He took five hundred credits in bills from his own wallet. The top one he marked: “Good luck!” very plainly. He scribbled several different names on it with different pens.
He connected a remote control to a picto-recorder that was registering the Chamco room, checked everything, and checked the mirror too.
One more look at the live view of the garage. Yes, Zzt was back, puttering around with a big motor. That would keep him busy for a while.
Terl sped down the corridors of the berthing compound. He entered the smaller Chamco brother’s room with a passkey. He checked the drinking horn on the wall. Yes, it had money in it. He put in the five hundred credits. He went back to the door. Ready!
He touched the remote control in his pocket.
Imitating the rolling walk of Zzt, he went over to the drinking horn and with stealthy movements took out the five hundred credits, looked around as though fearful of being observed, counted the money—the marked bill plainly in view—and then crept out of the room, closing and locking the door.
A berthing attendant saw him from a distance and he ducked.
He got back to his room and swiftly removed the makeup. He put the five hundred credits back in his wallet.
When the screen showed him Zzt had gone for dinner, he returned the cap and workcoat to the washroom.
Back in his own quarters, Terl rubbed his paws.
Leverage. Leverage. Stage one of this lever was done, and he was going to pull it and good.
3
It was a night that was long remembered by the employees in the recreation area of the minesite.
They were not unused to seeing Terl drunk, but tonight—well! The attendant shoveled panful after panful of kerbango at him and he took them all.
Terl had begun the evening looking depressed, and that was understandable since he wasn’t very popular lately—if he ever had been. Char had watched him slit-eyed for a while, but Terl was obviously just bent on getting drunk. Finally Terl seemed to rouse himself and did a bit of paw-gripping—a game whose object was to see which player couldn’t stand it anymore and let go—with some of the mine managers. Terl had lost in every case; he was getting drunker and drunker.
And now Terl was heckling the smaller Chamco brother into a game of rings. It was a gambling game. A player took a ring and put it on the back of the paw and then with the other paw snapped it off and sailed it at a board. The board had pegs with numbers, the bigger numbers all around the edges. The one that got the biggest number won. Then stakes were put up again and another round occurred.
The smaller Chamco brother hadn’t wanted to take him on. Terl was usually very good at rings. Then his drunken condition became too alluring and the Chamco let himself be persuaded.
They started by putting up ten-credit bets—steep enough for the recreation area. Chamco got a ninety and Terl a sixteen.
Terl insisted upon raising the bets and the Chamco couldn’t refuse, of course.
The ring shot by the smaller Chamco brother sizzled through the atmosphere and clanged over a four peg. The Chamco groaned. Anything could beat that. And lately he had been saving his money. When he got home—in just a few months now—he was going to buy a wife. And this bet had been thirty credits!
Terl went through contortions of motions, put the ring on the back of his paw, sighted across it, and then with the other paw sent it like a ray blast at the board. A three! Terl lost.
As the winner, the smaller Chamco brother couldn’t quit. And Terl had taken another pan of kerbango, leering around at the interested gallery, and upped the bets.
The onlookers placed some side bets of their own. Terl was reeling drunk. He did have a reputation with this game, which made the odds lower, but he was so obviously drunk that he even faced the wrong direction and had to be turned in the right one.
The smaller Chamco brother got fifty. Terl got two. “Ah, no, you don’t quit now,” Terl said. “The winner can’t quit.” His words were slurred. “I bet . . . I bet one hun—— . . . hundred credits.”
Well, with pay halved and bonuses gone, nobody was going to object to winning easy money, and the smaller Chamco went along.
The audience roared at Terl’s bungling as loss after loss occurred. And the smaller Chamco brother found himself standing there with four hundred fifty credits.
Terl reeled over to the attendant and got another saucepan of kerbango. As he drank it he went through his pockets, turning them out one by one. Finally he came up with a single bill, a bit crumpled and marked all over.
“My good-luck money,” sobbed Terl.
