Keeping low, taking advantage of every bit of cover so as to remain hidden from the compound, he nevertheless went fast.
He had to find water. His tongue was swollen, his lips cracked.
He had to find food. He felt the lightheaded unreality that came with the beginnings of starvation.
Then he had to get back to the mountains. He had to stop Chrissie.
Jonnie went a mile. He examined his backtrail. Nothing. He listened. No sound of the insect, no feel of monster feet shaking the earth.
He ran two miles. He stopped and listened again. Still nothing. Hope flared within him.
Ahead he could see greenery, a patch jutting out of a gully, a sign of water.
His breath hoarse and rattling in his chest, he made the edge of the gully.
No scene could be more heartwarming. A speck of blue and white. The cheerful burble of a small brook running through the trees.
Jonnie lunged forward and a moment later plunged his head into the incalculably precious water.
He knew better than to drink too much. He just kept rinsing his mouth. For minutes he plunged his head and chest in and out of the stream, letting the water soak in.
Gone was the taste of that terrible gooey stick. The freshness and cleanness of the brook were almost as joyful as its wetness.
He drank a few cautious swallows and then sank back, catching his breath. The day looked brighter.
The backtrail was still quiet. The monster might not discover he was gone for hours. Hope surged again.
Far off to the northwest, just a little bit above the curve of the plain, were the mountains. Home.
Jonnie looked around him. There was an old rickety shack on the other side of the stream bed, the roof sunk down to its foundation.
Food was his concern now.
He took more swallows of water and stood up. He hefted his kill-club and walked through the stream toward the ancient shack.
While running, he had seen no game. Perhaps it was cleared out in the vicinity of the compound. But he didn’t need big game. A rabbit would do. He had better take care of this fast and keep going.
Something moved in the shack. He crept forward, silent.
In a scurry several big rats raced out of the shack. Jonnie had started his throw and then stopped. Only in the dreariest of a starving winter would one eat rats.
But he had no time and he saw no rabbits.
He picked up a rock and threw it against the shack. Two more rats streamed out and he threw his kill-club straight and true.
A moment later he was holding a dead rat in his hand, a big one.
Did he dare light a fire? No, no time for that. Raw rat? Ugh.
He took a piece of the sharp, clear stuff from his pouch and stepped back to the stream. He cleaned and washed the rat.
Hunger or no hunger, it took some doing to bite into the raw rat meat. Almost gagging, he chewed and swallowed. Well, it was food.
He ate very slowly so that he wouldn’t get any sicker than he felt at eating raw rat.
Then he drank some more water.
He wrapped a last piece of the rat in a scrap of hide and put it in his pouch. He kicked some sand over the debris he had left.
He stood up straight and looked at the distant mountains. He took a deep breath, bracing himself to start again on his run.
There was a low whistle in the air and something fell over him.
He rolled.
It was a net.
He couldn’t get free.
The more he tried to get out of it, the more tangled up he became. He stared wildly around.
Through an opening he saw the truth.
The monster, without haste, was moving forward out of the trees, taking in the slack of the rope to which the net was attached.
The thing exhibited no emotion. It moved as though it had all the time in the world.
It wrapped Jonnie up in the net and tucked the whole bundle under its arm and then began to rumble along back toward the compound.
5
Terl, fiddling with forms at his desk, felt very cheerful.
Things were working out fine, just fine. Security techniques were always best. Always. He now knew exactly what he had wanted to know: the thing drank water and drank it by plunging its head and shoulders into a stream or pond. And more importantly, it ate raw rat.
This made things very easy. If there was any animal available near the compound, it was rat.
He guessed he could teach the old Chinkos a thing or two. It was elementary to let the man-thing loose and elementary to keep him under surveillance with a flying scope. It was, of course, a little trying to be out in the open wearing a breathe-mask and yet make speed over the ground. That man-thing didn’t run very fast compared to a Psychlo, but it had been a bit of an exertion. It was hard to exert oneself while wearing a breathe-mask.
But he hadn’t lost his skill in casting nets, old-fashioned though it might be. He hadn’t wanted to use a stun gun again: the thing seemed frail and went into convulsions.
Well, he was learning.
He began to wonder how many raw rats a day the thing had to consume. But he could find that out easily.
He looked with boredom at the report before him. The lost tractor had been found along with its Psychlo driver at the bottom of a two-mile-deep mine shaft. They ate up a lot of personnel these days. There’d be a yowl from the main office about replacement costs. Then he cheered up. This fitted very well into his plans.
He checked around to make sure he had no more work to do and put his desk in order for the end of day.
Terl went over to a cabinet and took out the smallest blast gun he could find. He put a charge cartridge in it and set it to minimum power.
He took some rags and cleaned up his face mask and put a new cartridge in it.
Then he went outside.
Not a hundred yards north of the compound he saw his first rat. With the accuracy that had won him an honored place on his school shoot team, even though the thing was in streaking motion, he blew its head off.
