Battlefield Earth Part 13

In deep gloom he stood in a hallway between domes, lost in thought. He did have a solution of sorts. And there were signs of unrest. He made a sudden decision.

A compound intercomm was near to hand. He took hold of it and called Numph.

"Terl here, Your Planets.h.i.+p. Could I have an appointment in about an hour?... I have something to show you...Thank you, Your Planets.h.i.+p. One hour."

He hung up, pulled his face mask off a belt hook, donned it, and went outside. Soft snowflakes were drifting down.

At the cage he went straight over to the far end of the flexirope and untied it.

Jonnie had been working at the instruction machine and he watched Terl warily. Terl, coiling up the rope, did not fail to notice that the man-thing was now using the chair to sit in.

A bit arrogant but it was good news, really. The thing had one of its hides rigged to the bars to keep snow off a sleeping place. There was another one tented over the machine and work place.

Terl yanked at the rope. "Come along," he said.

"You promised I could build a fire. Are we going out to get firewood?" asked Jonnie.

Terl yanked on the rope and forced Jonnie to follow him. He went straight to the old c.h.i.n.ko offices and booted open the door. Jonnie looked around the place with interest. They were not inside the domes. This was an air-filled place. Dust lay in a blanket and stirred as they walked through the interior. There were papers scattered about, even books. There were charts on the walls. Jonnie saw that this was where the desk and chair had come from, for many just like them stood about.

Terl opened a locker and brought out a face mask and bottle. He hauled Jonnie close to him and slammed the mask over his face.

Jonnie batted it off. It was quite large. It was also full of dust. Jonnie found a rag in the locker and wiped the mask out. He examined the fastenings and discovered they were adjustable.

Terl was rummaging around and finally came up with a small pump. He put a fresh power cartridge in the pump, connected it to the bottle, and began filling it with air.

"What is this?" asked Jonnie. "Shut up, animal."

"If it is supposed to work like yours, why do you have different bottles?"

Terl kept on pumping up the air bottle. Jonnie threw down the mask and sat down against the locker door, looking the other way.

The amber eyes slitted. More mutiny, thought Terl. Leverage, leverage. He didn't have any.

"All right," said Terl, disgusted. "That is a c.h.i.n.ko air mask. c.h.i.n.kos breathed air. You breathe air. You have to have it to go in the compound or you'll die. My bottles contain proper breathe-gas and the compound domes are filled with breathe-gas, not air. Now, satisfied?"

"You can't breathe air," said Jonnie.

Terl controlled himself. "You can't breathe breathe-gas! Psychlos come from a proper planet that has proper breathe-gas. You, animal, would die there. Put on that c.h.i.n.ko mask."

"Did the c.h.i.n.kos have to wear these in the compound?"

"I thought I told you." "Where are the c.h.i.n.kos?"

"Were, were," said Terl, thinking he was correcting the thing's grammar. It already spoke with an accent. High and squeaky, too. Not a proper ba.s.s, irritating.

"They're not here anymore?" Terl was about to tell him to shut up when a streak of sadism took over. "No, they're not here anymore! The c.h.i.n.kos are dead - the whole race of them. And you know why? Because they tried to strike. They refused to work and do as they were told."

"Ah," said Jonnie. It came together for him. One more piece of evidence that added up to the smoke on the belt buckle design. The c.h.i.n.kos had been another race; they had worked long and hard for the Psychlos; their reward had been extermination. It bore out his estimate of the Psychlo character.

Jonnie looked around at the shambles; the c.h.i.n.kos must have been killed a long time ago.

"See this gauge?" said Terl, pointing to the air bottle he had now filled.

"It registers one-zero-zero when the bottle is full. As it is used up, this needle goes down. When it gets as low as five you're in trouble and will run out of air. There's an hour of air in the bottle. Watch the gauge."

"Seems like there should be two bottles and one should carry the pump," said Jonnie.

Terl looked at the air bottle and saw it had clamps on it for a mate and there was a pocket for the pump. He had not bothered to look at the labels and directions on the bottle.

"Shut up, animal," Terl said. But he filled a second bottle, joined it to the first, and put the pump in the slot between them. Roughly he put the mask and rig on Jonnie.

"Now hear me, animal," said Terl. "We are going inside the compound and I am going to talk to a very important executive, His Planets.h.i.+p himself. You are to speak not one word and you are going to do exactly what you are told to do. Understand, animal?"

Jonnie looked at him through the c.h.i.n.ko faceplate.

"If you don't obey," said Terl, "all I have to do is pull your face mask loose and you'll go into convulsions." Terl didn't like the look he always got from those ice-blue eyes. He yanked the lead rope.

"Let's go, animal."

Chapter 2.

Numph was nervous. He looked at Terl uncertainly as the security chief entered.

"Mutiny?" said Numph. "Not so far," said Terl.

"What do you have there?" said Numph.

Terl yanked on the lead rope to pull Jonnie from behind him. "I wanted to show you the man-thing," said Terl.

Numph sat forward at his desk and stared. A nearly naked, unfurred animal. Two arms, two legs. Yes, there was fur. On its head and lower face. Strange ice-blue eyes. "Don't let it pee on the floor," said Numph.

"Look at its hands," said Terl. "Manually adept..."

"You sure there's no mutiny?" said Numph. "The news was released this morning. I haven't heard any response from two continents yet, the minesites there."

"They probably aren't very pleased, but no mutiny yet. If you look at these hands-"

"I'll watch the ore output carefully," said Numph. "They might try to cut that down."

"Won't mean anything. We're pretty short of personnel," said Terl.

"There are no maintenance mechanics left in transport. They've all been transferred to operations to up production."

"I'm told there's widespread unemployment on the home planet. Maybe I should pull in more personnel."

