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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 said 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! Yaw! 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 double 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
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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. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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