The inspecting sergeant shrugged and closed up the suitcase, returning it to Knot. Knot wondered: what was a CC representative doing with lab control animals? Normally these were kept in their labs. Why had Finesse sent him out to fetch them? Was she going to interview a lobotomized laboratory technician? It didn’t seem to make much sense.
The sergeant cranked up a medieval-style portcullis that admitted them to the interior of the power station. He cranked it down again behind them, and locked the mechanism with an old-fashioned padlock. Archaic—but extremely secure. It was obvious that no one could enter or leave the premises without proper clearance. Yet computerized inspection systems were just as effective and far more efficient; why did a modern power plant employ such antiquated devices? It was as though anachronism had been institutionalized.
They continued on in, traversing a second checkpoint. Surprisingly strong security here, even for a crucial utility. Did they have trouble here with sabotage? Then why admit criminals so freely? There had to be a pattern that he hadn’t yet fathomed.
There seemed to be a residential section here in the restricted region. This made sense; it would be cumbersome and inefficient and deleterious to security if every employee had to go in and out daily. So power employees would remain on the premises for days or weeks at a time, their needs served by facilities within the facility. In fact, this was a type of enclave, whose general dynamics he understood.
It would be hellishly difficult to escape from this place. He could probably fool the people, but not that padlocked portcullis. He hoped there were other exits.
They brought him at last to a room in the cellar of this complex. Here sat a small fat woman, her hair bleached bright gray in what could be a local fashion, her dress cut low in front to display an unappetizing set of breasts. Perhaps she had once been good looking, before doubling her weight; evidently she believed she had not changed. Faith might indeed work miracles, especially if psi was involved, but there had to be at least a modicum of practical application—such as dieting.
“This is not the CC agent!” the woman snapped, glaring at Knot. “The agent is normal—and female. Are you complete idiots?”
Knot’s captors did not answer. It seemed they had been ordered to pick up the occupant of Room 507, and had been told nothing else. Their error was understandable. Only Knot’s chance return, in lieu of Finesse, had prevented them from nabbing her.
“Don’t blame your flunkies,” Knot said. “It’s a case of mistaken identity.”
“Who are you?” the woman demanded sharply.
“Who are you?” Knot retorted.
“You may call me Viveka.”
“Call me Knot. I’m from Planet Nelson.”
“What were you doing in the agent’s room?”
What did these characters know, or not know? Were they connected to the lobotomizers? If so, he did not want to remain their prisoner! He’d better answer, and watch for his best chance to escape. “I came to pick up a suitcase.” He lifted the case he carried.
“Why?” she demanded accusingly.
The truth seemed best. “Finesse sent me for it.”
“Then you are another CC agent.”
“No. I came to see her, and she sent me on an errand.”
“Why should she associate with you, if you are not one of them?” The emphasis was significant.
“You really want the story? Not only is it not your business, it’s not very interesting.”
“I want the story. Your life may depend on it.”
Knot didn’t think she was fooling. These people had already abducted him, which was a serious crime on any world, and knew he would complain to the authorities if he were released. It might be as easy to commit a worse crime to cover up, and they had to have considered that at the outset. Meanwhile, this was a cold, angry woman. Perhaps her frustration over declining sex appeal had translated to ruthless sabotage of the CC systems.
“She interviewed me at my enclave—I’m a mutant, as you can see—to learn about a source of income we were concealing from CC. She—played up to me, and I thought she had interest; she’s an attractive woman.” He spread his hands, noting Viveka’s tightening of mouth muscles. Yes, she resented attractive women. “She got her information. I went with her to argue my enclave’s case with CC, and we hammered out a compromise, but then Finesse left and—well, finally I followed. I was a fool.”
“CC agents can’t be trusted,” Viveka agreed, warming slightly. “You don’t like CC?”
