The Rowan Read online

  The contact was abruptly cut. The child began to whimper and that was also abruptly cut.

  ‘If she keeps shutting the child up, how are we going to find her?’ Interior asked sourly. ‘You’ve had your clairvoyants on it, haven’t you?’ she asked the Commissioner.

  ‘Indeed I have, but you know as well as I do,’ he replied somewhat defensively, ‘that a clairvoyant requires “something” on which to focus.’

  ‘Yegrani didn’t,’ the Medic said ruefully.

  ‘Yegrani’s been dead for years,’ Interior said with real regret and then caught a look on the Commissioner’s face.

  The wail began again, piteous, gasping, begging for help. They could hear it falter, pick up again with an overtone of outrage.

  ‘Ha! Siglen’s met her match. She can’t silence the brat.’

  ‘It’s not a brat,’ Interior said, ‘it’s a frightened child and it needs all the help we can muster. Look, these days children are simply not left alone for …’ she checked the digital on the wall, ‘… days. There has to have been an accident. You have no reports of any in Port or City, let’s concentrate on the Claims. There are quite a few isolated mining settlements on this planet where a child might be left alone. Don’t we have reports of an unseasonal rain in the west?’

  ‘Five thousand miles is a long way to “throw” a mental cry,’ the Governor remarked, then looked startled at what his own words implied. ‘My word!’

  ‘Indeed there could have been an accident. Earthquake, or flood perhaps with the recent appalling rainfall.’ Interior rose resolutely, nodding courteously to the Governor. ‘We have the resources, people – let’s use them.’

  As they all left the chamber for their own offices, Interior caught the Commissioner’s arm.

  ‘Well? Is Yegrani still alive somewhere?’ Being careful to check that no-one had heard her or paid them any particular attention in the general departure, he gave her an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Surely she would help us save a young life?’

  ‘Under the circumstances, she might very well, but she’s outlived Methuselah by another lifetime and hasn’t much strength. We’d best try to narrow the search down to one area.’

  That took less than an hour once every element of civil service became involved. First satellite pix were reviewed and the 150 kilometer-long swathe of destruction could not be mistaken. Interior herself phoned the industrial concern which had laid claim to that section. They were swift to open records to the Incident inquiry. They had not heard from the mine manager and were beginning to be concerned.

  ‘Not concerned enough to send us an alert, I notice,’ Interior remarked caustically. Then she turned to the Commissioner. ‘What I don’t understand is why you didn’t have a registered precog on this disaster.’

  ‘It isn’t what could be called a gross personnel disaster,’ he replied with a look of chagrin. ‘I mean, I know a substantial number of people have obviously lost their lives but their deaths don’t affect all Altair in a knock-on situation. Unfortunately. Then, too, most of our precogs have urban affinities,’ he added apologetically.

  ‘I think I’ll introduce a fine for companies that do not keep in twenty-four contact with their field installations,’ muttered Interior, jotting down a note in capital italics.

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Look!’ she said as the Company’s personnel files scrolled past. ‘Fifteen kids between the ages of one month and five years. How much detail does your clairvoyant need?’

  ‘I don’t even know if she’ll help us,’ the Commissioner said ruefully. ‘She hasn’t opened a connection to my calls.’

  The crying started up again, was cut off, and continued with a desperate edge to the wail.

  ‘That child is growing weaker,’ the Medic exclaimed as he barreled into the Incident room. ‘If she’s buried in a mudslide, she’s got no food or water – and maybe not much air left.’

  The printer murmured to itself, smoothly extruding new copy. Interior bent over it, groaning with a note of despair in her voice.

  ‘I ordered a comparison survey of the terrain before and after the slide. There’re ravines fifty-meters deep now with mud and debris. The slide is sixty-klicks wide in places. If she’s buried in any depth of mud, she’ll be asphyxiated soon. Particularly if she keeps crying like this, using up her oxygen.’

  The Commissioner moved to a console, gesturing for the others to step back. ‘I’m adding a Mayday to her private code but whether she’ll answer or not …’

  ‘Yes?’ The guttural voice dwelt on the sibilant. No picture appeared on the screen.

