The Rowan Read online

  About the Book

  The Talents were the elite of the Nine Star League. Their gifts were many and varied, ranging from the gently telepathic, to the rare and extremely valued Primes. On the Primes rested the entire economic wealth and communications systems of the civilised worlds. But Primes were scarce – only very rarely was a new one born.

  And now, on the planet Altair, in a small mining colony on the western mountain range, a new Prime existed, a three-year-old girl – trapped in a giant mud slide that had wiped out the rest of the Rowan mining community. Every Altarian who was even mildly talented could ‘hear’ the child crying for help, but no one knew where she was buried.

  Every resource on the planet was centred into finding ‘The Rowan’ – the new Prime, the first ever to be born on Altair, an exceptionally unique Prime, more talented, more powerful, more agoraphobic, more lonely, than any other Prime yet known in the Nine Star league.

  THE ROWAN – A NEW CONCEPT, A NEW LEGEND, FROM THE CREATOR OF THE DRAGONS OF PERN.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One: Altair

  Part Two: Callisto

  Part Three: Deneb

  Part Four: Altair and Callisto

  About the Author

  Also by Anne McCaffrey

  Copyright

  THE ROWAN

  Anne McCaffrey

  Respectfully dedicated to

  Jay A. Katz

  because we enjoy a meeting of minds

  (well, most of the time)

  PROLOGUE

  During the late twentieth century’s exploration of space, a major breakthrough occurred in the validation and recording of extrasensory perceptions, the so-called paranormal, psionic abilities long held to be spurious. An extremely sensitive encephalograph, nicknamed by critics ‘the Goosegg’, had been developed originally to scan brain patterns of the astronauts who suffered from sporadic ‘bright spots’, temporarily diagnosed as cerebral or retinal malfunction.

  The alternate application of the Goosegg was inadvertently discovered when the device was used to monitor a head injury in an intensive-care unit of Jerhattan. The patient, Henry Darrow, was a self-styled clairvoyant with an astonishing percentage of accurate ‘guesses’. In his case, as the device monitored his brain patterns, it also detected the minute electrical impulses discharged by activated extrasensory perceptions. The delicate instrumentation registered the discharge of unusual electrical energy as Henry Darrow experienced a clairvoyant episode. For the first time there was scientific proof of the extrasensory perception.

  Henry Darrow recovered from his concussion to found the first Center for Parapsychics in Jerhattan and to formulate the ethic and moral premises which would grant those with valid, and demonstrable, psionic talents certain privileges, and responsibilities, amid a society basically skeptical, hostile, or overtly paranoid about such abilities.

  When worldwide disarmament finally followed the numerous Summits of the late ’80s and ’90s, governments turned to other researches and the western world’s space program began to catch up with Soviet experiences. What few people knew was that Talents were instrumental in the promulgation of honest monitoring of the disarmament and monitoring processes, thwarting many attempts to subvert the program. Many Talents lost their lives to secure the world peace which enabled humans to turn their energies and hopes to space exploration.

  More Talents were mustered to colonize this solar system and to bridge the gap between this and other systems with habitable planets.

  When young Peter Reidinger made the first mind-machine gestalt, pushing a light spacecraft by telekinesis from orbit to Mars, a new era dawned for the parapsychic Talents in which they found themselves celebrated instead of shunned, admired instead of feared, and necessary to every aspect of the surge forward from the crowded and resources-poor planet Earth.

  To extend the interstellar gestalt, special installations were built for the Talents, terraformed habitations on Earth’s Moon, Mars’s Demos, and on Jupiter’s Callisto. From these stations were kinetically launched the great survey and exploration ships that colonized the nine stars that had G-type planets, suitable for humans.

  Though the Talents abhorred notoriety and opted for political neutrality, it was inevitable that their abilities should contribute to the stability of the interstellar government. ‘Probity and neutrality’ was both motto and method and a new kind of honest diplomacy resulted in spite of attempts to subvert the Talents. Many Talents died rather than dishonor their calling: the few who were corrupted were so swiftly disciplined by their peers that such treachery was eschewed as profitless. The Talents became incorruptible.

