Mute

  I can’t detect them anyway, in this light, Knot thought distastefully.

  Even in daylight, you could not. They turn invisible, inaudible, unsmellable and unfeelable.

  That’s impossible! Knot protested.

  It is a variant of your own psi. Living creatures cannot perceive them directly. In your case, living creatures forget what they have perceived. You are retroactively unperceivable.

  Ah. But machines can perceive them?

  Yes—and people who stand beyond the range of their psi. So they have not yet achieved ascendancy against man’s instruments. I am in mental touch with their representatives. If you will assist them in their quest to achieve safety from machines they will accompany you and warn you of threats.

  I can’t tell them how to escape machines; I can’t do that myself.

  But you will be meeting with CC, who might be able to answer them.

  Why should CC help the roaches to prevail against man?

  CC is concerned with psi mutants. These are advanced psi mutants.

  What about me? I don’t want ineradicable roaches overrunning my premises.

  If man does not deal with the roaches now, he will have to deal with their next generation of mutations. Then it may not be a matter of coexisting, but of man’s survival.

  She had quite a point. You reason like a human being.

  Yes. It is exhilarating, drawing on your intelligence. I never conceived such grand notions alone.

  They were certainly impressive notions. Man’s survival? I will ask CC about the way for roaches to achieve safety from machines. That’s all. I don’t guarantee CC’s answer. CC may refuse to respond, on grounds that it would be detrimental to CC’s self-interest.

  The roaches understand that. Their representatives will accompany you.

  So now he had to carry the vermin with him! But what had to be, had to be; he could understand their need to have their kind meet CC. He had gone to a lot of trouble to present his own case personally to CC, back at the outset of this adventure. Where are they?

  They are in your pocket, Hermine thought. They climbed up your leg just now.

  But I never felt them. But of course he would not have; nervous psi-roaches were imperceptible. Did that make it better, or worse?

  Now the rats, Hermine thought.

  How can you stand to deal with rats? They’re your natural enemy!

  Mit says I must, if am to survive.

  What rat would help you, personally?

  I don’t know. But I believe Mit. I will perish without a rat.

  Knot sighed. She kept coming up with compelling answers. If you can do it, so can I, I suppose. What is their talent?

  They can find food. But more significant are the rat fleas, which can nullify poison their hosts assimilate. But the fleas are vulnerable during their egg stage; then heat can destroy them. They need help to safeguard that portion of their lifecycles.

  Do you realize how ludicrous this is becoming? Knot demanded.

  Yes.

  This is the ultimate limit. Why should I want to help fleas? I would prefer to abolish them entirely!

  I am not partial to fleas myself, Hermine admitted. But they can help us. Drugs are a kind of poison.

  Knot caught on. Such as stungas and truth gas?

  Yes.

  All right. I will also ask CC how the mutant fleas can protect eggs. That’s all.

  Pick up the rats. They are hosts for the fleas.

  I feel like a menagerie! But Knot reached down in the dark and found two small furry creatures. He lifted them and put them in a pocket. They were hardly larger than mice. These assistants will enable us to escape the planet?

  Mit thinks so. At least they will help us somehow. He says the future becomes opaque soon.

  You mean I’m picking up all these animals on speculation? Just because Mit thinks they may improve our chances? No precognitive guarantee?

  It is complex. CC could not read your future, even with Drem the futurist. Now Mit is encountering the same difficulty. He feels it is best to recruit animals who can substitute for his powers and mine.

  What’s going to happen to you and Mit? Knot thought with alarm.

  Nothing—if we separate from you. We could survive on this planet. The gross one would welcome us.

  And if you stay with me?

  Opaque.

  I can’t blame you for avoiding that risk, Knot thought regretfully.

  No. We are staying with you. We share your mission.

  Knot was not even inclined to argue. He had felt naked without Hermine and Mit, in the lobo’s volcano villa. He had been literally naked without noticing; it was their psi he depended on. Thanks.

