Mute (33 page)

But at the moment he had a more immediate concern. The lobos would soon discover his ruse, and commence a canine-assisted search for him. He had to get well away from here in a hurry.

Mit says there is a vehicle near,
Hermine advised him.
A stilter.

Knot didn’t know what that was, but decided it was for him. It had to be better than jerking along on foot. He followed directions and found it: a kind of saddle mounted on long, jointed stilts, suitable for traversing fields of standing grain without crushing many plants. It was no toy; it was sturdily constructed, with a small but powerful hydrogen motor that dripped its water exhaust to the plants below.

He climbed up and seated himself. It felt high and precarious, but it did seem to be his best available mode of transportation.

Knot followed Mit’s instructions and started the motor. A driblet of fluid fell as the machine spun into life.
No pollution,
Hermine thought, again relaying Mit’s perception.
They don’t like pollution right under growing plants. For fencing and turning-under it is all right, but not in the living fields. This will conceal your odor somewhat from the canines. They will have difficulty tracing you.

This sounded better and better. Knot put the stilter into gear. It lurched forward, flinging its jointed stilts out ahead, lifting them from behind. It seemed to have about eight, and reminded him of a long-legged bug. But though it seemed momentarily about to collapse, it had a balancing circuit, and actually held its position well. Soon he gained confidence.

They moved out across the fields. The stilter stepped over obstructions and gullies without difficulty, and could also make fair progress on flat land. He worked it up to high gear, and fairly flew across the dark fields. In fact the sensation was very like flying, for in the night he could see the ground only as a vague haze, and his feet barely brushed the tall plants below him. Just so long as the stilter didn’t set a foot in a rodent-hole and take a tumble!

She wakes,
Hermine thought. There was no need to identify the subject; the impression of Finesse came right through. Her face was throbbing with the residual discomfort of the broken nose, and she had a headache and felt awful. But she had told the interrogator nothing, and would not tell him anything, no matter what.

Hi, Hermine!
she thought strongly.
If you read me, contact whatshisname. His memory will return when introduce yourself. Bring him to me—carefully. These people are vicious.

She did not yet know that her captors were lobos, Knot realized. He had assumed that she had guessed this, but perhaps he had assumed too much. She thought this was a purely local group. Maybe that was best; no sense having her realize the full extent of her captors’ activity, while she was helpless.

But now a man was with her. That was why she had awakened. He had entered her cell and splashed water or her face. It stung awfully. She saw him now: Piebald.

“You have psi talent,”
the man said.
“You are not normal.”

Finesse did not respond. She merely relayed her impressions, not knowing whether they were being received. It was all she could do.

“CC sends only psi mutants on spy missions,”
Piebald continued.
“Therefore you are a psi spy. I will find out your psi, so as to know the nature of CC’s plot.”

Off on the wrong track. Knot did not know whether to be gratified or alarmed, for surely Piebald would torture Finesse cruelly in his effort to discover the undiscoverable. The lobos would never get what they wanted from her, for CC had evidently anticipated such a threat to a psi-mute and eliminated it by sending a normal. But they might destroy her in the process.

The sending faded out.
We must help her,
Knot thought to the weasel, and felt her strong assent.

Then a light showed on the horizon.
Trouble again,
Hermine thought.
The aircraft returns on its search pattern.

Mit can help us avoid that.

Yes. But there are ground parties organizing too. The pattern is becoming too complicated for him.

Maybe I can simplify it. Where is the nearest rough terrain?

Acute angle to the left. We’re going away from it.

Knot guided the stilter into the necessary turn. He was working into a certain skill with this machine, and was getting to like it. Now he intended to ascertain the thing’s practical limits.

We are going toward them,
she protested.
One aircraft, two groundcraft, and three men on foot with laser rifles.

Sounds like fun.
Knot steered the stilter with one hand, and brought out his stolen laser pistol with the other.

The lights of the aircraft approached, swiftly. It turned out to be a blimp, its large gas chamber giving it buoyancy to enable it to hover without sending down a blast of air that would flatten the growing grain. The farmers of Macho were very conscious of the welfare of their crops. Probably the lobos had wanted to use faster jetcraft, and been blocked by the local plantation owners.

Quickly Knot assessed his chances: he could not lose himself, once discovered by the blimp, since it did not have to keep moving at high speed. It could fix on him, its operators firing their lasers at convenience. However, it could not come down below tree-top level, since there were a few trees here, and would be subject to the vagaries of wind. The trees and shrubs ahead of him would be effective as long as he stayed among them.

That left the ground crews. Rough terrain would interfere with the trucks—Mit had identified these now—but not with the men on foot. The stilter could probably outrun the footed men, but not the blimped or trucks.

True.

This was another puzzle. He had to find a route that would inhibit all three aspects of the pursuing force until he could win entirely free and be forgotten again. Assuming those damned written instructions the lobos were using allowed them to forget enough.

Mit says there is no such route,
Hermine informed him.
The rough ground is scant, just a gully with some rocks and larger trees. It is surrounded by wide-open fields. You can avoid the lobos only fifteen minutes there.

And Mit ought to know; fifteen minutes was well within his reliable precog perspective.
I shall have to change the rules again,
Knot decided.

Ooo, naughty man.
The weasel was apprehensive and delighted.

Knot reached the limited badlands, however, unobserved.
But they are closing in,
Hermine warned.
They know this is a good place for you to hide.

Lead me to the man I can most readily overcome,
he directed her.

Mit located the man. He was scouting a copse in the steepest section of the gully, using a flashlight. This depression appeared to be a natural cavity left as a flood-overflow; the base of it glistened with water when the man’s light shone that way. The weeds were tall and robust, and the trees were achieving fair size. Probably fertilizer from the fields got washed in here, enriching it.

