The Rowan

by Anne McCaffrey

  The Rowan and Jeff simultaneously: Same sort of craft we destroyed two years ago!

  Reidinger: Score a point for Talent! Fleet took nine seconds longer to identify. ZAMBIA and her sister ships are demanding the chance to retaliate!

  The Rowan and Isthia: Do NOT permit them to engage!

  The Rowan: We’ll need their minds!

  Reidinger: You figured it out then, Angharad?

  The Rowan: I did indeed! But Leviathan must get close enough to hit the gravity well before it can be swung away from Deneb VIII.

  Jeff, grimly: And we wait?

  Reidinger, equally as grim but with such a strong vein of assurance that the Rowan could feel Jeff relax: We wait for the right moment!

  Jeff composed a graphic display, the Fleet deployment and the Leviathan’s mobile units, added the now measurable speed, mass, and composition of the invader, and grunted when the projection appeared. ‘Closing too bloody damned fast. And if this master strategy of yours doesn’t work?’

  Reidinger: Fleet elements have already destroyed or disabled seven of the fifteen destroyers Leviathan sent out. We’ve sustained some casualties.

  When he paused for too long, Jeff asked sharply: And they’re beetles, aren’t they? More of those damned beetles!

  Reidinger: So the initial unconfirmed reports suggest.

  Jeff let out a wild yell, startling everyone in the Tower. ‘They’ll be making statues to your long ear, Mother,’ he cried, hauling her into his arms and whirling her about.

  Isthia swatted futilely at him but his ebullience did much to lighten the tension in the Tower. ‘Silly boy! Hearing was the easy part!’ She pulled herself out of his arms, but not before giving his face an affectionate caress.

  The eyes of everyone in the Tower turned to the graph and the inexorable progress of the Leviathan past the cold and sterile outer planets of the Denebian system.

  Reidinger, righteous but sad: Two of our destroyers were wiped out. Got too close to the Leviathan when they chased its defenders back. Then it sent seeking missiles in the direction of the dreadnoughts. All sustained damage, fortunately none have been crippled.

  Jeff: Does the Fleet still believe in the potency of its weaponry?

  Reidinger with a snort: Moscow and London are bracketing the intruder and have launched their first salvos.

  Isthia: They have to be seen to try, Jeff. Stop that pacing. My nerves are bad enough without you clomping about like that.

  The Rowan: Save your energy, love. Talent has the big guns and you’re the bombardier!

  Jeff’s eyes sparkled and his grin was pure malice. I figured it out. A bit slow, perhaps, but this local yokel finally caught on.

  I think, and the Rowan paused dramatically, you got past Reidinger’s shield and sneaked a peek.

  Jeff, wearing an innocent expression: I? Invade our Master’s privacy? I’m good but I’m not that good!

  The Rowan laughed aloud. ‘I think you’re better than good, love. If you’d waited, you’d’ve figured out what Reidinger has in mind.’

  *

  It wasn’t easy for anyone in the Tower to wait, watching the invader making its way deeper and deeper into Denebian space, knowing that the intersection of the planet’s orbit and Leviathan’s path was steadily approaching. Isthia sent people home to rest, ordered food brought in, revised the Watch rota, sent Jeff and the Rowan to the Farm to sleep. She arrived at the Farm and sent them back to assume command.

  Additional squadrons were dispatched to harry Leviathan. Though many strikes were made on the surface of the planetoid, the hits had no discernible effect on its inexorable path.

  The Rowan, on a thin band to Isthia: Those mothers must feel pretty invincible by now.

  Isthia: I sense that they are aware of the attacks.

  The Rowan: And smug! I dislike that attitude.

  Besseva: It will suit our purpose.

  The hours dragged and the Rowan began to realize subjectively how Jeff must have felt during that first contact.

  Jeff: Bloody useless is how I felt.

  The Rowan: That’s not how you came across to me.

  Jeff, giving her his special smile as he swiveled his chair around to her: And how did I come across to you?

  The Rowan regarded him for a long moment, smiling tantalizingly. Busy. Preoccupied. Annoyed with bureaucratic inefficiency.

