Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
Anne McCaffrey
Individual Titles
THe ROWAN
Anne McCaffrey
CORGI BOOK.
THE ROWAN
Prologue
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.