Synopsis
"[Anne] McCaffrey's world of the Talented is as vivid as that of Pern and its dragons."--Publishers Weekly
Earth has reached its darkest moment. In subterranean warrens, the poor eke out precarious lives where jobs are scarce and children are sold for labor--while on the surface, a privileged few enjoy lives of luxury. As the population surges and unrest spreads, a disaster of epic proportions seems inescapable. The only hope: a platform under construction in space from which starships will be launched to colonize distant planets. But the project is critically behind schedule. In the midst of the chaos, Rhyssa Owen and her fellow Talents--telepaths who read minds, kinetics who manipulate matter, and precogs to whom the future is an open book--struggle to survive. Then two children are discovered whose extraordinary psychic gifts have the potential to avert the looming catastrophe--or hasten its ominous arrival. . . ."synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Anne McCaffrey, one of the world's most popular authors, is best known for her Dragonriders of Pern(R) series. She was the first woman to win the two top prizes for science fiction writing, the Hugo and Nebula awards. She was also given the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement in Young Adult Fiction, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and was named a Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula Grand Master. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1926, McCaffrey relocated to Ireland in the 1970s, where she lived in a house of her own design, named Dragonhold-Underhill. She died in 2011.
From the Back Cover
Earth has reached its darkest moment. In subterranean warrens, the poor eke out precarious lives where jobs are scarce and children are sold for labor -- while on the surface, a privileged few enjoy lives of luxury. As the population surges and unrest spreads, a disaster of epic proportions seems inescapable. The only hope: a platform under construction in space from which starships will be launched to colonize distant planets. But the project is critically behind schedule.
In the midst of the chaos, Rhyssa Owen and her fellow Talents -- telepaths who read minds, kinetics who manipulate matter, and precogs to whom the future is an open book -- struggle to survive. Then two children are discovered whose extraordinary psychic gifts have the potential to avert the looming catastrophe -- or hasten its ominous arrival...
From the Inside Flap
As director of the Jerhattan Parapsychic Center, telepath Rhyssa Owen coordinated the job assignments for psychically gifted Talents. And though she had her hands full dealing with the unreasonable demand for kinetics to work on the space platform that would be humankind's stepping-stone to the stars, she was always ready to welcome new Talents to the Center.
Feisty and streetwise, twelve-year-old Tirla used her extraordinary knack for languages to eke out a living in the Linear developments, where the poor struggled to make ends meet and children were conscripted or sold into menial work programs. Young Peter, paralyzed in a freak accident, hoped someday to get into space where zero gravity would enable him to function more easily. Both desperately needed help only other Talents could provide.
With the appearance in her life of one extraordinary man with no measurable Talent at all, Rhyssa suddenly found herself questioning everything she thought she knew about her people. And when two Talented children were discovered to have some very unusual -- and unexpected -- abilities, she realized that she would have to reassess the potential of all Talentkind...
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Pegasus in Flight
By Anne McCaffreyRandom House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1991 Anne McCaffrey
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-345-36897-3All rights reserved.
They have been at a great feast of
languages, and stolen the scraps.
—William Shakespeare.
CHAPTER 1
Tirla took a quick look from the alley into the Main Concourse of Residential Linear G, then pulled back instantly, flattening her thin twelve-year-old body against the plas-slab wall. Public Health officials were swarming all over, rounding up the early-morning crowd of able-bodied workers who had been scanning the employment board for a day’s work, the mothers with their handicapped kids making their way to the Rehab centers, and the legal children on their way to the Linear’s physical-training facility.
Cautiously she took another look, to see what the PHOs were setting up on their tables: vials and the big compressed-air bottles that operated the hyposprays. She withdrew, having seen enough to recognize another wholesale vaccination effort. Strange, she hadn’t heard of any new ‘mune plagues. To give them their due, PHO was swifter than rumor to avert disaster.
Rapidly Tirla ran through her head her current list of those mothers of illegal children whom she should inform: first, because they would pay her for warning them to hide the kids; second, because those who could afford to would pay her for stealing whatever vaccine was being administered. She counted on her fingers: Elpidia, certainly; the old bouzma, Pilau; Bilala, and Zaveta, Ari-san, and Cyoto—and she had better ask Mama Bobchik if there were newborns, for they would need the Five-shotter. She would want one for herself, as well, and could possibly finagle a box, depending on how the current stuff was packaged. It all depended. Mirda Khan, yes—she had best tell that old wagon right after she warned Mama.
