Battlefield Earth Part 76

They were disputing the cost and contract terms of hiring the Brigantes. Of all things! The planet needed a defense force. And these clauses that he had so painstakingly sorted out- spending his valuable time hour after hour with that General Snith-were all necessary.

Senior Mayor Africa was challenging the pay. He was saying that one hundred credits per Brigante per day was excessive, that even Council members only got five credits a day, and that if they spread credits around this way they would make them worthless! Wrangle, wrangle, wrangle, taking up picky and unimportant points!

Brown Limper had been making good progress. He had the Council whittled down to five now, but it certainly looked like four too many!

He cudgeled his brains as to how to solve this dilemma.

Driven by Lars out to the Brigante suburb of the city that day, it is true he had been taken a bit aback by what the Brigante women were doing. Right in the streets and with no clothes on at any time. But General Snith, during their conference, had said they were just frolicking.

Coming back, Lars had been talking about that wonderful, wonderful military leader of ancient times named...Bitter?...no...Hitler?Yes, Hitler. How he had been a champion of racial purity and moral uprightness. Racial purity didn't seem very interesting but "moral uprightness" had caught Brown Limper's attention. His father had always been a champion of it.

Sitting there listening to these endless arguments and objections, he recalled a conversation- purely social- he had had with that friendly creature, Terl. It had been on the subject of leverage.

If one had leverage, one could do pretty well what he pleased. Sound philosophy. Brown Limper had grasped that. He truly hoped Terl thought him an apt pupil, for he was very happy to have his friends.h.i.+p and help.

He sure didn't have any leverage on this Council! He tried to think of some way he could maneuver them into appointing himself and a secretary as the sole authority for the planet. He couldn't quite come up with anything and he pondered other things Terl had said: good, down-to-earth advice. Something about it being the right thing to do to pa.s.s a law and then arrest the violators or use their violations as leverage. Something like that.

It came to him in a flash.

He rapped for silence.

"We will table the resolution to accept the Brigante contract for now," said Brown Limper in his best voice of authority.

They quieted down and Asia folded his robes with a gesture of- of what was that- defiance? Well, he'd take care of him!

"I have another measure," said Brown Limper. "It has to do with morality." And he proceeded to make a speech about morality being the backbone of all societies and that officials must be honest and true and that their conduct must be beyond reproach and that they must not be discovered in any scandalous situations or circ.u.mstances.

It went down rather well. They were all reasonably honest men and they saw that official conduct should also be moral even though their different moral codes varied.

They unanimously pa.s.sed the offered resolution that scandalous official conduct should result in removal from post of any offender. They felt very upright about it.

At least they had gotten one resolution pa.s.sed. They adjourned.

Back in his office, Brown Limper reviewed some data with Lars about "b.u.t.ton cameras." Lars had some knowledge of them. Yes, he thought Terl could tell him where some were in the compound.

The following morning, when all the officials were out of their rooms at the hotel, Lars, in the name of decency, put some b.u.t.ton cameras in unsuspected places in rooms and connected them to automatic picto-recorders. The following night, Brown Limper had a very confidential meeting with General Snith. As a result, a dozen of the better-looking Brigante women were employed at the hotel in various capacities by the manager, who was short of help and who agreed that such good-looking women should be in posts that directly contacted his guests to make their stay more comfortable.

The evening after that, Terl thought Brown's measures were very wise and said he was proud of him to have thought of it all on his own.

Brown Limper was very pleased and he went back to his office, to work late at night a.s.sembling the steps of his plans. Notable among them were charges to bring against Jonnie Goodboy Tyler when Brown Limper at last had a free hand. The list of charges were getting pretty long, and punishment was overdue.

Chapter 2.

It was the dark of the moon. The lights of the cage area had been turned out. The sentry had been told to stay elsewhere.

Brown Limper sat on the ground. Terl crouched close to the bars. Lars Th.o.r.enson, using a tiny masked light to occasionally resort to his dictionary, sat between them.

Their voices were very low. There must be no possibility of any of this being overheard. Tonight was the big one!

Terl's claws twitched and little surges of energy ran through him. This conference was so important, its successful outcome so vital to his plans, he was having trouble breathing. Yet he must sound indifferent, casual, helpful (a new word he had learned). Conflicting impulses had to be sealed off, such as reaching through the bars (which he had de-electrified, unbeknownst to them, by using the inside remote control hidden in the stones); the pleasure of tearing them with claws was very, very subordinate to what he was attempting tonight. He made himself tensely concentrate on the business at hand.

