Part 16
1
Terl sat in his dark hole and was gloomy.
He was not with the other Psychlos; they would have torn him to fur fluffs. He was here in a cubicle that had once been used for cleaning supplies on the dormitories. It had been rigged with a breathe-gas circulator; it contained a narrow, twelve-foot-long bed; there was a little port that had been rigged to push food through—one could see the outside corridor beyond its revolving panes; and there was a two-way intercom inset below the door.
The place was strong enough: he had already tried every means of opening it and escaping. He was not chained, but every hour of the day and night there was a sentry with an assault rifle just outside.
It was really the fault of the females, both the animal females and Chirk. His hindsight was a bit faulty, but not his conviction that it was correct. Always a master of self-delusion, Terl was at his best these days.
When he compared his present lot with the beautiful dream of being wealthy and powerful on Psychlo, being bowed to by the royalty and trembled at by everyone else, he quivered with suppressed rage. These animals were denying him his due! Ten beautiful gold coffin lids lay moldering in the company cemetery on Psychlo, of that he was utterly certain. The delicious thought of slipping out there some dark night and exhuming them was second only to the thought of the wealth and power that would ensue.
He had befriended these animals. And how had they treated him? A mop closet!
But Terl was nothing if not clever. He roused himself now and began to think hard and brightly. Now was the time to be the calm, cool, masterful Terl.
He would get to Psychlo. He would get these animals and this planet destroyed, finally and forever. He would dig up those coffins. He would be bowed to and trembled at. Nothing must stand in his way!
He began to tally up the bits and scraps of leverage he had. First, of course, it went without saying that his own cleverness was his chief asset; he agreed with himself on that. Second, he was almost certain the first animal he had caught had forgotten that there was a hefty charge of explosive left buried in that cage. Third, there had been three remotes: one was still in his office, one had been seized, but the third was just inside that cage door in case he somehow got tricked or trapped in there. That third one would have enabled him to blow up the females or shut off the power to the bars, and he was certain it had not been found. The fourth piece of leverage was a pretty big one and the fifth was gigantic.
Leverage!
Sitting there in the semidark he thought and thought. And after several days, he knew he had it. Every point in its torturous pattern of events was perfectly channeled, perfectly conceived, and ready to be put in train.
The primary stage was to get himself put in that cage. Good! He would do it.
So it was that a very mild, personable Terl noted one morning that the sentries no longer wore kilts. Gazing out through the revolving panes of the food slot, he carefully concealed his elation. He sized the creature up. It had long pants, strapped boots and a half-wing insignia on its left breast.
Terl might be a top graduate of company schools but he was no linguist: that was part of the arts, and what self-respecting Psychlo had anything to do with those? So an element of luck had to enter in here.
“What,” said Terl in Psychlo through the intercom installed in the door, “does that half-wing stand for?”
The sentry looked a bit startled. Good, thought Terl.
“I should have thought it would have two wings,” said Terl.
“That’s for a full pilot,” said the sentry. “I’m just a student pilot. But I’ll have my full wings someday!”
Terl laid aside his conviction that you couldn’t understand animals. While arrogance demanded nonrecognition of them, necessity demanded he recognize them. This thing was talking Psychlo. Chinko accent, as would be expected, but Psychlo.
“I am sure you will earn wings,” said Terl. “I must say your Psychlo is excellent! You should practice it more, though. Talking to a real Psychlo would help.”
The sentry brightened up. Suddenly he realized that that was perfectly true. And here was a real Psychlo. He had never talked to one before. It was quite a novelty. So he told Terl who he was, that being easy to discuss. He said he was Lars Thorenson, part of the Swedish contingent that had arrived some months ago for pilot training. He did not share the ferocity of some of the Scots against the Psychlos, for his people, way up in the Arctic, hadn’t had any previous contact with Psychlos. He thought maybe the Scots exaggerated things a bit. And by the way, was Terl a flier?
Oh, yes, Terl told him, and it was quite true. Terl was a past master in all types of flight, battle tactics and stunts like flying right down into five-mile-deep mine shafts and picking up an endangered machine.
The sentry had drawn closer. Flight was very dear to him and here was a master. He said that their best flier was Jonnie, and did Terl know him?
Oh, yes, Terl not only knew him, but back in the old days before there had been a misunderstanding, he himself had taught that one a few tricks: it was why he was such a good flier. A very fine creature, actually; Terl had been his firmest friend.
Terl was elated. These were cadet sentries, standing watches in addition to their schooling to ease the considerable load on regular personnel.
For several days, each morning, Lars Thorenson improved his Psychlo and learned the ins and outs of combat flying. From a master and a onetime friend of Jonnie’s. He was quite unaware that if he put some of these “tricks” into use he would lose the most elementary fight in the air, and later others would have to shake the nonsense out of him before he got himself killed. Terl knew well it was a risk to play this trick, but he just couldn’t resist it.
