Pegasus in Flight by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online

idle,” Sascha’s voice continued. “This could, in fact, be the break we’ve been waiting for. We got too close. It’d be nice to know—” and at that word the door to Teresa Aiello’s office swung open and Sascha Roznine strode in, smiling at everyone. As he gave his brother’s shoulder a grateful squeeze, he continued, “where exactly we got so close. We’re working on it, and with your assistance, Harv and Teresa, I think we have a line to throw out to those sharks.” His smile took in each of his listeners, but he cocked his head at his brother and winked.
    Slowly a smile began to lighten Boris’s face as he read the detailed thoughts in Sascha’s mind. “Tag kids with strands through the school system? That might just work! We might even catch the bastard child-stealers this time.” Boris leaned forward across the table. “You are all familiar with the restraint filaments that were recently developed? Sometimes those we tangle with the strands escape before they can be secured. A second application has been made with a slightly altered formula, and now the altered strand can be traced for up to six months. There’re certain anomalies to be resolved, but it’s worth the effort to tag every child in the vulnerable group.”
    “You mean, this side of the river?” Teresa waved at the panorama visible from her tower office, the uptown cluster of beehive, cone, and single-tower Residential buildings clearly visible on this bright morning. “But statistically, it’s the illegals in the Linear Residentials who are more at risk.”
    “If we could catch Linear kids to strand ’em,” Boris said, raising his hands palms-up in resignation, “we’d be way ahead. Meanwhile we’ll strand as many kids as we can on both sides of the river and hope.”
    “Hope?” Sascha asked softly.
     
    Rhyssa!
She recognized the mental touch of John Greene, the Talented bodyguard of Secretary of Space Vernon Altenbach.
    We got problems?
she asked.
    Girl, you really deserve all the headaches of administration if you can guess that much from just hearing me speak your name.
    No precog needed, JG, because you never bother me unless there’s political pussyfooting. What is it this time?
    A bill to draft the Talented into whatever position the government needs them!
    Not again?
Rhyssa’s response was half-amused, half-irritated.
    Concerted attempts had been made in the past by government agencies to circumscribe the freedom of choice originally granted to the Talented. That was prior to the point at which the government began to appreciate the applications of Talent—after the days when Daffyd op Owen, her illustrious grandfather, abetted by Senator Joel Andres, had fought to gain legal immunity for Talents exercising their abilities.
    Immunity had been particularly vital for precogs because, when they warned of disasters which were, by those warnings, averted, they had been subjected to expensive and time-consuming lawsuits. There had been attempts since then, from the ridiculous to the deadly serious, to regulate or restrict, all manner of Talents to military, civil service, or mercantile uses.
    But the Talented had always managed, quite legally and with no untoward exercise of their particular abilities, to circumvent such attempts. Many Talents had willingly sacrificed personal freedoms to serve in the public sectors, some on a lifelong basis, to preserve the right for their peers to choose. Rhyssa’s parents had done that, to give her the opportunity to achieve the position she now held.
    Again, and this isn’t funny, Rhyssa,
Johnny Greene went on,
space is in a bind. The platform has to be finished on schedule before the sheer weight of numbers on Earth becomes more unmanageable than it already is.
    So Ludmilla’s been lobbying?
    She’s got some hefty help, and Vernon’s got tremendous pressure on him. I’m the loudest of the Washington/Luxembourg voices, so I’m making the contact with you for the rest of the