Mute

  Your psi is wonderful, Hermine thought. Once you get their attention off, it stays off.

  It has its uses, he agreed.

  Guided by Mit’s spot directives, he wound tortuously through the labyrinth, avoiding gassed rooms, and officers who would challenge him, and other routine pitfalls.

  Then Hermine relayed another picture: the Piebald mutant, his open hand swinging toward Knot’s face—no, Finesse’s face—and the impact-shock of a hard slap. We do not use sophisticated electronics or psionic techniques here, Piebald said. Only the most rudimentary room-speaker system, that came with the estate. We rely on age-old standbys. Tell us what you know, before I destroy your pretty face.

  The age-old standbys: rudimentary speaker systems and physical brutality to captives. “I will kill that man!” Knot gritted, a black fear and rage swamping his equilibrium.

  Finesse is tough, Hermine reassured him. The bad man can beat her face to a pulp, and she will tell him nothing. She is immune to most drugs too.

  Good to know, Knot replied, horrified at what loomed. But he found he was no longer so upset about the lobos he had killed with the solar beam. This was a rough league!

  He arrived at the strip-search station. Pause, Hermine directed. Mit says this is easy; they don’t search people going out, only those coming in. There will be a distraction.

  An old-fashioned telephone rang. The sentry picked it up. Knot walked past, nodding casually, as though this were routine. The man looked concerned, but was occupied by the phone and let Knot pass. This was obviously incorrect procedure, but the present disorganization fostered such carelessness.

  Since out-of-sight was out-of-mind in Knot’s case, this was perfect. A brief contact faded more rapidly than a long one, and unless the man was reminded of Knot in the next few seconds, he would not remember Knot had been this way. In fact, no one at the station would remember who had caused the trouble; it would have to be attributed to person or persons unknown. In this respect, Knot’s psi was indeed major; its insidious effect was as potent as any overt psi could be.

  The portcullis was another matter. He could not pass it unless it was raised—and the operative would accept only the clearance of a superior he knew personally. That personal-identification system was a good one; no faked papers or tattoos could prevail.

  There was, Mit found, a counter-locking mechanism that required the authorization of a person in a distant office, one beyond the reach of Knot’s psi or that of Hermine or Mit. This was how the superior’s approval was enforced; even if the gatekeeper suffered complete mental takeover, he could not by himself raise the portcullis. The system had no doubt been designed with psi in mind, since some psis were hypnotists and others controlled minds directly. You cannot pass, Hermine thought despairingly.

  Just watch me try! Knot marched up to the desk. Project confirmation as I go. What is this man’s name?

  Jeb, she replied dutifully.

  “Jeb, there’s trouble in the beam-access room,” Knot said briskly. “Some fool spun the beam out of its channel. It killed some, blinded others, and burned the wall before the orbiter cut it off. There’s absolute chaos there, and a serious fire hazard. Summon the city fire-damping squad immediately.”

  Jeb peered at Knot, trying to place him. Hermine evidently planted some recognition, for the man slowly nodded. “But we have our own fire service, and it’s not my place to—”

  “Who the hell do you think got burned?” Knot snapped. “They were good men, too. We need help before this whole place goes up. Our reserve power won’t last forever. Now get on it. This is the only desk that’s not overwhelmed by the problem.”

  Jeb got on it. In a surprisingly short time a crew appeared on the other side of the portcullis. “Let them through,” Knot directed.

  Jeb phoned for confirmation—and did not receive it. What’s that other man’s name and position? Knot demanded. Read it from Jeb’s mind.

  Xoth, the countermand engineer. He has a sad face.

  Knot took the phone from Jeb’s hand. “Xoth, is that you there? Get the lead out of your jowl and open the gate. The relief fire crew is hung up here while the beam-access room burns. I will not assume responsibility if this delay causes an explosion.”

  “Who are you?” Xoth demanded.

