“I, too, am trying to salvage our kind,” Knot said. “But my kind is not lobo; it is mute.”
“You oppose us; you represent the force of species destruction. You must be destroyed.”
Uh huh. The inability to tolerate dissent: another signal of unbalance. She had seemed quite balanced originally, but now was revealed at the opposite. “So you lobos are taking over the galaxy, closing down civilization?”
“Putting CC to better use than lobotomizing those who oppose it, yes.”
Her sentiment was so like his own that he was shaken. Had he been premature in judging her? Better to argue the case further, and see what developed. “But you bring anarchy!”
“We do. But it is better than total destruction.”
She seemed sincere, and he agreed. He had no special fear of anarchy, and would gladly risk it rather than suffer the curse of unrestrained mutancy to continue. But if she were actually sane, despite appearances, how was he to account for her embracement of the concept of this “lopsi,” the disembodied psi force? This was akin to belief in the supernatural. “How do you communicate with lopsi?”
“I don’t. It communicates with me. I study the signals of its will—the patterns of leaves floating upon the waters of the lake, the motes of dust in the slanting sunbeams, the configurations of the clouds in the sky, and I interpret the will of lopsi. I tell my husband, and he directs our kind to the necessary actions—and lopsi confirms their actions and punishes those who disobey.”
A pattern here—but how much was rationalization, how much delusion? “Punishes? How?”
“They die in accidents, in fighting, in explosions such as the one at headquarters. Only the chosen survive, the ones who remain in lopsi’s favor, such as my husband. He is an ugly man, but hideously smart. He listens to me, therefore he succeeds. If he did not listen, he too would perish.”
Knot decided he had it straight now. The blessed survived, the damned died—by retroactive definition. There was no way to refute such a philosophy; it was insulated from reality. Religions, in the past, had prospered on it.
The truth was that Piebald was indeed ugly, and indeed smart. He might listen to her, but his success had to do with his intelligence, not her advice. He would simply tell her he had done what she directed, regardless of the truth. “I thank you for the insight, Hulda. I shall relay it to my associates, but I doubt they’ll join your side.”
“Suit yourself. Our side will prevail. You may join it and survive, or oppose it and perish. I foresaw the outcome when I had my psi, and I am confirmed in that vision now as the realization is upon us. Join or die: that is the extent of your free will. Consider carefully.”
“I shall.” Knot faded out.
Back on Chicken Itza amidst his friends and the tired chickens, Knot made a full report. “Does she sound sane to you?” he asked.
“She’s a conniving woman,” Finesse said. “I know the type. She may be part-way crazy, but canny too. Piebald probably pays more attention to her than you think. And perhaps it does explain the unity of the lobos: they’re all a little bit crazy in the same way. Lobotomy must have some adverse effect on sanity; a prop the brain normally depends on has been removed, leaving at least a token imbalance, and need for compensation. A lobo is not a created normal; it’s a surgically corrected abnormal. The lobos could honor her as a prophetess, and so Piebald could indeed draw his authority from her, just as any cultist leader draws his authority from the god or demon he purports to serve. The lobos want to believe in this force she describes, this lopsi, and so they honor her, trying to make it true. Lopsi may be nonsense, as all the other oracular pronouncements and cults in human history have been, but to the right clientele, the one with inherent will-to-believe, that sort of thing can be extremely compelling. The lobos are tailor-made for exploitation by a salvation movement; they all want so desperately to recover what they have lost. If they don’t convince themselves there is hope, they have no reason to keep on living.”
“A salvation cult,” Knot echoed. “Of course! We have been looking for something rational. You’re right; some of the greatest movements in human history have been cultist, the ones that survived despite persecution, in fact seemed to thrive on it. Like mutation, most of those cults are non-survival, but the few that do endure can become great movements.”
It was as though his agreement caused her to reverse. “Still, the lobos have had remarkable success, and it’s hard to believe it can all be the product of fanaticism. CC has dealt with cultists before, and CC knows history better than anyone. If there really were a discorporate lobo psi, subtly making all lobos perform its will, or at least motivating them to accept its imperatives, that could account for a lot.”
