The Rowan

by Anne McCaffrey

  Rowan, love!

  Jeff’s rich voice was tender and soft, gently rousing her from sleep. Phantom lips laid pressure on hers, and a phantom touch caressed her loverly in other places.

  She so much desired his presence, was convinced that he had somehow returned, that when she realized that she was still alone in her bed, she almost wept.

  Oh, Rowan, lovey. I am so sorry! I devoutly wish I was really there. And she experienced a jolt of his own sexual tension and was a little dismayed at its intensity.

  The debris is still falling?

  She caught the grimness – and the fatigue – in his mind. Like rain! He was also disgusted. If any of us in that merge had had the sense God gave little green apples …

  He gave them some?

  … we’d have made sure we scattered those hulks sunward!

  Oversight!

  Overhead, too. At least we have equipment now to monitor falls. The squadron’s on twenty-four-hour duty lassoing the big stuff, packing it into drones for shipment back. We may think we’re tired now, but you wait. She felt the unruly humor. Our basket’s entirely full of eggs.

  Eggs?

  Eggs, I said. Our biologists say that the beetles were reproducing for 1) a generation-type voyage 2) shortlived workers that had to be periodically replaced, or 3) stocking up for a population explosion on our planet. They want to do an in-depth examination and extrapolation of the life cycle. So don’t make an omelette.

  Not with frozen eggs. Jeff! Wouldn’t it be a lot easier and more work- and cost-effective to examine everything there? The Rowan felt tired just thinking about the effort involved. Was Jeff warning her or complaining?

  They ‘say’ they have to do it in the big Moon labs – to prevent contamination or something. I think they don’t want Deneb to get such a juicy contract so early in its career as a colony. We could pay off our Central Worlds’ Start-up debt if we’d that kind of investigatory work here.

  The Rowan thought about that. The Armed Services, naval and military, regarded Talent with deep suspicion – since generally speaking, those of a mind to make war were too prosaic to understand minds which eschewed physical violence. Except, of course, she reminded herself, when they needed an entire squadron dispatched to a far corner of the galaxy. THEN they remembered Talent quite well! She didn’t trust bureaucracy either but regulations and rules did reduce chaos to mere confusion. She had come to respect regulations: she would never condone restrictions. Not being of an acquisitive nature, she also did not understand the economics involved: she had all the possessions she needed: she could purchase whatever she liked – within reason – and she was not covetous.

  Jeff was another matter. And all that happened to Jeff.

  How badly is your colony in debt to Central Worlds? And how HAD your governors decided to pay it off?

  This planet’s mineral rich: we’re miners and engineers, with enough farmers thrown in to keep us locally supplied.

  The Rowan pondered a moment, permitting the peripheral information she had absorbed in that merge to surface to her public mind. She knew he was an engineer in a farming family. She knew he had six brothers and four sisters, since increases in Deneb’s population were as important as any other occupation. She knew that his oldest brother and his two older sisters with young families had been wiped out by the aliens, as well as his father and the two youngest siblings: that two younger brothers were medical personnel, that his mother would soon deliver a posthumous child. He had uncles, aunts, and cousins unto the third degree, and half of them had minor Talents. But Deneb, which was not scheduled to achieve full status in Central Worlds nor slated to receive a Prime in the next hundred years, had not organized its Talents until the imminent invasion had forced them into maturity.

  Yes, you picked up a lot about us, didn’t you, sweeting? Jeff sounded pleased and she felt him stretching … the stretch of someone relieving aching, strained muscles. She sent soothing impulses, phantom hands to knead and smooth. She would much rather have had the genuine warm flesh beneath equally fleshy fingers. I, too, and the longing in Jeff’s tone ran as deep as her own.

  This can’t continue!

  That’s for sure, but I also cannot leave Deneb. Jeff’s tone took on an irritated resignation. There’s just no way I can permit myself personal time if my absence results in more destruction. Like right now. Be back!

  His presence in her mind was gone: not so much as an echo remained. She felt more bereft than ever, deeply dissatisfied. If she applauded his principles, she fumed at the circumstances. Which brought her to the nub of the problem: Siglen’s imposed space fear. If Jeff could not, in honor, leave Deneb at this critical moment, it was up to her to break down her own resistance to space travel.

