To Ride Pegasus Read online

  In a world of telepaths,

  the most dangerous weapon

  is a thought …

  Then he saw her, fingers clawing for leverage on the stairpost, foot poised for the step from the landing. A too-thin adolescent figure, frozen for a second with indecision and shock; strands of black hair like vicious scars across a thin face, distorted and ugly from the tremendous physical and mental efforts of the frantic will. Her huge eyes, black with insane fury and terror, bloodshot with despair and the salty sweat of her desperate striving for escape, looked into his.

  She knew him for what he was; and her hatred crackled in his mind …

  By Anne McCaffrey

  Published by The Ballantine

  Publishing Group:

  DECISION AT DOONA

  DINOSAUR PLANET

  DINOSAUR PLANET SURVIVORS

  GET OFF THE UNICORN

  THE LADY

  PEGASUS IN FLIGHT

  RESTOREE

  THE SHIP WHO SANG

  TO RIDE PEGASUS

  BLACK HORSES FOR THE KING

  NIMISHA’S SHIP

  THE CRYSTAL SINGER BOOKS

  CRYSTAL SINGER

  KILLASKANDRA

  CRYSTAL LINE

  THE DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN®

  DRAGONSDAWN

  THE CHRONICLES OF PERN:

  FIRST FALL

  DRAGONSEYE

  MORETA: DRAGONLADY OF

  PERN

  NERILKA’S STORY

  THE MASTERHARPER OF PERN

  DRAGONFLIGHT

  DRAGONQUEST

  THE WHITE DRAGON

  THE RENEGADES OF PERN

  ALL THE WEYRS OF PERN

  THE DOLPHINS OF PERN

  With Jody Lynn Nye:

  THE DRAGONLOVER’S GUIDE

  TO PERN

  By Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  POWERS THAT BE

  POWER LINES

  POWER PLAY

  Edited by Anne McCaffrey:

  ALCHEMY AND ACADEME

  A Del Rey® Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1973 by Anne McCaffrey

  Parts of this book were previously published:

  “A Womanly Talent” Analog, copyright © 1969 by the Condé Nast Publications, Inc.

  “Apple,” Crime Prevention in the 30th Century, copyright © 1969 by Hans Stefan Santesson, editor.

  “A Bride for Pegasus,” Analog, copyright © 1973 by the Condé Nast Publications. Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited. Toronto.

  www.randomhouse.com/delrey/

  eISBN: 978-0-345-45751-6

  v3.1

  This book is

  respectfully dedicated to

  Betty Ballantine,

  a woman of many talents

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 To Ride Pegasus

  2 A Womanly Talent

  3 Apple

  4 A Bridle for Pegasus

  About the Author

  1

  To Ride

  Pegasus

  To Ride Pegasus

  The slick pavement, oily with rain and motor lubricants that had dripped from the hundreds of ill-repaired vehicles utilizing the major north-south artery into Jerhattan, caused the accident. Henry Darrow had not been exceeding the speed limit when he passed the old two-seater. But he had a date with destiny. And kept it on time.

  Had there been no rain that day, or had the lane been closed as scheduled for resurfacing, or had the old two-seater maintained the minimum speed in the left-hand lane, Henry Darrow would not have been exasperated enough to pass, would not have skidded on the slick paving, would not have crashed into the guard rail, would not have fractured his skull so that a bone fragment pressed against the brain pan; had the accident occurred even half a mile further up the arterial road, Henry Darrow would not have been sent to the one hospital in the area equipped with a special electro-encephalograph.

  As things came to pass, this was how his accident was to occur: exactly how. In fact, he had jotted down the exact time in his astral notebook: 10:02:50 post meridian. He had also reminded himself that day not to take the arterial route back into Jerhattan but he had not foreseen one slight delay at the gasoline station which caused him to change his mind and take the fateful route, forgetful of his own prognostication.

