Battlefield Earth (110 page)

“It would be an awful way to die,” said Jonnie.

Angus straightened up. “Well!” he said just like he had popped up out of a dive in the lake. “Psychlo is gone! The empire is gone! And that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about anymore! Good riddance!”

     Despite emotional reactions, Jonnie had been raised a hunter. His had been a life in the mountains, much of it spent alone on trails where pumas and grizzlies and wolves could lurk. There were times when you could feel a planning predator behind you, watching for a false move, concentrated on intentions of its own.

For the last fifteen seconds he had had that feeling. Danger!

He spun about, tensed for action.

The small gray man behind him said, “Oh, didn’t you know?”

Jonnie let his hand fall away from his gun butt.

The small gray man appeared not to have noticed. “A lot adds up now that I didn’t understand before. Yes, I fear

Psychlo is gone. We knew that, of course. We weren’t sure how.”

Angus said, “Are there any Psychlos left?

The small gray man shook his head.

The other small gray man, who had arrived by teleportation, had been lurking in the shadows. He came forward now. “We checked it and checked it. Probes told us Psychlo was gone only a couple of weeks after it happened. We’ve had ships out everywhere….”

The first small gray man had glanced at him. A cautionary glance?

The other small gray man smoothly shifted what he was going to say. “The transshipment rigs were all at minesite centrals or at regency palaces: that was company custom. All their executive personnel and high-ranking officers on planets were quartered near the platforms- pure laziness, really, so they wouldn’t have far to walk and could get dispatches sooner. And the bulk of their breathe-gas storage was also in the same area.

“The first word they got- they never went in much for space travel as such, since they had a monopoly on teleportation-and it wouldn’t have gotten back to them soon enough any way- was when they fired into

Psychlo.

“We of course couldn’t examine all universes, but knowing Psychlos, we are positive there are no transshipment rigs or central compounds or executives left. We ourselves gave it up over five months ago. The time limit would have been six months for breathe-gas to last. And that expired six months ago.”

Jonnie had been watching them carefully. These men were hiding something. And they wanted something. They were a threat. Down deep he knew that. Their manner was easy. They were very pleasant and smooth. But their frankness was a pose.

“How can you be sure,” said Jonnie, “that some Psychlo engineer didn’t build a transshipment rig?”

“Oh,” said the second small gray man, “he would have fired straight to us at once if he avoided firing into Psychlo. The rig nearest us blew to bits. Took half a city with it. Horrible. Just by a freak, I was out sailing with my family that day, miles away. However, our own offices are fifteen levels underground.”

Was the original small gray man giving him a warning sign? In any case, he got interested in his pointed fingernails.

Angus said, “I don’t see any planets listed that have the same atmosphere as Psychlo. Are there any other planets that have that breathe-gas?”

The two small gray men thought it over. Then the one who had come latest said, “Fobia. I don’t think they’d list it.” The two of them laughed about something.

The original one said, “Excuse us. It ’s kind of a joke. The best-kept state secrets of Psychlo are all a kind of open book in our business. That they would omit listing ‘Fobia’ is so typically Psychlo. It ’s where they exiled King Hak about two hundred sixty-one thousand years ago. It ’s the only other planet in that system, and it is so much further out than Psychlo, you can’t even see it from the home planet with an unaided eye. It is so cold, its atmosphere has liquefied and lies in lakes on the surface. They built a little dome there and exiled Hak and his fellow conspirators and then got so scared he’d escape they sent assassins in and killed them all. Typically Psychlo. They cut the whole thing out of their schoolbooks. Let’s see your astrographic tables.” He took them, looked a while, and then laughed and showed his companion. “Not there! An omitted planet right in their own system!”

In response to Jonnie’s look, the second one said, “No, not even any Psychlos there, and nothing going on there either. It ’s nothing but breathe-gas ice and very tiny anyway. As of a couple of weeks ago, probes showed it totally deserted. No, you can be certain that’s the end of the Psychlos. I saw on scans I reviewed here that you have a very few still alive, but you didn’t get them to build this!” He patted the side of the console dragon. “For reasons best known to Psychlos they’d kill themselves first!” He shook his head. “There were a few alive.

Engineers in branch minesites. And don’t think one didn’t try to persuade them! They’re all dead now.”