She would have to change into clean clothing issue—she had washed, but this week’s issue was five days old and looked eight. Public Health were quick to notice details like that. Mama Bobchik was always good for fresh wear, especially if Tirla went to her first with her news. This could be a very good day, Tirla thought with a rise of spirits as she slipped back down the alley for the center-shaft emergency stairs on her way down to Mama Bobchik’s pad.
Most of Tirla’s twelve years had been spent in scrounging a totally unofficial living in the multi-ethnic thirty-storied community of the Linears. She could not afford to miss a single trick, like today’s unexpected Public Health roundup, to escape the stringent controls, clever obstacles, and little traps ingeniously set up by the Jerhattan Complex Administration Council and the Law Enforcement and Order Organization to identify and control each member of the restless population.
Officially there had never been a record of Tirla’s birth. She was, however, the fifth child born to Dikka—only the first, Tirla’s brother, Kail, was legal. The government tied a woman off when she gave birth to a second child. Consequently Firza, Lenny, Ahmed, and Tirla had all been born in Dikka’s single-parent squat with the aid of Mama Bobchik, who had had an illegal child every year until her womb had dried up. Kail had been official until Dikka had sold him at ten. Firza had had the use of Kail’s wrist ID for two years until she was profitably disposed of. In the next year, Dikka, Lenny, and Ahmed died of one of the immune plagues that sporadically flared up to decimate the Linears. In the haste and confusion of body disposal, Dikka’s death had not been officially noted. So Tirla had been left with two ID bracelets—a fine legacy. Self-sufficient and resourceful, she had managed to retain the squat, drawing two subsistence rations, until Dikka’s ID was canceled after her failure to appear for a routine medical examination.
Wise in the ways of her society, Tirla had not been caught short by the lockout. She knew Tenancy Articles, Paragraphs, and Subsections by heart, so figuring out the cancellation date had been no problem. Two days prior to the eviction, she moved her few possessions—hotter unit, the best of the sleep sacks, the ‘corder, and the pretties Dikka’s men had given her from time to time—into new quarters five levels below the Main Concourse, in the maintenance segment of Linear G, right beside the charged security grille that protected the engineering section from unauthorized entry. Only a slight and agile person like Tirla could reach the eyrie, where massive ducts formed a broad platform before bending up the inner wall. She patched her hotter and ‘corder wires into the overhead cables, certain that her small use of electricity was unlikely to be discovered, and settled in. She did miss the all-night informational programs on the squat’s tri-d. The big public tri-ds on the Concourse stopped ‘casting at the midnight curfew. Tirla, with her clever, shrewd, and organized mind, was thirsty for knowledge. She even used Kail’s ID to log into school. One of Dikka’s men had said that one had to know the rules before one could break them. Tirla had never forgotten.
For another two years, Kail’s bracelet supplied his small sister with daily subsistence, weekly clothing issue, and other amenities until “Kail” failed to appear at Evaluation Center within three weeks of his sixteenth birthday. The cancellation caused Tirla no problem, for by then she was well-established, almost indispensable to most of the Residential clients and gang bosses in the neighborhood industrial complexes. Her ability to translate any of the nearly ninety dialects and languages used in the subsistence-level Residential Linears saved clients hours at official transspeech centers, or worse, misunderstanding. She knew when to be ingratiating or stand firm. She knew what courtesies were due whom and never failed in performing them. Everyone who knew her knew very well that she was illegal. Because she was so useful to the residents of Linear G, as she would be today with her warning about the Public Healthers, and because officially she did not exist anyway, there was no profit—yet—in reporting her illicit existence.
The various errands she did—and she was scrupulously silent about them—often brought in “floating” credit chips. Floaters were legal tender—Pay to Bearer, untraceable chips that changed hands frequently. Jerhattan Treasury and all the merchant and banking houses wisely ignored the circulation of minor amounts of floaters, just as they ignored the petty small traders as long as they made no trouble and their merchandise was harmless. Tirla, and others like her, relied on floaters to support their illegal existences in the Linears.
