Battlefield Earth Part 133

The team set it up as an a.s.sembly line. The Psychlo would be brought in, put under, and have the capsule or capsules removed, and then would be pushed down to another table where the younger doctor, taking advantage of the anesthesia, would fix and polish up the fangs and back teeth.

In this way, after the first one, each Psychlo entering would see another Psychlo lying there, unconscious, getting his teeth fixed on another table. The metal a.n.a.lyzer on the first table was explained as necessary to find cavities.

They rolled up their sleeves and began to roll.

The a.s.sembly line went off without a hitch. A Psychlo would come in, get the metal removed from his brain, be shunted over to get his teeth fixed, and then be wheeled back on a mine cart to the Psychlo area of the compound to recover.

It took one hundred forty-four working hours, twelve days, to get the whole lot through.

The early ones were all up and about before the last one was finished. They had had a lot of cavities, even some minor extractions. But their gleaming fangs! My, were they impressed. Walking about, whenever they pa.s.sed a reflective surface, they could be seen holding their breath, lifting their breathe-masks, and inspecting anew their beautiful new "smiles."

A Psychlo admiring beauty was a major change in itself.

They did not become more polite. But they became more pleasant and agreeable.

Ker couldn't stand the others getting all this without himself getting into the scene. He didn't even know he didn't have any capsules, but he did know his fangs weren't s.h.i.+ny bright. So they had to pull him in, put him under, and polish his teeth. And that finished the lot.

The medical team took the cricks out of their backs and began to pack up.

"It's all over to you now, Jonnie," said MacKendrick. "Be careful as we have no guarantee they won't retain some residual behavior pattern based on tradition and education. I hope you finally solve their math."

And the team went back to Aberdeen. Jonnie was on his own.

Chapter 3.

Chirk collected the company personnel records for him, and Jonnie went through them, one by one, as they were handed to him. Just now she had a big, thick, tattered folder that was all water-stained and mildewed.

Jonnie took it. It was the record of one named Soth, an a.s.sistant mine manager who had served in the compound near Denver. Jonnie had never seen him there: he must have kept to his room or his office. Some of the reason was visible in the record: Soth was one hundred eighty years old; a Psychlo life span was around one hundred ninety and it meant that Soth could not have been feeling all that spry.

But there was more in the record. Since the age of fifty, Soth had never returned to Psychlo. He had been s.h.i.+pped all over the universes, serving two years here, four years there. But never a return to Psychlo. He had even been cross-fired on rigs every time, a thing that was very unusual as almost all cargos went via Psychlo and Jonnie had thought that all personnel did. In fact, this insistence on using Psychlo as a transfer point was the main bottleneck on the expansion of the Psychlos: the transs.h.i.+pment platform there could only handle so much cargo and firings in a day. Jonnie had already started doubling up platforms in places, one to receive and one to fire.

Jonnie studied the record. Soth, after graduating from mine school, had been an under-professor of "ore theory." It all seemed quite usual right up to the age of fifty when abruptly he had been a.s.signed as an a.s.sistant mine manager to a very remote planet. And for the next one hundred thirty years he had been s.h.i.+fted continually, always retaining the same rank.

It was an oddity. Jonnie went through the reams of records on him. And finally found one of the same date as his original transfer from Psychlo. It said, "Unsuitable for teaching profession. Fla, Chief Catrist, Gru Clinic, Psychlo."

That little slip of paper had condemned a being to obvious exile for a hundred thirty years! No other black marks evident. Always seemed to have done his work, nothing negative otherwise. Instead of going straight to Soth, Jonnie instead made a test with Maz. This Psychlo, at whom Ker was mad, was one of the biggest Jonnie had ever seen. He had been the local planning engineer.

Remembering the Chamco brothers, Jonnie loaded up a hand blast gun just in case, positioned himself in a room where he had lots of s.p.a.ce to back up, and had Maz brought in.

