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  “I apologize for what I thought,” Knot said.

  Finesse melted. “No, you’re only trying to help. I do not take gracefully to falls or other lapses of dignity.”

  “So Hermine told me. Did she also keep you posted about my thoughts?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s a little tattletale.”

  “She enjoys it. You two get along very well.”

  “And did she tell you I saw up your leg?”

  “Of course. She takes special glee in news like that.”

  “It’s some leg.”

  “Nature worked very hard on it.”

  “Um.”

  “Men are fools. No woman would let the sight of a man’s leg sway her from her ignorant determination.”

  “True.”

  No weasel either, Hermine put in.

  “You really like my leg?”

  “I like all of you.”

  “Even my temper?”

  “That’s the best part of you.”

  “Better than my leg?”

  “Well—”

  “The lightning has abated. My recorder is operating again.”

  He blinked. “What has that to do with what I’m thinking?”

  “I don’t want to forget a moment of this.” She opened her arms to him.

  “I’m not agreeing to join CC!” he protested.

  “But you will allow me to complete my mission by bringing you in for a direct CC interview?”

  “Direct off-world interview? Never!”

  “To plead your case for the leadmuter’s welfare. If you don’t join, that remains in doubt. You need to convince CC that your way is best, and you can do that effectively only in person. Anyone else would forget your message, unless you made a hologram, and that would further betray your nature,”

  “You’re very clever”

  “CC employs only the cleverest.”

  “All right,” he said grudgingly. “One CC interview, on the subject of my choosing. I’ll leave directly after that.”

  You will never leave, Hermine thought. You touched her, you saw her leg. The point of decision has passed. Fool.

  “I am indeed a fool,” Knot agreed, and swept Finesse in, kissing her hungrily. She was delicious.

  CHAPTER 3:

  Finesse drove him to the spaceport. The vehicle was a summer sleigh, generating a layer of ice on its underside that slid across the road surface. It steered by changing the temperature of the ice on one side or the other, and braked by letting it melt too far. A jet of ice-fog provided the initial propulsion. This made a somewhat jerky ride, at times rather cold, but it was fast and fun. They sat close together, sharing a fluffy blanket: that was part of what made it fun.

  Knot experienced nostalgia for this countryside, suspecting that despite his best intent and endeavor he would not see it again.

  But maybe he didn’t have to suffer false premonitions. He now had the services of a precog—for what that was worth. Hermine—does Mit know? Will I return here?

  Mit does not know. His precognition is short range, usually, like his clairvoyance. It is also more difficult to read strong mutants like you.

  Even when their mutancy is not related to precognition? Or to telepathy?

  Yes. There is a common bond between psi-mutants: we interact in devious ways that transcend the limits of species. We do not understand this; we only know it is so. Usually.

  Makes sense, Knot decided. Will you keep me company?

  The little weasel-face poked out of Finesse’s purse. Yes. Mit too.

  “May I?” Knot inquired aloud, extending his left hand toward the purse. The weasel came into it.

  “Which is another reason I vamped you,” Finesse said. “These are my friends. We’ve been together a long time, in terms of experience. You are taking them away from me.”

  “No, I have no intention of—” Knot protested.

  “Damn you, I can’t fight predestination any more than you can!” she snapped.

  Knot looked at her, startled. Her lower lip was trembling despite her effort to firm it with her teeth. “I am precogged to take your friends away from you—and you knew that before you came to me?”

  She knew it, Hermine thought. She is only our caretaker. CC told her that from the start. You are to be our permanent associate.

  “I don’t own them,” Finesse said. “I’m not their kind.”

  “Not a psi mutant,” he agreed soberly, appreciating the enormous longing and frustration she felt. “Here I was jealous of your normal status, while you—”

  “Can we drop the subject?”

  “No! I don’t want to do this to you!”