  The need for Talent became chronic, far outstripping the supply. For those potential few, the training was arduous; the rewards did not always compensate Talent for the unswerving dedication required by their taxing positions.

  PART ONE

  ALTAIR

  TORRENTS OF RAIN covered the western side of the great Tranh mountain range of Altair, streaming in muddy runnels down slopes already saturated with nine days of steady precipitation. The sturdy minta trees were bloated and their root systems bulging to the surface, adding the slime of their overload of sap to the rivulets which increasingly dislodged the shallower root systems of the few brush varieties that could flourish in such rocky soil. Little brooks matured into streams, then rivers, into cascades of increasing volume and force, filling up blind canyons until such deposits also overflowed. And the minta slime seemed to grease the watery ways.

  After seven people had slipped and broken bones on the main street of the Rowan Mining Company’s small settlement, the manager had ordered miners and their dependents to curtail all outdoor activities and arranged door-to-door deliveries for supplies, using the Company’s sturdy hopper vehicles. Operations in the several producing shafts had already been suspended when the pits began filling. When the unceasing torrents began to interfere with transmissions, there weren’t even entertainment circuits to amuse those immured in ever-dampening and cramped quarters.

  In the same lugubrious vein, Met reports gave no hope of an alteration in the deplorable conditions. The records show that, on the tenth day, the mine’s manager asked his home office in Altair Port for permission to evacuate all nonessential personnel until the weather improved. His report pointed out that the accommodations were rather primitive and had not been constructed with excessive rainfall in mind. He cited an alarming number of respiratory ailments among his people, almost epidemic in proportion. Enforced idleness and substandard conditions had also seriously undermined morale. He put in an urgent order for pumps to drain the shafts when, and if, the rain ever did stop.

  The records showed that the directors debated withdrawal. That particular installation of the Rowan Company was only just showing some profit which would be wiped out by the cost of a perhaps unnecessary expense. Meteorology was duly consulted and long-range satellite forecasts indicated that the rains were to abate within the next seventy-two hours, though arctic and antarctic pole conditions did not suggest any break in generally overcast weather, much less sunny intervals, within the next ten days. Approval to evacuate was withheld but advice on treatment of the respiratory complaints and appropriate medication was dispatched immediately to the Rowan Company’s coordinates by the FT&T Prime.

  It was early morning when the mudslide began, so high above the plateau on which the Rowan camp stood that it was not detected. A few people were already cautiously abroad, using their assigned hour with a hopper to do necessary errands, to the small infirmary for medicine for their sick, to the commissary for supplies. By the time the instrumentation in Operations
registered the incident, it was already too late. The entire western face of the minta-clad slope was in motion, like a tsunami of mud, rock, and pulpy vegetation. Those outside saw their fate bearing down on them. Those inside their homes mercifully were unaware. Only one, a child still in the hopper while her mother carried her parcels quickly through the unabating rain to the house, escaped the disaster.

  The sturdy little hopper was borne up on the lip of the sludge river, its ovoid shape an advantage, its heavy plastic hull slipping over, under, and along the inexorable slide of heavy, wet mud. Its occupant was bounced about, bruised, and knocked unconscious as the hopper rolled and caught, was freed and carried over a precipice, its fall cushioned by the mud that had preceded it. Nearly a hundred kilometers from the Rowan camp, it became wedged on an outcropping, covered by the vast river of sludge as the slide flowed on until its impetus was dissipated into the long deep Oshoni valley.

  The crying began sometime after the mud ceased its downward flow. A pleading, quavering appeal to a mother who did not answer. An announcement of hunger and hurt, sporadic at first, then increasingly insistent. Abruptly the cry was cut off, and a whimpering took its place, a whimpering which rose in volume and intensity. Was silenced again, during which time everyone with a psi rating of 9 or more experienced relief, for the nondirectional sound grated on the mental ears of the sensitive.

