To Ride Pegasus Read Online Free PDF

like him. Miserable vibes from him, just miserable!”
    She left the room. Molly quietly began to pack up the Goosegg while the Commissioner stared first at the open door and then at Henry.
    “She operates more efficiently with an occasional word or two of thanks, Mailer. Most people do.” Henry gathered Molly into the curve of his arm, motioned courteously to Jerry to take the Goosegg and wishing Mailer a pleasant good-day, left.
    “Hey, just a minute …”
    Henry turned at the door. “As Babs said, Mailer, you’ve had more than a minute and our time is valuable.”
    “Does Charity have to be sedated again, Gus?” Henry asked the Center’s physician. “We’ve got her a temporarycontract to find out the troublemaker in the Arrow Shirt Company.”
    Gus ducked his head, his face twisted into a grimace, wanting to say no and having to say yes. He leaned against the now flagged door to Charity McGillicuddy’s two roomed accommodation on the living floor of the Center’s warehouse building.
    “Even with the shielding we’ve got, Hank, it’s not enough privacy for the empaths and telepaths. Not enough physical distance. No way to get out and away from ourselves, if you get what I mean. We’re sort of all crammed into this warren despite the conveniences and amenities. You might say, it’s too much of a good thing … too close a buddy-buddy act. Like an overdose of euphorics. Everyone’s high here on sheer good fellowship. And it’s much too much for Charity.”
    Henry looked towards the corridor window with the projection of sunlight on the grass, a huge spreading beech tree, russet against an autumnally blue sky. Though it was so realistic that the leaves moved gently and the angle of sunlight altered slowly, Henry knew it to be only a projection and his mind would not accept the fantasy that deluded millions of warren dwellers.
    “Talent requires certain realities not obtainable in this age,” Gus went on. “And one of the most important is physical freedom and elbow room.” He snorted, aware of the impossibility of fulfilling that requirement in Jerhattan’s overcrowded boundaries.
    “We’ve been offered that old game preserve in …”
    “Too goddamned far to commute and most of us gotta.” Molnar was head neurologist at the Midtown Hospital Center although he spent more time as the Center’s physician.
    “Okay,” Henry said, “I’ll do what I can.”
    “Henry?” Gus eyed his friend suspiciously. “What are you up to now?”
    “Me? Nothing.” Then Henry Darrow assumed a crouched stance and rubbed his hands together, chucklingevilly. “But Destiny … haha HA! I know when we twain shall meet. Soon!”
    Gus rolled his eyes heavenward to deal with Henry Darrow in this whimsical mood.
    “Oh, don’t worry, Gus,” Henry said in a normal voice. “I usually call ’em, you know.”
    Gus nodded sourly.
    “Content yourself,” Henry continued, “with the enticing thoughts of dissecting my brain when I die, and trying to figure out just how I do it.”
    “Ha!”
    “You can’t subpoena Barbara Holland, not on those grounds, Commissioner Mailer,” Henry Darrow said. “But you can hire her services from the Center …”
    “What Center?” demanded Mailer, looking scornfully around the minuscule space that served as Henry’s office.
    “The Center we’ll shortly acquire with the wages you’ll be paying Talents like Barbara, and Titter Beyley and Gil Grade and …”
    “Titter Beyley?” The Commissioner hovered on the verge of apoplexy.
    “Yes, Titter. He drank to stop finding things. Alcohol affects the parapsychic faculty, sometimes it inhibits, as in Titter’s case; sometimes it sharpens.”
    “Now, just a minute, Darrow …”
    “My minutes are valuable, Mailer. I only have so many. You want things and people found: Barbara has that faculty and so does Titter Beyley. Actually Titter’s much better for inanimate objects than Barbara. He doesn’t like people. And the day you