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:
By Council Resolution, in the interest of his personal safety and to curtail any embarrassment, realizing his value to the state, it is decreed that Jonnie Goodboy Tyler not again visit the compound located in this place until such prohibition is formally rescinded by constituted authority.
Duly passed on voice vote and certified as legal.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 Page 55