Maz's teeth were gleaming gleaming behind his faceplate. He sat down easily enough. He was a bit surly. behind his faceplate. He sat down easily enough. He was a bit surly.

"I hear that Ker clown has been saying I won't work," began Maz with no preliminary. "Contract or no contract, if you think you can put a midget operations officer over the head of a planning engineer, you think trouble!"

"He just wants to get the tungsten mine going," said Jonnie.

"What's the point? You can't s.h.i.+p it to Psychlo. You finished that!"

Jonnie thought he might as well dive in now rather than drag it out. "If you'll give me the mathematics to compute the location of the next ore body, I'll work it out."

Maz scowled. Jonnie prepared to draw.

"Somehow," said Maz, and his scowl deepened, "I don't think I'm supposed to talk mathematics with an alien." He thought it over. He lifted a back strap of his breathe-mask and scratched under it.

A considerable time pa.s.sed.

"I can't think where I got that idea. Mine school? Yes, mine school. Say, this is funny. I got a picture of somebody holding a whirling spiral in front of me...." He yawned. He thought a while. "Hey!" he said explosively. "That's the catrist in charge of our group. You know, I haven't thought of him for years. Funny old . He used to spend hours with the youngest males- when he wasn't down in the s.e.x shops of the old town. Yeah, it was him. What were we talking about?"

"Showing me how to do mathematics," said Jonnie.

Maz shrugged. "Why bother? Take a lot less time for me to do the calculations myself. What's he going to do with the ore?"

"Cross-fire it to other planets," said Jonnie.

"That's kind of illegal. How much bonus? For me, I mean."

"The usual," said Jonnie.

"Tell you what. You tell that Ker he ain't no boss of mine and mind his manners and you double my planning bonus per ton and I'll calculate the ore body." He laughed. "There's a lot more tungsten there than I ever told the company! Is it a deal?"

Jonnie said that it was and Maz left. It was an inconclusive test. But he hadn't been attacked. He waited for two days for Maz to commit suicide. But he didn't. He just went out and started giving Ker a hard time, but in the process he broke out his a.n.a.lyzers and instruments and stakes and shortly was shooting "glow-stripes" into the earth to give workers lines along which to dig.

Jonnie used the time otherwise as well.

He went down to Salisbury and, with Thor to back off the elephants and black mambas, dug into the man-books trying to find anything about "whirling spirals" being held in front of people's faces.

He found one reference to it in a booklet named, "Hypnotism for the Millions." Seemed kind of silly. He made one and, with Thor holding a small deer, spun it in front of its face and all the deer did was stare at it.

Thor said to try it on him and he did, but Thor just went into gales of laughter.

According to the book, you put people to sleep and told them things and then the people would do them afterward without knowing it was an order. Jonnie guessed Psychlos must be different if it worked on them. Anyway, he had an idea of what the "catrist" had been attempting with Maz. There had been some effect but not enough without the capsule.

What a weird world those Psychlos had lived in! imagine putting a whole population under a mental cloud! But the idea wasn't solely Psychlo's, for there it had been among the spider webs of the old man-library! And it had been a man-book which had led him on to the capsules.

How could any being consider itself so right right to think it should make all other beings into robots to do its bidding? He thought of Lars. Had Hitler been doing things like that? to think it should make all other beings into robots to do its bidding? He thought of Lars. Had Hitler been doing things like that?

As Maz, according to a call to Victoria, was still going strong, Jonnie went back to tackle Soth. If anyone knew math, he should.

Jonnie was determined to get motors into production. And after all this time of getting trouble from Psychlo mathematics he was feeling quite willful about it. This had to be revealed. There were no two ways about it. Terl and his condemned equations that wouldn't balance, that never made any sense! Why, if something happened with a console, he'd never know what was wrong with the circuit. He couldn't figure one out. Not with Psychlo math.