  Jeff said aloud, fidgeting, ‘I wish I was busy right now! Even a little bureaucratic inefficiency to maul would be a relief!’ He sat bolt upright when he glanced at the monitor. ‘Hey, that thing has slowed. It’s going to go into orbit around us!’

  ‘Why?’ Isthia wanted to know. ‘I will not believe its intentions are pacific!’

  Jeff was busily adding equations to the graph. ‘No, not in that orbit. Just far enough away for its missiles to be effective and too far for any retaliation from the ground – if we had any missiles of any kind. Ruddy bitches are going to pound hell out of us again!’

  No, they’re not! Reidinger’s mental alert was almost anticlimactic when it echoed through the minds of everyone in the Tower. Angharad Gwyn-Raven, the A focus is yours. Gather it! Jeff Raven, collect the B focus, Prepare!

  With a single look of exchanged love, the Rowan and Jeff lay supine on their conformable couches and relaxed their bodies. They didn’t notice Rakella motioning for medical orderlies to attend them.

  Capella came querulously into the Rowan’s mind first: This is becoming a habit: twice in as many years. Really! I do trust that we can dispose of this intrusive type for once and all.

  The Rowan: That is the intention! The Rowan also read how nervous Capella was under the guise of complaint. She felt vulnerable, a sensation which the Talented rarely entertained. To herself, the Rowan realized how much she had learned of herself, and others, in the two years since the first merge.

  With Capella came the surge of all the female Talents of her system. Then the T-2 Jedizaira at the Betelgeuse Station added her strength; Maharanjani from Altair and, among those who joined from her native planet, the Rowan felt the touch of her stepsister and welcomed her. Earth’s Talents, Elizara leading as she was familiar with the Rowan’s mind, swelled the force still greater. Procyon sort of stumbled into the focus, apologizing but Piastera was a T-3 and, with Guzman as Prime, had had little chance to do much merging off-planet. Other minds joined in large and small groupings, led by T-2s or T-4s, tentatively at first, then melding in more comfort as they were integrated into the whole of female Talent throughout the Nine-Star League. Their determination to halt the invaders vibrated more fiercely than the force that opposed them. The Denebians came in last, Isthia, Rakella, and Besseva down to young Sarjie, thrilled to be admitted into this experience. Then all were swallowed up in the final consolidation of the Rowan merge.

  Reidinger, and his voice seemed nearly a whisper to the totality that the Rowan had become: Now, Angharad, now! The Raven merge is available!

  Blazoned in the mass mind was the graph on the Tower’s screen and steadily the Rowan merge moved out toward the invader. Like a laser stabbing through space, the Rowan-mind gathered speed and reached the planetoid. Various elements of the Rowan-mind noted composition, mass, confirmed that Leviathan had been made from a dead world, now a darkness reverberating with noisy machinery and the scuttling of myriad creatures, whose minimal understanding responded to commands directed at them from the central point in the cavernous vessel.

  The Rowan-mind: The ‘Many’ are sixteen but some do not emanate much strength. We interrupt and distract the ‘Many’ – NOW!

  There could be no defense against such a shaft of pure mental energy and the ‘Many’ struggled briefly, withered and collapsed into mindlessness under the intensity of the force directed against them.

  The Jeff-focus shouted: NOW! And every kinetic male Talent was joined with full gestalt from all available generators to divert Leviathan on to its final trajectory – straight toward Deneb’s primary.

  Later, in the many y
ears of discussion provoked by an event which lasted six hours, it would be seen as the most perfect example of mind over matter: ineluctably simple when compared to weapon technology or the complexity of spaceship drives. Once the Rowan-mind merge distracted and destroyed the minds of the huge, female reproducers, Leviathan lost its directive force: the diverse subordinates aimlessly continued in the routines for which they had been genetically designed, movements that had become pointless.

  Then the Jeff-mind merge exerted the kinetic energy to deflect Leviathan from its intended orbit above Deneb VIII. Together both mind merges concentrated on speeding Leviathan on its new course. When the gravitic pull of Deneb’s sun caught the planetoid, the mind merges released it.

  Leviathan’s plunge into the solar incandescence created a brief flare in the corona, recorded as the finale to this astounding exercise.

