Battlefield Earth (10 page)

     It had been a damp, cold, thoroughly miserable night.

Jonnie had clung to the bars for hours, loath to sit down or even step down. Mud was everywhere. The gush of water had taken the sand and dirt in the pool and spread it all over the cage and the dirt of the floor had avidly soaked it up. The mud became ankle deep.

But at last, exhausted, he had given in and slept lying in the mud.

Midmorning sun was drying it somewhat. The two dead rats had floated away out of reach and Jonnie didn’t care.

Already dehydrated from his previous experience, he felt the hot sun increase his thirst. He looked at the muddy pool, contaminated with slime from the cage. He could not bring himself to drink it.

He was sitting miserably against the bars when the monster appeared.

It stopped outside the door and looked in. It was carrying some metallic object in its paws. It looked at the mud and for the moment Jonnie thought it might realize he couldn’t go on sitting and sleeping in the mud.

It went away.

Just as Jonnie believed it would not come back, it reappeared. This time it was still carrying the metal object, but it was also carrying a huge rickety table and an enormous chair.

The thing made tricky work getting through the door with all that load, a door too small for it in the first place. But it came on in and put the table down. Then it put the metal object on the table.

Jonnie had at first believed that the huge chair was for him. But he was quickly disabused. The monster put the chair down at the side of the table and sat down on it: the legs of it sunk perilously into the mud.

It indicated the mysterious object. Then it took the two books out of its pocket and threw them on the table. Jonnie reached for them. He had not thought he would ever see them again and he had begun to make out of them a kind of sense.

The monster cuffed his hand and pointed at the object. It waved a paw across the top of the books in a kind of negative motion and pointed again at the object.

There was a sack on the back of the object and it had discs in it about the diameter of two hands.

The monster took out one of the discs and looked at it. It had a hole in the middle with squiggles around it. The monster put the disc on top of the machine. There was a rod there that fitted into the middle of the disc.

Jonnie was extremely suspicious, his hand bruised from the cuff. Anything this monster was up to would be devious, treacherous, and dangerous. That had been adequately proved. The game was to bide one’s time, watch, and learn- and out of that possibly wrest freedom.

The monster now pointed to two windows on the front of the object. Then it pointed to a single lever that stuck out from the front of it.

The monster pushed the lever down.

Jonnie’s eyes went round. He backed up.

The object talked!

Clear as a bell, it had said, “Excuse me…”

The monster pulled the lever up and it stopped talking.

Jonnie drew back further. The monster clouted him between the shoulder blades and drove him up to the table so hard the edge hit his throat. The monster raised a cautionary finger at him.

It shoved the lever up, and by standing on tiptoe Jonnie could see that the disc went backward from the way it had gone.

The monster pulled the lever down again. The object said, “Excuse me, but I am…” The monster centered the lever and the machine stopped. Then it pushed the lever up and the machine went backward again.

Jonnie tried to look under the machine and back of it. The thing wasn’t alive, surely. It didn’t have ears or a nose or a mouth. Yes, it did have a mouth. A circle low down in front of it. But the mouth didn’t move. Sound just came out of it. And it was talking Jonnie’s language!

The monster pushed the lever down again and the object said, “Excuse me, but I am your…” This time Jonnie saw that some odd squiggles had been showing up in the top window and a strange face in the lower window.

Once more the monster pushed the lever up and the disc on top went backward. Then the monster centered the lever. It pointed a talon at Jonnie’s head and then at the object.

Jonnie noticed then that the monster had been moving the lever off center, all positions to the left. The monster now moved the lever all the way over to the right and down, and different squiggles appeared but the same picture showed, and the machine said something in some strange tongue.

The monster backed it up and put the lever in the left-right center and down. Different squiggles, same lower picture, but an entirely different set of sounds.

Behind the face mask the monster seemed to smile. It repeated the last maneuver again and pointed to itself.

Jonnie suddenly understood that that was the monster’s language.

Jonnie’s interest was immediate, intense, and flaming.

He reached up and pushed the monster’s paw away. It was hard to reach because the table was so high and big, but Jonnie made nothing of that.

He moved the lever up and to the left.

Then he moved it down. The machine said, “Excuse me, but I am your instructor….” Then Jonnie did the same operation in the right-hand position and it said something that was language but strange. Then he did it in the center position and it spoke again in the language of the Psychlos.

The monster was looking at him closely, even suspiciously. It bent way over and peered back into Jonnie’s face. The flickering, amber eyes slitted. Then it made a doubtful motion toward the machine as though it would pick it up and carry it off.

