Battlefield Earth (114 page)

Jonnie whispered urgently to Lord Voraz, “Wait. They claimed they burned a lot of cities. There are all sorts of war damages.”

“I tried to get it in; it would have increased the value of the property,” Lord Voraz whispered back, “but this isn’t a peace conference, you know. It ’s a trial and treaty about offenses to the conference itself.”

No reparations for Earth? Jonnie felt like jumping up and protesting. If Sir Robert or MacAdam had been here-

“A trillion credits fine,” whispered Lord Voraz, “is stiff. It will crash the whole Tolnep economy. Even if Earth were awarded city damages, Tolnep could never pay them after that huge fine. Be happy about it. You got rid of all the hostile forces.”

And got rid of all challenges to a clear title, thought Jonnie sourly. Now they were wide open to the bank foreclosure with no real money to meet it.

But Fowljopan was coming down on Jonnie. “Your emissary was not here! This is highly irregular. It does not void or change these findings. But if he is not here to sign them, they will not be valid. Your war will go right on. So you better advise your government to get him here quick. These papers will be ready for signature tomorrow afternoon. Are you going to see he is here?”

“I’m not a representative-” began Jonnie.

“You have influence,” said Fowljopan. “Use it! We want to finish up here and go home.”

“You better do as he says,” whispered Lord Voraz.

Jonnie looked up to see Dries Gloton standing at the door. He’d come back!

As Jonnie walked out, Dries asked Lord Voraz, “Is the Earth representative coming?”

Voraz pointed to Jonnie.

“Will you get him here?” Dries Gloton asked Jonnie.

Jonnie said he’d try, and Dries and

Lord Voraz looked at each other and grinned.

He was too disheartened about no reparations for Earth to give much thought to them.

     A few feet from the door of the conference room, Jonnie started to get mad.

War! Any one of those lords in there, or their governments, merely had to say the word and their fleets pranced off to bash somebody’s head in!

And when they’d bashed it in, they could just sail off tra-la, without a thought of what they’d done to people’s homes and lives, and then maybe come back another day to bash some more!

Jonnie took a walk around the causeway of the bowl. It was a sunny noontime and the mine entrance and exhaust fans made a gentle breeze as they changed the air.

The little children lay in the rifle pits, shaded with bits and pieces of cloth.

They followed him with their eyes. The dogs whuffed and snuffled at him from the ends of their leashes and, somehow recognizing him as a friend, wagged their tails. The older children, having fed the younger ones, were sitting cross-legged and eating from bowls: they grinned and nodded as he went by.

Jonnie thought, why shouldn’t these children have a chance? Why couldn’t they have a future that was happy and safe?

War! What right did cold, impersonal nations have to murder and rampage, to smash and crush and gut their more helpless, fellow beings?

Call it “national policy,” call it “necessities of state,” call it what you will, it still amounted to an action of the insane.

Psychlo! What right did Psychlo have striking this planet down? Couldn’t they have bought what they wanted? Couldn’t they have come in and said, “We need metal. We will exchange this or that or technology for it.” No, it suited them better to murder and steal it like a thief.

He thought about the time before the visitors came, when first they had been free from the oppressive tyrants. The people had been trying to get on with it, had been happy, had been working with a will. And then the visitors came. And with them the bank.

Organization might be necessary. But it gave no one the right to create a government that was an inhuman, soulless beast!

He thought of Brown Limper and his idiocies in the name of “the state.” Yet Brown Limper had been almost sensible compared to those lords in there.

Jonnie looked at the children. And he made up his mind. Whatever happened, there would be no more war. Not anywhere.

He had been so engrossed in his thoughts that Chief Chong-won had to shake his arm to get his attention.

The chief was jumping up and down and waving at Jonnie to come on and at last practically pushed him into the ops room.

Tinny was beaming! A chatter of Pali was spraying out from around her headphones. She said something into her mike and turned to Jonnie.

“It’s the Scot officer in charge of rescue in Russia!” said Tinny. “They spotted some green smoke coming from a ventilator in puffs. Somebody inside had gotten the armor off the ducts. They’ve got mine-hoist gear going right this minute hauling people out!”

Minute by minute the reports came in. Then Tinny turned to Jonnie: “It’s Colonel Ivan! It ’s for you! He says ‘Tell Marshal Jonnie the valiant-red-army is still at his command!’ “

Jonnie was about to reply. He was finding it hard to talk. But Tinny said, “Here’s another one for Jonnie. He wants to hear your voice!” She pushed the headset at Jonnie.