  “Who am I?” Knot repeated incredulously. “Who the hell do you think I am, hangdog? Now cut this foolishness and release that gate, or I’ll get over there and do it myself. The beam-room is burning, idiot!”

  Xoth, cowed, released the gate. The liability of mindless functionaries was that they tended to react mindlessly to the semblance of authority. The portcullis lifted; the fire crew marched in—and Knot marched out.

  As the portcullis dropped again, more men erupted from the interior. “Stop that man!” one cried, spying Knot. “No one is permitted out! We’re on quarantine!” But they were too late; the metal bars barred their way, and they would have to obtain due countermand clearance before they could pass. Xoth, realizing that he had been stung once, would be extremely balky about lifting the barrier a second time.

  Mit says that was some show, Hermine thought. An honest man could not have done it.

  If CC needed an honest agent, CC would have hired one.

  Yes. Animal mirth. Honesty was a concept alien to most animals. To Hermine, whatever worked best was good, and whatever failed was bad.

  This was, Knot reflected, one of the reasons why animals did not rule the galaxy. In order to become technological, entities had to work together, developing interdependencies, specializations and trust. These things could not exist without honor. An ethical code was fundamental to man’s success. Knot did not enjoy lying, any more than he enjoyed killing. The best he could say about it was that he would never violate such human codes unless he was hard-pressed. He had become, in his own estimation, less of a man, in the interest of short-term survival. And this too was part of life; the civilized virtues were sloughed off when the basic drives were invoked. Man still had some evolution ahead of him. When a man in trouble could not make a good weasel, perhaps he would be there, ultimately civilized.

  Perhaps, also, he would be extinct. How could man as a species progress, when there was greater survival value in retaining primitive characteristics? Unless the entire framework of life progressed in tandem, every creature becoming more ethical—no, it would never happen. Ethics was simply not the overriding goal of life. It was merely a limited tool that enabled one species to gain on the others for a while. Prior tools had been the ability to walk on land, and the ability to maintain the heat of the body regardless of the weather, and dexterity with objects. Tools, literally.

  They emerged into the concourse. They are raising the portcullis, Hermine warned. Mit says—

  Yes, I could have guessed that myself. Knot broke into his awkward run. Have Mit look ahead. I need a train going away from the city that I can board without money.

  They all take money.

  Then find me some money, soon. Knot was panting, his uneven gait tiring him.

  She consulted with Mit. Some is spilled ahead. Lift up that loose grate.

  Knot lifted the grate. There, in the dirt and refuse, were several small metal disks: the local coins. He picked them up.

  An abrupt flare of pain stuck him. Something had smashed his nose. Knot grunted, putting his hand to his face—and found it whole. Oh—is that Finesse? He would rather have had it be himself.

  Yes. Now she is unconscious.

  Thank God for that! I will kill him extremely slowly!

  First, I will bite off his nose, Hermine resolved. They ran on, two animals in agreement.

  Now Knot could hear the clamor of the pursuit. Precious moments had been taken, getting the coins. Lead me by a route that will put me on a train just before they catch me. I do not want to sit and wait for them.

  Mit worked on it. Knot led his pursuit, who, it developed, had semi-canine trackers, a merry and circuitous chase around the passages, terminat
ing at a subway train just about to pull out. He jammed a coin into the admission turnstile and boarded. The hunting party drew up just too late, as they had at the portcullis. Mit had done it again! Knot waved a cheery farewell through the grimy window.

  Mit and I have not before performed like this, Hermine thought. You make us efficient.

  Well, I like you.

  The irrelevancy was lost on her. Finesse likes us too, but she never—

  She’s a normal and a woman. Two strikes against her.

  Again, the humor failed to register. It is not only that.

  Knot relaxed as the train carried them swiftly forward. He knew he would be safely forgotten and lost in the crowd by the time the lobos intercepted the train at the next stop. He was an extremely slippery customer. He felt expansive.

