Battlefield Earth (85 page)

Reaching the crowd, Jonnie found a Coordinator struggling to his knees. Others were stirring, sitting up groggily. The place was a litter of fallen banners, musical instruments, and odds and ends of what must have been a planned celebration.

The Coordinator’s mouth was moving and Jonnie thought the Scot must have lost his voice. He couldn’t hear anything the Coordinator was saying. Jonnie turned and saw an escort plane had landed. He hadn’t heard that.

Suddenly he realized it was this confounded helmet of Ivan’s. Jonnie unfastened the chin strap and got the huge, thick ear pads off his ears.

“… and how did you get here?” the Coordinator was saying.

“I flew in!” said Jonnie, a bit sharply.

“That’s my ship right over there!”

“There’s a creature on the ground!” said the Coordinator. He was pointing at the tied Tolnep. “How did he get there?”

For a moment, Jonnie was a trifle exasperated. All this shooting and running… it dawned on him: none of these people had observed a thing that had gone on.

The people were confused and embarrassed. The three tribal chiefs there were coming up, bowing, upset. They had “lost face.” They had planned a very fine reception- see the banners, the musical instruments, the presents there- and he had already landed. So please excuse them….

The Coordinator was trying to answer Jonnie’s questions. No, they hadn’t seen anything strange. They had all come out here shortly after sunup to wait and then here he was and their schedule was all out of kilter now and it must be nine of the morning … what? Two of the afternoon? No, that can’t be. Let’s see your watch!

They wanted to start the reception up now even though they didn’t feel that well. Jonnie told the Coordinator in charge to hold it off a bit and got to the radio.

On local command, he told the two planes still holding to be very alert to any ship in orbit. Then he switched to planetary pilot band, knowing well it could be heard by the visitors. He got Sir Robert in Africa.

“The little birds tried to sing here,” said Jonnie. They didn’t have a code. They surely needed one. But he was making do. “All okay now. But our friend Ivan in his new hole must have a ceiling. Got it?”

Robert the Fox got it. He knew Jonnie meant him to get air cover to the Russian base and he would right away.

“Have our own band play Swenson’s Lament,” said Jonnie. There was no such Scot piper lament. Planetary radio silence, if you please. If the visitors had known he would be here, they were monitoring unguarded speech. “I may play a note or two but otherwise Swenson’s Lament.”

He turned off. The situation was more dangerous than he had thought. For all the people on this planet.

Only he had been “deaf.” Only he had been able to act. Therefore that bell-mouthed barrel had been emitting a sound wave of high intensity that produced a total paralysis. So that’s how the Tolneps did their slave trade.

     The escort pilot who had just landed didn’t understand what had happened either, and he was trying to explain it to the Coordinator who didn’t speak German. Jonnie asked the German whether he had recorded the action and the pilot said he had. Jonnie explained it to them both, in English to the Coordinator and in Psychlo to the pilot, that it was a device on the nose of that hidden patrol ship over there.

And they had better gather this crowd up and take them into a room of one of these ruins and explain and play the discs for them so they wouldn’t think the place was full of devils. Soothe them down. They could have a reception later.

The crowd was trailing after the Coordinator into a nearby interior. Jonnie walked over to the Tolnep.

The creature was conscious now. His eyes without his faceplate looked blind. They saw in some different light band and needed correction filters. Jonnie looked around and found the half-shattered plate and, keeping well away from the creature’s teeth, dropped it over his eyes. It tried to snap at him.

Jonnie hunkered down and said, “We will now begin your narrative, the long sad story of your youth, how circumstances drove you to crime, and how that fateful trail led you to this pitiful ending.”

“You’re mocking me!” snarled the Tolnep.

“Ah,” said Jonnie. “We speak Psychlo. Very good. Continue your story.”

“I will tell you nothing!”

Jonnie looked around. It was quite a drop from the top of that huge palace down to the valley. He carefully selected the spot and pointed it out. “We’re going to carry you up there and drop you. See the place just at the end of the long gable?”

The Tolnep laughed. “Wouldn’t even dent me!”

Jonnie was thoughtful for a while. “Well, we’re not really enemies of yours, so I am going to reconnect the wiring on your ship, put a little remote control I have in it, and send you back up to the Vulcor-class war vessel.”

The Tolnep was silent. Rather alertly silent.

“So I just better get to work on the remote control-” and Jonnie got up as though to go to his plane.

“Wait,” said the Tolnep. “You really wouldn’t do that, would you? Return me to my ship?”

“Of course. It ’s the civilized thing to do!”

The Tolnep screamed, “You rotten foul Psychlos! You would do anything! Anything! There is no limit to your filthy sadism!”

“Why, what would they do to you?”

