Pegasus in Flight Read online

  PEGASUS

  IN

  FLIGHT

  Anne McCaffrey

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Other Books by Anne McCaffrey

  Look Ma, . . .No Hands!

  To learn more about other great Ballantine Books . . .

  Copyright

  This Book is respectfully

  and gratefully dedicated to

  Diana Tyler

  and

  Diane Pearson

  PROLOGUE

  During the late twentieth century’s exploration of space, a major breakthrough occurred in the validation and recording of extrasensory perceptions, the so-called paranormal, psionic abilities long held to be spurious. An alternate application of the Goosegg, an extremely sensitive encephalograph developed to scan brain patterns of the astronauts who suffered from sporadic “bright spots,” temporarily diagnosed as cerebral or retinal malfunction, was inadvertently discovered when the device was used to monitor a head injury in an intensive-care unit of Jerhattan. The patient, Henry Darrow, was a self-styled clairvoyant with an astonishing percentage of accurate “guesses.” In his case, as the device monitored his brain patterns, it also registered the discharge of unusual electrical energy as he experienced a clairvoyant episode. For the first time there was scientific proof of extrasensory perception.

  Henry Darrow recovered from his concussion to found the first Center for Parapsychics in Jerhattan and to formulate the ethical and moral premises that would grant those with valid, and demonstrable, psionic talents certain privileges and responsibilities in a society basically skeptical, hostile, or overtly paranoid about such abilities.

  Extrasensory perception—or Talent, as it came to be called—came in varying strengths and forms. Simple, short-range telepathy was fairly common, once inhibitions were discarded. But there were also one-way telepaths, people who could send their thoughts but not receive those of others, and people who could receive thoughts but not send. Others were empaths, able to adjust immediately to the moods of those around them, sometimes quite unconsciously. Telempaths could sense and react to extreme or more distant emotions; some of these were able to redirect emotion, by broadcasting other emotions or by neutralizing the negative—such Talents proved to be invaluable in crowd control, for they could keep a throng from turning into a senseless mob. But the most valuable of the telepaths were those who could both receive and broadcast thought, speaking to other minds anywhere in the world.

  Telekinetics—Talents who could move physical objects by sheer mental power—were also invaluable, their abilities ranging from lifting heavy machinery to manipulating on micro levels.

  Clairvoyants or precogs could see future events, either close at hand, or at some remove from their present. Very often their visions allowed the future to be altered and disasters to be averted. Some clairvoyants had special affinities: some sensed events revolving around fire, water, or wind; others were more apt to perceive children, or violence, or criminal intentions.

  Finders also had affinities—some could locate people or animals, while others were able to sense inanimate objects—and their abilities could vary greatly in range.

  Talent came in many forms and guises, and not all of the viable types had, as yet, been recognized. The various centers, worldwide, constantly searched for the less dramatic gifts because the need had now far outstripped the supply. For those potential few, the training was arduous, and the rewards did not always compensate for the unswerving dedication required by their taxing positions.

  And yet to be found Talented became the aspiration of many, and the triumph of few.

  They have been at a great feast of

  languages, and stolen the scraps.

  —William Shakespeare.

  CHAPTER 1

  Tirla took a quick look from the alley into the Main Concourse of Residential Linear G, then pulled back instantly, flattening her thin twelve-year-old body against the plas-slab wall. Public Health officials were swarming all over, rounding up the early-morning crowd of able-bodied workers who had been scanning the employment board for a day’s work, the mothers with their handicapped kids making their way to the Rehab centers, and the legal children on their way to the Linear’s physical-training facility.

  Cautiously she took another look, to see what the PHOs were setting up on their tables: vials and the big compressed-air bottles that operated the hyposprays. She withdrew, having seen enough to recognize another wholesale vaccination effort. Strange, she hadn’t heard of any new ‘mune plagues. To give them their due, PHO was swifter than rumor to avert disaster.

  Rapidly Tirla ran through her head her current list of those mothers of illegal children whom she should inform: first, because they would pay her for warning them to hide the kids; second, because those who could afford to would pay her for stealing whatever vaccine was being administered. She counted on her fingers: Elpidia, certainly; the old bouzma, Pilau; Bilala, and Zaveta, Ari-san, and Cyoto—and she had better ask Mama Bobchik if there were newborns, for they would need the Five-shotter. She would want one for herself, as well, and could possibly finagle a box, depending on how the current stuff was packaged. It all depended. Mirda Khan, yes—she had best tell that old wagon right after she warned Mama.

  She would have to change into clean clothing issue—she had washed, but this week’s issue was five days old and looked eight. Public Health were quick to notice details like that. Mama Bobchik was always good for fresh wear, especially if Tirla went to her first with her news. This could be a very good day, Tirla thought with a rise of spirits as she slipped back down the alley for the center-shaft emergency stairs on her way down to Mama Bobchik’s pad.

  Most of Tirla’s twelve years had been spent in scrounging a totally unofficial living in the multi-ethnic thirty-storied community of the Linears. She could not afford to miss a single trick, like today’s unexpected Public Health roundup, to escape the stringent controls, clever obstacles, and little traps ingeniously set up by the Jerhattan Complex Administration Council and the Law Enforcement and Order Organization to identify and control each member of the restless population.

