To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
“Yes, an airplane has blind spots. Where would you put a saddle?” Molly had her practical side.
He laughed and hugged her. Henry’s frequent demonstrations of affection were a source of great delight to Molly, whose own strength was in tactile contacts.
“Don’t know. Lord, how would you bridle a winged horse?”
“With the heart?”
“Indubitably!” The notion pleased him. “Yes, with the heart and the head because Pegasus is too strong a steed to control or subdue by any ordinary method.”
“You couldn’t break our sort of Pegasus anyhow,” Molly said firmly. “Wouldn’t want to even when he flies so high…” She burrowed into Henry’s arms, suddenly frightened by the analogy.
“Yes, luv. When you ride the winged horse, you can’t dismount. Anymore than you can suppress the Talent you’ve been given. We’ll find our bridle, I think, with time and training and more practice at riding.
“That Goosegg was the really important break. Now we can prove parapsychic powers exist and who has them. We can discredit the charlatans and clowns who’ve given the rest of us a bad name. The real Talents will be registered with the
Center, and we’ll have graphs to prove they’ve had valid Incidents. The Center will supply them with the specialized jobs that utilize their Talents. From just a sampling of validly Talented people we’ve already attracted, I can think of hundreds of top jobs.”
“Even Titter Beyley and Charity McGillicuddy?” Molly Mahony Darrow’s eyes danced with mischief because Titter drank continuously and Charity pursued an old profession diligently.
“Takes a thief to catch a thief and Titter’s been stealing for years to support his habit. Remember that Charity’s heart of gold beats in a true telepath’s breast.”
“Size 42-C.”
“Molly!”
“Go on with our future, Henry.”
“I want Watson Claire as our PR man because I know damned well he’s a receiving telepath: he must be to handle clients the way he does. He’s got a positive genius for presenting the campaign a client’ll buy. Claire’s the sort of person we’ve got to enlist, for his sake as well as ours. Ours, because we’ve got the biggest goddamn public relations program on our hands, and the public can make or break us. His sake, because he’s not happy pushing products he despises.”
Molly nodded sympathetically.
“We get an intensive information program going and that will help recruiting.
Then we’ve got to start rescue operations for those hidden Talents and especially those poor misfits in institutions because they heard voices…which they did…or they imagined impossible things, which they didn’t. Or their empathy with the world around them was too great to be endured and they abandoned reality. And we’ve got to figure out the best way to train these
Talents once we’ve got them verified.
“Then we’ve got to get exactly the right place to live in.”
“To live? But this apartment is…”
“Okay for us, for the time being. But not for the rest of us. No, now don’t worry, Molly luv. I know where we’re going.”
Molly regarded him steadily for a second. “But you don’t know exactly how we’ll get there, is that it?”
Henry laughed, nodding.
“That’s the challenge, luv.”
“And then what’s on the agenda? I’d better know the worst.”
Henry chuckled to give himself time to evade. “Then comes one of the harder jobs…”
Molly’s eyes grew round. “You’ve outlined a lifetime’s work and then tell me one of the harder jobs…”
“Will be to establish professional immunity for the Talents so we don’t get sued out of our eyeball sockets because we said something would happen which didn’t because we said it would. Oh, we’ll get it sooner or later, but I’d rather sooner than later when you consider the money that’ll be tied up in suits. But that won’t be my headache.”
“It won’t be?”
“I can’t live forever, luv.”
She clung to him and he gave her only a quick embrace.
“I’ll live long enough, Mary-Molly luv, and so will you.” He put her away from him then, for he had to keep his desire in check with the pressures of his destiny.
“Now, gentlemen, the subject all wired up to the electroencephalograph, familiarly known as the Goosegg, is a telekinetic Talent. That means, gentleman, that he can move objects without any other agency than his mind. Ralph, would you be good enough to demonstrate?”
Ralph, who used to be known as Rat Wilson, was not the most prepossessing of individuals, being skinny to the point of emaciation, with a rodent-like face and a mouth that remained slightly open due to untended tonsils and adenoids; but his rather large grey eyes were dancing with mischief and interest. That he had perfected his art in the variety of correctional institutions which had attempted to remold him to society’s requirements was irrelevant-now.
He sat under the electrode net of the Goosegg at one end of a large hall, a small TV camera throwing a picture of the print-out on the big screen above him.
Forty-seven scientists and businessmen were seated around the room, in the center of which sat a table with a variety of objects: a hammer, nails and a plank of wood; a coffee tray with an urn, cups, cream and sugar; a guitar; and a training set of waldoes, limp and grotesque without hands to fill the gloves.
Henry Darrow walked to the other end of the room, as far from both Ralph and the table as possible.
There was a significant silence in the room, with the audience casting glances from table to Ralph to Henry. Suddenly a cup rattled, rose, was joined to a saucer and aligned itself under the spout of the urn which was tapped almost simultaneously to pour coffee into the cup. Belatedly, a spoon clattered into the saucer.
“Who takes it black?” asked Ralph as cup and saucer veered to the nearest watchers.
“I do,” said one cool businessman, lifting his hand.
“Hang on to it then, mac,” replied Ralph. “Got it?”
“Hey!” The man closed his fingers around the lip of the saucer but when Ralph released it, he was unprepared and the black coffee sloshed over the saucer rim onto his hand.
There was a slight wave of amusement, shattered by the crash of a hammer driving a nail into a block of wood.
“I’ll make the next one white. Who’s for it?”
A second cup was delivered to its receiver as the hammer drove the nail smartly into the wood. At the same tune, the waldoes jerked alive and began to assemble the objects in the tray. The guitar twanged with a bawdy ballad.
With cups sailing around the room, the crack of the hammer to the tempo of the song, the industry of the waldoes leaving everyone gaping, Henry returned to the stage, taking a pointer and starting the sales pitch.
“As you will notice, if you can take your eyes from the flying saucers, Ralph’s use of his Talent results in the hard variations of the alpha waves, here and here. The beta fluctuation is rapid, deep. Note the difference at the beginning of the graph before Ralph started. Notice the increase as he stepped up the output of the parapsychic faculty. Has anyone any doubts about the authenticity of this demonstration? Will you accept this print-out as valid, and that the graph represents Ralph’s paranormal ability?”
“Stop him!”
Henry signalled to Ralph and coffee cups crashed to the floor. The hammer bounced and fell to the table and the waldoes went limp to a discordant twang on the guitar.
“For chrissake,” and the man on whom a cup of coffee had fallen sprang to his feet, wiping at soaked pants and dancing from the hot bath. Instantly the cup righted itself and incredibly refilled with the just-emptied coffee.