Security or no security, the voice said, “Jonnie? It ’s Tom Smiley Townsen!”

Jonnie couldn’t talk.

“Jonnie, the village people are all okay. Everybody is all right, Jonnie. Jonnie, are you there?”

“Thank god,” Jonnie forced himself to say. “Tell them that for me, Tom. Tell them all. Thank god!”

And he sat down in a chair and wept. He had not realized how worried he had been about them. He had suppressed it with an iron will so that he could work.

The reports were still coming in and after a while he got busy. They wanted to know where to go and he in his turn had the glad news for them of the departure of the enemy and the terms, and shouts and cheers began to leak through from the background of the communicator’s voice there.

They had five wounded pilots and a lot of burn cases and they wanted help from Scotland. He learned the old underground hospital in Aberdeen had been set up and he got the badly wounded ones flown through to it and pried a nurse loose in Aberdeen to be flown back to Tashkent to care for the minor burns and injuries.

He had gotten so busy with these problems that he had forgotten all about Sir Robert until Dries Gloton got Chong-won to remind him of it.

Jonnie had been avoiding it a bit. They had not yet succeeded at Castle Rock and he knew that trying to pry Sir Robert loose was going to take some doing. He had even wondered whether he couldn’t get Lord Fowljopan to put off the signing a day. Sir Robert was going to be a handful.

Even so, he put the call out and got busy arranging for all prisoners to be put down at Balmoral Castle about fifty miles to the west of Aberdeen, easily found from the air because of three noticeable peaks nearby, because of a river, and because it itself was a prominent ruin. It was only about fifty miles from Aberdeen on a road that was in fair condition, but Thor said he could pick any up in a marine attack plane and get them to the hospital at Aberdeen if they needed it. Jonnie gave him some precautions and then went out and got the Hawvin emissary, who seemed to be the contact now with the orbiting fleet, and gave him a trace map so he could transmit it to the Hawvin commander. They said they could do it this afternoon without waiting for the final signatures. Nobody knew how many prisoners there were but they’d be flown down in different launchcraft. Jonnie left it up to them and to Thor in Scotland.

Doing all that had given him a pretty distinct impression that things were very hectic around Edinburgh and he was even less inclined to call Sir Robert.

Once more, Dries Gloton got Chong-won to push him. Good lord, those small gray men were anxious to get Sir Robert here!

He finally persuaded communicators up there in Scotland to track down Sir Robert, and when he finally got him on the radio, every misgiving he had had was fully justified.

“Coom doon there!” Sir Robert had rapped back via communicators. And so far as it could be translated and relayed, he told Jonnie off properly!

Didn’t Jonnie know that there were twenty-one hundred people in the various ancient shelters beneath the Rock- if they were still alive? That heavy bombs had smashed in every possible entrance? They had gotten atmosphere hoses drilled in here and there, but who could talk through those? The Rock cliff sides had been pulverized and shattered so that every time they got a drift going in, they had landslides.

Yes, Dwight was there! Yes, Dwight had gotten tunnel casings from Cornwall and tried to drive them in. Did Jonnie think they were all standing around doing nothing?

It was all right for Jonnie to be sitting around with those la-de-da lords drinking tea. Go right on and drink tea but let people get on with this, this-

It took Jonnie half an hour to impress on Sir Robert that without his signature, the matter of the “visitors” wouldn’t be ended.

Finally, with considerable blasphemy that the communicators couldn’t handle well in Pali, Sir Robert said he would pry a pilot loose and fly down.

Jonnie sat back, feeling exhausted. He didn’t like to fight with Sir Robert. And he could understand his position completely. His Aunt Ellen was in those closed-off shelters. And Chrissie! It was all he could do himself to sit here handling things when he felt he should be up there, digging with his bare hands if necessary.

The small gray man looked very pleased when Chong-won told him Sir Robert was coming.

     Out of the night sky from the north, rushing far ahead of its sound, seen at first as just another star, a plane approached Kariba.

The antiaircraft gunner intercom sounded: the plane was friendly and requested permission to land.

Jonnie went to watch it set down. The door opened and somebody jumped out. The face was a white blur in the night. Jonnie peered more closely: bandages- somebody with his face totally bandaged.

A finger pointing at Jonnie’s beard. “The very thing!”

It was Dunneldeen!

They swatted each other happily. Then Dunneldeen pushed Jonnie back into better light and looked at him.

