Considering that the first laboratory station had gone over budget by trillions and had been five years late in completion, Barchenka’s achievements so far were considerable. But Rhyssa knew the truth: that the Exalted Engineer was beginning to fall behind schedule despite all her efforts. It was rumored that the woman slept no more than four hours a night and daily accomplished a prodigious amount of work—but that she expected the same dedication from everyone on the project. Unfortunately she did not have the charisma or leadership ability to generate either loyalty to herself or to the project. Initially many Talents had volunteered to assist, but one after another they declined to renew their contracts. The many enticements to return with their unique capabilities to work on Padrugoi Station had met with failure.
Personnel Manager Per Duoml, coming in behind Ludmilla, moved with the heaviness of someone accustomed to lighter gravity, but he managed without the antigrav assists. A Finn, as capable and dedicated as Barchenka, he was slightly easier to deal with. And though he, too, tended to wear a metal shield, the Talents had liked working with Duoml: he was fair, competent, and had succeeded in persuading a few Talents to return for special, short-term assignments. But still most had declined to extend their employment, and they could not be conscripted. And though Rhyssa had dutifully asked the directors of every Center in the world, she had no takers to offer Duoml.
Program Manager Prince Phanibal Shimaz pounced in behind Per Duoml, and his presence was neither essential nor welcome to Rhyssa. Peculiarly arrogant and impervious to her continued, and lately overt, distaste for his company, he used any excuse available to press his suit on her. Rhyssa often wondered why he had bothered to develop an impenetrable mind shield when his face revealed all that most men would have had the courtesy to hide. The prince was a computer genius—some said he had thought in binary codes in his creche and teethed on chips—and when he was barely out of his teens, he had mastered the use of the Josephson junctions in what he termed an “idiot proof” application to regulate with complete safety the vast flow of skycars and drones in and out of major Linear depots and over densely populated areas. He was currently applying his efforts to create a similar basic and safe flow of spatial traffic.
Rhyssa composed her face and her mind, smiling with a warmth she did not feel as the three settled themselves.
“I do not,” Ludmilla began with no preamble, her deep voice guttural with only a slight trace of her native language, “have the required personnel.” Her pale eyes accused Rhyssa.
“As I have told you repeatedly, Manager, I cannot and will not order the Talented into space.”
Ludmilla brought her fist down with a wince that revealed that, in her frustration, she had forgotten the gravitational differences. She brought the bruised hand up in a gesture that in the space station would have been flamboyant but was less graceful on Earth.
“You must insist—”
“I can insist, but they can resist,” Rhyssa replied equably.
“How can I maintain schedules without the personnel to perform the necessary tasks? Day by day we fall minutes behind: minutes which your diffident workers could make up in seconds. I will not fall behind the schedule. We will make our completion deadline. We must have the suitable personnel. You told me that you have them, and I have here the proof.” Triumphantly Ludmilla extracted a pencil disk from her tunic and brandished it at Rhyssa.
“In that reply I said that I would certainly approach all Centers with your specific requirements. I most certainly did not promise to fill the vacancies.”
Barchenka narrowed her pale eyes into a basilisk stare. “You recruit constantly. It is public knowledge that you find new Talents—”
“It does not follow,” Rhyssa inserted smoothly, “that those we recruit are the kinetics that you specifically request. Certainly I could not ask untrained Talents to go into the hazards of space.”
“Why not?” Ludmilla dismissed that consideration with a broad wave of her hand, inserting the pencil file back into its pocket at the end of the gesture. “We will train them on the job—to be useful, to be careful, to be specialists. They will love space. They will make many credits and be wealthy.”
“The Talented do not accumulate wealth, Manager,” Per Duoml stated in his flat, nearly toneless voice, his patient eyes never moving from Rhyssa’s face.
“Nonsense! Everyone acquires wealth.” Ludmilla had more than the usual contempt for altruists. “In the beginning we had many Talents working for us.”
