She’s going to destroy you!
“At least you could have warned me,” Finesse said sweetly.
“And had the warning recorded on your holo, for all the galaxy to know! My secret is virtually worthless if it isn’t secret.” He was still watching the image, fascinated. At the time of his performance, he had been under the impression that he was doing the doing and she the acquiescing, but from this vantage it was evident that she had keyed in many of his doings, leading him from one exploit to another. She was certainly no amateur! “Where was the pickup?”
“In my hair. It’s a heat reader. CC interprets the variance patterns and renders them back into a visual representation. It is independent of line-of-sight. I still think you could have made your point without humiliating me.”
“There would have been no humiliation without that recording. I never intended anyone to know about my ability, apart from necessary individuals like York. I would be much happier if you just forgot the whole matter.”
“Which I shall surely do—until I review the current recording.”
“CC already knows?” That was rhetorical. Since CC had processed the recording and assimilated her contrasting report, that was a foregone conclusion. The net was drawing tight, and Knot had not yet found a way to slip free. For one thing, CC would now have a copy of the recording on file.
“CC always did know, I’m sure. CC knows everything about everyone it is interested in.”
“Even you? Why did it select a normal for this mission?”
“CC surely knows more about me than I know about myself. I was a foundling, a bastard baby sired by a spaceman; CC arranged for my care. It was only natural that I should grow up to work for CC.”
“A spaceman? They have only short planet-leaves. You should have been a mutant.”
“Well obviously I wasn’t!” she flared. “Probably CC took me in with the hope that I would manifest psi, since I had no physical mutation. I must have been a disappointment. But by the time that was evident, too much was invested in my education. Now you know more than you deserve to know about me. And now CC is ready to recruit you,”
“Why didn’t CC just come flat-out and ask me, then?”
“Because a number of prospects are under consideration, and CC must select only the best one, and needs further data. My first interview with you provided that. You were the cleverest, smoothest, slipperiest, least ethical scoundrel who remained true to his basic loyalties and knew what they were, and you very nearly foiled the investigation itself. That, it seems, was what CC was looking for. You are the one selected.”
“Selected for what?” Knot decided not to make an issue of the personal description; it was accurate enough.
“For whatever mission CC has in mind. That’s its job, you know—to match the mutants to their best situations. I’m only an interviewer.”
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered, “Tell CC to go ram a disrupter electrode up its tubing sidewise.”
She looked at him obliquely. “Most people are flattered to be chosen for special assignments by the Coordination Computer. It means they are the very best for the position. The best in the galaxy.”
“I told you: I don’t like CC or approve of the system. I refuse—”
Alert! Alert! Hermine broadcast. Mit says a bad act of nature forms.
“Oh come on,” Knot muttered. “I’m not going to rape her.”
“Shut up,” Finesse said. “Hermine never jokes about a thing like this.”
Apparently at this range it was possible for the weasel to send to two minds simultaneously, because Finesse had reacted at the same time Knot picked up the thought. “Storm?” she asked now, evidently thinking it at the weasel too.
Not water. Strange.
“We have very sudden, fierce tempests at erratic intervals,” Knot said. “Some are wet, some dry. We’d better get under cover in a hurry—if Mit’s clairvoyance is to be trusted.” Knot looked at the sky. “Though I see no sign of a storm.”
“Mit’s precognition has its limits, but is to be trusted,” Finesse said. “He may not be able to properly define what is coming up, but it is surely dangerous. We’ve never been able to define his ability precisely; it seems to be a unified perception embracing present and future. Clairvoyance with a temporal dimension.”
Not storm, Hermine repeated. Something else.
“We’d best use the leadmuter’s cave,” Knot decided.
They hurried forward. But it took several minutes to get near the cave, and the threat coalesced before they arrived. The trees began to move strangely, aligning their leaves along common planes or lines of cleavage, none touching others. Grass stood erect, similarly aligned. Finesse’s hair began to rise.
“An electric charge!” Knot cried, feeling his own hair extend. “Rare, but bad. Keep moving!”
The charge intensified. Now Finesse’s hair radiated out like an anemone helmet, and even her eyebrows bushed out, Knot’s skin tingled; all the hairs of his body were straightening. Where was the charge coming from, and where was it going? Knot had supposed the wild stories about this effect were exaggerated. Now he wasn’t sure.
My fur is sprung! Hermine thought, alarmed.
“It is discharging the electricity,” Knot explained, for weasel and woman. “A harmless effect—for the moment. But if sparks start jumping—”
There was a crackling. Jags of light struck upward from the trees. At first the displays were small and faint, but they soon grew more spectacular.
“I don’t like this!” Finesse exclaimed, trying to pat her standing hair in place. A little aura of light showed where her hand approached her head. She resembled a remarkably cute witch with an uncharacteristic halo. “I’m sure it’s playing havoc with my recording.”
“That so?” Knot asked, not at all disgruntled by the news. “You mean you’ll have no way to remember what is happening now?”
Oh, ho! Hermine thought, projecting a fleeting vision of a predator closing in on prey.
