Mute (67 page)

YES.

THIS COMBINATION HAS A TEMPORAL COMPONENT?

YES.

IS IT THE SAME AS THE CC OVERRIDE CODE? Knot asked with abrupt insight.

YES.

So they could no more pass this door that blocked the way to the master switch than they could take over mastery of the Coordination Computer. Piebald must have known it.

“Why don’t you kill your baby?” Piebald’s mocking voice came.

“
I
would.”

The awful thing was, that would do it. With his full powers restored, Mit could grasp the current code. They knew it, Piebald knew it—and they all knew that they would not take that step. Their lives and the welfare of the galaxy might depend on it, but they would not harm the baby. Piebald, in a similar situation, would have done anything he needed to, to win. On a purely rational basis, they were inadequate; they let their feelings interfere with their mission. The irony was, Harlan himself might suffer more as the result of their refusal to hurt him—but still they balked.

“Oh, no!” Finesse exclaimed. “They’re setting up a stasis projector!”

Which spelled doom. Most projectile and heat weapons were banned from CCC because they could damage valuable machine components, but stasis hurt nothing, and was quite effective. This time they would be unable to avoid it.

“There may be one other way,” Knot said slowly. “I refused to join the bee hive, but they left me with an option. I had forgotten it.”

Finesse glanced at him suspiciously. “What option?” Then she concentrated on the lobos down the hall, and they moved away from the projector. She had, for the moment, made them afraid of it—but that was at the limit of her range, and she could not delay them long this way.

“A chart of CCC, perhaps including access codes. They used precognition to assemble it; I did not understand why, or why they thought it was such a significant achievement. They must have had power in their mass-mind to penetrate Harlan’s null-precog. We could get that chart from Pyridoxine, here—but I would have to align myself with the hive.”

“Does the hive’s interest conflict with the original CC program?”

“The hive wants autonomy for the psi animals. I would be supporting the animal mutiny. Now that I’ve come to know so many animals so well, I respect their motives more. Animals have died to forward our cause here. I don’t think CC cares one way or the other about animals, so there should be no great conflict.”

“I think I could pick gaping holes in your argument—if I had the time,” she said. “But I think we need that chart. Very well. You join the hive, but I remain true to CC. If you betray the computer, I’ll fight you.”

He believed her, though what she really meant was that she would fight him if he opposed her view of CC, her dedication to the prior program. There was that split again. He was more ready to compromise than she—and they might have to compromise, to beat the lobos. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

She looked nervously down the hall. “Whatever you do, make it fast. I’m weakening, and they’re getting stronger. I think we have less than a minute.”

I join you,
Knot thought to Pyridoxine.
Give me the code, if you have it. The combination to this lock.

Immediately it flowed into his mind. Knot tapped on the metal of the door, following the complex pattern. He worried that the stasis would catch them before he completed the code. But the lobos were taking their time, sure that he had no escape. Suddenly the door clicked, unlocked, and swung inward.

“They must have killed the baby after all!” Piebald cried, amazed. “Activate the stasis immediately!”

Knot and Finesse and Auler piled through and pushed the portal closed behind them. They had beaten the stasis.

They were in the chamber of the master switch. The switch turned out, to Knot’s surprise, to be a simple massive red-handled knife lever, a make-or-break connection in the main power line. Knot did not know what the power source was, but evidently all of it channeled through here.

“Now we have a problem,” he said. “If we pull that switch, we’ll cut off all power on this planet. The heating will fail, the air regeneration, the elevators, lights—everything. We’ll probably die ourselves. But if we don’t pull it, the lobos remain in control of CC.”

“Little do you know the art of hard-nosed bargaining,” Finesse said grimly. She strode forward.

The door behind them opened. Piebald charged in. He held a translucent ball in his hand.

Finesse, hearing him, turned. Suddenly fear filled the room. Knot, Piebald and Auler scrambled for the door. But in their haste they crashed against it, pushing it closed. There was a click as it locked.

Finesse stood with her hand on the switch. “Yield, Piebald,” she said. “Or we all shall die, and all your minions with you. You know I will do it.”

