Battlefield Earth (60 page)

     There were people there who would be telling their great-grandchildren that they personally had been present when the Jonnie had gone into that cage, and who would gain no small importance and notoriety because of it.

Jonnie was on Windsplitter again, walking the horse toward the small isolated dome erected to house the

Chamco brothers.

“That was not well done,” said Robert the Fox, close beside Jonnie. “Don’t scare these people like that.” He himself had been worried stiff.

“I didn’t come over to see the people,” said Jonnie. “I came over to see the Chamcos and I’m on my way right now.”

“You have to think of your public presence,” said Robert the Fox, gently. “That frightened them.” This might be Jonnie’s first day out and Robert might want it to be a good day for him, but that visit to Terl had been hair-raising. “You’re a symbol now,” he continued.

Jonnie turned toward him. He was very fond of Sir Robert. But he couldn’t conceive of himself as a symbol. “I’m just Jonnie Goodboy Tyler.” He suddenly laughed in a kindly way, “That is to say, MacTyler!”

Any concern Sir Robert had felt melted. What could you do with this laddie? He was glad the day seemed a happy one again to Jonnie.

The crowd was much more subdued but it was following. Colonel Ivan had gotten over his fright and had his lance-carrying Cossacks in formation. Bittie MacLeod had successfully swallowed his heart and was leading in the direction Windsplitter seemed to be pointing him. The Argyll in command of the compound sneaked a quick and needed one from a flask and was handing it to his second in command.

Jonnie sized up the separate dome ahead. Well, they had done very well by the Chamco brothers. They had salvaged a dome canopy from some mine shafts not now working. It had been raised on a concrete circle. It s atmosphere lock was one of the better ones- a transparent revolving door to keep the breathe-gas in and the air out. There was a separate breathe-gas tank and pump. The transparent dome had shades and they were open now despite the sun’s heat-Psychlos didn’t seem to care much about heat and cold. Here the Chamcos were busy with plans and suggestions in return for pay- that could be paid now in cash thanks to

Ker’s discovery of Galactic credits.

Jonnie knew them from his training days around the minesite. They were top-grade design and planning engineers, graduates of all the accepted Psychlo and company schools. By report they were extremely cooperative and even polite- as polite as a Psychlo ever could be, which was not much. Their idea of politeness was a one-way flow- at them.

They could be seen in there now, working at two big upholstered desks, flanked by drawing boards. There was an intercom of the usual type so one could stand outside and talk to those inside without going through the lock. But Jonnie could not imagine trying to talk technical matters through one of those intercoms.

Colonel Ivan must have read his mind. He pushed forward and said in his limited English, “You go in there?”

Then he looked around wildly for a Coordinator who spoke Russian.

The Coordinator interpreted, “He says that’s bulletproof glass in that canopy. He can’t cover you with rifles.”

Robert the Fox said, somewhat desperately, “Haven’t you been out long enough for your first day?”

“This is what I came over to do,” said Jonnie, rolling off Windsplitter.

Doubtfully, Colonel Ivan handed him the knobkerrie and at the same time tried to get the interpreter to translate.

“The colonel says not to stand in the airlock,” said the Coordinator. “To go inside and move over to the right. If you don’t, his men can’t charge in.”

Hobbling toward the atmosphere lock, Jonnie heard the crowd behind him saying things like: “He’s going in there, too! Doesn’t he realize these Psychlos…” and “Oh, look at those awful beasts in there.” Jonnie didn’t like all this impeding of his actions. Being a symbol had its problems! It was an entirely new idea to him that he couldn’t move about freely at his own discretion and that others would have a say in where he was going.

He guessed the Chamco brothers usually had their canopy curtains closed, because even though the curtains were now open they had lights burning. He put on an air mask a pilot had handed him.

Jonnie hobbled through the atmosphere lock, experiencing a bit of trouble with it. These locks, built for Psychlos, were always clumsy for him. Too heavy, too hard to push.

The Chamcos had stopped working and were sitting still, looking at him. They were not in any way hostile but they didn’t greet him.

“I came to see what progress you were making in rebuilding the transshipment rig,” said Jonnie, using pleasant Psychlo intonations- as pleasant as Psychlo ever was.

They didn’t say anything. Was the smaller Chamco brother looking a little wary?

“If you need any materials or anything,” said Jonnie, “I will be happy to see they are furnished you.”

The bigger Chamco brother said, “The whole rig was burned out. The console. Everything. Destroyed.”

“Well, yes,” said Jonnie, leaning on his cane in front of the atmosphere lock. “But I’m sure they are just common components. There’s miniature rigs in these freighters that are not too dissimilar.”