Knot was startled. “Hermine sends pictures, too!”
“Of course she does,” Finesse snapped, giving up on her hair. “Where is this cover we’re headed for?”
“Just coming into sight ahead.”
They ran on, each person radiating fat sparks. The whole landscape was blazing with the electrical discharges, and small lightning forks were jumping from the trees high into the sky before petering out in umbrella-like spreads. Knot was a good deal more alarmed than he cared to admit.
Me too, the weasel thought. But Mit says we’ll make it. The cave is safe.
They did make it. They bundled into the cave mouth as if taking shelter from hail.
No farther! Hermine warned. Mit says it is safe only here at the edge.
“Thanks,” Knot said aloud. It was easier to focus his thoughts when he engaged the vocalizing mechanism, and it let Finesse know what he was thinking. Though he had no doubt he could learn readily enough to project without vocalizing or subvocalizing, at such time as he needed to. “The leadmuter gets excited by storms and things and tries to transmute other substances—such as people—into lead. Doesn’t work, but it’s not too healthy either—for him or the subjects.”
Finesse looked out at the electrical display, then into the passage leading to the leadmuter. She shuddered. “I’m not used to this sort of danger.”
She’s pretending, Hermine thought mischievously. She’s tough as rats.
You’re helping me against her? Knot thought, nicely managing to avoid vocalization.
It doesn’t matter. There is no help for you.
Hm. “If I understand the situation correctly, there’s no danger as long as we heed Mit,” he said, uncertain himself.
“Yes, we must stay right here,” she agreed.
“Of course—until the threat passes. But you know, it is hardly in my interest to keep you safe. What you have already recorded is enough to damn me.”
“I didn’t come here to damn you!” she prote
sted. “CC needs your help.”
What is her real interest? Knot asked Hermine, who had climbed from Finesse’s pocket and was prowling the cave.
She means to seduce you into joining CC.
Just as he thought. Finesse’s first visit had been exploratory. The second was recruitment, and she had an obvious weapon. He recognized that, but remained vulnerable. She was really his enemy, but he would do a lot to obtain her good will. Ask Mit whether she will succeed.
Knot expected no direct answer to that. He was wrong. She will succeed.
The seduction or the conversion to CC?
Both.
Don’t I have anything to say about it? Knot demanded.
Nothing.
Nothing?
It has been determined. Mit knows.
Knot experienced a sudden firm resolve. He would see about that! He had little faith in precognition, especially as it might relate to himself. A storm might be predicted accurately enough; it had no free will. A man was different.
Finesse was making herself comfortable, arranging her limbs attractively, setting up for her effort. Knot tried to ignore her.
Other psi powers were remarkable but basically sensible. They merely accomplished by mental means what could also be done by physical means. His own talent was an example: there were drugs and treatments that could cause people to forget recent events, temporarily or permanently. They interfered with the intermediate process of memory fixation, so that the short-term memories never made the necessary transition to long-term memories. Electric currents applied to certain sections of the brain could erase established memories. The leadmuter’s ability was another example. Transmutation of substances could be accomplished in the laboratory, with extraordinary effort and expense; this was not worthwhile economically, but it was possible. Clairvoyance was merely the awareness of surrounding landscapes and events, and extension of the normal perceptions. Telepathy was like a built-in intercom.
But precognition—that was essentially fortune telling. It was inherently paradoxical, since the future was mutable. Tell a man he was about to step into a hole and hurt himself, and he would avoid that hole, rendering that prediction inaccurate. Thus true precognition could not exist—at least, not if what it showed was told to the subject.
There are rats who don’t believe weasels can kill them, Hermine thought.
I’m a rat, all right.
“Dollar for your thoughts,” Finesse said, smiling at him. He almost felt the warmth penetrating his skin, compelling his body to react. She was so infernally pretty; it was her weapon, and she used it well.
“A genuine archaic hundred-cent note?”
“Or equivalent in service. Women have been known to do a lot for a dollar.”
Don’t try to fence with that predator; she’ll eat you up, Hermine warned.
“Hermine thinks I’m a rat and you’re a weasel.”
Finesse stretched, elbows bent, breasts flattening under the cloth of shirt and jumper. “Some rats are attractive enough.”
“And some weasels.” But he had a challenge to rise to: the proof or disproof of precognition. “What’s to stop me from just walking out of here, now, a rat that slips the trap?”
She gestured at the effects continuing beyond the mouth of the cave. “That.”
The electrical display was at its height. Every tree radiated streams of light, illuminating the landscape so brightly it was difficult to watch. Knot was not sure what such a flow of current would do to his body and brain, and did not care to experiment. On the other hand, he knew it was not safe at this time to approach the leadmuter. To that extent the precognition was correct. He would have to remain here.
But he did not have to be seduced into anything! Finesse was lovely, and she was a normal, and his memory of his last engagement with her—and the timely and graphic reminder of it she had provided via the holograph—fired his imagination and desire. But he had willpower, and he would not sell his conscience for sex.
