Jonnie was listening to him. He had wondered for some time now when they would get around to this point. It was the key problem. And if it were left unhandled, all the doors they were trying to open would jam shut in their faces.
“Since I have been here,” said Lord Voraz, “not one of those elegant aristocrats has failed to draw me aside and try to discuss his nation’s chances for a war loan. Of course, we seldom make war loans. All we do is issue the bonds for them and let them sell them to each other. There’s no real money in war loans. With economics this shaky, the chances of their being paid back are poor. Wars are not as popular with the people who fight them as with the lords who run them and profit by them! Revolutions could occur and revolutionaries are notorious as bad risks.
“So before you commit yourselves to these risks, you should understand them.”
Jonnie stood up. These small gray men had not signed anything yet. He had been afraid there would be a quibble. He picked up his helmet and silver wand.
“Sir Robert and I discussed this. We rehearsed it. It is risky. But I believe we have no choice. Do I have the temporary right, granted by all of you, to set bank policy for the next couple of hours? If it is successful, you will not be the losers. If I am not successful, you won’t have lost anything.”
“You set bank policy?” gaped Lord Voraz.
“Let him do it!” said the baron.
“But he might commit us to some course of—”
“You just better say yes, Lord Voraz,” MacAdam said. “That’s Jonnie Tyler there who’s talking.”
Lord Voraz looked numbly from MacAdam to the baron. “I’ve not yet signed—”
“Nor have I,” said Dries.
The baron reached over and made Voraz’s head bob. “He said ‘yes,’ Jonnie. Go ahead.”
“But he might do something dangerous,” Lord Voraz was trying to sputter. “He is a very peculiar young man!”
Jonnie had already left with Sir Robert. A Sir Robert with a grim expression on his face.
3
The bowl of the firing platform area had been stripped of tarpaulins. A Russian trooper stood in each rifle pit, the noonday sun harsh on their white tunics and glittering weapons. A few emissaries lounged in the shade under the pagoda eaves.
Jonnie called for the host and ordered him to get the lords into the conference room.
Stormalong, hearing the stir, popped out of the ops room with a dispatch in his hands, intending to rush over to where Sir Robert and Jonnie stood. But the broad arm and bandaged hand of Colonel Ivan stopped him.
“Leave them alone,” Colonel Ivan managed in English. He had his orders. He stood and watched the emissaries going in the conference room door. He knew Jonnie would be going in there in a moment and he knew what Jonnie was going to do. It made him a little nervous for Jonnie, since he would have no direct protection in there. A casual glance had told him that many of these lords were secretly armed for all their fine clothes and arrogant ways. When Jonnie gave them the shock that was planned, they might react in violence. It would be like swimming in a river full of crocodiles! Colonel Ivan made up his mind: if they hurt Jonnie, not one of these fine lords or these bank people would leave Earth alive. But that was no immediate help for Jonnie if they turned on him. And that they well might do.
Angus was kneeling by the atmosphere projector, putting some final touches to the adjustments. He glanced across the bowl, saw what was happening, and speeded his work up. They would need it in a moment.
Stormalong, frustrated, fluttered the dispatch in his hand and, still restrained by Ivan, watched the last of the lords file in. Then there went Sir Robert and Jonnie, following them.
Inside the conference room, the host was adjusting chairs and helping the lords get settled.
The small gray men and MacAdam and Baron von Roth entered and took seats along the wall.
Sir Robert stood with Jonnie alongside the raised platform. Sir Robert was shooting glances at the lords from under bushy gray eyebrows. Somehow these mighty powers had to be brought to heel. He did not much mind tearing into them. He just hoped the final outcome would not be disaster.
Martial music came on.
The host stood up. “My lords, this final stage of the conference has been called by the emissary of Earth. I present Sir Robert!”
It did not start well.
There was a buzz among the lords. They looked askance toward Voraz. Wasn’t this supposed to be an auction? What was the Earth emissary doing talking to them?
Sir Robert in his regimentals took the center of the platform. The mine spotlight came on.
“My lords,” he said in a heavy, sonorous voice, “we have something else to discuss besides auctions!”
“You mean,” called Fowljopan, “that we have been delayed here for days for nothing?”
“Our food and atmosphere supply is running out,” shouted Lord Dom, “and we are long overdue! Is all this just a waste of time?”
They were turning ugly. Voraz was signifying nothing, just sitting there, expressionless. He had a very poor opinion of this whole action.
“My lords,” said Sir Robert, loud enough to be heard across a battlefield, “of recent times there has been talk among you of a reward!”
They quieted instantly. A reward was something to engage one’s attention.
“Two sums of money,” said Sir Robert, “each amounting to one hundred million credits, have been put out to encourage a certain search!
“It was,” he shouted, “to find the one!”
The lords went very alert.
“There is the one!” and his hand shot out pointing at Jonnie!
The mine spotlight shifted to Jonnie and his buttons and helmet flashed fire.
It was dramatic. A sudden intake of breath from the lords.
It was not exactly as Jonnie had planned it. Sir Robert had let his own feelings change it. Still, it was very effective.
