To Ride Pegasus

by Anne McCaffrey

  “There has to be a happy ending to every fairy tale, after all. Though I shouldn’t have expected it of Gillings, fer gawd’s sake.”

  Her switch of mood, while it obscured her thoughts from him, lifted his spirits. Nonetheless, he said rather gloomily that there hadn’t been a precog of any happy ending for Cinderella.

  “Oh, you … honestly!” Sally sounded peeved and her eyes flashed at him irritably. “Your trouble, Daffyd op Owen, is that you don’t really believe in Talent.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Daffyd stopped and stared down at her.

  “Just because no one has precogged a disaster of some monumental proportion resulting from this fairy tale affair, you’re down in the doldrums. Does everything Talented have to end in disaster? Are you going to be committed to grief for the rest of your born days? Or are you willing to admit that there hasn’t been a disaster precog because there isn’t going to be a disaster? That things will work out right? All the sensitives are edgy, but not miserably so. Good God, do we have to wallow in sorrow all the time? Do we have to run around wondering if we have a right to be happy?”

  Daffyd thought he knew Sally Iselin fairly well but this—from a girl characteristically full of puppyish good-nature and exuberance?

  She turned on him, her brown eyes flashing with anger as she stamped her foot. “And I am not a good-natured puppy! I can be just as much of a bitch as any other woman!”

  In that outraged mood, she forgot to shield her inner thoughts. It was all there, what propriety had kept Daffyd from “perceiving” and her sense of honor had prevented her from showing him more openly.

  Abruptly Daffyd reached out and drew her into his arms, savoring the miraculous disclosure. Unaccountably Sally struggled, and courtesy disregarded, Daffyd probed deeply into her mind, past the barriers she had carefully erected, past the pert verbosity with which she masked those inner feelings. With a strangled sob, she relaxed against him and let him perceive the whole of her conflict. The older man/much younger woman, her yearning to be tall/elegant, an appropriate spouse for a man of his status/abilities, the puppy image of herself from his mind, her feeling of inadequacy because she couldn’t locate more and more Talents to relieve the burdens on him … all the small sins and great vanities that inhabit the soul of any human being. And what he saw in that instant of perception only endeared her to him more.

  With one hand he tilted her head back, forcing her to meet his eyes, amused that a telepath required a look. Her mouth lifted slightly in a smile as she shared his thought. He felt a pressing need to articulate the thoughts he was transferring to her mind but all he could say was her name before he kissed her. No more was needed.

  The next morning the nebulous anxieties of the sensitives were translated into attacks on the Talented. One of the finders attached to the LEO Block was beaten up on his way to the Center. A Talent mechanic at the big Mid-Town Parking Complex was seriously mauled and shoved into the boot of the car he’d been servicing. Two healers in the General Hospital were raped and shorn of their hair but their assailants were caught because the girls had the ability to “call” for help.

  In the clear light of that morning, Daffyd bitterly wondered if indeed he had a right to any personal happiness.

  “And if that isn’t a piece of outright antediluvian puritanical nonsense, I don’t know what is,” Sally said, popping out of the bathroom with all the savagery of a miniature … “… I am not a miniature anything, Dai op Owen.”

  But she was comical enough in her undressed state, mentally bristling at his thoughts and aggravated by his pessimistic rumination to put the morning’s disasters in their proper perspective.

  “I’m not sure what good it’ll do to have Roznine marching in here now,” she went on, pouring out coffee.

  “I’d hoped he’d come as soon as he regained consciousness.”

  Sally’s eyebrows flicked up. “You’ve never failed of your mark before. Unless …” She pursed her lips, frowning.

  “Amalda’s inhibiting him?” Daffyd caught the half-suppressed notion.

  “You know she’s scared of him. I mean, scared as a woman is of a very domineering man … sexually, I mean. Oh, you know what I mean and then there’s Bruce Vaden and all that.”

  “Amalda had proof positive yesterday that Roznine couldn’t dominate her.”