Brown Limper was relating in whispers that he had succeeded in exposing blatant scandal in the Council. He had taken each of the four other Senior Mayors aside and shown them certain recordings, and they had realized their conduct was a total violation of their own laws. Each had looked at himself performing perversions he had recently been introduced to by the Brigante women, as many as four women at a time, and had agreed with shame he was a potential disgrace to the government. (Lars had trouble finding "shame" in the Psychlo dictionary but at last discovered it in the archaic section as an old Hockner word, obsolete.) A resolution appointed Brown Limper Staffor Executive for the Council, a.s.sisted by the Secretary (who could sign his name after much drilling but who otherwise could not read). The entire authority of the Council now reposed in one Brown Limper Staffor as Senior Mayor Planet from here on out and forevermore as the most deserving and competent Councilman. The others had packed and gone home. Brown Limper's word was now law for the whole planet.

Terl would have thought some note of elation would be detectable. That was how he would have felt. He whispered an approval and a commendation on how statesmanlike this conduct was. But Brown Limper did not brighten. "Is there something else I could help you with?" whispered Terl.

Brown Limper drew a long breath, almost a sigh of despair. He had drawn up a list of criminal charges against that Tyler.

"Good," said Terl in a very low voice. "You now have the power to handle him. Are they strong charges?"

"Oh, yes," whispered Brown Limper, brightening. "He interrupted a Council-ordered removal of a tribe, kidnapped the Coordinators, murdered some of the tribesmen, stole their goods, and violated their tribal rights."

"I should think," whispered Terl, "that that was serious enough."

"There's even more," said Brown Limper. "He ambushed a Psychlo convoy and mercilessly slaughtered it, gave no quarter, and stole their vehicles."

"You have proof of all this?" whispered Terl.

"Witnesses from the tribe are right here. And picto-recorder pictures of the ambush are being shown nightly at the Academy right over there in the hills. Lars has made copies."

"I should think all that is more than adequate to bring about justice," said Terl. The word "justice" was another one they had to look up in the translations going back and forth.

"There's even more," said Brown Limper. "When he turned over the two billion Galactic credits found at the compound, it was over three hundred credits short. That's theft, a felony."

Terl gasped. He wasn't gasping at the shortage. He was gasping at two billion Galactic credits. It made the coffins he supposed were in the cemetery on Psychlo mere kerbango change.

He needed a few minutes to sort this out and he told Lars he needed a fresh breathe-gas cartridge for his mask. Lars got him one, not noticing the electrification switch had been reversed. Terl had to flip his remote, which he did in the nick of time to prevent an electrocution.

As he fitted the new cartridges in place, Terl thought furiously. Old Numph? Must have been. Why, the b.u.mbling idiot wasn't so b.u.mbling after all! He'd had other swindles going for...thirty years?...must be! Two billion Galactic credits! Suddenly Terl updated his plans. He knew exactly what he could do with this. Those two billion were going into three or four sealed coffins marked "radiation killed" so they never would be opened and they were going to go right into his cemetery. He had had slightly less workable plans. He abandoned them and a whole new panorama spread before him, one that not only could not fail but also would be enormously profitable. All in a flash he had things rearranged. A plan far safer than he had had. Far more workable. No desperation in it.

The close, dark conference got going again.

"What," whispered Terl, "is your problem really then?" He knew what it was exactly. This idiot couldn't lay his paws on the animal Tyler!

Brown Limper sagged once more. "It's one thing to have charges. It 's quite another to get my hands on Tyler."

"Hmm," said Terl, hoping he sounded very thoughtful and considerate (a new word Terl had looked up). "Let me see. Ah. Hmm. The operating principle here is to attract attract him to the area." This was just common security chief technology. "You can't go out and find him as he is elusive or too well protected, so the right thing to do is to lure him here, away from protection, and then pounce." him to the area." This was just common security chief technology. "You can't go out and find him as he is elusive or too well protected, so the right thing to do is to lure him here, away from protection, and then pounce."

Brown Limper sat up with a sudden surge of hope. What a brilliant idea!

"The last time he was active here," whispered Terl, keeping the twitches down to a minimum, "was when we did a transs.h.i.+pment firing. If another transs.h.i.+pment firing were done and he knew about it, he would be here in a flash. Then you could pounce."