“Very difficult,” said the smaller Chamco brother. Were his eyes a little strange or was it just a Psychlo being a Psychlo?

“We ought to rebuild it,” said Jonnie. “We won’t know what really happened to Psychlo until we do.”

“Takes a long time,” said the bigger Chamco. Were his eyes looking a little strange? But then the amber orbs of a Psychlo always had tiny flames in them.

“I have been trying to figure it out,” said Jonnie. He looked over to the side where they had some textbooks. Right on the end was the one he had thrown down this morning. “If you could explain to me-’

The smaller Chamco sprang!

The bigger Chamco leaped up from his desk and charged.

They were roaring.

Jonnie stumbled backward. The cane was in the road of a draw. He threw it at the nearer Chamco, a weak throw; he was never left-handed.

He saw an enormous paw blurring in the air, coming at him.

He knelt and did a left-handed draw. Talons raked the side of his face.

Jonnie fired.

The recoil threw him back against the door and he tried to push into the atmosphere lock. It seemed jammed, frozen.

Flat on his back, a boot stamping down to crush his ribs, he fired up from the floor.

The boot blurred away.

A furry pair of paws were coming at his throat!

The roars were berserk.

Jonnie fired at the paws and then at a huge chest. He punched blast after blast into them, driving them back.

Somehow he got to his knee. The two gigantic bodies were falling back, falling down. Jonnie fired again at one and then the other.

Both of them were flat on the floor.

The smaller Chamco brother was thoroughly stunned. But just beyond him the bigger one was fighting with a desk drawer. He got it open and pulled out something.

It was all happening too fast. Jonnie could not see what he had due to the angle of the desk. He moved sideways to get a clearer shot.

The bigger Chamco had a small blast gun. But he wasn’t trying to aim it at Jonnie. He was aiming it at his own head.

He was trying to commit suicide!

The howling maelstrom of action had passed. Jonnie coolly aimed and blew the gun out of the bigger Chamco’s hand. It didn’t explode. Part of the blast had hit the Psychlo and he flopped back, knocked out.

Damn, not having a right hand and arm! He couldn’t at once recover his cane. He hopped sideways and leaned against the canopy wall.

Smoke was thick in the room, curling around the breathe-gas exhaust vents. He was half-deaf from all the roaring and snarling and the blasts of the gun in this confined space.

Whew! What was that all about? There they lay. But why the attack?

The atmosphere lock door revolved and Colonel Ivan and a sentry burst through.

“Don’t fire those rifles!” warned Jonnie. “This is breathe-gas and radiation will blow us to bits. Get some shackles!”

“We couldn’t find air masks!” howled the guard, hysterical. Then he tore out to find shackles.

Colonel Ivan adjusted his own air mask a hitch to better look at the two Psychlos sprawled on the floor. They looked like they were out, but Jonnie still had a blast gun on them.

He gestured at the breathe-masks of the Psychlos, which were hanging on a coat tree. Colonel Ivan grabbed them and put them on the unconscious Chamcos. Jonnie gestured at the breathe-gas circulator controls and Colonel Ivan went to them and shut them off, and then with a lot of battering with huge strength he got the atmosphere lock folded back on itself, flooding air into the place.

Sentries finally could rush in, chains and shackles rattling and clanging, and get them onto the Chamcos.

Jonnie hobbled outside. Only then did he realize the crowd had been there and had seen all this through the canopy glass. Some were pointing at his face and he realized for the first time that he was bleeding.

He hobbled to Windsplitter and mounted.

The crowd was talking to one another. Guards were trying to work. “Why did he attack those Psychlos?” “They attacked him.” “Why did they fight?” “Look out, here comes a flatbed and forklift, please stand aside.” “I don’t blame Jonnie for shooting Psychlos.”

“Could we have some help here with these bodies?” “Why did they let him go in there?” “How come they attacked him?” “I have heard that these Psychlos…” “But I saw him; he was being very pleasant and they charged him. Why would they do that?”

Jonnie didn’t have a bandana or a scrap of buckskin to staunch the blood dropping down on his hunting shirt. Some mechanic handed him a wad of waste and he held it to his cheek.

“They were supposed to be tame Psychlos! Why did they attack him?” More crowd talk.

Jonnie surely wished he knew. What had he said? He had a sudden thought. He called out, “Did anybody get a recording of that? The conversation must have been coming through the intercom.”

Well, there had been about fifteen picto-recorders using up discs ever since he had stepped off the plane. An Argyll rushed up waving one. “Can somebody copy that for me?” asked Jonnie. “I have to know what was said that made them do it.”

Oh, yes, sir, right away! And they had copies of it before he hoisted himself off Windsplitter and into the plane. He was going to study these.

“Wave,” said Robert the Fox.

