Pegasus in Flight

by Anne McCaffrey

  Carmen was exasperated. Just when I had a good placement—or thought I did—she’s gone into the dark again. No, wait, Sascha, there’s light around her now. She’s in some sort of a cramped tunnel.

  Sascha: Uses the bloody conduits like a subway. I’ll have the schematic of G on my screen for the next year at this rate.

  Carmen: Think how well you’ll know the innards of a Residential by then.

  Sascha: Thanks. Keep track of our mole.

  Carmen: Wait a minute, Sascha, I think she’s moving out of G.

  Sascha, startled: How can she?

  Carmen: She’s in the underground. Red light. The freight subways are the only tunnels illuminated in red, aren’t they?

  Sascha: Omigod, which direction has she gone?

  Sascha, Cass here. Mirda Khan was just seen talking with our quarry. Khan insists that the girl escaped from her. I’ll believe that when pigs fly.

  Sascha: What were they talking about?

  The meeting, Flimflam, Yassim. Khan has gone into panic and isn’t making much sense. She’s afraid—there’s suddenly a real big dollop of guilt, anxiety, mainly fear. For herself and just a little for Tirla.

  Sascha: Boris! Our quarry may be venturing into one of Yassim’s industrial territories. Alert your surveillance.

  At his desk in the Parapsychic Tower, Sascha Roznine experienced the sort of frustration that plagued few Talents. Hardened criminals were easier to apprehend than one preadolescent child who looked nearly half her actual age. And what on earth was the child doing in Yassim’s territory? She would have done better to crawl back into her very secret hidey-hole. He was tormented with memories of the pix of vivisected child bodies.

  CHAPTER 10

  Barchenka was furious when informed that she would be deprived of her strongest kinetics for the week it would take to mitigate the monsoon flooding. She first cried mutiny, then grand larceny, but was brought up short by her own Station Authority, who pointed out that the Talents had a legal right to attend major disasters such as the one that undeniably existed in the Bangladesh flooding. Also, the pilot was an off-duty volunteer, and there had been no damage to the Erasmus, which he had returned to Padrugoi as soon as Woomera cleared him for a launch.

  Massive efforts in shoring up the levees and careful manipulation of the barriers and dams prevented the Ganges from turning the lower portion of Bangladesh into a vast lagoon from Bogra to the sea. Still, whole towns had to be evacuated and necessary supplies shifted, difficult even kinetically in the appalling conditions. The force of the channeled flood did inundate Chittagong and coastal towns below it, but not as disastrously as the precog had predicted. Talent once again had reduced the impact of a major natural catastrophe.

  Peter Reidinger, on the other hand, slept late into the next morning, but when Don Usenik checked him over, he seemed none the worse for his major gestalt effort. But there was no doubt that his achievement had altered him: he neither floated nor essayed to walk—he strutted, chin high, with a slightly superior smirk on his face.

  “What was the saying? ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’?” Sascha asked Rhyssa, peevish in his frustration over the lost girl. “He’s insufferably smug this morning.”

  Dorotea gave a snort. “Don’t overreact, Sascha! He’s got a right to crow. Perfectly natural in anyone, especially a fourteen-year-old boy whose only available movement until recently was tonguing a switch or blinking his eyes at tri-d to change channels. Pretty heady stuff to save a country. I scanned him pretty deeply at brunch while he was still sleepy, and there’s nothing in his mind that smacks of corruption.” She grinned. “A bigger generator, more derring-do, and plenty of self-satisfaction.”

  “Lighten up, Sascha-bear,” Rhyssa said, smiling encouragingly. “Or don’t you remember some of the tricks you and Boris pulled at that age?”

  “A telepath can’t get into quite the same sort of trouble a kinetic can,” Sascha said, grimly thinking of a girl fumbling in red-lit freightways. What was her Talent?

  “Peter’s got a fine sense of integrity, Sascha,” Rhyssa said. “He’s sensitive and sensible. We have to think how to bring him back to cruel reality after his minor miracle.”