“We wished to assist the world project,” Rhyssa said. “But you would not accept their stipulations when their contracts came up for renewal.”
“Stupid clauses, untenable for us. Shifts of no more than six hours when we work twenty-four on the platform. Special shielding for noise. There is no noise in space.” Her scornful gaze rested hotly on Rhyssa.
“No noise which is audible to you, Madame Engineer, but which is extremely unpleasant to sensitives.”
“Bah! Sensitive!” Once again Barchenka summarily dismissed that consideration. “Spoiled, pampered, catered to.”
“No, Madame Barchenka, not pampered or spoiled, but yes, catered to,” Rhyssa flashed back. “The Talented are skilled personnel and require some minor considerations to enable them to perform at their best in the hostile environment of space.”
Barchenka plowed on as if she had not heard. “It is incredible that such a minority can exert so much influence on the economic life of our world. In the airport, in the spaceport, in industry where, while I order matériel, I see the very Talents I must have to complete the most important project of the world, a project which has universal approval, which means mankind may reach beyond the limits of this solar system and explore the very stars themselves. Yet you and the other Center managers do not permit me to hire the specialists I need.”
“It is not the permission of the Center directors that is required, but the consent of the employed,” Rhyssa reminded the engineer. “Center directors negotiate the individual contracts with the necessary safeguards.”
“I can buy the contracts.” Barchenka’s challenge was also a threat.
“Such contracts cannot be sold, Engineer Barchenka, and if you would accept the necessary safeguards, you might be more successful in attracting Talent!” Rhyssa replied sternly, beginning to lose patience with the woman’s dogmatic pursuit. She could ignore Per Duoml’s mournful expression and even keep her gaze averted from Prince Phanibal’s hot eyes, slightly wet lips, and nostrils that flared slightly from his rapid breathing; but all three glaring at her were an unnerving combination. She kept a smile on her lips, deliberately increasing the flow of her limbic system.
“You can insist,” Ludmilla repeated. “It is in all your contracts that ‘it can be voided at the discretion of the Center in emergencies.’ ”
Rhyssa suppressed a rush of anger that Barchenka had been given access to a Parapsychic Contract and had to remind herself that such contracts were public knowledge. “My fellow directors do not consider that you have a true emergency, Engineer Barchenka.”
For the first time Barchenka flared angrily. “I say this is an emergency! I say I must have a larger work force to complete this world priority project.”
“You have unlimited access to the conscriptable pool of workers.”
“Bah! They are useless—sterile, uneducated, untrainable grunts! I cannot build a space platform only with grunts. I will have the kinetics I need. I promise that, Director!” With that she wheeled and, in a dangerous imbalance, made a lurching exit, Prince Phanibal following her.
Per Duoml took one step forward, bowing slightly at the waist. “Even half a dozen kinetics would improve the situation tremendously.”
“As I have explained repeatedly, Per Duoml, insure the Talents shielded quarters and a six-hour maximum shift and they will be amenable. Surely if there’s credit enough in your budget to support the number of trips back to Earth that have been made for the purpose of recruiting Ta
lents, the funds can be found to supply their basic needs on Padrugoi!”
“Engineer Barchenka must adhere to the budget. No alterations can be made to existing staff accommodations.”
“Then Engineer Barchenka is stuck with the result.” Rhyssa fervently wished that Per Duoml would relax his mental shield long enough for her to place directly in his mind the information her words patently did not convey. “You require kinetics to shift objects of mass proportions in the assembly of Padrugoi. You also need kinetics who can assemble chips of the most complex delicacy in the total vacuum of space. The kinetic energy required by both tasks is the same and exhausting. They need quiet to restore their strength—they are sensitive to the metallic vibrations of Padrugoi itself, the inhumanly close quartering, the lack of privacy, and the appallingly bad rations which are insufficient to replenish their bodies and minds.”
Per Duoml nodded impassively and then shrugged, unwilling to comment before he, too, turned to leave.
