental tone lost some of its assurance.

  ‘Ackerman!’ The Rowan turned to her stationmaster.

  ‘I’ve been listening.’

  Hang on, Deneb, I’ve got an idea. I can deliver your germdogs. Open to me in half an hour.

  The Rowan whirled on Ackerman. ‘I want my shell.’ Her brilliant eyes were flashing and her face was alight. ‘Afra!’

  The station’s second in command, the handsome yellow-eyed Capellan T-4, raised himself from the chair in which he’d been quietly watching her.

  ‘Yes, Rowan?’

  She glanced to the men in the room, bathing each in the miraculous smile that so disconcerted Ackerman with its sensuality.

  ‘I’ll need all of you to help me. I’ll have to be launched, slowly, over Jupiter’s curve,’ she said to Afra. Ackerman was already switching on the dynamos, and Bill Powers punched for her special shell to be deposited on the launch rack. ‘Real slow, Afra. Then I’ll want to draw heavy.’ She took a deep breath.

  Like all Primes, she was unable to launch herself through space. Her trip from Altair to Callisto had deeply traumatized her. Primes were the victims of particularly pernicious agoraphobia. Most could not tolerate heights either. There were some who said that the Rowan did very well indeed to climb the stairs to her ‘tower’. Paradoxically, where the looming bulk of Jupiter gave others ‘falling’ psychoses, it reassured her. With the planet in the way, she couldn’t ‘fall’ far into the limitless void of space.

  As another necessary security measure – in the event of a meteor shower on Callisto – the Rowan had a personnel capsule, opaque and specially fitted, padded and programmed to reduce the paralyzing sensation of ‘movement’. By the exercise of severe self-discipline, the Rowan had accustomed herself to taking short emergency drill trips.

  As soon as she saw the capsule settle in the rack, she took another deep breath and disappeared from the Station, to reappear beside the conveyance. She settled gracefully into the shock couch of the shell. The moment the lock whistle shut off, she ‘knew’ that Afra was lifting her, gently, gently away from Callisto. She wasn’t aware of the slightest movement. Nonetheless, she clung firmly on to Afra’s reassuring mental touch. Only when the shell had swung into position over Jupiter’s great curve did she reply to the priority call coming from Earth Central.

  Now what the billy blue blazes are you doing, Rowan? Reidinger’s base voice crackled in her skull. Have you lost what’s left of your precious mind?

  She’s doing me a favor, Deneb said, abruptly joining them.

  Who’n hell are you? demanded Reidinger. Then, in shocked surprise, Deneb? How’d you get out there?

  Wishful thinking. Hey, push those germdogs to my pretty friend here, huh?

  Now wait a minute! You’re going a little too far, Deneb. You can’t burn out my best Prime with an unbased send like this.

  Oh, I’ll pick up midway. Like those antibiotics this morning.

  Deneb, what’s this business with antibiotics and germdogs? What’re you cooking up out there in that heathenish hole?

  Oh, we’re merely fighting a few plagues with one hand and keeping three bogey ETs upstairs. Deneb gave them a look with his vision at an enormous hospital, a continuous stream of airborne ambulances coming in; at crowded wards, grim-faced nurses and doctors, and uncomfortably high piles of still, shrouded figures. That melded into a proximity screen showing the array of blips on an orbital hold. We haven’t had the time or the technology to run IDs but our Security Chief says they’re nothing he’s seen before.

  Well, I didn’t realize. All right, you can have anything you want – within reason. But I want a full report, said Reidinger.

  And patrol squadrons?

  Reidinger’s tone changed to impatience. You’ve obviously got an exaggerated idea of FT&T’s influence. We’re mailmen, not military. I’ve no authority to mobilize patrol squadrons like that! There was a mental snap of fingers.

  Would you perhaps drop a little word in the appropriate ear? Those ETs may gobble Deneb tonight and go after Terra tomorrow.

  I’m filing a report, of course, but you colonists agreed to the risks when you signed up!

  You’re all heart, said Deneb. />
  Reidinger was silent for a moment. Then he said, Germdogs sealed, Rowan. Pick’ em up and throw ’em out, and his touch left them.

  Rowan – that’s a pretty name, said Deneb.