  The Raven-merge: That’s what we should have done with the first attackers.

  The Rowan-merge: We did warn them!

  Slowly the individual minds retreated from their foci: slowly because the mass elation of success had bordered on exquisite ecstasy, too sweet not to savor; slowly because the communion of so many minds was in itself a rare and unique experience. Thanks were given and received. Farewells were tender between those who had just met; reluctant between old friends, united once again. The last withdrawals were almost painful and the Rowan felt totally drained, her mind barren and echoing after such a surfeit.

  ‘Easy, Rowan,’ said Rakella in a muted voice. Even so the Rowan winced weakly. ‘Just drift. Jeff’s fine. Dean’s with him. You’ll both recover after a good, long sleep.’

  I’m here, Jeff said and although he was still on the couch not a scant half meter from her, his tone was a whisper. This was a much longer affair than the first one. Sleep! I’ll love you later.

  ‘I want the pair of you asleep by the time I count three,’ Isthia said, her doughty self.

  That’s not fair, the Rowan thought despite a hideous pounding in her reverberatingly empty head.

  Why’s fair?! One, two, three!

  When the Rowan woke much later, revived and refreshed, she found she was alone in the bed at the Raven farm.

  Jeff was called back to Earth, Isthia said.

  Reidinger? The Rowan shot straight up in bed in her anxiety.

  Back in form, aren’t you, ‘but don’t you dare reach for him!’ Isthia added in a bellow from the kitchen area. The man’s all right. I can’t lie to you. And she couldn’t so the Rowan knew that Reidinger had collapsed. He is very much alive and kicking! Or so Elizara says, and she should know. But his efforts to move dreadnoughts and who knows what else out to Deneb at the last moment were too much for a man his age. He, and Isthia’s tone became scathing, had to do it himself to be sure all was set up for you and Jeff. Elizara has him in hand and she said that you must rest today, too. You’ve the baby to consider. But you may rise and dress.

  ‘You need food first, talk later,’ Isthia said, when the Rowan managed a slow and slightly unsteady entrance, ‘but you’ll be happy to know that one of the beetle attack ships was captured intact. When the boarding party cracked the main air lock, they found the creatures in some sort of stasis, frozen in position. Xenobiologists are of the opinion that they couldn’t even perform routine tasks without ongoing contact with Leviathan. The biologists are ecstatic: they can study the species with impunity. The Fleet has a complete ship to disassemble and all that technology to dismantle. When I think that Jeff nearly died trying to collect just bits and pieces, I could spit acid!’

  As the Rowan listened to Isthia, she ate ravenously and with a single-mindedness that appalled her. It was a trifle unnerving when she recalled a similar trait in the beetle ‘Many’. Not that there was even the faintest possibility of contamination or even a transfer of mentality, the Rowan thought as she devoured the very excellent meal Isthia had prepared. Not between such disparate thinking mechanisms, despite that brief but devastating period of contact. She was just very, very hungry after yesterday’s exertions.

  Isthia: Of course you are. Nothing more. Don’t even think about it! ‘You were splendid, by the way. In case no-one thinks to tell you!’ Then she touched the Rowan lightly on her shoulder. ‘That was two days ago, by the way.’

  ‘Two days?’ The Rowan dropped her utensils and stared at Isthia.

  ‘You’re pregnant. You needed more rest. But I saw to it that Jeff slept a full twenty-four before I let them ship him back to Earth. He deserved that much!’

  ‘He deserves a lot more than twenty-four hours’ sleep!’ The Rowan glared at Isthia and wished there was someone she could really tell off!

  I’m that person, then, cariad! And Jeff’s chuckle sounded in her mind, soothing her, caressing her as only he could. Your part of the merge was the difficult one. I only had to push!

  ‘Yegrani was right,’ Isthia went on, ‘you were the focus that saved us all. The Leviathan “Many” had to be immobilized first.’

  Suddenly the Rowan had had quite enough of Yegrani’s Sight. ‘I suppose I should feel relieved that I’ve fulfilled it.’