His departure left Rhyssa with an uneasy sense of foreboding. She directed a query to Sirikit on duty in the Control Room of the Center. Any precogs in just now?
Sirikit: None. You’re expecting one?
Rhyssa projected an image of Ludmilla Barchenka’s grim visage: Possibly!
CHAPTER 4
The boy blinked three times, and the channel on the ceiling screen changed again. He sighed. Yet another oldie he had already seen often enough to have memorized the good parts. He blinked the switch signal again, and realized that he had been through enough of the channels to be sure that there was nothing on to catch his attention—not even an educational program unfamiliar to him. The first few weeks he had been in the ward it had been lots of fun, watching the tri-ds all through the long nights. Kept his mind off—things—after his headaches had eased. Sometimes he almost missed those headaches, because at least then he had been feeling something in his body.
He sighed. He could do that, too, he reminded himself, thinking positively as Sue, the therapist, said he must. He didn’t understand a lot of what she told him, like imagining himself walking and running, thinking hard of how he used to do it—before he had run alongside the ruins and that brick wall had collapsed on him.
Why? The agonizing question made him gasp. He had thought he had stopped thinking about that. Asking “why” was definitely negative and always depressed him terribly. Why had that wall come down just as he, Peter Reidinger, had been running past it? Had he kicked a stone that had been enough to trigger the collapse? Had one of the boys chasing him lobbed a stone at the wall? Why, since it had been standing for fifty or a hundred years all by itself, why had it picked that moment to come down? Three seconds later, he would have been safe—safe from both the wall and the boys chasing him. Why had he turned into the forbidden area, anyhow? He’d had a choice at the end of the alley: over the wall, only it seemed very high to him and he had nothing to give him a leg up; to the right, only that took him back into the Alley Cats’ territory and possible ambush; or to the left, weaving his way through the ruins, making it more difficult for them to know which way he would go. Why?
Negative! Negative! Peter screwed up all his face muscles and then made them relax, group by group. Then he smiled, slowly and consciously spreading his lips and bringing the corners of his mouth up, stretching them until his cheeks lifted, his chin dropped, and his lips parted over his teeth; willing the nerve impulses in his face to change the limbic system. As Sue had taught him, he pulled his most happy moment out of his mind: his eleventh birthday, when his father had come home on leave from the space station in time for the party.
Planting that memory firmly in front of “why,” Peter rehearsed the details of that happy experience until he could relive the entire scene from the moment the door chime had announced that his father had made it home until Dad had tucked him into his bunk. He had gotten so he could even feel the touch of his father’s hand on his forehead.
Good thing Dad had touched him there—one of the only places he still had feeling. Peter sighed again and refelt the touch. Then he closed his eyes and “heard” his father leave the room, “heard” the muffled sounds of his parents talking and laughing. He expelled another deep sigh.
He was lucky. He could breathe on his own now. Sue had been so proud of him when that autonomic reflex had returned. He filled his lungs, knowing that his chest was rising, his diaphragm tightening. He could feel the air in his windpipe. He held his breath until spots came in front of his eyes; then he expelled it.
Immediately he heard the steps of the duty nurse. Miz Allen did not like to be disturbed, especially when he knew that they had a critical case on Pie 12. He counted ten steps and then she was peering down at him, making eye contact. She then peered at the wall panel that displayed the readings from his monitors.
“Why was there a respiratory fluctuation, Peter?”
“Aw, I was just doing my breathing exercises.”
“You were not. “Miz Allen glared at him a moment, and then her long thin face relaxed. She laid a light hand on his forehead and then drew one finger down his cheek to press it against his lips. “You were fooling. Don’t fool with your breathing, Peter. Your brain needs oxygen. And it needs sleep, too. It’s quarter of four. You should sleep. You know how to achieve relaxation, Peter. Do your progressives, there’s a good boy.”
They both heard the sudden whimpering of the burn girl on the other side of the circular ward.