  “You can’t help it. You like animals, you have a way with them. Just as you do with phys-mutes. CC knew that too. You can work with disadvantaged creatures more effectively than I can, even though I have worked very well with them. Without them, I don’t know how I’m going to interview others.”

  Disadvantaged creatures. She had the typical normal’s arrogance toward non-normals. No wonder she could not work as effectively with them as he could. She thought it was her lack of psi, but it was her fundamental attitude, even more of a liability because it was unconscious. She had been born to that attitude; it could not even be regarded as a fault in her. It was part of being what she was: the inherent pride of normal flesh. And he, possessed of the pride of mutant flesh, yet longed so hard for what could never be that her very arrogance became part of her appeal. Ironic, foolish, yet true.

  “I won’t be taking them from you,” he said, “Since won’t be working for CC.”

  “So you think,” she sniffed.

  And it was that pride, too, that prevented her from breaking down, bewailing her misfortune, or pleading for some change. She was in her fashion tough, even in her vulnerability. Knot had no doubt Finesse could produce a storm of tears if she thought that would forward her mission; but she would never let her emotions interfere with that mission.

  Awful smart man, Hermine thought approvingly. The smartest mind I’ve ever met, considering how foolish you are about to be.

  “Do you know, I’m half in love with you already?” Knot inquired conversationally. The weasel had called the shot with telling accuracy.

  Finesse almost steered the vehicle off the track. But her voice was firm. “You are intrigued by an attractive normal female. Most mutant males are. That’s one of my prime qualifications for my position. Men don’t slam any doors in my face, or throw me out of their domiciles. Good interviewers are commonplace, esthetic ones less so.”

  “Yes, I am intrigued,” he agreed. “Your prime qualification worked like a charm on me. You’re the first really attractive normal who ever took me seriously, and I have no adequate defense. I never interacted like this with a normal woman before, and not just because they forgot me. So—you are conquering me, just as you intended, and I do not want to hurt you. But you don’t have to worry about my taking your friends and leaving you. I can appreciate that working with Hermine is very like being telepathic yourself, and losing her would be like getting lobotomized. Even if I intended to work for CC, I would not do it by depriving you of her company.”

  She put her sweet five-fingered genuine-normal hand on his deformed four-fingered mutant hand. “Thank you, Knot. I know you mean it. It’s not your fault that Mit foresees his own separation from me. You will be separated from your enclave, too.”

  “I thought Mit was unable to precog whether I would come back here.”

  “He gets occasional distance flashes of major events. But he cannot tell whether you will return to your enclave. He knows only that you will at some point be separated from it, in an important and significant manner—as I will be separated from him and Hermine. Take the psi-animals; they do belong with you, and they will be with you despite anything you or I can do, and I’d rather have them with you than with someone else.”

  “You forget that I’m only going to try for a compatible deal for my enclave and the
leadmuter. Your friends belong with you and CC.”

  We belong with both of you and CC, Hermine thought. But there are periods of opacity and separation and grief ahead that Mit cannot yet perceive clearly.

  Knot nodded, experiencing warm affirmation and cold misgiving. These were indeed his people. Finesse possessed, as she admitted, the lure of esthetic sex appeal—but the animals were psi. Never before had he had the chance to interact on a personal basis with psi powers equivalent in magnitude, if not in type, to his own. He was quickly developing an addiction to it.

  We understand, Hermine thought. Finesse is a good woman, very good, but also normal. We are not.

  CC had connived well when it sent this trio to fetch him: a woman to get his attention, the animals to show him what he had been missing in psi. CC had known that the bond of psi would transcend the bond of species. He might tell CC to go to hell, and find himself another woman; but without CC he would never find himself equivalent psi mutants. CC pretty well controlled the market on pets. CC was like a monstrous spider, throwing loops of silk over him, each strand differing in type but just as strong. Yet he knew this was happening, and recognized the ploys; that gave him strength to oppose the net.

