Get Off the Unicorn (3 page)

Shut up, Ironpants
, David said.

Shoulder to the wheel, you old wart,
Capella chimed in waspishly.
Hit hard first, that's safest.

Look, Rowan,
Reidinger said.
Siglen's right. He could burn you out.

I'll take the chance.

Damn Deneb for starting all this!
Reidinger didn't quite shield his aggravation.

We've got to do it. And now!

Tentatively at the outset, and then with stunningly increased force, the unleashed power of the other FT & T Primes, augmented by the mechanical surge of the five stations' generators, was forced through the Rowan. She grew, grew and only dimly saw the puny ET bombardment swept aside like so many mayflies. She grew, grew until she felt herself a colossus, larger than ominous Jupiter. Slowly, carefully, tentatively, because the massive power was braked only by her slender conscious control, she reached out to Deneb.

She spun on, in grandeur, astounded by the limitless force she had become. She passed the small black dwarf that was the midway point. Then she felt the mind she searched for; a tired mind, its periphery wincing with weariness but doggedly persevering its evasive actions.

Oh, Deneb, Deneb, you're still intact!
She was so relieved, so grateful to find him fighting his desperate battle that they merged before her ego could offer even a token resistance. She abandoned her most guarded self to him and, with the surrender, the massed power she held flowed into him. The tired mind of the man grew, healed, strengthened and blossomed until she was a mere fraction of the total, lost in the greater part of this immense mental whole. Suddenly she saw with his eyes, heard with his ears and felt with his touch, was immersed in the titanic struggle.

The greenish sky above was pitted with mushroom puffs, and the raw young hills around him were scarred with deflected missiles. Easily now, he was turning aside the warheads aimed at him.

Let's go up there and find out what they are,
the Reidinger segment said.
Now!

Deneb approached the thirty mile-long ships. The mass-mind took indelible note of the intruders. Then, off-handedly, Deneb broke the hulls of twenty-nine of the ET ships, spilling the contents into space. To the occupants of the survivor, he gave a searing impression of the Primes and the indestructability of the worlds in this section of space. With one great heave, he threw the lone ship away from his exhausted planet, set it hurtling farther than it had come, into uncharted black immensity.

He thanked the Primes for the incomparable compliment of an ego-merge and explained in a millisecond the tremendous gratitude of his planet, based on all that Denebians had accomplished in three generations which had been so nearly obliterated and emphasized by their hopes for the future.

The Rowan felt the links dissolving as the other Primes, murmuring withdrawal courtesies, left him. Deneb caught her mind fast to his and held on. When they were alone, he opened all this thoughts to her, so that now she knew him as intimately as he knew her.

Sweet Rowan. Look around you. It'll take a while for Deneb to be beautiful again but we'll make it lovelier than ever. Come live with me, my love.

The Rowan's wracked cry of protest reverberated cruelly in both naked minds.

I can't! I can't!
She cringed against her own outburst and closed off her inner heart so that he couldn't see the pitiful why. In the moment of his confusion, she retreated back to her frail body, and beat her fists hopelessly against her thighs.

Rowan!
came his cry.
Rowan, I love you.

She deadened the outer fringe of her perception to everything and curled forward in her chair. Afra, who had watched patiently over her while her mind was far away, touched her shoulder.

Oh, Afra! To be so close to love and so far away. Our minds were one. Our bodies are forever separate. Deneb! Deneb!

The Rowan forced her bruised self into sleep. Afra picked her up gently and carried her to a bed in a room off the station's main level. He shut the door and tiptoed away. Then he sat down, on watch in the corridor outside, his handsome face dark with sorrow, his yellow eyes blinking away moisture.

 

Afra and Ackerman reached the only possible conclusion: the Rowan had burned herself out. They'd have to tell Reidinger. Forty-eight hours had elapsed since they'd had a single contact with her mind. She had not heard, or had ignored, their tentative requests for her assistance. Afra, Ackerman, and the machines could handle some of the routing and freighting, but two liners were due in and that required her. They knew she was alive but that was all: her mind was blank to any touch. At first, Ackerman had assumed that she was recuperating. Afra had known better and, for that forty-eight hours, he'd hoped fervently that she would accept the irreconcilable situation.