Yes you will, Hermine thought. Her net is closing over you already. She obtained a distance precog about the storm, and timed this visit to coincide. You never had a chance.
Shall we make a wager?
No. I never take easy prey. You cannot win. Mit knows.
Mit can’t know. A storm he can predict; it has no self-will. I am a man. My fate is not predetermined.
It is in this respect.
“Whatever are you two thinking about that distracts you from the immediate prospect?” Finesse murmured, self-assured and twinkling.
“Free will or not free will.”
She smiled, and again he felt the impact. Oh, she knew how to use her assets! “As William Ernest Henley put it in ‘Invictus’: ‘It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll; I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my Soul!’”
Knot considered her curiously. “Which side are you on?”
“I’m on your side, Knot. And on CC’s. I know what’s best for you. That’s why I must work to reconcile the two of you; you belong together.”
“I have no use for CC! I refuse to join it. My free will will not permit it.”
“So you prefer to argue with Mit? This is futile.”
“I defend my right to pursue my own destiny!”
“Your unconquerable Soul,” Finesse agreed. “I like it.”
“You really believe in this stuff, don’t you! You think everything will come out exactly as the crab predicts.”
“I know it will. But that doesn’t mean you are in any way under duress.”
“This is a contradiction!”
“Not at all. It simply means that your free will will bring you to CC.”
“I could knock you out and toss you into the electricity. Neither your faded memory nor your fouled-up recording would ever betray the truth. You cannot force me to join!”
Finesse put her hands on his shoulders. In the flickering electric light her face was animated despite its stillness, the shadows leaping across nose, lips and brows. She was eerily beautiful. “Knock me out. Throw me away.”
Of course he could not. “Pointless. Your memory and recording will be washed out anyway, by my psi and the storm. But CC has the prior recording. I can’t hide any longer. But I still don’t have to join.”
Finesse smirked knowingly. Knot threw his arms about her, bore her back against the rock, and kissed her savagely. She offered no resistance.
He drew back. “No! This is how you’re doing it! Seducing me.
You showed me how good it could be, with your sophisticated subtle expertise, getting me hooked; then you carefully reminded me with the holo, making sure that hook was tight; now you’re putting your price on it. You figure I’m already addicted. You think I’ll throw away my conscience for your favors.”
“I wouldn’t respect you if you did.”
“So it’s all right with you if we just lie here a while, wait out the storm, then go back to the main enclave?”
“It’s all right with me if you try to do that. But I would be deceiving you if I said I thought you’d succeed. You will join CC before we leave here, or at least make a sufficient commitment.”
“I submit I will not—and that you will not remember any of this, and this time will have no recording to remind you. You will have either to turn me in for hiding the leadmuter, or let me go entirely. I have beaten you, this time.”
Fool, Hermine thought, as Finesse smiled complacently.
Knot plowed on heedlessly, “You’re all locked into your brainwashed belief in the machine, in nonsensical psi. Well, you may have nabbed the leadmuter, but not me.”
“You’re repeating yourself,” Finesse said. “Next, you’re supposed to plead the welfare of your enclave.”
“Though why you want to take the leadmuter away from his only joy, to the detriment of our fine enclave—” Knot broke off, realizing that he was proceeding exactly as she predicted. The precognitive crab was probably keying her in
. The very thing he was trying to disprove, mocking him!
“That I can answer in a manner you can understand,” Finesse said, adjusting herself on the rock for greater comfort. Knot realized that he was still halfway embracing her, and drew back farther. “You are evidently using this mutant to produce gold, a metal of unquestionable value for sculpture and coinage and the plating of assorted objects and the illumination of fancy manuscripts. Has it occurred to you that he might as readily produce platinum, which is more valuable than gold, or iridium, which is several tines as valuable as platinum? With proper management, the value of his metallic output might be multiplied tenfold, with no inconvenience to him. He might even like iridium better.”
“Well—”
“CC is aware of that prospect. That’s CC’s job—to coordinate mutant talents, to the best advantage of humanity. You are largely wasting the gold you have here, in the interest of secrecy. Suppose we tuned the leadmuter to something really precious, like crystallized carbon—diamond—and granted your enclave a percentage of the proceeds? You could have more profit from that than from all your present gold, and the leadmuter would be happy, and it would all be legal. The leadmuter would not even have to move from this cave. CC expediters would be provided to attend to all his needs. He could be much better off than he is now.”
Knot looked at her cynically. “CC is offering that?”
“Not necessarily. I’m merely making the point that CC takes good care of mutants, especially the ones with special psionic powers. If you really care about the welfare of the leadmuter—”
She was becoming uncomfortably persuasive. He did care about the leadmuter, and knew that what she offered was probably the best possible situation for the old mutant—and for the enclave. To keep all that they had now, plus the intangible benefit of legitimacy... “What assurance do I have that CC would honor such a commitment?”
“Practicality. On bucolic worlds like Nelson, the best bovine milkers are the ones who are the most pampered. The most productive hens—”
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