“The supernatural can always account for a lot,” Knot said. “Let’s write this effort off as a wrong lead, and get on with our task. We are not blind fanatics.”
Finesse smiled, agreeing. “Not blind, anyway. Let’s just call this a lesson in the psychology of our opponent; maybe it will come in handy. To whatever extent the lobos believe in divine will, they won’t worry about our efforts, and that will help us.”
“Hulda will tell Piebald of my visit to her,” Knot said.
“So Piebald will know we have psi-projection. He’ll expect us to explore CCC that way first. He won’t be so alert for a physical visit.”
And a physical visit was necessary. Even if they could use the override code by psi-projection, it wouldn’t stick; Piebald would simply re-override. They had to go there and take out Piebald himself.
The problems of travel required some planning. “Even amplified psi won’t stop the CC detectors,” Finesse pointed out. “And we’ll have to sleep at some point, and that includes the amplifier-rooster. What happens to our cover then?”
What, indeed. It was a relatively short hop from Chicken Itza to CCC, but their mission had no time limit. In addition, the CC readouts were operating on this planet, as there was as yet no overt mutiny here, no power cutoff. That meant they could not sneak aboard any ship under assumed identities. Passengers’ baggage was routinely rayed to check for contraband; that would not do either. How, then, were they to board?
At last they found the way. They donned cold suits raided from little-used emergency supplies, fitted themselves with powdered oxygen capsules, and had themselves sealed into crates of chicken carcasses being shipped to CCC. There should be no machine inspection of this lot, since it was only routine meat.
There were interminable delays. Knot slept, and worried that he would have trouble reminding the others of their mission, after the effects of sleep and stasis made them forget. Then he reminded himself that they would remember the mission; it was only Knot they would forget. In the context they would discover themselves in, it would be easy enough to accept the reminder that he was part of the mission too. He was keenly aware of the loading process, as his crate got thumped into the hold by the conveyor system and other crates were piled on top. He was buried under frozen meat. Suppose something happened, and it couldn’t be unloaded? How long before the cold penetrated his suit and made him become what he claimed to be? He tried to shiver, but the stasis closed in, freezing him in another way.
Mit says all is well, Hermine’s thought came.
Thank you. It was immensely comforting—not merely Mit’s relayed assurance, which was at least slightly suspect while Baby Harlan was with them, but the fact of Hermine’s presence. From the start of this adventure, she had been his most constant companion and useful aide. Perhaps this was what was now inclining him toward the cause of the animals. Once one knew an animal like her, how could one not appreciate animal nature?
I like the way you think, Hermine thought.
What about bees? an insect thought came.
ALL animals! Knot answered. And let himself sleep.
• • •
The journey, apart from their unusual mode of embarkation, was routine. There was never any turnabout outside the galactic disk,
because CCC was only a few hundred light years distant. Chicken Itza was the main food supplier for the personnel who serviced the Coordination Computer; it had to be conveniently close.
Hermine, her telepathy amplified by the chicken, extended it to the mind of a passenger in the ship. She fed the images to Knot on a continuous basis, so that their minds merged as they had while they fought the rats of the Macho power plant. Thus it was as if Knot looked out of other eyes.
The disk-approach was nothing special; stasis pre-empted it. But the shuttle dropped down onto a small but phenomenal planet whose entire surface was burnished metal. There was no vegetation visible, no mountains, no seas or wilderness. Every thing was artificial, measured, and clean. The externals of the Coordination Computer. The passenger looking was highly impressed; he found it hard to imagine a single computer as big as a full planet. Why, he wore on his wrist a device two centimeters in diameter that gave him the precise time in any of fifty planetary systems, recorded stray notes that might occur to him, monitored his vital signs constantly and gave warning if any declined, and displayed the picture from any of several galactic news broadcasts. If all this could be handled by this small, feather-light chip, how much more could be handled by the similar chips of the Coordination Computer—amounting to planetary mass!
