To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
The Goosegg chattered crazily and Molly whirled to see what was happening. But Henry Darrow was grabbing her arm, his eyes widening with bewildered surprise and incredulity.
“You’re a Gemini. What’s your name? You’re going to marry me.”
Love at first sight is a rare enough incident, particularly in a hospital setting, despite what the romances say. But far rarer was the scientific accident that proved a long suspected truth. For what had registered on the
Goosegg’s chart was indisputable proof that the parapsychic talent exists. Henry
Darrow had a precognitive experience when he looked at Molly Mahony as a person, not just the nurse in attendance, and “knew” she would be his wife.
They did marry, as soon as his leg was out of the cast. Marriage was not the only thing Henry foresaw for Molly: he knew, too, her date of death, a fact he never disclosed to her. Talents, he learned very shortly, had to discount such precogs in their own lives if they were to operate efficiently for others. Molly was treasured, loved and cherished all the days of her life by her husband because he knew how little of her time he would enjoy.
The significance of the Goosegg’s remarkable activity did not immediately impinge on Henry’s awareness. To Molly Mahony belongs all the credit, therefore, for lifting the parapsychic function from the realm of chicanery to science.
For starters, Molly was fascinated with the unusual strength and pattern of Henry’s EEG charts. She couldn’t dismiss, as Dr. Scherman had, the variations. In her favor was a natural inclination to place Henry Darrow’s mind into an exceptional category. Added to that, she knew Henry’d had the precognition of their marriage at the precise moment the Goosegg went wild. At the very first opportunity she tried an empiric experiment. She attached the electrodes to her own skull the next time she had occasion to exert her own ability in the intensive care ward. A similar variation occurred in her reading; not as intense as Henry’s, but significant. She took several more of herself, and copied those portions of Henry’s records which showed this curious excitation.
She was rather surprised that Dr. Wahlman, Henry’s surgeon, did not cancel the Goosegg monitoring when Henry appeared to have recovered from the worst of the concussion. She wondered if Wahlman was as interested in the EEG variation as she was.
Henry had two more precognitive incidents before she felt she could approach Dr. Wahlman with her private conclusions.
“For my own information, Dr. Wahlman, what is the significance of this activity in an EEG?”
“Well, now,” said Wahlman, taking the graphs diffidently and studying them in a manner which told Molly that he hadn’t a clue. “To be frank, Mahony, I don’t know. This particular sort of print-out usually occurs just prior to death. And Darrow’s very much alive.” The surgeon looked towards Henry’s closed door with some irritation. Henry had insisted on pursuing his avocation of charting horoscopes, had even imported his computer, embarking on a cerebral activity which apparently had no deleterious effects on his rapid recovery but did not strike Wahlman as exactly the sort of occupation suitable to a man recovering from a near-fatal head injury.
“And these?” Molly showed him her own graphs.
“Whose are these? A terminal reading? No, couldn’t be. The alpha’s too intense.
What are you up to, Mahony?”
“I’m not certain, doctor, but I do know that when Mr. Darrow is…hardest at work, that’s when this sort of variation occurs.”
“Jesus help us, the damned Goosegg’s queer for astrology?”
Molly smiled and apologized for bothering the surgeon with anomalies.
“Mahony, if you weren’t the best post-operative nurse we have, I’d tell you to bug off. But if you have any idea, any unreasonable idea, why that kind of reading occurs, would you please let me in on the secret?”
She let Henry in first.
“The moment you woke up after your accident and asked was I Gemini and then said I was going to marry you, was that a precog?”
“Fact, my love-fact!”
“No, Henry, stop that now. Later. Answer me. Was your precognitive faculty at work?”
“Violently.” The modified bandage on his head gave him a slightly rakish look but he stopped caressing her, responding to her serious mood.
“And, for instance, when Mrs. Rellahan was here, you told me that you had an intense prevision…:”
“Hmmmm.” Henry’s mouth tightened slightly with dislike.
“This is what the Goosegg printed out. See, here the rapid needle, strong strokes, the length of the pattern…And, in these…”
“That’s not my pattern, too, is it? Quite a difference.”
“No, that’s my brain waves. And this is what happens when I’m healing.”
Henry looked slowly up at Molly, an incredulous joy brightening his eyes, a light suffusing his face that rewarded Molly for her efforts and intuition.
“Molly, my own heart’s darling, do you know what we have here?”
The world in general remained skeptical. Fortunately Henry Darrow cared very little for the world’s thoughts but he was able to produce proof to a powerful, wealthy few that the parapsychic faculty existed in certain individuals and could be manifested at will.
A whole new line of research was instigated by those private persons and concerns which had long hoped for scientific recognition of the paranormal abilities.
“I’ve always had a presentiment of Destiny, of being on the threshold of some vast important breakthrough,” Henry told Molly during the early hectic days shortly before they formed the first Parapsychic Center. “Most megalomaniacs do, too, and your psychotic paranoids like Nero, Napoleon, Hitler and Kyudu. That’s why I had that team of psychiatrists examine my mental health with fine Freudian tongs. Nonetheless it’s a prejudicial admission. D’you know, I’ve been afraid to forecast my own future too far in advance now? Some details are unwise for any man to know…” He looked with unfocused eyes at the blank wall in front of them for a moment before he smiled reassuringly at her. “I’ve been a dilettante up till now and my critics can say either that I gained my wits in that accident, or lost the few I had, but that event was the threshold of my…of our destiny.”
“Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead,” Molly replied, gesturing theatrically.
“And torpedoes there will be,” Henry agreed grimly.
“I thought you said you didn’t see far in advance…”
“For myself, I meant. Not for what we must do.” He was silent again for a moment. “God, it’s going to be fun.”
Molly looked at the amusement in his eyes, the anticipatory gleam of malice.
“For whom?” she asked.
His eyes sparkled as he turned his gaze back to her.
“For us,” he said, hugging her affectionately, “for all of us,” and he meant the newly recruited Talents. “We may perceive the outcome, but half the fun, most of the fun in life, is getting there. And I’ve got just enough time.”
As soon as he was sufficiently recovered to argue with his surgeons (and because
Molly assured Wahlman that Henry couldn’t get around her vigilance), he was allowed to go back to work full time. Not, as previously, in his capacity as a dilettante astrologer, but as the manager, organizer, fund-raiser, and recruiter par excellence for the Parapsychic Center.
“Mary-Molly luv, it’s going to be accomplished in steps, this establishment of the Talented in the scheme of things. Not society, mind you, for we’re the original nonconformists,” and he tapped his forehead just below the pink flesh of the newly healed head wound. “And Society will never permit us to integrate.
That’s okay!” He consigned Society to insignificance with a flick of his fingers. “The Talented form their own society and that’s as it should be: birds of a feather. No, not birds. Winged horses! Ha! Yes, indeed. Pegasus…the poetic winged horse of flights of fancy. A bloody good symbol for us. You’d see a lot from the back of a winged horse…”