Linear G thrust thirty massive levels above the squat, featureless F and H commercial blocks where residents of Linears E, G, and I worked. Once, on a Free Day, while Tirla still had her brother’s ID, she had gone with Mama Bobchik to the Great Palisades Promenade, where thousands upon thousands of people had swarmed to enjoy a brilliant spring day, to overlook the exclusive hives, platforms, and great cone complexes of Manhattan Island, and to ooh and aah at the monorail cars, large and small, that zipped along the tracks which garlanded the buildings like colored tinsel strands. That was the first time Tirla had seen ships floating on water or the great pleasure skycars. There had even been a special issue of holiday food, yards above the standard fare, at dispensing banks. Buril, Mama’s son, had a tripper key that he used on the dispers, so they had managed to stuff themselves before the mechanism’s malfunction alarm was triggered. It had been a super day for Tirla. She had never dreamed that the world was that big.
That was the same day that Buril explained to her all about the space platform that was being built, which needed so many workers. When it was completed, he said, all the people living on Manhattan who had enough credit and were the “right kind” would be able to go off into space and find other worlds to live on. Then all those beautiful buildings would be empty and there would be enough space for everyone crammed into Linear squats to live in proper big apartments with a bedroom for each family member and no more Public Health or LEO men and women tying men and women off, shaming a virile man.
This morning, as Tirla scratched on Mama Bobchik’s door to tell her of the PH presence in the Linear, she heard the old woman gasping and groaning as she struggled off the bedshelf.
“Kto stuchitsya? Perestan’te udaryat’sya. Okh, kak bolit golova!”
Tirla grinned. So Mama had a big head this morning, caused by the vodka she had made from the potatoes Tirla had nicked for her. In that state, she would be easy to wheedle out of a credit.
“It’s Tirla, and the Public Health are already on the Concourse.”
“Boje moi! Eto tak? Have I not enough pain in my life?” But the door was pushed open wide enough for Tirla to slip inside. “What have you said? The Public Health again? So soon? Why?”
“Another vaccination by the looks of it. They’re grabbing everyone, able-bodies, students, handies and their mothers.”
“Ah, we must hurry. Elpidia, Zaveta . . .” Mama Bobchik began reciting the names of her usual maternity patients.
Tirla tugged her arm.
“Nu, what do you want from me?”
“I cannot help unless I have clean issue,” Tirla said, managing to look piteous and sound efficient at the same time.
languages, and stolen the scraps.
—William Shakespeare.
CHAPTER 1
Tirla took a quick look from the alley into the Main Concourse of Residential Linear G, then pulled back instantly, flattening her thin twelve-year-old body against the plas-slab wall. Public Health officials were swarming all over, rounding up the early-morning crowd of able-bodied workers who had been scanning the employment board for a day’s work, the mothers with their handicapped kids making their way to the Rehab centers, and the legal children on their way to the Linear’s physical-training facility.
Cautiously she took another look, to see what the PHOs were setting up on their tables: vials and the big compressed-air bottles that operated the hyposprays. She withdrew, having seen enough to recognize another wholesale vaccination effort. Strange, she hadn’t heard of any new ‘mune plagues. To give them their due, PHO was swifter than rumor to avert disaster.
Rapidly Tirla ran through her head her current list of those mothers of illegal children whom she should inform: first, because they would pay her for warning them to hide the kids; second, because those who could afford to would pay her for stealing whatever vaccine was being administered. She counted on her fingers: Elpidia, certainly; the old bouzma, Pilau; Bilala, and Zaveta, Ari-san, and Cyoto—and she had better ask Mama Bobchik if there were newborns, for they would need the Five-shotter. She would want one for herself, as well, and could possibly finagle a box, depending on how the current stuff was packaged. It all depended. Mirda Khan, yes—she had best tell that old wagon right after she warned Mama.
She would have to change into clean clothing issue—she had washed, but this week’s issue was five days old and looked eight. Public Health were quick to notice details like that. Mama Bobchik was always good for fresh wear, especially if Tirla went to her first with her news. This could be a very good day, Tirla thought with a rise of spirits as she slipped back down the alley for the center-shaft emergency stairs on her way down to Mama Bobchik’s pad.
Most of Tirla’s twelve years had been spent in scrounging a totally unofficial living in the multi-ethnic thirty-storied community of the Linears. She could not afford to miss a single trick, like today’s unexpected Public Health roundup, to escape the stringent controls, clever obstacles, and little traps ingeniously set up by the Jerhattan Complex Administration Council and the Law Enforcement and Order Organization to identify and control each member of the restless population.