  Of course, since it was a major turning for him as well as millions of other people, he could never have avoided the accident. Which is why his subconscious—or so it is maintained—prevented him from remembering his forecast at the critical moment.

  Henry Darrow was therefore injured, seriously, with minor fractures in the left leg as well as the depressed fragment of skull bone. Had Henry been fully conscious during surgery, he would have assured the surgeons that, despite the severity of the wound, he would live. They would have been dubious. Henry Darrow knew when he was going to die—from myocardial infarction, some fifteen years, four months, and nine days in the future.

  He couldn’t tell them since the cranial pressure affected his speech center and he was mercifully unaware of his surroundings. Brain surgery can be a harrowing experience.

  The operation was technically successful and Henry was assigned a bed in the intensive care ward, cardiac and encephalographic monitors keeping close track of his vital systems. The Southside General Hospital boasted the very latest technology, including one of the ultra-sensitive electroencephalographs, familiarly known as “Gooseggs.” The Goosegg equipment was developed during the Apollo flights in the 70s, to monitor the effects of the mysterious “lights” which periodically afflicted the astronauts, and to record any suspected damage by cosmic radiation to the brain tissue. The ultra sensitive equipment was primarily used now in hospitals to detect brain damage to newborn infants suffering oxygen starvation during birth, or, as in Henry Darrow’s case, brain injuries where similar oxygen deprivation, bleeding, and pressure must be ascertained.

  The intensive care nurse on duty when Darrow regained his sense after surgery was, as Destiny preordained, Molly Mahony, a rather plain girl who good-naturedly bore a lot of teasing from her colleagues for her avowed dedication to nursing. She was invariably assigned the critical cases because she had a knack of pulling them through the crises.

  “Dr. Scherman, would you look at the print-out on Mr. Darrow’s EEG?” she said when the resident checked in at her station. “The alphas are unusually strong for a man as critically injured as he, aren’t they?”

  Scherman looked obediently at the graphs, nodded sagely and then gave her a wink. “He been conscious at all? Giving you a line?”

  Molly shook her head, very serious though she knew he was teasing her. Scherman always did. “He’s not regained consciousness, Dr. Scherman. I’m to notify Dr. Wahlman when he does. But should I give him a ring about these readings?”

  “Ah, don’t bother, Molly. That one’s lucky he can print anything out on the Goosegg. You’d’ve thought he’d’ve known better.”

  “Better? About what? He was an accident casualty, wasn’t he?”

  “Better about going out at all. He’s Henry Darrow, the astrologer. Christ, it costs a fortune to consult him about your future.” Scherman snorted. “And he couldn’t cast his own properly.”

  Scherman left after a cursory glance at the other i.c. patients. Molly Mahony looked with renewed interest at the brain injury. She knew of
Henry Darrow, though she wouldn’t have admitted it to many. No more than she would have admitted to anyone that she felt she had the gift of healing. Unlike her grandmother who’d had no medical background and ran into problems with her “healing hands,” Molly had professional cachet and knew best how and when to apply her “whammy.”

  Having a unique talent, Molly was keenly interested in all the paranormal manifestations. In her lexicon, the astrologist merely used the signs of the zodiac to focus a precognitive gift, one fortunately more scientifically based than tea-leaf reading or card-telling. Just as the nursing profession allowed her to focus her healing talent on a scientific basis. So she knew of Henry Darrow and now tiptoed, like an awed sycophant, to the bedside and stared down at a face she hadn’t noticed before.

  His face had character even in lax-jawed abnormal coma. The eye-sockets were black and blue pits, and here and there a trace of blood had escaped the emergency clean-up. It was unfair of her to look at him in such a condition. She laid the back of her hand gently against his cheek, not liking the color of his skin. She flicked back the sheet, took a fold of the pectoral skin, and gave it a brutal twist Well, at least he had reactions. She patted the sheet into place and stroked his cheek again.

