“Okh, kak bolit golova!” Mama said in an appropriately wispy tone, the back of her fat hand against her head. The pain in her voice was not entirely faked, considering the hangover headache.
“What’s she saying?” the PH officer asked, hovering between concern and annoyance.
“Her head hurts,” Tirla replied.
“Not from this injection,” was the callous response of the PHer. “Now move along!”
Solicitously Mirda Khan and Tirla propped up Mama Bobchik as she made her way slowly toward the nearest side aisle. Once safely out of sight, Mama immediately reached for Mirda’s sack and peered inside it.
“One whole tray? Miraculous, Tirla, truly miraculous. There are more than enough. Run ahead and tell them to come in small groups. The PHOs have already checked our three levels. It will be safe.”
In the course of her errands, Tirla tried her ID bracelet on as many public dispensers as she passed, no matter what commodity emerged from the slot. She tucked each purloined item into the extra material at the back of her coverall, or into a sleeve or a trouser leg. It became harder to move quickly, but she managed. By evening, she had enough small floaters and illegally acquired items to keep her well fed and content for the next month. If she stretched a bit, it might even be six weeks before she need bother about working again.
CHAPTER 2
“There was no aura of menace or threat,” Rhyssa Owen told Sascha Roznine as he stood glaring down at her. To reduce his threatening glower to a more productive, thoughtful mood, she touched his arm, reinforcing her statement with a mental See? Curiosity. An impingement, not a threat.
Sascha subsided, but he continued to glare at the graph recording of Rhyssa’s early-morning sleep pattern, where the wide black mark of the spoke showed that she had been roused from an REM dream sequence to full alertness by a mental intruder.
As the director of the Center for Parapsychic Talents on the North American East Coast, Rhyssa Owen lived on what had been the Henner estate, a reserve of trees, lawn, and mature gardens above the Hudson River on the Palisades. This archaic remainder of the twentieth-century residential suburbs interrupted the flow of Linear structures that housed the millions who lived and worked in the massive Jerhattan complex. Rhyssa’s quarters were undistinguished from any of the other three-story apartment blocks set among the gardens and trees. As with all dwellings for the Talented, these were secured and shielded from unannounced entry. In fact, even those who tenanted the Linear constructions running on the long sides of the Center’s extensive grounds did not know of its existence, so artful were its screens. No one should have been able to intrude on Rhyssa, much less in her sleep.
“Awkward, rousing you so thoroughly. You need all the rest you can get.” Sascha projected a vision of himself and Rhyssa curled together in her bed, the double-thick duvet tucked around their spooned bodies.
Yes, yes, Rhyssa replied. She responded with a vision of a firm foot pushing the Sascha body out of the bed. But even if you had been there physically, you couldn’t’ve helped, Sascha-bear. It was all in my mind, in my dreams. And that’s your duvet, not mine. I never use plaids.
Rhyssa smiled up at him, fluttering her eyelashes to mock his projection. He raised his brows in resignation. They both enjoyed this game. They had been playing it for years.
Picky, picky. Don’t avoid the issue, Sascha said. “Who, I’d like to know, could knock in on your mind? And why?”
“Indeed!” Rhyssa crossed her arms and stared off into a view of the lowering clouds and dismal rain that obscured a usually breathtaking view of Jerhattan. That’s what perplexes me.
Don’t range, Streaky. Sending your mind out searching for him takes too much out of you. You’re going to need all your energy to deal with the Zealots. He projected the vision of three persons with limbs so entangled they resembled an Oriental fetish, each caricatured face wearing an expression of mixed intransigence and skepticism.
Oh, don’t! She laughed as her return image untangled arms and legs and set each person upright, a whisk-broom smoothing tunic and trousers while emblems of rank were straightened. I can’t remember that when I have to deal soberly with their urgent requests for Talents I don’t have. They’re laughable enough as it is.
“Good. That’s all they deserve. Shall I have Sirikit check back and see when this phenomenon first registered?” Sheer impudence! Sascha snorted his annoyance.