Brown Limper saw that clearly.

"But," said Terl, "you have another problem too. He is using company property. Company planes, company equipment. Now if you personally owned all that, you would really have him on grand theft."

Brown Limper got lost. Lars repeated it and clarified it. Brown Limper couldn't quite grasp it.

"And," whispered Terl, staying very calm, "he is using the planet. Now I don't know whether you know that the Intergalactic Mining Company paid the imperial Psychlo government trillions of credits for this planet. It is company property!"

Lars had to look up things in both the Psychlo and an old English dictionary to get across how much was a trillion and then had to write it for Brown Limper. At last Brown Limper could at least grasp that it was an awful lot of money.

"But the planet," said Terl, "is now mostly mined out." This was a flagrant falsehood but these two wouldn't know that. A planet wasn't "mined out" until you were almost through the crust to the liquid core. "I just so happens that it is now worth only a few billion credits." It was still worth about forty trillion. c.r.a.p, he'd sure have to cover his tracks on this one! But it was briliant briliant.

"I am," whispered Terl, "the resident agent and representative of the company and authorized to legally dispose of its property." What a lie! Oh, would he have to cover his tracks. "You realized that, of course. The animal Tyler did, which was why he kept me alive."

"Oh!" whispered Brown Limper. "That had puzzled me! He is so bloodthirsty I couldn't understand how he let you live when he murdered the Chamcos that very same day."

"Well, now you know his secret," said Terl. "He himself was trying to negotiate with me to buy the Earth branch of Intergalactic Mining and the planet. That's why he feels he can go around using company equipment and stamping all over the globe. Of course I wouldn't hear of it, knowing his bad character." (The last was another word Terl had looked up.) Brown Limper was suddenly engulfed by the trap Tyler had "set" for him. For a moment he felt the very earth he was sitting on was crumbling under him.

"He knows where this two billion is?" asked Terl.

"Yes," whispered Brown Limper tensely. Good heavens, how blind he had been! Tyler was going to buy the company and the planet, and what would happen to Brown Limper then?

Terl had it all sized up. "But I wouldn't sell. Not to the animal Tyler. I was thinking of you."

Brown Limper whistled with relief. Then he looked around over his shoulders both ways and leaned forward, impatient at the delays of cross-translation. "Would you sell the company and the planet to me? I mean us?"

Terl thought about it. Then he said, "It's worth more than two billion, but if I have it in cash and a few other considerations, I will do it."

Brown Limper had studied a lot of economics lately. He knew how to be cunning. "With a proper bill of sale?"

"Oh, yes," said Terl. "The bill of sale would be legal as soon as signed. But it would have to be recorded on Psychlo as a formality." Oh, devils, if he ever tried to record such a thing, if they even heard of it, they'd vaporize him the slow way!

He pretended the last cartridge had been spent and he bought time with another change. There was a condition where a planet was written off. The company never sold a planet. When one was abandoned, they had a weapon they used. Terl had already decided to destroy this planet. He'd already covered the ground. He got a grip on himself. Any bill of sale he signed would go up in smoke if he destroyed the planet. Good. It might take the company two years to counterattack. He had lots of time. Yes, he could safely sign a bogus bill of sale.

Once more the close huddle was going again. "To make such a concession, you would have to do the following: One, get my old office set up; Two, let me work in there freely to calculate and build the console of a new transs.h.i.+pment rig; Three, provide any and all needed supplies; and Four, provide me with adequate protection and force at the firing itself."

Brown Limper was a little doubtful. "But I will have to take the two billion to the company offices on Psychlo," said Terl. "I'm no thief."

Brown Limper could appreciate that.

"And I will have to record the deed of sale for both the planet and the company branch here for it to be totally legal," said Terl. "I wouldn't want you holding an unrecorded deed. I want to be fair to you, too." (That was another word, "fair," he had looked up.) Yes, said Brown Limper, one could see he was leaning over backward to be fair and legal. He was still a little doubtful.

"And if you have a bill of sale to the company you own all the equipment and minesites as well as the planet, and Tyler won't be permitted to fly about."

Brown Limper sat a little straighter. He began to get a little eager.

