Mute (30 page)

“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 his 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 at 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.

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?