He lurched over to the firing position in front of the board. “Chamco Two, just one more crap-little bet. You see this bill?”
The smaller Chamco brother looked the bill over. It was a good-luck bill. Mine employees taking off for far places after a final party sometimes exchanged good-luck bills. Everybody signed everybody else’s bill. And this had a dozen signatures on it.
“I’m betting my good-luck bill,” said Terl. “But you got to promise you won’t spend it and that you’ll trade it back to me on payday if I . . . I lose it?”
The smaller Chamco brother had gotten money-hungry by now. He was picking up nearly two weeks’ pay, and the wage cuts had hurt. Yes, he’d promise to do that.
As winner, the smaller Chamco brother went first. He had never been very good at rings. He fired and ouch! It was a one. Anything, but anything, would beat it.
Terl stared at it. He went drunkenly forward and looked at it closely. He reeled back to the firing line, faced the wrong way, had to be turned, and then zip! He got off a sizzler.
It hit the blank wall.
With that, Terl passed out. The attendant, helped by the Chamcos and Char and couple of others, got Terl on a banquet serving trolley that groaned and bent. They wheeled him in a triumphal parade to his quarters, got the key out of his pocket, brought him in, and dumped him on the floor. They were pretty drunk, too, and they went away chanting the funeral dirge of the Psychlos in a most feeling way.
When they were gone, Terl crawled to the door and closed and locked it.
He had taken counter-kerbango pills after dinner, and all he had to do now was get rid of the excess, which he did, tickling his throat with a talon over the wash basin.
Quietly then, with great satisfaction, he undressed and got into bed and had a beautiful sleep full of beautiful dreams concerning the beautiful future of Terl.
4
Jonnie heard the monster enter the cage and close the door.
In the past few weeks, Jonnie’s hands and face had healed and his hair, eyebrows and beard had grown out. His reflection in the water from the snow he had melted in a pan told him that. He couldn’t see any scars on his hands, but they still looked red where they had been burned.
He was wrapped in a robe, facing away from the door and he didn’t look around. He had worked late with the instruction machine.
“Look over here, animal,” said Terl. “See what I brought you.”
There was something different in the monster’s voice. It seemed jovial, if that were possible. Jonnie sat up and looked.
Terl was holding up four rats by their tails. Lately the nearby rat population had been cut down and Terl had been shooting rabbits and bringing them in, a very welcome change indeed. Yet here were more rats and the monster thought it was a favor.
Jonnie lay down again. Terl threw the rats over by the fire. One wasn’t quite dead and started to crawl away. Terl flashed his handgun from its holster and blew its head off.
Jonnie sat up. Terl was putting the gun away.
“Trouble with you, animal,” said Terl, “you have no sense of appreciation. Have you finished the disks on basic electronics?”
Actually, Jonnie had. Terl had brought the disks weeks ago, along with some disks on higher mathematics. He didn’t bother to answer.
“Anybody that could be fooled by remote controls couldn’t ever really operate machines,” said
Terl. He had harped on this before, omitting the truth that it was he who had been fooled.
“Well, here are some other texts. And you better wrap your rat brain around them if you ever expect to handle machines—mining machines.”
Terl threw three books at him. They looked huge but they were featherweight. One hit Jonnie but he caught the other two. He looked at them. They were Psychlo texts, not Chinko translations. One was Control Systems for Beginning Engineers. Another was Electronic Chemistry. The third was Power and its Transmission. Jonnie wanted the books. Knowledge was the key out of captivity. But he put the books down and looked at Terl.
“Get those into your rat brain and you won’t be sending machines over cliffs,” said Terl. Then he came nearer and sat down in the chair. He looked closely at Jonnie. “When are you really going to start cooperating?”
Jonnie knew this was a very dangerous monster, a monster that wanted something that hadn’t been named.
“Maybe never,” said Jonnie.
Terl sat back, watching Jonnie closely. “Well, never mind, animal. I see you pretty well recovered from your burns. Your fur is growing back.” Jonnie knew Terl had no interest in that and wondered what was coming next.