“The very thing! Somebody cut your beard half-off! And mine’s burned half-off! Make an appointment for me with your barber!”

“Did you get shot down?” said Jonnie, looking a little anxiously at the swathe of bandages on his face.

“Now, laddie, don’t be insulting!” said Dunneldeen. “What Bolbod or Drawkin or Hockner could shoot down the ace of all aces? No, Jonnie boy, it was helping fight fire. It ’s not too bad a burn, but you know Dr. Allen. Never happy unless he’s swaddled you up like an innocent babe.”

“How is it up there?” said Jonnie.

“Bad. We got the fire out but that’s all you can say for it. Dwight and Thor are trying to open tunnels but the rock slides. There’s lots of hope but that’s all I can give you. Say, did that small gray man come back here? Is that his ship over there?” “Was he at Edinburgh?”

“Oh, that he was. Went all around bothering everybody asking questions. Got in everybody’s way. And then he seemed to get what he was looking for and went swooshing up to Aberdeen. Almost got himself shot down! He was looking for the king-you know, Chief of Clanfearghus.”

“How is he? The Chief?” said Jonnie.

“Well, he’s a bleeder. You know, doesn’t stop bleeding once he’s cut. I’m always telling him to stay out of wars- they’re unhealthy! Anyway, we found him outside and rushed him to the Aberdeen hospital and they gave him transfusions. This small gray man tried to get in to see him and of course the gillies threw him out. But then Dr. Allen got cornered by him. Seems like this guy,” he indicated the ship where the lights were flashing, “has been collecting books and libraries all over the place. He picto-graphs them. And he got Dr. Allen to tell him what was wrong with the Chief and they looked it up in a lot of old man-books, and Dr. Allen found there was a compound called Vitamin K that made blood coagulate and they synthesized some and what do you know…the bleeding stopped! The Chief’s recovering. What is this small gray man, a doctor?”

“No,” said Jonnie. “He’s the Sector Branch Manager of the Galactic Bank. I’ll tell you more later, but he was up there making sure this planet had a government!”

“Well, it was a nice thing to do, anyway,” said Dunneldeen.

Jonnie was glad for the Chief but he sure was beginning to feel surrounded by the bankers. He didn’t tell Dunneldeen they were about to foreclose on them. “You see Stormalong?”

Dunneldeen shook his head. “Let’s get Sir Robert. He’s dead to the world in the plane.”

And Sir Robert really was dead to the world. Singed and gray-faced where his skin wasn’t blacked with soot, his hands torn, his clothes in burned rags, Sir Robert looked exactly what he was- an old man who had been going through hell for days without rest.

They tried to lift and carry him between them but the old War Chief was a very heavy man, especially when dead weight. They got a mine cart and wheeled him into the hospital.

Jonnie got the nurse up and she examined Sir Robert. He was not injured except for his hands. She gave him a shot of B Complex and he never stirred at the punch of the needle.

Mr. Tsung and his family were suddenly up and hovering around and they ran off to get things organized. Shortly, they were giving Sir Robert a bath and trimming the burned areas in his beard and hair so they looked more even. They soon had him in a bed. He had never opened his eyes!

Jonnie went back to the hospital where he had left Dunneldeen and found him sitting in a chair sound asleep while the nurse changed his face bandages. The burns were not disfiguring. His beard sure was tattered. Jonnie stopped the nurse from putting on fresh bandages and called Mr. Tsung’s daughter, who came in with her scissors and neatened the Scot by cutting his beard like Jonnie’s.

Jonnie had hoped Dunneldeen could spell him in ops while he went to look for Stormalong. But Dunneldeen was really in no condition to do anything but sleep. Jonnie turned him over to the Tsung family and they gave him bath and put him to bed.

It must be hell in Edinburgh!

Jonnie got on the radio to Russia. They had had several thousand people stuffed into that old base. Smoke or no smoke, some of them must be functional. There were two hundred fifty Chinese there from North China. There were the Siberians and the Sherpas. Tinny got some of her own messages in: the rest of the monks and the Buddhist library, the Chinese library and such things were safe. She had to run out and tell Chong-won and Mr. Tsung. Late at night it might be, in both Tashkent and Edinburgh, but Jonnie started shuffling people.

The most vital question now was: where was Stormalong? Where was MacAdam? The only thing they ever got out of Luxembourg was a girl saying something that sounded like “Je n’ comprempt pas!” and that sure didn’t spell Stormalong or the Scot banker. Was he going to have to handle this foreclosure thing with no help?