  The sleigh slid into sight of the spaceport. The term was a misnomer; the true spaceport was in orbit about the planet Nelson, where the spaceships parked. To a considerable extent, the ships were the port. Shuttles connected them to the surface. Still, this shuttleport was impressive enough. It was one of several scattered about the planet, whose barges boosted freight to the main port. Each shuttle barge was a bullet-shaped unit set in the deep bore of a cannon pointed at the sky. Compressed gas launched the loads gently but forcefully. In fact, the shuttles’ similarity to bullets was in more than their shape; they were shot from guns.

  A shuttle was rising as the sleigh approached, its massive vapor-jet marking the sky. Another was lowering, gliding in on spread wings; no sense wasting fuel in the descent. They were both very pretty, to his taste: galactic technology against a setting of planetary wilderness. Knot trusted the wilderness more than the technology, but certainly did not hate the latter. It was mechanized government he objected to, not the machines.

  Finesse parked the sleigh and got out, limping slightly. Her ankle injury was not serious and would soon heal; in fact she had mentioned that there was a psi healer who worked for CC who would take care of it in an instant.

  They rode a belt to the central office where they proffered their left arms. Finesse’s pattern-print checked without any problem, but Knot’s arm was bare. An alarm sounded, summoning a human attendant.

  This was a normal male of advanced age. “First trip, eh, mute?” the oldster said. “Have to register you with CC.”

  “There goes my freedom,” Knot muttered.

  “Eh?”

  “He’s nervous about space,” Finesse explained.

  Isn’t she a beautiful liar? Knot asked Hermine, smiling inwardly. Space was not his concern.

  Needs a better pelt for true beauty, the weasel responded. But she does lie well.

  “We shall need to verify your identity in due course,” the man informed Knot. “Where is your residence and what is your employment?”

  As if he didn’t know where a mute lived. But Knot was used to this. “Enclave MM58. Ask for York for a reference.”

  “It is a formality,” the man said. “Your CC pattern will be your definitive identifier henceforth. Have you relatives or associates with whom you prefer to be grouped?”

  That would give people a better handle on him, betraying his nature when his associates could not remember him. Better a clean break. “No.”

  “Then you get the top number in the stack. Please put your arm in the imprinter.” The man indicated the maw of a squat machine.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” Finesse assured him mischievously. “Much.”

  “About like your ankle?” He liked that analogy: a minor physical, but major emotional bruise.

  Ooo, mean man!

  “Touché,” Finesse agreed, grimacing cutely. She could make the most negative expressions become positive. With considerable anxiety and distaste, Knot inserted his arm into the forbidding hole. There was a sudden sting that seemed to penetrate right through to the bone. He yanked his arm out “All done,” the man said.

  Knot looked at the smarting pattern on his arm. It was formed of dots and blanks, outlined by a square. Thirty-six positions, like a little map or a segment of a magnified print.

  “That’s all there is,” Finesse assured him. “A tattoo pattern on your skin, indelible, and a similar one on the bone beneath, so you can’t erase or forget it. You’d have to lose your whole arm to be anonymous to CC now.”

  “Trapped,” Knot said lugubriously. It really was not a joke.

  “You must memorize your number, just in case,” she continued. “It’s in binary code, twelve digits, each one delineated by three characters. So your first digit is a seven, and your full number is 710225430613.”

  “Just like that, she reads it,” Knot muttered.

  “I work for CC, remember? I need to communicate readily with the computer even when no voice adapter is present. I think you will want to too, just as you do with assorted mutants, each in his own mode. It’s an advantage to be able to converse with anyone in his own style.”

  She had scored on a pet discipline. Knot had labored diligently to master every established system of linguistic communication. The human galaxy had a common language, thanks to its relatively recent colonization and the extent of individual travels within it, but many non-verbal variants of that language existed. He had just never thought of the computer’s digital coding as such a language, though of course it was. His antipathy to CC had caused him to limit his education. “I’ll work on it. Do you have a chart of numbers and letters?”

