“Sir Robert asks me to tell you,” whispered the boy, “that there will be a sudden exodus in a moment and not to be alarmed. They have been working it out in ops for the past half-hour and the orders are being issued this instant. There are hundreds of people trapped in shelters in Edinburgh. The tunnel corridors and entrances fell in under heavy bombs. They do not know how many are alive or anything else. He says it is like a caved-in mine. They are leaving in minutes and he wants you to carry on here. If needed he will come back.”
Jonnie felt like a cold hand had gripped his heart. Chrissie and Pattie were part of that.
If they still lived.
“I should go!” said Jonnie.
“No, no,” said the boy Quong. “Sir Robert said you would say that, Lord Jonnie. They will do everything that can be done. He said to tell you he is leaving all this in your hands.”
At that moment pandemonium broke loose. Sir Robert raced out of the ops room. He had somewhere changed his clothes and the gray cloak billowed as he donned it on the run.
“Goodbye, Lord Jonnie," said Quong and raced away.
Sir Robert was at the passage, waving his arm with an urgent swing, “Come on!” he bellowed. “Come on!”
Doctors MacKendrick and Allen sped out of the hospital area, shutting valises as they ran. Allen turned and shouted something at the nurse and then sped on.
The walking wounded hobbled and limped out, heading for the passage.
Four pilots raced by.
Guards who a moment before had been covering Schleim from pits were yelling to one another and a soldier carrying several packs raced toward them and then they were gone.
A crowd of officers and communicators slammed out of ops and headed for the passage exit.
Suddenly, Jonnie was aware of the turmoil and commotion among the Chinese. Mothers were dumping babies and a screech of instructions at older daughters and then running to the exit. The Chinese men were snatching up bits and pieces from the personal baggage, shooing smaller children into the vicinity of the half-grown girls, yelling at each other to hurry. Dogs, snapped on to leashes that were pushed into the hands of young boys, set up a cacophony of barking and howling at being made to stay.
A plane motor started up. Then another.
Three Scot pilots ran out of the ops room, getting into flight clothes and gripping maps.
And all the time Sir Robert was at the exit shouting, “Come on! Come on!”
From the open door of ops, Stormalong's voice was rising above the din. “Victoria? Victoria? Damn it man, keep your radios manned! Take every mine pump you've got. Every atmosphere hose and pump. Got that? I know it's in clear! All right.” A woman communicator in there was taking over. She started to chatter
Pali.
“Come on!” Sir Robert was shouting at the delaying few. “Damn it, Edinburgh is burning!”
A plane took off. Sir Robert was gone. Another plane. Another, another, another. From the whip of sound they were lancing up to hypersonic in seconds. Jonnie wondered whether they were leaving any aircraft at all.
Lord Dom came over to Jonnie. His big, liquidy face looked a bit concerned. “What's happening? Are you abandoning this area? You realize that in a temporary suspension of hostilities it is irregular to use it to arrange the redisposition of military forces to achieve the advantage of surprise when hostilities are resumed. I would caution-”
Jonnie had had just about enough of being Chinko polite for one day. He was worried about Chrissie and Pattie. And very concerned about his village people who had gone to Russia. “They are on their way to try to dig hundreds of people out of collapsed shelters,” said Jonnie. “I don't think your rules apply to noncombatants, Lord Dom. And even if they did, not even you could stop those Scots. They're on their way to save what they can of the Scottish nation.”
Jonnie walked into ops. The place was in a shambles left by the hasty departure. Only the Buddhist woman communicator and Stormalong were there. She had finished her messages and was sitting back, head bowed, exhausted. They had been on straight duty for days without rest. This was the first
“Russia?” said Jonnie to Stormalong.
“I sent the whole contingent at Singapore there over half an hour ago. They took everything they had. It 's just a flight over the Himalayas and they'll be there in another couple of hours. I don't know what they'll find– we haven't heard from Russia for a couple of days.”
“Edinburgh?” said Jonnie. “Nothing for the last hour.”
“Did I hear you sending everyone at Victoria to Scotland?” said Jonnie. “What about the prisoners there?”
“Oh, they gave Ker a blast rifle.” He saw Jonnie's look. “Ker says he'll blow their heads off if they so much as move an eyebone! They left that old woman from the Mountains of the Moon to handle their diets. And all your vital notes are safe-' He was about to add “here” when he saw Lord Dom at the door and looked at him.
Lord Dom said, “I didn't wish to intrude but I couldn't help overhearing. Haven't you left this whole conference area, maybe this whole continent, maybe the planet, without air cover?”
Jonnie shrugged and pointed to Stormalong. “There's he and I."
This startled Lord Dom. He quivered a bit.
Stormalong laughed and said, “Why, that's twice as many as there used to be! Not long ago, there was just him!”
He pointed at Jonnie.
Lord Dom blinked. He stared at Jonnie. The young man didn't seem worried at all.
Lord Dom went off and told his colleagues about this. They discussed it considerably among themselves.
They decided they had better keep a careful eye on Jonnie.
Chapter 10
Jonnie stood outside the ops room door and looked around the bowl. How quiet it seemed.