  “A diversion usually helps,” Dorotea remarked with a gleam in her eyes. “I used that ploy often with my lads.” She wrinkled her nose and sighed. “All too often.”

  “It’s going to have to be pretty good to distract him from the Erasmus stunt,” Sascha said with uncharacteristic gloom.

  Rhyssa was distracted from the conversation by the mental hail of Johnny Greene. Rhyssa, you guys called a G and H. Did it have something to do with the spectacular landing and takeoff of the Erasmus?

  One of the phones on Rhyssa’s desk rang, and being nearest, Sascha picked it up.

  “Yes, Dave? No, Rhyssa’s got a call on her mind. Can I help?” He listened for a moment and then replaced the handset, his face grimmer than ever.

  Johnny, Rhyssa was saying, it’s very complicated.

  Sascha: You haven’t heard the half yet, dear. Dave’s got bad news for us, too. Ludmilla’s claiming that we’ve perjured our immortal souls and deliberately falsified our Register.

  Johnny: Vernon’s had all kinds of flak from NASA, the Space Authorities, the Padrugoi Authority . . .

  Rhyssa, fiercely: Remind Vernon what kinetics are doing on the Indian continent. Sascha, tell Dave that his public pitch is that, despite all odds, Talent has kept its covenant of disaster assistance. And I want Johnny and Dave up here as fast as they can make it. Particularly you, Greene. To Dorotea, she said, “I think Peter’s immediate illusions of grandeur are going to be heavily dampened.”

  Boris entered the telepathic conference. The Power Resources commissioner is also demanding an explanation for a G and H that caused last night’s brownout and wiped out all his power reserves, he said plaintively. The city commish wants a lot of answers. Sascha, you heard anything?

  Sascha, savagely: No!

  Vsevolod Gebrowski, urgently: Rhyssa, Barchenka is out to get you! And there’s nothing I can do to distract her. I told her G and H. Her telempaths have explained that this is a Talent emergency code which needs no elaboration. She does not accept that.

  Rhyssa: You tell Ludmilla from me that she’s had plenty of secrets she doesn’t share, like early-completion bonuses, as well as fines on delays. I don’t question her; she doesn’t question me.

  Vsevolod: She does. I warn you.

  Dorotea, helpfully: Amalda Vaden sees nothing untoward.

  Rhyssa: Why did you bring her in on this?

  Dorotea: I think we need all the reassurance we can get.

  Sascha: Dave Lehardt, Gordie Havers, and two top NASA generals are on the same heli with Johnny.

  Rhyssa remembered how satisfied Peter had looked after dealing so beautifully with the Erasmus crisis. She groaned. “He’s only fourteen.”

  Carmen: Sascha, I’ve got a fix on her.

  Sascha was out the door in a flash. Good luck!

  Rhyssa: Right back at you!

  “Peter’s far more mature than most fourteen-year-olds I’ve dealt with,” Dorotea mused. “Including you,” she added, favoring Rhyssa with an admonitory glance. “And he’s got all the right instincts for being Talented.”

  Tirla did not like using the freight subways. The red light was off-putting. However, a cargo train servicing the automatic industrial complexes all along the riverside was the only way to get to the secreted holding place Yassim used to stash his merchandise, a train going into the J industrial. Then she would have to walk to the correct shunt. There were emergency alcoves set at intervals all along the right-hand side, so she could avoid being crushed by any passing cars. Dead unthinking things like tram trains did not frighten her. Live unthinking things like some of Yassim’s sassins and hitters did.

  She waited a hundred meters from the yawning red-and-black mouth of the G shunt for nearly an hour before a J train arrived. It would h
ave to slow as it reached the junction, so it was no problem for an agile person to drop onto the first segment, catch a good hold of the flange, and settle down for the trip. Flattened on the top, she was small enough to have several centimeters’ clearance from the curved ceiling of the tunnel. She reset her grip as the train picked up speed again, vibrating under her. The fetid wind, a noxious combination of overheating metal, grease, and the acrid stink of electricity, roared down across her body, and she angled her face down.

