Pegasus In Space

Peter considered this. "Well, I did look at the mass of drones and shuttles when I was doing them. I know that something's dense by the feel of it."

"What has mass in this room that you'd need gestalt to move?"

Peter eyed the objects in Rhyssa's office and then, with a mischievous glint in his eye, pointed to Johnny Greene and promptly, those in the office heard a distant generator hum and the general, chair and all, was lifted off the floor.

"Hey, just wait an effing minute," Johnny said, his eyes round with surprise. He didn't move but his body tensed a moment before he obviously forced himself to relax. "Not even for you, Pete Reidinger," and he shook his index finger at the grinning boy, "will I be a display piece."

He and his chair were put back in place with not so much as a jar to Johnny's extended legs: the heels of his shoes fitting exactly back into the marks on Rhyssa's thick carpet.

Sascha, Rhyssa, and Lance were grinning at his indignant reaction.

"One of these days, my young friend," and the threat went unspecified. "Why didn't you pick on him?" Johnny continued, sitfing upright and pointing to Baden. "He outweighs me."

"He's my trainer," Peter replied with an impudent grin.

"That'll teach you, Johnny," Rhyssa said, having thoroughly enjoyed his discomfiture.

"I don't know about that," Johnny replied, losing all trace of petulance before indolently shooting the cuffs of his tunic and resettling himself in the lounge chair. Then he favored Peter with a genuine smile. "Just caught me unawares. I'll be very careful not to underestimate you again, young skeleteam."

"Which reminds me, Lance," Rhyssa said, putting her arms on her desk and leaning forward toward the Australian, "to tell you that Peter was fifteen just six weeks ago."

"I take due note, Rhyssa, that he is not a working Talent yet," Lance replied. "And with all kinetics and 'paths back on their jobs, I presume that you don't intend to use the skeleteam."

"Emphatically not. Now don't argue, Peter," she said to the boy, who was levitating out of his chair in protest. "Neither Sascha nor I would have condoned the use of your exceptional abilities under normal conditions. Now that we are definitely back on-line, we are morally obligated not to abuse your good nature and Talent in any way."

"But you're letting Tirla work," Peter began.

"Tirla is in residence," Sascha broke in, scowling fiercely at the boy, who recoiled from his expression, "with Lessud, Shria, and their family in a Long Island Residential Linear that is not remotely like Linear G in Jerhattan. She is definitely not working," and Sascha strung out the last three syllables to emphasize the point.

"She took you and me shopping," Peter murmured.

"Tirla has never considered shopping to be work," Rhyssa said, pathing tightly to Sascha, Stay out of this.

Sascha grinned broadly as if in response to her comment. "She's putting in every other minute she's awake studying."

"I'd say she'll need to do more shopping for you, skeleteam," Johnny remarked, eyeing the bare leg of Peter's now too-short everyday trousers.

"I could do with some duds myself," Lance said. "You blokes ought to get your thermostats fixed. This city's bloody cold."

"It's spring," Rhyssa said in surprise.

"Not to my goosebumps it ain't. C'mon, sprout," Lance said, rising and nodding to Peter. "Now we got the ground rules laid out, we can have a good chinwag on the way to getting me some warmer stuff. Or should we call on this Tirla you mentioned?"

"She's studying hard," Sascha said firmly.

"With your permission, Rhyssa?"

"By all means, Lance. Begin as you mean to go on." Rhyssa waved her hand toward the door.

Lance indicated that Peter should precede him to the door.

"Sascha and I have some schedules we must go over," Rhyssa said, pulling some pencil files toward her. "Johnny, don't you have someplace you have to be now?"

"Well, if you put it that way, " and clipping his hand toward his right eye in an airy salute, General John Greene disappeared, the generators humming slightly to indicate how he had effected his withdrawal.

Peter gave a little sniff of disdain as he exited. Behind him, Lance cocked an eyebrow at Rhyssa and Sascha and left.

"My private opinion," Sascha remarked to his chief, "is that Pete could probably 'port himself anywhere without gestalt."

"You're probably right," Rhyssa said with a sigh, and inserted the first file.

Halfway through the second week of his training time with Peter, Lance was interrupted by a telepathic touch.

Lance Baden? Carmen Stein. I have found her.

Found who? Lance was so intent on observing Peter doing a lift of a half ton of scrap metal from a yard to a steel foundry that he couldn't for the moment recall what "her" Carmen Stein might have found.

The Bantam child.

I'm not usually this slow, Lance said, not willing to direct any attention away from the screen that was graphing Peter's use of power in gestalt. Who?