To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
He woke in tune for dinner and seemed in control again, laughing at Dorotea’s antics, playing with her on the floor until her bedtime. Only when the baby was safely asleep in her shielded room did he tell Ruth all that had happened.
“Oh, no, not Mr. Andres,” she said when he finished. Lajos didn’t notice her quick flush as she recalled her one personal encounter with the magnetic Senator
Andres. He’d been…so kind to her and she’d been so embarrassed.
“How could I guess that he’d be involved? It was the flames. And how could I know that Zeusman would be saved at Andres’s expense?”
“Why, you couldn’t, darling,” Ruth cried, alarmed at his self-castigation. “You couldn’t! You mustn’t blame yourself. You saved lots of lives today! Lots!”
Lajos groaned, miserable. “But why, Ruthie…why does it have to ricochet off Andres? If Rizor hadn’t ordered the converter off, the experiment would have been concluded. All they had to do was keep visitors out.”
“No, that’s not quite true,” Ruth told him in stern contradiction. “You said yourself that the heat-converter proved to be flawed. That flaw would not have been discovered without your precog. It would have exploded during the next lab fire. Who knows who might have been killed then?”
“But Andres is the one who needed the neo-protein!”
“They’ll come up with a neo-protein somewhere else, then,” Ruth said, very positively to distract Lajos. “They’ve made so many strides in organ replacement…”
“Except livers! That neo-protein was supposed to correct some kind of abnormal protein growth…faulty endogenous protein metabolism…that’s what’s killing Senator Andres…stuff is cramming into his liver and spleen, enlarging them and there’s no known way to clear the amyloids. And when the liver doesn’t work, that’s it, honey. Ticket out!”
Ruth went on stroking Lajos’ forehead gently, knowing that he must find his own way out of this. He burrowed his face into her neck, entreating the comfort that she never denied him. Later her mind returned to the terrible paradox, the tragic linkage of circumstance and the sorrow of the well-intentioned Good Samaritan.
God gives man stewardship of his gifts and the free will to use or deny them.
Why must it be, that a man acting in good faith, finds himself reviled?
As sleep finally claimed her in the early morning hours, she wondered if she ought now to use her Talent to prevent Lajos from precogs like this. No, she drowsily realized, she had no right to take negative action. One must always think positively. One is one’s brother’s keeper, not his warder!
“I rather expected a call from you, Dave,” Joel Andres said, his grin on the vidscreen slightly waving from atmospheric disturbance. “And that’s no precog.
No indeed,” he rattled on, without permitting op Owen to speak. “The good senator from that great midwestern state called especially to warn me that I’m the next sparrow to fall because my pet witch doctor read the wrong crystal ball. Hey, that rhymes. Now, I don’t believe that for a moment, Dave, on account of I don’t think that that stupid mock-protein goop would have been jelled or curdled or what have you, in time to save my misspent life anyhow.” The words were lightly said but there was an edge to Andres’s voice that ruined the jovial effect
“How long, Joel?”
“Probably long enough to get that Bill out of Committee, Dave, and I’ll count the time well spent. Zeusman can’t put down the mass of evidence in favor of psionics, the tremendous saving of loss and life already effected by validated precogs. By the way, Welch told me that the precog came in at 10:12. Do you know the time when Zeusman gave his pilot orders to fly to North East?”
“ 10:12?”
“Right, man. And that’s in the record! Right in his flight log and a friend of mine impounded it because the pilot isn’t so contemptuous of the circumstances as Zeus man. That pilot was scared silly by the coincidence. And don’t think I’m not going to ram that down Zeusman’s double-chins.”
“He’ll never admit our warning saved his life, Joel,” Daffyd said.
“Hell, he doesn’t have to admit it. The facts prove it. But I must say, Dave, you made one mistake.” Joel’s chuckle was rich.
“Had I known what I know now, I do believe that this once I’d’ve sat back and twiddled my thumbs.”
“Ha! I don’t believe that for a minute…no, maybe you would have,” and the lawmaker’s voice rippled with amusement. “If this has buckled your altruistic armor, it’s worth it. Worth dying for, because there’s nothing trickier to tie down than an honest man gone bad! Now let me go to work.”
“Joel, let me know…”
“Hang loose, man. Don’t rob me of my cool. Not now!”
The senator signed off but Daffyd op Owen sat staring moodily at the wall opposite his desk, unable for the first time in his life to divert his train of thought. His mind writhed in recrimination as bitter as an ancient inquisitional penance.
“Dave?” Welch’s brisk voice broke through his introspection. “There’s an anomaly on…Oh, I’ll come back later…”
“No, Lester, come in.”
Welch gave his friend a speculative look but he unrolled the graphs without comment.
“Ruth Horvath!” Op Owen was surprised, almost irritated that she should be the subject of the intrusion.
“Couple of things. Here…on the baby’s chart…Incident after Incident.
…compare it with Ruth’s. No pattern. Not even an inky hiccup. I thought you said she could block that baby.”
Curious now, op Owen scanned the charts. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to a sustained emphatic variation.
“That’s the anomaly. Happened last night. It’s a spontaneous variation. All her others have been triggered, usually by Lajos. And, if you’ll look at the peaks and valleys in last night’s records, you’ll see that the pattern is kinetic.”
“That’s too tight for a true kinetic touch.”
“Well, it’s not TP, it’s not ‘finding’ and what’n’hell would she be trying to do, fast asleep? ‘Finding’ is a conscious application, anyway. No, this is a kinetic pattern.”
“For what reason? Against what?”
“Who knows? The point is, while she has stopped suppressing her husband, she hasn’t started blocking her daughter. And that’s going to be serious. I mean, we don’t need a teething telepath broadcasting discomfort.”
“Teething?”
“I forget you’re not a parent,” Welch said with tolerant condescension, “to small babies, that is.”
Op Owen was engrossed in the patterns and it was obvious that Ruth was not responding and seemed unable to use a conscious block. And that was too bad. He frowned at the unusual kinetic display of the previous night.
“She’s got it. She used it.”
“Not consciously.”
“I hate to resort to therapeutic interference. It might jeopardize her ever using it consciously.”
“It’s therapy for Ruth, or that baby’ll tyrannize both parents. And that’s bad.
A kid that strong has got to have limits, right now, before she can develop precocious resistance.”
Op Owen examined the charts one last time, shaking his head as he noticed the telepathic patterns on Dorotea’s chart, saw the impingement on the mother’s and no block.
“These could be legitimate calls…”
“Don’t evade, Dave. I know you hate interfering with Talent; that it should be spontaneous. Admit Ruth Horvath is one of those who cannot use Talent consciously. Meddle a little!”
Op Owen rose, his face drawn. “I’ll drop over to see them today. Let’s hope she responds well to hypnosis,”
“She does. I looked up her training record.”