  We like you. And Finesse. And Klisty.

  Knot had not really thought about it before, but realized that Klisty could not be left on Planet Macho. The lobos would destroy her. She had become part of their mission involuntarily. But she was indeed a nice little girl, no burden to have along.

  Knot breathed deeply. Any more vermin to recruit?

  No.

  May I go home now?

  Yes, immediately, Hermine agreed. Mit says it is time.

  The master has spoken. Knot felt his way to the exit. Do the rats have names?

  Yes. The male is Roto, the female is Rondl.

  They are not telepathic?

  Not. Only clairvoyant about food. Since they consume similar staples to men and weasels—

  Yes, I understand. But I feel like a walking slum. Flies, roaches, rats, fleas—

  Bees, not flies! the mini-hive interjected with buzzing annoyance.

  Bees, Knot agreed. He didn’t want to get stung.

  The last three would be unnecessary as allies, if you agreed to represent the hive. Their chart—

  According to Mit’s guess—and Mit admits my future is opaque. Maybe no allies are necessary.

  Maybe Mit and I are unnecessary too.

  Knot did not respond. The weasel was getting as biting with her thoughts as she might be with her teeth. But she was right. He was forever complicating things by doing them his own way. Yet that was the way he was. Possibly that was why precognition was becoming inoperative in his vicinity. Well, what would be, would be—unless he was about to foul things up so badly that what would be would not be.

  Funny man, Hermine thought. Her pique was abating.

  Knot climbed the old steps and emerged to the partial gloom of night. The sky was overcast with no moonlight showing, but the city cast its own ambient radiance. His eyes had adjusted to the point where he could see well enough, and he made good progress toward his host’s house.

  I must leave you now, Hermine thought. Mit says it will be bad if the lobos detect me with you. But the lobos do not know about the new animals. Take care of them, and we shall rejoin you when the time is right.

  May I tell Finesse?

  Yes. You must tell her everything. But not so the lobos perceive. They do have monitoring devices.

  Right. Farewell for now, whiskerface. Thanks for all. Knot felt tight in the chest at this parting; the weasel had become important to his emotional equilibrium.

  Mit had evidently timed things properly, because Knot slunk back inside the house and into bed without raising any alarm. He set his clothing on the floor beside the bed, trusting the creatures in it to make themselves comfortable. He lay awake for some time, wondering whether he had done the right thing. These tacit alliances with vermin—it was like a nightmare, a nonsensical development that would prove to be illusory in the morning. Yet—

  Finesse came to his bed. She crawled under the sheet with him, and put her arms about him, and kissed him silently. Her legs clamped about one of his, and muscles twitched—and suddenly he recognized the standard squeeze-pulse code.

  WHERE DID YOU GO? she demanded through thigh-pressure pulses. I ALMOST FORGOT YOU.

  What a way to communicate! He had thought she wanted to make love. He kissed her, set his teeth in her lip, and gently bit
in code: JEALOUS FEMALE!

  She bit back. HAVE YOU BEEN SEEING THAT OTHER FEMALE?

  Oops—she really did have the wrong idea! I MET HERMINE.

  THAT’S THE ONE.

  He started to laugh. She stifled him with another kiss. He drew her in tightly, his need for her bursting from its bonds. They proceeded in leisurely but intense fashion to love making, all the time conversing by assorted pressures of contact. In the end they were in the most intimate stage—and communicating through meaningfully rhythmic genital contractions. Knot would rather have made simple love, but she insisted on having the whole story, and this was the best way to tell it without any spying lobos catching on. He told her everything.

  ROACHES? she exclaimed in constrictions that became almost painful. FLEAS?

  HERMINE SAYS MIT SAYS—

  She relaxed. She had great faith in Hermine and Mit. Once she had the rationale, she accepted it more readily than Knot himself had. THIAMIN, RIBOFLAVIN, NIACIN, she pulsed. YOU AND YOUR INFERNAL HUMOR!

