To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
Op Owen took a deep breath and exhaled regret and supposition. He must keep his mind clear, his sensitivities honed for any nuance that would point a direction toward success.
As he left his shielded quarters at the back of the Center’s extensive grounds, he was instantly aware of tension in the atmosphere. Most Talented persons preferred to live in the Center, in the specially shielded buildings that reduced the ‘noise’ of constant psychic agitation. The Center preferred to have them here, as much to protect as to help their members. Talent was a double-edged sword; it could incise evil but it neatly separated its wielder from his fellow man. That was why these broadcasts were so vital. To prove to the general public that the psychically gifted were by no means supermen. Research had indicated there were more people with the ability than would admit it. There were, however, definite limitations to most Talents.
The Parapsychic had been raised, in Daffyd’s lifetime, to the level of a science with the development of the Goosegg, ultra-sensitive electroencephalographs which could record, and identify the type of “Talent” by the minute electrical impulses generated in the cortex by the application of psychic powers. Daffyd op Owen sometimes thought the word “power” was the villain in perpetuating the public misconceptions. Power means “possession of control” but such synonyms as “domination,” “sway,” “command” leapt readily to the average mind and distorted the actual definition.
Daffyd op Owen was roused from his thoughts by the heavy beat of a copter. He turned onto the path leading directly to the main administration building and had a clear view of the Commissioner’s marked copter landing on the flight roof, to the left of the control tower with its forest of antennal decorations.
Immediately he perceived a reaction of surprise, indignation and anxiety. Surely every Talent who’d heard the news on the morning ‘cast and realized its significance could not be surprised by Gillings’s arrival. Op Owen quickened his pace.
“Orley’s loose!” The thought was as loud as a shout.
People paused, turned unerringly towards the long low building of the Clinic where applicants were tested for sensitivity and trained to understand and use what Talent they possessed: and where the Center conducted its basic research in psionics.
A tall, heavy figure flung itself from the Clinic’s broad entrance, charged down the lawn, in a direct line to the tower. The man leaped the ornamental garden, plunged through the hedges, swung over the hood of a parked lawn-truck, straight-armed the overhanging branches of trees, and brushed aside several men who tried to stop him.
“Project reassurance! Project reassurance!” the bullhorn from the tower advised.
“Project happiness!”
“Get those cops in my office!” Daffyd projected on his own as he began to run towards the building. He hoped that Charlie Moorfield or
Lester had already done so. Orley didn’t look as if anything short of a tranquillizer bullet would stop him. Who had been dim-witted enough to let the telempath out of his shielded room at a time like this? The moron was the most sensitive barometer to emotion Daffyd had ever encountered and he was physically dangerous if aroused. By the speed of that berserker-charge, he had soaked up enough fear/anxiety/anger to dismember the objects he was homing in on.
The only sounds now in the grounds were those of op Owen’s shoes hitting the permaplast of the walk and the thud-thud of Orley’s progress on the thick lawn.
One advantage of being Talented is efficient communication and total comprehension of terse orders. But the wave of serenity/reassurance was not penetrating Orley’s blind fury: the openness dissipated its effect.
Three men walked purposefully out of the administration building and down the broad apron of steps. Each carried slim-barreled hand weapons. The man on the left raised and aimed his at the audibly-panting, fast approaching moron. The shot took Orley in the right arm but did not cause him to falter. Instantly the second man aimed and fired. Orley lost stride for two paces as the shot penetrated his thigh but incredibly he recovered. The third man-op Owen recognized Charlie Moorfield-waited calmly as Orley rapidly closed the intervening distance. In a few more steps Orley would crash into him. Charlie was swinging out of the way, his gun slightly raised for a chest shot, when the moron staggered and, with a horrible groan, fell to his knees. He tried to rise, one clenched fist straining towards the building.
Instantly Charlie moved to prevent Orley from gouging his face on the coarse-textured permaplast.
“He took two double-strength doses, Dave,” Moorfield exclaimed with some awe as he cradled the moron’s head in his arms.
“He would. How’n’hell did he get such an exposure?
- Charlie made a grimace. “Sally was feeding him on the terrace. She hadn’t heard the news ‘cast. Said she was concentrating on keeping him clean and didn’t ‘read’ his growing restlessness as more than response to her until he burst wide open.”
“Too much to hope that our unexpected guests didn’t see this?”
Charlie gave a sour grin. “They caused it, Boss. Stood there on the roof, giving Les a hard time, broadcasting basic hate and distrust. You should’ve seen the dial on the psychic atmosphere gauge. No wonder Orley responded,” Charlie’s face softened as he glanced down at the unconscious man. “Poor damned soul. Where is that med-team? I ‘called’ them when he got outside.”
Daffyd glanced up at the broad third floor windows that marked his office. Six men stared back. He put an instant damper on his thoughts and emotions, and mounted the steps.
The visitors were still at the window, watching the med-team as. they lifted the huge limp body onto the stretcher.
“Orley acts as a human barometer, gentlemen, reacting instantly to the emotional aura around him,” Les was saying in his driest, down-east tone. To op Owen’s wide-open mind, he emanated a raging anger that almost masked the aura projected by the visitors. “He has an intelligence factor of less than 50 on the New Scale which makes him uneducable. He is, however, invaluable in helping identify the dominating emotion of seriously disturbed mental and hallucinogenic patients which could overcome a rational telepath.”
Police Commissioner Frank Gillings was the prime source of the fury which had set Harold Orley off. Op Owen felt sorry for Orley, having to bear such anger, and sorrier for himself and his optimistic hopes. He was momentarily at a loss to explain such a violent reaction from
Gillings, even granting the validity of Lester Welch’s assumption that Gillings was losing face, financial and personal, on account of this affair.
He tried a “push” at Gillings’s mind to discover the covert reasons and found the man had a tight natural shield, not uncommon for a person in high position, privy to sensitive facts. The burly Commissioner gave every outward appearance of being completely at ease, as if this were no more than a routine visit, and not one hint of his surface thoughts leaked. Deep-set eyes, barely visible under heavy brows, above fleshy cheeks in a swarthy face that missed nothing, flicked from Daffyd to Lester and back.
Op Owen nodded to Ted Lewis, the top police “finder” who had accompanied the official group. He stood a little to one side of the others. Of all the visitors, his mind was wide open. Foremost was the thought that he hoped Daffyd would read him, so that he could pass the warning that Gillings considered Orley’s exhibition another indication that Talents could not control or discipline their own members.
“Good morning, Commissioner. I regret such circumstances bring you on your first visit to the Center.” This morning’s newscast has made us all extremely anxious to clear our profession.”