  The cardiograph pulsed slow but regular, though there were traces in the reading that spelled the beginnings of arteriosclerosis. No more than would be apparent in any reading of a forty-two-year-old heart which had lived well and hard.

  Now she placed strong, slender fingers on his temples, pressing lightly, trying to “feel” where the real injury was. Not that which the surgeons had corrected when they removed the splinter and released the pressure on the brain. But the psychic injury, the essential blow to the vitalities of the man, which had been shocked by the proximity of death, by the exigency of the operation—that ultimate violation of personal integrity.

  So often in her reading of case histories, she’d seen the simple term “heart failure,” or the more complex medical annotation of heart stoppage for a variety of physically inexplicable and unnecessary reasons. Shock, they would term it for lack of better explanation, “the patient died of shock.” Fright, Molly called it. When a patient of hers retreated from reality in this sort of fright, Molly would draw that violated integrity back again with her Talent.

  The response to her healing touch on Henry Darrow’s brow was different and puzzling. The cardiogram etched bolder, stronger peaks and the Goosegg made frantic passes on all four recording bands.

  Henry Darrow’s eyelids flickered, opened, and a faint smile crossed his lips.

  “What the hell hit me?” he asked.

  “You hit you,” Molly replied, “on the center post of your car when you crashed into the guard rails, Mr. Darrow. Head ache?”

  “Christ yes!” He moaned and tried to reach upward.

  “Don’t. You’ve suffered a severe concussion, head lacerations, your left leg is fractured …”

  There was mischief in the clear green eyes that met Molly’s. “You’re not supposed to tell me such things, are you?”

  Molly smiled. “You know anyhow. And you really ought to pay more attention to your own predictions, Mr. Darrow.”

  The Goosegg chattered crazily and Molly whirled to see what was happening. But Henry Darrow was grabbing her arm, his eyes widening with bewildered surprise and incredulity.

  “You’re a Gemini. What’s your name? You’re going to marry me.”

  Love at first sight is a rare enough incident, particularly in a hospital setting, despite what the romances say. But far rarer was the scientific accident that proved a long suspected truth. For what had registered on the Goosegg’s chart was indisputable proof that the parapsychic talent exists. Henry Darrow had a precognitive experience when he looked at Molly Mahony as a person, not just the nurse in attendance and “knew” she would be his wife.

  They did marry, as soon as his leg was out of the cast. Marriage was not the only thing Henry foresaw for Molly: he knew, too, her date of death, a fact he never disclosed to her. Talents, he learned very shortly, had to discount such precogs in their own lives if they were to operate efficiently for others. Molly was treasured, loved and cherished all the days of her life by her husband because he knew how little of her time he would enjoy.

  The significance of the Goosegg’s remarkable activity did not immediately impinge on Henry’s awareness. To Molly Mahony belongs all the credit, therefore, for lifting the parapsychic function from the realm of chicanery to science.

  For starters, Molly was fascinated with the unusual strength and pattern of Henry’s EEG charts. She couldn’t dismiss, as Dr. Scherman had, the variations. In her favor was a natural inclination to place Henry Darrow’s mind into an exceptional category. Added to that, she knew Henry’d had the precognition of their marriage at the precise moment the Goosegg went wild. At the very first opportunity she tried an empiric experiment. She attached the electrodes to her own skull the next time she had occasion to exert her own ability in the intensive care ward. A similar variation occurred in her reading; not as intense as Henry’s, but significant. She took several more of herself, and copied those portions of Henry’s records which showed this curious excitation.

  She was rather surprised that Dr. Wahlman, Henry’s surgeon, did not cancel the Goosegg monitoring when Henry appeared to have recovered from the worst of the concussion. She wondered if Wahlman was as interested in the EEG variation as she was.

  Henry had two more precognitive incidents before she felt she could approach Dr. Wahlman with her private conclusions.

  “For my own information, Dr. Wahlman, what is the significance of this activity in an EEG?”

