To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
“Please emphasize that we admit to human fallibility and use computers to limit human error.”
Joel frowned at op Owen’s droll interjection. “Then I’ll show how the foresight prevented or averted the worst of the Incidents. That Monterey Quake is a heaven-sent example. No heroes perished, even if a few sparrows did fall from gas discharges.”
“I thought it was the meddling with the sparrow’s fall that perturbs Senator Zeusman” Daffyd remarked wryly. “For want of that seed, the grain won’t sprout…”
“Hmmm, yes, it does! ‘What will be, will be,’” and Andres mimicked Zeusman’s voice again.
“Since he initiated Pope,” said op Owen, “I’d reply ‘Whatever is, is right.’ “
“You want me to turn Papist now, huh?” Joel grinned wickedly.
Daffyd chuckled as he continued, “Pope also advises, ‘Be candid where we can but vindicate the ways of God to man!’”
The gently delivered quote had an instant effect on the senator, comparable to touching a match to a one-second fuse. Midway to explosion, Andres snapped his mouth shut, sighed extravagantly and rolled his slightly yellowed eyes heavenwards.
“You are the most difficult man to help, Daffyd op Owen!”
“That’s only because I’m aware how carefully we must move in the promulgation of this Bill, Joel. I don’t want it backfiring at the wrong time, when some of the basic research now in progress becomes demonstrable. The Talents can’t be hamstrung by obsolete statutes imperfectly realized on a scrabbling compromise basis.”
“Dave, you want to run before you can walk?”
“No, but trouble has been foreseen.”
“Darrow again, huh? Or are you hoist on your own petard?” Joel waggled a finger triumphantly. “Trouble stemming from current non-protection. Go cast up a precog after the Bill is passed.”
“Ah-ha” and Daffyd mimicked Joel now, “but we don’t see the Bill passing!”
That rendered Andres speechless.
“And we are hoist on our own petard,” the telepath continued with a hint of sorrowful resignation in his voice, “because all our preventive methods are affecting the future, unfortunately, much as Senator Zeusman presented the syndrome in his Sparrow’s Fall peroration. That was such a masterful speech,” op Owen said with rueful envy. “Valid, too, for as surely as the Center issues a warning, allowing people a chance to avert or prevent tragedy, they have already prejudiced the events from happening as they were foreseen. That’s the paradox.
Yet how, how can ethical man stand aside and let a hero perish, or even a sparrow fall, when he knows that he can prevent unnecessary or premature loss.”
“The Monterey Quake could not have been prevented,” Joel reminded him, then blinked in amazement. “You’re not holding out on me, are you? You haven’t found a kinetic strong enough to hold the earth’s surface together?”
Dave’s laughter was a spontaneous outburst of delight at his friend’s discomposure.
“No, no. At least…not yet,” he said just to watch the outraged expression on Andres’s mobile face.
There were few people with whom Daffyd op Owen could relax or indulge in his flights of humor and hyperbole. “Seriously, Joel, the Monterey Quake is a spectacular Incident and a prime example of the concerted use of Talent, minimizing the loss of life or property. We have never had so many precogs stimulated in their separate affinities. And it’s the most concrete example of why precogs need legal protection. Do you realize that the Western Center was deluged with damage suits for the tsunami that followed?”
“That was predictable.”
“But we issued no warnings. And it’s against such irrational attitudes that precogs need legal protection more than any other Talent. Theirs is stimulated by mental perceptions as erratic as a smell in the morning air, a glance at a photo, the sound of a name. In a sense, precog is tremendously unreliable because it cannot be used as consciously as telepathy, teleportation and telekinesis. And to protect the Talent as well as the Center, we insist on computer corroboration when details are coherently specific. We never issue a public warning until the computer admits reliability…and we get damned because we have ‘heard’ and not spoken. Of course, a number of our precogs have become absorbed into business where peculiar affinities place them. For instance,” and Daffyd held up a tape-file, “this young man, who’s applying for progeny approval, is a fire conscious. But he’s one reason this city has such low fire-insurance rates: his Talent prevents them-a blessing indirectly passed on to every resident…”
“Hmmm, but scarcely spectacular enough to register with the average egocentric
Joe Citizen,” said Andres sourly. He was restless with Daffyd’s earnest review of facts he knew well. “However, every little bit helps, Dave, and the public moves a lot faster pro bona pocketbook.”
“True, exactly true, and they get rather nasty when we try to save them money and will not understand that a legitimate forewarning automatically alters the future, even to the point of preventing the foreseen Incident which will have cost old publican money, or time, or effort he then feels was unnecessary.”
“And there we are, right back at square one,” said Joel in flat disgust. “That is what Mansfield calls ‘meddling’ and what makes him fight this Bill with every ounce of his outraged moralistic, neo-religious, mock-ethical fibre. Remember, he’s backed by the transport lobbies, and every time one of your precogs hits that jolly little brotherhood, causing delays, hurried inspections, the whole jazz-you got a number-one headache. Because, when the predictions don’t happen as predicted, Transport swears your meddling is superstitious interference, un called for, unnecessary and nothing would have happened anyway.”
Daffyd sighed wearily. “How many times have we found bombs? Fuel leaks? Averted hijacks? Metal fatigue…mechanical justifications?”
“Doesn’t signify, Dave, not if it touches the pocketbook of the Transport Companies. Remember, every precog implies fault: human or mechanical, since the Companies will not recognize Providence as a force. And human or mechanical, the public loses faith in the Company thus stigmatized. When Company profits are hit, Company gets mad, sues the precog for defamation of character, interference, et cetera.”