Mute (40 page)

“I tend to forget that the vast majority of psi-mutants are partial or negative. For every first class psi like you, Hermine, there are about ninety-nine lesser psis, and about half of them are so negative as to perish soon, and many of the rest are mental cripples.” Finesse was now reviewing the underlying basis of the psi society, perhaps trying to grasp how she, a normal, related. “I am sure there must have been psis before space travel, that were not understood for what they were, and were incarcerated in mental hospitals as feebleminded, incompetent, or criminally insane. In fact, they even used a minor form of lobotomy on them, electroshock treatments that stunned their psi for a time and made them seem normal. How can we of the present ever compensate or atone for the ignorant brutalities of the past! At least now we recognize the few successful psis, and use them productively.

“Still, it is instructive to restore perspective. There are ten or a dozen partial psis like Lydia for everyone like you, Hermine—and a hundred or more normals like me. I have to remind myself how rare a thing a true psi is, like a diamond buried in trash, and what a terrible thing it is, what a crime it is to destroy such abilities, ever, for any reason at all. This lobo effort to eradicate psis must be stopped. It must be!”

Another pause. Knot fancied he could hear her breathing rapidly, tired from her exertion. Finesse really believed in what she was doing. Then: “I really must stop now. I have to get some sleep. I know Piebald’s up to something nasty; he’s just letting me be until he gets it organized. I really ought to throw myself in the pool and drown myself—but I lack the willpower as long as there is hope for escape, and anyway, they would haul me out long before I scored. I love you, Hermine, and I love Mit, and also whatshisname...”

The sending ended. Knot smiled with resignation. “Whatshisname” was not really a joke, in his case. Finesse remembered him, because of the clever manner she had played back her holo-recordings of their mutual experiences, but the memory was not as deep-seated as it would otherwise have been, and not as immediate. Probably she had been able to retain none of the Planet Macho experiences with him, but knew he had been summoned here, so could interpolate.

Meanwhile, she had correctly fathomed the nature of her captors, and had no illusions about Piebald’s intentions. Knot, like Finesse, distrusted what was developing at the villa-prison. But he was selfishly glad, too, for this gave him time to reach her, and the longer she went without being hurt again, the better for them both.

Now he, too, had to sleep. He knew there would be savage trials ahead, for himself, his companions, and for Finesse. They all needed their strength.

As Knot drifted off, experiencing more guilt for not being able to love the woman he held or hold the woman he loved, or to impregnate the first or to rescue the second, he had one more distressing thought. It occurred to him that his party had been in one fracas, and no one had been lost. That meant the ax was still hanging.

One of them was destined to die—and he still did not know who.

CHAPTER 10:

There was another village astride the path on the way down. It did not seem to be in a good position for either garbage collection or fishing, which meant food came from elsewhere. Perhaps from the bodies of slaughtered travelers?

Trouble,
Hermine thought, in a warning that was all too frequent in this enclave.
These people have a psi-pain broadcaster, an unlobotomized criminal.

Knot paused to acquaint his companions with this problem. “We have to pass through this village, and they will surely attack us with psi-pain,” he explained aloud, also informing the gross one through squeeze-talk. “We must endure the pain and press on, until we can nullify the psi. But it will not be pleasant, and we—” He paused, then made himself finish the thought. “We may lose one of our number.”

“So what else is news?” Thea inquired. “We see death every day, and we all know how mortal we are.”

“I don’t like being responsible for bringing it to innocent people,” Knot said. He checked with Hermine. “Mit says the pain-projector is a bedridden old man in a shack at the center of the village; we can eliminate him by shoving his whole house off the ledge into the river. The gross one has the strength; the question is, are we willing to take such an extreme measure?”

“No,” Strella said. “Deliberate murder of a cripple like that, whose psi is like mine—no.”

Thea agreed. “If we are careless killers like the others, why should any of us seek to leave the enclave? The death I see around me is not premeditated; it is natural violence that flares up like a fire. To coldly plan murder—no. There must be a better way.”