Then the stasis came, and the vision cut off. Hermine’s perception spread about the ship, extending to the minds of the animals aboard. There were flies, roaches and rats here, too, stowaways that man’s ingenuity had not been able to eradicate, and their psi development and species stability were similar to what Knot had encountered on Planet Macho. They could not effectively mutiny on the ship; man had too firm control here. If necessary, in an extreme case, the human crew could evacuate the ship and open the air locks, allowing the cold and vacuum to decontaminate it. Except for protected insect eggs, perhaps. But for generations the vermin had been quietly spreading their breeds and mutations to all the planets the ship orbited, transferring to the shuttles with the passengers and spreading out from the spaceports. They also remained on the shuttles until able to transfer to other diskships, in this way forming a galactic network. It had hitherto been a mindless thing; now, with the enhanced perceptions of psi, it was becoming conscious. Rats were becoming exogamous, preferring to breed with those of other ships; thus there was an imperative for crossing from vessel to vessel. The animal mutiny had been quietly building for many animal generations.
In fact, Knot realized, the mutiny of animals would continue as long as their psi kept advancing—and that would be as long as spaceships roamed the galaxy. The situation was already virtually out of control; how could man eradicate roaches he could not perceive? He had to stop both the mutation of animals and the travel of such mutes about the galaxy—and that could only be effected at this stage by the complete cessation of galactic travel itself. Which would abolish man’s own galactic empire. Thus his only real choice was to come to a reasonable accommodation with the psi animals.
Yes, of course, Hermine agreed. That has been obvious for some time.
Then if we recapture CC, we must take action. But he knew Finesse was not ready for that. She still believed in the old program, and could not perceive the necessity for change.
You must see that you take over CC, not Finesse, Hermine agreed. She is wonderful and we love her, but she represents disaster too.
Thus his problem of the microcosm became a matter of galactic import. Knot knew Finesse would not be easily persuaded, and not easily mollified at such time as he countered her will.
Then the shuttle landed. The crates were unloaded, bumped onto another conveyor, and stacked in another refrigerated warehouse. Step I had been completed: the approach to CCC.
All they had to do now was reach a key terminal, tap out the override code, and put CC back on course—assuming they could agree on the course. After eliminating Piebald and getting through the CC psi defenses that had successfully repulsed the attempts of a battery of enemies for decades—until Knot’s own party had enabled the lobos to take over.
First they had to get out of the frozen crates. The teleporting chicken could not move them out; he had to have freedom of motion himself, to flap his wings and crow, in order to make his psi function. This was a liability Knot didn’t like, but a chicken was a chicken, not the smartest or most versatile of creatures. He had to function as he functioned. Hermine, with her telepathy operating even during stasis, was much superior that way.
There lay the answer. Put a thought in the mind of the warehouse supervisor that our crates should be stored separately, Knot directed. Near some noisemaker, if possible.
Hermine reached out—and in due course their crates were moved near the main freezer unit that made the floor vibrate with the effort of its exertions. Under the cover of that noise Knot exerted leverage and burst out of his crate, which had been modified at key spots to permit this.
Good—this was deep in the storage area, with no human personnel in evidence. Knot freed Finesse and Harlan and the animals, and he and Finesse reassembled their crates as well as they could to make them appear untouched.
The CC telepaths are aware of us, Hermine thought. They are neutral, so are making no response. They are not even avoiding us, because Piebald is watching them, and will know we are here if they deviate from their normal routine.
That tells us Piebald has not selected a telepath to work with him, Knot thought. I suspected he would not, because he doesn’t trust psi. He may wait to select allies until he has a better notion of the challenge.
They held a quick council of war. “Piebald should be here in CCC,” Knot said, keeping his voice low so that the freezer noise would drown it out at any distance. “He knows we’re coning; he just doesn’t know when or how. Hundreds of ships orbit CCC every day, so it’s hard to watch them all.”
