Mute (23 page)

Knot made his way to Room 507. He touched the announcement button, and heard a melodic chime beyond.

A picture-screen snapped on, framing Finesse’s face. Pretty as a picture: oh, yes! “Yes?”

“It’s me,” Knot said.

Her brow furrowed, “Whom?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t remember me!” he snapped. “Knot, of Planet Nelson. You took our leadmuter.”

Comprehension came, as from a distance. “The leadmuter, yes. You were the placement officer of the local enclave, weren’t you? What are you doing here?”

“I love you!” he blurted. “I couldn’t let you—”

“Well, don’t yell it to the whole planet! It’s an uncouth word, here.” Indeed, she seemed to have some distaste for the term herself, as though he had rendered a mild obscenity. “Look, I’m very busy now, and—”

“What
is
this? Here I tell you that—that—and all you can say is—”

“You had better come in for a moment.” The door opened on a lush apartment, with fur-lined easy chairs and mirror walls. There was a huge circular bed, with a matching mirror in the ceiling above it.

Knot entered, feeling out of sorts. He wasn’t used to such affluence, and it embarrassed him. Finesse was evidently a creature of luxury beyond his taste. Was she planning to interview the thirty Machos here? In what way did the ceiling mirror facilitate this?

She spun impatiently to face him. She wore a Macho-style dress with female frills, a peek-a-boo bodice, and sleek pale green stockings whose color deepened subtly in a way that caused the inexperienced eye to travel ever upward toward the juncture. A dark green bow in her hair augmented the green of her eyes. Knot did not approve of the outfit, but had to admit it was effective; the typical Macho male would gaze exactly where intended to, and not be disappointed.

“Knot—that is your name?—I have a full schedule of interviews today and I can’t delay. So state your business succinctly and let me get on with it.”

“I have come to take you away from this,” he said, knowing this was all wrong. She obviously had no inclination to get away; she liked her work. His eye strayed to the ceiling mirror again, and that nerved him to continue. “All these men—”

“Oh, yes—you’ve been pestering me for a date. I wish people like you would learn to distinguish between politeness and a come-on. I told you no—several times, as I recall. Just as I have told most of the rest of them no.”

Oh, that hurt!
Most
of the rest? “But I thought—”

“Now get one thing straight. I am a normal. You are a mutant. Your hands are of two different sizes. We are of different worlds. Why don’t you go back to your—you do have a mutant secretary? Or do I misremember? The mod-mute on Planet Sylvester—but no, I think it was Nelson.”

She was cutting him into ribbons! “I just—”

“The one on Sylvester had shrunken hands and feet,” she continued, musing. “It gets so hard to distinguish one interviewee from another!” Then she returned to Knot. “Well, it’s time you realized. Your place is with your own kind. I’m sorry to be so abrupt with you but I
am
pressed for time.”

What had made him ever believe he had a chance with her? She had sent him rejection-slip holos because she had so many offers she couldn’t answer them all individually. “I see I was foolish. I apologize.” He turned to go, completely deflated by embarrassment and gloom.

She softened. He remembered from somewhere that she had a hot temper and a forgiving heart. “Knot, I realize it’s hard for you. I interviewed you once, to reach the leadmuter, and I see now I had more impact on you than I intended. I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s all right,” he said numbly, approaching the door. What a fool he had made of himself, crossing the galaxy for this.

“Look, Knot—I shouldn’t do this, but if it will help—”

He paused, hope flaring. One demonstration on the circular bed?

“I’ll let you come with me for my first interview.”

Oh. She thought he could watch and learn how a real man operated? “Thanks, no. I can’t compete with a Macho man.”

“You might be surprised.” She came up behind him, putting her small, fair, normal hand gently on his shoulder. Even through the cloth, her touch felt electric. “Please, I want to show you. It’s the least I can do to make amends. I don’t believe the interviewee will object. I think you have a misapprehension about the nature of my job.”

