Read Pegasus in Flight for Free Online Page B

the lab can do is genotypes, and it’s all-sorts.”
    Every citizen of the United World was permitted—provided they did not carry the proscribed genetic recessives—to produce a replacement. One parent, one child. Two parents, two children. ZPG was stringently enforced until the pressure of Earth’s population could be released on the new habitable worlds, identified but not yet attainable. The Propagation Laws were easier to enforce in rural communities than in the huge residential warrens of cities like Jerhattan, with its population of over thirty million.
    Teresa turned to the LEO commissioner. “You haven’t stopped the spot checks, have you, Boris?”
    “Hell, no, but we’re still not locating the early pregnancies no matter how we try. If I had the personnel to mount simultaneous level searches, we’d catch more.” Boris brought his clasped hands together as if closing a net. He gave a ghost of a grin. “We did pretty well at the Residentials, six weeks after the last big power outage, but that was a once-off.” Then he spread his hands wide, matching Dunster’s resignation. “You know our situation. We manage to keep a lid on most of the trouble—if we’re all sitting down as hard as we can. It isn’t as if we need more bodies.”
    “The ones that ignore the legal control,” Harv said dejectedly, “are exactly the ones educational and hygiene programs don’t reach—in any language.”
    Teresa grimaced. “So there’s no indication where the rest of those poor kids were snatched?”
    Roznine shook his head. “Could have come from any subsistence level.”
    “In the last gruesome chucking, three months back or so, only four were recognizable ethnic types,” Harv Dunster said grimly. “Near Easterners—Lebanese and Arabic. Two were Tay-Sachs, ten were dark-skinned, and one was an HIV carrier—which may well be why they were all . . . disposed of.” The medic sighed heavily. “I suspect Lab may also find anti-body positives among this latest—”
    “Spare me, Harv,” Teresa said firmly, and called up the main Jerhattan map on her screen. “We’ve just had a go-round of the Residentials with Public Health. We haven’t got the funds available for another. Exactly where were the bodies found, Boris?” Her fingers hovered over the terminal as she waited for an answer.
    “Washed up out by Glen Cove, not far from some of the more exclusive residential hives bordering the Sound.”
    “Great!” Teresa’s frustration came out as sarcasm. “No Incident logged?” she asked Boris, though that would have been included in the initial report.
    “The storm, yes. The flotsam, no.”
    “Shouldn’t your brother be here by now?” Teresa frowned, glancing at the clock ticking off the seconds in the corner of the main screen. “We need all the help we can get on this.”
    The focus of Boris Roznine’s blue eyes locked briefly as he linked minds with his younger brother. “Traffic snarl’s breaking up. But he says”—his voice suddenly deepened as the Talent peculiar to the twin brothers allowed one to speak through the other—“Look, I want to save time—yours and mine. These murders go deeper than the loss of thirty juveniles. Forget the HIV factor—it’s irrelevant here. They were disposed of because we’d got too close to them, but not close enough, soon enough. Teresa, Carmen’s been on search-and-find duty ever since you handed us the Waddell kidnap file. She got a whiff or two of terror, but never enough light to pinpoint. Except that she got a hint of water.” Boris’s wide mouth quirked briefly, reflecting his brother’s chagrin. “Most of those children had to be illegals. We all know that that group of pederasts is active—and supplied—despite international efforts to eradicate that
sort of traffic. We know that kids are bought as cheap labor and shipped who knows where. And that some are also secreted as possible transplant donors.”
    “We haven’t been