“You know, animal,” said Terl, “you sure had me fooled that first day.” Terl’s eyes were watchful but he seemed to be just rambling along. “I thought you were four-legged!” He laughed very falsely. “It sure was a surprise when you fell apart into two animals.” He laughed again, amber eyes very cunning. “Wonder what happened to that horse.”
Before he could stop himself, Jonnie experienced a wave of sorrow over Windsplitter. He choked it off instantly.
Terl looked at him. Then he got up and wandered over to the cage door. To himself Terl was thinking: the horse is a key to this. He had been right. The animal was attached emotionally to that horse. Leverage, leverage. It came in many guises and its use was power.
Terl appeared to be laughing. “You sure had me fooled that first day. Well, I’ve got to be going. Get busy on those books, rat brain.” He went out. “That’s a good one: rat brain.”
Jonnie sat staring after him. He knew he had betrayed something. And he knew Terl was up to something. But what? Was Windsplitter alive?
Uneasy, Jonnie built up the fire and began to look over the books. And then he was gripped in a sudden wave of excitement: he had found “uranium” listed in the index of Electronic Chemistry.
5
Terl was not at all surprised to see the smaller Chamco brother come nervously into his office.
“Terl,” he said hesitantly. “You know that good-luck credit note you lost to me. Well, I won’t be able to exchange—”
“What are you talking about?” said Terl.
“That good-luck credit note. You lost it to me and I promised to exchange it with you. I wanted to tell you—”
“Wait a minute,” said Terl. He fished out his wallet and looked into it. “Hey, you’re right. It isn’t here.”
“You lost it to me playing rings and I promised to exchange it back. Well—”
“Oh, yes. I have some dim recollection of it. That was quite a night. I was drunk, I guess. What about it?”
The smaller Chamco brother was nervous. But Terl seemed so open and pleasant he was emboldened. “Well, it’s gone. Stolen.”
“Stolen!” barked Terl.
“Yes. Actually the five hundred credits I won and a hundred sixty-five more besides. The good-luck bill was among—”
“Hey, now. Slow up. Stolen from where?”
“My room.”
Terl got out an official pad and began to make notes. “About what time?”
“Maybe yesterday. Last night I went to get some drinking money and I found—”
“Yesterday. Hmmm.” Terl sat back thoughtfully and gnawed at the top of his pen, “You know this isn’t the first theft reported from rooms. There were two others. But you’re in luck.”
“How so?”
“Well, you realize of course that I am responsible for security.” Terl made an elaborate demonstration of searching through piles of junk on his back bench. He turned to the smaller Chamco brother. “I shouldn’t let you in on this.” He looked thoughtful, then seemed to make a sudden decision. “I can trust you to keep this secret.”
“Absolutely,” said the smaller Chamco brother.
“Old Numph worries all the time about mutinies.”
“He should after that pay cut.”
“And so—well, you understand, I wouldn’t do this on my own initiative—but it just so happened that your room was under surveillance yesterday—along with several other rooms, of course.”
This did not much shock the Chamco. The company often put work areas and quarters under surveillance.
Terl was fumbling through stacks of disks among the clutter. “I haven’t reviewed them. Actually, never intended to. Anything to keep management happy . . . ah, yes. Here it is. What time yesterday?”
“I don’t know.”
Terl put the disk on a player and turned on the screen. “You’re just lucky.”
“I should say so!”
“We’ll just scan through this disk. It was on for two or three days . . . I’ll give it a fast-forward.”
“Wait!” said the smaller Chamco brother. “Something flashed by.”
Terl obligingly reversed it. “Probably just you going in and out. I never review these things. It takes so long and there’s so much to do. Company regulations—”
“Wait! Look at that!”
Terl said, “Here?”
“Yes. Who’s that?”
Terl brightened up the screen.
“That’s Zzt!” cried the Chamco. “Look what he’s doing! Searching the room. Hah! He found it. Crap! Look at that! There’s your bill!”