“That’s an idea.” Rhyssa smiled ruefully as she pulled clothes from drawer and closet. She continued to talk as she dressed in the bathroom. “I only thought of checking my graph this morning. I really do need my sleep.”
“Probably some emergent Talent who doesn’t understand protocol. I do wish they didn’t always feel required to overreact to their newfound mind-powers.”
“Damned strong one!” Maliciously, Rhyssa projected an image of a very young Madlyn Luvaro, mouth wide open, and the circle of people cringing away from the waves of sound emanating from her.
Sascha grimaced. Madlyn Luvaro had a mental shout that could penetrate to the space station and any of its peripheral dockyards. It had been Sascha’s task, as he was nominally in charge of Training and Development, to teach her how to focus and moderate her mental voice. Madlyn adored him passionately and was embarrassingly possessive of him, an adulation he was finding increasingly difficult to discount—it was the reason that he assiduously cultivated the notion that he and Rhyssa were on the brink of a total partnership. Kindly, Rhyssa did not disclaim the rumor.
“I’ll have Sirikit run a check on possible emergents,” he told her, then sent the request to Sirikit in the Control Room, also asking her to check Rhyssa’s encephalograph charts for the previous months.
Emerging washed and dressed, Rhyssa beckoned Sascha to follow her through to her office, which adjoined her living suite. She yawned as she sat down at her desk, kinetically pulling some pencil files into her reach, fanning them out, and turning each until the index-code side was visible. She selected the one she wanted and neatly piled the others in front of her, code side outward, as her first selection inserted itself in the reply slot. Simultaneously the reader net came off its hook and settled lightly on her head. With one finger, she poked the left contact pad against her temple in a final adjustment.
“We won’t find him there,” she said, and was as startled as Sascha was that she used a gender. “Well, I know a trifle more than I thought I did from that fleeting nudge.”
“A secret lover?”
“Could be,” Rhyssa murmured, projecting an image of a sly grin and a come-hither expression directed at an amorphous shadow. Although her tone was light, Sascha perceived that her surprise at making any kind of an identification went deep.
“I’ll follow through,” Sascha said, and left her office. As he took the antigrav shaft down from her tower to the vast basement complex where most of the Center’s training and research was conducted, he carried with him a vivid mental picture of Rhyssa Owen at her desk, the reader net covering her black hair, a spider-webbing across the wide silver lock that she had had since her early teens. That streak grew broader every year, and by her late thirties her hair would be all Celtic silver.
Rhyssa would always have a young face, Sascha thought, as both her father and her illustrious grandfather, Daffyd op Owen, had had: young, vibrant, with dark blue eyes that sparkled and gleamed with intelligence, humor, and unassailable energy. Rhyssa was nearly as tall as the males in her family and a shade too thin; she clothed her long bones in elegant, if often bizarre styles: generally long flowing garments that set her off in a society which had stripped apparel to the minimum.
She was not pretty—her features, though small, were too uneven and mismatched, her right eye socket canted above the cheekbone, giving her a gamine expression that no one who knew her would misjudge. Her nose had a slight bump, making her profile look haughty, and her mouth was too generous above a strong jawline. Still, one forgot such details within moments of meeting
her. She had inherited the full measure of charismatic personality, as well as the strong psionic talents, of her parents—and of the grandfather who had battled to secure the position of Talents in the present socioeconomic-political atmosphere.
Sascha Roznine, himself a third-generation Talent and younger than Rhyssa by three months, preferred his current role as chief trainer and recruiter in the Center. Not for him the petty power ploys that Rhyssa coped with admirably, for he had struggled all his life to manage a quixotic temper. The nerve-racking sessions with Jerhattan’s managers and all the picayune details she had to deal with would have set him raging in five minutes. Sascha, on the other hand, had immense patience with emergent Talents, coaxing, cosseting, and curbing, gently allaying their doubts and building their confidence. When Rhyssa had once pointed out that, in their own way, emergent Talents were as obnoxious as managers, Sascha had replied that at least Talents learned from their mistakes.