  When the J train finally slowed with screeching brakes and made the left-hand turn into the cargo docks of its destination, she readied herself to jump off. She had to land clear of the coding machinery that opened and sorted out the goods to be delivered from the load. But she had done it with no problem before and did it again, dropping lightly down and running up the narrow ledge by the various chutes and moving ramps that began the unloading.

  When she came to the first curve in the narrow tunnel and the last of the red light was gone, she used her handlight, glad that she had filched a fresh charge for it only the previous week. With the dim beam to light her way, she trotted along in a half crouch until the muscles in her legs and back ached. She dropped to her knees then and rested a moment before continuing on.

  Motivated by her keen sense of self-preservation, Tirla had once taken the precaution of investigating his holding cell, a room hidden behind a false wall of barrels at the back of an automated factory, where the noise of the ill-tuned machinery would drown any screaming. But he did keep the children reasonably well cared for, since purchasers could view them on a closed-circuit system he provided. Disabling the archaic scanner would be no problem for Tirla, and she knew the precise location of the ventilator hatch in the room’s ceiling.

  The kids had been in there nearly two days. They would be rested, she knew, and possibly feeling pretty good about their new conditions, which were, after all, a considerable improvement over squats. They might not want to leave. She wished she knew whom Yassim had grabbed—then she could figure out how to stir them to leave Yassim’s hospitality long enough to force him to pay their parents proper compensation.

  She loosened the appropriate wires on the ancient scanner so that the static would snow the visual. Then, gaining entrance through the ventilator hatch, she dangled from the ceiling to the excited clamor of young voices.

  “Hey there, cool it way down!” she ordered in Basic, repeating the message for those who might be slow to translate or need to be reassured. “Yushi, pull a mattress down so I can land soft. It’s a drop.”

  While Yushi and his younger brother complied, she did a quick estimate. Yassim must have been quite pleased at his catch: twenty-four prime kids to sell. The remains of a recent meal relieved her of one obstacle—the guards were not likely to check soon again—but it meant that the kids would have one less reason to want to leave such a cushy setup. Why, there were only two kids per bunk. They all had new gear on, and the girls were tarted up like their mothers.

  “Yassim take any of you yet?” Tirla asked, imbuing her voice with trembling urgency and widening her eyes with real fear. “I got here as quick as I could!” she added, implying that maybe she had not been quick enough.

  “Huh?” Yushi was good at taking orders but not at thinking.

  “They took my sister!” Suddenly little Mirmalar’s painted face screwed up into tears. “They took her an hour ago. And she had on the prettiest things—orange and brown with gold, and new earrings . . .”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mirmalar. I did everything I could to get here in time.” As Tirla lavished sympathy on the weeping seven-year-old, she could see panic beginning to spread to the others. She got madder than ever at Yassim. It was one thing to take ten-year-olds, but not seven- and eight-year-old babies! What kind of pervs did he supply?

  “Whaddya mean?” Tombi, Bilala’s eldest son, asked, his manner slightly aggressive. He was nibbling at a sweetbar; judging from the smears on his face, it was one of a series.

  “We gotta git out of here,” Tirla said, releasing Mirmalar with a reassuring pat. “This place has a baaaad stink.”

  “It ain’t got any at all,” Tombi replied, though he turned his head immediately to the rudimentary sanitary unit in the corner.

  “They take Raina already, you all are in biiiiig trouble. I’m gonna get you all out. Now. Before more bad men come. You girls know what I mean,” she added, waggling a stem finger at them. Tombi and Dik snickered. “Same thing happens you guys, too, and you know you too small for that carry-on yet.”

  Tombi stopped nibbling the sweet and looked apprehensively at the door.

  “Sure they feed you up good. Sweet stuff coming out your ass, giving you a bellyache,” she said, dismissing the remains of the recent meal. “This place’s good to keep you from crying much. You cry plenty soon and no one hear you ever. Stick it up you good, every which way, and that’s the best of it. You know what your mothers tol’ you. You know what to watch out for.”