Terl corrected the sentry’s Psychlo up to a point. And then one morning he said he himself would have to exactly clarify certain words and really they should have a dictionary. There were lots of dictionaries, and so the next morning the sentry gave him one.
With considerable glee, Terl went to work with the dictionary when the sentry was off duty. There were a lot of words in the composite language called “Psychlo” that were never actually used by Psychlos. They had leaked into the language from Chinko and other tongues. Psychlos never used them because they could not really grasp their conceptual meaning.
So Terl looked up words and phrases like “atone for wrongs,” “guilt,” “restitution,” “personal fault,” “pity,” “cruelty,” “just,” and “amends.” He knew they existed as words and that alien races used them. It was a very, very hard job, and later he would look on this as the toughest part of his whole project. It was all so foreign, so utterly alien!
Soon Terl was satisfied he was ready to enter his next stage.
“You know,” he said to the sentry one morning, “I feel very guilty about putting your poor Jonnie in a cage. Actually, I have a craving to atone for my wrongs. It was my personal fault that he was subjected to such cruelty. And I wish with all my heart to make amends. I am overwhelmed by guilt and I pity him for what I did. And it would be only just if I made restitution for it all by suffering in a cage like he did.”
It made Terl perspire to get it all out, but that only added to his contrite look.
The sentry had made a habit of recording their conversations, for he studied them later and corrected his own pronunciation, and since he had never heard a lot of these words in Psychlo before, he was glad he had it all on disk. Terl was also glad. It had been an agonizing performance!
The sentry, having the evening free, digested all this. He decided he had better report it to the compound commanding officer.
There was a new compound commander, an Argyll, very well noted for his prowess in raids in earlier days and very experienced—but not in America. The ease with which a radiation bullet could blow up a Psychlo had given him a bit of contempt for them in their current state. And he had a problem of his own.
Literally mobs of people from all over the world got off planes and took tours of the compound. The coordinators showed them around and pointed out where this had happened and that had happened. Many-hued and many-tongued, they were a bit of a nuisance. And almost every one of them wanted to be shown a Psychlo. Most had never seen one, no matter that they had been oppressed by them for ages. Some very important chiefs and dignitaries had enough whip with the council to get special permission. That meant an extra detail of guards the commander did not have; it meant taking people down into the dormitory levels where they should not be; it actually meant a bit of danger to them for some of those Psychlos down there were not reconstructed!
So the commander toyed with this idea. He went out and looked at the cage. Evidently it could be wired—in fact it was wired—with plenty of voltage to the bars. If one put up a protector in front so people would not touch the bars and get hurt, he would be relieved of these nonsense tours into the dormitory.
Further, it appealed to him to have a “monkey in a cage.” It would help morale. And it would be an added attraction. He could plainly see that somebody might want to make restitution and do amends. So he mentioned it sketchily to a council meeting. They were very busy and had their minds on other things and he omitted to tell them it was Terl.
Technicians checked to make sure the cage wiring was live and could be shut off easily from the outside where the connections and box had been fastened to a pole, and that a barrier was erected to keep people from electrocuting themselves.
It was a very elated—but carefully downcast—Terl who was then escorted under heavy guard and put in Jonnie’s and the girls’ old cage.
“Ah, the sky again!” said Terl. (He hated the blue sky of Earth like poison gas.) “But I must take no pleasure in it. It is only just that I will be confined here, exposed to public view and ridicule”—he had looked up some new words—“and mocked. It serves me right!”
And so Terl went about his duty very honestly. The crowds came and he looked ferocious and leaped about, glaring at them through his breathe-mask glass and making little children scream and flinch outside the barricade. He had heard of gorillas—beasts over in Africa—beating their chests, so he beat his chest.
He was a real hit. The crowds came, they saw an actual Psychlo, they even threw things at him.
They had heard that he put Jonnie in a collar, and young Lars visited him one day and told him, through the bars, that the crowd wanted to know where his collar was.
Terl thought that a great idea. A couple of days later, five guards came in and put a heavy iron collar and chain on Terl and fastened him to the old stake.
The compound commander was quite happy about it. But he told the guards that if Terl showed any sign at all of trying to escape, they were to riddle him.
Terl’s mouthbones wore a private smile as he capered and postured. He rumbled and roared.
His plans were working out perfectly.
2
Jonnie threw the book from him and pushed away his lunch untouched.
The guard at the door looked in through the glass, abruptly alert. Colonel Ivan whirled in an automatic response, combat ready: it had sounded like the thud of a grenade for a moment.
“It makes no sense,” said Jonnie to himself. “It just makes no sense!”
The others, seeing it was no emergency, relaxed. The sentry returned to his usual position and the colonel went on wiping down the white tile.
But Chrissie remained alarmed. It was almost unheard of for Jonnie to be irritable, and for days and days now, ever since he had started to do nothing but study books—Psychlo books they seemed to be, though she could not read—he had been getting worse and worse.