Was the original one trying to turn the other one off? But the new one was a bit better dressed and appeared to be the superior of the other.

“I think,” said the original one, “that we really ought to get together for a formal conference. There are some things to take up.”

Ah, thought Jonnie. Now we get to it. “I’m not a member of the government,” he hedged.

The newest arrival said, “We’re aware of that. But you do enjoy its confidence. We were thinking that possibly if you and the two of us could have a talk, you might assist us to arrange a conference with your government.”

“A talk about having a serious talk,” said the other.

Jonnie had an inspiration. He recalled the first gray man had drunk yarb tea. “I’ll be having dinner in half an hour. If you can eat our food, I’d be pleased to have you join me.”

“Oh, we eat anything,” said the newest small gray man. “Anything there is. We would be so pleased.”

“Half an hour it is,” said Jonnie. And he left to tell Chong-won he had dinner guests after all.

Now

maybe he’d find out the threat that these two posed. He wasn’t imagining it. These two were dangerous!

     The small gray men could really eat.

Jonnie had been surprised at how well the chief had decorated the main room of the spare apartment. Colored paper lanterns- with mine lamps in them- had been hung about; two paintings, one of a tiger coming toward you in the snow, the other of a bird in flight, decorated the walls; side tables for serving had been set up; the large center table where they sat even had a cloth on it.

Mr. Tsung had insisted Jonnie don a gold brocade tunic- after Jonnie refused to wear a robe of green satin- and Jonnie looked quite nice.

Some very subdued but kind of squeaky music was coming from someplace. It and the click of dishes that Chief Chong-won kept hauling in and the jaws of the small gray men were the only sounds.

Jonnie had tried to invite Angus but he had said he had to keep an eye on that moon gyro. He had wanted Stormalong to come but the pilot was dead tired and catching naps in the ops room. He had asked Chief Chong-won and Mr. Tsung to also eat with them but they said no, they had to serve. So just Jonnie and the two small gray men had wound up as the diners. Jonnie felt that this was a pity for there was an awful lot of food. And Jonnie, so far, had no one to talk to. The small gray men just ate. And ate and ate!

The dinner had begun with appetizers- egg rolls, barbecued loin ribs, and paper-wrapped chicken; these had been served in mounds and had all been eaten up by the small gray men. Then various noodles had been served- pancake noodles, yat ga mein, mun yee noodles, war won ton, beeflo mein, yee fu noodles, and gorn lo won ton, tubs of them! And the small gray men had eaten them all up. Large platters of chicken had been served- almond chicken, cashew chicken, button mushroom chicken, and lichee chicken. And the small gray men had eaten all that up. Then there had been beef dishes- Mongolian beef, sauteed eggplant with beef, tomato beef, and chili pepper steak. And they had gotten around that! Massive platters of Peking duck, cooked in three ways, had, in its turn, disappeared down their gullets. They were working now on egg dishes-chicken egg foo yung, precious flower egg, and mushroom egg foo yung.

Jonnie wondered where Chief Chong-won had gotten all the ingredients until he recalled that game had been plentiful, including lots of fowl in the lake, and that the Chinese had had time to plant and harvest gardens, using an area protected by the dam armor cable to keep the wild beasts out of it.

He himself had not eaten very much. Mr. Tsung had had it relayed to him disparagingly that most of these dishes were southern Chinese cookery and that true cookery had evolved in the north during the Ch’ing Dynasty when his family took care of things. The Peking duck and Mongolian beef should get his main attention. Jonnie had complied. It was pretty good food.

Not as good, of course, as his Aunt Ellen’s venison stew, but quite edible. The nurse had sent in word he was not to have any rice wine because of the sulfa but that was fine- Jonnie didn’t much care for drinking anyway.

These small gray men were eating the entire banquet that had been planned for thirty people! Where did they put it all?

Jonnie took the time to study them.

Their skin was gray and kind of rough. Their eyes were a dull gray-blue, maybe like the sea, and had heavy lids. Their heads were round and hairless. Their noses took a sharp upturn just at the tip. The ears were a bit odd- reminded one more of gills than ears. They had four fingers and a thumb on each hand, though the nails were very pointed. They really looked quite like men. The main difference was their teeth: they had two rows of teeth, the second set just behind the first.