No better way,
Hermine assured Knot.
The villagers will kill whoever comes among them. They have no hesitation about murder.

Knot relayed this news. “I can believe it,” Strella said. “My own villagers were the same. But since we have to pass, we’ll have to risk it. Perhaps my own psi will cancel out the pain-psi. Hold your noses!” And she walked boldly into the village.

She had chosen to sacrifice herself! Knot started after her, then realized that he could do nothing, and held back. If her psi worked, blocking the pain-psi, that would be the time to charge through. While the villagers who were closer to the smell-psi remained dazed. They might get out the other side without being caught. But right now, distance was best.

The hornets’ nest stirred. Freakish mutants boiled out of the shacks. “Kill! Kill! Kill!” they shrieked, laying hands on Strella.

Her psi-stink exploded—but so did the pain broadcast of the village psi. It was as though a giant had stepped on a crowd of people. Mutants fell writhing to the ground, twisted by the double barrage of psi.

Knot had assumed the villagers would be immune or acclimated to their psi’s power. Apparently not; they had to suffer its full force. In a moment the effect spread outward to intersect Knot and those with him. Stench and agony washed through them, surely milder than that in the center of the village, but still awful. Knot staggered, falling against the inner wall as he had before. The gross one seemed to withstand it better; Knot remembered he was resistive to psi. But Thea writhed right out of his grasp.

Knot retained enough control to catch hold of the mermaid and prevent her from rolling off the ledge. He was determined to foil her predicted demise if it were humanly possible. They collapsed together, sharing the agony, embracing in the passion of wretchedness, not delight.

Gradually the horror eased. But now the villagers were recovering too. They had been psi-pained before; they were not immune, but they did know the effect was temporary and did not represent any bodily damage. Knot climbed unsteadily to his feet, placing Thea carefully—but the villagers were simultaneously picking up the stricken Strella.

They tore brutally at her body. Seeing that she was not young and delectable, they lifted her high and heaved her over the ledge. “No!” Knot cried, knowing it was already too late, that the prediction had been fulfilled. The sacrifice had been designated, inevitable. He felt, along with his horror, a certain obscene relief.

In a moment he recognized the emotion. A flare of purest rage shot through him. He had failed Thea, and now he had failed Strella, at the cost of her life—because of the thoughtless animosity of these freaks. Perhaps because he himself had wanted her to be the victim, instead of Thea. He had saved Thea—and in that delay, the freaks had gotten to Strella.

Hermine was right: these savage villagers had to be destroyed. If Knot went down with them, maybe that was only fair.

Knot charged forward, heedless of Thea’s cry of protest. The villagers were just turning back from the ledge. He rammed the nearest, a stork-legged, pot-bellied man, and shouldered him over.

Then the psi-pain hit him again. But such was Knot’s internal psychological pain and self-loathing that it overrode the seemingly physical induced pain he experienced. He screamed a scream of purest abandoned savagery as he jumped at the next mutant—a woman with a body segmented like that of a vertical caterpillar. She had a weapon, a length of metal, sharpened into a blade on one side. Knot grabbed that pseudo-sword, wrenched it from her grasp, and hurled her sidewise over the ledge. “Die—all of you!” he bawled, converting his internal pain to ferocious action. He swung the sword at the next, lopping off an appendage of some sort.

The villagers rallied. Pain and suffering and hate had been their lot in life, and they were not to be put off by a lone berserker. More weapons flashed, and here the ledge was wide enough to permit them to encircle him.

Knot fought ferociously. If he died, he deserved it! He would take them with him! But already he felt his fury ebbing, and knew that he would soon be overwhelmed. He was not really a physical fighter. He had learned a lot from CC’s expert, but there were limits to what one man could do in a crowd, where there were no civilized conventions or restraints. He was an animal being matched by animals. The villagers pressed in, blocking off his weapon, restricting his options.

A crude club smashed the sword from his hand. Knot stood for a moment, dazed by the purely physical shook and the fatigue he felt. Strenuous action like this, coming after the hike on the steep path, could make a person tire readily. With a cry of glee, a villager leaped on him.