  Throughout the settlements of Altair, a search was conducted to discover the injured, abandoned, or abused child whose distress was being broadcast planetwide.

  ‘I’ve children of my own,’ the Secretary of the Interior Camella told the Police Commissioner as the Colonial officials met in the Governor’s office in emergency session, ‘and that is the cry of a frightened, hurt, hungry child. It’s got to be somewhere on Altair.’

  ‘We’ve done street searches, checked the hospital records of any potential psi children born within the last five years …’ He shook his head over failure. He didn’t himself have any Talent but he had a great respect and admiration for those who did.

  ‘The crying pattern, the incoherency, the repetition, suggests an infant of two or three years,’ said the Chief Medical Officer. ‘Every sensitive on my staff has been trying to make contact.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why it cuts off so suddenly,’ the Commissioner said, riffling through the reports he’d brought with him to show the extent of the search.

  Opened for colonization a scant hundred years before, Altair did not have a large population – the present density surrounding Altair Port and City amounted to some five million, two hundred and fifty-three thousand, four hundred and two people. Another one million, seven hundred thousand and eighty-nine people were beginning to carve additional settlements, generally mining concerns exploiting the mineral and ore wealth of the great planet, across the planet’s immense main continent.

  ‘Reports are a bit slow coming in from all the Claims,’ Secretary Camella said, her voice puzzled. ‘That freak weather pattern is moving eastward towards us. But we must identify the child: Someone this strong so young must be carefully monitored.’

  Involuntarily she glanced out toward the FT&T installation at the far edge of the Port Space Field. A puff of dust, followed rapidly by half a dozen more, indicated that the incoming freight was being racked up by the kinetic abilities of Altair’s major asset, Siglen, the T-l Prime. Her mental kinesis augmented by a gestalt with the powerful generators that encircled her installation, Siglen could pick up messages from as far away as Earth and Betelgeuse, could locate and land freight drones as easily as others lifted the ordinary artifacts of everyday living.

  Mankind’s exploration of Space had become feasible because the major psionic Talents of telepaths and teleporting kinetics were able to span the vast intersystem distances, providing reliable and instantaneous communication between Earth and its colonies. Without the Primes in their tower stations, constantly in mental communication with other Primes, able in the gestalt to shift both export and import material, the Nine-Star League would have been impossible. The Primes were the kingpins of the system. And such Talents were rare.

  Without the Federal Telepath and Teleport network, Mankind would still be trying to reach its nearest spatial neighbors. The Earth Government, once a centralized, world-wide authority had finally been achieved, had ordained an irrevocable autonomy to FT&T, thus ensuring not only its impartiality but its effectiveness in keeping contact with the now far-flung colonies of Mankind. When the Nine-Star League had been formed, it had ratified that autonomy so that no one Star System could ever hope to control FT&T, and with it, the League.

  Most communities took pride in the number and variety of Talents among their inhabitants. The fear and distrust of paranormal abilities had been submerged by the obvious benefits of employing Talented folk. There were, of course, many degrees of Talent, with micro- and macro-applications. Naturally, the stronger Talents were the most visible and the rarest. The strongest in each area of expertise were accorded the title of ‘Prime’. The rarest of Primes were those who combined telepathic and kinetic abilities and became the main link between Earth and the planet on which they served.

  ‘We may well be witnessing the emergence of a Prime!’ Interior couldn’t quite stifle that burgeoning hope and the somewhat vain dream that this new Talent might eclipse Siglen. She might be Altair’s greatest asset but a prickly one. Camella had to deal with her and found no joy in that aspect of her duties. Her predecessor, now happily fishing in the eastward foothills, had christened Siglen ‘the space stevedore’, an epithet which Interior tried very hard to forget in Siglen’s more trying moments.

  For Altair to have produced a Prime Talent so soon would be most prestigious. If the child’s potential was properly developed, and the strength inherent in its manifestation augured well, Altair would attract the best sort of colonist, hoping that something in the atmosphere of the planet nurtured Talent. (No-one had ever proved that connection. Or disproved it.)