  It is that I am an experienced interviewer and mutant placement officer. Finesse is also an interviewer, but it is her business to glean information and apply human perspective. It is mine to discover ways to make people relate, and to perform at their best potential. I apply that skill to your mutant talents too. Surely CC was aware it would be this way. It wasn’t just my psi; there are plenty of better potential psi-agents. It was my total expertise for this situation.

  Yes. CC said you were the best man for the job. That with us and Finesse, you would be the best agent in the human galaxy. I think you are.

  With one chance in four of succeeding, Knot reminded her.

  There was another wash of emotion, not precisely the weasel’s. She dreams, Hermine thought.

  Even in her sleep, Finesse was sending? That had to be an important dream! Knot paid close attention, as the diffuse images and feelings came through.

  Finesse’s dream began in pain. Her face was hurting; her eyes gazed past the two sides of a lump of misery that seemed to project enormously. She retreated from it, but it followed her back inside her head. The pain was not merely physical; it was spiritual. She had always been pretty, and that had been a prime component of her self-image, giving her confidence and courage. Now she was not pretty, and that undercut her foundation. Now no one would love her.

  I love you! Knot thought violently.

  And it seemed a trace echo of his thought got through, for now in her dream his homely face appeared. She had fixed him in her mind; she might forget the last few hours with him, but she remembered the earlier association, buttressed as it had been by her holo-recordings. That memory had been blocked on the conscious level by CC’s treatment, but remained in the nether levels that her dreams intersected.

  “Even like this?” she asked plaintively, visualizing herself as a child with a grotesque protuberance, a watermelon nose, discolored and misshapen.

  “Even like this,” his image assured her.

  Then abruptly the pain was gone, or at least receded far to the background, and she was skipping forward in a wraithlike dress that wafted tantalizingly about her contours, making flickering displays of breast and thighs and torso that she knew would inflame the male mind. He was beside her, running unevenly but not objectionably. She didn’t care that he was homely; she had enough beauty for them both. They crossed a lovely field of blue daisies. Streamers of lightning radiated from trees in the distance, bright, spectacular, remarkable, but not nearby. Her hair lifted, buoyed by the electrostatic charge, but not in the manner of electrocution but rather like the gentle current underwater. It iridesced, throwing off little fountains of half-glimpsed colors, peacock-fair.

  Knot, watching, feeling, realized that this was an elaboration of their experience at the mouth of the leadmuter’s cave, when the electrical storm had pinned them down. Sure enough, there was the deep splendor of gold in the background, shedding its luster beneath the green plants, taking the place of soil. Gold had theoretically brought her there; thus it manifested in the fundament, the ground from which all else sprang. Her recorder had not been operative then, because of the charge in the air, so she could not have refreshed her memory of this particular scene. Yet it was here in her dream, reconstructed and beautified. Her subconscious remembered what his psi had erased from her conscious mind. This vision had survived both him and CC; doubly erased, it returned, distorted yet delightful. Knot did not know what would account for that, except perhaps the intensity of love.

  She loved him, without doubt. Yet something nagged him; was there some reason she should not love him? He could not isolate that reason. Perhaps it was merely his own unwillingness to believe that a woman like that could love a man like him.

  She turned to him then, in the dream, and opened her arms, and her dress dissolved entirely and blew away like so much froth, little bubbles of it popping pleasantly. ‘I’m really a mutant like you,’ she murmured, kissing him oh-so-sweetly. ‘I’m your kind.’ He embraced her, and she felt his big strong hand on one side, and his smaller weaker one on the other, and this was reassuring because she knew it could only be him in that configuration. He was a mutant, but also a man, she knew; he wanted mainly one thing, and this she gave him gladly.

  You wrong me, Knot thought. I would give up that one thing to have you safe and free!

  But this was her dream, with her simplistic assessment of the male nature. She did not realize that if sex were all that motivated a man, he would have no need to choose between women. Yet neither was it to be ignored. They merged, and their linked bodies tilted, he forward, she backward, rotating, feet leaving the ground, end over end, slowly in air, flying, never falling, never touching earth. Here was part of the symbolism of dream flying, the freedom from gravity and from social restraint, the doing of what was usually forbidden or so limited as to be not worthwhile, abandoned, weightless, care-less. They spun giddily between the lightning strokes, ascending into the sky, bound together, arms clasping each other, feet interlocking, turning, turning...