  Thanks, she said absently. She had followed along Reidinger’s initial push, and picked up the two personnel carriers as they materialized beside her shell. She pressed into the station dynamos and gathered strength. The generators whined and she pushed out. The carriers disappeared.

  They’re coming in, Rowan. Thanks a lot!

  A passionate and tender kiss was blown to her across the intervening light years of space. She tried to follow after the carriers and pick up his touch again, but he was no longer receiving.

  She sank back in her couch. Deneb’s sudden appearance had been immeasurably disconcerting. The strength, the vitality of his mind was magnetic. He had seemed to be inside the capsule with her, filling it with his droll humor and warmth. That was it! He was ‘warm’ toward her and she had basked in that sensation like a sun-dodger. She had never achieved such an instant response to anyone since Turian, whom she often thought of wistfully.

  Oh, she had always had rapport, contact, with others. In fact, with anyone the Rowan chose to, but, with everyone below her own capability, there had always been an awkwardness, a reluctance that had inhibited her overtures. Siglen certainly had thrown shields across her most private thoughts, explaining them patronizingly as ‘no need to put old worries on young shoulders’. Siglen, to this day, still considered the Rowan ‘a mere child’ despite the fact that she’d been Callisto Prime for nearly ten years.

  There were still times when the Rowan wished that Lusena had not died in that crash, days before Reidinger had appointed her to the new base on Jupiter’s moon. Lusena had been such a comfort, such a support, believing so firmly in her future, in the future promised by Yegrani: an ephemeral promise. So the Rowan had struggled to understand herself as she had earlier struggled to perfect control of her Talent.

  ‘We who have been blessed with extraordinary powers,’ Siglen had been fond of declaring in a doleful tone, ‘cannot expect ordinary joys. We have an obligation to use our Talent to benefit all Humankind! It is our Fate to be singled out and single, the more to concentrate on our duties.’

  There had been only Turian to prove an exception. However, that had been ten long years ago now. And male Primes didn’t have a problem finding suitable mates.

  Reidinger had a score of children of varying degrees of competence. David on Betelgeuse was madly in love with his T-2 wife and concentrated on a duty to populate his system with as many high-potential Talent offspring as his wife would tolerate. The Rowan did not have any personal liking for David, though she could work with him satisfactorily. Capella was as eccentric as Siglen was conservative and her personality rubbed the Rowan the wrong way. For all the mental rapport the Rowan achieved with the other Primes, none of them were ever really ‘open’ to her. Reidinger was usually at least sympathetic to some of her problems, but he had to be available every single moment to the myriad problems of the FT&T system. And the Rowan knew fully the loneliness that Yegrani had foretold with no diminution anywhere.

  When the Rowan had been first assigned to Callisto Base, she had thought it was what the words of the Sight meant, for she was a focus. After some months of the routine, the Rowan was severely disillusioned. She was useful, yes: even essential for the smooth flow of material and messages between the Nine Star capitals, but any Prime would have done as well.

  Once her enthusiasm died, she fell back on Siglen’s dogmatic training and tried hard to find satisfaction, if not sublimation, in doing a difficult and taxing job well, suppressing her increasing sense of unrelieved isolation. Quite aware of her devastating loneliness, Reidinger had combed the Nine-Star League to find strong male talents, T-3s and T-4s like Afra, but she had never taken to any of them.

  She liked Afra well enough, and not just because of her promise to his sister, Goswina, but not that well. The only male T-2 ever discovered in the Nine-Star League had been a confirmed homosexual. And now, on Deneb, a T-1 had emerged, out of nowhere – and so very, very far away.

  Afra, take me home now, she said, suddenly aware of physical and mental exhaustion.

  Afra brought the shell down with infinite care.

  After the others had left the Station, the Rowan lay for a long while in the personnel carrier. In her unsleeping consciousness she knew that Ackerman and the others had retired to their quarters until Callisto once more came out from behind Jupiter’s bulk. Everyone had some place to go, someone waiting for them, except the Rowan, who made it all possible. The bitter, screaming loneliness that overcame her during her off-hours welled up – the frustration of being unable to go off-planet past Afra’s sharply limited range – alone, alone with her two-edged Talent. Murky green and black swamped her mind until she remembered the blown kiss. Suddenly, completely, she fell into her first restful sleep in two weeks.

  Rowan. It was Deneb’s touch that roused her. Rowan, please wake up.

