Authors: Anne McCaffrey
He did as she directed, and they met again in the chucking, clanking dark of the automated manufactory.
“Lock it?” Sascha held the door ajar.
“Yes.”
“But how will Yassim know how they got out?”
“They’re not there, are they? The cage door is open.” Sascha saw her shrug and felt, rather than saw, her malicious smile. “Why should I make it easy for him?”
By the time they reached the loading dock, Sascha’s muscles were protesting their abuse. The team had loaded the children into the cars, and the dock was full of cargo to be transshipped.
“You cut that fine, Sascha,” the team leader told him. “There’ll be a goods train through here in two minutes. We’re not supposed to disrupt the service.”
Tirla tugged imperiously at Sascha’s sleeve. “My floaters.”
With one hand he passed them to her, with the other he grabbed her wrist. “No tricks now. There’s more business we can do together. We’ll discuss it back in G.”
Sascha did not know whether it was her surprise that allowed him to capture her or if she was willingly cooperating with him. But she entered the car ahead of him as he tried to keep his grip from breaking fragile bones.
Go!
he told the driver, and the starting pressure of the special train pushed him against the padded end of his car.
“Are you taking us all to G?” Her tone was casual.
“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? To get the kids back to G?”
“I kept our bargain.” Her voice held an element of antagonism.
“So will I. Back at G. Then we deal again.”
She was silent for a long time, thinking that over.
CHAPTER 11
Peter tried to follow the tri-d meteorologist’s report on the latest freak weather conditions that seemed worldwide, Bangladesh being the worst example. It was difficult to concentrate when he felt “problem” hovering in the air. He
knew
he had done nothing wrong; in fact, he knew that he had done something most extraordinary, about which he felt very good indeed. But it was hard not to be worried. He could sense the nebulous anxiety emanating from Rhyssa, Dorotea, and Sascha. He should not have asked Dorotea about a bigger generator. The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew it was the wrong time. But he had
proved
what he could do with enough power to increase the gestalt, and that 4.5 felt like puny kid stuff now.
Kid stuff!
Peter grinned to himself and gave the 4.5 a little shove; it whined obediently. Like a dog. And who was he kidding? He was still only a fourteen-year-old boy. He had already absorbed enough Talent discipline and seen enough examples of the sort of people Talents were to realize that he had rushed the gate. One did not climb mountains when one could not walk. Rhyssa, Sascha, and Dorotea had supported him throughout the entire
Erasmus
incident, ready to help him, ready to keep him from burning himself out. And he hadn’t. But had it been
because
they had been right there to protect him? Think about
that,
Petey boy, and get your swelled head back to normal. There are a lot of things you
can’t
do just yet.
He poured himself another glass of orange juice and brought it to the living room as the broadcaster announced that once again supply shuttles for Padrugoi had been grounded by weather conditions. The screen depicted the rank of four perpendicular space vehicles, locked into their gantries, waiting for lift-off conditions with urgently needed materiel so that the First World Project would be finished in time.
Talents were helping to do that, Peter thought with a little thrill of corporate pride. He had just started wondering how big a generator he would need to send a shuttle safely through the foul weather when the program switched to coverage of the flooding in Bangladesh. There were no scenes actually showing the Talents at work; teams of doctors and rescue workers were filmed rushing about. There was also no mention of exactly how the
Erasmus
had landed so safely at Dacca. He had not really expected to be mentioned publicly. But one would think that there would have been some comment that Talents were risking their lives in the appalling monsoon conditions. The results of their work were shown, all right enough, but somehow that did not seem to be enough.
Rhyssa and Dorotea were always subtly mentioning how important it was not to rub Talent into people’s noses. People resented differences. Talent had always to be discreet. The way his mother looked at him had demonstrated
that
! Peter grimaced. His own mother was scared of him now. When he had been totally helpless, she had been so good about coming to see him, hugging him, kissing him, always bringing him something: a fax clip about his favorite ball team, a couple of her special cookies, a few flowers. Now when she visited she would not hug him; she sat bolt upright in the chair and tried not to look at him when he wanted so much to show her what Talent allowed him to do.
When Mum was there he redoubled his efforts to appear to walk normally and carry things properly so it would not freak her out. How often had she said she prayed every night to see Petey on his feet and walking around? And she never
looked
at him now. She never once mentioned his ball team. Not that he would ever play sandlot baseball again . . . Then Peter grinned, thinking what homers he could whack and how fast he could run the bases. Maybe now he could be the pitcher he had always wanted to be . . . His fastball would be
something else!
