Mute (11 page)

The Captain looked at the card. “Of course,” he said equably. “We’ll start with clairvoyant analysis, and use the telepath in a secondary capacity.” He faded out.

Knot nudged Finesse. “That’s a magic card?”

“Yes,” she said, showing it to him. Printed on it were the large letters CC, with a code pattern.

Your nature must not be known,
Hermine explained.

Will it be discovered? Ask Mit.

Mit says no. Not here. Finesse has been able to keep the secret.

Even from the station clairvoyant?

Yes.

Knot shook his head in wonder. Clairvoyant versus precog, or vice versa, or whatever. How could one override the other?

He told you,
Hermine thought.
The specific pre-empts the general. We are very specific.

The holo-Captain reappeared. “Please rise and file past my image separately,” he said. “Our clairvoyant is with me now, and will halt the person who complicates our voyage. The faster we accomplish this identification, the faster we shall be or our way. I know none of you wish to be delayed any longer than necessary.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Knot said, before Finesse elbowed him in a rib.

“I haven’t had this much adventure in years!” the man behind Knot said happily. “What a thrill if I’m the one!”

The people formed a crude line and began marching past the image. One little boy poked a finger at it. “No, there’s nothing there,” the Captain said, smiling. “By law, I cannot mingle with passengers. That is one of the safety precautions CC enforces. Should I catch some loathsome disease and have my brain turn to jelly and steer the ship into a black hole, you passengers would be most unhappy with me. Especially if it hadn’t been precogged.”

There was a general chuckle, as the passengers adapted to the situation and felt more at home with the joking Captain. Knot and Finesse took their places at the end of the line. “What if it
is
us?” Knot asked.

“It isn’t. Hermine checked with Mit.”

These were really useful animals! “Who is it, then?”

She turned her green eyes upon his in silent rebuke.

You talk too much,
Hermine explained.
We don’t want others to know our natures.

Then tell me privately because I don’t care who knows our natures, at the moment. Who is it?

The woman in green. She doesn’t know it yet.

Knot looked at the woman. She was young and fairly pretty, with her hair done in an elegant bouffant, and displayed a prominent bosom. That should be interesting.

No, it is mundane.

Any woman with a bust like that is interesting.

It is like that because she is pregnant.

That deflated him. The weasel was right: the woman was suddenly less interesting. Still, the situation intrigued him. He was seeing precognition in operation, and wanted to know to what extent it was valid. Maybe Mit’s precog about him joining CC could be foiled, simply by a change in plan.

Knot waited as the other passengers were checked. Sure enough, when the green woman passed the holo-Captain, he challenged her. “I regret to inform you, that our clairvoyant indicates you are the focus of our problem.”

“Me!” she exclaimed, shocked. “I’m just going to join my husband in System Fitzgerald. I take this ship to CCC, then transfer. “

“You are fated not to arrive,” the Captain said with polite grimness. “I know you would not want anything untoward to happen. It’s probably a perturbation, an anomaly that will clear in a few hours. Will you take the next ship?”

“No! This is the only ship that makes the connection to Fitzgerald this week. I can’t wait.”

“Then will you submit to telepathic probe?”

“Yes! I have nothing to hide. Your precog is wrong, that’s all there is to it. I have no intention of doing anything rash. Far, far from it!”

“The queen protests too much, methinks,” Finesse murmured.

“Excellent,” the Captain said. “If you will kindly step forward to the crew compartment—”

“Oh, no! I’m not getting mixed up with the crew. I know why the law keeps you from mingling with the passengers! You horny spacemen get a girl in your cubby, you really go to work! I’m going to join my husband!”

“Madame, you misunderstand.” The Captain’s patience was becoming strained. “I am married myself, as are most—”

“You married stags are the worst of all!” she flared. “You think that protects you from suspicion!”

“Oh, I love this gal,” the man who had been behind Knot said. “‘Course, she’s probably right.”

