To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
“All children require limits. Want them. As long as those limits are consistent and reasonable, a child as aware as Dorotea of her parents’ approval and affection won’t resist. In any event, by the time she could, or would, we shall have been able to instill discretion and your moral code. Right now, Ruth, you have all that’s required to keep Dorotea from becoming a nuisance and a brat.”
Ruth instantly reacted with indignation to his calculated insult and then laughed as she recognized the bait. She left his office considerably reassured, once again at harmony with her situation.
Op Owen envied her that carefree assurance. He still didn’t know what to call what she’d done. Yes, she had suppressed Lajos’s precog over the last six weeks, but in the four months prior to that Lajos’s abilities had increased in strength and efficiency and, except for duration and width, by a similar application of psionic effort on Ruth’s part. What did her Talent actually affect? And would it, as he had so blithely assured her, be able to “block” Dorotea?
Well, if she thinks she can, she will. At least she is no longer afraid of her precocious child, he thought. He swung his chair round, gazing out at the peaceful view of the grounds of Beechwoods, seeing the city beyond with its spires, towers and living blocks.
Was I right in my analogy that Talent is in its infancy, and the public is the parent? With the duty to block the undisciplined child? The Talents are more disciplined than the average citizen we often have to search out and rebuke, protect and cherish. It would be catastrophic for the parent to fear the child.
How much of the whole truth would reassure, as it had Ruth?
Those who truly understand psionic powers need no explanation. Those who need explanation will never understand.
Two mornings later, while reviewing contracts covering institutions holding government research grants, Lajos experienced one of his strongest Incidents. So powerful was the flame-fear that it was all he could do to pull the Goosegg recording web to his skull and depress the key that would relay the reading back to the Center.
“Flames!” he said, gasping; his mind reeled with the panoramic intense preview.
“Where?” he was prompted.
“A sheet, in front of a huge window, overlooking…the grounds.
Rhododendrons. Red ones. The clock in the church tower…nearly twelve. Too much heat! The converter is flawed. It’ll blow. There are so many people watching. They don’t belong there.” Lajos was abstractedly curious at the sound of indignation in his voice. “They caused the fire. Meddling. I know him!” Lajos struggled to get a clear picture of that face.
“You don’t like him. Who is he?”
“Ahhh…the flames. Obscuring everything.” Lajos fell back in his chair, shaken and sweating.
“Can you make it to the Center? I’ll send transport,” the duty officer said.
By the time Lajos reached the computer room in the Center, the system was already chuckling away at the details, locating which laboratories had scheduled visitors in the a.m.: laboratories using heat converters. The church clock tower suggested a college so that data was added as well as the planting of red rhododendrons.
Op Owen greeted Lajos with a grin of approval. “That was the most intense pattern you’ve ever projected. Have you any idea why that premonition should affect you so?”
“None, sir,” Lajos replied, taking the seat op Owen indicated. He was still shaken.
“The man you knew: he was someone you obviously dislike. Do you have the impression that you’ve met him personally?”
“No. I recognized his face, that’s all. Then the flames leaped up.”
“We don’t have much time,” and op Owen’s eyes glanced towards the wall clock, registering quarter to eleven. “Your precog came at 10:12. Unfortunately this appears to be appropriation time and every lab in the country is having its share of visitations. I want to play back your answer, Lajos. I was struck by two things and if you can pinpoint them also, we’ll have the ‘where’ at least.”
“Anything.” Lajos could see the vivid overprint of the flames in his mind and tried to see beyond their obscuring curtain. “And one day, figure out why I have a pyroaffinity.”
“Keeps insurance rates low, Horvath,” Welch said drily as he rewound the tape.
“Don’t knock small favors.”
Lajos listened as objectively as he could, appalled at the odd wooden quality of his voice, the fear when he mentioned the flames.
“I’ve got it, sir,” he said. “The converter, the lab, the church tower. Knowing that the people didn’t belong there. Wherever it is, is familiar to me.”
“Charlie,” Welch spoke over his shoulder to the programmer, “add Horvath’s place and travel card.”
Almost immediately a print-out appeared.
“Sir, it’s North East University. Checks out, clock in church tower, visible from research laboratory which uses a heat converter.”
“Any visitors scheduled today?”
“No report on that yet, sir, but they do have a government funded research project in neo-protein and sub-cellular engineering.”
“Check the university direct,” Welch said after a nod from op Owen.
“Only limit it to a request about visitors,” op Owen added. “There was something else I want to check first.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Charles broke in as op Owen lifted his desk phone. “Several parties are expected during the course of the day. Dr. Rizor wishes to speak to you.”
“When your office puts in a guarded call, Daffyd op Owen, I’m curious. Come clean.”
“Henry, we are not alarmists…”
“Precisely. So…?”
“We’ve had a valid Incident that appears placed at North East. Several of the details have not coincided, however. We are fallible, you know.”
Rizor’s snort was derogatory. “What’s the rest of the precog?”
“It centers around the heat converter in the lab building opposite the church tower.”
“And? God, it’s like pulling nails from you, Dave.”
“The heat converter may be faulty. The precog was that it will blow due to a sudden hot lab fire, just before noon, while visitors are on the premises.”
“I’d hate for something to happen there now, Dave. We’re on the verge of a breakthrough in the neo-proteins. Running tests that are awfully good. But no visitors are expected there.”
“Then a variable has already altered the precog.”
“That’s too glib a dismissal, Dave. Why would a lab fire stimulate your precog?
I didn’t think they usually worked out of their own area.”
“Our precog recognized one of the visitors.”
Welch signaled urgently to op Owen.
“Look, Dave,” Rizor was saying, “I’m taking no chances. I’ll have that converter checked and the building cleared. That’ll alter circumstances, too. Besides I don’t want visitors in that building until we complete the program. A breakthrough will warrant government funding all next year. I appreciate your calling, Dave. Let me know when I can help again.”
Welch was practically apoplectic before op Owen hung up.
“ Washington sent in an urgent personal precog for Mansfield Zeusman!”
“That’s who I saw,” Lajos cried, jumping to his feet.
“Get Senator Zeusman’s office on the phone, Charlie, and don’t indicate the origin,” op Owen said.
“Dave,” and Les Welch had a peculiar expression on his long face, “he’s the last person to warn. One, he won’t believe you. Two, he’s our principal antagonist.
Let that damned hero perish.”
“Les, you have a dry sense of misplaced humor.”
“I’m practical as all hell, too,” Welch added.
“Can you tell me if Senator Zeusman is expected in the office this morning?”