Pegasus in Flight

by Anne McCaffrey

  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.

  Ragnar’s voice came through on the intercom. He was duty officer, and twenty years in the Center had made him impervious to rank and prestige. “Rhyssa, there’s a bunch here to see you. Do I send ’em up?”

  “Yes, I’m expecting them, Ragnar.”

  His “humph” came over the speaker, and Peter noticed Rhyssa’s little smile. He also noticed that she was nervously running the stylus through her fingers. Dorotea sat even straighter in her chair and managed to look not only larger and more imposing but very, very queenly.

  There was a polite knock on the door, and Rhyssa pressed the release button. The first man in the room was a telepath, Peter realized, and he was directing tight private warnings at Rhyssa. The second man, very tall, thin, and wise-looking, gazed directly at Peter and nodded. He knew who Peter was even if Peter did not know him, and he was also a telepath. He courteously identified himself to Peter as Justice Gordon Havers.

  Peter knew the third man, Dave Lehardt, who immediately moved to stand by Rhyssa’s desk, facing the others as they filed in. He made his partisanship very clear. He exchanged a glance with Rhyssa and gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head. She had a slight smile on her face, and Peter sensed that she was very glad to have Dave Lehardt so close by. But knowing that Dave was not a Talent, Peter was surprised by the intimate exchange. He felt a flair of jealousy.

  The next six men to enter were obviously important people; four were in uniform and only one of them was Talented. That one appeared very nervous and kept looking from Rhyssa to Dorotea. The last man to enter gaped at Rhyssa in a fashion that made Peter very uneasy—his eyes and his manner made Peter wonder if he was one of those perverts his mother used to warn him about.

  As Rhyssa asked them all to be seated, Peter picked up names: Vernon Altenbach, who was secretary of space; the Russian officer was General Shevchenko, Padrugoi liaison official, and even with the shield he wore, he was bristling with aggression. The telempath was Andrei Grushkov, and Peter felt sorry for him—he had to be truthful to his employer, the general, but he felt obscurely that he was betraying Talent in doing so. There were two NASA officers, a general and a colonel, and that pervert was the world-famous Josephson-junction specialist, and a Malaysian prince besides, who did such fantastic programming of air and space traffic. Peter did not like the man any better once he knew he was a genius, not when the man kept sloppily ogling Rhyssa. The man who had come in first was Colonel John Greene, and Peter watched in some awe as the most successful etop pilot of the early days of the Padrugoi Project placed a chair next to him, Peter Reidinger, and smiled quite pleasantly at him. Colonel Greene seemed to be the only one who was smiling. Even Justice Havers looked solemn.

  “It would be pointless for me to deny that I am aware of the reason for your visit,” Rhyssa said calmly. “Shall I call up the Eastern Center Register for you to check on our memberships?” She placed her fingers over the keyboard.

  Peter regarded her with pride. She even had a little smile on her face. And that pervert kept smarming at her.

  The Russian liaison general cleared his throat. “We have already seen it, Madame. But we believe that you have not honestly declared your full kinetic strength.” He crooked his head to see his telempath’s face.

  “Andrei can certainly assure you that our declaration is honest and complete. We have nothing to hide. No Talent does.”

  “Andrei has also assured me, Madame Owen,” the general continued ponderously, “that no kinetic anywhere could have successfully landed the Erasmus, not even the twenty-two on board her, or—” He paused dramatically. “—assisted its takeoff from the Dacca field in the weather conditions prevailing that day.” His chest seemed to deflate slightly once he had delivered his accusation.

  “It was me,” Peter said. He wanted to get it all over with, and get that smarmy-faced man out of the room and away from Rhyssa. “I mean, it was I.”

  The stunned silence was worse than noisy disclaimers. Then Colonel Greene started to chuckle and Dave Lehardt began to laugh. He also winked approvingly at Peter. Not one of the other visitors appeared to be the least bit amused.

  “And tell me just how, young man,” Vernon Altenbach asked, skeptically, “you accomplished such a feat?”

  Stick to the facts, man, the facts, Rhyssa said, mental laughter rippling her tone.

