To Ride Pegasus Page 6

  The party consequently generated little joviality despite the abundance of liquor and exotic foods on the sideboard. George ate sparingly, drank slowly. Anything he consumed these days, he complained, tasted sour or flat or insipid and caused heartburn.

  Conversations were conducted in sepulchral tones and languished easily. The occasional laugh was quickly suppressed. Only Henry Darrow contrived to look at ease though Molly knew, by the way he rubbed his thumb and index finger together constantly, that he was in a highly nervous condition. She didn’t dare touch him since she was not a whit less distraught herself, and would only double Henry’s tension. The person who was suffering most was young Daffyd op Owen. She had become very fond of the sensitive young man and wished that he didn’t have to be present. He’d not had time to learn to shield himself, certainly not in such an emotionally loaded situation as this. Daffyd was visibly sweating, yet gamely trying to simulate proper party behavior as he chatted with another young Talent, a precog named Mara Canning.

  As the appointed time drew nearer, any semblance of normality dwindled: efforts to keep party talk going faltered. Everyone had one eye on the clock and the other on George Henner.

  “You’re supposed to be happy,” George Henner complained when the current silence remained unbroken for sixty-four seconds. “My death means you’re all safely ensconced here.” His scowl was ambiguous. Then he pointed a finger at Henry. “So tell me, Hank, if you lose the wager, where will you go? I …” and he laughed hollowly, “or my executors expect you to vacate the premises … immediately.”

  “And we will I’ve assembled every telekinetic we’ve got … and a flock of physical muscle men. We can clear the premises in an hour, I’m told. You will grant us that much time?”

  Henner grunted, then brightly asked where the new Center would be located.

  “I’ve a site upstate seventy miles: woods, a small lake, very pastoral. The disadvantage being the distance to commute. You know what copter traffic is like over the City and the Talents are contracted to be at work on time … no matter what.”

  Henner’s chair had been wired to monitor his life-systems, and the results were broadcast on a screen visible anywhere in the room. George glanced up at it incuriously.

  “All systems still go?” he asked, swinging around to the nearest medical man who, startled, nodded “Three minutes and counting, Henry?”

  “George, may I remind you that this excitement is bad for you?” Henry said.

  “Excitement bad for me? Goddamn you, Darrow, it’s kept me alive months past the estimate those jokers gave me. You’ve kept me alive, damn your eyes.”

  “Damn ’em?” Henry laughed. “That was the point, George, and you’ve admitted it before impartial witnesses, too.”

  Henner pursed his thin, bloodless lips, glaring at various people in the room, unsatisfied with his present victim’s reactions and unable to vent his feelings on anyone better suited than Henry. His restless, probing glance fell briefly on Molly.

  “Having to leave here will put your program back, won’t it?”

  Henry shrugged. “For this decade, perhaps yes. The new location will be too far for prospective Talents in the subbie class to come for the test. We can have mobile units … once we have the personnel. Trouble is the units have to be especially constructed …”

  “Yes, yes, you’ve told me all that.” George flounced around in his chair, seeking a new or comfortable position as well as another victim. But he returned to Henry. “You’ll be sorry you’ve kept me alive. In exactly two minutes and four seconds …”

  “No, George, I won’t ever be sorry for your life. Only sorry for your death.”

  “I can believe that!”

  “Indeed you can!” cried Molly, unable to bear George’s taunting acrimony.

  “Molly …” George’s voice entreated her and she instinctively stepped toward him, her hands outstretched to give the comfort which had often eased him. But he leaned away, suddenly suspicious even of her. Her hands flew to her mouth as the rebuff wounded her. But his reaction broke Henry’s tight control.

  “Damn it, George, she only wants to help.”

  “Help me? Live? Or die!?”

  Molly began to cry, turning towards the wall. But Henry took her in his arms, for once the comforter.

  “Molly didn’t deserve that from you, George. The wager was with me!”

  “He didn’t mean it that way, Henry,” said young op Owen, the words bursting from his lips, as if he’d been holding back for some time the desire to speak out.