There were so many strengths and varieties of Talent. Of the precogs, there were those who could foresee events, generally those which would have a major effect on a large number of other people; those whose prescience was limited to people they knew or were assigned to watch; and those whose precognitions had affinities with fire, water, males or females, children—there was as wide an assortment of focus points as there were strengths of perception.
Telepathy was the most common Talent, though some people could only receive thought, and others only send it. Telempaths felt emotions and responded to the pervading ones. A trained telempath could either dampen negative auras or reinforce positive ones, a Talent useful for altering the tension in a crowd, preventing rampaging emotions from turning groups of people into disorderly mobs.
Finders were those Talents who could locate things, using only a facsimile of the desired item, or, in the case of a missing human or animal, a garment or some other personal object.
Telekinetics could work on the largest objects, or the most minute particles that could not be seen with the naked eye or even a microscope, though there had only been one known genetic manipulator, Ruth Horvath. Telekinetics were invaluable in so many walks of life that those with this Talent were encouraged to have as many children as possible.
The rarest of the Talents were the pure and double telepaths—like Rhyssa, who could send and receive communications across the world as long as she had met the person she wished to contact. She could penetrate any mind not shielded by the thin metal caps the nervous wore or by the natural mental shield that some normal people were born with.
Sascha, also a strong double telepath, lacked the phenomenal range that Rhyssa possessed, but he never resented her for it. Once her strength had been established by her grandfather, Rhyssa had been committed to a Center directorship and all its responsibilities—responsibilities that Sascha would never want to take on. As far as he was concerned, Rhyssa was welcome to her Talent.
He heard Madlyn Luvaro before he landed on the shaft cushion at the basement level. She was trying to be quiet, but she was as successful as if she had been tap-dancing across a sound-resonant surface.
Until you learn to damp down your aura, it won’t work, Madlyn, he told her. Improper flow! Low positive energy is what you need to be ‘silent.’
Dammit, I thought that’s what I had! Her mental response was contritely discouraged.
Sascha pushed out of the shaft and there she was, flattened against the wall.
“I did ‘hear’ you coming,” she said aloud.
Sascha: Giant step forward! Madlyn was a powerful sender, but generally she could “hear” only those in her immediate vicinity.
He tugged a strand of her tangled mane of black hair as he passed, and she fell into step behind him, her large and expressive eyes rueful. Madlyn was a voluptuous eighteen-year-old with a sensual nature to match her appearance. She, and her Talent, had matured at fourteen, and since then Sascha had been struggling to teach her the necessary discipline that any Talent had to master, and that she would certainly require before her penetrating mental shout could be utilized.
Sirikit’s already checking Rhyssa’s Goosegg readings. Sascha had not tried to dampen his immediate concern. With so many telepaths aware of the alarm, keeping the investigation under wraps had been impossible.
Someone actually intruded on Rhyssa? Madlyn projected an image of herself throttling a large, amorphous intruder and squashing it into a little ball which she then flushed down the toilet.
Sascha snorted. Madlyn was quite capable of attacking anything that threatened Rhyssa. Who in the Center wasn’t?
They found Sirikit already scanning Rhyssa’s Goosegg encephalographs for the previous month. Several were paused at the spoking that indicated intrusive wakenings. The Goosegg, initially developed to monitor the odd light flashes experienced by astronauts, was especially sensitive in registering delta brain waves, which had been discovered to be the seat of paranormal or extrasensory perceptions. A Talent, trained to recognize his or her own slight mental alteration prior to paranormal activity, slipped on a net that could read brain activity. Many Talents, particularly the precognitives and clairvoyants, wore them night and day. They were lightweight, of a strong fine mesh matching the wearer’s hair color. The net transmitted to the Center’s main banks, so that Incidents of paranormal activity could be officially recorded, studied, and consulted. It was proof positive to any skeptics that the extrasensory perceptions did occur.