  Afra!

  The Capellan’s mind-touch was instantly available. He always was, she realized. Afra was like a shadow – a loving shadow she also perceived with her newly expanded perceptions of loving and caring. She squashed that observation to save Afra’s sensitivity.

  I’ll need to practice in my shell.

  Not in the middle of night, Rowan, he came back, not bothering to mask his exasperation. Believe me, I’m all for helping the course of true love, but trying to crack a trauma of such long standing is irrational when you – and I – are exhausted. Tomorrow morning. We’ll have a few hours before Callisto clears Jupiter and Earth shipments arrive. This humble T-4 needs all the rest he can get to cope with you on the best of days and I don’t count today one of them! Go to sleep, Rowan. I need mine!

  It was so seldom that Afra was adamant that the Rowan meekly broke the contact. He was right. It would be crazy to try anything in her state of mind.

  State of mind! How did Siglen manage to condition her so thoroughly? Why hadn’t anyone noticed it? Lusena had been so common sensible: why hadn’t she spotted the neurosis?

  BECAUSE Siglen harped on it so often, moaned about the Curse of the Primes so that no-one thought to question her. And both David and Capella had been woefully stressed on their flights. Who would have dared question Altair’s biggest asset?

  Ass was right, the Rowan thought, spotting anomalies that refuted Siglen’s contention. She’d always been able to teleport herself about Port City and the Tower. She’d never experienced agoraphobia. The mechanics of teleporting oneself on a planet were no different than teleporting oneself from one planet to another. The Rowan was disgusted. YEARS had been wasted because of Siglen’s stupid inner ear imbalance!

  And yet, the Rowan distinctly remembered her own terror when, as a very little girl, Lusena was taking her into the shuttle that would have transported her to Earth. She had been so terrified at the sight of that portal she had even dropped Purza to teleport to the only place of safety she knew. Siglen had been raving then about the horrors of space travel, and sparing the poor child any further anguish. Just as she had in the act of teleporting the Rowan to Callisto! The Rowan shuddered remembering that nightmare: why did Talents have to have such perfect recall?

  David of Betelgeuse could clearly remember being nursed at his mother’s breast. Capella swore she remembered her birth trauma. Which, David had acidly remarked, was why Ironpants refused to mate, unwilling to inflict such horror on a child from her womb. Well, that was her excuse.

  Once again, the Rowan tried to force her memory back, before that aborted departure. All she knew about her early childhood was what she had been told: that her parents had died in an avalanche, that she had been the sole survivor of the Rowan disaster. She had never questioned those facts. She had devoutly wished that she had known something of her background: her real name, what her family had been like, if she’d had any brothers and sisters. It hadn’t been until she’d been in Turian’s company that she realized what she might have been lacking.

  She did remember being taken from the hopper, and immediately sedated. She most certainly remembered telling Siglen that she was the Rowan, because ‘they’ all called her ‘The Rowan Child’.

 
; Now that she knew that this whole fufurrah about Primes traveling in space was an imposed neurosis, she was more than halfway to restoration. Or that was the often repeated theory. She stilled her restlessness, found a comfortable position in her half-empty bed, and initiated her sleep pattern.

  The next morning she was awakened by the rumble of generators warming up.

  We’ve two hours before we clear Jupiter, Afra said in his customary dry tone.

  I know. Odd how she always did. Callisto’s orbit in its relation to its primary was a permanent fixture in her consciousness. She dressed quickly, remembered to drink a sustaining meal, and jogged down the passageway to the bunker where the personnel carriers were stored, saw hers missing from its rack and went on to the launch cradle in which it now rested.

  She didn’t feel the least bit altered from the last time she had lain on the padded couch. Shouldn’t she?

  Feel different? Afra echoed and gave her a chuckle.

  [Why had she never realized that Afra was warm brown, velvety smooth, and faintly citrony of scent?]

  YOU yourself haven’t altered, Afra went on through her private observation of him, Just your perception of the process.

