Authors: Anne McCaffrey
“Why can’t you?” Peter asked. Surely admirals could do what they wanted. Cut orders or something.
Coetzer chuckled. “Doesn’t work like that, Pete. Now, come with me and I’ll show you the nerve center of this ship.”
“Admiral on the bridge,” was the ringing cry, causing officers and ratings to snap to attention.
“As you were. If you’ll—” Coetzer began, and stopped as he saw the awed expression on Peter’s face. He’d never quite got over the wonder of the scene that was visible in the forward screen of the
Andre Norton
so he stood in respectful silence as Peter absorbed the panorama. The ship’s prow, although parallel to the great wheel of Padrugoi, faced outer space. Sometimes the prospect terrified those with any degree of agoraphobia. Mostly the view reduced people to stark amazement and wonder, as it did Peter.
The hunger, the yearning for the unknown and the unreachable was visible on the boy’s face. For a long moment, the boy was stock-still until Lance leaned forward and lightly touched his arm. Peter exhaled.
“Say again, Pete?” the admiral asked, sure that he had heard words on that breath.
“I only need to know where to stand,” Peter murmured, eyes focused beyond the plasglass to the black space, pinpointed with stars.
“When you find out,” Johnny said gently, “do let me know.”
Peter gave his head a shake, grinned with sheepish apology to the admiral.
“Well, then, let me show you how the
Andre Norton
operates.”
Peter was attentive, asked intelligent questions, but his eyes were constantly seeking the scene outside.
“He’s mesmerized,” Lance remarked quietly to Johnny.
“Has that effect, all right,” Johnny replied, giving a short sharp sigh. “Can’t blame him. I ogle it every chance I get.”
Once the bridge tour was done, the admiral offered his guests lunch in his quarters. It was obvious to the others that Peter would have gladly taken a sandwich to the bridge and stared at space until it was time to leave. But he had learned manners from Dorotea and, though he kept looking at space until the lift door closed it from sight, he recovered his poise on the way back to Padrugoi. He kept thanking the admiral throughout the excellent lunch, asking now and then about details he wished to make clear in his own mind.
“Would it be against security if I asked if I could have some, well, sort of details, like how she masses? And you know, some idea of her interior and her decks?” Peter asked while the adults were having coffee. He didn’t like any stimulants. He hadn’t needed any medication since he’d left the hospital. Other than his paralysis, he enjoyed very good health.
“We do have just the sort of documentation you’d like, Pete,” the admiral said. “Oh, nothing that breaches security or shows more than the general outlines but the specs do include the dimensions as well as the mass, though that’s estimated rather than actual. We know how much the components weigh in gravity. Of course, it isn’t as if the
Andre Norton
were a seagoing ship and we’d know how much water she displaces.” The admiral grinned. “But yes, you may have what we’ve prepared as a press handout at her Launch.” He leaned across the table to Peter, who was on his right. “You will, of course, be on hand?”
“I’d be delighted, sir,” Peter replied, beaming with gratitude.
“Good, that’s settled. You are high on the invitation list,” and the admiral winked.
“Any time I can be of service, sir, you have only to think it.”
“Really?” and Dirk Coetzer rolled his eyes.
“Oh, not ’pathing you, sir, never,” Peter assured him hurriedly.
The admiral grinned. “Just teasing. I’m well aware of the high ethics of Talent.”
“Anyway,” and now Peter paused to smile impudently, “you’ve got a natural shield that only lifts when you get very angry.”
“Oh? I do?” Coetzer was pleased.
Now you’ve done it
, Johnny said with feigned disgust.
Done what?
I’ve had the admiral believing I could read his mind so he’d tell me what I needed to know before I went in and found it
.
Peter looked from Johnny to the admiral who was still grinning with great satisfaction. Coetzer raised an eyebrow significantly at Johnny and sat back in his chair.
Looking without permission isn’t ethical
, Peter said, distressed that the man he admired most would do such a thing.
Who said I looked?
Johnny replied.
He just thinks—thought, thanks to you—I could read him
.
Tsck, tsck
, Lance Baden said without glancing at their end of the table. He was chatting with unusual animation with the attractive engineering officer, Lieutenant Commander Pota Chatham.