“They’d shoot me down and you know it! And I’d sizzle and burn in the air friction!”

“But why wouldn’t they want you?” said Jonnie.

“Don’t play around with me!” raved the Tolnep. “You think I’m stupid? You think they’re stupid? I notice you don’t mention sprinkling virus powder all over me to infect the crew. You are a fiend! Coughing my lungs out all the way there, writhing in agony as I fall, burning slowly mile after mile with the build-up of air friction heat! You just plain go to hell!”

Jonnie shrugged. “It’s the civilized thing to do,” he said and started toward the ship again.

“Wait! Wait, I tell you! What do you want to know?”

So Jonnie heard about the travails of this Double-Ensign Slitheter Pliss and his Half-Captain Rogodeter Snowl, and how stupid it was not to let a superior officer win at gambling. He heard a lot of other things, not really relevant, and then the double-ensign said, “Of course Snowl hasn’t told the crew, because he’ll take the whole prize himself, but it’s rumored that there’s a hundred-million-credit reward for finding the one.”

“What one.’ said Jonnie.

But Double-Ensign Slitheter Pliss didn’t have anything more on it than that. He explained they were waiting to make sure, but either way the combined force would eventually attack en masse. The commanders of the ships were gambling via viewscreen for shares of the loot, and Rogodeter Snowl had already won the planet’s people, he thought, though Snowl often lied and one didn’t really know. But for certain they would need transport and maybe have to go home for it. Home? Did he ever notice a bright star- really a double star? Must be very bright from here. Constellation above it looked like a square box from this angle. Well, that was home. Ninth planet in the rings. The Tolneps only had one planet. They were raiders of other planets. Slaves.

That seemed to be all just now, so Jonnie told him he wouldn’t send him back to his ship. Not yet, anyway.

Jonnie had read that once a Tolnep bit, it took six days to develop more poison. So he got a mine sample bottle and a rag out of the plane and told the Tolnep to bite the rag a few times and the Tolnep resignedly did so. Jonnie put the rag in the bottle and put the lid on tightly. MacKendrick knew about snakebite serums. Maybe he could make one for Tolnep bites.

Another escort plane had landed. It had a copilot. There was a minesite down the mountain, smashed now, but it would have an ore carrier and they had spare fuel, so Jonnie sent them down to check one out and fly it up here. He was taking this Tolnep and the patrolcraft back. He also told them to see what the minesite could supply in the way of passenger carriers.

Jonnie looked up in the afternoon sky. He couldn’t see anything in orbit but four hundred miles and daylight would make it invisible. An uneasy day.

The Coordinator and the German pilot had shown the pictures and had taken the crowd over to see the ship and explain the gun to them. The throng was leaving it now. Coming back toward Jonnie, who was standing by the plane, they were within talking distance.

Abruptly, as though on signal, they all dropped down to their knees and began bowing their heads to the ground. And then they stayed down.

Jonnie had seen quite enough people falling down today. “Now what’s the matter?” he said to the Coordinator.

“They are deeply ashamed. They planned a great welcome for you and it all went splat. But more than that,” said the Coordinator, “they have developed a lot of respect for you. They had it before, but now-’

“Well, tell them to get up,” said Jonnie a bit impatiently. Adulation was not any pay he was after.

“You just saved their lives or maybe more,” said the Coordinator.

“Nonsense,” said Jonnie. “I was just lucky to be wearing a helmet with ear pads. Now tell them to get up!”

The German pilot was near at hand. It seemed that this was the day for embarrassment. He was explaining to Jonnie again that he had dared not fire: a Mark 32’s guns might have blown half that palace right down on the crowd and Jonnie. It was an enclosed bowl here and the blow-back of the blast- Jonnie shook his head and waved him away.

The Coordinator was introducing chiefs. A small man with a smiling Mongol face, wearing a fur hat, came forward. Jonnie shook his hand. The Coordinator said this was Chief Norgay, head of what remained of the Sherpas. They were famous mountaineers and used to run salt caravans clear across the Himalayas in Nepal above India. They used to be very numerous, maybe eighty thousand, but there were only a hundred or two now: they had hidden high up in inaccessible places. There was very little food; even though they were good hunters the game was scarce in high places.

And this was Chief Monk Ananda. The man was wearing a reddish-yellow robe. He was big with a very peaceful face. He was a Tibetan and they had a monastery in caves. Any other Tibetans that remained in the country considered him their chief: You see, even before the Psychlo invasion, the Chinese had driven the Tibetans out of their country and they had gone to other lands. The Chinese had suppressed Buddhism-Ananda was a Buddhist- but the caves were very hard to reach, being way up a ravine in a peak, and the Psychlos had never succeeded in rooting them out. The Tibetans were pretty much starved. They were unable to come out to flat places and grow much food and even in this last summer had not been able to grow much due to lack of seeds.

