Mute by Piers Anthony Page B

It was inherently paradoxical, since the future was mutable. Tell a man he was about to step into a hole and hurt himself, and he would avoid that hole, rendering that prediction inaccurate. Thus true precognition could not exist—at least, not if what it showed was told to the subject.
    There are rats who don’t believe weasels can kill them, Hermine thought.
    I’m a rat, all right.
    “Dollar for your thoughts,” Finesse said, smiling at him. He almost felt the warmth penetrating his skin, compelling his body to react. She was so infernally pretty; it was her weapon, and she used it well.
    “A genuine archaic hundred-cent note?”
    “Or equivalent in service. Women have been known to do a lot for a dollar.”
    Don’t try to fence with that predator; she’ll eat you up, Hermine warned.
    “Hermine thinks I’m a rat and you’re a weasel.”
    Finesse stretched, elbows bent, breasts flattening under the cloth of shirt and jumper. “Some rats are attractive enough.”
    “And some weasels.” But he had a challenge to rise to: the proof or disproof of precognition. “What’s to stop me from just walking out of here, now, a rat that slips the trap?”
    She gestured at the effects continuing beyond the mouth of the cave. “That.”
    The electrical display was at its height. Every tree radiated streams of light, illuminating the landscape so brightly it was difficult to watch. Knot was not sure what such a flow of current would do to his body and brain, and did not care to experiment. On the other hand, he knew it was not safe at this time to approach the leadmuter. To that extent the precognition was correct. He would have to remain here.
    But he did not have to be seduced into anything! Finesse was lovely, and she was a normal, and his memory of his last engagement with her—and the timely and graphic reminder of it she had provided via the holograph—fired his imagination and desire. But he had willpower, and he would not sell his conscience for sex.
    Yes you will, Hermine thought. Her net is closing over you already. She obtained a distance precog about the storm, and timed this visit to coincide. You never had a chance.
    Shall we make a wager?
    No. I never take easy prey. You cannot win. Mit knows.
    Mit can’t know. A storm he can predict; it has no self-will. I am a man. My fate is not predetermined.
    It is in this respect.
    “Whatever are you two thinking about that distracts you from the immediate prospect?” Finesse murmured, self-assured and twinkling.
    “Free will or not free will.”
    She smiled, and again he felt the impact. Oh, she knew how to use her assets! “As William Ernest Henley put it in ‘Invictus’: ‘It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll; I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my Soul!’”
    Knot considered her curiously. “Which side are you on?”
    “I’m on your side, Knot. And on CC’s. I know what’s best for you. That’s why I must work to reconcile the two of you; you belong together.”
    “I have no use for CC! I refuse to join it. My free will will not permit it.”
    “So you prefer to argue with Mit? This is futile.”
    “I defend my right to pursue my own destiny!”
    “Your unconquerable Soul,” Finesse agreed. “I like it.”
    “You really believe in this stuff, don’t you! You think everything will come out exactly as the crab predicts.”
    “I know it will. But that doesn’t mean you are in any way under duress.”
    “This is a contradiction!”
    “Not at all. It simply means that your free will will bring you to CC.”
    “I could knock you out and toss you into the electricity. Neither your faded memory nor your fouled-up recording would ever betray the truth. You cannot force me to join!”
    Finesse put her hands on his shoulders. In the flickering electric light her face was animated despite its stillness, the shadows leaping across nose, lips and brows. She was eerily beautiful. “Knock me out. Throw