How the hell far did they take this macho business? Did they display sexual prowess before audiences? Knot wanted to negate angrily, but his desire to remain with her, on any pretext, was too strong. “All right.”

“Excellent,” she said with false cheer, and he realized that despite the intensity of her invitation, she would have preferred him to decline. He had not been man enough even for that. “Right this way.”

She led him to the car she had rented. It was a strange one, with rotating pneumatic rubber wheels at each corner, and a plastic wheel inside that controlled the direction the external wheels rolled. Yet this vehicle made good progress over the flat road prepared for it.

They were soon away from the city and into the country. This was a plains world—no, he corrected himself,
no
planet was all of one type. There were surely quite different features elsewhere. But in the immediate vicinity there were few trees, contrasted by richly growing fields. Large animals were grazing, but there were no fences, just sections of differently shaded grass.

“Each species of animal prefers a particular type of forage, so they don’t stray,” Finesse explained, noting his perplexity. “They don’t believe in fences on Macho—at least not where tourists can see them. Farther back in the hinterlands there are many fences, though, I understand. Something about good fences making good neighbors.”

“I should have known.” Trust a planet like this to have a double standard: one practical, the other for show.

He watched her handling the car, fixing its mechanisms in his mind in case he should ever need to drive something similar. He wished he could say more to her, but this was obviously a lost cause. Well, York would welcome him back. What, he asked himself yet again in a derisive mental tone, had possessed him to make this journey?

Somehow it seemed to him that CC was responsible. She worked for CC; that had brought her to him, and now kept her away from him. He had once imagined himself as another agent of CC, but of course that was merely more foolishness. Would she be more amenable to his advances if he were an agent? Or if CC could be turned off entirely? He wasn’t sure, but the notion was appealing.

What would happen, really, if the giant computer were switched out of the affairs of man? Fewer interplanetary voyages, fewer mutants—but most inhabited planets were basically self-sufficient, and others could become so if they had to. They could continue well enough on their own recognizance. The elimination of CC might destroy the empire, but not affect the human species much. Not that he had any way to approach the dictator machine, let alone turn it off. So it was a pleasant but empty dream.

Almost, he thought he remembered something, but it eluded consciousness. Had he figured out a way to turn off CC? No, obviously not; if he had, he would probably have implemented it. Probably it had been a dream figment that seemed real at the time but had proved impractical in the waking state. He seemed to have suffered considerable confusion of identity and motive, since becoming enamored of Finesse.

She certainly was lovely! He realized CC had selected for that, for appearance and competence. When using psi-mutes, as it usually did, CC selected for the particular psi powers required; when using normals, it picked the most esthetic. That meant only that the machine had been programmed with excellent human taste. What was Knot, in contrast? An ungainly mutant freak with little to recommend him to a woman or make him memorable. He was literally unmemorable—which of course was one reason Finesse had largely forgotten him. She probably hadn’t reviewed her holo tapes of their prior interviews, which meant that her memory was not being recharged. The memory of a holo was seldom as permanent as the memory of direct experience.

Tapes? Where had he gotten that notion? Why would anyone want a tape of a meeting with him?

Knot had the uneasy feeling that he was still forgetting things himself, as if programmed to remember certain things only in certain circumstances. But perhaps he was paranoid; why would anyone care what he remembered or forgot? Certainly not Finesse, who wanted only to be politely rid of him.

Finesse slowed. They had been traveling at a velocity higher than he had properly appreciated, for the wide-open spaces and distant horizon made progress seem slow. But they were now well away from the city, around the grand curve of the planet’s surface, and the landscape was changing. They were coming to a bridge over what appeared to be a monstrous river gully. Pylons became tall as the ground dropped away; then abruptly the drop became sheer for a lowering of ten meters and on down at a steep slant thereafter to the river. The bridge carried blithely upward and over the chasm in a sweeping suspension. Knot worried that the cables could snap, but knew they wouldn’t. The citizens of Macho had their foibles, but they did know how to construct grandiose things.

“Large mutant enclave down there,” Finesse said conversationally. “Designated TZ 9.”