A copy of the coveted plans, secured in a big envelope with
ISS ANDRE NORTON
blazoned on the front, was shortly delivered to the admiral, who handed it over to Peter. Then the Talents rose from the table, thanked the admiral and his officers for the tour and the lunch, and took the lift to the boat deck and the recently installed telepad. As they swung out of the lift, they nearly collided with a cleaning crew. Johnny felt a surge of menace and looked around at the janitors running vacuum tubes over the deck and walls. The flicker of whatever-it-was was gone. Probably one of the grunts, annoyed by their appearance.
“Admiral Coetzer did say we were the first, didn’t he?” Peter asked as he ducked into the personnel carrier, the envelope hugged to his chest. Lance was not the only one to notice that his fingers actually curled possessively on its edges.
“Yup,” Johnny said, climbing into the forward left-hand seat. “Care to ’port us home, Peter?”
Peter hesitated and then, with careful hands and fingers, put the envelope on the forward shelf. He even managed an extra pat, as if telling the envelope to stay put.
“Sure,” he said.
Dave Lehardt was relatively accustomed now to telekinesis but he was not accustomed to seeing it happen: the view of the boat deck of Padrugoi was suddenly the sunny late afternoon of the Henner grounds, and not a hint of movement—just the abrupt alteration of physical position. Dave swallowed in awe at the ease with which Peter displayed his ability. The kid hadn’t even taken a deep breath: just teleported them. Snap! Like that! Amazing!
———
“H
e was
holding
the envelope, Rhys,” he told his wife, imitating Peter’s gestures. “He cocked his fingers around the edges and he was holding it to his chest—like his most precious possession—with both hands flat and definitely hugging it to him. He may not
know
he was doing it but Johnny, Lance, and I saw him.”
Rhyssa smiled at her husband over the head of their son. “He’s been close to such small motor movements for some time now, but only when he isn’t really trying to use them. Lance hasn’t mentioned it to him, though he’s told me. That’s good news. Peter still has no feeling below the neck. Maybe he’ll just forget trying and let his Talent take over. When he’s not conscious of the need for movement, sometimes he just moves like an ordinary sixteen-year-old. He doesn’t even hover just above the floor as much anymore.”
Dave chuckled softly, sitting down to watch his wife feed Eoin. “He would have liked to hover outside the
Andre Norton
. Seems to me that a kinetic would make a very good space traveler. He, or she, would function well in no gravity.”
“For goodness’ sake, don’t mention that to Peter. Or he’ll be after permission to do spacewalking next.”
“Why not? Johnny does. And Coetzer dropped a hint that they would like to contract Pete for assembly jobs.”
“I know that,” she said in a glum voice.
“You’re going to have to let him, you know. You’d be wrong to fight it.”
Rhyssa gave him a long, hard stare that he returned, a little smile tugging at his lips.
“It’s good public relations to plan ahead for every likely contingency, m’love. And look at it from Pete’s perspective. Do you know anyone else who’s so totally accustomed to no-gravity?”
She gave a little laugh. “I hadn’t thought of his kinesis as no-gravity.”
“It might be a little different, learning to cope wearing a space suit. He does, after all, still have to breathe air. Or does he?” He gave Rhyssa a quirky glance.
“Of course he does,” she said. “Only why was it so important for him to get the plans?”
“Souvenir, of course. We were the first two civilians to see the finished product.”
“Yes, that makes sense.” Rhyssa paused, stroking her son’s thin but waving hair. “Does he know Coetzer wants to employ him when he’s of age?”
“Nothing was specifically said in Peter’s hearing. But the boy’s not dumb. He’ll figure it out. He’d have Johnny on his side.”
“That is, of course, a great consolation to me.” Rhyssa lifted her son to her shoulder to burp him.
“It is to me,” Dave said, leaning back in the chair and stretching his legs out.
“M
aree?” Peter called from his room. “Can you give me a hand here?” Amariyah appeared at the doorway, very much aware that her friend meant that literally. She knew that he did not use his body the way she could. She had even mentioned once, very tactfully, that he should remember to touch his heel to the floor first, then his toe. That’s how people naturally walked. But she was quick to respond to any need he voiced.
“How?”she asked.