Jonnie waved. The crowd was looking at him, some faces quite white, even a black face a bit gray. “Please stand back,” from the guards. “Clear the field, please.”

Back at the base that night, just after dinner, Colonel Ivan got a Coordinator in. The Coordinator said, “He wants me to tell you that you live too dangerously.”

There might have been more, but Jonnie cut him off. “Tell him, perhaps at heart I’m just a Cossack!”

The Russians laughed about that, repeating it for days and days thereafter.

It had been a rather energetic first day out.

There was a repercussion. Three days later he received a confidential written message from the Council. He did not think much about it at the time, not being unduly sensitive.

Later he would look back on it as a turning point and criticize himself for not realizing how ominous it was.

The message was very correct, very polite, passed by a slim majority. It was brief:

By Council Resolution, in the interest of his personal safety and to curtail any embarrassment, realizing his value to the State, it is decreed that Jonnie Goodboy Tyler not again visit the Compound located in this place until such prohibition is formally rescinded by constituted authority.

Duly passed on voice vote and certified as legal.

Oscar Khamermann, Chief of the Tribe of British Columbia, Secretary to the Council.

Jonnie read it, shrugged, and tossed it in the wastebasket.

     - Part XVII -

     Brown Limper Staffor came away from the compound utterly ill with envy- he called it “righteousness.”

What a horrible, vulgar spectacle!

All those people crowding about, cheering even, touching his moccasins, absolutely fawning. It was more than a normal sane man like Brown Limper could tolerate.

He had felt he was losing ground lately, and he beat his head to think of ways and means, even criminal, to correct this gross mistake people were making about that Tyler!

Since Jonnie Goodboy Tyler had come to the village last year, prancing about, bribing people with gifts- while really only trying to do them out of their lands and houses- and since Brown Limper had realized that Tyler was not only not properly dead but apparently moving in a larger world and moving far too successfully-Brown Limper had been lying in wait.

When he recalled how he had been put upon and scorned and held up to ridicule by Tyler ever since they were children, he seethed. He had to be careful not to dwell on it too much, for then he would lie awake in bed and roll and toss and grit his teeth and bring on a fever. That the instances of Tyler’s doing those things could not be directly recalled or isolated as actual incidents only made it grindingly worse. They must have happened or Brown Limper wouldn’t feel this way, would he? It proved itself.

When he heard that Tyler was crippled and likely to die, a flood of relief had poured through Brown Limper. But here he was today, limping maybe but certainly making a nauseating spectacle of himself with those Psychlos.

It was not that Brown Limper had not been trying. Some time since when old Jimson had complained of rheumatism, Brown Limper had kindly shown him how beneficial locoweed was to aches and pains- Parson Staffor had left a supply. Brown Limper had performed this act of humanity right after he had been startled to find old Jimson inclining toward Tyler’s criminal proposals to destroy the village and move the people to some desolate mountainside and abandon them there to starve and freeze. Jimson obviously could not be trusted to govern, due of course to his aches and pains. Mercifully now he had retired to his bed and awoke when his family brought him some food. It was so gratifying to see that the old man was out of his pain and not worried and harassed by village affairs. It was, of course, a bit of a burden to take all the work on himself, but Brown Limper was patient and enduring, if a bit pious, about it.

When the Coordinators had come from the World Federation for the Unification of the Human Race, Brown Limper had thought of them as interfering busybodies at first. Then they had shown him some books.

Old Parson Staffor, before he began to chew on locoweed day and night, had taken his responsibilities seriously, both to his village and to his family. He had sought to initiate Brown Limper into the church and had brought out from hiding a secret book no one else in the village knew about called “The Bible,” and in strict privacy he had taught Brown Limper how to read. But Brown Limper had not much cared for a career as a parson, and he had thought it was better to aspire to be a mayor. A parson could only persuade, but a mayor…well now!

It was quite simple logic. There was Tyler, prancing around on his horses, ogling the girls, the young men following his lead and getting into trouble, the Council soft-headedly overlooking his criminal pursuits. And there was Brown Limper-wise, tolerant, understanding, and brilliant- overlooked and even scorned and cast aside. And hadn’t Tyler’s own father- if he really was Jonnie Goodboy Tyler’s father-protested when Brown Limper was born clubfooted and mutated and was allowed to live. Well, maybe not just older Tyler but Brown Limper’s mother used to tell him that some had protested but that she had prevailed and saved his life. She used to tell him that several times a week and Brown Limper had gotten the message: the Tylers had attempted to murder him!

So it was only sensible he should be upset and take measures to protect not only himself but the whole village as well. It would be utterly irresponsible not to do so.