"Also," continued Terl, "You can let it be known through various channels that you are going to fire a s.h.i.+pment to Psychlo. And the moment he hears that, he'll be right over here and you've got him! And the moment he hears that, he'll be right over here and you've got him!"

That did it!

Brown Limper almost reached through the bars to shake hands on it until Lars reminded him they were electrified. He got up, restraining an impulse to jump about.

"I'll draw up the deed!" he said. Too loud. "I'll draw up the deed," he whispered. "All your conditions are accepted. We will do exactly what you say!" He rushed off in the wrong direction to get to the ground car. Lars had to collect him and get him into it. Brown Limper had a wild look in his eyes.

"Now we will see justice done," Brown Limper kept repeating all the way back to Denver.

Terl, in his cage, couldn't believe his luck. Laughs and twitches fought to take over. He had done it! And he would be- was!- one of the richest Psychlos alive!

Power! Success! He had done it! But would he ever have to be sure this accursed planet went up in smoke. As soon as he left.

Chapter 3.

Jonnie was pitching rocks down off the bluff and into the lake. The vast lake, really an inland sea, stretched out to a cloudy horizon. There was a storm building up out there now, a not uncommon thing for this huge expanse of water.

The bluff on which he stood rose nearly sheer, two hundred feet above the lake. Erosion or some volcanic cataclysm from the cloud-hidden peaks to the northeast had covered the bluff top with rocks the size of a man's fist. They were simply made for throwing.

He had formed the habit of daily trotting down here from the minesite a few miles away. It was hot and humid here at the equator but the running did him good. He was not afraid of the various animals around here, ferocious though they might be, for he never went unarmed and the beasts seldom attacked unless disturbed. There was a road of sorts to follow, and the Pyschlos must have made a habit of coming here from the minesite, perhaps to swim, for the road went across the bluff and down to a beach on the other side. No, not to swim. Psychlos didn't like swimming. Perhaps to go boating?

Once he had read that this lake area had been one of the most heavily populated on the continent. Several millions had lived here. The Psychlos seemed to have taken care of them long, long ago, for there was not even a trace of fields or huts, much less people, left.

He wondered why the Psychlos mainly hunted people. Dr. MacKendrick said it was probably a matter of sympathetic nerve vibration: animals might not suffer acutely enough to add to the enjoyment of the monsters, or perhaps it was just that man's nerve pattern, in a body with two arms, two legs, and upright, paralleled their own. Even their nerve gas specialized in sentient beings and was far less effective on four-legged creatures and reptiles. There was a Psychlo text on its use and it said as much. Something about its being attuned to "more highly developed central nervous systems." But whatever might be the reasons for that, these Psychlos at the minesite had not made much of a dent in the game. And the game, smelling him, did not go racing away. He suddenly realized that he didn't smell even vaguely like a Psychlo.

The storm out there was building up. He glanced toward the very distant minesite to see whether there was any rush getting back there to beat the storm.

Very tiny in the distance a small tri-wheeler ground car had left the mine. Somebody coming. To see him? Or just somebody out for a ride?

Jonnie went back to pitching rocks. The current state of affairs was a bit gloomy. One of the Psychlos had died; the other three were holding on. They had found about a third of the corpses had two items in their heads, and Dr. MacKendrick was practicing on the cadavers to find out how to bore in and remove them without killing a Psychlo-in case one of the last three made it. They still had two with two objects in their heads. Might even be a relief to them to get rid of the hideous things!

But Jonnie did not much like all this business with cadavers and he turned his mind to something more cheerful.

During the battle he had made an interesting discovery. He had been flying that mine platform with hands. He hadn't recalled that until a week had gone by. MacKendrick said it was another part of his brain taking over the lost functions. Under stress, he had a.s.sumed, those "lost" functions and nerves healed because of a battle. But Jonnie didn't believe that.

Jonnie's theory was that he manipulated the nerves. And it was working! He had begun by simply willing his arm and leg to do what he wanted. Each day he had gotten a bit better. And now he could trot. No cane. And he could throw.

For a hunter trained as he was, the inability to sling a kill-club had made him feel helpless. And here he was pitching rocks.

He threw one out. It went arcing through the air, down off the bluff, and sent a small white geyser up in the lake, the "plunk" coming back to him a moment later.

Pretty good! If he did say it himself.

The storm out there was towering up a bit higher, grayish black, a bit ugly. He glanced toward the minesite and found the tri-wheeler had almost arrived. It stopped.