"Anthony,.Piers.-.Mute (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Susan)

Fool, Hermine thought, as Finesse smiled complacently.

Knot plowed on heedlessly. "You're all locked into your brainwashed belief in the machine, in nonsensical psi. Well, you may have nabbed the leadmuter, but not me."

"You're repeating yourself," Finesse said. "Next, you're supposed to plead the welfare of your enclave."

"Though why you want to take the leadmuter away from his only joy, to the detriment of our fine enclaveЧ" Knot broke off, realizing that he was proceeding exactly as she predicted. The precognitive crab was probably keying her in. The very thing he was trying to disprove, mocking him!

"That I can answer in a manner you can understand," Finesse said, adjusting herself on the rock for greater comfort. Knot realized that he was still halfway embracing her, and drew back farther. "You are evidently using this mutant to produce gold, a metal of unquestionable value for sculpture and coinage and the plating of assorted objects and the illumination of fancy manuscripts. Has it occurred to you that he might as readily produce platinum, which is more valuable than gold, or iridium, which is several times as valuable as platinum? With proper management, the value of his metallic output might be multiplied tenfold, with no inconvenience to him. He might even like iridium better."

"WellЧ"

"CC is aware of that prospect. That's CC's jobЧto coordinate mutant talents, to the best advantage of humanity. You are largely wasting the gold you have here, in the interest of secrecy. Suppose we tuned the leadmuter to something really precious, like crystallized carbonЧdiamondЧand granted your enclave a percentage of the proceeds? You could have more profit from that than from all your present gold, and the leadmuter would be happy, and it would all be legal. The leadmuter would
not even have to move from his cave. CC expediters would be provided to attend to all his needs. He could be much better off than he is now."

Knot looked at her cynically. "CC is offering that?"

"Not necessarily. I'm merely making the point that CC takes good care of mutants, especially the ones with special psionic powers. If you really care about the welfare of the leadmuterЧ"

She was becoming uncomfortably persuasive. He did care about the leadmuter, and knew that what she offered was probably the best possible situation for the old mutantЧand for the enclave. To keep all that they had now, plus the intangible benefit of legitimacy . . . "What assurance do I have that CC would honor such a commitment?"

"Practicality, On bucolic worlds like Nelson, the best bovine milkers are the ones who are the most pampered. The most productive hensЧ"

"And this is the hen with the gold eggs," he agreed. "All right, I bow to expedience. If CC will make a formal royalty commitment, and eschew recriminations, penaltiesЧ"

"I have no doubt it willЧif you acquaint it with the facts I will have forgotten."

"Making me an agent of CC! Is that what Mil means?"

"A hint of it. You will have to do what you feel is best for the interests you serveЧin this case, the lead-muter and the mutant enclave. You aren't going to hurt a number of mutants just to spite CC."

"Why do I have the sinking feeling that all is foreordained?" he grumbled rhetorically.

"Because it is."

He had walked right into that one! "My service isn't! The leadmuter is one thing, butЧ"

"An analogy, if you will," Finesse said, adjusting her skirt to show a trifle more leg. His eye was of course drawn to it. The flickering light made the shadow between her thighs jump forward and back, as though beckoning. He wished he could run his hand into that shadow, and knew that he couldЧwhich was why he could not. The moment the fish did more than nibble at the lure . . .

"You think of the leadmuter in terms of precious metals or stones," Finesse continued, as if blithely unaware of the lure of leg and shadow. "But he may be wasted in that capacity. Did you ever think what transmutation of substance entails?"

"It is an exercise in futility to speculate how a mutant performs," Knot said. "The processes of the brain are in many respects too complex for the brain itself to comprehend. Somehow it taps into a source of power no machine can even detect, and uses it to do things no machine can do as readily. If laboratories could duplicate any portion of true psi, they would have done so long ago."

"I was not referring to the mutant, but to the effect." She switched a muscle in her thigh, and Knot finally had to look away, lest his battle be lost right here. "Do you know how nature produces lead?"

Knot focused on that as though grasping a lifeline. "Never thought of it. Isn't it one of the elements, the basic forms of matter from which all others are made? Created hi a supernova by heat and compression and whatnot? As with copper, silver and gold? I do know it is one of the four most used metals of the Industrial Age, or used to be."

"Start with the radioactive element thorium 232," she said briskly. "It has a half-lifeЧyou know what half-life is?"