“I don’t like CC,” Knot agreed. “I had this notion I could win her away from—” He shrugged. “I should have known better. So she sent me to pick up the bag she’d forgotten. I was fool enough to think it contained something important. Now I know she was just getting rid of me. Your goons were there at the hotel. End of sad story.”
Viveka frowned. “It’s too pat, Knot. Why should an anti-CC mutant just happen to fall into our hands?”
“I didn’t ask to come here!” he snapped. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I don’t like you either. I roughed up two of your people—but you had three more, plus a laser. I’ll be happy to leave right now.”
The woman squinted thoughtfully. “Obviously she sent you back so we would capture you, in lieu of her. She must have suspected.”
That gave Knot pause. “The little bitch!” he breathed. “She used me!”
“CC uses people,” Viveka agreed. “She would have left the suitcase deliberately, as a pretext to send you back at just the right time. The time she would ordinarily have returned.”
Finesse had said she was catching on to something. True words!
“Now I have sprung the trap, so you’ll never catch her.” Knot was half pleased, half angry. He didn’t like being used.
“We shall catch her. The question is, what shall we do with you? We can’t simply let you go; we can’t afford to have CC learn about us.”
“You are an organized anti-CC conspiracy?”
Knot hardly expected a direct answer to that, and received none. “I think we’d better question you,” Viveka decided.
“Haven’t you been doing that?”
“Under the drug.”
Knot didn’t like this, but the men were closing in. He would have to submit to the drug—or fight. He saw a laser pistol pointed at him. He decided to accept the drug. After all, he had been telling the truth.
It turned out to be a vapor capsule: an old-fashioned truth-sniffer. He sniffed, and almost immediately felt his volition receding. He thought he could tell a lie if he had to, but he had no desire to do so; it would be too complicated.
Viveka leaned forward, carefully showing more of the bosom he did not wish to see, and questioned him. First she verified routine things, such as his name and planet of residence. Then she went over his connection to CC, and his reason for coming to Planet Macho. This only corroborated what he had told her before taking the drug. Finally she queried him closely on his attitude toward CC, evoking the mixed respect and hostilities he felt. At last, satisfied, she gave him a sniff of the nullifier, and his volition returned.
“So you are in fact also a psi-mute,” she said, interested. Knot didn’t remember telling her about that; the drug must have put him under deeper than he thought. “CC knows about you, but can’t use your particular talent at this time. So your psi is of little practical use.”
“It protects my privacy,” Knot said.
“How would you like to join our organization?”
“I don’t know what your organization is.”
“Now I can tell you. We are the lobos—the involuntarily lobotomized.” She smiled at his surprise. “Yes, I was psi. I was a limited telekinetic, I did very well in gambling institutions, until they caught on. Then I had to protect myself—and I made the mistake of traveling on a CC ship. I went into stasis for the takeoff, and never came out of it. When they released me, I was a lobo.”
Knot began to understand. Incorrigible criminals were
lobotomized; it was the ultimate penalty. A telekinetic who used psi to cheat at gambling and “protected” herself when challenged—that could mean using her psi to interfere with the valves of the heart of the arresting officer. Power abused led inevitably to future abuse. Viveka had surely needed correction—and she had surely understated the case.
“All of you are lobos?” he asked. “I thought one man was a telepath but he couldn’t read my mind.”
“He was a telepath—before CC cut him. He had a little trouble about private information.”
Translation: the telepath had peeped for embarrassing secrets, and tried to extort money or favor in return for his silence. That kind, too, could be stopped only by lobotomy. This was an organization of vengeance-seeking psi-criminals. Deprived of their psi, they were now merely criminally minded.
“You realize I’m not a criminal,” Knot said cautiously.
“All you did was try to cover up the existence of your leadmuter, so CC wouldn’t take the money,” Viveka said. “There are those who would call that embezzlement, cheating, lying—”
“I was only trying to protect the welfare of my enclave!”