The Captain did not seem to be enjoying himself, though. “We want only to protect your privacy in what may be a delicate matter—”

“I’ll bet! I’ve met that kind of delicacy before! You men are all alike! You don’t get
me
in that crew-shack! Bring your telepath out here, where everybody can see him.”

“Our telepath is not—”

“That’s what I thought. You men trumped this whole thing up, just to get a girl in that room. Bring him out here, or admit your game!”

Now other passengers were murmuring assent. The woman had struck a nerve of suspicion that a number of people shared, including Knot. Who knew what tricks a bored crew might perform, to gain access to attractive passengers they knew they would encounter only once? How could anyone challenge the information of precog or clairvoyant, or deal with a telepath who could read a person’s real nature and intent?

Beneath that was a more fundamental suspicion: a general distrust of and aversion to the Coordination Computer itself. Did CC really have to have these psis checking out passengers, or was it gathering data for the aggrandizement of its own power? A machine ruled the galaxy; everybody knew that, though all officials denied it. But if it was awkward to challenge the insight of an individual psi-mute, how much more awkward was it to challenge the phenomenal organizational computer itself? So the undercurrent of hostility showed only obliquely. As Knot suspected was the case here.

“Very well,” the Captain said, with an enigmatic smile.

Now comes the good part,
Hermine thought.
With all your complex thoughts, you have missed the obvious. Mit’s laughing.

A middle-aged woman entered the passenger compartment. She wore a transparent face mask to protect her from possible contamination by passenger ailments, and translucent skintight gloves. “I am the telepath,” she announced.

“A female peep!” the man behind Knot exclaimed. “It’s indecent!”

The woman glanced at him. She was matronly, with smile lines around mouth and eyes. “I’m sure it would be, in your case,” she said to the man “Fortunately I read only with permission.” She addressed the woman in green. “May I read you?”

Somewhat deflated, the young woman consented. “Of course.”

The telepath stood before her, concentrating. “Please think of this trip,” she murmured. “Your expectations for the voyage, your concerns, fears—”

The woman screwed up her face, thinking. Knot was tempted to make a remark about the obvious effort and what it signified of her intelligence, but Finesse nudged him warningly before he got started.
And no comments about garbage burning, Finesse says,
Hermine thought. Knot had indeed been generating such a thought, too; the weasel must have read it, reported it to Finesse, and relayed the reply.

“It isn’t working,” the telepath said. “Like many people you do not focus your thoughts clearly unless you vocalize. Try talking to yourself, subvocalizing, so I can follow.”

Rat twaddle!
Hermine thought.
A good telepath can pick up images. This one is only a partial tele; she can perceive only what is directly broadcast, and she can’t send at all.

“Subvocalize?” the woman asked.

“Speaking in your mind.”

“I can’t do that! You think I’m queer?”

Knot had trouble following that. How could subvocalizing relate to oddity?

“The alternative,” the telepath said patiently, “is to speak aloud, while I verify the accuracy of your presentation. You would not be able to distort the facts. I really think there should be a more private place to do this.”

The woman looked at the entrance to the crew’s quarters. “Nuhuh! I stay right here.”

She’s as difficult as I am!
Knot thought to Hermine, intrigued.

“As you wish,” the telepath agreed with resignation.

And will suffer similarly,
the weasel warned.

“So you want me to say what I’m thinking aloud?” the woman asked. “Here goes. My name is Stenna, and this is my fourth disktrip, and I’m not worried at all about it, and I have absolutely no intention of blowing up this ship or derailing it or pulling out the bilge-plug or whatever, so your precog or clair or whoever has a gear loose, or maybe he just wanted to get me in that crew-room alone.”

The telepath looked perplexed. She glanced at the holo-Captain. “She’s telling the truth, as she sees it. She has a limited intellect.”

Hoo!
Hermine thought.
They are fed up with that woman.

“She may not know the truth,” the Captain said. “Keep working. If we get much farther behind schedule, we’ll have to scrub this flight. “

“Why are you making this trip?” the telepath asked.