  ‘Have you heard the crying?’

  ‘Who hasn’t? I could have told you Siglen wouldn’t help. It’s beyond her capabilities. Bouncing parcels from place to place requires no finesse, since the gestalt does all the work.’

  As there was no visual contact, the Commissioner rolled his eyes at the bite in Yegrani’s tone. For years, there had been enmity between the telekinetic and the clairvoyant, though the Commissioner happened to know the original fault was more of Siglen’s making than Yegrani’s.

  ‘There is fear that the child is running out of air, Yegrani. The mud is fifty-meters deep in places along a 150-klick swathe. We’ve plenty of …’

  ‘Look to the left above the Oshoni valley, on a ledge, approximately two klicks from the tongue of mud. She’s not deeply entrenched but the hopper skin has been fractured and sludge is oozing in. She is frantic. Siglen has done nothing to reassure the child as a sensitive, caring person would have done. Guard this one well. She has a long and lonely road to go before she travels. But she alone will be the focus that will save us from a far greater disaster than the one she has escaped. Especially guard the guardian.’

  The connection severed but as soon as Yegrani had ‘sighted’ the child’s position, the Secretary of the Interior had forwarded a printout of the conversation to the rescue teams, waiting in their special vehicles. The Governor himself requested the launch and gave Altair’s Prime the coordinates. She did not ask how they had been obtained but faultlessly sent the mission speeding to its destination.

  ‘Did she mean “left” looking at the bloody thing, on its left?’ demanded the captain as the rescue team emerged after their journey. Their shells had slid to a halt on the valley floor, just where the outthrusting ‘tongue’ of mud ended. ‘Phaugh!’ he pinched his nostrils, ‘the stench of minta’s enough to choke you! Lemme see that geo print.’

  ‘The ledge should be there!’ his second in command exclaimed, pointing to their right. ‘Solid ground, too, from which to work.’

  ‘Get the two klick fix,’ the captain ordered, pointing to the scan operator. ‘Stay off that mud! Anyone who falls in has to walk home.’

  The team scrambled to the stone outthrust above the ledge and brought their detectors to bear in careful sweeps. An intrusion was detected approximately ten meters out in the mud. The medic extended his sensitive equipment and caught vital signs. The digger boom was rigged and swung out. Two volunteers, on cables linked to the boom, descended into the ooze above the point of detection and began to shovel the muck away. As fast as they shoveled, the uncooperative sludge slid back in.

  ‘I want that suction tube and now!’ cried the captain, inwardly well satisfied with the instant obedience to that order.

  The hopper, wedged on to the outcropping, was not deep and once a large enough surface was cleared, the tractor beam was attached. It fought the suction of the mud while the shovel team worked with desperate speed, muttering about kinetics never being where you needed them. Suddenly sufficient air got under the hopper to break the seal, and only the quick reflexes of those on the bank kept the craft from colliding forcefully with the tractor arm. The little vehicle swung and bumped about before finally settling to solid ground.

  Mud sheeted off the hull and oozed from the fracture, as the entire team watched anxiously. How much of that stuff had seeped into the interior? Everyone was immensely relieved to
hear a thin, tremulous cry, mental and physical. As one, the team attacked the battered door to wrench it open.

  ‘Mommie?’ A tattered, bruised, mud-encased child crawled to the threshold, sobbing with relief, squinting in the sudden daylight. ‘Mommie?’

  The team medic leapt forward, radiating reassurance and love. ‘It’s all over, honey. You’re safe. We’ve got you safe.’ She pressed the hypno spray to a muddied arm before the child could realize that her parents were not among those clustered around the hopper. At that, the sedative was not quite fast enough to allay the anguished mental yowl which all Altair heard from the orphaned Rowan child.

  *

  ‘We’ve done as much as we can,’ the Chief Medical Officer said in a slightly defensive tone.

  ‘We know you have,’ Interior replied, radiating all the approval she could project.

  ‘The fact remains that the Rowan child is not cooperating,’ the Governor remarked with a rueful sigh.

  ‘It’s only ten days since the tragedy,’ Interior added.

  ‘And there are definitely no relatives to take charge of her?’ the Governor asked.

