Mute

  Yes, it was an extremely neat setup—almost better than it was reasonable to credit the lobos with being able to manage. The removal of their psi powers did not leave individuals any less intelligent than before—but neither did it enhance their mental or other abilities. So how had they managed such things as this? Somebody should have caught on!

  They have captured Finesse, Hermine announced. They are taking her somewhere in a car. She is afraid.

  We have to get out of here! Knot thought back. The notion of physical danger to Finesse appalled him.

  Mit says they won’t put stun gas in this room. But people are coming. They will capture you unless—

  Ask Mit what the lobo identification system is. Knot, driven by the imperative of the threat to Finesse, had become largely unconcerned about his own welfare. This was a tactical situation; with a little key information he could negotiate it.

  Personal recognition, she responded after a pause.

  Oh, no! There was no way he could fake that. Yet he had to get through, until one of the stungas-flooded rooms cleared and he could step out beyond the search area.

  No way to fake personal recognition? There had to be a way! Ah—he had it! Hermine, you must help me. I am going to establish recognition. You must respond alertly, or I will fail.

  Mit already told me. But he thinks it won’t work.

  He’s not sure of that?

  Not sure.

  Because the situation remained too complex for the little crab to assimilate in its entirety. But Knot had lived all his life without any guarantees of success. He didn’t have to be sure; he needed only a fighting chance.

  A man entered and paused, spying Knot.

  What’s his name? Knot demanded.

  “Hey, I don’t recognize you,” the man said challengingly.

  He is called Wold.

  “Hi, there, Wold. You forget me already?” Knot said, smiling as he strode forward. When did he come to this station, from what prior situation?

  I cannot tell that. It is not in his conscious thought, and I cannot explore the unconscious mind.

  Wold was squinting with perplexity. “You may remember me, but—”

  “I knew you back at the other job, two–three years back.”

  Now it’s conscious. He was technician for a small private solar plant four years ago.

  “I still don’t—” Wold was saying.

  “Now I have it. How time flies! Four years back, it must have been, at that little plant, what was its name—”

  Sun Valley.

  “Sun Valley. I was just a handyman then, with my bad hand.” Knot held up his left hand, angled to give the impression of mutilation, of a finger cut off, rather than a naturally scant member. Project a thought to him: knowledge of my bad hand. And my name.

  Slowly the man’s brow simplified. “That’s right. Missing a finger, aren’t you? You’re—Knot.”

  “You remembered!” Knot smiled again, putting his left hand out of the way as if self-conscious about his deformity. “Machine mishap, years ago. But I swore it wouldn’t hold me back. I took any job I could get, and I took the courses, passed the tests, and now I’m here. I hoped I’d be working with you, Wold. You always had the touch with this stuff.”

  You are the best liar I ever met, Hermine thought, awestruck.

  Wold remained doubtful, but lacked the conviction to make an issue of it. Knot continued talking, using key information Hermine drew from the man’s mind as Knot’s remarks evoked it, skillfully building a stronger case. He was indeed good at this; it resembled an interview, and he had had years experience at that, and a lifetime’s experience dealing with people who did not remember him. This time Knot was dealing with a man whose absence of memory was natural, not the result of Knot’s psi. The transition was not difficult. Soon Wold was completely reassured. Later, when the other lobos questioned him, Wold would not remember Knot—and they would have trouble understanding how he had cooperated with a friend who had never existed.

  In the course of this dialogue, Knot also picked up the information that the lobos had made it a policy to take over as many of the key services of the planet as was possible. They worked with greater discipline and for less pay than others, and never interrupted the work to make demands for better conditions or fringes. Thus they had made steady progress, and constituted the better part of the police force and fire services, as well as manning the solar power station and a number of other key industries. The average normal did not like lobos, but thought they were all right “in their place”—as public servants. They never achieved the top positions, but never protested the obvious discrimination that excluded them. Knot marveled privately at this; what force held them so well in line?

  Wold took him around the beam. It was Wold’s duty to see that the beam remained focused on target. “Any little thing disturbs it,” he explained. “Weather patterns outside—it’s choked down to the narrowest feasible diameter, so that it cuts right through local fog, but dust in the air deflects it marginally. Some dust gets through despite the force screen. So I keep an eye on it, making sure it strikes the main reflector dead center. Usually it’s routine, but in a storm it gets hairy.”

  “No automatic computer corrections,” Knot observed questioningly.

  Wold laughed. “None at all! If we had a computer tie-in, there would be a CC tie-in, and you know what that means!”

  Control by CC, Hermine filled in, drawing it from Wold’s mind. The lobos are rabid anti-government fanatics. They dislike the local planetary government, and they hate CC.

  “Macho is run by men, not machines,” Knot agreed smoothly. This was how the lobos avoided detection by CC: they avoided using any electronic device that CC could conceivably tie in to. It decreased the efficiency of their operations, but it certainly did keep them free. He needed to get out of here and explain that to Finesse and CC. But first things first: the escape.

