To Ride Pegasus

by Anne McCaffrey

  Daffyd op Owen had his best finders scan the pictures, he sent copies to the LEO office and, on an off-chance, gave a final print to his best precog.

  “You better find that girl,” Gillings told op Owen, “or I’ll find her and make her answer—officially—for that riot.”

  “Frank, don’t provoke another Maggie O.”

  Though the comset was not color, Daffyd was certain that Gillings’ face changed shade.

  “We’re doing all we can,” he went on soothingly, “to find her but there’s no way of forcing her to come to us.”

  Gillings growled something dire as he broke the connection.

  There were days when Gillings was not Daffyd’s only cross. He and Sally had spent most of the morning trying to figure out a way to attract Amalda to them. Lester Welch walked in, listened a few minutes and then snorted in disgust.

  “Why don’t you just find out where this Red Vaden lives? If he was so gone on the girl he’d leave a successful show, he’s probably tied up tight with her. And if he’s at leisure,” and Lester grinned as he used the performing arts’ euphemism, “he’s surely checked into the PA Casting Agency.”

  Op Owen closed his eyes briefly before he thanked Lester with a good grace.

  “I’m not sure what we’d ever do without your common sense, Les.”

  “Oh, someone else’d tell you your nose is on your face.” And Les left.

  “This is one time I wish I were a kinetic,” Daffyd said with a wistful sigh, thinking all kinds of disasters, of a minor sort, to befall the dour New Englander on his way down the aisle to his own office. Then he caught Sally grinning at him, her eyes sparkling. “And if you repeat any of what I was thinking …”

  She composed her face into solemnity, raising one hand. “Dai, you know I can’t ’path that accurately.” But in her mind was a vivid picture of Lester stuffed into one of his wastepaper baskets.

  Daffyd placed a call to the Casting Agency. Bruce Vaden had reported his availability and a new address. However, the Agency informed him, the address was naturally restricted. Daffyd explained who he was and that he urgently needed to get in touch with Vaden and was informed that Performing Artist Vaden would be contacted and would return his call if he were interested.

  “ ‘If he were interested’ indeed,” Daffyd repeated, breaking the connection with uncharacteristic irritability.

  “Shall we think Lesterish, and perhaps drop a word in the omnipotent ear of our local lion?” asked Sally.

  Her suggestion elicited the needed address in five minutes and in less than half an hour, they were on their way by copter to an isolated area of the Coast. The small sea-silvered cottage was tightly locked and obviously untenanted. Rather depressed, Sally and Daffyd returned to the Center. Lester met them at the roof stairs.

  “You’re covered with canary feathers,” said Sally.

  “I thought you couldn’t read my mind,” Lester replied, startled.

  “With your expression I don’t need to.”

  But Sally hesitated at the door of Daffyd’s office. Rather more aggravated with circumstance than Sally, Daffyd took her firmly by the arm and pushed her into the room. He was instantly overwhelmed by several devastating impressions: contact with Sally informing him that her emotions were highly unstable; there were intense love-hate auras swirling in the room and among them the sure knowledge that the chestnut-haired girl seated facing the door was a powerful and violently agitated empath; that the red-bearded man standing by the window was linked to her in a desperate, despairing bond.

  “I’m Daffyd op Owen,” he said, “and this is Sally Iselin, head of our Clinic Recruiting Team. We’ve been looking for you.” Daffyd poured out waves of sympathy/reassurance/overt love and respect.

  “We found you,” replied the man. “I’m Bruce Vaden.”

  “We tried to locate you at the Fact last night,” Daffyd said, turning to Amalda. His second impression was that the girl was about to implode.

  At that point Sally gasped and made a movement towards Amalda as the impact of fear/confusion/hatred/love/horror/revulsion/affection lapped over the two Talents.

  “That’s just a sample of what I can do.” Despite a southern softness, the girl’s voice grated in their ears and was echoed by an intense mental shout that caused both Daffyd and Sally to shake their heads. “I don’t want this. It doesn’t matter any more if Red is in or out of the room. It works anywhere now.” She was drenched in bitterness, but there was pity as well as satisfaction to be read from her glance as she watched Sally beginning to shake with reaction.