The older Chinese children had quieted the younger ones and gotten them to bed. The dogs were silent, exhausted from the excitement of a while ago. The emissaries had all gone off to their apartments or guard duty over Schleim. There were no sentries in sight. The place seemed deserted. Even though it was not late yet.
To one brought up in the silences of mountains, the calm was welcome.
It might be the sort of calm that is followed by blasting storm. But it was a moment's calm.
Too many situations were running all at the same time for him to have any peace of mind. Who knew what would happen as a result of the emissary trial: he did not trust them. What would occur after this “temporary suspension” of war? What would they find in Edinburgh? In Russia? He told himself he had better not let his mind dwell long on these last two places or he would edge over into anxiety and grief.
That book he had read– that said you could handle things if you did one of them at a time: good advice.
Psychlo! He had been living in such a tornado that the question of Psychlo had become a sort of dull pain like a toothache. Was there any danger of counterattack? Or was that just a shadow?
Ha! This was a thing he had been waiting for. He had a transshipment rig. It was in fine working order. There were no planes in the air, no motors running. Psychlo! He would end right now that question of threat.
He strode over to the console and almost fell over Angus. The Scot was sitting in a pool of light, working intensely with some rods and wheels. He didn't look up but he knew Jonnie was there.
“While you were settling up with Schleim," said Angus, fingers flying around his work, “I parked a picto-recorder on a peak on Tolnep to watch that moon. Reaction motors don't mess up a firing– only teleportation motors do. So I just fired it. But that was the only gyrocage assembled. I’m putting together a spare.
“Angus,” said Jonnie, “we are going to find out what happened to Psychlo! We've got the machine, we've got the time.”
“Give me about half an hour,” said Angus.
Jonnie saw he needed no help and he wasn't going to stand around here and wait.
En route to his room he looked in at the hospital. They had left a woman nurse
, an elderly Scot, and she resented being left behind. She looked up from a patient as Jonnie entered. “It’s time for your sulfa and your shot!” she said threateningly. Jonnie knew he shouldn't have come in here. He had just wanted to see how the wounded were doing.
The two fractured-skull cases were lying in their beds. They seemed all right. But being Scots and left behind, they eyed him dully. The two burned antiaircraft gunners seemed all right but, being Scots, they didn't want to be there with Edinburgh burning.
“Take off your jacket!” snapped the nurse. Then she took the bandage off his arm and looked at the arrow wound. “Hah!” she said, sounding disappointed, “it won't even leave a scar!”
She made him take sulfa powder and wash it down with water. She jabbed an inch of needle into his good arm and squirted B Complex stingingly with a savage turn. She took his temperature and counted his pulse. “You're perfectly well!” It sounded like an indictment.
Jonnie had had a lot of practice in diplomacy that day. He felt sorry for these people. Jacket and helmet dangling from his hand he said, “I sure am glad you people stayed. I may need lots of help defending this area.”
After a moment of amazement, they all came alive. They said he could count on them! And when he left they were all chattering about what they could do and smiling– even the nurse.
With the exodus of the adult Chinese, he hadn't really expected to find Mr.
Tsung. But there he was. He had laid out a blue jacket on the bed along with some other items for change. But he was bowing and beaming. With his hands tucked in his sleeves, he was going up and down like a pump.
He was trying to say something but his English wasn't up to it and suddenly he bolted and came back with Chief Chong-won.
“Well, at least you're here,” said
Jonnie. “I thought the place was near empty!”
“Oh, no,” said the chief. “The Coordinators are all gone. But we have guests, you know. The emissaries. So I’m here and the cook; there's an electrician and two antiaircraft gunners.” He started counting off on his fingers. “Must be a dozen people left. We do have one problem.” He saw Jonnie go alert. “It’s the food. I thought we'd be feeding all these emissaries and we got ready to fix the fanciest Chinese food you ever heard of. But they don't eat our food! So we have all this food and nobody to eat it! Too bad!”
To a people who had been pressed starving into the snowy mountains for centuries, it must look like quite a tragedy. “Feed the children,” said Jonnie.
“Oh, we have, we have,” said the chief. “Even the dogs. But we've still got lots too much food. I tell you what we'll do. There's an empty apartment and we'll set it up for a dining room and we will feed you a beautiful dinner.”
"I’ve got something to do,” said Jonnie.
“Oh, no problem, no problem. It is very stylish to eat late. The cook will be so pleased. Here,” and he made a dash outside to the hall and brought back a tray with some soup and small patties of dough and meat. “These are...no Psychlo word...between-meal-bites. Help us out!”
Jonnie laughed. If that was all the problems they had, life would be a basking in the sun!
He sat down in a chair and began to eat the snack. Tsung, after setting up a small table, was back to bobbing again.
“What's he bowing about?” said Jonnie.
The chief waved his hand and Jonnie saw that a fourth viewscreen had been installed, making two for the conference room. “He's been in here all the time you were on that platform, working a Coordinator half to death translating. They've got discs of everything that went on. The second screen was so they could see both you and the emissaries. I looked in here a time or two-'
Mr. Tsung was volubly interrupting him. The chief translated, “He wants you to know that you are the fastest pupil he has ever seen. He says if you had been an imperial Prince of China and his family had still been chamberlains and not exiled, China would still be there.”