  Altair had been fortunate enough to have a reasonable range of Talents in the original complement of settlers: precognitives; clairvoyants; ‘finders’ with strong metal and mineral affinities who had discovered the high-assay ores and useful minerals, increasing Altair’s exports; the usual range of minor kinetics, macro and micro who could shift, connect or manipulate things; a good range of the healing Talents, though no Primes yet, in the medical field, and the more ordinary empaths who were invaluable in any sort of employment which might generate boredom or minor dissension. Empaths and precogs were also members of the Constabulary arm of Civil Government, not that there was much criminal activity on Altair: people were generally far too occupied in carving out their personal bailiwicks on Altair’s broad and fertile acres, or exhuming its hidden treasures. The planet was too new to have developed the ‘civilized’ crimes of densely populated and deprived urban areas.

  Altair was lucky in its spatial position in the Nine-Star League and, because it was central to several new colonial ventures, had been one of the first colonies to receive a full Federal Telepath and Telekinetic Station with a Prime telepathic kinetic, Siglen. That advantage had greatly boosted Altair’s appeal to both individuals and industrial concerns. To have developed a Prime Talent would fill the Governmental cup to overflowing. So the Secretary of the Interior turned to the Medical Officer.

  ‘That’s all well and good, but first we have to have the child,’ the Medical Officer said, voicing her very thought though the man was unTalented. Then he cleared his throat testily. ‘My advisors suggest that the child is injured – yet there’s been no report anywhere in the medical system of a wounded or shocked infant victim.’

  ‘Demonstrably there IS one,’ the Governor said, bringing his fist down on the table. ‘We’ll find it, and know why an infant was allowed to cry so long without attention. New lives are the most valuable resource this planet has. Not one should be squandered …’

  A wail, a piteous, mind-scoring wail cut through hi
s rhetoric. MOMMEEEEE! MOMMEEE! MOMMEEEE, WHERE ARE … The plaint was abruptly severed.

  In the ensuing silence, the Secretary pressed careful fingers against temples which still reverberated from that mental shriek. The most perfunctory of knocks was made at the Council Chamber door which opened to admit an anxious administrative assistant.

  ‘Secretary, Siglen wishes urgent communication with you.’

  Interior exhaled in relief. Siglen could as easily have inserted her message into Interior’s mind but the Prime was a stickler for protocol – for which the Secretary now blessed her.

  ‘Of course!’

  The screens all around the Council room came on, lending considerable immediacy to this event. Siglen made few demands on the Council. Now, as the angry woman stared out at them, her eyes seemed to penetrate deep into the thoughts of each of those present. Siglen was a slab of a female, soft from a sedentary life and a disinclination to exercise of any kind. She was in her Operations room, the hum of the gestalt generators a background noise.

  ‘Interior, you are to find that child wherever she is, and discover who has abandoned her and deal with them to the full extent of the law.’ She had large eyes, her best feature, and they were wide with indignation and frustration. ‘No child should be allowed to broadcast on such a level. I cannot keep interrupting my flow of work to deal with what is clearly a parent’s responsibility.’

  ‘Prime Siglen, is it fortunate that you are free to contact us …’

  ‘I’m not at all free. I’m falling behind on today’s shipments …’ She gestured impatiently behind her. ‘That simply is not good enough. Find that child. I can’t waste time silencing her.’

  Interior muttered something dire under her breath but composed her expression, and sank her thoughts. ‘We were about to ask you to help us find …’

  Siglen’s indignant expression interrupted her. ‘I? … assist … in finding a child? I assure you I am no clairvoyant. I will endeavor to keep her quiet enough to allow me to discharge my duties to this planet and the service to which I have committed my life. But you …’ and a bejeweled finger, its tip enlarged by perspective so that the whorl pattern was clearly visible, ‘will locate that appallingly bad-mannered infant!’