  Henner nodded, his face flushed with what Dai op Owen afterwards said was remorse. But the monitors began flashing warning signals.

  “Hell, Molly,” George began in a choked voice, “I don’t distrust you.” Then the death alarm went off. “Ha! The appointed minute … And I’m alive! You’re wrong, Henry Darrow. You and all your tea-leaf, table-tipping crystal-gazing …”

  At precisely 9:00:30, George Henner’s heart gave a massive contraction and stopped. Cameras on the dead man recorded that his hand raised slightly, towards Henry and Molly before the dead body collapsed.

  Accustomed as they were to the death processes, the physicians in attendance were held motionless by the dramatic circumstances. Gus Molnar reacted first, hand moving towards the adrenalin syringe.

  “No!” cried Dai op Owen, stepping forward, his hand outstretched “He wants to die. He doesn’t want to win the wager.”

  “My God,” cried one of the physicians, pointing to the screen. “Look at the Goosegg. It’s gone wild. The mind’s still alive … No. Consciousness has gone. But God, look at the graph.”

  “Let him go. He wants to go,” Daffyd op Owen was saying.

  Molnar looked first towards Henry whose face was expressionless, then at the other physicians staring at the monitor readings.

  “That means the brain’s dead, doesn’t it?” asked LEO Commissioner Mailer, pointing to the Goosegg graph now scribing straight lifeless lines.

  Two of the medical men nodded.

  “Then he’s dead,” said Mailer, glancing towards the Governor who nodded accord. “I’d say you won the bet, Darrow.”

  “The wager said ‘minute’, I trust, not second?” asked one of the Senators.

  “He shouldn’t’ve excited himself like that,” a doctor muttered. “This party was a mistake. Of course we weren’t consulted on that. But it set up circumstances which would obviously result in overstimulation, certain death for a man in Henner’s condition.”

  “Or, there’s the voodoo element in this,” another physician said without rancor. “Tell a victim often enough that he’ll be dead at such and such a time and the subconscious takes over and kills the man.”

  “Not in this instance,” said Gus Molnar, loudly and belligerently. “And there’s ample medical substantiation, including your own remarks” he added, pointing at the voodoo adherent, “that the stimulation provided by the original bet kept George Henner alive long past his own medical men’s estimate. The bet did not cause his death, it caused his life.”

  No one ventured to refute that statement.

  “I believe,” spoke up one of the attorneys present, “that the autopsy was to be performed immediately?”

  As if on cue, two men appeared from the hallway, wheeling a stretcher. Silently they approached, their passage unimpeded as guests stepped aside hastily. The body was laid on the stretcher in silence. But, as the men took their positions to leave, Molly broke from Henry’s embrace. With gentle fingers, she closed the dead man’s eyes. The tears streamed down her face as she kissed George on the forehead. The stretcher glided out of the room. No one spoke until the last sound of footsteps in the hall was gone.

  “Mr. Darrow,” said the attorney, his voice sounding abnormally loud after the requiem silence, “I was enjoined by Mr. Henner to make a few announcements at this time usually reserved until several days hence. I was to tell you that this was one wager he didn’t wish to win and hoped h
e wouldn’t: no matter what indication he gave to the contrary. He said that you were sportsman enough, Mr. Darrow, to appreciate the fact that he had to try to win.” The attorney turned to the physician who had brought up the voodoo insinuation. “He also ordered me to counteract any attempt to bring charges resulting from a misinterpretation of today’s sad occasion. He empowered me to say that he had implicit trust in the integrity of all members of the Parapsychic Center. We,” and he gestured towards his colleagues, “are to be the executors of Mr. Henner’s estate, the bulk of which, excluding a few behests and excluding these grounds now the irrevocable property of the North American Center for Parapsychic Talents, is to go into a Trust Fund, providing legal assistance to anyone registered with the Center who may be imprisoned or charged with damages or lawsuits following the professional use of their Talent, until such time as specific laws are promulgated to give the Talents professional immunity.” The lawyer gave Henry a wry grin. “He said, and I quote, ‘If you ride a winged horse, you’d better have a wide net when you fall. And that takes money!’

