Mute by Piers Anthony

invested in my education. Now you know more than you deserve to know about me. And now CC is ready to recruit you,”
    “Why didn’t CC just come flat-out and ask me, then?”
    “Because a number of prospects are under consideration, and CC must select only the best one, and needs further data. My first interview with you provided that. You were the cleverest, smoothest, slipperiest, least ethical scoundrel who remained true to his basic loyalties and knew what they were, and you very nearly foiled the investigation itself. That, it seems, was what CC was looking for. You are the one selected.”
    “Selected for what?” Knot decided not to make an issue of the personal description; it was accurate enough.
    “For whatever mission CC has in mind. That’s its job, you know—to match the mutants to their best situations. I’m only an interviewer.”
    “Yeah, sure,” he muttered, “Tell CC to go ram a disrupter electrode up its tubing sidewise.”
    She looked at him obliquely. “Most people are flattered to be chosen for special assignments by the Coordination Computer. It means they are the very best for the position. The best in the galaxy.”
    “I told you: I don’t like CC or approve of the system. I refuse—”
    Alert! Alert! Hermine broadcast. Mit says a bad act of nature forms.
    “Oh come on,” Knot muttered. “I’m not going to rape her.”
    “Shut up,” Finesse said. “Hermine never jokes about a thing like this.”
    Apparently at this range it was possible for the weasel to send to two minds simultaneously, because Finesse had reacted at the same time Knot picked up the thought. “Storm?” she asked now, evidently thinking it at the weasel too.
    Not water. Strange.
    “We have very sudden, fierce tempests at erratic intervals,” Knot said. “Some are wet, some dry. We’d better get under cover in a hurry—if Mit’s clairvoyance is to be trusted.” Knot looked at the sky. “Though I see no sign of a storm.”
    “Mit’s precognition has its limits, but is to be trusted,” Finesse said. “He may not be able to properly define what is coming up, but it is surely dangerous. We’ve never been able to define his ability precisely; it seems to be a unified perception embracing present and future. Clairvoyance with a temporal dimension.”
    Not storm, Hermine repeated. Something else.
    “We’d best use the leadmuter’s cave,” Knot decided.
    They hurried forward. But it took several minutes to get near the cave, and the threat coalesced before they arrived. The trees began to move strangely, aligning their leaves along common planes or lines of cleavage, none touching others. Grass stood erect, similarly aligned. Finesse’s hair began to rise.
    “An electric charge!” Knot cried, feeling his own hair extend. “Rare, but bad. Keep moving!”
    The charge intensified. Now Finesse’s hair radiated out like an anemone helmet, and even her eyebrows bushed out, Knot’s skin tingled; all the hairs of his body were straightening. Where was the charge coming from, and where was it going? Knot had supposed the wild stories about this effect were exaggerated. Now he wasn’t sure.
    My fur is sprung! Hermine thought, alarmed.
    “It is discharging the electricity,” Knot explained, for weasel and woman. “A harmless effect—for the moment. But if sparks start jumping—”
    There was a crackling. Jags of light struck upward from the trees. At first the displays were small and faint, but they soon grew more spectacular.
    “I don’t like this!” Finesse exclaimed, trying to pat her standing hair in place. A little aura of light showed where her hand approached her head. She resembled a remarkably cute witch with an uncharacteristic halo. “I’m sure it’s playing havoc with my recording.”
    “That so?” Knot asked, not at all disgruntled by the news. “You mean you’ll have no way to remember what is happening now?”
    Oh, ho! Hermine thought, projecting a fleeting vision of a predator