To Ride Pegasus

Gillings was delighted to use Amalda and Bruce Vaden as riot prevention. He even offered to take the charge off the books but Daffyd suggested that it remain a while longer. The team was instantly assigned to a round of rallies, meetings, conferences, and conventions. Such gatherings were encouraged. to divert a population with too much unoccupied time but any one of them might explode into a riot, given the proper stimuli. Decibel alarms were legally required in every meeting hall, in-chiding churches, but clever agitators could and had sabotaged them so that the suppressant gases were not released when the “noise” level reached the sharp pitch of incipient riot. The professional agitators had also learned how to modulate their voices below the danger level, carefully goading their victims into the spontaneous combustion which neither gas nor water jets could control. And which no precog could be expected to accurately predict until too late for effective action.

Fortuitously, as Amalda learned to control herself, she learned to read Harold with an accuracy and perception that surpassed Sally’s. Harold could serve with the team, Daffyd decided, as a gauge for the general atmosphere of a group and as, in an emergency, a body guard for Amalda. (You learned things, even from disasters, Daffyd told himself positively.) Partnered with the empath, Amalda would sit in the center of an audience or circulate through a crowd. Vaden would be on the periphery, ready to “broadcast” if it became necessary. They could also be expected to keep up a running projection of whatever aura the LEO authorities or the sponsors of the occasion requested, if this were not a commercial affair. Subliminal pressures for mercantile purposes were, of course, an illegal and unethical use of Talent.

The team was extraordinarily successful in unexpected ways. The Motorboat show had the lowest incidence of petty pilfering in its history: the Home Show reported no lost children and a remarkably quiet, well-behaved quota of siblings following their parents through the exhibits. Two conventions, noted for the inebriation of their members, had their damage deposits reduced as a result of genial but undestructive behavior.

And Amalda began to gain confidence to the point where Sally remarked that even Bruce Vaden had been seen to smile occasionally.

I was surely right about the menu today, Amalda thought as the waiter plunked down the mock chicken, lumpy reconstituted potatoes and shrivelled snap beans.

Oh, well, all part of Life’s Rich Pageant, she added and started broadcasting recklessly intense delicious taste feelings. Harold began to beam beside her, attacking his food with relish.

She glanced casually around at her table mates, as pompous a crew of convention goers as she’d ever seen and she was now an authority. (Did they always use the same “masks” at conventions? Or could it be the same group of people as the

Plastic Container Manufacturers last week, and the Fabric Finishers Association on Tuesday-week?) They responded to her prompting as rapidly as Harold, all grunting with pleasure as they ate their cardboard food. Amalda sighed. Too bad she and Brace couldn’t. get a kick-back from the catering staff for “improving” their food beyond the call of duty.

Now there I go again, she thought, but it does seem that the Talented were letting an awful good thing go the way of Duty and Honor.

She was rather pleased with her broadcasting today. She had begun to bother with such fine points in their assignments, more to amuse herself at first-like stopping all those kids from whining at the Boat Fair. But it had sounded like home, all her brothers and sisters whining at once, before they’d tied Ma off.

If she never heard another child whine it would be soon enough. And making food at least “seem” tasty was in defense of her poor abused digestion. According to specifications, all the nutrients and vitamins were in the food and would be absorbed by her system. But she’d come to prefer “tasting” things. It made these convention luncheons bearable. What a way to earn a living!

And yet, Amalda reluctantly admitted, she didn’t dislike it. If only…She wouldn’t think about that. It’d ruin her appetite. After all, now she’d got the hang of this trick mind of hers, she could make whole bunches of people feel what she wanted them to. When the time came, she could control him, too. Bruce was never far from her. She smiled, the warmth of his infinite love a presence to counteract any nibble of fear. Sometimes when Bruce made love to her, she wanted to embrace the whole world with its beauty, but that sort of broadcasting wasn’t even moraclass="underline" that was private between her and Bruce and…

He’d thought things at her that night…Things she didn’t even dare to think about…Harold was getting restless. She curbed her reminiscences.

And then, the jab. So sharp she gasped, so hard it was physical yet the prod was in her mind…and all too familiar. He was here.

Harold whimpered, empathizing with her. She hastily damped down her shock of fearful surprise. He was as abruptly gone from her mind. She shivered, unable to suppress the lingering sense of revulsion that that recognition touch evoked in her. She overcame the feeling, smiling inanely around at her table mates. She patted Harold soothingly on the arm. He grinned, restored to equilibrium. Good, she must keep this to herself.