  Officially there had never been a record of Tirla’s birth. She was, however, the fifth child born to Dikka—only the first, Tirla’s brother, Kail, was legal. The government tied a woman off when she gave birth to a second child. Consequently Firza, Lenny, Ahmed, and Tirla had all been born in Dikka’s single-parent squat with the aid of Mama Bobchik, who had had an illegal child every year until her womb had dried up. Kail had been official until Dikka had sold him at ten. Firza had had the use of Kail’s wrist ID for two years until she was profitably disposed of. In the next year, Dikka, Lenny, and Ahmed died of one of the immune plagues that sporadically flared up to decimate the Linears. In the haste and confusion of body disposal, Dikka’s death had not been officially noted. So Tirla had been left with two ID bracelets—a fine legacy. Self-sufficient and resourceful, she had managed to retain the squat, drawing two subsistence rations, until Dikka’s ID was canceled after her failure to appear for a routine medical examination.

  Wise in the ways of her society, Tirla had not been caught short
by the lockout. She knew Tenancy Articles, Paragraphs, and Subsections by heart, so figuring out the cancellation date had been no problem. Two days prior to the eviction, she moved her few possessions—hotter unit, the best of the sleep sacks, the ‘corder, and the pretties Dikka’s men had given her from time to time—into new quarters five levels below the Main Concourse, in the maintenance segment of Linear G, right beside the charged security grille that protected the engineering section from unauthorized entry. Only a slight and agile person like Tirla could reach the eyrie, where massive ducts formed a broad platform before bending up the inner wall. She patched her hotter and ‘corder wires into the overhead cables, certain that her small use of electricity was unlikely to be discovered, and settled in. She did miss the all-night informational programs on the squat’s tri-d. The big public tri-ds on the Concourse stopped ‘casting at the midnight curfew. Tirla, with her clever, shrewd, and organized mind, was thirsty for knowledge. She even used Kail’s ID to log into school. One of Dikka’s men had said that one had to know the rules before one could break them. Tirla had never forgotten.

  For another two years, Kail’s bracelet supplied his small sister with daily subsistence, weekly clothing issue, and other amenities until “Kail” failed to appear at Evaluation Center within three weeks of his sixteenth birthday. The cancellation caused Tirla no problem, for by then she was well-established, almost indispensable to most of the Residential clients and gang bosses in the neighborhood industrial complexes. Her ability to translate any of the nearly ninety dialects and languages used in the subsistence-level Residential Linears saved clients hours at official transspeech centers, or worse, misunderstanding. She knew when to be ingratiating or stand firm. She knew what courtesies were due whom and never failed in performing them. Everyone who knew her knew very well that she was illegal. Because she was so useful to the residents of Linear G, as she would be today with her warning about the Public Healthers, and because officially she did not exist anyway, there was no profit—yet—in reporting her illicit existence.

  The various errands she did—and she was scrupulously silent about them—often brought in “floating” credit chips. Floaters were legal tender—Pay to Bearer, untraceable chips that changed hands frequently. Jerhattan Treasury and all the merchant and banking houses wisely ignored the circulation of minor amounts of floaters, just as they ignored the petty small traders as long as they made no trouble and their merchandise was harmless. Tirla, and others like her, relied on floaters to support their illegal existences in the Linears.

  Linear G thrust thirty massive levels above the squat, featureless F and H commercial blocks where residents of Linears E, G, and I worked. Once, on a Free Day, while Tirla still had her brother’s ID, she had gone with Mama Bobchik to the Great Palisades Promenade, where thousands upon thousands of people had swarmed to enjoy a brilliant spring day, to overlook the exclusive hives, platforms, and great cone complexes of Manhattan Island, and to ooh and aah at the monorail cars, large and small, that zipped along the tracks which garlanded the buildings like colored tinsel strands. That was the first time Tirla had seen ships floating on water or the great pleasure skycars. There had even been a special issue of holiday food, yards above the standard fare, at dispensing banks. Buril, Mama’s son, had a tripper key that he used on the dispers, so they had managed to stuff themselves before the mechanism’s malfunction alarm was triggered. It had been a super day for Tirla. She had never dreamed that the world was that big.

  That was the same day that Buril explained to her all about the space platform that was being built, which needed so many workers. When it was completed, he said, all the people living on Manhattan who had enough credit and were the “right kind” would be able to go off into space and find other worlds to live on. Then all those beautiful buildings would be empty and there would be enough space for everyone crammed into Linear squats to live in proper big apartments with a bedroom for each family member and no more Public Health or LEO men and women tying men and women off, shaming a virile man.

  This morning, as Tirla scratched on Mama Bobchik’s door to tell her of the PH presence in the Linear, she heard the old woman gasping and groaning as she struggled off the bedshelf.

  “Kto stuchitsya? Perestan’te udaryat’sya. Okh, kak bolit golova!”