Suddenly he remembered the Voraz letter. Hundreds of thousands of inventions and the formulas all in Psychlo math. To really get the crashed arms companies converted over to consumer products, those hundreds of thousands of inventions-even though acc.u.mulated for millennia and probably stolen by the Psychlos from now defunct races-could very well spell the difference between booming prosperity across the galaxies and having to face a new conference of emissaries howling for his blood. n.o.body would be able to figure them out unless he could pry the secret of Psychlo math out of these ex-company employees. Mr. Tsung had been right. It could become a "diplomatic" matter. It could even become war.

Chapter 4.

Soth, Jonnie found, did not live in the dormitories. Apparently he coughed at night and kept other Psychlos awake, and they had insisted he be berthed in a small former storage room that was hooked into the breathe-gas circulating system. And that was where Jonnie found him.

The room wasn't too bad. The old Psychlo had cut down the original storage shelves and fabricated some bookcases and tables from them; the cases were utterly jammed with books and the tables covered with a litter of paper.

Soth was sitting on a high stool as Jonnie entered. His fur was splotchy with blue hairs, sign of an aged Psychlo. The amber eyes were a bit blurry with white matter at the corners. He was dressed in a wraparound robe and he had a small cap on his head.

He peered near-sightedly at Jonnie, evidently seeking to see who it was. Then he remarked the belt gun.

"So you have come to s.h.i.+p me on," said Soth. "I was wondering when someone would notice."

"You seem to have a lot of books here," said Jonnie, seeking to change the subject.

"I was fortunate," said Soth. "When that attack first came on the compound, I was in my office and I heard the fire gongs going. I knew there'd be a lot of water so I ran down to my room and put everything I had into waterproof ore bags. Then when we were to leave for here, I asked a nice young human if I could go get them and bring them. And he permitted it."

Jonnie was looking at the t.i.tles. He couldn't read most of them. They were in scripts he had never seen before.

"They usually let me keep my books," said Soth. "In cross-firing, they don't much care what weight or cubic s.p.a.ce there is for there's nothing else going. Will you let me keep them when you cross-fire me this time?"

Jonnie was afraid for a moment that this old Psychlo must be in his dotage.

Then he realized they wouldn't really know that there were no other Psychlos alive; they might think there were other captives elsewhere.

"I'm not here to cross-fire you. We're sure there are no Psychlos on other planets now."

Soth digested this. Then he let out a little snort. "Funny way to end a hundred thirty years of exile. But it's not ended. I'm still exiled even if I stay here."

Jonnie had him talking. He had better keep him talking. "How did it start?"

Soth shrugged. "The way it always starts. Being impolite to a catrist. Isn't it in my record?" As Jonnie shook his head, Soth went on. "You might as well know. Lately I have had this strange feeling that I should be more honest. And I do appreciate your fixing my fangs for me. Two were quite painful.

Anyway, we had this young Psychlo in school and he got confused about his lessons and wanted a better explanation-"

"About mathematics?" said Jonnie.

Soth looked at him for quite a while. "Why do you ask that?" he said finally. A sort of a cloud had pa.s.sed over him and gone away. Then, as Jonnie didn't reply, he went on. "Well, yes, it was about mathematics in a way, I suppose. It was how you calculate ore bodies in semicore mining." He sighed. "Somebody must have reported him because the catrist of that school wing came in and started shouting at him and then started shouting at the whole cla.s.s. It was very disruptive. There's no excuse for what I did really, but for years I used to think it was because my mother was a member of an underground church group. They believed that sentient creatures had souls and they felt very strongly about it.

"It wasn't that she was caught or anything. But some of it must have rubbed off on me to make me do what I did. This catrist was standing there screaming at the cla.s.s that they were all animals and they better remember they were animals. And he was making so much noise I must have gotten confused. I did want him to quiet down because I had a cla.s.s to teach. And it just slipped out."

He sat for a long time. "It's sort of painful to talk about this. I never do. If word of this got back to the-' Then he let out a slight gasp. "I just realized. They're all dead. It 's all right if I talk about it!" Then he looked closely at Jonnie. "It is all right, isn't it?"

