To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
But she couldn’t keep from glancing around for Bruce: he was at table 4, near the dignitaries. He glanced up, nodded at her, and was then required to make some answer to his partner, a female who simpered up at him.
Sometimes, Amalda thought, Red has the harder role to play.
Part of her mind wanted to search for him, but her strongest desire was never to be touched by him again, ever. She scanned the room now, certain she’d be able to locate his evil self. She’d certainly studied his IDs long enough to spot him physically anywhere. Waiters were coming and going from the kitchens. He wasn’t one of them. He wouldn’t be one of the conventioneers. She’d’ve identified him long before now. She opened her mind, making it, as Dave had suggested, like the lens of a camera, slowly widening. She didn’t really want to: too much of an appalling and revolting nature seeped in. She wondered how Dave, who was a full telepath and
“heard” actual thoughts, not just emotions as she did, could bear it. She wondered how much he had “conditioned” her mind to accept her Talent. She knew he had: he’d told her so. She didn’t mind…probably Dave had done that, too. But he was so kind. Now if only he’d…
No, she told herself sternly, these thoughts you may not have. Sally loves Daffyd op Owen. She grimaced. For a perceptive Talent, Dave could be awfully dense. For the Lord’s sake, you didn’t even have to be a telepath to see Sally
Iselin was madly in love with Mm. Or maybe Dave knew and couldn’t do anything about it? Couldn’t someone condition Dave? Hmmm. Maybe I’ll get to work on it.
No, and Amalda gave her head a little regretful shake, that would be tampering and that’s not ethical.
She sighed. Being a Talent imposed certain rules and regulations which absolutely couldn’t be broken. In the first place, you got found out too fast.
Not much of a bridle on that winged horse Dave’s always talking about but it kept you from falling off…morally…
The waiter was bending over her. Amalda leaned toward Harold to permit the waiter to remove her plate. Instead he mumbled something.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you,” she said, smiling up at him.
He gave her a stare and said something in the same unintelligible mumble. She could, however, sense his urgency. He had something she must do?
“I’m really very sorry, but would you repeat your question?” She gestured at the chattering diners by way of explanation.
The little man looked angry. In a clear voice, he asked the waiter at the next table to join him.
“I ask her a simple question and she gives me this so-sorry routine,” he said. But he was incensed about something. And his urgency intensified.
“Really, there’s so much noise,” Amalda said.
The second waiter, a burly man, gave her a fierce scowl.
“What’s your problem, miss? You got delusions? Ain’t you conventioneers satisfied with nothing? Do like he says and there’ll be no trouble.”
“I certainly don’t want to cause trouble.” And Amalda began to broadcast soothing thoughts.
Suddenly a third man was pulling her chair from under her and the first two had her by the arms.
“You just come with us, miss. You just come with us.”
They were scared: they were prompted by an urgency which was unnatural and artificially induced. He had instigated their actions.
She got Harold to his feet. The poor witless fool was momentarily as confused as she was. She felt Bruce reacting. But she was being physically manhandled away from the table by the two waiters. If they did get her out of the hall-it wasn’t that far to the kitchen entrance-Amalda tried to keep from panicking. The next thing she knew Harold reached out and grabbed the waiters by the shoulders, had torn their hands from her arms, and banged their heads together.
Then Bruce and two officials closed in on the knot of people and somehow the unconscious waiters were being whisked from the banquet hall.
“Calm ‘em, Mally,” Bruce hissed at her and she began to pour out such sweetness and light that everyone at her table stopped eating to beam at each other. She modified the broadcast, got Harold and herself reseated. She even managed to keep her trembling reaction inward so that none of it boiled over to erase the idiotic smile from Harold Orley’s face.
By the time the luncheon ended, however, the effort began to tell on her and was reflected in Harold’s nervousness. She felt physically drained. What if he had been able to get her away before Harold could react? Before Bruce, on the other side of the hall, had been able to get to her? Supposing he had…
Bruce was at her side, his face set and determined. She knew that look. But now she was afraid of leaving the semi-protection of so many people. If he had actually tried to kidnap her in the middle of a convention…
A plainclothes LEO man was bearing down on them. She rose, smiling brightly.
Harold twitched his hulk to his feet, but his brow was clouding with childlike anxiety.
Disgust at her spinelessness buoyed Amalda’s weakening knees. The instant Red put his arm around her protectingly, she almost crawled into him.
“Let’s get her out of here,” Red said and gestured the LEO man to lead Harold.
“Come this way,” the LEO man said, gesturing to the draperies at the side of the huge banquet hall. A door in the paneling gave onto a small anteroom. “The
Waiters Union is screaming over those busted skulls. We got to get you out of here quietly. What’n’hell did happen, Amalda?”
“I don’t quite know,” she murmured, aware that exhaustion was overcoming mental resolve. “Is it all right to leave?” She looked back over her shoulder at the diners dispersing slowly.
“The hell with them,” Bruce said in a savage voice.
“I’m so sorry. So sorry.” Amalda had a sense of failure. The first tune she came up against him she had fallen apart. She wanted to cry. She was a failure. After all Daffyd and the others had done to help her…to swoon like any vapid female…
“I’ll get you. I’ll get you the next time.” The voice was as loud in her ears as Bruce’s exclamation.
“Bruce…”
Charlie Moorfield came through Daffyd’s door without bothering to knock.
“They did it,” he cried, halting his forward momentum just short of gouging his thighs on the desk edge.
Daffyd picked up the images so vivid in Charlie’s mind, and despite the fact that he could also perceive that the emergency was over, he sprang to his feet.
“Who did what?” demanded Sally, excitedly. She wasn’t accurate enough to ‘path the sequence.
“They tried to snatch Amalda at the Morcam Convention luncheon,” Daffyd told her.
“Only she got Harold to bash their skulls in.”
Sally gasped.
“Gillings said the attempt and the arrest were handled so quickly that no one at the table with Amalda and Harold knew what happened,” Charlie went on. “Waiters Union is screaming over the quote unwarranted unquote arrest of three members.
There’s hell to pay.”
“Not necessarily,” said Lester but he was glowering as he walked into the room and carefully closed the door behind him. “This is a clear case of professional immunity.”
“How do you construe that?” Daffyd asked.
Lester sighed as he regarded his boss with a tolerant expression.
“Amalda is a registered Talent, right? She was present at the Luncheon in a professional capacity. Therefore no one, not anybody, has the right to interfere. The waiters did, by trying to remove her from the hall. They broke the law. Amalda hasn’t. Neither has Harold. Even if he was a little overzealous, he is now protected from the consequences of his Talent.”