“I told you I was only going to defend our enclave,” he said.
Her brow furrowed. “You must have told me when I wasn’t recording; I don’t have a note on it.”
“True. It involved the leadmuter and—you know.”
She knew. The enclave secrets had to be protected. “Did you salvage him?”
Knot had worked that out with CC. “Halfway. He stays here, but CC operatives will assume control of his output. They will try to convert him to iridium production, and give us a royalty amounting to half the value of the gold he used to produce.”
“Iridium is that valuable?”
“About five times the worth of gold, at contemporary prices. CC uses a lot of it in its wiring, I think.”
“So CC’s cut itself in for 50 percent of our share, despite making a 400 percent profit on the changeover,” she grumped.
“But now it’s legal. We can spend all we get, openly.”
Her eyes lighted. “Now that’s an improvement. We could only risk 10 percent, before.”
“Yes. I’m rather pleased with myself. We could have lost him entirely. Now we’ll have five times as much disposable income, indefinitely. Maybe I should quit my job here and become a professional negotiator.”
York came to him, spreading her arms. He took her in—but she detected the difference immediately. “Oh, no—that slinky normal got to you, didn’t she!”
“Yes,” he admitted sheepishly. “It was her job to guarantee the good faith of our enclave by—”
“By captivating you,” she finished.
“She was extremely good at it. Nothing against you, York—”
“I never had controlling interest in you,” she said with resignation. “I can’t compete with a beautiful normal. Matter of fact, if I had access to a handsome normal man—”
“Glad you understand.”
“You’ll never see her again anyway.”
“I’m going to make the effort, though.” It would have been easier to let York be satisfied, but his new mission required her informed cooperation. He had to be alert for any contact by the enemy, and had to inform Finesse when it came. If York thought he was to have no further contact with the CC girl, she might interfere with such a message. That could be disastrous. “Face it, York: the damage is done. CC has the leadmuter and Finesse has me. I’m going to go after her.”
“Knot, you’re a mutant! She works for CC. You were just an assignment, her route to the leadmuter. Certainly she’s pretty, and smart, and normal—that’s why you’re nothing to her.”
“I’m a sucker, without a doubt,” he agreed ruefully. Indeed, he was beginning to wonder. His memories did not seem to align perfectly with his logic. Could CC have been stringing him along, dumping him back here with a pseudo-mission to keep him quiet? “I’ll send her a hologram asking for a date.”
“She won’t even remember you!”
“Yes she will. She made holos of all her time with me. She uses the same system you do.”
“Just what sort of time did you spend with her?”
York was getting too jealous. He’d have to fudge it somewhat. “Well, I’d like to believe that I made love to her once or twice, and that—”
“Ha! With a normal? And her making holos of it all?”
“Uh, well—”
“In any event, that means CC knows all about your—”
“CC always did. I found that out. Fortunately, it’s not a talent CC can use, outright.” That had been something of a comedown. He had assumed CC would co-opt his services the moment it ascertained his psi-status and obtained his agreement to work for it, but in fact CC had not been very much interested. They had hammered out the leadmuter compromise and that had been that. In fact, he had never actually interviewed CC directly; Finesse had taken him instead to an available terminal on a closer planet, a chicken world. He was disgruntled.
“You were gone four days,” York exclaimed. “Allow two days for travel, to and from. You cooled your heels for two days to get the leadmuter compromise?”
“I did. But it was surely worth it.”
“CC’s more efficient than that! Even granted that it was giving you only a millionth of its attention, while it coordinated all the diskship schedules of the galaxy and poked its awareness into all sorts of private business elsewhere, it still shouldn’t have taken that long. There had to have been more. Could some of your memory have been blotted out?”
That was a telling thrust. Knot was used to doing it to others, amused at their problems remembering him. Was he now getting a taste of what it felt like? Certainly CC had the facilities to erase selected memories, or to suppress them for a time. Drug/hypno therapy—painless removal of key information.
“It could be,” he admitted reluctantly. “But to what point? Had CC wanted me as an active agent, CC could have taken me. Why interview me, then blot out the memory and turn me loose with a passive mission?”
“As a gesture of contempt,” she suggested. “Or to keep you out of its agent’s hair. If you’re pinned to one planet by a make-work mission, all she has to do is stay off that planet.”
Knot began to get angry. “Damn it, I didn’t like CC before, and I like CC less now. Why disrupt my life for four days, to show how unimportant I am?”
“Why, indeed,” York agreed, pleased.
“Maybe I can subvert Finesse away from CC—just to get even.”
York was silent, realizing her play had backfired. She had sought to convince him that he needed a mutant woman, but Knot was hopelessly hooked on the normal.
• • •
Knot settled in to the routine of his job, then made his holo, asking Finesse for a date. He would ascertain how much of his memory reflected truth, and how much reflected hope. If she cared for him, she would show it; if not—
Finesse responded after a reasonable interval, politely declining the date. “This in no way reflects on your personality or quality as a man,” she said sweetly as the hologram image faded.
“It’s a damned rejection slip!” he exploded. Rejection slips came when a person applied for a position with a government or institution and was not hired; they were always politely, even complimentarily worded, and meant nothing other than failure. That made his ire rise again.
