Pegasus in Flight (25 page)

He came right up to her so that she had to look about, to acknowledge his proximity.

“The hardest thing in dealing with you Talents is to catch you when no one else is listening,” he began. His blue eyes held a very intense look. He took the saucepan away from her and returned it to the soapy water, then put both hands on her arms and turned her slightly but decisively toward him. “Pete and Johnny are so involved in a rehash of my pratfall, they couldn’t be paying attention to anything else.” With a little pressure of his hands, he pulled her against him.

Johnny:
Don’t you dare be coy!

Rhyssa:
Get out of my head, Johnny Greene.

Peter:
Ah, just when it’s getting interesting. How’ll I ever learn how it’s done!

Rhyssa:
Break off! Both of you! If I feel so much as a tendril of thought . . .

Johnny:
I think she means it!

Peter:
I
know
she does!

Her mind was filled with a deafening silence.

“They’re not,” Rhyssa assured him.

“I’ve been told and warned, obliquely and right to my face, that I’ve no right to ask a woman of your obvious Talent, and talents, to marry a man without an ounce of the right stuff in him.”

Rhyssa felt a surge of anger flare deep inside. She wondered who had been inhibiting this wonderful, caring man—especially considering all he had done to aid Talents. Then she willed him not to stop talking such marvelously romantic stuff and tilted her head up encouragingly. She shivered with anticipation.

“But I think such a decision is up to you and me,” he went on. “And I’m so totally besotted with you that I can’t think straight when you’re in the same room with me, and I don’t think of much else but you when we’re apart. Rhyssa Owen, would you even consider marrying me?”

“What took you so many eons to ask?” she replied, folding her arms about his neck and grinning up at him. With a gladness that seemed to emanate from every pore of him, he clasped her firmly in his arms and kissed her with a great deal of entirely satisfactory expertise, just as if he had read her mind.

CHAPTER 15

Sascha!

He could not ignore Dorotea’s call, but it was coming at an awkward moment. He lifted his hand to signal to Budworth and Sirikit for a slight break in their discussion.

Dorotea’s mental tone was colored by vexation.
As you showed her how to use her wristband to purchase damned near anything anywhere, you may now teach her thrift and budgeting. And some sense of order in her own room! There’s not an inch of space that isn’t stacked ceiling-high with “bargains.”

Sascha:
Where is she?

Dorotea, at the end of her patience:
Trying on clothes while viewing today’s lessons!

“Look, Bud, run those ethnic groupings again,” Sascha ordered. “We’ve at least got a statistical forecast of how many psionic Talents each generation has produced since Darrow and op Owen’s time. Now let’s break it down into individual Talent manifestations: precogs, finders, affinities, kinetics, telepaths, telempaths.”

Budworth shrugged equably and began to formulate the program.

“I still don’t know
how,
” Sirikit said in her soft, lilting tones, “that’s going to help us discover Talent in the Linears.”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s gotta be a fire or two,” Sascha commented cryptically as he exited. But his mind was already on one particular Talent who had come so far from her early years in the Linears.

Since that fateful shopping trip three weeks before, Tirla had discovered a new pastime that almost rivaled her hunger for learning. At first, Dorotea had been amused. “It’s hunger of another sort: acquisition. It’ll pass.”

Cass had accompanied her on two more expeditions, showing her how to use the subway transport, and thought it was fun to watch Tirla slip into the most exclusive shops and boutiques. Then she had started shopping on her own, and scoffed when Dorotea worried that child-stealers would snatch her.

“Snatch me? Not likely,” Tirla replied scathingly. “I can smell their sort coming on the streets. I’m safe in the malls.”

But the malls were not free from all peril, for she was detained twice by overzealous officials and, to her credit, had waited patiently until someone—usually Sascha—arrived from the Center to verify her right to wear the ID bracelet and make charges against the Center’s account.

She was more amused by the detentions than alarmed, and determined to enjoy her new pastime. Certainly she was not deterred from her expeditions, and since Sascha backed Cass’s opinion that Tirla was capable of handling herself, Dorotea’s apprehension waned. Invariably, Tirla ended her afternoons at the Old-Fashioned Parlor. When Tirla announced that she was going to work her way right through the five pages of confectionery selections, Dorotea had laughed.

“It might put a little weight on those bird bones of hers, and she always eats her dinner,” she said. “I wish she would put on weight. What must those shop attendants think when that child looks half-starved all the time?”

Dorotea was standing in the living room when Sascha arrived in answer to her summons, and she pointed sternly toward Tirla’s room. Sascha tapped on the door, and Tirla’s cheerful hum broke off.

“Who is it?” There was always that note of apprehension when the girl was caught unawares. Once she could break into the telepathic mode that Sascha was certain she possessed, she would rarely be caught off-guard again.