“Look at Rhyssa’s recordings, Sascha. There’s no question that the Incidents have been increasing,” Sirikit said as Sascha strode to the bank of horizontal spindles used in such comparisons. “First one three weeks ago, second four days later, then three, and this past week once a night—about four-ish.”
Sascha: Odd time for a voyeur!
Sirikit: With three-quarters of the population asleep in bed.
Madlyn: Insomniac?
Sascha smiled, for not only was her mental tone appropriately soft but she had caught the quick exchanges.
Sascha: An adolescent generally has to be pried from his sleep. Rhyssa thinks it’s an emergent Talent.
Madlyn: You keep telling me that emergent Talents follow no rule.
“Any statistics on insomniacs?” Sirikit asked.
“I’ll program it,” Madlyn said, flipping her hair back as she seated herself at a monitor, keying in directories that could access any computer bank in the world under the special concessions granted the Centers. She was cleared for normal use, although passwords were needed for any sensitive files. Madlyn might have been blatant in her sexuality, but her mind, open to inspection at all times, was as transparently guileless as a child’s. “Well, this won’t be productive. Anyone can have insomniac phases. Anxiety is the biggest cause. There are some people, the elderly in particular, who can get along on only four hours of sleep a night!” Her mental picture was of a horrified grimace superimposed on a tossing body in a rumpled bed. “I’m wrecked without eight hours!”
Sirikit leaned back from the spools, which had all paused to display the telltale spoke of intrusion.
Sirikit: Three-thirty to four, predawn, too early for most shift workers, even air and road haulers.
Sascha bent over her shoulder, studying the reels as if he could glower the riddle into the open.
Sascha: Rig her net.
Madlyn gasped and stared at him. Sirikit blinked, sighed, and then, rising from her stool, went to the main board to enable the necessary program.
“Some early-morning joy seeker has to be overflying the Center. Set an alarm through her net, and we can catch the bugger in the act.” Sascha’s voice was vindictive.
Madlyn shot him a worried glance. She could feel the wave of high negative energy he exuded.
CHAPTER 3
Barchenka, Duoml, and His Highness Manager Prince Phanibal Shimaz arrived promptly for their meeting with Parapsychic Center Director Rhyssa Owen at the Jerhattan City Manager’s Tower, a massive structure in the center of Central P
ark, the last vestige of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Manhattan. The tower, rising above the tallest of the mercantile buildings, was crowned by ziggurats of communication dishes, giving it an appearance from any distance of a grotesque bunch of stiff daisies rammed into an immense glass brick. Skycars of varying sizes, at the landing level, stuck out like a fringe of angular, multicolored leaves.
Space Station Construction Manager Ludmilla Barchenka entered first, her odd bouncing gait indicating that she was wearing her antigrav boots. Her infrequent visits back to surface gravity were difficult for her—but they tended to be worse for those she confronted. The woman’s appearance did nothing to mitigate her abrasive personality: she was stocky, big-boned though not fleshy, with a flat, broad face and unexceptional features. Pale blue eyes and short-cropped hair only added to the image of a tough persona—cold, inflexible tenacity. To top that off, Ludmilla invariably wore a thin metal skullcap, a shielding device that was almost an insult to Rhyssa in her capacity as director of the Eastern Center. Rhyssa was not sure if Barchenka used the shield merely out of concern for security or because she was pathologically wary of the Talents whose services she desperately needed even as she deplored their abilities. Sascha was convinced that Barchenka had some sort of Talent, even if it could not be scanned, and that she refused to acknowledge the possibility.
Despite her total lack of social graces, the Exalted Engineer’s dedication could not be faulted. Padrugoi Station was due to be completed, and on budget, at the end of the current year.
With interstellar voyages now possible and habitable planets located in two near systems, the pressure to implement the colonization program was incredible. But first the Padrugoi Station, the essential springboard to the stars, had to be completed. The project had worldwide priority and the enthusiastic support of every political and economic faction on Earth.
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