To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
Hmmm. Good notion.”
“What can Roznine hope to achieve by forcing us into court?” asked Red. He was trying to cover his earlier thoughts before they became apparent to Daffyd.
Present now was a thread of hopelessness, a presentiment that the intense happiness and rapport that Brace Vaden had enjoyed with Amalda was to be sundered: too good to last. Daffyd could only answer the spoken question.
“Now that has me stumped,” he said, and meant it on several levels.
“Stand-in?” Gillings appeared to reject the stratagem instantly and just as abruptly, he frowned thoughtfully. “Why? You don’t think anyone would be crazy enough to try and snatch Amalda in court, do you? Although…” he glanced over at the windows, “the atmosphere is damned unstable…”
“I know,” Daffyd agreed. Even during the short copter flight to the LEO Block, he’d been aware of the pervasive “darkness” of the city’s emotional aura. The weather had been miserable, which didn’t help; general employment was down; there’d been the usual complaints about the subsistence-level foods; gripes about the TRI-D programming; nothing out of the ordinary…yet. There might indeed be the makings of a major blow-up.
It would take two weeks for an improvement in the food to have a perceptible effect: TRI-D programming was undoubtedly being altered but even the most perceptive Talents could be fooled over what the public really wanted on the boob tubes. The variety of “circuses” available was almost as infinite as food tastes and yet one never knew precisely what would satiate the public appetite.
Op Owen made a mental note to check all precog rumblings. Strange there hadn’t been any definite Incident by anyone when such a large population unit was involved.
“Look, op Owen,” Gillings was saying, “I’ve got to have the team available for riot spotting. Particularly right now. And I can’t have them identifiable.”
“Then we send Amalda to the hearing made-up.”
Gillings muttered under his breath about fancy dress and sow’s ears and then suddenly swung round to fix op Owen with a startled glare. Daffyd hadn’t expected to keep Gillings in the dark long.
“Okay, op Owen, what’s behind all this pussy-footing? Who was trying to snatch
Amalda at the Morcam Luncheon? Was it the same guy who was at the Fact? Because if it was, let’s get him and cool him. I need that team operating. And there’s that open charge of riot provocation…”
Op Owen took a deep breath. “I don’t think it would be advisable to cool Roznine.”
“Roznine?” Gillings exploded from his chair with all the frustrated astonished exasperated impotence of the strong man suddenly discovering himself in an untenable position. “Roznine! Christ, op Owen, do you know what would happen to this city, in the present mood, if I arrested the Pan-Slavic leader?” He fumed on, in much the same vein, for moments more until either Daffyd’s placatory thoughts or his own lack of breath brought a stop to the flow of recriminations.
“I haven’t suggested you arrest Roznine. In fact, that would not only be impolitic but dangerous.”
Gillings glared at him, snapping out one short explosive word. “How?”
“Because Roznine is a latent Talent. That’s what scared Amalda.”
Gillings erupted again, thoroughly enraged. This tune the shield of his public mind slipped sufficiently for Daffyd to see past the anger to the panic his confession evoked.
“No!” Daffyd’s negative, forcible mental as well as audible, carried weight on every level and blocked those avenues of action which he could perceive Gillings already plotting. “Roznine is contained…at the moment But-this time we don’t force a latent into a position where he can become dangerous to an entire city. I want to avoid another Maggie O far, far more than you do!”
Gillings had no escape from Daffyd’s mind, so op Owen did not relent in the pressure until he was certain of Gillings’s uneasy and resentful cooperation.
“Roznine is no threat to us…yet. But he does threaten Amalda,” Daffyd went on. “That threat is real. It would be stupid,” and he paused to let that word be absorbed, for Gillings was not a stupid man, “to get Roznine so frustrated that additional facets of his Talent-whatever it is-are stimulated.”
Gillings’s face was a study of frustration. He gave vent to a stream of profanity which so delighted and enlightened op Owen that he could ignore the fact that he was the victim of the spiel. But, with the avalanche, Gillings recovered his mental equilibrium.
“I told you a couple of months ago that what you guys really need is a law that makes it illegal to conceal Talent.”
Daffyd laughed wryly. “Roznine may be unaware that what he uses is Talent!”
“Unaware? My effing foot. With all the publicity you guys have been larding the TRI-Ds with, he’s got to know what he is-especially if he’s been playing mental patty-cakes with that Amalda. Op Owen, I don’t need a Roznine in this city! You
Talents put him where he belongs and bridle him or lobotomize him or something.
Or I’ll invoke whatever law on the books suits me and cool him permanently. I can’t have this city turned into a battlefield. Or have you forgotten Belfast?”
His buzzer winked the urgent red. Gillings raised one fist as if to squash the unit and then, swearing viciously, slapped the toggle open.
“Well?”
There was a moment’s hesitation. Daffyd could almost see the caller swallowing hastily, probably wishing he didn’t have to continue.
“Commissioner, the lawyers for the WU are here with bail for their members. Do we release them?”
“I want to scan them,” Daffyd said in a swift undertone.
“Delay ‘em. Someone’s on the way down from this office. Then permit bail.”
Gillings tossed an oddly designed coat button to op Owen.
“This’ll get you anywhere in the building. And keep it.”
Daffyd thanked the Commissioner, and left. Prowling the LEO offices would not be a frequent pastime: the “neural” noise level was more than a telepath of
Daffyd’s sensitivity could bear.
The Waiters Union had sent a battery of lawyers to procure the release of their incarcerated members. They had been shown into a waiting room, just off the main admissions hall of the retention section of the LEO Complex.
Daffyd sauntered by, scanning each man’s mind quickly. What he “heard” he didn’t like, but it confirmed the fact that Roznine was organizing the proceedings.
None of these men knew more than his own assignment. But each was moved by an intense desire to complete it expeditiously and successfully or…The “or else” held dark, dire and fearful consequences.
Daffyd returned as quickly as possible to the shielded calm of Gillings’s private eyrie. The Commissioner was absent. Daffyd used the few moments’ respite for some solid thinking.
There were times, he finally concluded, when a man had to operate on the “feel” of things alone. He was not, God forfend, a precog, but there were also tunes when a man simply had to dispense with rational thought and its consequences. Particularly when faced by a free agent like Roznine who could not be expected to have predictable responses to stimuli and pressures.
The similarities between Roznine and Maggie O were inescapable, but this time
Daffyd had a tool and a resolve. “We’ve been fighting fire with old-fashioned water, Frank,” he said to the Commissioner when the man stalked back into his office. “From now on we use modern methods, foam and tranquillizers.”
“What are you jibbering about?”