Terl sighed. b.u.mbling fool. "With reduced pay and no bonuses and this planet being as awful as it is, I shouldn't think you'd get many takers. Now this animal here-'

"Yes, that's so. I should have brought in more personnel before we cut the pay. You sure there's no mutiny?"

Terl plunged. "Well, the best way to halt a mutiny is to promise upped production. And within a year, I think we can replace fifty percent of our outside machine and vehicle operators with these." d.a.m.n, he wasn't getting through.

"It hasn't peed on the floor, has it?" said Numph, leaning forward to look. "Really, that thing smells bad."

"It's these untanned hides it wears. It doesn't have any proper clothes."

"Clothes? Would it wear clothes?"

"Yes, I believe it would, Your Planets.h.i.+p. All it has right now is hides. As a matter of fact, I have a couple of requisitions here-' He advanced to the desk and laid them there for signature. Leverage, leverage. He didn't have any leverage on this fool.

"I just had this place cleaned," said Numph. "Now it will have to be ventilated thoroughly. What are these things?" he added, looking at the requisitions.

"You wanted a demonstration that this man-thing could operate machines. One of those is for general supplies and the other is for a vehicle."

"They're marked 'urgent.

"Well, we have to raise hope fast if we want to avoid a mutiny."

"That's so." Numph was reading the whole requisition form even though he had seen thousands of them.

Jonnie stood patiently. Every detail of this interior was being taken in. The breathe-gas ports, the material of the dome, the strips that held it together.

These Psychlos didn't wear masks inside, and for the first time he was seeing their faces. They were almost human faces except they had bones for eyebrows and eyelids and lips. They had amber orb eyes like those of wolves. He was beginning to be able to read their emotions as they related to their expressions.

When they had come down the compound halls they had pa.s.sed several Psychlos, and these had looked at him with curiosity, but they had looked at Terl with outright hostility. Apparently he had some special job or rank that wasn't popular. But then all the relations.h.i.+ps among these people were hostile, one to another.

Numph eventually looked up. "You really think one of those things could run a machine?"

"You said you wanted a demonstration," said Terl. "I have to have a vehicle to train it."

"Oh," said Numph. "Then it isn't trained yet. So how do you know?"

d.a.m.n, thought Terl. This fool was worse than he had thought. But wait.

There was something bothering Numph. There was something Numph was not talking about. The intuition of a security chief always sensed it. Leverage, leverage. If he could know this, maybe he'd have leverage. He'd have to keep his eyes and ears open. "It learned to operate an instruction machine very quickly, Your Planets.h.i.+p."

"Instruction?"

"Yes, it can read and write its own language now, and can speak, read, and write Psychlo."

"No!"

Terl turned to Jonnie. "Greet His Planets.h.i.+p."

Jonnie fastened his eyes on Terl. He said nothing.

"Speak!" said Terl loudly, and in an undertone added, "You want that face mask ripped off?"

Jonnie said, "I think Terl wants you to sign the requisitions so that I can be trained to operate a machine. If you ordered it, you should sign it."

It was as though he had said nothing at all. Numph was looking out the window, thinking about something. Then his nostrils flared. "That thing certainly stinks."

"It will be gone," said Terl, "just as soon as I get the requisitions signed."

"Yes, yes," said Numph. He dashed initials on the forms.

Terl took them quickly and started to leave.

Numph leaned forward and looked. "It didn't pee on the floor, did it?"

Chapter 3.

Terl had had no sleep and two fights already today, and he was in no mood for a third.

The snow was drifting down on a gray-white day, covering the half-wrecked, small, bladed vehicle, deepening on the broad expanse beyond the zoo. The man-thing looked utterly ridiculous in the huge Psychlo seat. Terl snorted.

The first fight had been over the uniform requisition. The clothing shop foreman- a mangy half-wit named Druk-had maintained that the requisition was forged: he had even said that knowing Terl he did not doubt it; and he had had the effrontery to verify it with an administrator. Then Druk had said he didn't have any uniforms that size and he wasn't in the habit of outfitting midgets and neither was the company. Cloth, yes, he had cloth. But it was executive cloth.

Then the animal had spoken up and said that under no circ.u.mstances would it wear purple. Terl had batted it. But it got up and said the same thing again. Leverage, leverage, d.a.m.n not having leverage on this animal.

But Terl had had an inspiration and had gone out to the old c.h.i.n.ko quarters and found a bale of the blue stuff the c.h.i.n.kos had once worn. The tailor said it was trash, but he could think of no more arguments.

It had taken an hour to hack out and fuse together two uniforms for the man-thing. And then it had refused to wear a regulation company buckle on the belt- almost had a fit in fact. Terl had had to go back to the c.h.i.n.ko quarters and dig around until he found what must have been an artifact- a small gold military buckle with an eagle and arrows on it. At least that made an impression on the man-thing. It s eyes had just about popped out.

The second fight had been with Zzt.

First Zzt wouldn't talk at all. Then he finally condescended to look at the requisition. He pointed out that there were no registration numbers in the blanks provided and maintained that this authorized him to provide anything he cared to at his own discretion. He said Terl could have the wrecked bladed vehicle. It was a write-off but it still ran. That was what had brought on the actual blows.

Terl had hit Zzt hard and they had gone around and around for almost five minutes, blow and counterblow. Terl had finally tripped over a tool dolly and gotten himself kicked.

He had taken the wrecked bladed vehicle. He had to walk beside it, running it, to get it out through the garage atmosphere port.

He now had the animal on it and it looked like another fight.

"What's this green stuff all over the seat and floor?" said Jonnie. The gently falling snow was covering it but it turned patches of the snow pale green as it dissolved.