  “Well, the Erasmus needed help landing at Dacca because the kinetics had to be there to reduce the disaster potential. So Rhyssa called a G and H—that’s a Talent mayday—and I got to use the generators at the East Side power station,” Peter replied. He kept his face straight, but he was enjoying the incredulity of the non-Talented in his audience; even the Russian telempath was admiring, and Peter sat himself even straighter in the chair.

  Dorotea: Well said, Peter!

  Gordon Havers: In times of doubt, honesty is the best policy.

  Johnny Greene: You better believe it, because they’re not! Unobtrusively, he patted Peter’s knee.

  “You have, I must assume, a kinetic Talent?” Vernon continued.

  “Yes, sir. I’m in training as a kinetic, but I can’t do as much as I’d like because the people who should be training me are all up on the station.”

  Rhyssa: Don’t spread it on too thick, Peter.

  Johnny: Nonsense. They deserve that kick in the shins.

  “How much training have you had then?” the general asked.

  “Well, Rhyssa and Dorotea do the best they can, but they’re telepaths . . .”

  Rhyssa, dryly: Thank you!

  Gordon: He’s sticking to the truth.

  “Initially Rick Hobson was helping me,” Peter went on, “but we’d only just gotten past the necessary stuff when he got conscripted to the station.”

  “Talents were not conscripted,” General Shevchenko objected forcefully. “They volunteered to assist in the completion of the first Great World Project.”

  Peter gave a contemptuous little snort. “If you’re not given a choice, you’ve been conscripted.”

  “And you expect us to believe that a frail boy manipulated the Erasmus?” Prince Phanibal Shimaz shot out of his chair and stood belligerently in front of Peter, shaking his finger at him. “I, Phanibal Shimaz, prince of Malaysia West, know that this would have been impossible from such a source! Tell us the truth, little boy!” he demanded, making the adjective pejorative.

  “He is telling the truth,” Johnny Greene said, rising to his feet to look down at the much shorter prince. Dave Lehardt and Rhyssa jumped to their feet angrily, ready to leap into the fray if need be.

  “As Andrei confirms to me,” General Shevchenko said in a hard voice. “You exceed your authority, Your Highness.”

  “And I shall prove it,” Peter added, glaring back at the prince. Just because he could do games with Josephson junctions and traffic-flow patterns that no one else could do did not make him an authority on Talent. “Look!” And Peter raised his right arm
, wishing he had enough small motor control to point a finger, but he had not quite mastered that yet.

  Actually, it was easy enough with power diverted from the Center’s equipment to raise and hold the big helicopter just outside Rhyssa’s bay window so that all could see it—and see that the huge rotor blades moved idly in the breeze of its ascent.

  “Do be careful with it, Peter,” Johnny Greene said amiably, one of the few in the room enjoying the moment. “It’s government property.”

  “I’m always careful, Colonel Greene,” Peter replied, feeling the euphoria of potency. He was almost sorry that he could not think of an even more convincing demonstration of his kinetic Talent. Dorotea was glaring at him significantly in her enough-is-enough look. He returned the vehicle gently to the ground.

  “How old are you, Peter?” Colonel Greene asked, just as if he and Peter were the only ones in the room.

  “I was fourteen on the eighth of September.”

  “And you get about now yourself under your own power?” the colonel inquired.

  Peter could see in his eyes that the man knew the true extent of his handicap.

  “I was that much”—his fingers measured a two-centimeter gap—“away from paraplegia myself after Mission Number 20,” Greene continued.

  Peter realized that Colonel Greene was very much on their side and making it very clear to everyone else that Peter’s Talent was off limits. “I’ve learned how to compensate just fine,” he replied, and a glance at the colonel told him that that was the right answer to make.

  “Rick Hobson really helped me. We were just beginning to go on to tougher things when he had to go to Padrugoi.”

  “So you’ve been Rhyssa’s skeleton crew? All by yourself?” Colonel Greene chuckled and looked across at the secretary of space.

  “I’m not nearly as much of a skeleton as I used to be.” Peter extended his arms and legs and regarded them dispassionately. “I’ll get some muscle on them yet. I’ve got to build slowly, you see, and it takes time.”

  Colonel Greene rose. “I think that’s the answer, gentlemen. It takes time to build muscle, any kind of muscle, and you build slowly to last longer.”