“But how many come each day from Chicken Itza?” Finesse asked.
Ouch! They could not afford to assume they had arrived unobserved; the lobos might be biding their time, making sure this was not a feint. “Our best course is to strike before Piebald is prepared. We must locate a priority terminal and use the override code—in the next few minutes, if possible.”
“We went over all this before,” Finesse reminded him. She was right; he was rehashing the matter unnecessarily, in his anxiety. “The main thing we have to beware of are CCC’s psi detectors. The machines aren’t like human psis, but they can give a bleep when psi is close. One bleep out of place, and the lobos will swarm down on it. CC keeps track of every employee.”
This, too, was a rehearsal. They knew they could not walk blithely about the premises; that was why they had brought a teleporter chicken. Hermine, Knot thought, have Mit locate—
Mit says there is master terminal twelve levels down. It is sealed in a locked vault, but we can teleport in.
Is it safe? This was almost too good to be true, so it could be a trap.
Mit cannot tell, without precognition. There is no person near, and no machine sensor.
That was the penalty for having Baby Harlan along. But without Harlan, they would have been vulnerable to CC’s many precogs before they arrived, and Piebald would surely have used one of them to nail Knot’s party. So he had to operate blind, for now, trusting that this gave him a sufficient advantage over CC. So far this seemed to be working. If, by chance, Piebald selected a precog, he had wasted one choice.
“Let’s gamble,” Knot said. “We can move our whole party in.”
“Let me go first,” Finesse said. “I can stand guard and scare the lobos off, if we trigger an alarm.”
Knot knew there should be no alarm, or Mit would not have reassured them. Finesse just didn’t want to be left behind. But this would give her first try at the terminal—unless he kept Mit with him. Stay with me, he thought to Hermine. You know why.
There was a nudge of agreement from the weasel. Then Knot kissed Finesse and let her go. She carried Harlan; he had the other animals.
br /> This would be the first test. If Piebald was using a telepath, despite indications, he might be waiting for them to separate, so he could tackle them singly. The controller might overcome Finesse, in Knot’s absence, if the controller was indeed one of Piebald’s selected psis. But they both knew this was the kind of risk they took, in this preliminary game of strategy. Each side had to be cautious, for premature action could lead to disaster. Yet failure to take such risks could be just as disastrous. The trick was to take risks and win.
Hermine relayed precise instructions to the chicken—and Finesse popped out of the room.
They are there, Hermine thought. No alarm. But Mit is uneasy. He wants his precog ability. He believes something is lurking, but he cannot focus on it.
The roaches are uneasy too, Knot agreed. The three were fidgeting and turning translucent. But we know this mission is perilous. The moment we start the override code, CC will advise Piebald and his minions will converge.
The chicken returned, alone. Knot made sure everyone was with him, picked up the other rooster, and stood ready. “Okay, Cocksure,” he murmured.
The wrenching came. He and the animals were in the chamber with Finesse. There was the terminal, as accessible as he could want. “It’s not a fake, a decoy?”
“It’s real,” Finesse said. “Either Piebald didn’t figure on teleportation—this room would be inaccessible to us any other way—or he has some other plot in mind.”
“Bless his presumed oversight.” But Knot noted that the three roaches had now disappeared. They were aware of incipient danger, and that could not be ignored.
Yet they had to try the terminal; otherwise their mission was pointless. If this was a trap, it would have to be sprung. Knot positioned himself before the terminal. Have Mit give me the code, as before.
A pause, then: Mit says he can’t.
Can’t? He did it before.
Another pause. He says he used precog for part of it before. It isn’t a simple linear code; it has a temporal component. That’s why no clairvoyant ever snuck in and got it before we did; only a clair-precog combination could do that, and by the time any intruders discovered that, CC would capture the clair or precog who tried. Mit is one of the very few who possesses the right combination—and he can’t get that code while Harlan is with us. No wonder he’s upset!