  Interior consulted her records. ‘We have the choice of eleven parents of similar genotype because many of the miners were from the same ethnic background. The Company headquarters did not keep backup files of the infirmary records, so we don’t even know how many children have been born since the camp was established ten years ago. So, no immediate relatives. There are doubtless some back on Earth.’

  The Governor cleared his throat. ‘Earth has more high-ranking Talents than any other planet.’

  ‘We do indeed need to guard our natural resources,’ Interior replied with a slight smile.

  ‘Let it be noted and so stipulated in the records of this meeting that the … Rowan child,’ he had paused for someone to supply a name, ‘is henceforth a Ward of the Planet Altair 4. Now what?’ and he turned to Interior.

  ‘Well, she can’t stay indefinitely in the Pediatrics Ward,’ she replied and turned to the Chief Medical Officer.

  ‘My chief therapist says she’s basically recovered from shock. The lacerations and hematoma sustained in the slide have healed. She has also managed to block all memory of the disaster but she can’t quite delete the fact that the child had parents, and possibly siblings.’ He nodded as the others murmured against more repressive measures. ‘But …’ and he spread his hands, ‘she is parentless, and although the T-8 junior therapist has managed to … to deal with the general telepathic “noise”, the child’s control is limited and her span of concentration woefully short.’

  Everyone grimaced, for the entire planet was still favored with outbursts from the Rowan child.

  ‘Does she receive as well as broadcast?’ the Governor finally asked.

  The Medic shrugged. ‘She must or she wouldn’t hear Siglen.’

  ‘Now that is something that has to be stopped,’ Interior said, setting her lips in a firm line before she went on. ‘Slapping the child down for perfectly normal …’

  ‘If loud,’ the Governor amended.

  ‘… exuberance – which you must admit is a welcome change from the crying – is going to inhibit what Talent the child has,’ Interior went on. ‘Siglen may be a Prime T&T but she doesn’t possess a single neuron of empathy, and her insensitivity to the child’s situation borders on the callous.’

  ‘Siglen may have no empathy,’ the Governor said, a thoughtful look filming his gaze, ‘but she has great pride in her profession and she has already trained two Primes to their current responsibilities at Betelgeuse and Capella.’ Someone grunted cynically. ‘She’s the most logical person in this system to undertake the Rowan child’s education.’

  ‘She’s been made a Ward of Altair,’ Interior stated, sitting erect with opposition, ‘and no-one’s likely to contend that. She’d have more kindly treatment on Earth at the Center. They’d care about her. I vote we send her there. And as soon as possible.’

  Lusena had the task of explaining it all to the Rowan child. The T-8 had been working steadily with her, playing games to get her to speak with her physical voice, rather than her mental one. Once the child was recovered from the physical effects and the sedative dosage had been reduced, Lusena had taken her to select a pukha toy from the hospital’s supply.

  Pukhas, deriving their name from the imaginary companion discovered by needful children, had become widely used in pediatrics. They could be programmed for a variety of uses, but more often were used in surgical and long-term care with great effect and as surrogates for intense dependency cases. The Rowan child needed her own pukha. Considerable thought had been given to its programming: its long soft hair was composed of receptors, monitoring the child’s physical and psychic health. It could, receiving danger signals from the Rowan, initiate pacifying sentiments, encourage conversation and, of paramount importance, moderate the little girl’s mental ‘voice’. It also responded with its soothing, rumbling purr when the little girl became restless or distressed. Although Lusena and the pediatrics staff would adjust the pukha’s programs throughout its usefulness, every sensitive on Altair knew when the Rowan christened it ‘Purza’. Her silvery laughter was a great improvement over whimpering, and almost everyone was sympathetic to the little orphan.

  Siglen’s personal assistant, Bralla, a T-4 empath, certainly was and did her best to soothe her mistress – who could, Bralla had admitted to the stationmaster, be more juvenile at times than the Rowan child.

  ‘Siglen might benefit by having a pukha herself,’ Bralla told the stationmaster, for Siglen had been extremely irascible when the Rowan child’s babble intruded on her concentration.