  RIGHT NOW IT’S INTERNAL HUMOR.

  She responded with a pulse that almost did him damage.

  I DON’T LIKE DEPERSONALIZATION, he protested.

  I LOVE YOU FOR THAT DISLIKE, she responded. Now at last she proceeded with proper enthusiasm to the fulfillment he craved.

  • • •

  Their reservation for interstellar travel was two days hence. They proceeded as if they had no inkling of the threat awaiting them. It seemed to Knot that some freak accident would happen while they were driving to the spaceport. Some other vehicle would suffer a mechanical failure and just happen to collide disastrously with their own. Yet if they acted too early to avoid such a calamity, such as changing their route, some other accident would be arranged. They would have to risk the accident—and escape at the latest moment, when no backup accident was available in time.

  One thing was sure: the lobos did not intend to let them reach the sanctity of the space shuttle safely. Another thing was likely: Mit’s precognition would not be able to anticipate the mishap far enough ahead for them to avoid it cleanly, without complication. The opacity of Knot’s future was closing in, interfering with the crab’s perception, decreasing its reliability. So they had no easy way to handle the threat.

  They spent what time they could becoming acquainted with their new associates. Since all of these were secretive by nature, it was easy to conceal them; the problem was to interact with them without alerting any snooping lobos to their nature. Thus they tended to do it while indulging overtly in routine mundane chores like eating or bathing.

  As it turned out, the new creatures were fairly good company. The roaches, by daylight, were pretty shades of red, green and yellow, and poked into things with cutely insatiable curiosity. Whenever anything happened that was out of the ordinary, or when even the mildest threat occurred, they faded to translucency. When the threat was strong, they vanished entirely. After the danger passed, they slowly became visible again. It was an intriguing process.

  The rats, Roto and Rondl, were a neatly matched pair. He was glossy black, she rough-furred white. Both were insatiably hungry, and their noses were forever quivering. They had soon discovered every hiding place of food of any kind. Things the gross one’s brother swore had been lost for years turned up, such as a can of genuine imported Earth brown beans; it had lodged behind a pipe below the sink. If anyone tried to eat a cracker in bed, a cute little rat was quickly there, whiskers vibrating expectantly. They also located garbage, for much of that, too, was edible—for a discerning rat. They were not tame; they bared their sharp little teeth and retreated when approached too brusquely. But a telepathic brother rat had evidently given them the word, and when Knot put down his hand they would come to it.

  This bothered Finesse slightly, and she made a point of courting the rats with tidbits of food. They remained wary of her, until she started nudging them with spot phobias: fear of the wall behind them, fear of the doorway to the side, fear of being without human company. It gave her practice in the application of her psi, exploring its ramifications and limits. It was a major talent—and she was both thrilled with it and furious with CC for concealing it from her. She also continued to worry that Knot wouldn’t like her as well, now that she wasn’t normal, despite his efforts to reassure her.

  In the morning she woke and turned to him and inquired, “Are we still lovers?” and he assured her that nothing had happened to change that, and then offered to demonstrate, purely as a public service, and she accepted and they conversed in squeeze language a lot more seriously than their actions suggested. That was when he learned of her experiments in psi, and she learned of his further thoughts and plans. He also reminded her of what he had told her before, that she had forgotten because of his own psi. She tended to remember the new creatures without recalling his part in it. It was an excellent session.

  Klisty had a room of her own, and did not stir from it at night. She was old enough to realize that Knot and Finesse did not want any third party visiting at that time. In the day, however, she became quite useful, for Knot could tell her something, and she would tell Finesse—then Klisty would forget the matter because of Knot’s psi, but Finesse would remember, because she had not received the news directly from Knot. A third party was invaluable, this way. What it was necessary for Klisty to remember, Finesse told her. Thus there was a lot of repeating of inconsequentials, but the disruptive effect of Knot’s psi was minimized.