These Coordinators had been delighted to find he could read and had given him some texts on “government” and one on “parliamentary procedure” called “Robert’s Rules of Order.” They had astonished him by informing him that as the active and only mayor, he was the chief of the American tribe. Apparently nearly all the people in America (they had to show him where it was on the globe) had been slaughtered or died off; his was the principal tribe and, being near the minesite, the most influential group politically.

Getting right down to it, what was this Council? Well, it was the heads of tribes all over the world, and they met or sent their deputies to meet in a sort of parliament right here in his front yard, so to speak.

They mentioned that he of course should be very interested due to the fact that the Jonnie came from there. Brown Limper did not just become interested, he became obsessed!

Were there any other peoples in America? Well, there were a couple found in British Columbia and four found in the Sierra Nevadas-a mountain range to the west- and some Indians-not really from India but called that- in some mountains way to the south. There were Eskimo and Alaskan tribes but they didn’t count geographically in America.

Brown Limper had been making progress. Since each Council member had one vote, he engineered the rescue of the couple in British Columbia and the four in the Sierra Nevadas (this was all humanitarian, of course) and settled them in his village as tribes and now claimed three Council votes. He was just now working on the Indian question to get a member of that tribe up here and so have four Council votes.

He hoped he was also making progress in other ways. At the Council he would casually and very truthfully drop remarks about Tyler. How the village had always considered him wild, rash, and irresponsible even though he personally had tried to correct such impressions. He mentioned how as a child Tyler was always running about playing and refused even to draw water for his family, an obligation all well-behaved, thoughtful children had. He made light of any rumor that Tyler had known about the tomb all the time and had hidden the information so that he, Tyler, could go there and rob the honorable dead: Tyler only went now and then, he said, and the parson of the village had once tried his best to correct him and had even taken some of the things the boy had stolen away from him as punishment. Tyler had eventually run away entirely and left his family and the whole village to starve for two winters. As to Tyler and Chrissie not being married, well, actually that was a village secret- the parson had found out certain things when they were children and had forbidden marriage. Not that Tyler cared much for authority- youth being what it

Was…

A lot of the older chiefs from far-off places did not know much of what was going on, and wasn’t Chief Staffor the only one around who had been Tyler’s own dear companion?

Just a couple of days before, Brown Limper had been argued with by some ignorant lout, a chief from the Siberian tribe, and Brown Limper had a feeling they didn’t all quite believe him. So he had been morose. Didn’t he know Tyler, the real Tyler? And now this disgusting spectacle of self-aggrandizement today. What a conceited oaf. Ugh! Spit! And now he had the nerve to go around pretending he couldn’t walk. Just more mockery of Brown Limper.

Brown Limper had noticed that the Psychlo in the cage seemed to be on very good speaking terms with Tyler. While he did not know what they were saying, it was obvious that they were actually well known to each other. But he had detected some bit of frostiness there.

Grabbing at a straw, Brown Limper decided to look into this a bit further and returned that evening to the compound. The sentries, of course, would not dream of saying anything to a senior Council member wearing a bit of colored ribbon that denoted his tribe, and Brown Limper hung about, watching the huge Psychlo from a distance. And he saw something very curious. A young Swedish pilot trainee stood for a while outside the bars talking to him.

The sentry said yes, the cadet came quite routinely after the classes of the day; he was polishing up his Psychlo: all pilots had to be very expert on Psychlo, and the monster in that cage was a real Psychlo and there weren’t many others around to talk to. No, he didn’t know what they talked about for the sentry couldn’t speak Psychlo, being part of the Argyll raiders on duty here, but the cadet’s name, it says here in the log, is Lars Thorenson, and thank you very much chief, sir, for mentioning that sentries should have cloaks and promising to take it up with the Council.

So, using his influence, Brown Limper found in Academy records that Lars Thorenson had been a member of a Swedish tribe that emigrated, way back, to Scotland; that he had originally been chosen as a Coordinator trainee because he spoke Swedish and English and had a gift for tongues; that his father was a fascist minister and had urged the boy to use the Federation to spread the call of fascism in view of the fact that it had been the state religion of Sweden and had had some important military figure named Hitler as its head and was needed by the world; that the boy had been dropped therefore by the Federation but had reapplied due to the scarcity of manpower and been accepted as a flying cadet; that he was doing horribly in stunt flying and was right now healing up from a bad landing and was temporarily suspended and probably would be sent back to the farm in Scotland on the basis that while he might have a gift for languages he didn’t seem all right in the head.

Well! A senior Council member could easily get that threat of dismissal quashed.

Brown Limper began to take a very definite interest in Lars Thorenson, and through him, in that monster in the cage.

Things were definitely looking up. Certain crimes must be corrected even if the criminal were an old companion!