“I'll run up the dynamos,” Ackerman said to Afra with a reluctant sigh, “and we'll tell Reidinger.”

Well, where's Rowan?
Reidinger asked. A moment's touch with Afra told him. He, too, sighed.
We'll just have to rouse her some way. She isn't burned out; that's one mercy.

Is it?
replied Ackerman bitterly.
If you'd paid attention to her in the first place . . .

Yes, I'm sure,
Reidinger cut him off brusquely.
If I'd gotten her light of love his patrol squadrons when she wanted me to, she wouldn't have thought of merging with him mentally. I put as much pressure on her as I dared. But when that cocky young rooster on Deneb started lobbing deflected ET missiles at us . . . I hadn't counted on that development. At least we managed to spur her to act. And off-planet at that.
He sighed.
I was hoping that love might make at least one prime fly.

Whaaa-at?
Afra roared.
You mean that battle was staged?

Hardly. As I said, we hadn't anticipated the ET. Deneb presumably had only a mutating virus plague to cope with. Not ET.

Then you didn't know about them?

Of course not!
Reidinger sounded disgusted.
Oh, the original contact with Deneb for biological assistance was sheer chance. I took it as providential, an opportunity to see if I couldn't break the fear psychosis we all have. Rowan's the youngest of us. If I could get her to go to him physically—I failed.
Reidinger's resignation saddened Afra, too. One didn't consider the Central Prime as a fallible human.
Love isn't as strong as it's supposed to be. And where I'll get new Primes if I can't breed 'em, I don't know. I'd hoped that Rowan and Deneb . . .

As a matchmaker . . .

I should resign . . .

Afra cut the contact abruptly as the door opened, admitting the Rowan, a wan, pale, very quiet Rowan.

She smiled apologetically. “I've been asleep a long time.”

“You had a tiring day,” Ackerman said gently.

She winced and then smiled to ease Ackerman's instant concern. “I still am, a little.” Then she frowned. “Did I hear you two talking to Reidinger just now?”

“We got worried,” Ackerman replied. “There're two liners coming in, and Afra and I just plain don't care to handle human cargo, you know.”

The Rowan gave a rueful smile. “I know. I'm all set.” She walked slowly up the stairs to her tower.

Ackerman shook his head sadly. “She sure has taken it hard.”

Her chastened attitude wasn't the relief that her staff had once considered it might be. The work that day went on with monotonous efficiency, with none of the byplay and freakish temperament that had previously kept them on their toes. The men moved around automatically, depressed by this gently tragic Rowan. That might have been one reason why no one noticed particularly when, toward the very end of the day, the young man came in. Only when Ackerman rose from his desk for more coffee did he notice him sitting there quietly.

“You new?”

“Well, yes. I was told to see the Rowan. Reidinger signed me on in his office late this morning.” He spoke pleasantly, rising to his feet slowly and ending his explanation with a smile. Fleetingly Ackerman was reminded of the miracle of the Rowan's sudden smiles that hinted at some incredible treasure of the spirit. This man's smile was full of uninhibited, magnetic vigor, and the brilliant blue eyes danced with good humor and friendliness.

Ackerman found himself grinning back like a fool, and shaking the man's hand stoutly.

“Mightly glad to know you. What's your name?”

“Jeff Raven. I just got in from—”

“Hey, Afra, want you to meet Jeff Raven. Here, have a coffee. A little raw on the walk up from the freighting station, isn't it? Been on any other Prime stations?”

“As a matter of fact . . .”

Toglia and Loftus had looked around from their computers to the recipient of such unusual cordiality. They found themselves as eager to welcome this magnetic stranger. Raven graciously accepted the coffee from Ackerman, who instantly proffered cigarettes. The stationmaster had the feeling that he must give this wonderful guy something else, it had been such a pleasure to provide him with coffee.