Fifty feet farther, another rat leaped out of a culvert and he decapitated it in midair. He paced off the distance. Forty-two Psychlo paces. No, he hadn’t lost his touch. Silly things to be hunting, but it still took a master’s touch.
Two. That would be good enough to start with.
Terl looked around at the hateful day. Yellow, blue and green. Well, he’d get quit of this.
Feeling very cheerful, he rumbled up the hill to the old zoo.
His mouthbones stretched in a grin. There was the man-thing crouched down at the far side of the cage, glaring at him. Glaring at him? Yes, it was true. It was the first time Terl had noticed it had emotions.
And what else had it been doing?
It had gotten to the packs—he remembered the thing clutching at them when he had returned it to the cage yesterday—and it was now sitting on them. It had been doing something else. It had been looking down at a couple of books. Books? Now where the crap nebula had it gotten books? Didn’t seem possible it could have gotten into the old Chinko quarters. The collar, the rope were all secure. He’d investigate that in due course. The thing was still here, which was what was important.
Terl advanced, smiling behind his mask. He held up the two dead rats and then tossed them to the man-thing.
It didn’t jump hungrily at them. It seemed to withdraw. Well, gratitude wasn’t something you found in animals. No matter. Terl wasn’t after gratitude from this thing.
Terl went over to the old cement bear pool. It didn’t seem to be cracked. He traced the piping. The piping seemed to be all right.
He went outside the cage and fumbled around in the undergrowth, looking for the valves, and finally found one. He turned it. Hard to do with a valve that old. He was afraid his great strength would just twist the top off.
From the nearby garage he got some penetrating oil and went back and worked the valve over. Finally he got it open. Nothing happened.
Terl traced the old water system to a tank the Chinkos had built. He shook his head over the crudity of it. It had a pump but the charge cartridge was long expended. He freed up the pump and put a new cartridge in it. Intergalactic was never one for innovations, thank the stars. The cartridges the pump needed were the same ones still in use.
He got the pump whirring but no water came. Finally he found the pond. The old pipe was simply not in the water, so with one stamp of his boot, he put it back in.
Up at the tank the water began to run in. And down in the cage the pool began to fill swiftly. Terl grinned to himself. A mining man could always handle fluids. And here too he hadn’t lost his touch.
He went back into the cage. The big center pool was filling rapidly. It was muddy and swirling since it had been full of sand. But it was wet water!
The pool filled up to the top and slopped over, spilling across the floor of the cage.
The man-thing was hastily picking up its things and jamming them into the bars to escape the inundation.
Terl went back outside and shut off the valve. He let the tank on the hill fill and then shut that off.
The cage was practically awash. But the water was draining off through the bars. Good enough.
Terl slopped over to the man-thing. It was clinging to the bars to keep out of the water. It had the hides way up, jammed over the cross braces. To keep them dry?
It was holding on to the books with one hand.
Terl looked around. Everything was in order now. So he had better look into these books.
He started to take them out of its hand but it held on. With some impatience, Terl smashed at its wrist and caught the two books as they fell.
They were man-books.
Puzzled, Terl leafed through them. Now where could this thing have picked up man-books? He drew his eyebones together, thinking.
Ah, the Chinko guidebook! There had been a library in that town. Well, maybe this animal had lived in that town.
But books? This was better and better. Maybe, like the Chinkos had said, these animals could grasp meaning. Terl could not read the man-characters but they obviously were readable.
This first one here must be a child’s primer. The other one was some kind of child’s story. Beginner books.
The animal was looking stoically away in another direction. It was useless, of course, to try to talk to it—
Terl halted his thought in mid-blink.
Better and better for his plans! It had been talking! He remembered now. What he had thought were growls and squawks like you get from any animal had been reminiscent of words!
And here were books!
He made the thing look at him by turning its head. Terl pointed to the book and then at the thing’s head.
It gave no sign of understanding.
Terl pushed the book up close to its face and pointed at its mouth. No sign of recognition occurred in the eyes.
It either wasn’t going to read or it couldn’t read.
He experimented some more. If these things could actually talk and read, then his plans were sure winners. He turned the pages in front of its face. No, no sign of recognition.
But it had books in its possession. It had books, but it couldn’t read. Maybe it had them for the pictures. Ah, success. Terl showed it a picture of a bee and there was a flicker of interest and recognition. He showed it the picture of the fox and again that flick of recognition. He took the other book with pages of solid print. No sign of recognition.
Got it. He put the small books in his breast pocket.
Terl knew what to do. He knew every piece of everything in the old Chinko quarters and that included man-language disks. They had never written up what man ate but they had gone to enormous trouble with man-language. Typically Chinko. Miss the essentials and soar off into the stratosphere.
He knew tomorrow’s program. Better and better.
Terl checked the collar, checked the rope, securely locked up the cage, and left.
6
It had been a damp, cold, thoroughly miserable night.
Jonnie had clung to the bars for hours, loath to sit down or even step down. Mud was everywhere. The gush of water had taken the sand and dirt in the pool and spread it all over the cage and the dirt of the floor had avidly soaked it up. The mud became ankle deep.