Watching them eat so voraciously and hugely, Jonnie tried to figure out what genetic lines such creatures might come from. They reminded him of something and he sought to place it. Then he recalled a fish that a pilot who was passing through Victoria had shown them. The pilot had been downed by fuel failure in the Indian Ocean and had ejected with a life raft. While waiting to be picked up he was attacked by these fish. When he was rescued, they had shot one of the fish with a cannon and picto-recorded it. It had been pretty big. What had he called it? Jonnie tried to think. They had looked it up in a man-book. Ah, a shark! That had been the name! Yes. These small gray men had a similar skin, similar teeth. Maybe they were evolved from sharks that had become sentient.

It finally came down to tea. It wasn’t that the small gray men couldn’t eat any more. It was that Chief Chong-won had run out of food! The tea was served, and the first small gray man asked with just a trace of worry whether this was “yarb tea.” He was reassured that it was just plain green tea, a fact that seemed to bring relief.

They sat back and smiled at Jonnie. They said that was the best dinner they had had in some time, maybe ever, and Chong-won slid out to tell and please the cook.

Under their gaze, Jonnie thought to himself that now they were finished with all the food in sight, they were going to try to eat him! But no, that was vaporing. They were quite pleasant, really. Now maybe he could find out what they were all about, what they really wanted.

“You know,” said the original small gray man, “about these hostile forces- your trouble here was really your defenses. Cheap trash. But that’s the Psychlos for you. They never put their money in good defenses. Personnel were cheap. They’d rather buy half-a-dozen new females or a ton or two of kerbango than proper armaments.”

He looked at Jonnie as though about to apprise him of something utterly devastating. “You know how much those antiaircraft guns you use cost?

Less than five thousand credits. Cheap trash! They won’t even shoot up to two hundred thousand feet. Bargain-basement, rummage-sale armaments. They probably bought them from some war surplus, used. And some executive put the new price on the books and pocketed the difference.”

“What should a proper antiaircraft gun cost?” said Jonnie to keep it going.

The newest small gray man thought a moment. Then he brought a small gray book out of his vest pocket and opened it. The page seemed to get bigger and he scanned down it with a little reader glass. “Ah, here’s one. ‘Surface/space combination repulsion, multicomputer firing defense cannon: maximum range 599 miles, 15,000 shots a minute, simultaneous tracking of 130 vessels or 2,300 bombs, destruction potential A- 13 (that’s capital ship penetration), cost before discounts, C 123,475 plus freight and installation.’ Now batteries of those located around your strong points would have handled that entire combined force or kept them so high up they could not have launched atmosphere crafts.”

The original small gray man agreed. “Yes, that was the main trouble. The Psychlos were both improvident and credit-pinching at the same time. I don’t think they even kept up this planet’s defenses.”

Jonnie could agree with that. He felt he was going to find out something about these fellows now that they were talking. Keep them talking! “Well, just at a guess,” said Jonnie, “what would you say proper defenses for this planet would cost?”

He had started something!

Both small gray men put their heads together. The original one started pulling all sorts of little things out of his pocket, looking into them and finding things. The newer arrival had a large ring on his left finger and at first Jonnie thought he was simply fiddling with it: not so; he was twisting and tapping it with sudden little jerks, and a long thread, so thin as to be nearly invisible, was coiling out of the ring.

They were very intense and their voices murmured and blended together. “…thirty space probes…maintained carrier wave probe warning beams…fifteen space drones, automatic firing at all nonsignal identified craft…cost of equipping terrestrial craft with identification beacons…2,000 atmosphere beacons…256 Mark 50 combat fighters…400 fly-away, antipersonnel tanks…7,000 antipersonnel road barricades…one hundred city cable defenses with rectractable gates…fifty heath/color search drones…fifty automatic target destroy surface drones….”

They were finished. The newer one snapped off the thread at the ring and tapped it at the end, and with a little pop! the thread expanded into a long sheet of paper like a tape. He gave it a small flick and it landed in front of the original small gray man. He picked it up, scanned the figures on it, and then looked at the end.

“With spare parts and freight,” he said, “it comes to C500,962,878,431 at two parts in eleven annual interest rate, plus an estimated C285,000,006 annual military and maintenance personnel salaries, housing and equipage.”