  “He also said that after he was dead,” and the lawyer faltered, embarrassed by the inadvertent rhyme, “he said the party was to begin. That this was to be considered a joyous occasion …”

  “He was glad,” Daffyd op Owen said, and his rather homely face lit with happiness. “That was so astonishing. His mind, the thoughts were happy, so happy at the moment of death. He was happy, I tell you. I know he was glad!”

  “Thank God!” was Henry Darrow’s fervent prayer. He raised his untouched drink. “A toast, ladies and gentlemen.” Glasses obediently were lifted. “To those who ride the winged horse!”

  One after another the glasses followed Henry’s into the fireplace of Beechwoods to preserve the tribute to George Henner’s memory.

  2

  A Womanly

  Talent

  A Womanly Talent

  “If you were one whit less honorable, Daffyd op Owen,” exclaimed Joel Andres heatedly, “you and your whole Center could go … go fly a kinetic kite.”

  The passionate senator was one of those restlessly energetic men who gave the appearance of continuous motion even in rare moments of stasis. Joel Andres was rigid now—with aggravation. The object of his frustration, Daffyd op Owen, Director of the East American Parapsychological Research and Training Center, was his antithesis, physically and emotionally. Both men, however, had the same indefinable strength and purposefulness, qualities which set them apart from lesser men.

  “I can’t win support for my Bill,” Andres continued, trying another tack and pacing the thick-piled green carpeting of op Owen’s office, “if you consistently play into Mansfield Zeusman’s hands with this irrational compulsion to tell everything you know. If only on the grounds that what you ‘know’ is not generally acceptable as reliable ‘knowledge.’

  “And don’t tell me that familiarity breeds contempt, Dave. The unTalented are never going to be contemptuous of the psychic abilities, they’re going to continue being scared stiff. It’s human nature to fear—and distrust—what is different Surely,” and Andres flung his arms wide, “you’ve studied enough behavioral psychology to understand that basic fact.”

  “My Talent permits me to look below the surface rationalizations and uncover the …”

  “But you cannot read the minds of every single one of the men who must vote on this Bill, Dave. Nor can you alter their thinking. Not with your thinking and your ethics!” Joel was almost derisive as he pointed a nicotined finger accusingly at his friend. “And don’t give me that wheeze about lawmakers being intelligent, thoughtful men!”

  Op Owen smiled tolerantly at his friend, unaffected by the younger man’s histrionics. “Not even when Senator Zeusman steals a march on us with that so apt quotation from Pope?”

  Andres made a startled noise of exasperation, then caught the look in the other’s eyes and laughed.

  “Yeah, he sure caught me flatfooted there.” He deepened his voice somewhat to mimic the affected bass of Mansfield Zeusman:

  “ ‘Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

  A hero perish or a sparrow fall …’

  “What a rallying cry that is! Why didn’t I think of it first? Mind you,” and Andres was deadly serious again, “that quote is pure genius … for the opposition. Spikes our pitch in a dozen places. The irony is that it would be just as powerful for us if we’d only thought of it first. Dave, won’t you reconsider,” Joel asked, leaning across the table to the telepath, “eliminating the precogs from the Bill? That’s what’s hanging it up now in Committee. I’m sure I could get it put on …”

  “The precogs need the legal protection most of all,” op Owen replied with unusual vehemence, a momentary flash of alarm crossing his face.

  “I know, I know,” and Andres tossed a hand ceiling-ward in resignation. “But that’s the facet of the parapsychic that scares—and fascinates—people most.”

  “And that is exactly why I insist we be as candid as possible on all phases of the extrasensory perception Talents. Then people will become as used to them as to ‘finders,’ ‘ports’ and ‘paths.’ Henry Darrow was so right about that.”