  Hmmmm? Her response was reluctant for sleep had been deep and desirable.

  Our guests are getting rougher … since the germdogs … whipped up a broad spectrum antibiotic … we thought … they’d give up. No such … luck. They’re … pounding us … with missiles … give my regards … to your space-lawyer friend … Reidinger.

  You’re playing pitch with missiles? The Rowan came totally awake and alert. She could feel Deneb’s contact cutting in and out: he must be deflecting the bombardment.

  I need backup help, sweetheart, like you and … any twin sisters … you happen … to have … handy. Jump over … here, will you?

  Jump over? What? I can’t!

  Why not?

  I can’t! I am unable to! The Rowan moaned, twisting against the web of the couch.

  But I’ve got … to have … help, he said and faded away.

  Reidinger! The Rowan’s call was a scream.

  Rowan, I don’t care if you are a T-1. There are certain limits to my patience and you’ve stretched every blasted one of them, you little white-haired ape!

  His answer scorched her. She blocked automatically but clung to his touch. Someone has got to help Deneb! she cried, transmitting the Mayday.

  What? He’s joking!

  How could he, about a thing like that?

  Did you see the missiles? Did he show you what he was actually doing?

  No, but I felt him thrusting. And since when does one of US distrust another when he asks for help?

  Since Eve handed Adam a rosy, round fruit and said ‘eat’. Reidinger’s cynical retort crackled across space. And exactly since Deneb’s not been integrated into the Prime network. We can’t be sure who or what he is–or exactly where he is. I certainly can’t take him at his word. Oh, all right. Try a linkage so I can hear him myself.

  I can’t reach him. He’s too busy lobbing missiles spaceward.

  I’ll believe that when I see ’em. For one thing, if he’s as good as he hollers, all he needs to do is tap any other potentials on his own planet. That’s all the help he needs.

  But …

  But me no buts and leave me alone. I’ll play Cupid only so far. Meanwhile I’ve got a company – and seven systems – to hold together. Reidinger signed off with a backlash that stung.

  The Rowan lay in her couch, bewildered by Reidinger’s response. He was always busy, always gruff. But he had never been stupidly unreasonable. While out there, Deneb was growing weaker. She left the capsule and made for the Tower. She should be able to do something once Callisto was clear of Jupiter and the station was operational. But when incoming cargoes started piling up on the launchers, there were no naval units waiting for a Deneb push.

  ‘There must be something we can do for him, Afra. Something!’ the Rowan said, choked with an unreasonable fear. ‘I don’t care what Reidinger said: Deneb’s genuine and Talents help each other!’

  Afra looked down at her sadly and compass
ionately, venturing to pat her frail shoulder.

  ‘What help can we offer, Rowan? Not even you can reach all the way out to him. And Reidinger has no authority to order patrol squadrons. What about focusing whatever other Talents there are on his planet? Surely he can’t be the only one!’

  ‘He needs Prime help and …’ She dropped her head, self-defeated.

  ‘And you can barely go past Callisto’s horizon,’ Afra finished for her, ‘which is more than any other Prime can manage.’

  Keerist! Incoming missile! Ackerman’s mental shout startled both of them.

  Instantly the Rowan linked with the stationmaster and saw, through his eyes, the little-used perimeter warning screen, now beeping frantically. Rowan located and then probed out into space. The intruder, a sophisticated projectile, leaking lethal radiations, was arrowing in from behind Uranus. Guiltily she flushed, for she ought to have detected it before the screen had. There was no time to run up the idling dynamos. The missile was coming in too fast. Deneb was certainly going to prove his peril to Reidinger! She marveled at his audacity in spinning the ET missile into the heart system.

  I want a wide-open mind from everyone on this moon! The Rowan’s broadcast was inescapable. Mauli! Mick! Go into action. She felt the surge of power as forty-eight Talents on Callisto, including Ackerman’s ten-year-old son, enhanced by the twins, answered her demand. She picked up their energy – from the least 12 to Afra’s sturdy 4 – and sent it racing out to the alien bomb. She had to wrestle for a moment with its totally unfamiliar construction and components. With the augmented capability of the merge, it was easy enough for her to deactivate the mechanism and scatter the fissionables from the warhead into Jupiter’s seething mass.