But at last, exhausted, he had given in and slept lying in the mud.
Midmorning sun was drying it somewhat. The two dead rats had floated away out of reach and Jonnie didn’t care.
Already dehydrated from his previous experience, he felt the hot sun increase his thirst. He looked at the muddy pool, contaminated with slime from the cage. He could not bring himself to drink it.
He was sitting miserably against the bars when the monster appeared.
It stopped outside the door and looked in. It was carrying some metallic object in its paws. It looked at the mud and for the moment Jonnie thought it might realize he couldn’t go on sitting and sleeping in the mud.
It went away.
Just as Jonnie believed it would not come back, it reappeared. This time it was still carrying the metal object, but it was also carrying a huge rickety table and an enormous chair.
The thing made tricky work getting through the door with all that load, a door too small for it in the first place. But it came on in and put the table down. Then it put the metal object on the table.
Jonnie had at first believed that the huge chair was for him. But he was quickly disabused. The monster put the chair down at the side of the table and sat down on it: the legs of it sunk perilously into the mud.
It indicated the mysterious object. Then it took the two books out of its pocket and threw them on the table. Jonnie reached for them. He had not thought he would ever see them again and he had begun to make out of them a kind of sense.
The monster cuffed his hand and pointed at the object. It waved a paw across the top of the books in a kind of negative motion and pointed again at the object.
There was a sack on the back of the object and it had disks in it about the diameter of two hands.
The monster took out one of the disks and looked at it. It had a hole in the middle with squiggles around it. The monster put the disk on top of the machine. There was a rod there that fitted into the middle of the disk.
Jonnie was extremely suspicious, his hand bruised from the cuff. Anything this monster was up to would be devious, treacherous and dangerous. That had been adequately proved. The game was to bide one’s time, watch and learn—and out of that possibly wrest freedom.
The monster now pointed to two windows on the front of the object. Then it pointed to a single lever that stuck out from the front of it.
The monster pushed the lever down.
Jonnie’s eyes went round. He backed up.
The object talked!
Clear as a bell, it had said, “Excuse me . . . ”
The monster pulled the lever up and it stopped talking.
Jonnie drew back further. The monster clouted him between the shoulder blades and drove him up to the table so hard the edge hit his throat. The monster raised a cautionary finger at him.
It shoved the lever up, and by standing on tiptoe, Jonnie could see that the disk went backward from the way it had gone.
The monster pulled the lever down again. The object said, “Excuse me, but I am . . .” The monster centered the lever and the machine stopped. Then it pushed the lever up and the machine went backward again.
Jonnie tried to look under the machine and back of it. The thing wasn’t alive, surely. It didn’t have ears or a nose or a mouth. Yes, it did have a mouth. A circle low down in front of it. But the mouth didn’t move. Sound just came out of it. And it was talking Jonnie’s language!
The monster pushed the lever down again and the object said, “Excuse me, but I am your . . .” This time Jonnie saw that some odd squiggles had been showing up in the top window and a strange face in the lower window.
Once more the monster pushed the lever up and the disk on top went backward. Then the monster centered the lever. It pointed a talon at Jonnie’s head and then at the object.
Jonnie noticed then that the monster had been moving the lever off center, all positions to the left. The monster now moved the lever all the way over to the right and down, and different squiggles appeared but the same picture showed, and the machine said something in some strange tongue.
The monster backed it up and put the lever in the left-right center and down. Different squiggles, same lower picture, but an entirely different set of sounds.
Behind the face mask the monster seemed to smile. It repeated the last maneuver again and pointed to itself. Jonnie suddenly understood that that was the monster’s language.
Jonnie’s interest was immediate, intense and flaming.
He reached up and pushed the monster’s paw away. It was hard to reach because the table was so high and big, but Jonnie made nothing of that.
He moved the lever up and to the left. Then he moved it down. The machine said, “Excuse me, but I am your instructor. . . .” Then Jonnie did the same operation in the right-hand position and it said something that was language but strange. Then he did it in the center position and it spoke again in the language of the Psychlos.
The monster was looking at him closely, even suspiciously. It bent way over and peered back into Jonnie’s face. The flickering, amber eyes slitted. Then it made a doubtful motion toward the machine as though it would pick it up and carry it off.
Jonnie slapped the huge hands away and fastened again on the lever. He put it in the left track and let it roll.
“Excuse me,” the machine said, “but I am your instructor if you will forgive such arrogance. I do not have the honor to be a Psychlo. I am but a lowly Chinko.” The face in the bottom window bowed twice and put a hand over its eyes.
“I am Joga Stenko, Junior Assistant Language Slave in the Language Division of the Department of Culture and Ethnology, Planet Earth.” Squiggles were running rapidly in the upper window.
“Forgive my presumption, but this is a course of study in reading and speaking the man-languages of English and Swedish.
“On the left-hand track of the record, I hope you will have no trouble in finding English. On the right-hand track you will find the same text in Swedish. On the center track the same text is in Psychlo, the Noble Language of Conquerors.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 Page 9