“Sascha!”

“Just a minute.”

For just a moment, Sascha thought he caught a stray coy thought, and then the door opened, in stages, because Tirla had to rearrange things to get it wide enough for him to enter. Sascha looked in and groaned.

“Tirla, what happened to the kid who had to be coaxed into buying more than one outfit?” It was the first thing that came into his head, and it was probably not at all the way to handle the situation.

Dorotea, in disgust:
Ham-handed twit!

Tirla blinked at Sascha. “But you told me I could shop whenever I wanted to. Just look what I found today!” And she held up a pair of stiletto-heeled sandals with jeweled straps. “And they fit. They didn’t cost much, because the shopkeeper had had them around for decades and practically gave them to me. Aren’t they lovely? D’you want to see them on? They make me much taller.”

“I’m sure they do, Tirla, but to be candid, they’re not the sort of thing a girl your age should wear.”

“They fit!” she repeated as if that were the most important aspect.

“Tirla! Is there no place I can sit down in here? And that’s what has Dorotea so upset. You know how neat she keeps everything in the house.”

Dorotea:
That’s right. Blame me.

“While Talents may have what they need, and also what they want, within reason,” he went on, “that’s the operative phrase. This—” He gestured broadly, hooking a hanger and its layers of clothing off the door. The pile tumbled to enlarge a mass of colorful blouses lying beside the door. “This is no longer reasonable!”

Tirla merely looked up at him, her face expressionless, but he sensed so deep a hurt and disappointment that he relented instantly. “I don’t think I can send it all back,” she said. “I’ve tried everything on.”

“Look, chip,” he said, using Cass’s affectionate nickname for her, “sending it all back is not the answer.”

It’s a start!
Dorotea put in.

“Learning to buy wisely is. Some of this stuff—” Sascha pointed to items of intimate apparel in lace and gauze that were far too sophisticated for even a twenty-year-old. “—can be packed up and stored . . .”

Dorotea, acidly:
Where?

“In the vaults.” He began picking up other inappropriate garments. “And we’ll get the clutter down to manageable proportions.” In doing so he exposed a small hill of shoes, of all colors and in a variety of styles that astonished him—and all of them small enough to fit Tirla’s dainty feet.

Dorotea:
Cinderella complex?

Sascha:
Pairs, every single one of them,
he said wryly.

Dorotea:
Then how can they be pairs?

“Five pairs of shoes, no more, Tirla.” He saw her sulky expression. “Five pairs at one time. And ten different outfits in the closet. None of this . . .” He held up an emerald green ball gown with exquisitely detailed beadwork in silver and leaf green. It was exceedingly stylish, and the color was perfect for Tirla—but not until she reached twenty. Eighteen, at least. “I’ll have some trunks sent over so you can put everything away. Then we’re going to sit down and work out a budget.”

“Budget? Like they do for cities and projects?” Surprised, Tirla came out of her sulk.

“Yes. The Center has a budget, I have a budget, Peter has a budget . . .”

Dorotea:
All God’s chillun got budgets!

“Then I won’t be able to go shopping again?”

Sascha was not impervious to her broken voice and her sad expression. “Shop all you want. Look in every damned mall on Manhattan, Long Island, and the Jersey Shore. Just don’t buy anything. Window shop to your heart’s content.”

“Never buy anything again?”

La da da, da da da dah!
Dorotea sang, mimicking a nostalgic violin air.

All right,
Sascha retorted.
And how would you curb a kid who’s never had much in her life and suddenly can have anything she wants?

More or less as you’re doing,
Dorotea admitted.
Just don’t waver at the sight of tears in her big black eyes!

Sascha caught an undertone in Dorotea’s voice that puzzled him. But he ignored it and returned his full attention to Tirla. “No, chip, not never. Just not so much so constantly, things you don’t really need right now, because you’ve got enough—of practically everything, as far as I can see.”

She sank to the edge of her barely visible bed. “But it’s not fun to window shop unless you’ve got someone with you. Where’s Cass? She loves to shop.”

“Cass is out on assignment.”

Tirla cocked her head up at him, no longer a disappointed and confused twelve-year-old. “More kids missing?”

“Not yet,” he said mendaciously. “We want to keep it that way.”

“Is she in a Linear?” Excitement brightened her expression.

Sascha nodded.

Dorotea:
For the love of little apples, don’t tell her where, or she’ll track Cass down.

“Why don’t you let me work undercover with her? I could be her kid and—”

“No!”

Tirla rocked back on the bed at the vehemence of his response. She looked hurt and confused again and even younger than her chronological age.

“Sorry, chip.” Sascha ruffled her sleek and shining hair in an effort to compensate for his tactlessness. “Give yourself a little break. We didn’t catch Yassim, and if he spots you, he’d have you wasted so fast, none of us could help you.”

