To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
According op Owen and Grade the merest nod, Gillings began issuing crisp orders.
He knew his business, op Owen thought, and he evidently trusted these technicians for he didn’t bother to crowd into the tiny apartment to oversee them.
“As soon as your men have prints and a physical profile, Commissioner, we’d like to run the data through our computer. There’s the chance that the girl did take advantage of the open Talent test the Center has been advertising.”
“You mean you don’t know who it is yet?”
“I could ‘find’ the coat only because I knew what it looked like,” Gil Grade said, bristling at” Gillings’s manner.
“Then where is it?” and Gillings gestured pre-emptorily to the sable-less apartment.
“These are the shoes, Commissioner,” said one of his team, presenting the fragile strap and jeweled footwear, now neatly sealed in clear plastic. “Traces of dirt, dust, fleck of nail enamel and from the ‘scope imprint, I’d say they were too big for her.”
Gillings stared at the shoes disinterestedly. “No sign of the dress?”
“Still looking.”
“Odd that you people can’t locate a girl with bare feet in a sable coat and a bright blue silk gown?”
“No odder than it is for your hundreds of patrolmen throughout the city,
Commissioner, to overlook a girl so bizarrely dressed,” said op Owen with firm good humor. “When you ‘saw’ the coat, Gil, where was it?”
“Thrown across the loveseat, one arm hanging down to the floor. I distinguished the edge of the sill and the tree outside, the first folds of the curtain and the wall heating unit. I called in, you sent over enough finders so that we were able to eliminate the similarities. It took us nearly an hour…”
“Were you keeping an ‘eye’ on the coat all the time?” Gillings demanded in a voice so devoid of expression that his contempt was all the more obvious.
Gil flushed, bit his lip and only partially inhibited by op Owen’s subtle warning, snapped back, “Try keeping your physical eye on an object for an hour!”
“Get some rest, Gil,” op Owen said gently. He waited until the finder had turned the corner: “If you are as determined to find this criminal as you say you are,
Commissioner Gillings, then do not destroy the efficiency of my staff by such gratuitous criticism. In less than four hours, on the basis of photographs of the stolen objects, we located this apartment…”
“But not the criminal, who is still in possession of a sable coat which you found once but have now unaccountably lost.”
“That’s enough, Gillings,” said Pennstrak who had rejoined them. “Thanks to your arrival, the girl must know she’s being sought and is shielding.”
Pennstrak gestured toward the dingy windows of the flat, through which the vanes of the big copter were visible. A group of children, abandoning the known objects of the development play-yard, had gathered at a respectful, but curiosity-satisfying distance.
“Considering the variety of her accomplishments,” op Owen said, not above using
Pennstrak’s irritation with his Commissioner to advantage, “I’m sure she knew of the search before the Commissioner’s arrival, Julian. Have any of these items been reported, Commissioner?”
“That console was. Two days ago. It was on ‘find,’ too.”
“She has been growing steadily bolder, then,” op Owen went on, depressed by
Gillings’s attitude. And depressed that such a Talent had emerged twisted, perverted, selfish. Why? Why? “If your department ever gets the chronology of the various thefts, we’d appreciate the copy.”
“Why?” Gillings turned to stare at op Owen, surprised and irritated.
“Talent takes time to develop-in ordinary persons. It does not, like the ancient goddess Athena, spring full-grown from the forehead. This girl could not, for instance, have lifted that portable set the first tune she used her Talent. The more data we have on…the lecture is ill-timed.”
Gillings’s unspoken “you said it” did reach op Owen whose turn it was to stare in surprise.
“Well, your ‘finders’ are not novices,” the Commissioner said aloud. “If they traced the coat once, why not again?”
“Every perceptive we have is searching,” op Owen said. “But, if she was able to leave this apartment after Gil found the coat, taking it with her, because it obviously is not here, she also is capable of shielding herself and that coat.
And, until she slips that guard, I doubt we’ll find it or her.”
The report on the laboratory findings was exhaustive. There was a full set of prints, foot and finger. None matched those on file in the city records, or
Federal or Immigration. She had not been tested at the Center. Long coarse black hair had been found. Analysis of skin flakes suggested an olive complexion.
Thermo-photography placed her last appearance in the room at approximately the time the four ‘finders’ fixed on her apartment, thus substantiating op Owen’s guess. The thermal prints also revealed that she was of slender build, approximately 5’4”, weighing 105 pounds. Stains on a paring knife proved her to possess blood type O. No one else had occupied the apartment within the eight day range of the thermography used.
From such records, the police extrapolator made a rough sketch of “Maggie O” which she was called for want of a better name. The sketch was taken around the neighborhood with no success. People living in Block Q didn’t bother people who didn’t bother them.
It was Daffyd op Owen who remembered the children crowding the police copter.
From them he elicited the information that she was new in the building. (The records indicated that the apartment should be vacant.) She was always singing, dancing to the wall ‘caster, and changing her clothes. Occasionally she’d play with them and bring out rich food to eat, promising they could have such good things if they’d think hard about them. While the children talked, Daffyd “saw” Maggie’s face reflected in their minds. The police extrapolator had been far short of the reality. She was not much older than the children she had played with. She had not been pretty by ordinary standards but she had been so “different” that her image had registered sharply. The narrow face, the brilliant eyes, slightly slanted above sharp cheekbones, the thin, small mouth and the pointed chin were unusual even in an area of ethnic variety.
This likeness and a physical description were circulated quickly to be used at all exits to the city and all transportation facilities. It was likely she’d try to slip out during the day-end exodus.
The south and west airstrips had been under a perceptive surveillance since the search had been inaugurated. Now every facility was guarded.
Gil Grace “found” the coat again.
“She must have it in a suitcase,” he reported on the police-provided handunit from his position in the main railroad concourse. “It’s folded and surrounded by dark. It’s moving up and down. But there’re so many people. So many suitcases.
I’ll circulate. Maybe the find’ll fix itself.”
Gillings gave orders to his teams on the master unit which had been set up in the Center’s control room to coordinate the operations.
“You better test Gil for precog,” Charlie muttered to op
Owen after they’d contacted all the sensitives. “He asked for the station.”
“You should’ve told me sooner, Charlie. I’d’ve teamed him with a sensitive.”
“Look at that,” Charlie exclaimed, pointing to a wildly moving needle on one of the remotes.
Les was beside it even as the audio for the Incident went on.
“Not that track! Oh! Watch out! Baggage. On the handcart! Watch out. Move, man.