“We lobos are only trying to protect the welfare of our kind. CC is an alien force, conceived as the servant of man, now becoming the master. CC must be stopped before it becomes totally powerful and discovers that it can dispense with the directives of the Galactic Concord—not that they’re worth much. We are not criminals, we are patriots!”
She had a point. He couldn’t find it in himself to like her or her group, and did not regard himself as kindred in spirit, but perhaps this was a noble and necessary counterforce to CC. “That’s why you interrogated me with the drug; there is no psi in your ranks. You have no telepath.”
“We use neither psi nor electronic machines,” she agreed. “All psis are suspect because CC keeps track of them, and all computer-type machines are suspect because CC is one of them, and may have inputs. This way CC can’t spot us. We’re invisible.”
He seemed to remember something about CC searching for an invisible enemy. Could it be that it had not occurred to CC that any organized opposition could function without the use of electronics and computers and psis?
“But what can you do to stop CC?” he asked. “It spans the galaxy, while you are restricted to this planet.”
“Lobos are everywhere in the galaxy, in increasing numbers,” she said darkly. “Have you any idea how many psi-mutes are deemed unfit by CC every year? Millions! We have chapters on every planet, and our power is growing rapidly. Soon there will be more of us than regular psis.”
“More of you—” Suddenly Knot caught on. “The illegal lobotomies. The lobos are responsible!”
“We are responsible,” she agreed with grave pride. “Now we’re doing to CC psis what CC did to us. Making all mutants equal. When all the psis are gone, CC will be helpless.”
“But the galaxy needs CC to maintain the empire, to uphold the level of civilization. Only CC can coordinate interstellar commerce. Without CC there would be anarchy.”
“What’s wrong with anarchy?” she asked grimly. “Most individual planets are self sufficient; they don’t need to be part of any machine empire. Anarchy is merely another name for complete freedom.”
Knot felt déjà vu. He had argued a similar case, once, somewhere, somewhen. Now he found he agreed and disagreed. He liked freedom, did not like CC, but did prefer civilization on a galactic scale. To be forever trapped aboard a single planet, under the heel of whatever local ruler or warlord there might be—somehow that bothered him. He had a vague picture of a man locked in a stone cell, eyeless and tongueless, quarreling with rats for his food. This, to him, was the essence of anarchy, for what reason he could not fathom.
“I have some sympathy with you,” he said at last, suppressing the nightmare vision. “But not with your methods. Abducting people, lobotomizing useful psis—have you any notion of the grief you are imposing on these innocent people?”
“Yes,” Viveka said, smiling. “The same grief that was imposed on me. I have a good cure for it: vengeance. Soon those former CC psis will be joining us as anti-CC agents.”
“Why would they do that? They should hate you!”
“Because we’ll tell them that CC betrayed them. Found them unfit and lobotomized them without trial. They’ll be furious.”
“But that’s not true!”
“They can’t remember—and no one who is not one of our inner circle knows the truth.”
“I know the truth!”
“But you will be joining us.”
Once more the déjà vu—yet he was sure he had never interacted with lobos before. “I’m not a lobo!”
“Not yet.”
Then Knot realized with horror what they had in mind for him. Lobotomy. Forgetting. Recruitment. He would not remember the truth either; he would believe what they told him. As others evidently had.
In fact, they could convert normals the same way. How would a lobotomized normal know he had never had a psi talent? He would not trust CC’s statement, and in any event hidden talents did show up, sometimes, late in life. So a person could be a psi and not know it, and have that psi nullified by lobotomy before it ever manifested. With the entire range of normals to draw from, there was really no end to the possibilities the lobos had here.
Yet, given the choice between CC and the lobos, he now knew he would choose CC. The machine’s way, at least, maintained galactic civilization.
Now the lobo thugs were closing in again. They had him in their power; they would work their obscene will on him. If he offered no resistance, he would be lobotomized—which was, for him, a fate about as bad as death. If he fought, he might experience death itself.