  Did you ever suspect that it was a psychosis engendered by Siglen’s lack of equilibrium?

  [Mental shrug.] A T-4 does not delve into the exalted mechanics of the Primes, my dear. Afra snorted at the mere thought of such blasphemy.

  But what do you think about, or Brian Ackerman, or any of those I whip back to Earth, when they’re being transported?

  I don’t listen in, and Afra added an admonitory chiding.

  You’re being obstructive. Well, be objective. What do YOU think about?

  During a kinetic displacement? Generally, I concentrate on getting where I’m supposed to go. Where did you plan to go today, Rowan?

  I would prefer to go to Deneb, she answered in a very meek and subdued voice.

  Not unless Jeff Raven is there to catch you, and he isn’t. And even with the gestalt, I can’t send you very far. You’re safe in that respect, he added quickly when he felt the first tinge of terror in her mind. It will take time, you know, to condition you to space travel.

  I can’t just sit here in the cradle …

  You’re not, you know, Afra said very gently. You’re hovering in Demos’s orbit above Mars.

  WHAT? In her fright, the Rowan projected such an almighty scream that Afra slapped his hands, instinctively but ineffectually, to his ears.

  WHAT are you doing. Rowan? came a roar from Earth Prime. Afra, I’ll flay your yellow skin and hang the meat from your bones out to dry! What ARE you doing with her?

  Leave him alone, Reidinger, was the Rowan’s prompt and equally agitated response. Afra’s obeying my orders and your stated wishes – that THIS Prime will learn to travel in space. Stop blustering. Here I am orbiting Demos and that’s further than I’ve ever been able to come before. But, and while she forced herself to admire the view, she found herself ‘looking’ straight ahead, unable/unwilling to turn her eyes from the sight of Demos’s pitted surface with Mar’s red/orange bulk beyond. As long as she had only that view to contend with, she could manage it. Demos looked exactly like its hologram.

  I think that’s enough for now, she added, spacing her words carefully, as if one of them might alter her head a fraction, forcing her to see more of the open space all around her shell which could be a prelude to the godawful spinning she’d felt on her first space voyage. Shut up, Rowan, that was a Siglenish imposition. Nevertheless, she felt sweat trickling down her face.

  You did very well, Afra said calmly and the next thing she knew she was back in the cradle.

  Did you really send me all the way to Demos, Afra? She felt totally spineless and couldn’t move a hand to blot the perspiration on her face.

  I certainly did, and you suffered no significant trauma according to the monitors in the shell. Just stop thinking about Siglen.

  Afra did not have to sound quite so smug, she thought deep inside her head. He had royally fooled her, that treacherous T-4.

  ‘What’s the Rowan’s capsule doing out here?’ Ray Loftus yelled and he had flipped up the canopy before he noticed her lying inside. ‘Hey – whaaaaat?’ He stared down at her, his face gone white. ‘Are you all RIGHT, Rowan?’ He didn’t appear to know what to do, waving one hand impotently.

  ‘Stop dithering and give me your hand,’ the Rowan said. ‘I’ve been to Demos and back – for my sins!’

  Ray willingly assisted her out of the capsule and, then almost too solicitously for she was drained by the experience, supported her up to the Tower building. His incredulity and several odd, unsortable fleeting emotions were inescapably projected to her through the physical contact. But she also caught pride and relief.

  Afra palmed open the door, took her hand and, with a brief kinetic surge, renewed her energy. Before she could read him, he had his shield up again.

  You don’t need to treat this as so commonplace an occurrence, you know, she added, piqued.

  Why not? It should be! Yow! He sidled away from the pinch she gave him.

  Now, if fun and games are over for this morning, can I please review the day’s schedule? came the acid tone of Reidinger. There are a few alterations.

  That night as the Rowan lay in her doubly lonely bed, she reviewed that lift. She had felt nothing: not even that spinning – once she’d shut her mind away from the notion – that had consumed her on the ’portation from Altair to Callisto. But, in the light of present knowledge, was it any wonder she responded as she had during her first space voyage? Hadn’t Siglen wept and moaned and wrung her hands and carried on as if she was sending the Rowan to her death? And all those preventive shots and medicines which, since her middle ear was not impaired at all, had probably produced the nausea, the spinning and disorientation because she hadn’t needed them. Siglen had done one fine job of preconditioning her to react exactly as she had.