Baby Harlan, who had been sleeping in Auler’s arms, woke and started crying. With that sound, the fear abated, though it did not entirely fade. Piebald straightened up and cocked his arm to throw the ball. Knot lurched toward him.

The arm moved. Knot, seeing that he would be too late, grabbed instead for the ball. He knew it had to represent a threat. He missed; it struck him on the side of the head, exploding into gas. Immediately volition left him; he collapsed beside Auler, unable to move. The gas surrounded them both.

Piebald staggered forward. He had had a whiff of gas himself, but not enough to put him down. He also showed signs of weakness from the effect of the burning he had received before; his mottled complexion was augmented by red blisters. But he refused to allow such trifles to restrain him.

Finesse concentrated—but could not seem to make the lobo retreat. “Don’t’ you know what happened?” Piebald gasped. “Your anti-precog baby, who has been such a thorn—he’s more than that. He’s anti-psi. He was improperly raised, unhealthy, but now better feeding and the healer have restored some of his vitality. His full ability is beginning to manifest, and now it is blocking your psi too. Your own ally is betraying you! You have become like me. Your psi is gone!”

Finesse reacted immediately. She jerked on the red handle. A fat spark jumped as the connection broke. “CC is gone too!” she cried.

“No, not yet,” Piebald said, continuing toward her. “It will take several minutes for CC’s circuits to fade out. That computer is planet-sized, remember. There is considerable current in the wiring. I can restore it.”

She attacked him, her hands clawing at his face. But Piebald, even weakened by burns and stungas, could handle himself physically. He blocked her arms aside, then delivered a savage right hand blow to her face. Again Finesse’s nose was smashed. She fell back, blood pouring out. It was the most devastating strike he could have made, physically and psychologically.

Knot, his face on the floor, saw it all; he happened to be pointed the right way. He winced, but his body did not respond. He could do nothing.

Piebald reached for the switch, to close it and restore power to the computer—but Finesse tackled him from behind. He had made the error of assuming that the smashed nose would send her into crying helplessness. But underneath, she was as tough as any man. Now she was a blood—smeared demoness, intent only on victory. Any notion she might have had of feminine wile or helplessness had been vanquished with her nose. Her hands passed around his head, nails going to his face, gouging his eyes. She hated this man every bit as much as Knot did, and with reason.

It was an awful struggle. Knot, immobilized, caught only snatches of it, mostly by ear. The woman he loved, against the man he loathed, both reduced to animalistic level in this terrible conflict—and still Knot could do nothing. He was forgotten—of course. Though perhaps not primarily because of his psi; if Piebald’s theory were true, Harlan was canceling out Knot’s psi too.

Aahh, you bit me!

For a moment Knot thought it was a cry from one of the visible combatants. Then he recognized Hermine’s thought. The weasel had been caught by one of the poisonous snakes. And still he, Knot, could do nothing. He could not even send the healer. Hermine, perhaps his closest friend, dying—

Knot concentrated in a fury of helpless anger. There had to be some way!

He saw one of the rats, Rondl, crawling across the floor, partially incapacitated by the drug, but getting stronger. Of course—the drug was a form of poison, and the psi fleas neutralized it in the rat’s body. That was their symbiotic service. Too bad Knot himself did not have such a resource.

Didn’t he?
Pyridoxine!
he thought to the bee.
Summon Rondl here.

The bee remained immobilized physically, but aware mentally. She concentrated.

Nothing happened. Her power was too small, by itself.

Knot realized that she needed a boost.
Relay!
he ordered her.
Rondl, come here!
The bee could relay much more of his power than generate her own.

Now the rat responded. In a moment she changed course and came to him, as though he had put his hand down for her.

Tell the fleas to bite me,
Knot thought urgently.
Many of them, now! To nullify the poison.

He felt the minute stings of several bites. Never had he been so glad to be attacked by insects! The immobility of his body began to abate. The effect spread outward from the sites of the bites, until he had control again. His rage at what was happening to Finesse and Hermine had accelerated it; he really wanted to recover.

Knot climbed to his feet. Piebald was choking Finesse—and had been for some seconds. Her face was purple under the mask of blood. Still she fought, her fingers like claws, reaching for his face. He shifted his grip quickly, grabbed her hair on either side, lifted her head, and rammed it down against the metallic floor. He was trying to kill her—and this would accomplish that very soon.