The untouched lunch worried her. It was venison stew with wild herbs cooked especially for him by Aunt Ellen. Weeks ago she had rushed to the old base to give him a glad and relieved greeting and to tell him that though her fears for him had almost come true, here he was alive! She had stood around suffused with delight until she suddenly saw what they were feeding him. The old village was only a few miles away down the pass, and either personally or through a small boy mounted on one of the horses Jonnie had left, Aunt Ellen routinely sent him his favorite dishes to be warmed up and served from the hospital galley. The boy or Aunt Ellen usually waited to take back the utensils, and when Aunt Ellen saw the food had not been touched she would be upset. Chrissie vowed to get the sentry to eat some and maybe gobble a few bites herself. It wouldn’t be polite to send back an untouched venison stew.
Had he been able to walk easily, Jonnie would have gone over and kicked the book. Normally he had vast respect for books, but not this one! It and several similar texts were all on the subject of the “mathematics of teleportation.” They seemed incomprehensible. Psychlo arithmetic was bad enough. Jonnie supposed that because Psychlos had six talons on their right paws and five on their left, they had to go and choose eleven as their base. All their mathematics was structured around the number eleven. Jonnie had been told that human mathematics employed a “decimal system” involving ten as the radix. He wouldn’t know. He only knew Psychlo mathematics. But these mathematics of teleportation soared above normal Psychlo arithmetic. The book he had just thrown down had begun to give him a headache, and these days his headaches had almost vanished. The book was called Elementary Principles of Integral Teleportation Equations. And if that was elementary, give him something complicated! Nothing added up in it at all!
He pushed back from the metal dolly table and rose shakily, supporting himself with his left hand on the bed.
“I,” he said in a determined voice, “am going to get out of here! There is no sense just waiting around for the sky to fall in on us! Where is my shirt?”
This was something new. The colonel went over to help Jonnie stand and Jonnie brushed him away. He could stand by himself.
Chrissie turned around in a flurry and opened three or four wrong bureau drawers. The colonel picked up a handful of assorted canes and sticks that stood in the corner and knocked half of them down. The sentry, ordered to report any unusual happenings to Robert the Fox, got on the radiophone right away.
Jonnie chose a “knobkerrie.” MacKendrick had had him practicing with a lot of different canes. It was difficult because both his right arm and right leg were seemingly useless, and carrying a stick in the left hand and hopping on the left leg didn’t work very well. The knobkerrie had been brought in as a gift from a chief in Africa who didn’t know Jonnie was crippled. The black wooden stick was beautifully carved; they used them as throwing weapons as well as canes. They must be big men down there because it was the right length. It also had a comfortable palm grip.
Jonnie hobbled over to the bureau and half-sat on it and got rid of the military hospital robe. Chrissie had found three buckskin shirts and some perverseness made him select the oldest and greasiest one. He got it over his head and let her lace the thongs across the front of it. He got into some buckskin pants and Chrissie helped him with a pair of moccasins.
He struggled with a drawer and got it open. One of the shoemakers had made him a left-handed holster and had more properly fitted the old gold belt buckle to a wide belt. He put them on over the shirt.
The holster had a .457 magnum Smith and Wesson on it with radiation slugs, and he lifted it out and laid it back in the drawer and got out a small blast gun, made sure it was charged, and dropped it in the holster. At the colonel’s odd look, Jonnie said, “I’m not going to kill any Psychlos today.”
He was engaged in stuffing his right hand into the belt to get it out of the way—that arm tended to dangle—when an uproar broke out in the passageway.
Jonnie was intent on leaving so he gave it little heed. It would be just Robert the Fox or the parson rushing over to fuss at him about council business.
But it wasn’t. The door burst open and the base officer of the day, a big middle-aged Scot in kilts and claymore, a man named Captain MacDuff, rushed in.
“Jonnie sir!” said MacDuff.
Jonnie had the definite impression they were objecting to his leaving, and he was about to be impolite when the captain sputtered the rest of the message: “Jonnie sir, did you send for a Psychlo?”
Jonnie was looking for a fur cap to wear. They had shaved his hair off for those operations and he felt like a singed puma bareheaded. Then the import of the question hit him. He got the knobkerrie and unsteadily hitched forward and peered out the door.
There stood Ker!
And in the glaring mine lamps out there he was a very bedraggled creature. Ker’s fur was matted with the filth clinging to it; his fangs seen through the faceplate were yellow and stained; his tunic was all ripped down one side and he had on only one boot, no cap. Even his earbones looked messed up.
They had put four chains on him with a soldier at the far end of each one. It looked so overdone on the midget Psychlo.
“Poor Ker,” said Jonnie.
“Did you send for him, Jonnie sir?” demanded Captain MacDuff.
“Bring him in here,” said Jonnie, leaning back against the bureau. He felt amusement mingling with pity.