"Sure," said Jonnie. "I don't even know what a 'catrist' is."

"You know," said Soth, "I've come to believe I don't either, really. But because of what it did to my life, I pieced a lot of it together. There's lots of books on lots of planets. Two hundred fifty thousand years ago, Psychlos were really a different people. They didn't even have the name 'Psychlo.' I think sometime or other they must have gotten frightened of somebody invading them or something.

"As near as I could piece together, there was this group of carnival performers- you know, mountebanks, frauds. They were the original Psychlos. They used to hypnotize people on the stage and make them do funny things to get the audience to laugh at them. Just trash. Actually, just criminals.

"When this panic came on, they went to the emperor and told him something or other because the next thing anyone knew, they were in charge of the schools and medical centers. The race before that had been called after the current emperor according to books on other planets. Well, right at that time, they began to be called Psychlos. That was the name of these carnival performers. So instead of being called after the ruler, the race was now called after the 'Psychlos.' It means 'brain,' according to some old dictionaries. Another form of the word also means 'property of.' Everyone became the property of the Psychlos.

"Anyway, members of this mob of cutthroats began to call themselves 'catrist.' That means 'mental doctor.' So the people became 'Psychlos' or 'brains' and the 'catrist' or 'mental doctor' was the real, hidden government. They taught all the children. They inspected every citizen. They suppressed religion. They told people how to think.

"Oh, I was stupid. There's no excuse for what I did." He fell silent. "But this catrist was raising so much row! I should not blame my mother. I should never have blamed her." He paused again and drew a long breath. "It just blurted out. I said, 'They are not animals!' "

He shuddered and after a while said, "So that began my exile. Now you know."

What Jonnie now knew was that that mob of frauds was stark staring insane.

"Well," said Soth, coming out of his despondency, "if that isn't why you're here, why are you? An old ruin like me has nothing to offer."

Jonnie decided to dive in. "You obviously know mathematics."

Suspicion clouded Soth's already rheumy gaze. "How did you know my hobby was mathematics? It isn't in my record. I paid a female clerk five hundred credits once to see it and I know." The mystery of it threw him. Then he solved it. "Ah!" he swept his paw down the bookshelves. "My books!" Then he clouded over again. "But they're mostly outer-language books and very few people can read them. A lot of the races are even dead! Come," he pleaded, "tell me why you're here!"

"I want you to teach me about Psychlo mathematics," said Jonnie.

There was a sudden tension in Soth. He seemed to become confused. Then it seemed to clear away. "n.o.body has asked me to teach them anything for a hundred thirty years. You're an alien race, but what does it matter? There are hardly any Psychlos left. What do you want to know?"

The tension slid out of Jonnie. He'd made it!

Chapter 5.

"In the first place," said Soth, after he had made himself more comfortable and taken a small bite of the kerbango Jonnie had produced, "there are an awful lot of different kinds of mathematics- different races, you know. I sort of kept my interest in life by collecting them.

"There have been existing systems for lots of different whole numbers.

There's the 'binary system' like the Chatovarians use: it has only two numerals in it, one and zero; that's so they can use them in computers, in which the electric current pulse, or the direction of magnetization of an element, has one of two values. One value corresponds to the numeral zero; the other to numeral one. Any number in any system can be translated to the binary system using only zero and one. Unwieldy for beings, but understandable for the computers.

"Then there's a system based on the integer three, an entirely different one based on four, another on five, another on six, another on seven, still another on eight, yet another on nine and so on. There's even been one on twenty and one on sixty.

"For paper computation the best system is called the 'decimal' system, based on ten." (Jonnie knew about this from man-books.) "Psychlo mathematics are based on eleven; some people call this the 'undenary' system. It 's difficult so I won't try to teach you that."

"Oh, I would love to know about the 'undenary' system!" said Jonnie. His use of the words 'love to know' gave him a twinge of conscience. He hated this confused mess!