  “Here is the mechanism control,” Wold explained. He was now operating on the assumption that Knot was here to assist him, and eventually to take over the shift. They were in an office whose partitions were heavily tinted glass. From here the beam was quite clear. It plunged straight down from the satellite, coruscating even through the tint. It was savagely beautiful. “The beam comes through this lens system in the ceiling, and can be angled to adjust for the deviations caused by external factors. Of course the orbiting solar station keeps it oriented pretty close, but the angle can change a little.”

  Knot paid close attention, for a notion was coming into his head.

  Mit says another man is coming, Hermine warned. He is trouble.

  “This control is for the main reflector,” Wold continued. “It bounces the beam along the power tube. From there it is fractured, and diverted to the various boilers and generators. Our job is to keep it right on target. Normally no trouble, as I said.”

  “Suppose you made a mistake and angled it into the wrong place?” Knot inquired.

  “Don’t even think that! This thing would burn a hole through the containment structure in minutes, and after that—ouch!” He shook his head.

  Very bad damage, Hermine thought. Explosions, loss of life, closing of plant, power failure in city, bad mark on lobo management leading to investigation and possible loss of this plant as a lobo enterprise. Much mischief.

  “The force-field shield wouldn’t hold in the beam?” Knot asked.

  “Not for an instant. The field inhibits only matter; the beam is energy. It—”

  The new person entered the room. Metal glittered on his shoulders; he was an officer. He paused, seeing two people in the office.

  “Identify yourselves!” he snapped.

  “Wold, beam technician.”

  “Knot, apprentice beam technician.”

  “You I recognize, Wold,” the officer said. “You, Knot, I do not. We assigned no apprentice. We are in search for an intruder, and I believe—”

  Put a thought about apprentice-approval in hi
s mind, Knot thought urgently to Hermine. Mislaid authorization papers, happens all the time, bureaucratic snafu—

  I can’t. His mind is closed.

  The true military man! Unfortunately, this was the most effective opposition he could make to subversion.

  Well, he would just have to try it verbally. “Maybe they didn’t circulate the bulletin about the apprentice program. These things get—”

  Now a laser pistol appeared in the officer’s hand. “Stand where you are, intruder.”

  But already Knot was grabbing Wold, swinging the man in front of him, holding him with a painful submission grip that emerged from his hidden training. Knot knew only a few combat techniques, but they had been admirably selected for his needs. When CC set out to train an agent, CC did a good job. “Sorry, friend,” he said in the man’s ear. “I hate to do it to an associate from Sun Valley, but it’s my life on the line.”

  “But why?” Wold asked, now firmly fixed in the belief that he remembered Knot from old.

  “I am an intruder. I have not been lobotomized.”

  The officer spoke into a phone button. An alarm sounded. Evidently the lobos did use some electronic apparatus, but only the most elementary sort, where its absence might have been cause for suspicion, such as a voice-activated intercom system. They probably did not conduct any private lobo business on such channels, though.

  They are closing in, Hermine thought. They will capture you. The hostage will not prevent them. They don’t care about him. They’re tough; once they lost their psi powers, their unity became the dominant force in their lives.

  Unity—as a substitute for psi? Was that the way he himself would feel, if he lost his psi? A compulsion to belong in the society of the un-psied? Knot doubted it.

  The officer was taking aim. He won’t fire yet, Hermine thought. He’s just holding you until reinforcements arrive. But he will shoot the moment you seem to be getting away.

  Mit had believed something like this would happen, and Knot had tried to go against the crab’s precognition. Every time he tested that precognition, he came away with a greater respect for it. Still, this sequence wasn’t over yet, and there was a chance, however marginal.

  “All right, friend,” Knot said. “I don’t think they’re going to let you be a hostage, and I don’t want an old acquaintance to get hurt just because I was desperate for a job. Never thought a mutilated hand would be more trouble than a mutilated brain, but that’s the way it is.” He wondered why he was bothering to maintain the lie, and realized that to the extent he had fictionalized the past relationship between himself and Wold, it had become real to him. All lobos were not evil; he liked this one. So he acted as a friend would have, foolish as that might seem objectively. “So I’m going to let you go. My advice to you is to get well away from here, because it’s going to get pretty ugly and I don’t want you to get blamed or shot.”

  “Thanks,” Wold said, and Knot was sure he meant it.

  He turned Wold loose. Knot was also playing a hunch, preserving his pseudo-identity as a job-seeker rather than a CC spy. Should he survive this present bind, that identity might be useful. It widened his small range of options. They might not kill a job-seeker.

  As Wold stumbled away, Knot dived for the beam controls. He did not attempt to parlay or bargain with the officer, knowing this would be useless. He touched the reflector control console, swept his hand across it, and spun the nearest knob.

  “Hey!” the officer cried. “Don’t fool with—”

  Can Mit guide me now?

  Yes. This is simple. Turn the next knob to the left, then release the lever below.

  So complex power-beam controls were simple to the crab’s precognition, while human motivations were complex. That offered a certain perspective. Knot followed Hermine’s continuous directions as Mit’s clairvoyance oriented on the tank. The great beam began to move. Warners and alarms went off all about.

  “Stop that!” the officer cried, aghast. “I’ll fire—”

  “Not at the beam controls,” Knot called back. “You’ll parlay.” Will he?