Two weeks after Knot’s chicken trip, a husky mutant walked into his office. The man had a head like a deformed anvil, and a fleshy overlay at his shoulders that made him seem much heavier than he was.
“Do you have any special talent?” knot inquired routinely.
“I can carry things pretty well,” the man said, flexing the muscles of his arms. They knotted up monstrously. That was muscle tissue, not fat.
But there was one other thing. The man’s hands were talking in galactic sign language—a system of communication that had a number of variants that Knot was necessarily proficient at. Thus he read the message instantly. The story those hands told was odd. They said: I AM A FIGHTING COCK, COME TO GIVE YOU A FUTURE.
Suddenly Knot remembered. Cock—the male chicken, and he had encountered some terrors. Doublegross Bladewings, pursuing him down a hall. Future-there had been a mutant who could jump people to alternate futures for short periods. Strange he had forgotten all this, as it had been quite exciting and sometimes grim at the time. This man was from CC!
“There are some weights in our enclave gym,” Knot said, concealing his disquiet. Obviously his memory had been expunged of these events, until the visiting mutant’s signaled words had recalled them. Accidentally or intentionally? “Let’s see what you can do.”
They went to the gym, taking an unoccupied chamber. “I am to teach you how to handle yourself under physical attack,” the man said. “How to kill, if necessary, with your bare hands.”
So CC was putting him into training. That meant his mission was not necessarily passive. Knot’s pride took a step upward. “I don’t have any intention of killing anyone,” he said. “But it would be useful to know how to defend myself.
”
They proceeded with the lesson. The anonymous man was good at his specialty, very good. Knot learned a great deal in a short time. There were fundamental principles that lent themselves to application in many situations; once mastered, they were the basis for some quite devastating specific applications.
In this session he did not learn nearly enough to consider himself a martial artist, but certainly his ability to protect himself from careless attack had vastly improved. A man might get angry and throw a punch; it would not land on Knot. Against a straight punch: step aside, catch the passing arm, strike the elbow with other hand; the leverage could break the attacker’s elbow. Against a strike with an instrument: step inside, turning, catch arm and heave attacker forward over shoulder so that he landed on his side, back or head. He might get up again, but would be unlikely to continue hostilities. Against a strangle from behind: heel into kneecap, elbow into gut, duck down and heave. Enemy would either let go or be thrown violently forward. Against a laser pistol held at a reasonable distance: raise hands, say magic words “I surrender,” wait for help. Only a fool, the instructor assured him, ever offered overt resistance to a laser or projectile weapon, unless he was certain to be killed anyway. One had to act before the weapon came into play, or after it went out of play.
At the end of the lesson, the man said with his hands: THIS FUTURE IS PAST. FORGET UNTIL NEED.
Knot was not aware of what had passed. “Can you lift that barbell?” He pointed.
The man leaned over, got his grip, and lifted it one handed.
“That’s strong enough,” Knot said. “We’ll find a place for you in our hauling detail.” Experimentally he heaved on the barbell himself, just to make sure it was as heavy as it looked. The right end came up slightly; the left did not. It was full weight.
York was waiting when he returned to the office. “You took a long time with that client,” she remarked. “If it had been a woman, I’d have been suspicious. Have trouble placing him?”
Knot looked at his watch. The hand had jumped forward an hour; he thought it had been only minutes. He experienced déjà vu; when had he seen his watch jump like that before? “He’s a brute! I thought he might not be as strong as he thought he was, but he proved himself.” Knot stretched his arms. “I must be more tired than I thought. I feel stiff and bruised, when all I did was point out a weight for him to lift.”
“That was all? You look sweaty.” She peered at him appraisingly. “You sure you haven’t started taking up with men?”
“No such luck. I did try to heft a barbell, after he did it one-handed. You know how jokers sometimes substitute lightweight fakes. But it was solid. Maybe I strained too hard, blanked out, and took a fall.”
She was immediately sympathetic. “Let me give you a rubdown with vibro oil. That will make you feel better.”
It would also make him feel erotic, as she well knew. Vibro oil penetrated the various crevices of the body, making the adjacent tissues tingle warmly. She would surely arrange to apply some to erogenous zones. Still, she was a good woman, and Finesse was far away and not very responsive, and he needed York’s support, especially if he was blanking out unexpectedly or getting sick. “That would be nice,” he said.
It was nice. York’s hands were strong and sure, and the oil gave him a lift like that of the milk of paradise—though he could not recall ever having tasted that fabulously precious beverage. When would he have had opportunity? York worked him artfully into a considerable passion, and shared the natural result. Yes, she was a good woman.
Yet even at the height of it, Knot knew this was only passing indulgence. He did not love York; he loved, however foolishly, an aloof normal girl who worked for the Coordination Computer. He knew he would bring only grief upon his head, but he had to try to win her. Better to love and lose than...
He sent another holo, and Finesse politely rebuffed it, as before. She regretted, she said innocently, that her work kept her moving about; she had to interview people on diverse planets around the galaxy, collecting personnel data for her employer. CC was a machine, but had to deal with human beings. It required human input. It was her job to provide human insights into otherwise impersonal data. Such as whether a given person was physically attractive to the opposite sex, or unduly nervous about something, or hiding something. She simply could not take time off at this stage, however much she might like to. This in no way reflected any criticism of him, however.