And Knot responded by ducking down, catching the mutant about the waist, whirling and heaving. This was weaponless combat, different from what he had been doing before. The element of surprise had restored an option to him. The creature went sailing over the ledge almost before Knot knew what he was doing. He had simply reacted—and done it effectively.

But already another was on him, grabbing him from behind. Knot rammed his large right elbow back, striking a soft gut, then pitched forward. The villager was hauled across Knot’s back and over the ledge.

Yet another was on him, not striking or grabbing but just trying to block him in place from the front so that the others could have a pinned target. Knot dropped to the ground, put up his big right leg, jammed his foot into the man’s stomach, hauled down on his arms, and shoved and heaved him up. It was the stomach throw, and it hurled the mutant out over the ledge to join his comrades.

But now Knot was on the ground. The villagers pounced in a mass—

There was a scream. A shack was toppling over the edge.

The villagers paused to stare in fascination and horror. Then, as the small building fell, Knot saw the gross one, standing braced against the wall. He had heaved the pain-psi mutant’s house over!

Now the gross one waded into the fray, secure from the annoyance of pain. It hurled villagers left and right, to smash into the back wall or off the ledge. Knot scrambled to his feet and got out of the way.

When it was over, the village was empty. They had, after all, followed Mit’s advice. Perhaps it had been precognition, not recommendation.

“I was fighting despite the pain,” Knot said, remembering. It was easier for the moment to set aside the major questions in favor of the minor one. “How could I do that?”

“You are a feeling man,” Thea responded. She was lying leaning against the wall, bruised and disarrayed but unhurt. “You reacted to their brutality when they killed our companion. You went berserk. That blotted out the pain, enough to let you function.”

“How can you know this?” he asked, disturbed.

“Hermine broadcast your feeling to the gross one and me, freeing us also. The gross one is starting to receive her. It—he—may I call the gross one male?—he went on to dump the hut of the psi-pain mutant. I could not help—but at least I understood. It had to be done.”

She was a very understanding woman, Knot realized. He was sorry again that he was unable to impregnate her him self; she would surely make a good mother.

Then he put his hand to his head. The weasel and crab were gone. Oh, no—during that fight, when he was hurling mutants over his head—had he somehow—?
Hermine! Mit!
he thought, alarmed.
Where are you?

We are safe,
Hermine’s thought came immediately.
We decided to move to a safer premises during the violence. Mit knew the way.

Now he saw them, perched on an overturned bucket. Yes, Mit would know the way.
Thank you for your help,
he thought sincerely.
Had you not freed the gross one—

He was free; he just needed direction. He has come to know us, so his mind is now receptive. We work well together,
the weasel added, pleased.

Yes—they were an excellent team, even when the job was mayhem. Now they had wiped out an entire little colony of mutants—just to get past. Could it be worth it? In what way could he consider himself to be morally superior to those freaks he had slain?

This was a kind of hell, Knot realized. He felt battered outside and inside, and deeply unclean. Mutilation—was it more of an outer or inner condition? But he knew the full shock of it had not hit him yet. It would take time to work its way to the surface and out, like a bad bruise, hurting all the way.

They continued. The path slanted fairly directly on down to the river. They followed it, then backtracked to the spot immediately below the village.

The carnage was there. The slope diminished near the shore, in this section, so that most of the bodies lay clear of the water. Some might have splashed into the river directly, and it was possible that these survived. If they had not, they had been carried away already in the current.

In any event, the water was clear. Some of those on the slope were not quite dead yet; Knot knew the kindest thing to do at this point was to kill then quickly and cleanly. But his brief battle-rage was over; he could not do it. He was sickened by it all, hurting inside in a new yet related way, hating himself for what he had done. He thought again of the mutilation, so clearly apparent here. What had anyone done to the lobos or the mutants, worse than his recent rampage? Now he faced the consequence, flinching, lacking the courage to finish what he had started.