  Daffyd curtly gestured Sally from the room. She resisted until he reinforced the order mentally, telling her to get Jerry Frames over here on the double. He duly noted that she was rebellious and not bothering to hide the fact in her public mind or her expression. Daffyd winced slightly as Sally slammed the door behind her.

  “You’re an empath,” Daffyd told Amalda, trying to reach through her broadcast to soothe her stampeding emotions.

  “I don’t care what I am. I want you to stop it. Now!”

  “I can’t stop it, my dear,” he said in his kindest voice, but he had a vision of a bridleless winged horse bolting across the heavens.

  Amalda rose, in a single fluid movement her eyes blazing. “Then I will!” Her words rose to the edge of a scream as she launched herself at the window. Daffyd moved to intercept her, physically and mentally, but not as swiftly as Red Vaden. Not that she could have achieved her end, since the window was unbreakable. So she hit the plastic hard and crompled into the arms of the redhead, sobbing hysterically and broadcasting such conflicting and powerful emotions that, out of pity, Daffyd reached for the trank gun in his desk and shot her.

  There was absolute silence on every level in the room as the two men stared down at the limp figure in Vaden’s arms.

  “I suppose that was necessary,” the man said in a bleak voice as he swung her up in his arms.

  Daffyd could read the relief in the man’s mind which had been bruised by confusion, fear and an unquestioning devotion to the girl. Op Owen gestured towards the couch.

  “All right, op Owen, what now?” Vaden asked after he had arranged Amalda gently in a comfortable position. The man’s eyes were a cold, troubled blue.

  Daffyd retained the gaze, probing deftly and finding in Vaden’s outer thoughts that their visit here had been his suggestion, a last possibility of assistance, since Amalda had been determined to end her Talent even if it meant taking her life.

  “First we have the Center’s doctor prescribe sedation,” and Daffyd nodded towards the painfully thin arm of the unconscious girl, “and a decent diet.”

  Vaden snorted as if practical advice was the last tiling he’d expected from op Owen but he took the chair Daffyd indicated to him.

  “Then the Center teaches her to control this Talent.”

  “Talent?” Vaden exploded. “Talent? It’s an effing curse! After the other night she’s scared to go out of the house. She’ll never perform again … She won’t even …” and he clenched his teeth over what he’d been about to add but not before the thought “audible” to Daffyd, made him pity the two more.

  “Any Talent is a two-edged sword, Vaden,” op Owen said, swinging his chair a little, a soothing motion.

  “What kind of a freak is she?”

  “She’s by no means a freak,” Daffyd answered in rather severe tones. “She’s a broadcasting telempath …”

  “And I’m the booster station?”

  “I think that would be a good analogy.”

  “Look, op Owen, I’ve read a good bit about you Talents and nothing was said about what Amalda does …”

  “Quite likely. We’re just beginning to appreciate the mutations possible in the parapsychic. We have only one true telempath here. He unfortunately has no more mind than a rabbit and he only receives. Amalda can apparently transmit exactly what she chooses. I gather the phenomenon only began when she met you?”

 
On the top of Vaden’s mind was the actual first meeting: a sort of dazed comprehension that they were “meant for each other.” Their first love-making had been a revelation to the blasé, sex-wearied Vaden and each succeeding day had strengthened their interdependence.

  “She was down and out,” Vaden said aloud in an expressionless voice. What he wasn’t saying was vividly and pictorially flashing across his mind, elaborating with every shade of the emotional spectrum a dry recital of fact. “Thank God it was me she approached …” and beyond the flashes of memories, Daffyd saw that Vaden had never allowed himself the luxury of loving or caring for anyone for fear of being hurt and used. In a transient profession, constantly beseiged by stage-struck youngsters who thought a PA license was “all” they needed to achieve fame, he had been invulnerable to physical charms and ordinary ploys. But he had absolutely no defense against the impact of Amalda’s mind in his. Now he ran nervous fingers through his crisp red hair. “We went everywhere.” He’d been haunted with the fear that she’d leave him or be taken from him. “Even to rehearsal. Then the girl who was to play Charmian was late so I asked Amalda to fill in and read it ’til she came. I’ve never heard a better first reading. She even lost every trace of her regional accent and became the hard-voiced trollop. We all loathed her. It was such a total charaterization! I’ve never seen such a thing in all the years I’ve been a PA. I’d expect such expertise from someone like Mathes or Crusada, but a novice? An ex-canary?” Vaden looked toward the unconscious girl and gave a sort of incredulous shrug. “She was so pleased to think she did have ability. She’d tried often enough to qualify as a vocalist.” Vaden made an exasperated noise in his throat. “The first time she sang for me I couldn’t credit that she’d been refused a license.” He turned back to Daffyd. “It just didn’t make sense.”