  “Perhaps … I mean, intellectually, Talent-wise, yes. But it’s Bruce that’s holding her back. He’s already at the top of the Glass mountain and Amalda doesn’t dare roll the other apple.”

  Daffyd caught the unarticulated ramifications of Sally’s thinking. Part of Amalda’s reluctance to admit Roznine’s attractiveness to her stemmed from a fear of being Bruce Vaden, to whom she was equally attracted but for different reasons.

  “She’s not one to drop the bone she’s got in her mouth for the one she sees in the water.” Sally said.

  “Now it’s fables?”

  “Why not? You added myths to my fairy tales so it’s my shot.”

  “That only leaves me proverbs.”

  “So?”

  “So! That leaves us with Amalda inhibiting Roznine?”

  “He should’ve been here otherwise.”

  Daffyd was turning over this interesting possibility in his mind when the comset beeped.

  “Boss, we got pickets out in front,” said Lester in a thoroughly disgusted tone of voice. “Pay your fair share. Everyone else is taxed. Why not you? No Minority privileges.”

  Daffyd sighed long and deeply.

  “Pete’s on reception and he says they’ve got legal political platforms, their IDs are upstate and they’re registered party members. Legally, under the Political Platform Act, they can picket the grounds because there if legislation concerning our tax status before the State Senate right now.”

  “Did you inform Gillings?”

  “Hah! They informed us about the time the first picketers foregathered on our gatestep. What’n’hell happened to your Machiavellian nonsense of yesterday?”

  “ ‘There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip!’ ” Daffyd replied. Sally gasped and signaled surrender.

  “Huh?” Lester wanted an explanation.

  “I must ask Gillings if Roznine’s had a visit from Aaron Greenfield since the hearing yesterday,” was Daffyd’s reply.

  “Did you goof, boss? Now what do we do?”

  “Keep tabs that the on-lookers remain quiescent, and alert riot control.”

  “Amalda and Red?”

  “No, plunk Harold in the gatelodge with Pete. Ask Gillings …”

  “Ask him yourself: Charlie says he’s just called through.”

  Before Daffyd could request a deferment of that call, Charlie had patched it through and Daffyd hoped his flinching wasn’t apparent to the LEO Commissioner.

  “You got troubles?” Gillings’s face was impassive.

  “Nothing we can’t handle …”

  “Oh, the trap’s sprung?” Gillings looked almost pleased.

  “Hmmmm … but I’d like a few of your riotmobiles around.”

  Gillings’s expression changed rapidly to sour discontent.

  “Like that, huh? I thought Roznine was supposed to come like a lamb?”

  Daffyd shot a guance at Sally who was muttering something about metaphors being illegal. Her levity was not appropriate to the gravity of the present situation and yet … it helped.

  “Roznine’s a strong personality …”

  “I’m going after him …” Gillings now looked like a trap sprung.

  “Gillings,” and Daffyd’s tone of voice was far sterner than people were apt to use in addressing the LEO Commissioner, “don’t go after Roznine. We’ve exerted all the pressure possible under the circumstances. Hell come …”

  The Commissioner regarded the Director for a long moment.

  “You better know what the hell you’re doing, op Owen.”

  “I do.”

  “Well, you sound as if you do,” Sally said when the call was d
isconnected.

  “I really think I do, Sally.” Daffyd looked out of his window toward the building which housed Amalda and Red. “Two birds in one bush, two baskets with the same eggs, two minds with the same great thought …”

  “Spare me! Uncle! I yield!”

  “Good, then let’s figure out how to unwind Amalda. I did not suggest to Roznine that he bring Great Birnam Wood to Dunsinane.”

  “I should have guessed that Shakespeare would be next.”

  “Considering my propensity for quoting Alexander Pope, I wonder you dared.”

  “He’s coming for me,” said Amalda when she and Red noticed the circling picketers and the gathering of curious by-standers.

  Bruce Vaden threw back his head and roared. He wasn’t counterfeiting the amusement though it had a bitter note. But her woebegone expression was ludicrous and his laughter was not the sympathy she’d expected.

