To Ride Pegasus
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Talents #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «To Ride Pegasus». Краткое содержание книги:
Roznine pounded the wall viciously, transmitting such hatred and discontent as boiled up in him from the frustration of not having her and the humiliation of being knocked unconscious…in full view of his constituents…by a slip of a girl he could break in two pieces with one hand.
And who was the red-bearded man who worked with her? How close did he work with her?
Jealousy was added to the seething emotions of Vsevolod Roznine. And the skin of his skull pulsed with a surfeit of his angry blood.
The intensity of his desire to see Amalda reached another peak. He fought it. He would not go to her. She must come to him! He could not go to her. She had to come to him. She, who could read his thoughts, let her read that one. Let her read his feelings…
“No!”
Roznine stopped. Everything about him stopped, his heart, his lungs, the oxygen molecules in his blood. Then he took a deep breath and exhaled, his wide mouth forming an odd smile in a suddenly calm face.
No wonder she had not come to him, the little one. She could read his thoughts.
She would be terrified of him, Roznine: terrified of the anger he had felt toward his little bird. He had felt her fear before, felt her spirit fluttering away from him. That was why she had run from the Fact. But she shouldn’t fear him, Vsevolod Roznine. Every man, boy and adult she should fear but not Vsevolod Roznine. He would go to her. He would explain.
Chort vozmi! Would his head never stop aching?
His comset buzzed. The noise stabbed piercingly through his skull. He grabbed frantically for the set to stop the noise, answering in a savage tone.
“Everyone’s in position, Gospodeen.”
“Position?” Roznine shook his battered head, unable to recollect which position and where.
“The picketers have been checked by the Center’s guards, who are two old men: nothing to worry about.”
Picketers? Pickets? At the Center? Oh, yes. He’d discussed that with the little man from upstate. How could he have forgotten?
“And the riot squad?”
“Parked at or working conveniently nearby. The disposal men…”
“Good enough!” His head pounded like a drill press but he remembered. How could he have forgotten? So she was a riot control team, was she? Well, let her control this riot! Men would pour in to the Center’s so private, so secluded, so sacrosanct grounds from all over the city: men from many ethnic groups so it couldn’t be blamed on his section. It had meant cancelling half the favors he was owed but, just let him get his hands on that little riot controller and…
.
He threw open the illegally unsealed window and slid down the airshaft on the escape line. He opened the window in the rear flat, which conveniently belonged to a relative who was blind anyhow, and exited through the back door. Found the iron pry-bar and flipped up the sewer lid, snagging it deftly back over the manhole when he was within. He walked briskly over the thin stream which trickled down the pipes at this time of day. Two rights and a left brought him to a wider section conduit with a catwalk on one side. Two more rights and two lefts and he climbed a ladder. The manhole had been shielded and a Disposal truck was just drawing up. Swiftly he was within the truck and issuing orders to the driver.
The sensitive signalled LEO headquarters that Roznine had left his quarters.
Immediately Gillings warned the Center and circulated the alert to all stations.
Charlie Moorfield rang through to Daffyd’s quarters.
“Ring Amalda and tell her I’m on my way over.”
Sally was struggling into her coverall, excitement making her fingers fumble so that Daffyd held the collar until she could find the armholes
“He is coming. You were too much for him.”
“Possibly.”
Daffyd could also see another interpretation of Roznine’s secret exit, particularly with the picketers outside and the observers forming a larger and larger ragged semi-circle beyond the gates to the Center.
“Yes, I see what you mean, Dai.”
“Let’s reinforce Amalda.”
The buzzer sounded again. “Boss, I get no answer from Amalda.”
“Tell Gillings to get all riot units here on the double. Alert ours.”
Daffyd op Owen swore as he grabbed Sally’s hand and pulled her out the door.
Short of teleporting, he’d never been down the stairs so fast. Afterwards Sally told him her feet had touched the steps only three times.
Amalda and Brace Vaden had exited through one of the side-gates in the grounds.
They’d come up on the picketline from one side, mingling with the onlookers until they were directly opposite the main gates. The picketers were dutifully chanting the slogans they carried, the four LEO men routinely assigned a picket, were almost as bored with the proceedings. A passenger conveyance settled to the public landing some hundred yards from the gates and the occupants, carrying collapsed signs, descended in an orderly fashion.
“Those are bully boys, not bona fide picketers,” Bruce told Amalda in a quiet voice.
She nodded for she’d unerringly sighted the one man who was important. “He’s with them.”
“Well, this is the last place he’d be looking for us. Are you shielding tightly?”
Amalda nodded again but she didn’t take her eyes from Roznine.
He really was attractive, she thought. There was something proud and fierce in his manner. Bruce was right: she hadn’t really seen him before. She’d been just so scared of his mind…
She stopped thinking because Roznine was suddenly glancing over his shoulder, at the crowd, frowning slightly. He stood near the copter, to one side of the new shift of pickets. They were milling about…
“Warn Dave Amalda, and get set. See how they’re maneuvering?” Even as he spoke, Bruce glided to a more advantageous position for teamwork.
The new arrivals, for all their aimless movement, could now be seen aiming for the LEO men and the Center’s two guards, mild-appearing gentlemen who were in fact top kineticists and could hold a grown man immobile on the ground without lifting a physical finger.
The old shift broke from their circuit, grounding and collapsing their signs, preparatory to leaving. Some elements of the crowd which had watched pacifically from the footpath began to move toward the grounds.
Amalda began to broadcast, gently at first, the feeling of immense fatigue, utter boredom and a dislike of this activity.
Brace moved further across the street, picking up and increasing the intensity of her broadcast. But he watched Roznine, saw the man stiffen, his head turn slowly, unerringly towards Amalda. The group in which she had been standing shifted and she was by herself.
The setting of the confrontation was superb, Brace Vaden told himself with a curious objectivity. As if by magic or common consent, everyone melted from the two principals, leaving a clear path between them.
“Don’t get scared, honey baby,” Brace told her tinder his breath, fighting in his mind to hold the broadcast and disguise the inner reluctance of sharing Amalda with anyone at all.
Suddenly he felt buoyed up, felt the indescribable mental support and touch of
Daffyd op Owen, speaking through him to Amalda. And it wasn’t just Dave, but something…no, someone else.
The area was blanketed with silence by Amalda’s projection which began to waver slightly. Brace intensified it, imagining as he’d been taught, that the emotion was something visible which he was manipulating tangibly, as visible and tangible as water falling over a specific area, drenching everything with its cascade.
Everything went at half speed. Roznine pulled first one heavy leg forward, then the other, like a man treading through molasses, sticky, cloying. The man’s face was contorted with effort and concentration.