Afra looked quietly at the stranger, his calm yellow eyes a little clouded. “Hello,” he said in a rueful murmur.

Jeff Raven's grin altered imperceptibly. “Hello,” he replied, and more was exchanged between the two men than a simple greeting,

Before anyone in the station quite realized what was happening, everyone had left his post and gathered around Raven, chattering and grinning, using the simplest excuse to touch his hand or shoulder. He was genuinely interested in everything said to him, and although there were twenty-three people vying anxiously to monopolize his attention, no one felt slighted. His reception seemed to envelop them all.

What the hell is happening down there?
asked the Rowan with a tinge of her familiar irritation.
Why . . .

Contrary to all her previously sacred rules, she appeared suddenly in the middle of the room, looked about wildly. Raven touched her hand gently.

“Reidinger said you needed me,” he said.

“Deneb?” Her body arched to project the astounded whisper.
“Deneb?
But you're . . . you're
here!
You're
here!”

He smiled tenderly and drew his hand across her shining hair. The Rowan's jaw dropped and she burst out laughing, the laughter of a supremely happy carefree girl. Then her laughter broke off in a gasp of pure terror.

How
did you get here?

Just came. You can, too, you know.

No, no, I can't. No T-1 can.
The Rowan tried to free herself from his grasp as if he were suddenly repulsive.

I did, though.
His gentle insistence was unequivocable.
It's only a question of rearranging atoms. Why should it matter whose they are?

Oh, no, no . . .

“Did you know,” Raven said conversationally, speaking for everyone's benefit “that Siglen of Altair gets sick just going up and down stairs?” He looked straight at the Rowan. “You remember that she lives all on one floor? Ever wondered why all her furniture has short legs, Rowan?”

The girl shook her head, her eyes wonderingly wide.

“No one ever stopped to ask why, did they? I did. Seemed damned silly to me when I met the woman. Siglen's middle ear reacts very badly to free-fall. She was so miserably sick the first time she tried moving herself anywhere, she went into a trauma about it. Of course, it never occurred to
her
to find out why. So she went a little crazy on the subject, and
who
trained all the other Primes?”

“Siglen . . . Oh, Deneb, you mean? . . .”

Raven grinned. “Yes, I do. She passed on the trauma to every one of you. The Curse of Talent! The Great Fear! The great bushwah! But agoraphobia, or a middle-ear imbalance, is not a stigma of Talent. Siglen never trained
me.”
He laughed with wicked boyish delight and opened his mind to the Rowan. Warmth and reassurance passed between them. Her careful conditioning began to wither in that warmth. Her eyes shone.

Now come live with me and be my love, Rowan. Reidinger says you can commute from here to Deneb every day.

“Commute?” She said it aloud, conscious of the overall value of Siglen's training, but already questioning every aspect.

“Certainly,” Jeff said, approving her thoughts. “You're still a working T-1 under contract to FT & T. And so, my love, am I.”

“I guess I do know my bosses, don't I?” she said with a chuckle.

“Well, the terms were fair. Reidinger didn't haggle for a second after I walked into his private office at eleven this morning.”

“Commuting to Callisto?” the Rowan repeated dazedly.

“All finished here for the day?” Raven asked Ackerman, who shook his head after a glance at the launching racks.

“C'mon, gal. Take me to your ivory tower and we'll finish up in a jiffy. Then we'll go home. With two of us working in our spare time, Deneb'll be put to rights in no time . . .
And when we've finished that . . .

Jeff Raven smiled wickedly at the Rowan and pressed her hand to his lips in the age-old gesture of courtliness. The Rowan's smile answered his with blinding joy.

The others were respectfully silent as the two Talents made their way up the stairs to the once-lonely tower.

Afra broke the tableau by taking the burning cigarette from Ackerman's motionless hand. He took a deep drag that turned his skin a deeper green. It wasn't the cigarette smoke that caused his eyes to water so profusely.

“Not that that pair needs much of our help, people,” he said, “but we can add a certain flourish and speed them on their way.”