“Do you think that’s wise?” said MacDuff. But he waved them forward.
Jonnie told the soldiers to drop the ends of the chains and leave. Four more soldiers he hadn’t noticed backed up, assault rifles trained on Ker. He told them all to leave. The colonel was flabbergasted.
Chrissie wrinkled her nose. What a stink! She’d have to clean and air the whole place!
No one wanted to go. Jonnie saw the pleading look through Ker’s breathe-mask. He waved them all out, and it was with enormous reluctance that they closed the door.
“I had to tell the lie,” said Ker. “I just had to see you, Jonnie.”
“You sure haven’t put a comb to yourself lately,” said Jonnie.
“It’s a devil’s cauldron they’ve got me in,” said Ker. “I’m half-crazy these days. I dropped from ‘His Planetship’ down to gooey dirt, Jonnie. I got only one shaftmate and that’s you, Jonnie.”
“I don’t know how or why you got yourself here, but—”
“It’s this!” Ker dove a dirty paw inside his torn shirt, oblivious of the fact that a more nervous Jonnie might have shot him. Jonnie could draw, if a trifle slowly, with his left hand. But Jonnie knew Ker.
Held before Jonnie’s eyes was a bank note.
He took it with some curiosity. He had only seen these at a distance in the hands of Psychlos paying off wagers and he had never held one before. He knew they were a basic symbol of exchange and greatly valued.
It was about six inches wide and a foot long. The paper felt a bit rough but it seemed to glow. One side of it was printed in blue and the other side in orange. It had a nebula pattern and bright starburst on it. But the remarkable thing was that it was worded in what must be thirty languages: thirty numeral systems, thirty different types of lettering—ah, one of them was Psychlo. Jonnie could read that.
He read: “The Galactic Bank” and “One Hundred Galactic Credits” and “Guaranteed Legal Tender for All Transactions” and “Counterfeiters Will Be Vaporized” and “Certified Exchangeable at the Galactic Bank on Presentation.”
It had a picture of somebody or something on the blue side. It looked like a humanoid, or maybe a Tolnep somebody had mistaken Dunneldeen for, or maybe . . . who knew? The face was very dignified, the very portrait of integrity. On the reverse it had a similar-sized picture of an imposing building with innumerable arches.
All very interesting, but Jonnie had determined to do other things today. He gave it back to Ker and started to fish out his own cap again. He felt sort of embarrassed with such a shaved head.
Ker looked a bit let down. “That’s a hundred credits!” said Ker. “It isn’t a Psychlo bank. The Psychlos and everybody else use those. It’s not counterfeit. I can tell. See how it glows? And these little fine lines here around the signature—”
“You trying to bribe me or something?” said Jonnie, discarding the cap he’d found and looking for a colored bandana instead.
“Why no!” said Ker. “Look, this money is no good to me now, Jonnie. Look!”
Jonnie propped himself more comfortably on the bureau edge and obediently looked.
Ker, with a glance at the door to make sure he had his back to it and that only Jonnie could see, dramatically threw aside his lapels and pulled the tattered tunic apart.
There was a brand on his chest.
“The three bars of denial,” said Ker. “The criminal scorch. I don’t think it’s any news to you I was a criminal. That’s one of the holds Terl had on me. That’s why he felt he could trust me to run around and teach you. If I was returned to Psychlo, having been found to hold false papers and employment, I’d be vaporized. If Psychlo recaptured this place they’d be sure those of us alive were renegades, and they’d examine us and find this. My papers are false. I won’t burden you with my real name: not knowing it you can’t be hit as an accessory. Got it?”
Jonnie didn’t have it at all, especially since the Psychlos would kill him on sight and not be troubled at all about “accessory.” He nodded. All this wasn’t getting anywhere. Where had Chrissie put the bandanas they’d found?
“And if in addition they found two billion Galactic credits on me, they’d do a slow vaporization!” said Ker.
“Two billion?”
Yes, well it seemed old Numph had been screwing the company for the whole thirty years of his duty tour here. Things not even Terl had dug up; things like commissions from the female administrators who charged; things like double prices on kerbango; maybe even selling ore to aliens who picked it up in space shifts . . . who knew? But Numph slept on four mattresses, and Ker thought it was funny they crinkled like that and he liked only one mattress, so he’d ripped open an end and there it was!
“Where?” said Jonnie.
“Out in the hall,” said Ker.
The midget Psychlo closed his coat and Jonnie beckoned at the guard in the small door window. Ker darted out through the door, loose chains dragging, alarming everyone out there, and came back lugging a big box which he dumped. Then he rushed out and got another box. Although a midget, only a bit taller than Jonnie, Ker was very strong. Before anybody stopped him and despite the flapping chains, Ker shortly had the room bulging with old kerbango boxes, and every one of them was overflowing with Galactic credits!