  Tirla grinned. So Mama had a big head this morning, caused by the vodka she had made from the potatoes Tirla had nicked for her. In that state, she would be easy to wheedle out of a credit.

  “It’s Tirla, and the Public Health are already on the Concourse.”

  “Boje moi! Eto tak? Have I not enough pain in my life?” But the door was pushed open wide enough for Tirla to slip inside. “What have you said? The Public Health again? So soon? Why?”

  “Another vaccination by the looks of it. They’re grabbing everyone, able-bodies, students, handies and their mothers.”

  “Ah, we must hurry. Elpidia, Zaveta . . .” Mama Bobchik began reciting the names of her usual maternity patients.

  Tirla tugged her arm.

  “Nu, what do you want from me?”

  “I cannot help unless I have clean issue,” Tirla said, managing to look piteous and sound efficient at the same time.

  Buril had fixed the clothing-issue slot in his mother’s squat so that it could be coaxed to extrude more than it ought. His taking ways had been very useful until Yassim—Tirla made the warding sign at just the thought of that man—had paid Mama a huge sum for him. Buril’s unusual talent for “fixing” official equipment made him quite valuable—he had not gone the usual route of Yassim’s purchases, and Mama had been paid enough floaters to keep her comfortable in her old age.

  Mama Bobchik blinked her reddened and bleary eyes and looked at the tiny girl. “Da, that is so!” She patted Tirla’s head before she went to the clothing slot and did something that her heavy frame obscured from the girl’s sight. When she turned back, she had a packet in her hand.

  “I washed this morning,” Tirla said, immediately unfastening and stepping out of the old suit. She had to roll up the sleeves and legs of the fresh issue, but when she had neatly folded each roll over wrist and ankle and pressed the edges to seal them, sleeve and leg bloused out nicely to give her apparel more style. She retied the pretty braided rope belt that she had inherited from her mother and tucked the excess material neatly back. “Now, I’ll tell Mirda Khan, do this level, and then up and down. That’ll be all I think I have time for. What’ll I do for an ID? They’ll grab me if my wrist’s bare.”

  What Tirla wanted most in her life was a genuine, valid ID bracelet that would allow her a squat right, the use of a tri-d, three meals a day, and a fresh weekly issue of clothing. An ID that was all her own and had never been anyone else’s! One that would allow her into the school programs that so few of the kids she knew seemed to care about at all.

  Now she cocked her head at Mama Bobchik, knowing perfectly well that an ID was essential when the PHOs were swarming the Linear. Mama Bobchik pretended to consider, giving Tirla just a few moments of anxiety.

  “Eto tak! For PHOs, we use one.” With a flounce of her skirts, for Mama would not wear the single-piece coverall without proper skirts to conceal her limbs, she turned her back on Tirla again. No matter how hard Tirla listened, she could not tell where Mama secreted those precious counterfeit IDs that Buril had also contrived. They were good for one day’s use only—one day, because while the band would be accepted by a portable reader such as the PHO would have to record vaccinations, it would show up as a fraud later, when the day’s entries were checked.

  Mama Bobchik turned around, dangling the precious ID band. “You split the take for the warning with me. As usual.”

  Tirla nodded solemn agreement to the terms, her eyes watching the swing of the band.

  “And if you can steal enough vaccine, I will give you thirty percent of that take,” Mama added.

  Tirla gave an incredulous snort. “Sixty. I could get caught stealing.”

&n
bsp; “Forty, then. No one has caught you yet. After all, I gave you the ID at no cost to you and have the expense of the spray gun.”

  “Forty-five!”

  The two hagglers eyed each other, and then Mama’s broad face beamed down at Tirla’s unyielding expression. She spit in her palm and engulfed Tirla’s delicate hand in her own to seal the arrangement.

  “You are a clever one. You must hurry now.”

  The girl was already slipping through the half-opened door and down the hall to spread the warning.

  Despite her speed, Tirla barely finished her route before the PH officers began to penetrate the levels, checking the IDs of each squat’s occupants and herding them out and down to line up for their hypospray. She soon learned that the health threat was not a ‘mune plague but a virulent intestinal disease that had started in Linear B with devastating results. All Linears were being vaccinated in an attempt to stem the spread of the ailment. The PH public-address system droned on constantly giving a short explanation in all the languages registered in Linear G; Tirla did some rapid translations of her own when requested by nervous mothers.

  “It’s only another food contamination,” she assured the skeptical. “They’ve isolated the source, who have been heavily fined and lost their license.”

  “Huh!” Mirda Khan said, her dark eyes glistening with skepticism. “That will be gone as long as it takes to send in enough credit to reissue it. How long will the protection last us?”

  “Oh, this one’ll do us for a year!”

  “A year? They are improving.”

  Trudging forward step by step in the long line, Tirla and Mama Bobchik finally reached the PH, dropped their wrists across the reader, and received their shots. Immediately Mama pretended to become faint and staggered against the table. While the PH woman was coping with that, Tirla swept an entire tray of the vaccine ampoules into the shopping sack Mirda Khan had ready as she, too, came to Mama’s assistance.