To Ride Pegasus (30 page)

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 Bruce 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.

Bruce 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, Bruce 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,” Bruce told her under 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. Bruce 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.

Amalda just stood, her chin slightly raised, looking as regal and poised as she had on the Fact stage, so sure of herself that she almost fooled Vaden.

The action was all slow motion: the picketers, real and bogus, discarding their all too heavy signs, inexorably sinking to the ground, sprawling in poses of utter exhaustion. It affected the LEO men though they tried hard
to resist the pressure, falling to their knees and hands, faces down on the ground.

Then only she, Bruce and Roznine were standing. She took a deep breath and looked straight at Roznine’s eyes: the first time she had done so.

And Bruce was right that Vascha (she found his nickname easily: though he thought of himself, self-importantly, only as Vsevolod Roznine, the Vascha personality was there, too) was nice looking, with a strong body and sensitive hands. She liked long, well-shaped fingers on a man—she liked to have such hands on her body.

“All right, here I am,” she said out loud and dared him in her mind to overpower her.

His eyes seemed to eat her flesh hungrily, as if starved for the essence beneath the covering tissue.

“You’re mine. I, Vsevolod Roznine, say you are mine.”
That was his thought, beating away at her. She wanted to laugh, to sing out because his thought couldn’t go any further than her mind. It couldn’t reach Bruce, standing not more than five feet away. Not unless she wanted it to go further!

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked gently because the knowledge of such total power over another human being humbled her.

Some of his bully boys were getting to their feet for she’d turned off some of her blanketing projection to deal with Vascha. Through Vsevolod Roznine she sent a fleeting thought of nausea that instantly reduced them to retching bodies on the grass. And as abruptly, she deflected the actual illness. Then she turned off the em-pathetical broadcast completely, knowing its cessation would leave the victims disoriented enough to cause no further trouble.

“I think you’d better come with us, Vsevolod,” she said to Roznine and took his hand, turning and leading him toward the Center as if he had no other choice. He didn’t because Bruce fell in on the other side, their strides matching.

Roznine was dazed, his lips compressed into a thin line. He glared down at Amalda as she led him, at arm’s length, like a mother dragging an errant child home.

The gateman nodded to the trio as they passed into the Center’s Grounds.

“What’n’hell has happened to your common sense, op Owen?” Frank Gillings demanded. “Letting not only Amalda and Vaden but Roznine into the City Council? For Chrissake that’s what he wanted Amalda for …”

“Easy, Frank. The team’s on assignment, completely legitimate.”

“Council isn’t a riot situation …”

Daffyd raised his eyebrows in polite surprise. “No? According to Roznine, the tempers get so hot no constructive work is ever done. Each ethnic group insists that its members are being discriminated against with accusations and counter-accusations until the mediator adjourns the hearing with nothing accomplished except exhibitions of parliamentary bad manners. Sorry. The team Is going to cool things long enough for common sense to prevail. Roznine’s reason for wanting Amalda’s Talent in City Hall was valid,” Daffyd also neglected to add that that was the bargain he’d struck with Roznine to join the Center. All the man wanted was to be certain the employment allotments were impartially assigned. Well, not all, Daffyd amended to himself, but Roznine had gone about it the wrong way.

Daffyd grinned reassuringly at Gillings’s image in the comset “He’s part of the team now and
she
follows orders.”

“But does Roznine?” asked Gillings sarcastically.

“As I’ve explained to you, Frank, Roznine is para-psychically dead to anyone else. Oh, Bruce Vaden empathizes with him to some extent now they’ve both had training, but Roznine’s is a one-way Talent, right to
Amalda. She’s the focos of the gestalt. You might say, he’s been check-reined.”

Frank Gillings grunted, somewhat mollified. Then, jetting out his chin, he glared at the Director. “You going to start lobbying for a rider on that Talent Immunity Law?”

“Immediately. In fact,” and Daffyd’s smile broadened with sheer malice, “Senator Greenfield is helping us get an interim rider through the State Senate on a BDI he has coming up on the Agenda next session.”

“Greenfield?”

“Yes. Roznine invited him here at the Center for a chat. The Senator was most amenable to the suggestion.”

The LEO Commissioner’s frown was partically perplexity. “What’d you guys do to Greenfield? Blanket him with loving kindness?”

“Good heavens, no. It was merely pointed out to him that the Center is not a minority, but a collection of minorities since all ethnic groups are represented. He took a tour of the grounds and instantly perceived that the housing was by no means as luxurious as he’d been previously led to believe, with swimming pools or wasted space that might house additional families. In fact, he complimented us on our planning and thrifty use of facilities.”

Frank Gillings was by no means taken in by Daffyd op Owen’s bland manner. He growled something under his breath.

“What did Roznine have on him, Dave?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Frank.”

The LEO man made a gesture of disgust.

“Dave, don’t give me any more problems for a while, will you?”

“Nothing’s coming up in the foreseeable future.”

The screen went blank on Gillings’s incredulous expression.

“Daffyd, that was highly immoral, unethical and downright dirty,” said Sally, half scolding as she rose from the
couch where she’d been sitting out of line-of-vision of the comset. She walked in under his arm, linking him around the waist. He nuzzled her curls and kissed her forehead.

“Probably. Les is always reminding me that it’s bad policy to tell all.”

“It’s a shame about Vascha though.” Sally sighed.

“Why?”

“Oh, it’s rather sad, his being a psychic mule, her Pegasus.”

“Thank God he is,” Daffyd said so fervently she looked up, startled. “With the ambition and drive that young man has, he’d rule the world in half a year if Amalda and Bruce weren’t there to stop him.”

Anne McCaffrey
is one of the world’s most popular authors. Her first novel was published in 1967. Since then, she has written dozens of books, of which there are more than twelve million copies in print. Before her success as a writer, she was involved in theatre. She directed the American premiere of Carl Orff’s “Ludus de Nato Infante Mirificus” in which she also played a witch.

McCaffrey lives in County Wicklow, Ireland, in a house of her own design, Dragon-Underhill, so named because she had to dig out a hill to build it. There she runs a private livery stable, raising and training her beloved horses for horse trials and showjumping.