  Klisty had the company of the animals in her room, however, so she was not really alone. The rats got to like her, and would settle down to snooze in her slippers. She made a sandbox for their function room; they were fastidious. She dubbed the three roaches Bedbug, Greenbug and Yelbug, and made a cardboard box for them to hide in, and soon had them walking on her hands without fading. She held limited mental dialogues with the five bees, and arranged to leave a jar of honey open for them in an inconspicuous spot; Knot hadn’t thought of that. At other times she contentedly watched the entertainment programs on the public holograph bands, which were pitched exactly to her level though labeled “Adult.”

  The five bee-flies buzzed out periodically, foraging in the garden, then generally returned to Knot’s jacket, where they positioned themselves to merge with the pattern of the weave. They reported that hostile entities lurked outside; they picked up the lobos’ minds. The fleas were not in evidence at all; they remained strictly on the rats.

  None of the creatures was obnoxious. Even the roaches were careful about where they deposited their droppings. Knot’s original aversion to dealing with vermin disappeared; in fact they stopped being vermin in his mind. They became animal acquaintances—as were Hermine and Mit. Useful ones, too—for the roaches’ sensitivity to danger would help a good deal as the group made its run for the space shuttle.

  Hermine’s worry, though, extended beyond that upcoming dash. Mit should be able to counter a purely local threat pretty well, by having Knot separate from the others so that they would be clear to precognition. Then Knot could use his own psi to sneak through alone. But there might also be a distance threat. How could bugs and rats, with their specialized little species psi powers, alleviate that? It was not, of course, their job to protect Knot—but if they did not help, and he and Finesse perished, these animals would lose their own quests too. So there was an atmosphere of cooperation.

  Then the mutiny broke out. Suddenly the despised vermin of Planet Macho were rebelling against their inferior status. It was amazing what chaos this caused. The city’s power failed and most commercial activity halted.

  Actually, this was not as fortuitous or coincidental as it seemed. This mutiny had been gathering its power for some time, merely awaiting the appropriate trigger. Knot’s damage to the solar power station had made it vulnerable; it had been operating at partial output while repairs were made, and any additional stress could knock it out again. When Knot had refused to participate in the mutiny, even as negotiator, there had been noth
ing to hold it back. Knot himself, he realized, had some responsibility here. Had he done wrong?

  He mulled that over at odd intervals, and concluded that he was unlikely to be the critical key to the status of the planet. Others must have turned down the hive too, and in any event the hive might not have intended to negotiate in good faith, or might have presented demands that made acceptance impossible. The whole interview with him might have been merely for show, to delude human beings about the intent of the bees. Still, Knot did feel a certain mild guilt.

  “Nothing to do but turn in early,” Finesse said with a meaningful glance at Knot. “No telling when the power will return.” It was late afternoon, but the light would soon fade; nothing much could be accomplished without electrical power, here amidst the electrified society. How different this was from the chasm enclave!

  Knot wanted to misinterpret Finesse’s look, but he knew better. It was escape, not romance she had in mind. A day early, to fool the lobos.

  They made no special preparations; that would have been a giveaway. They simply ate a good evening meal, closed up the house, and went to bed as the darkness closed in—exactly as many Macho citizens must be doing. Knot knew Finesse was sending to Hermine, arranging a rendezvous.

  Knot thought to the bees: Vitamins, we are about to go outside together. It is dangerous. Please ask your hive members not to harass us.

  The hive knows, the bees replied fuzzily. You will encounter no bees at all. The vermin know you have joined the mutiny, and will spare you.

  I have not joined the mutiny! Knot protested, remembering how he had fought battle with CC’s minions before, and lost. How could he remain aloof from causes, when the causes had psi-information about his destiny? I agreed only to consider it.

  The bees did not argue. Their intelligence was evidently enhanced by his presence, as Hermine’s was, but they lacked the mass of brain the weasel had, so could not respond as readily. Regardless, Knot was not about to turn against his own species. The revolt of the downtrodden vermin would have to proceed without him.