“Incredible,” said Terl. “You sure are lucky there was a mutiny scare on. Where you going?”
The Chamco had made an angry dive at the door, “I’m going down and beat the crap out of that low—”
“No, no,” said Terl. “That won’t get your money back.” And it wouldn’t either, for the money was nestling in a wad under Terl’s front belt. He had taken it from the room soon after the Chamco had hidden it. “This has become an official matter because it was detected on an official disk, during an official surveillance.”
Terl opened a book of regulations, Volume 989, to Article 34a-IV. He turned several pages and then spun the book about and showed the Chamco where it said “theft of personal monies from the quarters of employees by employees” and “when duly evidenced” and “vaporization.”
The smaller Chamco read it. He was surprised. “I didn’t know it was that stiff.”
“Well, it is. And this is official, so don’t go rushing off to take the law into your own hands.”
Terl took a blast rifle out of the rack and handed it to the smaller Chamco. “You know how to use this. It’s fully charged. You’re now a deputy.”
The smaller Chamco was impressed. He stood there fumbling with the catches and made sure the safety was on. “You mean I can kill him?”
“We’ll see. This is official.”
Terl picked up the disk and a smaller portable screen and player and the book of regulations, then looked around to see whether he had everything. “Come along. Stay behind me and say nothing.”
They went to the quarters and found an attendant. Yes, the attendant had seen Zzt coming out of Chamco’s room. Yes, he knew Zzt by sight. He didn’t recall whether it was the thirteenth or the fourteenth of the month. But he’d seen him. He was cautioned to say nothing, for “it was official and had to do with mutiny surveillance,” and the attendant obligingly signed the witness report, vowing to himself to be sure to keep quiet. He didn’t care much for executives anyway.
And so it was that Terl, followed by the smaller Chamco brother with a blast rifle in ready position, came to the maintenance area of the garage. Terl snapped a small button camera on the wall and pu
shed its remote.
Zzt looked up. He had a heavy wrench in his paw. He looked at the blast rifle and the set faces. Fear stirred in him.
“Put down that wrench,” said Terl. “Turn around and hold onto that chain-lift rail with both paws.”
Zzt threw the wrench. It missed. Terl’s paws batted him across three dollies. The Chamco danced around trying to get in a shot.
Terl put his boot on Zzt’s neck. He waved the Chamco back.
His body obscuring the Chamco’s view, Terl knelt and, with a rapid sleight of paw, “extracted” the wad of bills from Zzt’s rear pocket.
Terl handed them to the Chamco. “Are these your bills?”
Zzt had rolled over and stared up at them from the greasy floor.
The Chamco counted. “Six hundred fifty credits. And here’s the good-luck bill!” He was ecstatic.
Terl said, “You’re witness to the fact they were in his back pocket.”
“Absolutely!” said the Chamco.
“Show that bill to the camera on the wall,” said Terl.
“What is this?” roared Zzt.
“Back up and keep that blast rifle ready,” said Terl to the Chamco. Then, keeping himself out of the fire path to Zzt, he laid the things he had carried on the bench. He opened the book of regulations and pointed it out to Zzt.
Zzt angrily read it aloud. He faltered toward the end and turned to Terl. “Vaporize! I didn’t know that!”
“Ignorance is no excuse, but few employees know all the regulations. That you didn’t know it is probably why you did it.”
“Did what?” cried Zzt.
Terl turned on the disk. Zzt looked at it, confused, incredulous. He saw himself stealing the money!
Before Zzt could recover, Terl showed him the attendant’s signed statement.
“Do I vaporize him now?” begged the Chamco, waving the rifle about and fumbling off the safety catch.
Terl waved a conciliatory paw. “Chamco, we know you have every right—no, actually the duty—to carry out the execution.” He looked at Zzt, who was standing there stunned. “Zzt, you’re not going to do this sort of thing again, are you?”
Zzt was shaking his head, not in answer but in dumbfounded confusion.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 Page 15