  She’d get Afra to take her back to Demos tomorrow and this time she’d look at it – and around her. There was absolutely no physiological or psychological reason why she should be affected by space travel.

  No, there’s not. Keep telling yourself that, honey. Keep saying it until you believe it with all your heart and mind, Jeff’s voice said, gently inserted into her mind.

  Oh, your touch is so fragile … She worried that the tasks set him were too much for his so recently acquired abilities.

  No, not at all, he replied, deepening his tone. I didn’t want to startle you.

  Don’t try to deceive me, Jeff Raven. I know you’re exhausted. You shouldn’t even be trying to contact me in that state …

  Aren’t you glad I have? [His mental smirk was accompanied by a very delicate caress.] Wherever you are, no matter how tired I am, I shall always reach out to you. Though … and now his tone altered suggestively, it doesn’t help when I am trying to get some rest. Sleep well, love.

  She sent a light kiss for his cheek, laughing as she did so and tried to calm his mind to the sleep pattern.

  Granny! I can do that for myself!

  Tired as she was, she was not quite ready for sleep yet herself. So often she used sleep as a method of interrupting negative mental patterns, of unproductive and circular thinking. Sometimes she could gain an insight into a problem by going over and over it again – then wake the next morning with the solution.

  Tonight Purza appeared, not the remains that Moria had vandalized, but the comfort creature that had been her mainstay. The Rowan paused, thinking back to those last days of her childhood, of all the conversations she carried on with Purza, of the silly things they’d discuss … They? The Rowan caught herself up. She had believed, for many years, that Purza was sentient, despite the unalterable fact that the Rowan knew the pukha was NOT. She had imbued many qualities and characteristics into the comfort … toy, say it, Rowan, toy! … No, not a toy. Device! Monitor! Surrogate! The pukha had certainly been the receptacle of more confidences than
any human being, even of matters she never could have discussed with Lusena. Yet the Rowan distinctly remembered Purza advising her against things which she, the Rowan, had particularly wanted to do. How could the pukha have such discretion?

  The loss still rankled in the Rowan’s mind and heart. She had succumbed to a deep melancholia which Lusena had been unable to lift despite metamorphic treatment. Siglen had been irritated, having realized just how much she was beginning to rely on her apprentice, but she was far more fearful of contracting even the merest sniffle. Then Gerolaman had acquired the barquecat. And that ungrateful scamp whom the Rowan had counted on as a companion in her Callisto quarters had refused to leave the Jibooti passenger vessel, to the intense delight of the crew. She’d had to let him stay, more angered than dismayed by his defection.

  ‘When I was a child, I played with childish things!’ That phrase, which had been well dinned into her head during that painful readjustment time, now came to mind.

  The Rowan tossed restlessly in her bed, hating the phrase, and all the memories it evoked.

  Why would Purza come to mind now, tonight? Except that Jeff had queried the memory. Jeff was more than a substitute for a surrogate … except that he couldn’t even do his courting of her in person!

  Why Purza? Why not Rascal? She had truly outgrown the need for the comfort surrogate! Or had she?

  Puzzling through that, the Rowan fell asleep. In the morning, searching her waking thoughts for an answer, she found none. Instead she had an overpowering urge to seek Jeff. And resisted. She had set an additional clock to Denebian time and he would be hard at work. She had overslept her usual waking hour but Jupiter did not clear Callisto for three hours.

  Listlessly she rose to face the day’s routine. She and Jeff might have their lifetimes to get to know each other, but she’d rather start in earnest. Damn Reidinger! How could he! She’d like to tell him a thing or two!

  In person.

  Watch out! she heard Afra warn the Station staff. She wasn’t sure if she was annoyed or amused that caution was given. She palmed open the door into the Tower and let it whoosh shut behind her as she observed the wary expressions.