  Fulfillment for you has only begun, was Jeff’s fervent reply, suffusing her mind and body with his love – and his yearning. Get yourself down to Earth as soon as you can, cariad. And his bawdy chuckle gave her fair warning of his intentions. This is the beginning of the Gwyn-Raven Dynasty: you, me, ours, us!

  THE END

  About the Author

  Auspiciously born on April Fool’s Day, 1926, Anne Inez McCaffrey was the second of three children and the only daughter.

  She, like so many of her time, was shaped by the two World Wars and the Depression. Her father, George Herbert McCaffrey had served as a lieutenant in the First World War and after the war helped the Polish set up their government before returning home to marry Anne Dorothy McElroy.

  Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey was a very talented woman with a decent touch of what the family came to call ‘the Sight’. Just before the very worst of the stock market Crash in 1929, she pulled all her money out. Her husband, less trusting of such things, did not.

  When not drilling the children in the backyard or maintaining his reserve status with the Army, the ‘Kernel’ – as he called himself – indulged in gardening. He was also a great reader and one of Anne’s first memories was of him at the far end of the hallway reading Kipling’s Barrack-room Ballads while she was sick with scarlet fever.

  As Anne got older, she learned to ride horses and thus began a lifelong equestrian love affair.

  When the Second World War broke out, the Kernel reported immediately to the draft board, offering his services. Elder brother Hugh had already joined the Army and was stationed in Hawaii, desperately trying to get off the island and go to Officer Candidate School.

  During the worst of the Battle of Britain when ‘the Few’ were all that stood between the English and imminent invasion, Anne developed a sense of rapport with the plucky young Princess Elizabeth who, with her family, endured the German ‘Blitz’ on London – Anne being just twenty days the Princess’ elder. And with that was planted the seed that would grow into Dragonflight.

  Anne’s little brother, Kevin, was not expected to live. He’d contracted osteomyelitis and had, for several years, been at death’s door. Anne’s mother took charge of caring for ‘Kevie’ which left Anne herself to be sent down south to Stuart Hall School for girls. As a Yankee, and a Catholic to boot, Anne found Stuart Hall not the best of matches. She turned heads and gained the ire of the Dean by insisting on being allowed to go to the local movie theater to see Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ‘Tarzan’.

  Kevin did live thanks to the newly-developed penicillin and went on to enjoy a long life. The family was reunited when ‘the Kernel’ returned from his years in the European Theatre of Operations (ETO) but now a man so worn by the cares of war that his two younger children passed him by as they were searching for him among the returnees.

  Anne graduated from Radclif
fe College, cum laude, and while studying Slavonic languages, she’d participated in several theatre productions. It was at this stage in her life that Anne decided she really wanted to be an opera singer.

  She met Horace Wright Johnson, who preferred to be called Wright. Wright, a very handsome man with a great voice, wooed her with The Beggar’s Opera to such effect that they married.

  The Kernel went to Japan to help set up their government and volunteered to go along with the UN group to Korea when war broke out there. He contracted Tuberculosis and was returned to the States in 1953.

  Alec Anthony Johnson was born August 29th, 1952 and was less than a year old when the Kernel returned. After her first visit to her father in hospital, it appears that little Alec caught a diminished (and treatable) form of TB but Anne was forbidden to return to her dying father for fear of a more serious re-infection. She didn’t have the heart to tell her father that his first grandchild had been infected and the Kernel was deeply hurt that she wouldn’t come see him again. He wrote her out of his Will.

  Anne wrote The Ship Who Sang as her catharsis over the death of her father.

  Second son Todd was born in April 1956 after a ten months’ gestation. Originally scheduled for March 23rd, young master Johnson knew when he was on to a good thing and clung to the womb for an additional month. When the doctors suggested that he might be stillborn, Anne waved them off. Still, the amniotic fluid was all gone and he was born a wrinkled, yellow baby, called ‘the Chinaman’ by the nurses on staff. They were worried and immediately started pumping him full of liquids until they could finally say, ‘Congratulations, Mrs Johnson! He peed!’

  On their third try, the Johnsons produced a beautiful baby girl, Georgeanne Johnson – her name being the sum of her maternal grandparents’ names. When first seen by Uncle Hugh, he said, ‘What a gorgeous George!’ And from that was born her life-long nickname, Gigi.