“I told you,” Stenna said, sounding irritated. “To rejoin my husband. He works for Nebula Chemical Company, researching new strains of organic catalysts, and he’ll be there another six months or more. So I want to be with him. Why would I mess up the ship that’s taking me there, even if I knew how?”

“A good question,” Knot murmured. “I think the precog goofed.”

“Your self-interest leads you to question the validity of precognition,” Finesse replied.

And the precog is right,
Hermine put in.

“Do you have any personal problems?” the telepath asked. “History of aberration?”

“Of course I don’t!” Stenna said indignantly. “You think I’m a mutant freak or something?”

“Who are you calling a freak?” Knot demanded.

Stenna looked at him, her nervousness making her more carelessly assertive. “You, you freak! You shouldn’t be allowed on board with normal people. You should be shipped in the cargo hold. You’re probably the one causing the trouble, only your mute-loving girlfriend is cozy with the captain so they have to fix the blame on someone else.”

“Madame, please do not address a mutant in that manner,” the captain said. “They are citizens of the galaxy too. Common courtesy requires—”

“You’re talking just as if they’re people,” Stenna said with bravado. “They should all be locked in the enclaves where they belong, every last freak—and the freak-lovers with them!”

The Captain looked pained, and the telepath was hardly pleased, but they maintained their facade of politeness. Knot was under no such restraint. He ripped free of Finesse’s cautioning hold and strode to confront Stenna. His light mood had now swung back to ponderosity, and he wanted to shove his burden of negation onto someone else.

“You uncompromising bigot!” he exclaimed. “Without mutants, you would not be able to join your normal-loving husband at all. Galactic travel would be impossible. Did you ever think of that?”

Stenna was too far gone to be cowed. Her normal eyes, which were green like Finesse’s fairly flashed. “I don’t mean psi-powered people; they’re a necessary evil. But you physical freaks—you’re the failures that happened instead of psi-mutes. You should be thankful you even exist. If it were up to me, you
wouldn’t
exist. Why don’t you stay in your place? Look at you, with your lopsided body. You should be ashamed to show yourself in public.”

“I’d be ashamed to show a mind like yours in public,” Knot retorted. There was an element of awkwardness here, because she did have those green eyes and large bosom and was physically attractive. He would rather have fought with an ugly normal. But her bigotry, to his mind, was like a nest of maggots, eating out the substance of what could have been a lovely woman. “You’ve already inconvenienced this whole ship because of it.”

“You think so? Prove that I’m going to do any damage whatever to this voyage!”

Knot studied her, bringing his square pegs/round holes alignment expertise into play. Suddenly it clicked. All he needed was the proper formulation of the problem. “You’re pregnant,” he said.

“What business of yours is that?”

That might have been a set-up for a smart remark, but now he was more interested in establishing his devastating point. “Don’t you know how the mutations occur?”

“Of course I know! I haven’t been in space for a year, until now, and once conception has taken place it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway, for the mother,” Knot said. “Where was your husband the month before you conceived?”

“Right on Planet Vermiform with me!” she said.

“The whole month?”

“Thirty full days. I wouldn’t let him touch me until I’d checked the last one off on the calendar. So there’s absolutely no chance of—”

“Two things,” Knot said. “First, aren’t you aware that the clearance date is approximate, not absolute? The good Captain has explained that this particular ship has improved shielding—but many other ships do not. Prospects of mutation decrease geometrically with the passage of time, so that you are ninety percent safe after a month—if you operate correctly. Only fifty percent safe if you play it incorrectly.”

Suddenly she was uncertain. “Incorrectly?”

“The problem is that the mutated sperm cells stored in the male body do not clear automatically. One day after a space flight ends, they number 50 percent to 99 percent of the total. As the body continuously generates new ones, the ratio changes. But as long as there are any mutant cells remaining, even one percent, you cannot be sure. Since, as you put it, you did not let your husband touch you—well, did he touch any other women in the period?”

“Of course not! I wouldn’t marry a philanderer!”

“Then the presumption is that he did not manage to dispose of all of those tainted cells. It would have taken them longer than a month to clear.”