Officially there had never been a record of Tirla’s birth. She was, however, the fifth child born to Dikka—only the first, Tirla’s brother, Kail, was legal. The government tied a woman off when she gave birth to a second child. Consequently Firza, Lenny, Ahmed, and Tirla had all been born in Dikka’s single-parent squat with the aid of Mama Bobchik, who had had an illegal child every year until her womb had dried up. Kail had been official until Dikka had sold him at ten. Firza had had the use of Kail’s wrist ID for two years until she was profitably disposed of. In the next year, Dikka, Lenny, and Ahmed died of one of the immune plagues that sporadically flared up to decimate the Linears. In the haste and confusion of body disposal, Dikka’s death had not been officially noted. So Tirla had been left with two ID bracelets—a fine legacy. Self-sufficient and resourceful, she had managed to retain the squat, drawing two subsistence rations, until Dikka’s ID was canceled after her failure to appear for a routine medical examination.
Wise in the ways of her society, Tirla had not been caught short by the lockout. She knew Tenancy Articles, Paragraphs, and Subsections by heart, so figuring out the cancellation date had been no problem. Two days prior to the eviction, she moved her few possessions—hotter unit, the best of the sleep sacks, the ‘corder, and the pretties Dikka’s men had given her from time to time—into new quarters five levels below the Main Concourse, in the maintenance segment of Linear G, right beside the charged security grille that protected the engineering section from unauthorized entry. Only a slight and agile person like Tirla could reach the eyrie, where massive ducts formed a broad platform before bending up the inner wall. She patched her hotter and ‘corder wires into the overhead cables, certain that her small use of electricity was unlikely to be discovered, and settled in. She did miss the all-night informational programs on the squat’s tri-d. The big public tri-ds on the Concourse stopped ‘casting at the midnight curfew. Tirla, with her clever, shrewd, and organized mind, was thirsty for knowledge. She even used Kail’s ID to log into school. One of Dikka’s men had said that one had to know the rules before one could break them. Tirla had never forgotten.
For another two years, Kail’s bracelet supplied his small sister with daily subsistence, weekly clothing issue, and other amenities until “Kail” failed to appear at Evaluation Center within three weeks of his sixteenth birthday. The cancellation caused Tirla no problem, for by then she was well-established, almost indispensable to most of the Residential clients and gang bosses in the neighborhood industrial complexes. Her ability to translate any of the nearly ninety dialects and languages used in the subsistence-level Residential Linears saved clients hours at official transspeech centers, or worse, misunderstanding. She knew when to be ingratiating or stand firm. She knew what courtesies were due whom and never failed in performing them. Everyone who knew her knew very well that she was illegal. Because she was so useful to the residents of Linear G, as she would be today with her warning about the Public Healthers, and because officially she did not exist anyway, there was no profit—yet—in reporting her illicit existence.
The various errands she did—and she was scrupulously silent about them—often brought in “floating” credit chips. Floaters were legal tender—Pay to Bearer, untraceable chips that changed hands frequently. Jerhattan Treasury and all the merchant and banking houses wisely ignored the circulation of minor amounts of floaters, just as they ignored the petty small traders as long as they made no trouble and their merchandise was harmless. Tirla, and others like her, relied on floaters to support their illegal existences in the Linears.
Linear G thrust thirty massive levels above the squat, featureless F and H commercial blocks where residents of Linears E, G, and I worked. Once, on a Free Day, while Tirla still had her brother’s ID, she had gone with Mama Bobchik to the Great Palisades Promenade, where thousands upon thousands of people had swarmed to enjoy a brilliant spring day, to overlook the exclusive hives, platforms, and great cone complexes of Manhattan Island, and to ooh and aah at the monorail cars, large and small, that zipped along the tracks which garlanded the buildings like colored tinsel strands. That was the first time Tirla had seen ships floating on water or the great pleasure skycars. There had even been a special issue of holiday food, yards above the standard fare, at dispensing banks. Buril, Mama’s son, had a tripper key that he used on the dispers, so they had managed to stuff themselves before the mechanism’s malfunction alarm was triggered. It had been a super day for Tirla. She had never dreamed that the world was that big.
That was the same day that Buril explained to her all about the space platform that was being built, which needed so many workers. When it was completed, he said, all the people living on Manhattan who had enough credit and were the “right kind” would be able to go off into space and find other worlds to live on. Then all those beautiful buildings would be empty and there would be enough space for everyone crammed into Linear squats to live in proper big apartments with a bedroom for each family member and no more Public Health or LEO men and women tying men and women off, shaming a virile man.