“There’s more in his numbered accounts on Psychlo,” said Ker, “but we can’t get that.” He stood there panting a big smile, very proud of himself. “Now you can pay the renegades like the Chamcos in cash!”
Captain MacDuff had been trying to tell Jonnie they’d checked the boxes while making sure there were no explosives and still ask what was this stuff? all the while wanting to know how Jonnie had sent a message to the compound without it being known to the sentries, and was it all right that they had let Ker bring it? He was flustered. He had a Pyschlo running around flapping chains and Jonnie was laughing.
“And you want—?” said Jonnie to Ker.
“I want out of that prison!” wailed Ker. “They hate me because I was over them. They hated me anyway, Jonnie. I know machines. Didn’t I teach you to run every machine there is? I heard they have a machine school over at what you call the Academy. They don’t know anything about those machines. Not like you and me do! Let me go help teach them like I did you!”
He stood there so pathetically, so pleadingly, he was so convinced he had done the right thing, that Jonnie laughed and laughed and shortly Ker’s mouthbones started to grin.
“I think it’s a great idea, Ker,” said Jonnie. At that moment he looked up and saw a frosty Robert the Fox in the door. Jonnie shifted to English. “Sir Robert, I think we have a new instructor for the schoolmaster. It’s true he’s a great machine operator and he knows them all.” He smiled at Ker and said in Psychlo, “Terms of employment, a quart of kerbango a day, full pay and bonuses, standard company contract omitting only burial on Psychlo. Right?” He knew very well Ker probably had buried a few hundred thousand credits on his own.
Ker started bobbing his head emphatically. He had held a few hundred thousand against a rainy day. He held out a paw to bash paws with Jonnie. That done, he was about to leave when he turned and came very close to Jonnie, speaking with the Psychlo equivalent of whispering.
“I got one more thing for you, Jonnie. They put Terl in a cage. You watch Terl, Jonnie. He’s up to something!”
When the midget Psychlo had left, Robert the Fox looked at these bales and bales of money.
“Job bribery,” said Jonnie, “comes high these days! Turn it over to the council.” He was laughing.
“This is Galactic money, isn’t it?” said Robert the Fox. “I’m going to contact a Scot named MacAdam at the university in the Highlands. He knows about money.”
But he was wondering at seeing Jonnie dressed. He was more than glad Jonnie had cheered up even though he thought the lad foolhardy for letting a Psychlo so close to him: one rake of a set of claws could cost one half his face. Then he realized Jonnie was hobbling forward, going out. He looked his question.
“I may not be able to hold the sky up,” said Jonnie, “but I don’t have to wait forever for it to fall either. I’m headed for the compound.”
He had to talk to the Chamco brothers. He had heard they were making absolutely no progress on repairing the transshipment stage and without that they never would find out about Psychlo.
3
It was a long way to the heliport, and especially long when you had only one working leg and a cane on the wrong side. The elevators weren’t working and probably never would again. Hobbling along, Jonnie had just begun to appreciate what a great job had been done cleaning up this place when he heard running feet behind him and a sharply barked order in Russian. Two men appeared, one on either side of him, who gripped each others’ arms in a chair lift, boosted him into it, and were running with him down the stairs to the heliport.
Somebody must have alerted the standby pilot there, for he was standing beside a mine passenger plane with the passenger door open.
“No!” yelled Jonnie and pointed with his good arm at the pilot side. What did they think he was, a busted-up invalid?
Of course, he was just that. But Colonel Ivan popped up at the pilot door and opened it. The two Russians literally threw Jonnie into the pilot’s seat.
A little confused, the standby pilot started to close the passenger door but was brushed aside by three Russians who, out of breath, had come tearing down the stairs. They leaped into the plane with a clatter of assault rifles.
Colonel Ivan was magically on the other side of the plane helping Robert the Fox and two kilted Scots into the ship and then got in himself.
The pilot was a Swede. He was getting into the copilot seat and saying something in a language Jonnie could not understand. Maybe a South African from the Mountains of the Moon? No, the pocket of whites there among the Bantu had been contacted too late for anyone to be fully trained yet. Then he realized the pilot was only there for local runs, really a cadet.
Jonnie wrapped himself up in the seat belt, pinning down his relatively useless right arm, and looked around at his passengers. The Russians were in baggy red pants and gray tunics and were finishing getting into their gear. As he turned, Colonel Ivan ripped the bandana off his head and clapped a round, flat fur cap on him. Jonnie took it off to get it on straight and saw it had a red star set in a gold disk on the front of it.
“We charge!” said Colonel Ivan. Evidently he had worked very hard at his English.
Jonnie grinned. They sure were an international contingent!
The wide doors had been left open and sunlight streamed in. He sailed the plane out into a beautiful summer day.
Ah, the mountains, the white mountains, majestic and calm against the dark blue sky! The ravines with their black shadows, the trees with their soft, dark green. And there was a bear. Cantering along a slope, bound on some important errand no doubt. And a whole herd of bighorn sheep, looking up at what must now be the ordinary sight of a plane on this route.