Even if he only used the 4.5!
But he had gone past that sort of
ordinary
thing, hadn’t he? When one could zap shuttles about like gameboard pieces,
ordinary
accomplishments no longer satisfied.
He drank his orange juice. Not
all
ordinary things, though. Some very ordinary and extremely homely actions—like getting himself an orange juice when he felt thirsty for it—were, in a special way, far more important than what he had done with the
Erasmus.
He sent the empty glass back to the kitchen; rinsed it out, and put it upside-down on the drainboard.
He had to keep things in perspective. It was more important to have the freedom to do little things and the
option
to do bigger ones. But, jeez, it had been a wonderful feeling to have all that power and do something no one else could have done with it—just when help was needed.
The tri-d was showing floodwater flowing obediently away from a small town and its surrounding fields. The sandbags and barriers along its torrent seemed to be containing it, but Peter could recognize the subtle signs of kinetic force. He wondered which Talent was at work. Rick Hobson? Mr. Baden? Now, if he’d had access to a generator, he would have been able to do that. He settled down to learn what he could about flood control from the program. Next time he would be ready to help. The 4.5-kpm was portable, wasn’t it?
His thoughts were interrupted by Rhyssa’s mental call.
Peter, would you come up to my office, please?
Sure!
He leaned briefly into the generator and sped out to Rhyssa’s building and in through the front door, slowing to maneuver the staircase; he got his feet to the ground as he reached the carpeted hallway leading to Rhyssa’s office. No effort!
Show-off.
Rhyssa was standing by her office door, but she was smiling. “We don’t have any mountains for you to move today, but there’s trouble in the wind, dear boy, there’s trouble in the wind.”
Peter stumbled in his forward motion and corrected himself.
Trouble? Why? We didn’t do anything
wrong!
Her touch reassured him, as it always did. Dorotea was great: she treated him casually, as she would any of her grandchildren, and that relaxed attitude made many things easier for him. But Rhyssa was different: her mind had so much depth—not that he had disobeyed the prime rule of mental privacy, but he could not help but sense the depth and purity that was there. She was also the most beautiful woman Peter had ever seen, on or off the tri-d. And she was so
good!
Everything about her was shining and brilliant. She made him feel whole and strong.
“We did something a shade too right,” Rhyssa said. “And we were not quite as discreet as we should have been.”
Momentarily afraid, he reached out to see exactly what they had done wrong.
Peter!
“Sorry.”
Rhyssa, more fiercely than Peter had ever heard her:
Damn that Barchenka woman!
“Was I
supposed
to hear that?” Peter was confused.
“Yes, and double-damn Barchenka!” Rhyssa said aloud, and waved him on through to her office, closing the door behind them.
He halted, sensing the aura of crisis. Dorotea, who was rarely perturbed, was brushing imaginary threads from her slacks. Things must really be bad. He zigged sideways, aware that Rhyssa just missed bumping into him.
Dorotea:
Well done, Peter!
“This is a strategy council, Peter,” Rhyssa said, gesturing for him to sit as she resumed her chair in the tower bay window.
Peter floated over to the conformable seat, grateful for its automatically adjusted support.
“Don’t ever forget just how proud we all are of you,” Rhyssa said, her gesture including the entire Center.
“You’ve added a brand new dimension to Talent.” She gave him an impish smile. “And reminded this Center’s manager not to get too complacent.”
Without violating etiquette, Peter could hear what she was not saying aloud: Talent was very happy; the unTalented were not.
Dorotea:
The unTalented always resist a new Talent which we haven’t carefully led them to expect. In this instance, you!
Rhyssa:
We don’t do something right, Peter, without doing something wrong!
Peter sensed a second qualification behind the thought and, remembering his manners, broke the contact.
Dorotea: And
we’ve got to figure out how to improve our testing methods!
She cleared her throat in a businesslike manner, then winked at Peter.
He thought, very privately to himself, that something bad was definitely about to happen, but he was assured of their love and approval and that was all that really mattered to him.
“If your main desire right now,” Rhyssa said, smiling with that special twinkle in her eye which she saved for Peter, “is to have the biggest generator on the planet at your disposal”—Peter flushed, looking hard at his bony knees—“then the main desire of half the industries on Earth
and
in space is to have you using theirs, and theirs alone.”