He tossed the long tape across the table to Jonnie and concluded, “There it is. An efficient and economical planetary defense system. All top-of-the-line merchandise. Good for a hundred years. That’s the sort of thing you should have had! And you can still have it!”

That was C498,960,878,431 more than Earth had! It had made him realize how broke Earth was. Now was the time to find out more about these two. “I surely appreciate your information. If you will excuse me, what are you two gentlemen? Arms salesmen?”

He might as well have dropped a bomb on them, they looked so startled! Then they looked at each other and both of them laughed.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” said the original small gray man. “It is so terribly impolite of us. You see, we are quite well known in our respective areas. And we know so much about you, in fact, know you so well, that it just never occurred to us that we never introduced ourselves!

“I am His Excellency Dries Gloton. And I am very pleased to meet you, Sir Lord Jonnie Tyler.”

Jonnie shook his hand. It was a dry hand, quite rough.

“And this,” said His Excellency, “is Lord Voraz. Lord Voraz, Sir Lord Jonnie Tyler.”

Jonnie shook his dry, rough hand and said, “It is really just Jonnie Tyler, Your Lordship. I have no titles.”

“We choose to doubt that,” said Lord Voraz.

His Excellency said, “Lord Voraz is the Central Director, Chief Executive Officer, and Overlord of the Galactic Bank.”

Jonnie blinked but bowed.

Lord Voraz said, “Dries here likes to call himself the chief collections executive but it is a sort of bank joke. He is actually the Branch Manager of the Galactic Bank for this sector. You might have noticed a time or two that I stepped on his toes accidentally. A Branch Manager has total authority for his sector and is a bit jealous of his prerogatives.” He laughed, teasing his junior. “Your planet comes in his sector and dealings about it are entirely up to him. He’s the one who has to show a profit for his area. Now I, I am simply here because the emissaries have met. These are very troubled-”

Dries Gloton cut him off sharply. “His Lordship can’t be expected to know all the ins and outs of sector business. He does very well to keep up with universes.”

Lord Voraz laughed again, “Oh, dear, I am really sorry we worried you. Why, we have been looking-”

Dries cut him off again, “We’re just here to help, Sir Lord Jonnie. By the way, would you like to start an account? A personal account?” He was fishing in his pockets for the materials. “We can give you a very low number and absolute confidence assured.”

Suddenly Jonnie realized that he had no money. Not just no money in his pockets. He didn’t have and never had had any money at all. He’d even given the gold coin away. He thought maybe he got pilot pay that was given to Chrissie, but he had never seen it. He steered off apprehensive thoughts of Chrissie quickly. He had better keep his mind on this talk. But he was broke. Penniless.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps later if I ever get any money to deposit.”

The two gave each other a quick look. But Dries said, “Well, just remember, we’re not enemies of yours.”

“I think you would be very bad to have as enemies,” said Jonnie, still fishing. “That fleet wouldn’t go away until you talked to Snowl.”

“Oh, that!” said Dries Gloton. “The Galactic Bank has lots of services for its customers. What you saw there was just notarial services. They needed a radio notary code trace to attest and verify that it was a valid conference order. He wouldn’t take their word, of course. They trust the bank.”

“Was calling the emissaries here a bank service, too?” said Jonnie.

“Well, no,” began Lord Voraz.

“You could call it so, if you like,” said Dries. “For sometimes such a conference is arranged as a service. It ’s in the interest of the Galactic Bank to have civilized planets do business together smoothly.”

Jonnie was not at all satisfied but he put an easy face on it. “These emissaries do seem to obey you, though. They call you ‘Your Excellency’ and they call Lord Voraz ‘His Worship.’ What do you do if they don’t obey you? You know, not come to the conference or do what you say.”

The thought shocked Lord Voraz. Before Dries Gloton could stop him, he said, “Unthinkable! Why, the bank would call in their loans, shut off their credit. Their economies would shatter. They would go bankrupt. Their whole planet could be sold right out from under them. Oh, they would think several times before-”

Dries finally got his attention and shut him off. “Now, Your Worship,” he said softly, “I know you feel strongly about these matters but we must remember that this is my sector and things that concern this planet are my worry. Forgive me. I think possibly Sir Lord Jonnie doesn’t really know too much about the Galactic Bank. We haven’t reprinted the information leaflets for ages. Would you like to know more about it, Sir Lord Jonnie?”