With his left hand romping on the console Jonnie dropped the ship over the last hills of the eastern slope and down toward the plains. Summer. And evidence of a recent rain, for there were flowers. Stretching out to an endless horizon in the east, an undulating landscape spotted with browsing herds, seemingly inexhaustible space in which men could live.
What a beautiful planet! What a lovely planet! Well worth saving.
The standby pilot was watching Jonnie in awe. He was flying with his left hand and left foot only, better than he himself had ever hoped to fly with five hands.
A rider? Jonnie darted down in a swoop to see who or what. Baggy pants? A flat, black-leather hat? A coiled rope in his hands? Gathering up a small herd.
“A llanero,” said Robert the Fox. “South America. They tend the herds now.”
Jonnie flipped his window down and waved and the llanero waved back.
What a beautiful day to be his first day out.
And there was the compound. What an awful lot of people! Must be thirty or forty of them looking toward the ship.
Jonnie set it down with a lightness that wouldn’t have cracked an eggshell. Thank heavens none of that huge mob of people had gotten onto the alert strip before he did, for now they were flooding over toward them, brown skins, black skins, silk jackets, ragged homespun, women, men . . . what an awful lot of people!
He opened the plane door and put the first and fourth fingers of his left hand in his mouth and blew a piercing whistle. Above the babble his trained ear heard what it wanted to hear: hoofs! And there came Windsplitter.
Jonnie got out of the security belts and before anyone could interfere slid to the ground—a trick seeing as these Psychlo planes had high cockpits. His right arm got in the way and he shoved the hand in his belt.
Windsplitter was nickering and bouncing about, glad to see him, and almost knocked him down with a tossing nose.
“Let’s see the leg,” said Jonnie, kneeling and trying to get hold of the left front hock that had seemed injured in the run down the cliff. But Windsplitter thought he was trying to do a trick Jonnie had taught him—to shake hands—and almost reprovingly he hefted his right hoof and offered it, succeeding only in practically knocking Jonnie flat. Jonnie laughed. “You’re all right,” and shook the offered hoof.
Jonnie had worked out how he could mount. If he sprang up belly down and threw his left leg over fast he would make it. He did. Success! He didn’t need all this help.
Now to ride around and find the confounded Chamcos. And find out about the delay in this transshipment rig.
But people were pressing around his horse. Black faces, brown faces, tan faces, white faces. Hands touching his moccasins, hands trying to give him things. And all talking at once.
He felt a twinge of guilt. Smiling faces, welcoming faces. It put a trifle of a blot on his day. If these people only realized it, he might very well be a total failure. And those lovely skies up there might soon go gray with death.
His lips tightened. He had better get about his business. Adulation was, if anything, a little embarrassing, particularly as he strongly felt he might not have earned it.
More hoofs. The voice of Colonel Ivan barking Russian at somebody. Leading six horses at a dead run, another Russian sprinted up. A barked command and Colonel Ivan and four Russians mounted up and Robert the Fox was mounting. There must have been a Russian and horses waiting at the compound.
The two kilted Scots pushed their way through the crowd to either side of Windsplitter’s head and began to gently part the throng so Jonnie could get going. There must be fifty people there now!
Just as he thought he was going to get moving, a small boy in a kilt elbowed his barefoot way to Windsplitter’s head and dropped a lead rope on it. His piping voice came out of the hubbub: “I am Bittie MacLeod. Dunneldeen said I could come and be your page and I am here, Sir Jonnie!” The accent was thick but the determination and confidence brooked no rebuke. The small boy started leading Windsplitter toward the compound.
Even though Windsplitter guided only with a heel and other signals, Jonnie didn’t have the heart to say no.
Behind him came five Russians with long poles—lances?—in their stirrups, pennons on the poles, assault rifles across their backs. A llanero dashed up on a horse and took position with them. A squad of Swedish soldiers rushed into view from the compound and presented arms. Workers were coming out of the compound. A big passenger plane came into the landing area and thirty Tibetans on a pilgrimage to the compound spilled out and joined the mob. Two flatbeds roared up to the fringes and about forty people from the city just to the north tumbled off. Another flatbed tore up from the Academy.
Jonnie, his horse walking dead slow behind Bittie MacLeod, looked over this joyous mob. They were shouting and waving at him and cheering. He had never seen so many people since the gathering of Scotland. There must be three hundred here!
White hands, black hands with pink palms, yellow hands; blue jackets, orange dresses, gray coats; straight blonde hair, brown hair, fuzzy black hair; languages, languages, languages: all saying, “Hello, Jonnie!”
He looked up apprehensively at the bright blue sky. For an instant he was startled by a drone . . . no, it was a recon drone; they had a lot of them constantly patrolling, watchful for any invader.