  No. A pause. This puts him in a difficult position, one his book does not cover. He is afraid he will make a mistake. He is nerving himself to fire.

  Knot worked the controls. The beam lifted out of its channel beyond the huge reflector. It struck the rim of the beam tunnel and sent up a blinding splay of light and heat. This was like a mental nova, only it was exhilaratingly real!

  Knot, forewarned, shielded his eyes. The officer did not. The lobo stood dazed, momentarily sightless, not knowing where to point his laser pistol.

  “All I want is to get safely out of here,” Knot called. “Have them lift the portcullis and vacate the checkpoints.” Will this work?

  No.

  “No!” the officer cried. He fired at the sound of Knot’s voice, but his aim was bad. His reflexes were geared to sight more than sound.

  Tell me where to move, if a beam is about to strike me, Knot thought. Aloud he called: “Then I shall burn my way out. I have a laser cannon here!”

  He worked the controls, lifting the beam farther from its channel. Now it struck a containment wall, and immediately the surface of the wall began to smolder and pop as impurities burst like little volcanoes.

  They are interrogating Finesse, Hermine thought. Asking her bad questions. She thinks they will torture her. There is a man— She projected a picture of a medium-sized man with mutant hair: fine and light colored patches amid a coarse and dark background, piebald. He is called that, Hermine thought. Piebald.

  Knot concentrated on the mental image of the man. His features were irregular, his skin mottled in a lesser piebald pattern. He was ugly, even by mutant standards, but alert intelligence gleamed in his face. And—good-humored malice.

  This was a person who enjoyed inflicting pain on enemy captives; Knot was sure of it. And the woman Knot loved was an enemy captive.

  The sending ended as Hermine’s attention was pre-empted by closer events. Half a dozen more men burst into the room, weapons drawn. Knot swung the beam grandly around toward them, and they flung themselves down. They wore heavy goggles and carried lasers; they began firing.

  Meanwhile, other lobos were torturing Finesse. Infuriated by that thought, Knot reacted with savagery. He swept the terrible beam across the men, and the firing stopped. He saw wisps of smoke rising, and in a moment smelled the sweetish odor of singed flesh. He had just fried several men, and on one level this disturbed him deeply. What had he become, so suddenly? A weasel among rats? Yet on the other level he visualized Piebald torturing Finesse, and knew he had to continue. He had to rescue the woman he loved, and he could do that only by saving himself first.

  Where should I aim, to burn myself a passage out?

  You can’t, Hermine thought despairingly. Mit says the walls are too thick, and the lobos are about to—

  I can damn well try! Knot aimed the beam at the door he had entered, and watched that door smoke.

  The beam failed. What happened? he thought, chagrined. But he was already figuring it out for himself. The satellite had ceased reflecting the beam. Knot’s weapon had been cut off at the source. Mit/Hermine had tried to warn him.

  “We aren’t finished yet!” he said aloud. He jumped away from the useless controls, ran to a smoldering body, and picked up the dead man’s laser pistol. And dropped it instantly; the thing was partially melted and still burning hot.

  He ran to the next. There, under the body, was a holstered pistol that had been shielded from the terrible glare. Knot drew that out and checked it; it was in working order, with a full charge.

  He stepped over the body, going toward the door. Those lobos who remained alive were blind and hurting, too far gone to notice him. He had, at least, rendered an orderly search into chaos, and opened new avenues of escape.

  Why haven’t the lights failed? The power’s gone now.

  Mit says they have temporary reserves, since they have to provide power a
t night when the satellite is in shadow and its field of harvest is reduced.

  He should have known. It would have been much easier to escape if the station had died, but of course it was proof against interruptions. Technological societies were notoriously fussy about the steady flow of power. Where to? he asked Hermine.

  Mit says it is hard to grasp. You have changed everything.

  Precisely, my dear. Never underestimate the power of a berserk human brain. That’s one reason Mit could not anticipate this. I can change reality too swiftly and vastly for him to assimilate, and he himself is factor in it, so his predictions affect his own survival. Everything is hopelessly mixed up, and that’s the way we want it. Just have him call out the way ahead of me; I’m headed for the checkout station and exit.

  You would make a good weasel.

  Thanks, he thought, flattered by the compliment. Hermine’s feeling came through with her message: an intense admiration and pleasure akin to human love. This was her kind of action. Yet Knot was a lot less confident than he projected. With the failure of the power-stoppage, that he had somehow counted on, the chaos would be briefer and milder than otherwise, and that made his task correspondingly more difficult. Also, though he had in one sense changed reality and overruled Mit’s prediction, this had required such an extraordinary and desperate measure that he would not be able to take it again in other circumstances. He had not really disproven precognition; rather he had shown the extent of its validity. It was akin to winning a game by dropping a bomb on the playing field: normally not worth it. He really needed to work things around to the point at which Mit could make a positive prediction, and he had not yet accomplished that.

  People were running about, trying to respond to the ubiquitous summonses of the alarms. The room-by-room search was in hopeless disarray. Knot passed several people, but was ignored by all; no one remembered him.