In these few seconds Knot was lurching forward, his strength resurging. He knew his own eyeballs were turning bloodshot with the effort, for the view before him was blurring. Only Piebald showed clearly, like a figure hung on the cross hairs of a gunsight. There was his target!

Knot came up behind the man. He took careful, almost gentle hold of the lobo’s own mottled hair. He held the head firm—then lifted his large right knee in a savage blow to the side of his enemy’s face.

Once again he had underestimated his opponent. Piebald yanked his head aside as Knot moved, drawing him off balance. The knee only grazed the lobo. Piebald let go of Finesse and caught at Knot’s uplifted leg.

Then it was elementary savagery again—only this time the lobo faced a man, not a woman. Knot, his scruples damped by shock and hate, attacked with insane fury. Fists, feet, teeth—anything. Piebald, at first taken aback by the sheer ferocity of it, soon began to exert his calculating strategy. He countered Knot’s strokes, tied up his limbs so that they could move only ineffectively, and maneuvered him gradually from the offensive to the defensive. He entangled Knot’s left arm in a bruising arm lock and started working toward a strangle with his legs. Knot resisted, but was unfamiliar with this particular mode of combat; it had not been covered in his brief course. As it turned out, legs were more clumsy than arms, but had far more power, and they could indeed be tightened about the neck in a strangle, if a person knew how to do it. Piebald knew how, and the lobo had the leverage. When Knot’s strength expired, as it had to, Piebald would have him helpless. Once again, the lobo was winning.

Finesse remained unconscious, perhaps in coma. Blood pooled on the floor by her face, and there was a pallor to the rest of her visible skin that boded ill. That terrible strike of her head on the floor: concussion—or death?

Knot knew he needed help. But where could it come from? The room was sealed—and if it weren’t, the lobos would be charging in to help Piebald. The healer Auler was unable to heal himself, while stunned. Harlan—was only a baby. The rats—

Bee Six—tell the rats to attack Piebald!

But Roto and Rondl were too timid. They hung back. They were not like the tough rats of the Macho solar station; they were gentle white-collar rats, harmless. They had done all they were psychologically capable of when they lent the use of their fleas to rouse Knot.

Then Mit the hermit crab emerged from Knot’s pocket. His shell had protected him from most of the battering, and his clairvoyance told him what to do. Perhaps it wasn’t psi, now, in the ambiance of Harlan’s nullpsi, but elementary crab sense. He was little, but he had fighting spirit.

Mit scrambled up the lobo’s arm, going for the face. Piebald could not deal with the crab, because then he would have to let go of Knot and lose his advantage. But they both knew that Mit knew exactly where to pinch to do the most damage. Perhaps a key nerve complex in the neck; perhaps an eyeball...

Piebald’s nerve broke. He had lost his psi long ago; he did not want to lose his sight too. He grabbed for the crab—but Mit was already dropping to the floor, knowing precisely when to make his move. Clairvoyance could not be readily surprised, even when largely nulled out. Knot wrenched his right arm free, grabbed the lobo’s hair again, and jerked Piebald’s head around. Now the initiative was his!

He went for a strangle of his own, but the lobo blocked it. They fell into a position of impasse, neither man having an immediate advantage, neither being able to initiate a new sequence without putting himself at a disadvantage. Had this been a polite competition match, the referee would have separated them, setting up for a new round. But this was real, and there was no way out.

But the master switch was down. CC was dying, as its residual power inevitably drained. The longer the impasse held, the closer Knot came to victory, and death. For once the computer passed below a certain stage, its electronic banks would suffer, like brain cells dying in a man, and then even the reversal of the master switch would not restore its full function. There would have to be extensive replacement of units, and reprogramming, before it functioned again, and without CC’s directives to bring the supply ships, it might be years or decades before such repair was possible. Civilization could collapse in that interim. CC was the brain; cutting off its power was like cutting off the supply of blood to the human brain. Certainly the lobos would not benefit. Already the illumination was dimming, and the air was becoming close.