Knot stopped the stilter and waited in ambush behind a gnarly trunk. The help of the psi animals made this virtually child’s play; he knew whom the man was, what his call—code was, and where he was going. As the man passed the tree, Knot stepped out behind him. “Please freeze in place; I have you covered.”
Now am discovered; now I revise the rules.

Fire!
Hermine thought.
He’s attacking.

Knot fired his beam as the man spun about. The laser caught the man on the side; a puff of smoke rose from his shirt. Then he dropped.

“Sorry about that,” Knot murmured. He had run afoul of a conditioned reflex, thus had not anticipated it through Hermine’s reading of the man’s prior thoughts. Such reflexes were invoked without thought, triggered by the situation. The lobos had well-drilled troops.

Knot was not yet immune to the horror of maiming or killing men, but he knew he had no choice in this case. Had he not fired, the man would have beamed him down. In addition, the memory of Finesse’s broken nose went far to alleviate his scruples about what he did with these people. In fact, by their torture of Finesse, the lobos had converted Knot into a far more dangerous man than he had been before. They had reduced him to a more primitive viciousness. He hoped that he would be able to return to civilized behavior, after all this was over; he did not like himself as he was now.

But I like you,
Hermine thought.
Now you understand about hunting, and about rats.

Yes, now he understood. The lobos were indeed like rats, tough, cunning, unrelentingly malignant, ubiquitous. One had to keep fighting them desperately, merely to slow the progress of defeat.

He undressed the man efficiently and changed into his uniform. This was a little tight about the right side, but would have to do. He put his own farmer’s clothing on the lobo. The man was not dead; the beam had penetrated his side as he turned, possibly holing a lung, but such wounds were cauterized as they were made and bleeding was not extreme. The survival rate of those injured by laser was much higher than that of those with similar injuries by projectiles. Knot was relieved; at least he had not done more damage than he had to.

He picked up the rifle, tucked the pistol away, and addressed himself to the communicator box. “Truller here,” he announced, using the name Hermine had picked from the lobo’s mind. “I have apprehended the fugitive.”

The response was immediate. “Good for you! Alive, incapacitated, or dead?”

“I tried to take him alive, but he attacked when challenged, and I had to hole him. I think he’s still alive, but I may have punctured his lung.”

You lie so well it becomes the truth,
Hermine thought.

“The directive says that man is a psi. We want him for interrogation. A truck will pick you both up in a moment.”

Knot waited, idly twining threads from the hole in the shirt so that they tended to draw it together. Probably no one would notice that the uninjured captor had the holed clothing while the injured captive’s apparel was whole, but it wasn’t worth risking. Knot hauled up a section of the shirt on the lobo, placed the muzzle of his pistol against it, and triggered a brief burst. The cloth puffed into ash. Then he tucked the shirt back into the belt. That would have to do.

Soon the truck arrived. Knot stood in the open and waved his arms, signaling it in. When it stopped, he helped the driver lift the unconscious man into the back, then joined him in the cab.

In the light of the interior, the driver turned, suddenly realizing that he had picked up a stranger. But Knot’s pistol now looked him in the right eye. “Drive carefully out of here, exactly as you would if everything were in order,” Knot said with deadly softness. He didn’t want the lobos to learn about Hermine or Mit, but needed to convince this man that he had no chance to resist. “If you attempt to betray me, I will know it before you act. I am a telepath. Think a thought.”

Gray two toad fly,
Hermine thought, relaying it.

“Gray two toad fly,” Knot repeated, pausing to let the significance sink in. “I have shot your companion; I will shoot you and drive this truck myself if I have to. Your practical choices are between driving healthy and riding wounded or dead. In either case you will not succeed in taking me to your superiors, so you need have no feeling of dereliction if you cooperate. I suggest you not even think of causing trouble for me.”

Cowed, the lobo drove the truck. It was not that he was a coward; Knot’s prompt action and logic had bypassed the man’s conditioned reflexes and left him reasonable. It was indeed better to cooperate, when all that could be gained by non-cooperation was his own malaise. He knew Knot was not bluffing; the condition of the lobo in back attested to that.

As they emerged from the rough ground, the vehicle communicator spoke. “Fash, have you located Truller yet?”

Knot made a little gesture with his hand toward the speaker grille. This unit, Mit had ascertained, was keyed by a signal from either end. It had been off while Knot spoke, but now was on. The lobos limited reliance on this sort of equipment was now costing them security; they were better off without it. Probably they had to use it, in deference to the normals who governed this planet; left to their own devices, they might have used a system of flag signals or blinking lights. Even that, however, would not have stopped Knot; he knew how to use those signals. More and more, he was coming to appreciate the wisdom of CC’s choice in agents.

Tell him to answer—as I wish him to,
Knot thought to Hermine.
Apply a background of alert menace.

Fash jumped when the prompting came; evidently he had not before experienced telepathic communication directly. But had he had any doubt at all of Knot’s power, this abated it. “I have picked him up,” the lobo said nervously. “The—the fugitive is in back, unconscious.”

“Proceed directly to our hospital station. Out,” the communicator said, and clicked off.

“That was well performed,” Knot said. He kept his laser oriented on the man’s head.

They bumped over the field, finally intersecting the road. The truck accelerated. Knot checked with Mit, then reached over to put the communicator on non-receive; now it would not be activated from the other end. He wanted to be able to talk freely.

“You will actually drive to the bridge across the enclave chasm, passing as close to the lobo hospital station as is feasible. After passing the station you will accelerate to the maximum permissible velocity. Should you deliver me without attracting attention to the place I am going, I will release you and your truck unharmed. Otherwise you will either be shot, or will share my fate. Do you understand?”

He understands,
Hermine thought.
He knows that the only way he can escape is to help you escape.