Jonnie slapped the huge hands away and fastened again on the lever. He put it in the left track and let it roll.

“Excuse me,” the machine said, “but I am your instructor if you will forgive such arrogance. I do not have the honor to be a Psychlo. I am but a lowly Chinko.” The face in the bottom window bowed twice and put a hand over its eyes.

“I am Joga Stenko, Junior Assistant Language Slave in the Language Division of the Department of Culture and Ethnology, Planet Earth.” Squiggles were running rapidly in the upper window.

“Forgive my presumption, but this is a course of study in reading and speaking the man-languages of

English and Swedish.

“On the left-hand track of the record, I hope you will have no trouble in finding English. On the right-hand track you will find the same text in Swedish. On the center track the same text is in Psychlo, the Noble Language of Conquerors.

“The written equivalent in each case appears in the upper window and suitable pictures appear in the lower window.

“You will pardon my humble pretensions of learnedness. All wisdom abides in the Governors of Psychlo and one of their major companies, the great and mighty Intergalactic Mining Company, on which let there be profit!”

Jonnie centered the lever. He was breathing hard. The language was stilted, oddly pronounced, and many of the words he did not know. But he grasped it.

He looked more closely at the object. He frowned, concentrating heavily. And then he grasped that it was a machine, a not-live thing. That meant that the insect had been not live either.

Jonnie looked at the monster. Why was this thing doing this? What fresh dangers and privations did it have in mind? There was no kindness in those amber eyes. They were like a wolf’s eyes seen in firelight.

The monster pointed toward the machine and Jonnie pulled the lever down to the left.

“Excuse me,” it said, “but we will begin with the necessary alphabet. The first letter is A. Look at the upper window.” Jonnie did and saw the marks.

“A…pronounced ay. Its sound is also a as in ‘pat,’ ay as in ‘pay’ ay as in ‘care,’ ah as in ‘father.’ Look at it well, excuse me please, so you can always recognize it. The next letter of the alphabet is B. Look at the window. It always has the sound of bas in bat….”

The monster batted his hand up and opened the primer to the first page. It tapped a talon on A.

Jonnie had already made the connection. Language could be written and read. And this machine was going to teach him how to do it. He centered the lever and pulled it down and there it was evidently spouting an alphabet in Psychlo. The little face in the lower window was showing mouth formations to say the sounds. He swung the lever over to the right and it was saying an alphabet in…Swedish?

The monster stood up, looking the four feet down to Jonnie. It took two dead rats from its pocket and dangled them in front of Jonnie.

What was this? A reward? It made Jonnie feel like a dog being trained. He didn’t take them.

The monster made a sort of shrugging motion and said something. Jonnie couldn’t understand the words. But when the monster reached over to pick up the machine, he knew what they must have been. Something like,

“Lesson’s over for the day.”

Jonnie instantly pushed the arms away from the machine. He moved over defiantly and stood there, blocking the reach. He wasn’t sure what would happen, if he’d be batted halfway across the cage. But he stood there.

So did the monster. Head on one side, then the other.

The monster roared. Jonnie did not flinch. The monster roared some more and Jonnie divined, with relief, that it was laughing.

The monster’s belt buckle, showing the clouds of smoke in the sky, was a few inches below Jonnie’s eyes. It connected with the ancient legend that told of the end of Jonnie’s race. The laughter beat at Jonnie’s ears, a growling thunder of mockery.

The monster turned around and went out, still laughing as it locked the gate.

There was bitterness and determination on Jonnie’s face. He had to know more. Much more. Then he could act.

The machine was still on the table. Jonnie reached for the lever.

     The summer heat dried out the mud.

White clouds spotted the skies above the cage.

But Jonnie had no time for them. His whole concentration was on the teaching machine.

He had gotten the huge chair shifted around and by lifting the seat height with folded skins, he could hunch over the table, close facing the old Chinko who, in the picture, fawned in an agony of politeness as he taught.

Mastering the alphabet in English was quite a trick. But mastering it in Psychlo was even worse. Far far easier to trail game by its signs and know, almost to the minute, how long ago it had passed and what it was doing. These signs and symbols were fixed deathless on a screen and the meanings that they gave were unbelievably complex.

In a week, he thought he had it. He had begun to hope. He had even commenced to believe that it was easy. “B is for Bats, Z is for Zoo, H is for Hats and Y is for You.” And by going over the same text in Psychlo, the Bats, Zoos, Hats and Yous became (a little incomprehensibly) Pens, Shovels, Kerbango and Females. But when he finally grasped, under the Chinko’s groveling tutelage, that Psychlo words for Hats, Zoos and Bats would start with different letters, he knew he had it.