  “I’d hazard that you were the missing factor.”

  “A modern Svengali?” Vaden was bitter.

  “Not exactly. But the brain generates electrical currents. And in the same way that a receiver must be tuned to a certain wave-length to get a message broadcast on that same wave-length, minds must be broadcasting on the same frequency. Yours and Amalda’s are. Were either of you ever parapsychically tested?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Well, we can sort out the pure mechanics later during testing but there is one other pressing question I must ask.”

  Vaden did have Talent, whether it had blossomed through contact with Amalda or not was immaterial, for he instantly perceived what was on Daffyd’s mind and stiffened. Daffyd continued, feeling it wiser not to let Vaden realize that he was in the presence of a strong telepath … at least not yet.

  “Granted you serve in the capacity of an amplifier for whatever mood Amalda creates, what happened the other night at the Fact? What terrified her so that she fled from what obviously was a smash-success? She had that audience in the palm of her hand.”

  An expression akin to terror crossed Vaden’s face, ruthlessly suppressed in a second.

  “You were in the audience?” Vaden asked, temporizing.

  “Yes, Sally Iselin had heard Amalda two nights before and wanted me to confirm her suspicion that Amalda was a high-gain empathist. What scared Amalda off that stage? And sent both of you into hiding?”

  There was nothing helpful in Vaden’s mind except a repetition of what Daffyd and Sally had felt in Amalda’s projection. Instead, Vaden’s thoughts became despairing.

  “That’s why you’ve got to help us, op Owen. Turn Amalda off!”

  Vaden didn’t attempt to disguise his fear now. And he didn’t strike op Owen as easily frightened. He was tough, able to take care of himself from the look of his bearlike build. And had taken care of himself, to judge by the scars on his knuckles and face.

  “Fortunately, no one can turn Amalda off. Nor do I yet see the necessity.” Only a nebulous but overwhelming fear in both Vaden and Amalda.

  “You’d better see,” Vaden cried, leaning urgently toward op Owen. His eyes were blazing with anger, fear and a sense of impotence which would be more frightening and humiliating to a man of Vaden’s temperament. “You’d better see that it’s crushing Amalda to the point where she was willing to commit suicide rather than live with what she’s become!”

  “You haven’t told me what frightened her and what if I may speak candidly, is bothering you as well.”

  Vaden got a grip on his fear and anger. “There was someone else in that audience,” he said in a harsh controlled voice, “who suddenly linked up with us. Someone who was trying to dominate. Who was determined to control what Amalda can do. She got the brunt of it, of course, then I caught it.”

  Op Owen was certain then, with an awful instinct, that Roznine was the third person. And the ramifications of that premise were decidedly unsettling. He managed to smile reassuringly at Bruce Vaden. He swung his chair idly from side to side with counterfeit unconcern. He had lost Solange Boshe but he wouldn’t lose Amalda … and Vaden … and Roznine.

  “That’s very interesting,” he told Vaden. “Does Amalda have any idea of the man’s identity?”

  “How could she?” Red Vaden asked scornfully. He was making a notable effort to cover his inner perturbations. He couldn’t bear even the notion of sharing Amalda with anyone. “The minute she realized what was happening, how strong the guy was, and what he wanted her to do, she made as if she was taking a short break. And told me to follow. But she won’t ever sing again. You don’t know what it does to you …”

  “I probably more than any man,” Daffyd said with a slight smile.

