To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
Gillings gave him a long look as if he suspected op Owen of facetiousness.
Julian Pennstrak cleared his throat hastily.
“That’s one less headache at any rate,” the LEO man went on, “but your precogs haven’t had any Incidents beyond this nebulous warning?” He tapped the Incident readings which had been sent to his office the previous day.
Daffyd shook his head. “The precognitive faculty is the most erratic but generally speaking, the larger the number of people involved, the greater the possibility of detailed Incidents. Or, conversely, the severer the change to a prominent person or a linked or emotional association, the more likelihood of a definitive Incident.
“The old tea-leaf and card readers attempted to tell the future, anyone’s future: and while I suppose they could generalize for the average soul well enough, the best of them were only accurate when predicting the future of lives which affected a large section of general mankind Some precogs operate only on a direct confrontation with a personality, which is why we keep key personnel folders with those sensitives. But you can’t actually provoke a precog.
“In the instance of Maggie O: she was a fluke to begin with, an isolated case, unintegrated in any group or with any affiliation that would cause one of our precogs to ‘read’ for her. That is, until circumstances put her in a position to cross Gil Gracie’s lifeline. Then we had a reading on him, but only because the precog was tuned to Gil.
“There are, as I keep saying ad nauseam I know, a lot of parapsychic manifestations about which we know nothing. Every tune I believe I understand one combination or facet, exceptions to that comprehension appear to confound me.
“Henry Darrow said that having any Talent is like riding a winged horse, you get a magnificent view but you can’t always dismount when you want to.”
Gillings had waited patiently through op Owen’s peroration; now he rattled the urgently tagged tapes on his desk. Pennstrak regarded the Director with new insight.
“I’d always thought that Pegasus was the symbol of poetry…flights of verbal fantasy. But I must say, I like your notion, Dave. A winged horse is an appropriate mount for you people. Not that I’d have the courage to hop on its back.”
“If you two would deign to consider the mundane problems of the earthbound,”
Gillings said in an acid tone of voice, “just how in hell are we going to find jobs for all these eager mud-grubbers?”
On a morning some two months later when Daffyd op Owen reached his office, there was a message on his desk to call Sally Iselin as soon as he had a moment. To a semantically-sensitive personality, the phrasing was provocative, added to the fact that Sally Iselin was in charge of recruit-testing. Daffyd punched her call numbers as soon as he read the note, disregarding other red and white flagged tapes and messages. If only one psi-latent was uncovered in a month of public information broadcasts, the program would be worth its cost.
“Daffyd here, Sally. You rang me?”
“Oh, Daffyd!” She sounded surprised and a tinge embarrassed. “I’m not really certain if I should bother you…”
“My great-grandmother used to say, ‘If it’s doubtful, it’s dirty.’”
“I’m not talking about a shirt, Daffyd,” and Sally’s usual levity was missing.
“I’m talking about people.”
“Which people?” It was like pulling screws from wood: intriguingly un-Sallyish.
“Well, Daffyd, I’d hate to prejudice you. But…well, would you take me out tonight? There’s a place I want you to feel. I can’t figure out what it is myself and I know something happened.”
“Curiouser and curiouser. You’ve hooked me…”
“Oh, damn. I don’t want to hook you. I’ve gone and done what I shouldn’t ta oughta.”
Daffyd laughed. “Sally, all you’ve done is arouse my very considerable, insatiable curiosity.”
“All right, elephant’s child. Pick me up at nine; you’ll need the copter and money.” Her voice darkened with baleful implications of wild spending and debauchery, but there was a rippling undercurrent of laughter which told Daffyd that Sally was herself again.
“With as many bundles as Lester will allow me. At 9!”
He depressed the comset button just as the door opened to admit Lester Welch.
“What’s on Iselin ’s alleged mind?”
“I can’t ‘path over a phone,” Daffyd replied, deliberately misinterpreting Lester.
The man swore and glared sourly at his boss. “All right, so you won’t talk either. Maybe I’ve no Talent but I don’t need it to know something’s got Sally excited. She’s so careful to sound calm.”
Daffyd shrugged his shoulders and reached for the in-tapes. “Soon as I know, you will. Anything else bothering you this fine morning? And Sally says I need bundles tonight.”
Lester eyed him in surprise for a moment and then snorted. He pointed to the finance-coded blue tape among the urgent flags Daffyd was fingering.
“Some local yokel from East Waterless Ford up-state wants to tax the Center’s residential accommodations, same as any other apartment block. Claims the revenue on such ‘high income residents’ would reduce the state’s deficit by 9%.”
Daffyd whistled appreciatively. “He’s probably right but for the fact that this is a registered restricted commune and those high-income residents turn every credit of their salaries over to the Center.”
“Listen, Dave, he’s building a pretty good case.”
Op Owen sighed. There was always something or someone or some committee picking away at the Center, trying to disrupt, destroy or discredit it despite all the careful publicity.
“They did the same thing in New Jersey, you know, when the Princeton University Complex put up those academician villages to counteract the high price of real estate and taxes,” Lester reminded him sourly.
“I’ll listen, I’ll listen. Now, go away, Les.” Daffyd inserted Welch’s tape in the console.
Lester growled something under his breath as he left. And Daffyd op Owen listened. He didn’t like what he heard but the State Senator had certainly done some of his homework. Revenues from the Center’s residential buildings would indeed be a tidy pile in the State’s chronically anemic Treasury. Only the
Center was in Jerhattan proper by a mile and a half, and therefore its revenues were the City’s, if anyone’s.
“Get me Julian Pennstrak, please,” Daffyd asked his secretary.
The City Manager might be of some assistance here. Certainly he’d be interested in what this up-state character, Aaron Greenfield (am I always to be “fielded,”
Daffyd wondered wryly, remembering his battle with the US Senator Mansfield Zeusman) is proposing. If Julian didn’t already know. Not much slipped past Pennstrak’s affable eagle-eye. Pennstrak wasn’t available but his secretary tactfully put Daffyd through to Pat Tawfik, Pennstrak’s speech writer who was, in actual fact, his Talent guard.
“Yes, Dave, Julian’s been keeping an eye on Green-field’s proposal,” Pat told him. “In fact, Julian had him in here for a long cozy chat when we first got wind of the scheme. Greenfield ’s like Zeusman: suspicious and scared of us supermen.”
“Julian told him that the residential buildings are communal…?”
“Yes and Julian showed him the figures the Center files every year, plus the auditors’ reports. Cut no ice! In fact, if anything,” and Pat grimaced, “it only confirmed Greenfield ’s notion that the Center is a rich source of additional income.”
“The Center is also in Jerhattan proper.”
“Julian made that point but Greenfield ’s one of those allocation goons: all for one and one for all…all monies being in one kitty-his. He’s State Budget
Chairman, you see.”
Daffyd nodded.