To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
Zeusman sank down into a chair, blinking at McNabb’s craggy face. Then the New England senator rose, a slight smile on his lips.
“Gentlemen, we’ve hassled this Bill back and forth for close to two years. We’ve satisfied ourselves the provisions protecting the parapsychic professions, as outlined in Articles IV and V, do not threaten the safety of the citizens of this country, do not jeopardize personal liberty, et cetera and all that, and, hell, let’s place it on the agenda and start protecting these poor idealistic bastards from…from them as don’t wish to be protected.”
McNabb’s grin was pure malice but he didn’t glance in Zeusman’s direction nor was the midwesterner aware of anything but this unexpected defeat.
Op Owen reached the Center after full dark of the late spring evening. The pleasant sense of victory still enveloped him in contentment. He found himself, however, turning toward the apartments rather than his own quarters. The news that the Andres Bill had left Committee and would be presented to the Senate next session had already been relayed to the Center. He heard echoes of the celebrating which appeared to be going on all over the grounds.
A little premature, he thought to himself, for the Bill must pass Senate and Congress. There would be sharp debate” but they predicted it would pass. The President was already in favor of protection for the Talented since he benefited from their guardianship.
Op Owen entered the building where the Horvaths lived. He hesitated at the elevator, then made for the steps, pleased to arrive without breathlessness at their apartment door.
He had a split second of concern that he might be interrupting the young couple but it was quickly dispelled when Lajos, still dressed, flung the door wide.
“Mr. op Owen!” The precog’s face was a study in incredulous amazement. “Good evening, sir!”
“I’m sorry. Were you expecting someone?”
“No, no one. Exactly. Please, come in. It’s just…well, everyone’s been apartment hopping since the news came…”
“The Director is immune to jubilation?”
Lajos was spared the necessity of answering because Ruth entered from the kitchen, her face lighting up as she rushed forward to greet their guest. Op
Owen was relieved at her obvious welcome: she could have developed a subconscious antipathy for him after their recent session.
“I don’t think anyone expected you back tonight, sir,” Lajos was saying, pressing a drink on op Owen.
“We’re all so proud of you, sir,” Ruth added shyly.
“I did nothing,” op Owen replied. “I sat in a shielded room and listened. It was Lajos’s precog…”
“There were three other reports, sir,” Lajos said, “but is it really confirmed that Senator Andres has had a remission of that liver ailment?”
“Yes, absolutely, demonstrably true. I know we’ve all felt burdened with a certain…regret, on that aspect of the North East Incident. It is the inevitable concomitant of the precognitive gift.”
“And Dr. Rizor’s grant will be restored?”
Op Owen was taken by surprise. “I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t think to inquire.” He felt himself coloring.
“We can’t think of everything, can we?” Ruth asked, her lips twitching with a mischievous smile.
Op Owen burst out laughing and, after a startled pause, Lajos joined him.
“I’ll bet it will be restored,” Ruth went on, “and that’s no precog: just plain justice.”
“How’s Dorotea?” op Owen asked.
“She’s asleep,” and there was nothing but pride and pleasure in Ruth’s face as she glanced towards the closed nursery door. “It’s fascinating to listen to her figuring out how to get out from under the table.”
Lajos echoed her pleasure. Op Owen rose, suddenly conscious of the rippling undercurrent between the two young people. His presence constituted a crowd.
“I wanted you to know about Joel Andres, Lajos.”
“Thank you sir, I do appreciate it.”
“It was good of you to tell us. You must be so tired,” Ruth said, linking arms with her husband and standing very close to him.
“Save your maternal instincts for your children, Ruth,” he said kindly and left.
Once again in the soft night air, op Owen felt extremely pleased with life.
Obeying an impulse, he glanced over his shoulder and noticed that the lights in the Horvath apartment were already out. He had interrupted them after all. Sometimes, shield as he could, the stronger emotions, sex being one of them, seeped through.
He took his time walking back through the grounds, permitting himself the rare luxury of savoring the happy aura that permeated the Center. He stored up the fragrance of the joyful night, the exuberance that penetrated the dark, the hopefulness that softened the chill of the breeze, against those desperate hours that are the commoner lot of man. These times of harmony, concert, attunement came all too seldom for the Talented. They were rare, glorious, treasured.
Habit made him stop in at the huge control room. Surprise prompted him to enter-for Lester Welch, a dressing robe thrown over his nightclothes and a drink in one hand, was bending over the remote graph panels. His attitude, as well as that of the duty officer, was of intense concentration.
“Never seen anything like that before in a coital graph,” Welch was muttering under his breath.
“Turned graphic voyeur, Lester?” Daffyd asked with tolerant amusement.
“Voyeur, hell. Take a look at these graphs. Ruth Horvath’s doing it again. And at a time like this? Why?”
Welch was scarcely a prurient man. Stifling his own dislike of such an unwarranted invasion of privacy, op Owen glanced at the two graphs, needles reacting wildly in response to the sexual stimuli mutually enjoyed. Lajos’s graph showed the normal agitated pattern: Ruth’s matched his except for the frenetic action of the needle, trying valiantly to record the cerebrally excited and conflicting signals its sensitive transistors picked up. The needle gouged deep into the fragile paper, flinging its tip back and forth. Yet the pattern of deviation emerged throughout the final high-a tight, intense, obviously kinetic pattern.
Abruptly the frantic activity ceased, the lines wandered slowly back to normal fatigue patterns.
“That was most incredible. The most prodigious performance I have ever witnessed.”
Op Owen shot Welch a stern glance, only to realize that the man meant the electronic record. He was momentarily embarrassed at his own thoughts.
“What does she do?” Welch continued speaking and the technician glanced up quickly, startled and flushing. “The kinetic energy is expended for what reason?
Not that she’d be able to tell us anyhow.”
“For what reason?” op Owen asked quietly, answering the safest question. “For the exercise of a very womanly talent.” He waited, then sighed at their obtuseness. “What is the fundamental purpose of intercourse between members of the opposite sex?”
“Huh?” It was Welch’s turn to be shocked.
“The propagation of their species,” op Owen answered his own inquiry.
“You mean…you can’t mean…” Welch sank, stunned, into a chair as he began to comprehend.
“It hadn’t occurred to me before now,” op Owen went on conversationally, “that it is rather odd that a brown-eyed, black-haired father and a grey-eyed, brown haired mother could produce a blue-eyed blonde. Not impossible. Just quite improbable. Now Lajos is precog, and we have to grant that Ruth is kinetic. So how do these genes produce a strong, strong telepath?”
“What did she do?” Welch asked softly. His eyes knew the answer but he had to hear op Owen voice it.
“She rearranged the protein components of the chromosome pairs which serve as gene locks and took the blue-eyed genes and the blonde-haired ones out of cell storage. And what ever else she wanted to create Dorotea. That would be my educated guess. Just the way she unlocked the RNA messengers for…” Op Owen hesitated: no, not even Lester Welch needed to know that bit of Ruth’s tinkering-“whatever it is she has in mind for this child.” Welch had not apparently noticed his hesitation. “It’ll be interesting to see the end product.”