  She was succeeding in scaring them—the younger ones were beginning to weep. She did not want them so scared that they could not move. “Yushi, Dik, Tombi, help me move the bunks. We make a stepstair. There’s room up there to stand.”

  “I ain’t goin’,” Tombi said, glaring defiance at her. He was heavier and taller than Tirla, but she kicked him so hard that he doubled up.

  “You’re going ’cause your mother sent me to get you,” Tirla knew how scared Tombi was of Bilala. “So you’re coming. Now, move! And crying won’t do no good, so stop. You need your breath for climbing and walking.”

  Just then the enormity of moving twenty-four scared and perhaps unwilling kids sank in. Tirla allowed herself only a moment to reflect on it. She had to do it, somehow, because otherwise she would have to leave G, and she did not want to. Linear G was home. She had made herself a place there, she had a business—she was safe there. Well, safe enough, if she laid low for a while.

  She chivvied and bullied all the kids up into the ventilation shaft, kicked the telltale bunk over, and replaced the grille. Someone might think that the kids were small enough to escape through it, but where would twenty-four of them go?

  She led the way, grouping the kids so that there were bigger ones holding the hands of the smallest. She made Tombi rear guard to give him some responsibility and put Yushi in the middle. He would always follow orders.

  The unloading platform with its eerie red light gave her no comfort—she knew that some of the kids would not be able to manage the acrobatics needed to get on one of the drones. They could, of course, straddle tracks all the way back to G, but it was a long, long walk, and there would be danger every time one of the speeding trains went by.

  Well, maybe they could all make it back one station to I and get lost in that industrial complex. It was safer than staying in J. Or was it? Maybe she would just take the older ones, who would be in more danger? No, they were all in danger, because whoever was left could be made to tell who had rescued the others. Maybe if she put the younger ones in a safe place and went back for help . . . Mirmalar’s father adored his daughters and would do anything to save the remaining one. And Yushi’s father was one of the strongest men in G.

  The vibrations that told her a train was on the tracks beyond the shunt alerted her. How much time did they have before they would know if its destination was J?

  “Hide in the tunnels! Quickly! Stand on the ledges!” She took Mirmalar herself, for the little girl was puckering up to cry again.

  “Ah, there’s never anyone on goods trains,” Tombi said.

  “Yeah, and how d’you think Yassim’s people get back and forth? Dumper cars are big enough to hold a dozen people.”

  That shut Tombi silent and lost him more face in the eyes of the other boys. Tirla shoved him toward a tunnel as she pulled Mirmalar after her.

  The screech of distressed metal announced another goods train being shunted into J from the north. She had not counted on one arriving quite so soon. S
he would never get the kids on this one even if it was going in the right direction for them to get home—unless there was a dumper car.

  But there was something odd here: Tirla realized with a sinking feeling that there was no cargo waiting on the platform to be loaded onto the arriving train. If a goods train was coming in here, what was it coming for? Could Yassim have someone in the main Dispatch office? Could he know that she had emptied his cage?

  There were five cars on the double-ended train. Two looked like empty dumpers. Without waiting to question such great good fortune, Tirla hauled Mirmalar out onto the platform.

  “Quickly. It won’t stop long. We must all get in.”

  They were, therefore, all on the platform when the train stopped. So none of them escaped the sleep gas that suddenly spewed out, catching them all in its mist. They fell like wilted flowers onto the plastic-coated loading surface.

  “She’s some kid,” Sascha said as he and Carmen carefully placed the object of their intensive search on a blanket pad and covered her. “Christ, but she’s a bit of nothing.”

  Carmen smiled slowly and turned the sleeping child’s head to one side to see where the lock of hair had been wrenched out. Her other hand reached halfway to touch it but then stopped. “She’s nothing but skin and bones, Sascha. We’ll have to improve her.”

  Sascha frowned a bit, looking around to see the rest of the team attending the other children. “We may not want to, Carmen. Boris and I have a feeling about this one.”

  “So do I.” Carmen smiled at him with her most mysterious smile.

  Boris: Did you catch her?

  Yes, Brother dear, her and them. She’d sprung the lot of ’em. She must have known exactly where to go.