  Gerolaman snorted. ‘The kind of cuddling she wants she’ll never get.’ And snorted again as Bralla frantically signaled him to guard his sentiments.

  ‘She’s not really a bad person, Gerolaman. Just …’

  ‘Far too accustomed to being THE most important person on the planet. She doesn’t like competition, not no way, no how. You remember that dustup with Yegrani?’

  ‘Gerolaman, she’s not deaf!’ Bralla rose, ‘She’s about to need me. See you later.’

  Purza was not always the key to exemplary behavior for a three-year-old. Siglen’s intolerance, even with Bralla’s discreet assistance, fell all too frequently on the Rowan child. Finally, the Secretary of Interior decided that someone had to do something about Siglen, and it was going to give her intense personal and official satisfaction to do so.

  ‘Prime Siglen, a matter of urgent importance,’ Interior said as soon as the T-l came on screen. ‘We have been able to divert a passenger ship tomorrow to collect the Rowan child.’

  ‘Collect her?’ Siglen blinked in astonishment.

  ‘Yes, we shall get her out of your hair by noon, so you will kindly see that her remaining hours on Altair are not punctuated by your reprimands.’

  ‘Remaining hours on Altair? You must be insane!’ Siglen’s eyes widened with shock and horror, and her fingers stopped fondling her sea-jewel necklace. ‘You can’t expose a child … a mere infant … to such a trauma.’

  ‘It seems the wisest course,’ Interior replied grimly, shielding the real reason.

  ‘But she can’t go. She’s Prime potential …’ Siglen stammered, her complexion ashen. She released her necklace to grip the edge of the console. ‘She’ll … she’ll die! You know as well as I do,’ and Siglen’s words crowded each other out of her mouth, ‘what happens to the truly Talented in space … I mean, look at how ill David became. Remember how devastated Capella was. To subject an infant … of unknown potential … to such mind-destroying trauma! Why, you must be mad, Interior. You cannot! I will not permit it!’

  ‘Well, you’re not permitting the child to exercise her Talent. She’ll get expert attention and training on Earth at the Center.’

  ‘You’d abandon that child of Altair, you’d send her away from kith and kin …’

  ‘She doesn’t have any on Altair,’ Interior he
ard herself saying, and then realized that Siglen was about to launch into one of her attitudes. ‘Prime Siglen, it is the order of the Council that the Ward of Altair be transported to the Earth Center – with your well-known delicacy of kinesis – on the passenger ship which has been diverted to Altair for that purpose. Good day to you!’

  As soon as the image on the screen was erased, Interior turned to the Medic and Lusena. ‘I’d’ve thought she’d flip the kid out to the ship without its having to land!’

  ‘Is there any foundation in what she said about David of Betelgeuse and Capella?’ asked the Medic frowning. He’d been a minor medical administrator ten years ago and not privy to details of that period.

  ‘Well, none of the Primes travel well, and none of them ever teleport themselves any great distance,’ Interior replied thoughtfully. ‘But the Rowan child will be a lot better off away from Siglen’s sort of discipline.’

  ‘I’ll just get back,’ Lusena said, rising and looking apprehensive. ‘She was napping but I’d hate for her to wake up and find me gone.’

  ‘You’ve done marvels with her, Lusena,’ Interior said warmly. ‘You’ll find a tangible reward from the Council when you’ve delivered her safely to Earth.’

  ‘She’s a taking little thing, really,’ Lusena said, smiling with affection.

  ‘A bit odd-looking with that whitened hair and those enormous brown eyes in that thin face,’ and the Medic looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Gorgeous eyes, lovely features,’ Interior said hastily to cancel Lusena’s dismay at the Medic’s blunt description. ‘And you’ll be all right with her tomorrow?’

  ‘I think the less fuss made the better,’ Lusena replied.

  All the fuss the next day was due entirely to the Rowan child’s total reluctance to enter the passenger vessel. She took one look at the portal of the ship and dug her heels in, literally and mentally. From her mind came a single high note of abject terror. From her lips a monotonous, ‘no, no, no, no, no.’ Purza, clutched so tightly around its middle that Lusena feared for some of its programming, was purring in loud response to the little girl’s distress.