  Joel Andres whirled back to the desk, gripping the edges fiercely. “The prophet Darrow notwithstanding, you don’t tell suspicious, frightened people everything. They automatically assume you’re holding something back because they would. No one dares to be so honest anymore. Therefore they are sure that what you’re withholding is far worse than what you’ve readily admitted.” He caught the adamant gleam in Daffyd’s eye and unexpectedly capitulated. “All right. All right. But I insist that we continue to emphasize what the other Talents are already able to do … in their narrow specialized ways. Once people can stomach the idea that there are limits on individual psionic Talents, that all Talents are not mind readers cum weight throwers cum fire dowsers cum crystal-ball-seers, all rolled up into one frightening package, they’ll start treating them as you want Talents treated: as professional specialists, trained in one area of a varied profession and entitled to professional immunity in that area if they are licensed and registered with the Centers. Don’t,” and the hand went up again as Daffyd tried to interrupt, “tell them you’re experimenting to find out how to broaden every Talented mind. Don’t ask for the whole piece of bread with jam on it, Dave! You won’t get it, but you will get protection for your people in the practice of their speciality, even your precogs, I’ll bear down heavily on the scientific corroboration of authentic foresights,” and Andres began to pace a tight rectangle in front of op Owen’s desk, his dark head down, his gestures incisive, “the use of computers to correlate details and estimate reliablity of data, the fact that sometimes three and four precogs come up with the same incident, seen from different angles. And most importantly—that the Center never issues an official warning unless the computer agrees that sufficient data coincides between Incident and reality …”

  “Please emphasize that we admit to human fallibility and use computers to limit human error.”

  Joel frowned at op Owen’s droll interjection. “Then I’ll show how the foresight prevented or averted the worst of the incidents. That Monterey Quake is a heaven-sent example. No heroes perished, even if a few sparrows did fall from gas discharges.”

  “I thought it was the meddling with the sparrow’s fall that perturbs Senator Zeusman” Daffyd remarked wryly. “For want of that seed, the grain won’t sprout …”

  “Hmmm, yes, it does! ‘What will be, will be,’ ” and Andres mimicked Zeusman’s voice again.

  “Since he initiated Pope,” said op Owen, “I’d reply ‘Whatever is, is right.’ ”

  “You want me to turn Papist now, huh?” Joel grinned wickedly.

  Daffyd chuckled as he continued, “Pope also advises, ‘Be candid where we can but vindicate the ways of God to man!’ ”

  The gently delivered quote had an instant effect on the senator, comparable to touching a match to a one-second fuse.
Midway to explosion, Andres snapped his mouth shut, sighed extravagantly and rolled his slightly yellowed eyes heavenwards.

  “You are the most difficult man to help, Daffyd op Owen!”

  “That’s only because I’m aware how carefully we must move in the promulgation of this Bill, Joel. I don’t want it backfiring at the wrong time, when some of the basic research now in progress becomes demonstrable. The Talents can’t be hamstrung by obsolete statutes imperfectly realized on a scrabbling compromise basis.”

  “Dave, you want to run before you can walk?”

  “No, but trouble has been foreseen.”

  “Darrow again, huh? Or are you hoist on your own petard?” Joel waggled a finger triumphantly. “Trouble stemming from current non-protection. Go cast up a precog after the Bill is passed.”

  “Ah-ha” and Daffyd mimicked Joel now, “but we don’t see the Bill passing!”

  That rendered Andres speechless.

  “And we are hoist on our own petard,” the telepath continued with a hint of sorrowful resignation in his voice, “because all our preventive methods are affecting the future, unfortunately, much as Senator Zeusman presented the syndrome in his Sparrow’s Fall peroration. That was such a masterful speech,” op Owen said with rueful envy. “Valid, too, for as surely as the Center issues a warning, allowing people a chance to avert or prevent tragedy, they have already prejudiced the events from happening as they were foreseen. That’s the paradox. Yet how, how can an ethical man stand aside and let a hero perish, or even a sparrow fall, when he knows that he can prevent unnecessary or premature loss.”

  “The Monterey Quake could not have been prevented,” Joel reminded him, then blinked in amazement. “You’re not holding out on me, are you? You haven’t found a kinetic strong enough to hold the earth’s surface together?”

  Dave’s laughter was a spontaneous outburst of delight at his friend’s discomposure.