This morning, as Tirla scratched on Mama Bobchik’s door to tell her of the PH presence in the Linear, she heard the old woman gasping and groaning as she struggled off the bedshelf.
“Kto stuchitsya? Perestan’te udaryat’sya. Okh, kak bolit golova!”
Tirla grinned. So Mama had a big head this morning, caused by the vodka she had made from the potatoes Tirla had nicked for her. In that state, she would be easy to wheedle out of a credit.
“It’s Tirla, and the Public Health are already on the Concourse.”
“Boje moi! Eto tak? Have I not enough pain in my life?” But the door was pushed open wide enough for Tirla to slip inside. “What have you said? The Public Health again? So soon? Why?”
“Another vaccination by the looks of it. They’re grabbing everyone, able-bodies, students, handies and their mothers.”
“Ah, we must hurry. Elpidia, Zaveta . . .” Mama Bobchik began reciting the names of her usual maternity patients.
Tirla tugged her arm.
“Nu, what do you want from me?”
“I cannot help unless I have clean issue,” Tirla said, managing to look piteous and sound efficient at the same time.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Pegasus in Flight by Anne McCaffrey. Copyright © 1991 Anne McCaffrey. Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Search results for Pegasus in Flight: 2 (Talents Saga)
Stock Image
Pegasus in Flight: 2 (Talents
Seller: World of Books (was SecondSale), Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Acceptable. Item in acceptable condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00093083415
Stock Image
Pegasus in Flight: 2 (Talents
Seller: World of Books (was SecondSale), Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Good. Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00087746644
Stock Image
Pegasus in Flight (Talent, Bk. 2)
Seller: Orion Tech, Kingwood, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Mass Market Paperback. Condition: Good. Seller Inventory # 0345368975-3-18838864
Stock Image
Pegasus in Flight (Talent, Bk. 2)
Seller: Your Online Bookstore, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Mass Market Paperback. Condition: Good. Seller Inventory # 0345368975-3-19470656
Stock Image
Pegasus in Flight (Talent, Bk. 2)
Seller: Jenson Books Inc, Logan, UT, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
mass_market. Condition: Good. The item is in good condition and works perfectly, however it is showing some signs of previous ownership which could include: small tears, scuffing, notes, highlighting, gift inscriptions, and library markings. Seller Inventory # 4BQGBJ012EBJ
Stock Image
Pegasus in Flight (Del Rey Books)
Seller: BookHolders, Towson, MD, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Fair. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ][ Ships Daily ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: NONE ] [ Edition: Reprint ] Has some spots on sides of pages Publisher: Del Rey Pub Date: 10/13/1991 Binding: Paperback Pages: 304 Reprint edition. Seller Inventory # 6615617
Stock Image
Pegasus in Flight (Talent, Bk. 2)
Published by
Del Rey (edition Reprint), 1991
ISBN 10: 0345368975
ISBN 13: 9780345368973
Used
Mass Market Paperback
Seller: BooksRun, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Mass Market Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Reprint. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting. Seller Inventory # 0345368975-11-6
Seller Image
Pegasus in Flight (Talent, Bk. 2)
Seller: Greenworld Books, Arlington, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: good. Fast Free Shipping â" Good condition. It may show normal signs of use, such as light writing, highlighting, or library markings, but all pages are intact and the book is fully readable. A solid, complete copy that's ready to enjoy. Seller Inventory # GWV.0345368975.G
Seller Image
Pegasus in Flight (Talent, Bk. 2)
Seller: Greenworld Books, Arlington, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: very_good. Fast Free Shipping â" Very Good condition book with a firm cover and clean pages. Shows normal use and some light wear or limited notes markings. A solid, nice copy to enjoy. Seller Inventory # GWV.0345368975.VG
Seller Image
Pegasus in Flight (Talent, Bk. 2)
Seller: Goodwill of Colorado, COLORADO SPRINGS, CO, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: good. All pages and cover are intact. Dust jacket included if applicable, though it may be missing on hardcover editions. Spine and cover may show minor signs of wear including scuff marks, curls or bends to corners as well as cosmetic blemishes including stickers. Pages may contain limited notes or highlighting. "From the library of" labels may be present. Shrink wrap, dust covers, or boxed set packaging may be missing. Bundled media e.g., CDs, DVDs, access codes may not be included. Seller Inventory # COLV.0345368975.G