The voices were a continuous roar. A woman was pushing something into his hand—a bouquet of wildflowers—and she was shouting, “For Chrissie!” He nodded to thank her and didn’t know what to do with them, so he put them in his belt.
The people of Earth, their hopes kindled, could rise and be alive again.
He felt more guilty than ever. They didn’t know he might have failed. Aside from not enjoying adulation, he also felt he certainly didn’t deserve it, not all this.
Robert the Fox had worked his horse up beside him. He saw that Jonnie was troubled. Robert didn’t want the first day out spoiled. “Wave to them a bit, laddie. Just raise your left hand and nod.”
Jonnie did and the crowd went wild.
They had been working their way up the hill toward the old Chinko quarters. There was the morgue over there. There was the dome behind which Terl used to have his quarters and where so often he had stood out the night. . . .
Jonnie stared. There was Terl in a cage with a collar on. Terl was capering and leaping about. A vague unease took Jonnie and he persuaded the Scot boy to lead him over toward it.
4
There was plenty of time. His business with the Chamco brothers was important but a few minutes would make no difference. He had certainly better see whether he could find out what Terl was up to.
The size of the throng was growing. The bulk of the trainees at the Academy, when they heard Jonnie had appeared at the compound, demanded a few hours off instantly; and the schoolmaster, understanding but unable to do anything about it anyway, had let them off, and here they were in a swarm. More people were in from New Denver. All work had stopped and machines were now deserted in the underground shops at the compound. Several council members appeared on the outskirts of the crowd. They included Brown Limper Staffor, chief of this continent. More than six hundred people were now there. The din was nearly deafening.
Terl saw the animal coming toward the cage and capered more violently.
Jonnie saw the area was not much changed or damaged by the battle. The geysering water had cut a few furrows on the plateau in its runoff; a bar or two of the cage was nicked by bullets; water had tended to wash the cage clean rather than damage it. He looked up to the connector box on the pole and saw it had not been changed: the bars were electrically charged in the same way, by the same cables. Someone had put a barrier of mine fencing so people could not reach the bars. Yes, it was much the same cage except that green grass grew in tufts around the perimeter.
His attention came away from the crowd. How many months had he been inside looking out, and how many nights had he stood outside looking in. A lot of nightmare was mixed up in that.
He wanted to question Terl. He flinched from talking through those bars again. A normal voice volume could not reach anywhere in this hubbub and he was not about to sit here shouting. He caught the eye of a sentry and beckoned him over. But instead of the sentry coming, the compound commander pushed through to him.
Jonnie saw that the man was an Argyll by his kilt. He leaned over to him to be heard: “Would you please turn off the electricity up there and have a guard open the door of the cage?”
“What?” exclaimed the compound commander in astonishment.
Jonnie thought he might not have heard and repeated his request. Then he saw the man was refusing. There was always a little friction between the Argylls and the Clanfearghus—indeed it had often erupted in clan warfare, and he recalled that only his visit to Scotland had interrupted the last war. Jonnie was not going to argue with the man. And he wasn’t going to yell at Terl through bars.
Robert the Fox looked at Terl, the cage, the Argyll, the crowd and the connector box on the pole. He reached out to check Jonnie. But Jonnie had already leaned forward and swung off his horse. Colonel Ivan breasted some people aside and thrust the knobkerrie into Jonnie’s hand.
Hobbling, Jonnie made his way to the exterior pole switch and pulled it open, having to balance against the pole to free his hand. It popped an electric spark as the bus bar opened. The crowd parted for him when they saw in which direction he was trying to walk. Suddenly they became very quiet, the silence starting from where Jonnie was and going out like a wave to the very outskirts.
The cage sentry had not left his post in all this hubbub. He carried the door keys in his belt. Jonnie pulled the keys out of the guard’s belt.
There was a ripple of excited questioning from people and then tense silence.
Terl took the opportunity to roar ferociously.
The compound commander started to rush forward but found himself halted by the huge hand of Colonel Ivan who had simply leaned down from his horse. The colonel wanted no extra bodies in a field of fire. The other Cossacks fanned out abruptly: there was the sharp clatter of assault rifle bolts being cocked, and four rifles were leveled at Terl in the cage. Some Scots sprinted to the roofs of the old Chinko quarters and the rush of running feet was replaced by the snicks of rifles being cocked and leveled on Terl.
The crowd surged back away from the barriers.
Jonnie heard the rifle bolts. He turned, speaking in a normal voice, for it was now quiet except for the roaring of Terl, “A bullet could ricochet off these bars and go into the crowd so please put your guns up.” He loosened the blast pistol in the holster and then as an afterthought checked to see that it was cocked and on “Stun” and “No Flame.” But he was convinced he was in no danger. Terl had a collar on and was chained, and while it wouldn’t be wise to get within physical reach of him, the only thing Terl would try would be some antic from the apparent mood he was in.