Miz Allen, reproving smile and all, disappeared, and Peter counted her steps, twenty-one, to get to the critical case. Then he counted to thirty, and the whimpering ceased. He knew burns hurt. He wished he felt something, even burns!
He immediately put his mind to the few progressives available to him: the relaxation of every muscle in his face, head, and neck. He could not move his head, but he had sensation in his neck. He reached total slack and thought carefully of his place, feeling the spring of grass under his feet, hearing the shimmer of leaves as a wind soughed through them, smelling the fragrances of the garden, gazing up at the sky above, the sun warm on his back. He began to float again. He had the sensation of drifting up, out of the supine body resting on its cushion of air, amazed and annoyed at the various tubings and wires shunted into him that he never felt.
The garden of his dreams was miles away from Jerhattan. It had been part of the vacation farm to which his parents had taken him when he was eight. For someone raised in Linear Jerhattan, surrounded constantly by the noise and smell of people and maintenance machineries, he had been totally entranced by the farm.
Peter knew that there were small green belts throughout the Jerhattan complex; he had even been to several, trying to relive that vacation, but none had evoked the same response in him, being too small and cramped to close out the eternal noise of the city.
He had found a place, though, where he could float when he got to the proper state of relaxation. It had grass and trees, barely visible in the eerie predawn light. And he was strangely attracted by other inexplicable strands, comforting wisps of thought, enticing him to linger. One in particular intrigued him, and he hovered as close to it as he could, tantalized by a sense of tranquil familiarity.
All of a sudden he was nearly blinded by powerful lights that flooded the scene. He felt a moment of terror. He could not suppress his scream, steadying only when he heard Miz Allen’s steps. He did not open his eyes until he felt her hand on his forehead and knew he was safe back in Bed 7 of Pie Ward 12.
“What’s the matter, Peter?” Miz Allen always knew if a patient was shamming and she did not tolerate false alarms. Her eyes flicked to the wall panel. “Bad dream?”
“Yes, bad dream.” Despite himself, his voice quavered, and her expression softened.
“Yes, your endorphin level shot up. I think you’ll have to have some sleep.”
Peter nodded, relieved at her decision. “I’ve got VMR tomorrow . . .” He began, but then darkness overwhelmed him.
You scared him
off! Rhyssa accused Ragnar, fuming that someone had triggered her net to alert the Center’s security forces if her pattern spiked during the night. The field lights had blazed up. Moments later she had heard the thrumble of the skycars, shooting off in all directions. Sascha! she roared. He was the only one empowered to set surveillance on her!
Sascha: We’ll catch the bugger!
Not that way! Rhyssa forced controls on herself to disperse the white-hot fury. Sascha had exceeded his authority—even the boundaries of friendship.
Sascha: I have not!
She inhaled deeply, aware that she was still trembling with anger. She expelled the breath right down to her toes, continuing to press downward until her belly muscles were taut. There was NO threat!
There was intrusion! His mental pattern broke briefly as he responded to some exterior stimulus. That’s bloody strange, he said a moment later. There was no intrusion. Not a physical one. Not a blip on any screen that can’t be accounted for. And nothing—read that—nothing in our airspace.
An emergent! Rhyssa colored the thought with satisfaction. That is, if you haven’t scared him out of his Talent! She sent an image of herself turning back onto her stomach, hauling the duvet in its pastel print tightly around herself, and dragging a matching pillow firmly over her head—which was what she did.
“An emergent from where?” was the question that circulated the Control Room.
“Who’s awake at four o’clock in the morning?” Sascha asked.
“I can do a probability curve,” Madlyn suggested, “eliminating all the obvious shift workers.”
“Why eliminate them?” Budworth asked.
“If they’re working, they’re not doing o.o.b.,” she replied.
“And who says this is an out-of-body job?” Sascha asked, turning on Madlyn with surprise.
“What else could it be?”
Sascha grinned. “You may very well be right, Madlyn, and it’s so obvious I wonder none of us thought of it before. Okay, who would go o.o.b.?” It was a leading question to which he already had an answer.
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