  “Of course. Mit told me you would ask for it.” She handed him a card.

  “Thanks, Mit,” he muttered.

  The clerk checked the new number, nodded approvingly, and had Knot go through the travel-clearance line again. This time there was no alarm. Then Hermine and Mit went through; the weasel had a tiny pattern on her left front leg, and the hermit crab a microscopic one on his left claw. The patterns did not have to be large enough for the human eye to read; that was merely for human convenience, not the machine’s need.

  “Your party is cleared for shuttle-lift,” the clerk announced.

  “That’s all?” Knot asked, surprised. “No wearisome, pointless colored tape?”

  “This is not the twentieth century,” Finesse assured him.

  “But don’t we have to be checked to be sure we won’t sabotage the ship in deep space, or hijack it to some pirate hideout?” Knot asked. He had never been to space before, fearing that a telepathic check would betray his nature to CC.

  “A specialized distance precog at the orbiting station checks the complete hop,” Finesse explained patiently. “He won’t let the ship go until the reading is clear.”

  Precognition, again: they certainly had a lot of faith in it! If Knot managed to prove that precognition wasn’t valid, would he also prove that the security of space travel was an illusion? Maybe it was illusion, and the news of lost ships was hushed up. With psi mind-affecting techniques, such a cover-up should be possible.

  Finesse nudged him; he was hanging back. If you don’t move it, she’ll stick you with a hatpin, Hermine thought.

  They boarded the shuttle and settled into the voluminous cushion seats reserved for them. Hermine and Mit took places separately. The object, Knot knew, was to have plenty of resilience to absorb the initial shock of launching. There would be a stasis-field for the worst of it, but that could be maintained only a few seconds, lest it interfere with the life processes of the marginally healthy travelers.

  They waited, while the mysterious mechanisms of the lift countdown proceeded, Knot’s left arm itched, and there was an ache in his bone. Perhaps it was psychological. There were
other passengers in other seats of the compartment, but he ignored them, distracted by the ache. Knot looked at the code card Finesse had given him, trying to take his mind off his arm.

  The number code was quite simple. Zero was three blanks [ - - - ], One was blank-blank-dot [ - - . ], two was blank-dot-blank [ - . - ], three was blank-dot-dot [ - . . ], four was dot-blank-blank [ . - - ], five was dot-blank-dot [ . - . ], six was dot-dot-blank [ . . - ], and seven was dot-dot-dot [ . . . ]. The basic numbers were 1, 2 and 4 with the others being combinations of those. The number 3, for example was a combination of 1 and 2; 5 was 4 and 1, 6 was 4 and 2, and 7 was 4 and 2 and 1.

  His arm itched again. Now he contemplated the full pattern:

  It didn’t look like much; just sixteen dots in a neat square, forming little horizontal, vertical and oblique rows of two, three and four. But now, seeing it as a 36-dot square, or as two numbers abreast, six lines deep, he developed the meaning . . . . was 7, followed by —. which was 1. Then the second line: — for 0 and - . - for 2. Thus, laboriously, through the whole number: 71 02 25 43 06 13. A twelve digit number economically rendered by sixteen dots in a square. Then the alphabet of letters, rendered into numbers for general speech.

  “Does it hurt?” Finesse inquired. “Let me kiss and make well.” She took his arm, lifting it toward her face.

  “Leave alone!” he snapped, shoving her away.

  “Sorry.” She drew as much apart from him as the seats permitted.

  Immediately he regretted his impulsive reaction. He had acted just the way she had about her ankle, and for similar reason. His pride was involved. The CC pattern was an obscene mark on him, a devil’s signature he wished he could erase—and knew he could not. This devil proffered many things Knot wanted—at a price it galled him to pay. Yet he should not blame Finesse.

  Does she hate me? he thought to Hermine.

  No, she understands. She calls it imprinting trauma. We all went through it.