“Down there? In the river?”

“On the banks. I understand there’s little or no level ground, so they build shanties on the slopes, and periodically the river rises and washes them away.” Her mouth quirked. “The Machos call it vermin control.”

“That’s barbaric!”

“It’s convenient—for the normals.”

Knot was getting angry. “How do they distribute supplies, food, medicine? I see no access route to the enclave.”

“What supplies? Perhaps you have not had experience with enclaves—”

“I live and work in one!”

“Of the inclement variety,” she finished.

“I’ve seen some pretty bad situations—”

“I suspect this planet has worse. The differential between the haves and have-nots is greater here than on most worlds. Most enclaves do not have clever executives or leadmuters to provide extra financing; they depend on the largesse of those in power.”

“What kind of largesse is that, here?”

“He who cannot or will not work, shall not eat,” she said seriously.

“That’s a mighty simplistic philosophy, especially as it applies to mutants. The mutants are born the way they are, through no fault of their own. They may lack hands, feet or internal organs; they are damned because their parents traveled in space to get to the colony planets. If the colonists are willing to accept the benefits of mutancy, such as space travel itself, they should also be willing to care for the casualties of mutancy. The mutants, as a class, carry far more than their weight. To shrug off such an ethical commitment in the name of a short-sighted pseudo-work ethic—”

“What do you expect, on a planet named Macho? This sort of attitude has existed since long before man’s access to space fostered the explosion of mutancy. These people are weak on empathy.”

“But it’s nothing but a pretext to throw the weakest to the wolves! There’s no humanity in it!”

“It has always been thus. Do you find more humanity in the Coordination Computer?”

That shut him up. In truth, he did prefer the orderly distribution of resources that CC facilitated. His own enclave, MM58, had had dealings with both the local human government and the distant CC, and the latter had always been far more prompt and reliable. CC never fudged or stalled; it delivered precisely what it promised, on the schedule promised.

But surely, he thought, some similarly equitable distribution of resources could be accomplished through purely human means. The very existence of CC was predicated upon the existence of human mutants. If turning off the machine meant that the ethos of societies like this one would dominate, so that even more of the disadvantaged people would be thrown into the chasm to fend for themselves—

No. Turning off the computer would mean that there would soon be no more mutants. Then the sanctimonious Machos would not be able to draw on the mutant-fostered benefits of space travel, and there would be no adverse mutants to dump in enclaves. The Coordination Computer was really responsible for this present situation.

He looked down at the ribbon of river below. The elevation of the bridge was awesome. “What would happen if we fell off?”

“Not much. These cars are equipped with temporary stasis generators for emergency stops. We would freeze for an instant, then step out unharmed.”

“I thought stasis was only for space ships.”

“The big units are. The one for this car weighs only a few pounds, and will operate for only a few seconds. That’s normally enough.”

“Is that how they put new mutes into the enclave? With a dropped stasis unit?”

“No, that would be too expensive. There are lowering stations in several places that deposit mutes every day. Once down, they fend for themselves.”

The car speeded up as they rolled down the other side of the bridge. Knot looked again at the river below. Now he fancied he could see a few tiny shacks on the steep bank. In his mind’s eye they were skidding down toward the water, as there seemed to be little to hold them in place. Precarious existence!

Yes indeed: if the mutant-generating policy of CC were halted, this sort of enclave would slowly dry up, until only normals lived on fair planets like this one. CC had generated the problem, then washed its figurative hands of the consequences by declaring that it had no authority over planetary concerns. What was needed was some human sensitivity to counterbalance the ruthless computer efficiency. If mankind could not colonize the galaxy as rapidly without the suffering mutants, it would still be a vast improvement. Did mankind really need to settle into every available crevice of the universe?

The address Finesse was looking for was in a village on the bank of the river canyon. There were several attractive chalets perched right at the edge, supported by cylindrical metal beams that dropped to the slope below. Beams? Knot saw a splash of water come from one, and realized it was a sewer pipe.