Space? He could get into space? He looked up in surprise, staring at her. Clearly she did not mean
his
way.
“How do they know about me?” He felt suddenly very defenseless. His father was always talking about the managers working a man to death with no consideration for him as a human being, only how productive he was, a cipher in a gigantic program.
“They don’t know it’s
you
,” Dorotea said.
“That’s the problem,” Rhyssa went on.
“Why?” Peter asked, thinking of
big
generators.
“Candidly,” Dorotea said, “you’re fourteen, you’re only just beginning to understand your Talent, and premature exposure could—”
“Burn me out,” Peter finished for her, though privately he did not think he
could
burn out—if he had the right power source for anything he wanted to shift. “But I didn’t burn out . . .”
“Without in the least diminishing your achievement, Peter, we were closely monitoring you the other night,” Rhyssa went on. “What
they
have in mind for you is another can of worms altogether. Speaking as a Center director, I must tell you that it has never been the policy of the Centers to assign trainees even part-time work until they’re at least eighteen.”
“Even I,” Dorotea put in, her hand gracefully sweeping her chest, “wasn’t permitted to do much until I was eighteen!” She made a face. “As a child, I thought I was just playing a game, guessing which ones in the room could hear me—people who
thought
they might be Talented.” She shot Peter an image of herself as a five-year-old, prettily dressed—and her early beauty was still apparent in her face and manner—walking through the Center’s crowded reception area.
“But I’ve
proved
what I can do,” Peter said. “And I was the only one who could land the
Erasmus
.”
“The situation is not about right or wrong, Peter,” Rhyssa said, leaning toward him, a sad expression in her eyes and face, “or even a moral obligation to reduce suffering and mitigate disaster.” Then she opened her mind to him so he could directly assess the current problem.
Peter had known, of course, that the Parapsychic Centers had had to send the best kinetics to Padrugoi to help complete the station on time. He had not realized all the undercurrents beneath the carefully contrived public image of Padrugoi, much less the machinations of Ludmilla Barchenka, who had forced the capitulation of Centers, ruthlessly stripping them of kinetics in what was basically a face-saving operation. He fumed when he saw that this Barchenka woman was threatening
his
Rhyssa with all kinds of offenses when it was now patently clear to him that Barchenka was at fault. And he was part of the problem. No, at the moment, he was
all
of the problem, because Barchenka was out to add him to her force of Talent.
“And I used to think working on the station would be the most special thing you could do,” he said slowly. It just was not fair!
“No, not fair, Peter,” Rhyssa replied, “but Talent recognizes that completing the station is far more important than individual personal considerations. Completing it on time is obviously Ludmilla’s personal goal. I can’t deny her that, only her means of achieving it, since by her achievement, mankind has made another giant step to the stars. Don’t be deflected too much by the skeletons in the space lockers. There’s been no major forward progress in all of human history that has not been accompanied by some problems.”
“Like letting people float out into space and die because rescue would put her behind schedule?” Peter was aghast.
“That’s been taken care of,” Dorotea reminded him.
“By Talents, and now she thinks she can conscript me?” Peter was so agitated that he floated above the chair.
Dorotea, prosaically:
You’re drifting, dear.
Peter settled down.
Well, I just won’t work for a person like her. And you’re not going to ask me to!
“Indeed and we’re not,” Rhyssa assured him. “But first,” she said with a grin, her eyes twinkling, “we have to prove to
them
that you’re
you
! We’ve been trying very hard to keep you sheltered until you’ve more control . . .”
How much control do I need if I can move a shuttle about the world?
“Peter!” Despite the sharpness in her voice, Peter knew that Rhyssa was amused by his outrage, proud of his achievement, and concerned for his future all at once. He subsided. “Thank you. Now, we were warned to expect visitors of high rank and great prestige. We wanted to brief you, since you are the cat we are about to let out of the bag.”
“I rather think he’s the cat among the pigeons,” Dorotea said with a sarcastic snort.
“Pigeons? War hawks, Dorotea,” Rhyssa corrected, settling into her chair. Then they all heard the unmistakable thunking of a big helicopter landing on the X outside Henner House. “Peter, don’t let the fuss get to you. There’s bound to be some bruised feelings and outraged sensibilities. You just pay them no heed!”
But he could not help but heed the fine but controlled aura of apprehension. They were worried. About him!
For
him.