McCaffrey, Anne - Pern 17 by McCaffrey Anne

Author:McCaffrey, Anne
Language: eng
Format: epub

back window, his tongue hanging on one side of his mouth in a canine laugh.

"Home, 0 noble Ali," Chuck said to me, settling his arm around my shoulders as I turned the ignition key.

As we pul ed away from the curb, Pat took young Anne from Esther, at which point the baby let out a squal of protest.

"Good heavens," exclaimed Patricia Kel ogg with mock pique, "is that gratitude to the woman who gave you birth?"

A Quiet One

"Have you never ridden a live horse?"

"I achieved the maximum level ..."

"Have you ever ridden a live horse?" the Interviewing Representative had repeated.

Remembering her hours on the mechanical surrogate where she'd learned the basic equitational skil s. Peri said, "I haven't had the opportunity ..."

"Yes, quite. Wel , I suppose that can't be helped.

"There wil be a trial period, you realize?" He kept scrol ing through her file on the recessed screen, which she could not see.

"Yes, I do."

"Wel , then, that's al now, young Peri. You'l receive notification of the decision in two weeks." The Interviewer stood, gave her one of those formal little rictus smiles that Interviewers seemed to cultivate, and she had left with the sense that she had not quite won the last argument. But Peri felt that she had won another major battle in her long, private, quiet struggle to have the career of her choice. Modern parents as wel as modern educational systems had, as their aim, fitted young people to rewarding,

fulfil ing careers in the widest variety of professions in a space-traveling society.

Class trips constantly introduced students to possible career opportunities, taking them to aquaculture farms, space stations, laboratories, hydroponic instal ations. From the day that ten-year-old Peri had visited the Working Farm, her ambition had been to work with horses, whose very existence had recently been under threat. The others on the class trip had fussed and complained about the "smel s," the "stinks," the "stenches," but Peri had rapturously inhaled them ... especial y the lovely odor of the horses. She'd always liked watching them move in the training films or the oldie movies. They were so proud, so regal, so wild.

Alone of her class, she had asked to touch a horse, which had responded to her tentative caresses with a soft nicker that had somehow thril ed her. The feel of the warm muscles under the skin, the bright and intel igent eye of the animal on her, its response to her tentative caress when it snuffled in her hand, its velvet nose nuzzling her palm: that had been the single most enthral ing experience in her life.

Through the ensuing years that sudden fascination did not fade.

Indeed, she accessed al the information about the equine species that the data banks in her Linear Residence Complex possessed.

She even found ancient books about horses, read al available disks by the currently acknowledged experts, like T. King-Sangster-Mahmood III, and, with avid eyes, watched every tape of equestrian sports available.

When Peri discovered that their Residential exercise facility included simulated horseback riding, she had asked permission from her mother to attend regularly.

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