“I want to put this,” his index finger limply pointed to the unfolded sheet on his worktop. It depicted the
Andre Norton
, the sections color-coded for the different functions: red for engineering, green for living, blue for life support, orange for command, yellow for cryogenic, and brown for storage. “On the wall.” He swiveled his body, his finger now pointing to the display space. “There.”
“You have the tacks?” she asked, coming forward. She was, as usual, dressed in gardening clothes, well washed and well used. Dorotea had put extra pads on the knees.
Amariyah pushed a chair against the wall while the top drawer of his desk opened far enough to allow the box of pins to exit and float toward her. She got up on the chair.
“Here?” She tapped the wall, looking over her shoulder at him.
“That’s right.” The thumbtack box hovered by her right hand. Then the sheet made a stately way across the room and flattened against the wall.
Amariyah straightened it slightly, took out the necessary tacks and neatly secured the corners, while Peter inhaled anxiously, wincing as each tack pierced the paper. She took the box out of the air, shut it, and, descending from the chair, replaced it and closed the drawer. Then she regarded the neatly hung drawing.
“That’s what you saw today?”
“Yesss,” and the awed tone Peter used made her regard him with polite surprise.
“You had a good look at it then?” she asked, knowing how excited Peter had been to be invited for a tour of the spaceship.
“But you should have seen outside!”
She blinked. “I thought it was inside that you wanted to see. What was outside that was worth seeing? You are telling me that space is all black.”
“Yes,” and Peter slowly shook his head from side to side, his eyes glowing, “it is. But then there’re stars and space.” The last word was reverently spoken.
“You and your space,” she murmured affectionately. She was well aware of Peter’s intense interests. He had got in the habit of confiding in her. She listened intently and unlike Tirla, his other confidante, she never interrupted or argued with him. Usually, of course, she was busy weeding. That gave them added privacy. Often he did what he could to help her because sometimes she tried to move things too heavy for her strength, like peat moss and fertilizer sacks or heavy pots and tubs. He’d even thrust his insensitive fingers into the mud because it was her notion that somehow messing in mud and dirt would be good for him. He knew Dorotea found gardening therapeutic, but not quite the same way that Amariyah did. She had an almost religious fervor for
her
garden. He understood it better now, with the diagram of the
Andre Norton
on his wall.
“Thanks, Amariyah,” he said.
“You’re hovering,” she replied, gently pressing on his shoulder until he was grounded.
“Thanks,” he said absently, his eyes going from stern to prow, up and down the decks, memorizing.
“Print won’t fade, you know,” she said kindly, quoting Dorotea’s oft-repeated maxim.
“It better not,” Peter said, but he smiled in her direction. “She’s beautiful, Amariyah. Just beautiful. Everything I imagined she’d be. Inside and out.”
“Do you want to go with her when she flies?”
Peter heaved a sigh, Amariyah slyly noting that his chest had actually lifted. When she had been in the Center long enough to be able to ask personal questions, she had broached the subject of Peter to Dorotea while they were companionably weeding the side bed. Why did he move so oddly? Had he been born like that? Dorotea had explained about the wall falling on him, his paralysis, and then his unusual ability to use a “connection,” Dorotea had called it (though Amariyah learned later from Tirla that it was called a gestalt), to use the power of his mind to move his damaged body. While she was on that subject, she said that Peter could also not use the toilet as others did, and wore a bag for waste disposal. Amariyah calmly accepted this explanation with a nod of her head.
Peter, Dorotea went on, couldn’t feel anything so they all had to watch out that he didn’t inadvertently burn or injure himself. He was assiduous in doing the daily Reeve exercises to keep muscle tone, and in getting massage. Dorotea assured Amariyah that it was polite to remind Peter to keep his feet on the ground. When he got excited, he started to hover. Amariyah was to ignore any other unusual motions. Peter was still trying to control, by his mind, the smaller movements of hands and feet that everyone else took for granted.
“Are you going to move the spaceship when she’s ready to go?” Amariyah asked. Several times now she had been in the personnel carrier, taken with Peter and Tirla on special educational trips.
“I wish.” Peter shook his head, altering the mood. He grinned down at Amariyah. “The
Andre Norton
has to get where she’s going under her own power.”