To Ride Pegasus

“That’s just a sample of what I can do.” Despite a southern softness, the girl’s voice grated in their ears and was echoed by an intense mental shout that caused both Daffyd and Sally to shake their heads. “I don’t want this. It doesn’t matter any more if Red is in or out of the room. It works anywhere now.” She was drenched in bitterness, but there was pity as well as satisfaction to be read from her glance as she “watched Sally beginning to shake with reaction.

Daffyd curtly gestured Sally from the room. She resisted until he reinforced the order mentally, telling her to get Jerry Frames over here on the double. He duly noted that she was rebellious and not bothering to hide the fact in her public mind or her expression. Daffyd winced slightly as Sally slammed the door behind her.

“You’re an empath,” Daffyd told Amalda, trying to reach through her broadcast to soothe her stampeding emotions.

“I don’t care what I am. I want you to stop it. Now!”

“I can’t stop it, my dear,” he said in his kindest voice, but he had a vision of a bridleless winged horse bolting across the heavens.

Amalda rose, in a single fluid movement, her eyes blazing. “Then I will!” Her words rose to the edge of a scream as she launched herself at the window. Daffyd moved to intercept her, physically and mentally, but not as swiftly as Red Vaden. Not that she could have achieved her end, since the window was unbreakable. So she hit the plastic hard and crumpled into the arms of the redhead, sobbing hysterically and broadcasting such conflicting and powerful emotions that, out of pity, Daffyd reached for the trank gun in his desk and shot her.

There was absolute silence on every level in the room as the two men stared down at the limp figure in Vaden’s arms.

“I suppose that was necessary,” the man said in a bleak voice as he swung her up in his arms.

Daffyd could read the relief in the man’s mind which had been bruised by confusion, fear and an unquestioning devotion to the girl. Op Owen gestured towards the couch.

“All right, op Owen, what now?” Vaden asked after he had arranged Amalda gently in a comfortable position. The man’s eyes were a cold, troubled blue.

Daffyd returned the gaze, probing deftly and finding in Vaden’s outer thoughts that their visit here had been his suggestion, a last possibility of assistance, since Amalda had been determined to end her Talent even if it meant taking her life.

“First we have the Center’s doctor prescribe sedation,” and Daffyd nodded towards the painfully thin arm of the unconscious girl, “and a decent diet.”

Vaden snorted as if practical advice was the last thing he’d expected from op Owen but he took the chair Daffyd indicated to him.

“Then the Center teaches her to control this Talent.”

“Talent?” Vaden exploded. “Talent? It’s an effing curse! After the other night, she’s scared to go out of the house. She’ll never perform again…She won’t even…” and he clenched his teeth over what he’d been about to add but not before the thought, “audible” to Daffyd, made him pity the two more.

“Any Talent is a two-edged sword, Vaden,” op Owen said, swinging his chair a little, a soothing motion.

“What kind of a freak is she?”

“She’s by no means a freak,” Daffyd answered in rather severe tones. “She’s a broadcasting telempath…”

“And I’m the booster station?”

“I think that would be a good analogy.”

“Look, op Owen, I’ve read a good bit about you Talents and nothing was said about what Amalda does…”

“Quite likely. We’re just beginning to appreciate the mutations possible in the parapsychic. We have only one true telempath here. He unfortunately has no more mind than a rabbit and he only receives. Amalda can apparently transmit exactly what she chooses. I gather the phenomenon only began when she met you?”

On the top of Vaden’s mind was the actual first meeting: a sort of dazed comprehension that they were “meant for each other.” Their first love-making had been a revelation to the blase, sex-wearied Vaden and each succeeding day had strengthened their interdependence.

“She was down and out,” Vaden said aloud in an expressionless voice. What he wasn’t saying was vividly and pictorially flashing across his mind, elaborating with every shade of the emotional spectrum a dry recital of fact. “Thank God it was me she approached…” and beyond the flashes of memories, Daffyd saw that Vaden had never allowed himself the luxury of loving or caring for anyone for fear of being hurt and used. In a transient profession, constantly besieged by stage-struck youngsters who thought a PA license was “all” they needed to achieve fame, he had been invulnerable to physical charms and ordinary ploys.

But he had absolutely no defense against the impact of Amalda’s mind in his. Now he ran nervous fingers through his crisp red hair. “We went everywhere.” He’d been haunted with the fear that she’d leave him or be taken from him.

“Even to rehearsal. Then the girl who was to play Charmian was late so I asked

Amalda to fill in and read it ‘til she came. I’ve never heard a better first reading. She even lost every trace of her regional accent and became the hard voiced trollop. We all loathed her. It was such a total characterization! I’ve never seen such a thing in all the years I’ve been a PA. I’d expect such expertise from someone like Mathes or Crusada, but a novice? An ex-canary?”