The door lock worked more easily than it used to. Someone must have oiled it. He opened it. There was an intake of breath from the crowd. Jonnie’s attention was not for the crowd.
Terl roared.
“Quit clowning, Terl,” said Jonnie.
Terl promptly did and hunkered down against the back wall, his amber eyes evilly amused. “Well, hello, animal.”
The parson’s voice rapped out from somewhere in the crowd: “He is not an animal!” Jonnie hadn’t realized the parson spoke Psychlo.
“I see,” said Terl to Jonnie, “that somebody clawed you up. Oh, well, it happens when one is stupid. How’d it happen, rat brain?”
“Be civil, Terl. What do you think you are doing in this cage?”
“Oh, that Chinko accent!” said Terl. “Try as I would, I could never make you into a polished, literate being. Very well, if it’s courtesy you want and as you speak Chinko, why, forgive this ignorant intrusion of speech into your lordly earbones—” He was going to go on with a string of the old Chinko abasements. Then he laughed viciously.
“Answer the questions, Terl.”
“Why, I’m ———,” and he said a Psychlo word Jonnie had never heard before.
Jonnie had had another purpose in coming in here. He wanted to see what Terl may have set up that somebody else had missed. He hobbled around the cage, staying wide of Terl and keeping part of an eye on him. He looked at the inside walls below the bars, looked into the pool. Terl had a small pile of things wrapped in a tarpaulin. Jonnie motioned with his left hand for Terl to back up and went over to the loose package. He knelt and flipped it open.
There was a garment in there, no more than a wraparound—Terl was wearing another one now and was otherwise naked. There was a bent kerbango saucepan with a hole in it and no kerbango. And a Psychlo dictionary! What on earth would the very educated Terl—in Psychlo at least—be doing with a Psychlo dictionary?
Jonnie backed up out of the reach of the chain. What was the word Terl had just used? Ah, there it was: “Repenting: the action of being sorrowful or self-reproachful for what one has done or failed to do; a word adopted from the Hockner language and said to be actually experienced by some alien races.”
“Repenting?” said Jonnie. “You?” It was his turn to laugh.
“Didn’t I put you in a cage? Don’t you realize that it could give one feelings of ——— ?”
Jonnie looked that word up: “Guilt: the painful feeling of self-reproach resulting from a conviction one had done something wrong or immoral; adopted from the Chinko language and useful to political officers in degrading individuals of subject races; said by Professor Halz to factually exist as an emotion in some aliens.” He popped the book shut.
“You must have some, too, animal. After all, I was like a father to you and you labored day and night to shatter my future. In fact, I clearly suspect that you just used me so you could betray me—”
“Like the exploding truck,” said Jonnie.
“What exploding truck?”
“The delivery flatbed,” said Jonnie patiently.
“Oh, I thought you meant that blade scraper you got yourself trapped in, the one that blew up out there on the plateau. You animals are always hard on machinery!” He sighed. “So here I am, the ——— subject of your revenge.”
Jonnie didn’t bother to look up the word. He knew it would be another one no Psychlo would ever use. “I didn’t order you in this cage or into that collar, you did. By rights I should ask them to put you back in the dormitory level. Capering around here, half-naked—”
“I don’t think you will,” said Terl evilly. “Why did you come down here today?”
It was better not to talk too much to Terl, but if he didn’t he couldn’t get him to leak data. “I came down to ask the Chamco brothers about the delay on the transshipment rig.”
“I rather thought you must have,” said Terl. He seemed indifferent. He heaved out a long sigh into his breathe-mask and stood up.
The crowd outside drew back with a frightened mutter. The monster was almost four feet taller than Jonnie. Claws, fangs visible through its mask . . .
“Animal,” said Terl, “in spite of past difference, I think I should tell you one thing. You will be coming to me for help soon. And as I am ——— and ———,” two more words Jonnie wouldn’t bother to look up, “I probably will be stupid enough to help you. So just remember, animal. When it gets too difficult, come to see Terl. After all, weren’t we always shaftmates?”
Jonnie let out a bark of laughter. This was simply too much! He threw the dictionary over on the tarpaulin, and leaning heavily on his knobkerrie, back to Terl, he walked out of the cage.
The moment he had closed and locked the door, Terl let out a dreadful roar and began prancing about beating his chest.
Jonnie threw the keys to the guard and went over and turned the electricity back on. He was still laughing to himself as he hobbled toward Windsplitter. The crowd was way back, making sounds of relief.
Not everyone was way back. Brown Limper Staffor was between Jonnie and the horse. Jonnie recognized him and was about to greet him. Then Jonnie stopped. He had never before seen such naked, malevolent hatred on anyone’s face.
“I see there are two cripples now!” said Brown Limper Staffor. He abruptly turned his back on Jonnie and limped off, his clubfoot dragging.
5
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. Its 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 disks 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:
Jonnie read it, shrugged, and tossed it in the wastebasket.