“It’s another rejection slip!” York snorted, angry for him in the hope that some of that emotion would sublimate into passion for the nearest available woman: herself. “She’s under orders to affront no one, so she’s polite, but—”
Yes, Finesse was interviewing other men—and Knot had some inkling how thorough her interviews were. He might as well be in love with a traveling call girl.
Other mutants came, male and female, and Knot placed them successfully—but he continued to suffer lapses in consciousness. He was afraid he could lose his job if the enclave supervisor found out—though since the supervisor did not remember him anyway, maybe not. York would not turn him in, as long as he yielded every so often to her triplicate charms. Knot retained his position largely because his office functioned well; if he spent time in the enclave infirmary, leaving the details to York, that performance would suffer, attracting untoward attention. York was good at her job, but she was no interviewer or placer. She lacked the inspired touch Knot had for placing square mutants in round slots.
So he concealed the lapses, which was easy enough to do, granted York’s cooperation, and he paid her the attention she required. All in all, it was an uneasy but feasible compromise, not without its satisfactions. Time passed.
Then one day he received a holo that snapped his last restraint. “I am sorry I can’t accept your kind invitation this week,” Finesse said demurely. “I have a five day tour on Planet Macho, interviewing thirty residents. I expect to be too busy even to roost.”
“Thirty Machos!” Knot exclaimed, appalled.
“Roost?” York asked. “What kind of term is that? Chickens roost.”
Chickens... Something clicked in Knot’s angry mind. “I’m going there!” he said.
“She must have meant to say ‘rest.’ Still, it’s a funny accent.”
“Take over the office. Cover for me. I’m on my way.”
She picked up on what he was saying. “To Planet Macho? You’re crazy! That’s half the galaxy away.”
“Damn right I’m crazy. If I’m not back in five days, put in for a new placement officer.”
“Knot—she’s a not worth it!”
But he was already departing the office. No time to roost? He’d see about that!
• • •
The voyage was no problem. Enclave MM58 had become wealthy; he put it on the tab and no questions were asked. Knot had been in space before, and had his code tattoo; he was now an old hand. He even had funds to carry him for this excursion; the personal bonus he had realized from the leadmuter settlement would cover several such trips, despite tourist rates. He kept largely to himself, so there would be no awkward lacunas when the stasis caused others to forget him too soon. In a day he arrived at Planet Macho.
As the shuttle made its way down, he reviewed what he knew about this world. The colonists here made something of a fetish of the he-man, she-woman syndrome. A male had to be large, strong, roughly handsome, weathered, and not too interested in the opposite sex, but capable of responding more than adequately when said sex was overwhelmed by the magic of his mere presence. The female had to be young but not juvenile, just enough above the age of consent to make that consent count without realizing the possible consequence, and have the superstructure to make that consent a matter of more than academic concern. It was, after all, no use to have a man show off his indifference to a woman, if the woman lacked the physical attributes that made such indifference an act of heroism. Mental qualities did not count for much, in either gender, and both children
and persons beyond the age of sex appeal were kept out of sight. Marriage was practiced, in deference to the demand of the galactic norm, but not taken too seriously; it was every man for himself, and proud of it.
The shuttle landed and the stasis abated. Again Knot thought of Finesse interviewing thirty prime head of this planet, and again he felt fury. The supermales would of course knock her around a bit before indulging in the other facet of their natural appetites; that, too, was the Macho mode. Women needed to be tenderized to make them most enjoyable, like hard fruit being rendered into delicious juice, and in any event violence and sex were allied. The ladies were supposed to enjoy the process, being turned on by the virile hostility displayed. But Finesse was not native to this planet; she could get badly hurt. (Worse: she might like it.)
At first glance and breath, Planet Macho was ordinary. It was a large, light world, with a lot of surface and slightly low gravity, making the horizon farther away than he was accustomed to, but also making him feel up to the challenge. The atmosphere was clean but a trifle thick, and the clouds in the sky were dense. This world probably had good storms.
No vehicle met the ship. A running track led some distance to the check-in buildings, which had the aspect of huge stables. Already the returning natives were running along this, vying with each other for speed. Of course: macho. Each man had to prove himself, constantly.
Knot was not an apt runner. His pace was lopsided because his body was. He could move rapidly when he had to, but he knew normals—particularly Macho-normals—would find his motions ludicrous. So he walked—which put him apace with the women. They glanced askance at him, but did not comment. They were generally large-boned, high-busted, fair-skinned normals with streaming pale hair and a few freckles, who jiggled firmly to front and rear as they walked. Pretty, in a heroic way, but not at all his type.
In due course Knot reached the building. He checked in by displaying his tattoo to the machine. Everyone checked in with CC; that was how the giant computer kept track of the galaxy. It knew where every space traveler was—to the nearest planet. Within the planetary scheme, CC had very little jurisdiction. It was the compromise between the need for galactic coordination and the need for planetary autonomy.
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