  “Well, now,” said Wahlman, taking the graphs diffidently and studying them in a manner which told Molly that he hadn’t a clue. “To be frank, Mahony, I don’t know. This particular sort of print-out usually occurs just prior to death. And Darrow’s very much alive.” The surgeon looked towards Henry’s closed door with some irritation. Henry had insisted on pursuing his avocation of charting horoscopes, had even imported his camputer, embarking on a cerebrali activity which apparently had no deleterious effects on his rapid recovery but did not strike Wahlman as exactly the sort of occupation suitable to a man recovering from a near-fatal head injury.

  “And these?” Molly showed him her own graphs.

  “Whose are these? A terminal reading? No, couldn’t be. The alpha’s too intense. What are you up to, Mahony?”

  “I’m not certain, doctor, but I do know that when Mr. Darrow is … hardest at work, that’s when this sort of variation occurs.”

  “Jasus help us, the damned Goosegg’s queer for astrology?”

  Molly smiled and apologized for bothering the surgeon with anomalies.

  “Mahony, if you weren’t the best post-operative nurse we have, I’d tell you to bug off. But if you have any idea, any unreasonable idea, why that kind of reading occurs, would you please let me in on the secret?”

  She let Henry in first.

  “The moment you woke up after your accident and asked was I Gemini and then said I was going to marry you, was that a precog?”

  “Fact, my love—fact!”

  “No, Henry, stop that now. Later. Answer me. Was your precognitive faculty at work?”

  “Violently.” The modified bandage on his head gave him a slightly rakish look but he stopped caressing her, responding to her serious mood.

  “And, for instance, when Mrs. Rellahan was here, you told me that you had an intense prevision …”

  “Hmmmm.” Henry’s mouth tightened slightly with dislike.

  “This is what the Goosegg printed out. See, here the rapid needle, strong strokes, the length of the pattern … And, in these …”

  “That’s not my pattern, too, is it? Quite a difference.”

  “No, that’s my brain waves. And this is what happens when I’m healing.”

  Henry looked slowly up at Molly, an incredulous joy brightening his eyes, a lig
ht suffusing his face that rewarded Molly for her efforts and intuition.

  “Molly, my own heart’s darling, do you know what we have here?”

  The world in general remained skeptical. Fortunately Henry Darrow cared very little for the world’s thoughts but he was able to produce proof to a powerful, wealthy few that the parapsychic faculty existed in certain individuals and could be manifested at will.

  A whole new line of research was instigated by those private persons and concerns which had long hoped for scientific recognition of the paranormal abilities.

  “I’ve always had a presentiment of Destiny, of being on the threshold of some vast important breakthrough,” Henry told Molly during the early hectic days shortly before they formed the first Parapsychic Center. “Most megalomaniacs do, too, and your psychotic paranoids like Nero, Napoleon, Hitler and Kyudu. That’s why I had that team of psychiatrists examine my mental health with fine Freudian tongs. Nonetheless it’s a prejudicial admission. D’you know, I’ve been afraid to forecast my own future too far in advance now? Some details are unwise for any man to know …” He looked with unfocused eyes at the blank wall in front of them for a moment before he smiled reassuringly at her. “I’ve been a dilettante up till now and my critics can say either that I gained my wits in that accident, or lost the few I had, but that event was the threshold of my … of our destiny.”

  “Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead,” Molly replied, gesturing theatrically.

  “And torpedoes there will be,” Henry agreed grimly.

  “I thought you said you didn’t see far in advance …”

  “For myself, I meant. Not for what we must do.” He was silent again for a moment. “God, it’s β going to be fun.”

  Molly looked at the amusement in his eyes, the anticipatory gleam of malice. “For whom?” she asked.

  His eyes sparkled as he turned his gaze back to her.

  “For us,” he said, hugging her affectionately, “for all of us,” and he meant the newly recruited Talents. “We may perceive the outcome, but half the fun, most of the fun in life, is getting there. And I’ve got just enough time.”