  It faded. Knot found himself in the drab train, deeply moved. Finesse, in her deepest heart, loved him too, and always had, and would even lie to him to hold him, pretending she was a mutant too. She did not quite believe he could love a normal, just as he had not believed she could love a mutant. Now he believed.

  Of course, it could also be that she craved some psi-power for herself, and so in her deepest hope laid claim to it. It was Knot’s psi that attracted her, as she had been candid enough to confess; her love for him was at least in part a sublimation of her balked desire for psi of her own. Probably CC’s expectation of psi in her had been tacitly communicated at an early age, and she had never fully reconciled herself to the reality of normalcy. Yet she was lovable without psi, if she could only believe it.

  Her dream has passed, Hermine thought.

  Her dream will never pass. But even if it did, love will remain.

  Yes. It makes me wish I could mate.

  Knot snapped out of his reverie. Surely you will—when you find the right weasel.

  The train slowed jerkily. The lights of the tunnel passed more slowly. Mit says they are waiting at the station.

  Damn, those lobos were organized! Any other pursuit would have lost him by now. Then we shall not get off.

  But they will wait at the end of the line, too.

  If they remember.

  They have written instructions. They follow these.

  Do those instructions describe me accurately?

  Yes. A camera took pictures when you entered the power station, Mit says. They draw from that.

  Smart lobos! They were catching on, learning how to nullify his psi. Then I must change my appearance.

  Knot looked about. Several passengers wore farm clothing: heavy blue coveralls, gloves, wide-brimmed hats. One was moving up the aisle toward the functions room. Knot got up and followed him, leaving the suitcase behind so that other passengers would know he planned to return to his seat, and entered the functions room just as the train jerked to a stop.

  “Sorry, friend,” Knot murmured, putting his right arm around the man’s neck in just enough of a stranglehold so that he could not cry out. “Wh
at is your name? Where do you work?”

  Meig, Hermine thought. He works on post-setting crew on a combine-farm beyond the end of the line.

  Knot put the man the rest of the way to sleep. Contrary to popular belief, a strangle properly executed was not uncomfortable for the victim. It interfered with the circulation of blood to the brain, and the brain clicked out painlessly.

  He sat the unconscious man on the function pot. Soon Knot had exchanged clothes with him. He knew the man would not recover until the train commenced its return journey. This, too, had been part of his training: how to induce harmless unconsciousness for a reasonable period. That would give Knot time.

  He emerged from the function room and sauntered down the aisle to the place Meig had occupied, bypassing his own suitcase. The suitcase was now a decoy for the lobos. The gloves concealed the disparity of fingers; he had two digits jammed into one socket on the right, and an empty socket on the left, but the glove fingers were so stiff it didn’t show. The hat shadowed his face, and the bulky overalls, too large for him on the left side, hid the irregularities of his torso.

  When the train reached the end of the line, Knot ambled out with the other farmers onto the station platform and took a flight of steps up.

  He emerged into waning daylight in a village. Three lobos were checking the line, referring to a picture. Knot strolled right past them. A truck was waiting; he boarded with two others, prompted by Mit’s advice, and it lurched off.

  “Don’t remember you,” one farmer said. It was not a challenge so much as an interested observation. These people were not looking for trouble.

  Knot smiled. “No one remembers me! I’m subbing for Meig; he’s indisposed tonight.” Steer me when I start to go wrong, psi creatures. But don’t get in my way.

  Yes, master! Hermine thought back mirthfully, and projected a picture of a tiny weasel scrambling away from a giant pair of walking boots that threatened to crush her.

  Knot had to smile. The farmer picked up on that. “You mean that woman of his is back in town?”