And this man here was Chief Chong-won, head of all the Chinese that were left. Did Jonnie know there used to be six or eight hundred million Chinese?

     Imagine that! There was another tribe up in North China who had taken refuge in an old defense base in the mountains. The base? The Chinese never finished it. It wasn’t very much. There were only a hundred or two up in North China. But Chief Chong-won here had three hundred fifty people. They were in a valley that probably had been mined and the Psychlos never went near them, but there was hardly any food. Nothing much would grow up so high. Awfully cold. No, we don’t have any trouble talking with the Chinese. They preserved a lot of their university records and are quite literate: they speak Mandarin, an old court language.

Jonnie shook hands. They would bow. So he bowed and this pleased the Chinese enormously.

“Speaking of languages,” said the Coordinator, “they had a little show for you. They’re all over there, so would you see it now?”

Jonnie glanced a bit uneasily at the sky. An escort was up there, very alert. He himself was not too far from the plane. He sent the German over to stand by his. Yes, he’d see the show. He felt bad; all their banners were on the ground, their musical instruments upside down in the turf.

About eighty people in reddish-yellow robes were sitting now in precise rows.

They were some of Chief Monk Ananda’s people. As Jonnie approached he could see that they were anywhere from eight years old to fifty. They all had shaved heads. They were boys, girls, men, and women. They were trying to be very solemn as they sat with legs folded under them but a gleam of mischief was in their eyes. An old monk was standing in front of them with a long scroll.

“We had trouble last spring,” said the

Coordinator. “Nobody, absolutely nobody could talk to these people. Not in India or Ceylon- that’s an island-or anywhere could we find any trace at all of the Tibetan language or this one. We really looked. But we solved it. Listen!” He gave a signal to the old monk.

The Buddhist read a line from the scroll. The whole group sang out as one, a singsong but not a repeat.

It was Psychlo!

The old monk read another line.

The group sang out the translation in Psychlo.

Jonnie was incredulous. The performance went right on, singsonging along.

“He’s reading a language that was once called ‘Pali,’ ” whispered the

Coordinator. “It’s the original language in which the canons of Buddhism were written. The monastery for some reason had in its possession a huge library of all the quoted tenets and words of Gautama Siddhartha Buddha, the man who started that religion about thirty-six hundred years ago. And they are literate in that language. But it is extinct. So we got a Chinko-’

“-instruction machine,” finished

Jonnie, “and taught them Psychlo from scratch!”

“And they converted it back to Pali! That Psychlo minesite down there is pretty smashed, but it had a dictionary and some other books in a fireproof safe and they’ve been going like a race horse ever since. So we can talk to them.”

The singsong was going on. They were speaking with a Chinko accent, just like Jonnie and the pilots!

“You like that, Lord Jonnie?” said Chief Monk Ananda in Psychlo. “They not only sing it out, they also talk it really well.”

Jonnie applauded them loudly and they cheered. He knew what he was going to propose here.

“Is this all of them?” said Jonnie.

No, there were about forty more, but it was quite a scramble down here from the monastery. It took ropes and climbing skill and help from the Sherpas.

The idea of a religious teacher’s words of peace, as he had heard them in that singsong, being put into Psychlo, where all such sentiments went unused, was marvelous to Jonnie.

Some musicians had recovered their instruments and began to play on small horns and long horns and drums. Some women had gotten fires going and their slight amounts of food were being warmed.

The pilots came back from the minesite with an ore carrier. Jonnie got massive amounts of help and they manhandled the patrolcraft into the big plane and put the Tolnep in it, very securely strapped down.

“There’s a lot of aircraft down there,” said Jonnie’s copilot. “The Scots that hit it must have set off an explosion in the compound. They must have blown the breathe-gas-the domes are scattered in pieces over about five acres. They didn’t bother to blow up the ammunition and fuel dumps. The hangars are on a lower level. There are about eighty or ninety battle planes in there. Some are singed but they look all right. There’s a lot of tanks and machinery. And there are about fifty of these ore carriers, lord knows why. Bunch of shop and storehouse material. Looks like they shipped a lot of bauxite from here. No live Psychlos.”

Jonnie made up his mind. He went to his plane and put the radio on planetary. He called the American base-Dunneldeen.

Jonnie remembered Dunneldeen’s joke. “You didn’t know I had fifteen daughters. It ’s quite urgent they wed.”

“Got it,” said Dunneldeen and broke the connection.

Jonnie knew he would have fifteen pilots- even though not all were graduated- within the next ten or twelve hours. Dunneldeen knew where he was.