Sir Robert resumed in a strong, triumphant voice. “With the help of a few Scots, he put a total end to the most powerful empire in sixteen universes!
“That man,” cried Sir Robert, “put a finish on an empire that had crushed and awed you all!
“Among you, you have five thousand planets! He put an end to an empire of over a million planets!”
The delegates sat very still. They were afraid of what might be coming. But they were impressed.
“Now do you want to see what he did that ended Psychlo forever?”
There was no wait for an answer. Four Russians and Colonel Ivan raced into the room with the mine cart that carried the atmosphere projector. They put it smartly in place and then drew back to the wall and stood there at attention.
Sir Robert touched a remote relay. The mine spotlight went off, the projector went on.
The view of the Imperial City just before the cataclysm leaped up over the platform. There, as though in visual sight, lay the moving, brilliantly etched ramparts of mighty Psychlo.
Few of the emissaries had ever seen full pictures of it. It would have been worth their lives ever to have set foot in the place. But they recognized the domes of the palace from Psychlo seals. Just seeing Psychlo was an experience.
And then the catastrophe rolled on.
They held their breaths.
Never had such widespread, violent disaster met their gaze.
Psychlo, engulfed in a hellish, molten death, before their staring eyes, turned into a scorching, blazing sun.
The picture went off. The mine spotlight did not come on. Sir Robert’s voice battered them from the dark.
“Think of the oppression of Psychlo! Think of how it altered every part of the lives of nations! Think of what its tyranny has done! And realize now it is over and ended, finished forever!
“You owe this man,” the mine spotlight hit Jonnie, “a huge debt for freeing you from a monster!”
The emissaries were not accustomed to fear. They felt afraid.
Sir Robert bored on. He
had discarded Jonnie’s orders. He felt too strongly himself. And he hated these pitiless lords who had possibly ended Scotland. “You have seen what he can do to such a planet as Psychlo!
“Now I am going to show you what else he can do!” Sir Robert killed the mine spotlight. He hit the projector remote.
The complete sequence of the Tolnep moon came on. They had viewed bits of this before. But they had not seen the whole finish of that moon, for it had been taken after the fight with Schleim.
Before them, the moon began to crumble and pucker in. The great ship that had tried to escape was eaten up before their eyes once more. And then the views from the Tolnep mountaintop came on.
Jonnie, too, had not seen these. Unless one looked hard, the moon seemed to be turning into gas. And then the gas began to liquefy in the intense cold of space.
The scenes of the piece of scrap iron falling in had a part in it Jonnie had not seen. Just before it entered the surface of the moon, a tongue of lightning roared at it. For an instant it went red hot and then, striking the liquefying gas, crumbled as it visibly drifted down to the still-fluid core.
That moon was now a ball, not just of gas, but of uncountable quintillions of megavolts of electricity. The separation of atoms had generated enormous charge, but there being no oxygen and no second pole to cause flow, the intense cold of space had frozen the resulting electricity. Jonnie realized this was how Psychlo fuel worked, but it had no heavy metal in it, only the more base metals. And that moon would kill any ship that came near it, not by disintegration, but by huge powerful charges of electricity. Ah, there came a meteor! Lightning flashed out and melted it.
The emissaries had seen a planet roar into the heat of a sun.
Now they were seeing a moon vanish and then congeal into a cold, deadly, frigid mass of destruction.
Sir Robert’s voice went into them like shock waves. “He can do that to your home planet at will!”
Had he hit them with a stun gun he could not have produced a more frozen effect.
“And,” cried Sir Robert, “there is nothing you can do to stop it!”
Jonnie had not planned it this strong. But Sir Robert was getting his revenge.
The mine spotlight hit Jonnie.
Sir Robert shouted at them, “He is going to put twenty-eight firing platforms in twenty-eight separate places—none of them on this planet. Your home planet coordinates are going to be set. Those twenty-eight platforms are going to fire, all twenty-eight of them, if any one of you turns hostile!”
This was not what Jonnie had told him to say. The twenty-eight platforms, yes. But not—
“All you have to do,” Sir Robert bellowed at them, “is get one small inch out of line, and all your home planets will become exactly like that moon!”
They were in paralyzed shock.
“You,” cried Sir Robert, “all of you are going to sign a treaty, a treaty that forbids war with us and war between yourselves. If you don’t, your home planets, all of them, will disintegrate just like that moon, and you and all your people will go with them!” He pointed again at Jonnie. “He can do it and will do it! So get right to work and sign a treaty now!”
Bedlam!
Every emissary came out of his seat, screaming with rage.
Colonel Ivan and the troopers tensed.
The din almost caved in one’s ears.
Sir Robert glared at them, feeling triumphant.
Jonnie walked to the center of the platform. The spotlight followed him. He raised his hands to quiet them. The tumult eased off a bit.
A final cry from Browl expressed the sentiments of them all. “This is a declaration of WAR!”
Jonnie stood there. Gradually his presence brought silence.
“It is not a declaration of war,” he said. “It is a declaration of peace!