Jonnie laughed and would have acknowledged with a return compliment but Mr. Tsung was talking very fast and drawing something from his sleeve. “He wants something,” said the chief. “He wants you to put your 'chop' on this paper. That is, your signature.” He was unfolding it. It was a considerable expanse of Chinese characters.
The chief raised his eyebrows and translated the sense of it for Jonnie. “This says that you approve the cancellation of exile of his family from the Imperial Court and that you recommend its reinstatement as chamberlains to the principal government of this planet and yourself.
"I’m not a member of the government,” said Jonnie.
“He knows all that, but he wants your chop on it. I warn you that he has two brothers and several relatives. They're all educated in diplomacy and such. Oh, he tells me there's a second paper here. Yes. This one restores their rank as Mandarins of the Blue Button– lets them wear a round cap with a blue button on top– noblemen, actually. It 's valid. They are noblemen.”
“But I’m not-' began Jonnie.
Mr. Tsung sang off into half-a-dozen trills of protest.
“He says you don't know what you are. Put your chop on these and he'll
do the rest.”
Jonnie said, “But I have no authority. The war isn't over yet. Not by a long ways! I-'
“He says wars are wars and diplomats are diplomats and there is no point in the game when it ends. I’d sign them, if I were you, Lord Jonnie. They're all studying Psychlo and English. It 's his chance to attain an eleven-hundred-year-old goal. I’ll read these word for word for you.”
Well, Jonnie felt they might not have made it without Mr. Tsung, so he was given a brush and he signed them and Chief Chong-won witnessed them.
Mr. Tsung reverently folded the pieces of paper into a cover of gold brocade and laid them away like they were crown jewels.
“Oh, yes,” said Jonnie as he left. “One more thing. Tell him how much I enjoyed that tale about the dragon who ate the moon.”
Part XXVIII
Chapter 1
Psychlo!
The home planet of two hundred thousand worlds.
The center of an empire that had ruled and ruined sixteen universes over a period of three hundred and two thousand years.
Psychlo. That had been the cause of man's destruction.
What had happened to its empire, if anything?
What had happened to Psychlo? And if it still existed, what did it plan?
Was it a danger or not?
For a grueling and turbulent year they had wondered. It lay like a nagging barb under their thoughts.
Now they were going to find out.
Pale light lit the bowl. The metal of the platform shone dully. Not a motor to be heard in the sky. The stars were bright above.
Angus and Jonnie looked at each other. Now they would know.
“First,” said Jonnie, “we will inspect minesites and see what transshipment rigs are active. Perhaps there is some indicator somewhere that would alert them to this. We will be cautious, not get too close to anything.”
The coordinate book told them of a transshipment rig at Loozite, a Psychlo mining world without population other than Psychlo miners. It was a large planet but distant from Psychlo.
They put the new gyrocage down, put a picto-recorder in the armored case, calculated the coordinates for a point forty miles from the Loozite transshipment site, punched the console buttons, and fired.
The wires hummed. The cage came back. There was a slight recoil.
Jonnie put the disc in the atmosphere projector that still stood there.
He pressed the button.
For a moment both he and Angus thought they must have miscalculated and shot a mine instead. Forty miles was a long way off for detail and Jonnie adjusted and recentered the scene before them.
It was a hole!
But not a mine. There stood a transshipment pole at a drunken angle.
But it was otherwise just a hole in the planet surface. No trace even of compound
domes.
Jonnie wondered whether they had different compound layouts on different planets. Perhaps that Loozite platform had been miles from anything else. Still, the Psychlos were demons for standard layouts. Usually the whole central administration of the planet was at the transshipment rig. For there was where the ore came from all over the planet. There was where the books were kept, where the main shops existed, where the top executives were.
Just that hole. It was pretty big, but a hole is a hole.
They chose another firing site: Mercogran in the fifth universe. It was shown as a planet five times the size of Earth but of less density.
They fired and recalled the gyrocage.
When Jonnie turned the projector on, they saw at once they had something different. They had to widen the view on the projector to see better.
Mercogran had been close to a mountain range and avalanches had apparently come down. They would have covered much of the space of any compound.
Jonnie brought the view in closer. There! At the lower right! The inverted bowl of a compound dome. It was lying like a broken soup plate. There was a transshipment pole and attached charred wires sitting in the middle of it. But nothing else.
So far no tight conclusion could be reached beyond the fact that those central compounds and transshipment rigs were certainly no longer working.
At random they took another planet: Brelloton. It was an inhabited planet, another reference told them, with a population of its own, governed by a Psychlo “regency,” enduring such rule for sixty thousand years.
They calculated the coordinates for a spot forty miles from the transshipment rig and fired the gyrocage.
They were not prepared for what they got. The atmosphere image showed a city. The transshipment rig there had apparently been on a raised plateau in the center of town.
Buildings that once must have been massive were blown to bits. They made a spreading pattern that radiated out from the plateau. Buildings that must have been two thousand feet high in a city that must have held a million beings or more had fallen outward like dominos.
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