  Vaden discredited the statement with a cutting sweep of his hand.

  “You’ve got to understand that Amalda must be turned off.”

  There was an edge in his voice now: he was hitting an emotional high, too. Daffyd reached surreptitiously for the trank gun.

  “Don’t you dare!” Vaden moved with surprising speed and grabbed op Owen’s hand.

  “I thought you’d understand, op Owen. Whoever that guy is is double dangerous!”

  “You’ll have every bit of protection the Center and every other Center in the world can offer you, Vaden,” Daffyd replied, allowing his voice to take on strength without volume. “Which is not inconsiderable, I assure you. What you don’t understand, Vaden, is that Amalda’s main problem is simply lack of control of her rather breath-taking ability.”

  “You don’t understand.” Vaden was desperate. “She can control masses of people. Those subbies in the Fact … she could have made them do anything. That’s what’s terrifying her. And me. And that other freaked-out mind … he wanted to use her to control that kind of a dangerous mob. God, man, I know what riot is. I’ve seen them. I’ve been caught in them. I know what happens. She could cause one. She even started one by not being there. She could incite the entire goddamned Jerhattan complex …”

  “How?” asked Daffyd blandly.

  “By … by … doing what that mind wanted her to do the other night.”

  “But,” and Daffyd matched Red Vaden’s urgency with his own, “she didn’t! And she couldn’t! And nothing on this world, not even some freaked-out mind with a megalomaniacal bent could make her. And once she’s learned to control this … winged horse of hers, I think you’ll all find this not so cursed a Talent.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “How old is Amalda?”

  “What? What has that got to do?”

  “How old?”

  “She’s twenty-two.…”

  “Twenty-two. And rather young for twenty-two, I should imagine. That’s still a tender age.” Daffyd could’ve wished for some of Amalda’s empathic strength but he was getting through to Vaden’s basic reasonableness. “And she has become emotionally involved with you … No offense, please, Mr. Vaden. From a rather humdrum frustrating existence, she has erupted onto the stage, into prominence … Even a mature personality could be dazzled. Then she is thrown into a highly charged situation—the concert at the F
act—it was unnerving for me as an observer, and I’m well in command of my emotional responses. She is frightened and runs! For which I don’t blame her at all. In short, Amalda has been operating on high for some time. We are still frail masters of our powers, Mr. Vaden. And that receiver/broadcaster unit which is Amalda is overcharged.

  “No, Mr. Vaden, we can’t turn her off. We don’t want to. But we can teach her how to channel her Talent, how to discipline it so it won’t run away with her as it has just done. We can also show you how to help her put on the brakes. Oh, yes, you can apply what, to all intents and purposes, are circuit breakers. She will need your strength and aggression, Mr. Vaden. In fact, and this is between us, Amalda is not as important as both of you. So I will consider you a team, because that’s what you are.”

  “Then you can help?” asked Vaden. He didn’t quite believe op Owen but the aura of belligerent desperation was fading.

  “I just said so.”

  “No,” and Vaden shook his head angrily as if he’d thought Daffyd would “know” his exact referents.

  “Emotion is as much a tool as a pen or a pneumatic drill …”

  Vaden stared at him, and then unexpectedly chuckled. “And Amalda’s been swinging the drill?”

  Inwardly op Owen cheered. Thank God the man had a sense of humor.

  “Exactly. Amalda has all the finesse of a tyro. If you had been the focus instead of this rather impressionable and previously frustrated young woman, I think matters might have progressed more circumspectly. As it was …”

  “I don’t think Amalda’s going to believe you, op Owen,” Vaden said, looking sadly down at the unconscious girl.

  “I don’t think she’ll have any alternative,” Daffyd replied severely. Vaden frowned, his eyes narrowing, but op Owen returned the look, adding a mental reinforcement. “She is exhausted from the look of her, which is what happens when you run an engine on full power for any length of time. We’ll sedate her sufficiently to let her body and mind rest. And we’ll keep her sedated until she begins to realize that she cannot control everything around her with the grip of a tyrant … for that seems to be her main fear. Rather commendable, actually.”