“I know that your economics are geared to war. I know that you consider the best way to get rid of excess population, which you feel you all have, is to engage in war.
“But in wars, one or another of the combatants is going to lose. Each one feels that it could not be he. But there is an even chance it will be.
“So, in declaring peace, we are only protecting you from each other.”
Fowljopan suddenly shouted, “When we get home we can send vast armadas against you! Even if you slay all of us, those fleets will still come and destroy you. And as for you, you have laid yourself open to assassination!”
Sir Robert was suddenly in front of Jonnie. “Your fleets will not save your own planets. There is no defense you have against these platforms. Only this one man would know where they are. And if thirty days passed without his resetting them, if anything happened to him and he was not there, those platforms would fire automatically. If something happened to him or to Earth, the home planets of every one of you would be destroyed.
“Also, he has doubles. They look exactly like him; you cannot tell the difference. If you thought you were assassinating him, you would probably only be assassinating a double. And if any double is harmed or touched, those firing platforms fire. All of them!
“It is up to you to protect Earth and to protect him. The lives of you, your rulers and your people depend upon it.
“And as to your fleets coming and destroying us, they might well do so. But if you don’t get home, they won’t know. They would attack here and have no base or people or rulers to return to. Think about that!”
“You are threatening emissaries!” shouted Browl.
“He is protecting emissaries!” snapped Sir Robert. “With your war industries tooling up to go full blast, there is more than one in this room who will be representing a government conquered by another!
“You should look at a principle known as force majeure. It means that an unexpected and uncontrollable event has suddenly entered upon the universes. A superior force!
“This man and what he can do is an event of force majeure. It changes the way things were. It determines how the future will be.
“I am a man of war. You are diplomats! You have it in your power as of this moment to exert an influence on this force majeure. If you do not avail yourselves of it, you are not diplomats but fools, and suicidal fools at that!”
“How can we control this?” said a small lord at the back.
Jonnie gently guided Sir Robert to the side. It had not gone as planned. Sir Robert had his own ideas. But Sir Robert had actually done very well. They were listening.
“Before the platforms fired,” said Jonnie, “a conference of emissaries would be called. Any unjustness in the action, any mistaken idea, could be handled.”
He saw he had some interest.
“The platforms could operate as an arm of such a conference as this,” he said.
He could see them sorting it out. He could see that at least some of them were edging toward the idea that this might give them, as individuals, a new power in their governments. It was in their manner. They were not speculating on him but on themselves. They were looking down at their fingers or talons. They were casting their heads to one side or another. But he knew he didn’t have them yet.
“It’s still an awesome threat,” said one.
“It solves nothing in our economies,” said another. “On the contrary, it will produce chaos.”
Jonnie looked at them. Then he began to realize what he was really dealing with. Every one of these lords and all their peoples had been bred for eons in the shadow of the cruel and sadistic Psychlos. They may have remained politically free, but they were stamped with the Psychlo philosophy—all beings are just animals. Greed, profit and corruption were understood to be the nature of every individual. There were no decencies or virtues. The brand of the Psychlo!
Such sentiments were the ideas of madmen. The Psychlos had tailor- made life this way and had then said, see? this is the way life is.
How could he reach these mighty lords?
“Our industries,” another cried, “are geared to war. An intergalactic peace wou
ld ruin us, every one!”
Yes, thought Jonnie. The Psychlos wanted any they did business with at war with one another. Who cared what these “free planets” did so long as they bought metal? The Psychlos could crush them at any time. The Psychlos wanted them fighting like animals, believed they were only animals!
Jonnie said, “There are other ways of handling economies. You could phase every war industry you have over to what is called ‘consumer production.’ You make things for the people. The people are employed. They make things for one another. Your people are your best market for your industries.
“In the near future there will be cross-shipping between your worlds. The Psychlos had it worked out that everything was first shipped to Psychlo. By that very fact, they throttled trade. It will be worked out so that you can quickly and cheaply exchange goods from one system to another. Out of that alone will come prosperity.
“Your people, now starving and rioting, can become gainfully employed in peace industries. They can have things for themselves. Such things as better houses and furniture, better clothes, better food.
“You have a golden chance here to herald an age of prosperity and plenty!”
He wasn’t quite reaching them. They were listening, which was all you could say.
“That doesn’t handle riots going on right now!” said Dom.
Jonnie looked at him. Now for the big plunge that would make Voraz shudder. “I am sure the Galactic Bank would be pleased to make huge and ample loans to governments that would use the money to buy food for their peoples and tide them over to a time when peacetime industry could be phased in. That and the news of no war again would halt your riots and stabilize your governments.”
Browl looked at Voraz. “Would you do that?”
Voraz found he had MacAdam on one side of him and the baron on the other. They both were jabbing him to say yes. He just sat there.
Jonnie was talking again. “And I am sure the bank would make available all necessary loans to convert your industries over to consumer production. Not only that, I am quite sure that the bank would engage in making loans to the private sector: to small businesses and even to individuals so they could purchase new products.”
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 Page 111