Tirla noticeably paled.

Dorotea:
Well, she’s still afraid of Yassim!

Tirla seemed so afraid that Sascha gathered her up in his arms and rocked her. “Yassim can’t get you here in the Center, Tirla. You’re safe here. I want to keep you safe so you can grow up and use that rare Talent you have . . . to earn enough money to pay for all you’ve been buying.” He tried to make a joke of it. He felt her stiffen in his arms. “No, not your floaters!” And he had to laugh. The little witch. Her hoard was precious to her, never to be broached. “Just think how little you’d have left if you
had
spent your stash. Think of that the next time you want to buy something. Pretend you’re spending
your
money.”

“I
wouldn’t
spend
my
money,” she mumbled against his chest.

With the slender little body curled trustfully in his lap, Sascha permitted himself just a few moments to caress her hair and savor the feel of her in his arms. Why Tirla? Of all the women in the world, how could this little waif, streetwise and precocious, have become so entangled in his emotions and heart? She could not possibly understand how much she meant to him. She was far too young for that aspect of maturing to have touched her. And yet . . . she responded to him as she did to no one else. With a final little hug, he put her from him as gently as he could. One day, eight or nine years in the future . . .

Dorotea had no comment to make. To his surprise, Tirla obediently began to fold up her possessions, neatly and carefully. Sascha watched for a few more moments and then went to arrange for trunks.

Peter and Rhyssa returned in quiet triumph the day that Cass Cutler reported to Boris that three Neesters and two Hispanics in Linear E were suspiciously more affluent than they had any right to be. Boris decided that he would not darken the happy return with such news and did not even inform Sascha of the event.

Dorotea and Tirla both exclaimed over how well Peter looked, tanned and healthy and moving with more confidence, while Rhyssa listened, an oddly soft smile on her face. Dave Lehardt had remained behind in Florida to finalize his PR campaign, setting the stage for Colonel Johnny Greene to assume the role of Skeleteam.

In his turn, Peter took full notice of Tirla’s new elegance and was amazed that she had shopped the malls herself.

“Well, Sascha took me the first time,” she admitted.

Dorotea, privately to Rhyssa:
And said “Open Sesame,” and in a week Tirla’s room was as full as a bazaar.

Sascha:
I heard that. Knock it off!

Rhyssa:
Did she pick that outfit herself?

Dorotea:
She picked out everything herself and a lot of things a twelve-year-old girl has no need of—yet.

Rhyssa:
She’s got good taste—in what she’s wearing now.

Dorotea:
Good taste all round. Just a trifle sophisticated.

Aware that Sascha was seething, Dorotea changed the subject.

Peter and Tirla slipped out of the room.

“How come you’re allowed to go to the mall all the time?” Peter asked Tirla, envious of her freedom.
He
was never allowed to go anywhere on his own.

Tirla shrugged. “Oh, they tried to tell me how dangerous it was.” She giggled. “As if I didn’t know how to take care of myself in any old Linear. Particularly one as straight as the ones here in Jerhattan.”

“And you go whenever you want?”

“Nearly every day.” She cocked her head at him. “You ever been to the Old-Fashioned Parlor of Gastronomical Delights?”

“Me?” Peter thumped his hand against his chest, then grimaced. He still didn’t have the small-muscle control needed to use just a thumb or a finger. He was feeling aggrieved on several counts. “Oh, I heard about the Parlor.” He pretended indifference, but then his pose faltered. “Is it really that good?”

“Good?” Tirla’s enthusiasm bubbled out of her. “It’s spectacular. You wouldn’t believe the concoctions they serve. ‘The most,’ ” she quoted from the menu, “ ‘scrumptious, delectable monstrosities of confections you’ll ever experience.’ ” Sensing Peter’s longing, Tirla deliberately encouraged it. “Any kind of flavor of ice cream, all homemade, every topping known to man . . .”

“And you just go?”

“Sure. Why not? It’s only four stops away on the subway.” She jerked her thumb at the murmur of adult voices coming from the living room. “Who’d miss us for half an hour, anyway?” When she saw the hesitation on his face, she added almost challengingly, “They’re busy. We’d be back before they’d know we’d gone!”

That decided Peter, though he knew perfectly well that his physical circumstances were far different from Tirla’s. Nevertheless, she was younger than he was, and if she was allowed, he was, too.

They left the house by the side door, Tirla skipping beside Peter in delight at his company. It was going to be such fun showing him just how well she knew her way around.

Peter could sense how pleased Tirla was to be able to take him someplace familiar to her but new to him. So he just smiled as they took their seats on the subway from the Center platform. Other Talents on the same car grinned at the two, sending telepathic greetings and congratulations to Peter, who had learned to assume a modest demeanor in public, even among other Talents.