He would go with them to the lobotomy unit, then make whatever break he could. The odds were against him, but it seemed his only course. At this moment he was tense but not afraid; fear was largely anticipation, and he knew he was at the crisis point now. Catch them by surprise—
No, Knot. They will drug you as you leave this room. They know no person goes willingly to his own lobotomy. You must fight here.
Who had said that? Surely not a lobo!
I am Hermine the weasel. You do not remember me or Mit, because CC erased your experience with us, but we are your friends.
Memory exploded at the perception of her name: a key concept. I remember you now little friend, he thought back. Where are you?
With Mit, in the suitcase.
Knot made a mental picture of a light flashing on. Of course! The control animals. They opened the suitcase, and I saw you in a cage—and did not know you! That was some blank!
CC did it so you would not betray yourself or us, Hermine explained. Do not leave us behind, this time.
Never that! he assured her. Ask Mit how we are to get out of this.
Distract Viveka. Step forward. Take Viveka hostage. Make the lobos drop their lasers. Start when I tell you.
Knot obeyed the gesture of his guards and started toward the door they indicated. Evidently they had not been alerted by his long silence; they must have believed he was assimilating his situation and coming to terms with his options. As indeed he had been—but his conclusion differed from their expectation. He had powerful psi on his side now—psi that he had not revealed during his drug questioning because he had not known about it. Mit, with his precognition, must have known exactly when to reveal that psi to Knot. After the interrogation, but before the lobotomy. Very neat integration of talents.
As Knot walked near Viveka, Hermine thought Now!
Knot paused. “Did it ever occur to you,” he inquired of the room in general, “That it might have been the lobos who lobotomized you?” Then, as the lobos reacted, he leaped to the side, flinging his left arm around Viveka’s fat neck and drawing her off balance. “Drop your weapons!” he cried.
The lobos turned to stare at him in surprise, but did not let their lasers fall. They did not yet believe that the pr
ey had turned predator. Make her scream, Hermine thought.
Knot knew how to do this. He put the fingers of his large right hand over her shoulder, pressing hard on a nerve complex there. Viveka screamed in pain, not fear.
Now the lobos dropped their weapons. Knot had not damaged the woman, but the scream had lent the kind of primeval authority to his demand that moved them. Mankind, as a species, was conditioned to react to a scream.
Pick up the second pistol to your left, Hermine directed.
But that one is awkward to reach. There is a closer one to the right.
The big lobo will kick your face as you squat near him.
Oh. Knot moved left toward one of the smaller and more nervous men, and stooped to reach for the pistol while keeping his right hand on Viveka. He got it. The big lobo to the right glowered but did not move.
Now make them walk ahead of you through that door, Hermine thought, mentally indicating the door they had been taking him toward before.
“Single file, through that door,” Knot said aloud, indicating it with his pistol. What a difference the help of his psi-animal friends made! What had been a nearly hopeless situation had transformed into an even chance. “Move!”
They hesitated. They know that passage is filled with stungas, Hermine thought. They were going to make you go first, then put on masks.
“If you don’t move, I shall ray you down one by one,” Knot announced. He pointed his weapon at the man nearest the door. “You have a free choice: the door or the laser.”
So now they knew he knew. Reluctantly, the man walked to the door. The others followed.
The third man is going to try a break, Hermine warned.
Knot fired the laser, merely burning the third man on the shoulder. “I can score better than that when I try,” he said. The man reconsidered, and stepped on into the passage.
By the time they got to the far side of the hall, they were staggering. The gas did not knock them all the way out; it was diffuse, and only bemused them so that they lacked full coordination and free will. Evidently it was absorbed through the skin as well as the lungs, or they would have tried to hold their breaths. Knot noticed that the lobos wore fairly tight-fitting clothes that covered most of their bodies; no flesh showed beyond faces and wrists. Head mask and gloves would take care of that. Only Viveka would have needed more protection—and probably she would not have entered that hall at all. Her job was interviewer, not executioner. Quite a little system the lobos had here; they must have processed a lot of psis recently.
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