  “My dear child, if Roznine has to salve his Slavic ego by resorting to that kind of subterfuge …”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I mean that Roznine simply can’t walk in here, no matter what suggestion op Owen planted in his mind when he was unconscious.”

  Her irritation was replaced by a shudder. Vaden could feel the repugnance she experienced when touching Roznine’s mind. But her impression no longer dominated his reaction to Roznine. Not after seeing the man in Court yesterday.

  “Did you really look at Vsevolod Roznine yesterday?”

  Amalda gave him that wide-eyed innocent stare and he felt her going “dead” on him. At first Bruce thought it was because she was afraid of Roznine and censored any references to him. Now he knew differently.

  “Mally hon,” and he took her by the shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye. “I looked at Roznine. I looked him over good and strangely enough, I liked what I saw.” That got her where she lived, and Red took a deep breath, opening his own inner mind so she couldn’t fail to see the sincerity of his words. “He’s the kind of guy I’d trust and respect even if I could probably take him apart in a fair fight. Oh, I know. I’ve heard all this static about his sewer-sink mind and his power in the city and I don’t know as my public mind would be all that clean and pure. I’ve learned to do my improper thinking carefully but no one’s warned Roznine that there’re guys around reading him now and again.”

  Amalda was staring up at him. Her eyes had gone all big and her lips were parted. He wanted to kiss her, to love and reassure her, but not just then.

  “Mind you, I don’t think Roznine’s a crusading saint but feckitall, Mally, he’s up against City Hall and when you’re fighting City Hall you use every advantage you can beg, borrow or,” he clipped her lightly on the jaw, “kidnap. Not that I blame him for flipping his nut over you.” He couldn’t keep his voice steady and he knew he was playing-back their initial meeting. “If you affect Roznine the way you do me, I’m damned sorry for the poor guy. It must be hell for him to want you and not get you.”

  Amalda discarded all restraint and now remorse/love/appreciation/agreement/understanding/pride/loyalty/washed over him.

  “Don’t do that Malty, I’ve got to think.”

  She bit her lip apologetically and “buttoned” her emotions up.

  “Thanks. Now, where was I? Yeah. As of yesterday, I don’t think Roznine could use you. Not now. Or only if you let him. And you won’t If that’s what’s bugging you, forget it. Or don’t you remember how easily you knocked him out? You gotta take it easy on the guy, hon. He loves you even if he doesn’t know it.”

  “It’s you I’m worried about, Bruce,” she said in a very low voice, her eyes wide and full of tears.

  So he embraced her, pressing her slender body against him, so she’d “feel” all he couldn’t express. His knowledge that you aren’t selfish with Talent, whatever kind you possessed: that they had a relationship too strong to be broken or diminished by the acceptance of a third party: that Talent had obligations beyond the personal and this was one of them, for both Amalda and Bruce.

  She reached up tenderly to stroke his face, her fingers enjoying the tactile contact with the silky hair of his beard, letting her fingers express what she didn’t articulate. As she had learned to accept Brace’s right to decide for them both, she accepted his decision now.

  “The stage is set, honey,” he said finally. “Extras all milling about, waiting for the director. Are you going to let him come?”

  She gave an impatient little shrug, then squared her shoulders and smiled at him, ready to move mountains, from the look of her. He liked that about Amalda, among a thousand other things. He conveyed that approval with a gentle, mind-blown hug. Talent has advantages, too.

  Roznine rubbed at his temples, wondering what kind of fake powder the medic had sold him as a headache remedy.

  They had done something to him when he was unconscious. Just as he, Vsevolod Roznine, knew that they had caused him to black out at the hearing. No, not “they”! Her!

  The conviction that he had to get to her, be with her, returned with renewed and irresistible force. And Roznine fought it again, fought it as his head throbbed, and his hands clenched into fists of effort to withstand the compulsion.

  He flung himself from the table, catching the leg with his foot and upsetting the untouched meal, half-stumbling against the door and striking his temple on the frame. He hit his head a second, a third time. And clutching the molding, threw back his head in bitter laughter.