He at length could lie back and rattle off the alphabet in English. Then he could, with a bit of squinting, sit up and rattle off the Psychlo alphabet in Psychlo. And with all the different nuances of how they sounded.

Jonnie knew he mustn’t take too long at this. The diet of raw meat would eventually do him in; he was close to semi-starvation since he could barely bring himself to eat it.

The monster would come and watch him a little while each day. While he was there, Jonnie was silent. He knew he must sound funny while he drilled. And the monster’s laughter made the back of his hair stand up. So he would be very quiet under that scrutiny from outside the cage.

It was a mistake. The monster’s eyebones behind the breathe-mask plate were coming closer and closer together with a growing frown.

The triumph of the alphabet was short-lived. At the end of it, the monster, one beautiful bright day, yanked open the door of the cage and came roaring in like a storm!

It yelled at Jonnie for minutes on end, the cage bars shaking. Jonnie expected a cuff but he didn’t cringe when the monster’s paw snaked out.

But it was reaching for the machine, not Jonnie. It yanked the lever down into a second stage that Jonnie had never suspected.

A whole new set of pictures and sounds leaped out!

The old Chinko said, in English, “I am sorry, honored student and forgive my arrogance, but we will now begin the drill of progressive cross-association of objects, symbols and words.”

And there was a new sequence of pictures! The sound for H, the picture of H began to follow one another at a slow interval. Then the Psychlo letter that had an H-like sound began to repeat, in sound and picture. And then they went faster and faster until they were an almost indistinguishable blur!

Jonnie was so astonished he did not realize the monster had left.

Here was a new thing. The lever was so big and resistive he had not realized that all this lurked just beyond another thrust of pressure.

Well, if a little push DOWN would do that, what happened with a little push

UP?

He tried it.

It almost blew his head off.

It took him quite a space of travel of the sun-made bar shadows to get brave enough to try it again.

Same thing!

It almost knocked him off the chair.

Holding back, he stared at the thing suspiciously.

What was it that came out of it?

Sunlight?

He tried it again and let it hit his hand.

Warm.

Tingling.

Carefully staying off to the side, he saw that pictures were appearing in the frames. And he heard, in the weirdest way, sort of with his head, not his ears, “Beneath the level of your consciousness, the alphabet will now go in. A,B,C…”

What was this? Was he “hearing” through his hand? No, that couldn’t be! He wasn’t hearing at all except for that meadowlark.

Soundless somethings were coming from the MACHINE!

He moved a little further back. The impression was less. He moved closer: he felt that his brains were frying.

“Now we will do the same sounds in Psychlo….”

Jonnie went over to the furthest extension of his chain and sat down against the wall.

He thought and thought about it.

He grasped at last that the cross-association drill of symbols, sounds and words was to get him very fast and then faster and faster so he did not have to grope for what he had been taught but would be able to use it without hesitation.

But this shaft of “sunlight” coming out of the machine?

He got braver. He went back and found a disc that must be very advanced and put it on. Bracing himself, he grimly pushed the lever all the way up.

Suddenly he KNEW that if all three sides of a triangle were equal, all its enclosed three angles were also equal.

He backed up. Never mind what a triangle was or an angle, he now KNEW.

He went back and sat down against the wall. Suddenly he reached out with his finger and drew in the dust a three pointed shape. He poked a finger at each inside bend. He said, wonderingly, “They’re equal.”

Equal what?

Equal each other.

So what?

Maybe it was valuable.

Jonnie gazed at the machine. It could teach him in the ordinary way. It could teach him by speeding the lesson up. And it could teach him very smoothly and instantly with a beam of “sunlight.”

Abruptly an unholy joy began to light his face.

Alphabet? He had to learn the whole civilization of the Psychlos!

Did that monster realize why he wanted it?

Life became a long parade of discs, stacks of discs. Every hour not needed for sleep was spent at the table- with straight picture learning, with progressively speeding cross-association, with the piercing beams of “sunlight.”

Half-starved, his sleep was restless. Nightmares of dead Psychlos were intertwined with raw rats chasing mechanical horses that flew. And the discs went round and round.

But Jonnie kept on, kept on cramming years of education into weeks and months. There was so MUCH to know! He had to grasp it ALL!

And with only one goal in mind: vengeance for the destruction of his race! Could he learn enough fast enough to accomplish his purpose?