  “Roznine has to beat his own head, because it feds so good when he stops!”

  His fingers dug into the frame until his nails bent against the durable plastic. His head turned slowly, as if he could see straight through concrete and plastic, across the miles to the Center in which direction he unerringly turned.

  “NO!” This time his fists thudded into plastic. “Roznine does not come at a woman’s call. She comes to him!”

  How had they done this to him? How could she call him? Once he’d known her name and that she was at the Center, he’d had his people find out all they could. She was registered as a telempath. Roznine had looked that up and the answer had only confirmed what he’d guessed himself: she could transmit emotions and probably receive them.

  Roznine pounded the wall viciously, transmitting such hatred and discontent as boiled up in him from the frustration of not having her and the humiliation of being knocked unconscious … in full view of his constituents … by a slip of a girl he could break in two pieces with one hand.

  And who was the redbearded man who worked with her? How close did he work with her?

  Jealousy was added to the seething emotions of Vsevolod Roznine. And the skin of his skull pulsed with a surfeit of his angry blood.

  The intensity of his desire to see Amalda reached another peak. He fought it. He would not go to her. She must come to him! He could not go to her. She had to come to him. She, who could read his thoughts, let her read that one. Let her read his feelings …

  “No!”

  Roznine stopped. Everything about him stopped, his heart, his lungs, the oxygen molecules in his blood. Then he took a deep breath and exhaled, his wide mouth forming an odd smile in a suddenly calm face.

  No wonder she had not come to him, the little one. She could read his thoughts. She would be terrified of him, Roznine: terrified of the anger he had felt toward his little bird He had felt her fear before, felt her spirit fluttering away from him. That was why she had run from the Fact. But she shouldn’t fear him, Vsevolod Roznine. Every man, boy and adult she should fear but not Vsevolod Roznine. He would go to her. He would explain.

  Chort vozmi! Would his head never stop aching?

  His comset buzzed. The noise stabbed piercingly through his skull. He grabbed frantically for the set to stop the noise, answering in a savage tone.

  “Everyone’s in position, Gospodeen.”

  “Position?” Roznine shook his battered head, unable to recollect which position and where.

  “The pick
eters have been checked by the Center’s guards, who are two old men: nothing to worry about.”

  Picketers? Pickets? At the Center? Oh, yes. He’d discussed that with the little man from upstate. How could he have forgotten?

  “And the riot squad?”

  “Parked at or working conveniently nearby. The disposal men …”

  “Good enough!” His head pounded like a drill press but he remembered How could he have forgotten? So she was a riot control team, was she? Well, let her control this riot! Men would pour in to the Center’s so private, so secluded, so sacrosanct grounds from all over the city: men from many ethnic groups so it couldn’t be blamed on his section. It had meant cancelling half the favors he was owed but, just let him get his hands on that little riot controller and …

  He threw open the illegally unsealed window and slid down the airshaft on the escape line. He opened the window in the rear flat, which conveniently belonged to a relative who was blind anyhow, and exited through the back door. Found the iron pry-bar and flipped up the sewer lid, snagging it deftly back over the manhole when he was within. He walked briskly over the thin stream which trickled down the pipes at this time of day. Two rights and a left brought him to a wider section conduit with a catwalk on one side. Two more rights and two lefts and he climbed a ladder. The manhole had been shielded and a Disposal truck was just drawing up. Swiftly he was within the truck and issuing orders to the driver.

  The sensitive signalled LEO headquarters that Roznine had left his quarters. Immediately Gillings warned the Center and circulated the alert to all stations.

  Charlie Moorfield rang through to Daffyd’s quarters.

  “Ring Amalda and tell her I’m on my way over. ”

  Sally was struggling into her coverall, excitement making her fingers fumble so that Daffyd held the collar until she could find the armholes.

  “He is coming. You were too much for him.”

  “Possibly.”

  Daffyd could also see another interpretation of Roznine’s secret exit, particularly with the picketers outside and the observers forming a larger and larger ragged semi-circle beyond the gates to the Center.