Battlefield Earth (15 page)

     Jonnie sat high on the blade machine. The aching cold wind blew puffs of snow, momentarily obscuring the compound. Jonnie’s attention was caught by the approaching crowd. Their combined footfalls made the earth shake.

The place chosen for the demonstration was a small plateau jutting out from the compound. It was a few thousand square feet in extent but ended in a sharp-edged cliff that dropped more than two hundred feet into a ravine. There was room to maneuver but one had to stay away from that edge.

Terl came stomping toward him through the light snow. He stepped up on a lower frame of the blade machine to put his huge face near Jonnie’s.

“See that crowd?” said Terl.

Jonnie looked at them. They were gathered by the compound. Zzt was over to their left.

“See this speaker?” said Terl. He jostled a speaking-horn thing in his hand. He had used it before in the drilling.

“See this blaster?” said Terl, and he patted a belt handgun he had buckled on, a huge thing.

“If you do one thing wrong,” said Terl, “or foul up in any way, I will gun you right off that rig. You’ll be very dead.

Splattered dead.”

Terl reached up and made sure the leash was secure; he had wrapped it around the roll bar and welded the end to the rear bumper. It didn’t leave much room for Jonnie to move. His instructions had gone unheard by the small crowd. Now Terl approached them and turned, stood with his huge feet apart, seemed to swell, and yelled, “Start it up!”

Jonnie started it up. He felt uneasy; a sixth sense was biting him, like when you had a puma behind you that you hadn’t seen. It wasn’t Terl’s threats. It was something else. He looked over the crowd.

“Raise the blade!” roared Terl, through the horn.

Jonnie did. “Lower the blade!” Jonnie did. “Roll it ahead.” Jonnie did. “Back it up.” Jonnie did.

“Put it in a circle.” Jonnie did.

“Now build a mound of snow from all angles!”

Jonnie started maneuvering, handling the controls, taking light scrapes of snow, pushing them to a center. He was doing better than just making a mound; he was building a square-sided pile and leveling off its top. He worked rapidly, backing up, pushing in more snow. The precisely geometric mound took shape.

He had just one more run to make inward, a run that would carry him toward the cliff a few hundred feet away.

Suddenly the controls did not respond. There had been a prolonged whirring whine in the guts of the control box. And every knob and lever on the control panel went slack!

The blade machine yawed to the right, yawed to the left.

Jonnie hammered at the slack controls. Nothing bit! The blade abruptly rose high in the air.

The machine rumbled relentlessly forward and rose up to the top of the pile, almost somersaulted over backward. At the top, it slammed down flat. Then it almost did a forward flip as it went down the other side.

It was rolling straight toward the cliff edge!

Jonnie punched the kill button time after time but it had no effect on the roaring engine.

He fought the controls. They stayed slack.

Wildly he looked back at the crowd. He got a fleeting impression of Zzt off to the side. The brute had something in its paw.

Jonnie strained at the collar that held him to this deadly machine.

He tugged at the flexirope. It was as unyielding as ever.

The cliff edge was coming nearer.

There was a manual blade control to his left, held by a hook. Jonnie fought to get the hook loose. If he could drop the blade it might stick and hold. The hook wouldn’t let go.

Jonnie grabbed in his pocket for a fire flint and banged the flint against the hook. The hook let go. By its own weight the scraper blade came down in a swooping arc and gouged into the rocky earth. The machine rocked and slowed.

There was a small explosion under the hood. An instant later smoke shot up in the air. And a split second after that a roaring tongue of flame rose.

The cliff edge was only a few feet away. Jonnie stared at it for an instant through the growing sheets of flame. The machine edged forward, buckling its scraper blade.

Jonnie whirled to the roll bar behind him. The flexirope was wrapped around and around it. Pressing the rope against the metal he attacked it with the flint. He had tried it before with no success. But on the verge of being yanked in flames two hundred feet down, hope was all he had left.

His back was getting scorched. He turned to face front. The instrument panel was beginning to glow red hot.

The machine inched closer to the edge.

Small explosions sounded as instruments burst. The searing metal of the panel’s upper edge was glowing with heat.

Jonnie grabbed what slack he had on the flexirope and held it against the red-hot metal edge. The rope began to melt!

It took all his will power to hold his hands there. The flexirope dripped molten drops.

The machine teetered. At any moment the blade was going to go into vacant space to shoot the machine into thin air.

The flexirope parted!

Jonnie went off the machine in a long dive and rolled.

With a shuddering groan, the last support of the blade snapped. Flames geysered. As though shot from a catapult, the machine leaped into empty space.

It struck far below on the slope, bounced, plunged to a stop, and was consumed in fire.

Jonnie pressed his burned hands into the cooling snow.

Terl was looking for Zzt.

When the machine finally went over, Terl had looked around in sudden suspicion. But Zzt wasn’t there.

The crowd had laughed. Especially at the last part of it when the machine went. And their laughter was like daggers in Terl’s ears.

Numph just stood there, shaking his head. He seemed almost cheerful when he commented to Terl, “Well, just shows you what animals can do.” Only then had he laughed. “They pee on the floor!”

They had drifted back to their offices and Terl was now searching the transport compound. In the underground floors, he walked past rows and rows of out-of-use vehicles, battle planes, trucks, blade scrapers…yes, and ground cars, some of them quite posh. It had not struck him before how villainous was Zzt’s pawing off on him of that old wreck of a Mark ll.

He searched fruitlessly for half an hour and then decided to try the repair room again.

Seething, he stomped into it and stared around.

His earbones picked up a tiny whisper of metal on metal.

He knew that sound. It was the safety slide being pulled back on a blaster.

“Stand right there,” said Zzt. “Keep your paws well away from your belt gun.”

Terl turned. Zzt had been standing just inside a dark tool locker.

Terl was boiling. “You installed a remote control when you ‘fixed’ that motor!”

“Why not?” said Zzt. “And a remote destruct charge as well.”

Terl was incredulous. “You admit it!”

“No witnesses here. Your word, my word. Means nothing.”

“But it was your own machine!”

“Written off. Plenty of machines.” “But why did you do it?”

“I thought it was pretty clever, actually.” He stepped forward, holding the long-barreled blast gun in one hand.

“But why?”

“You let our pay and bonuses be cut. If you didn’t do it, you let it be done.”

“But look, if I could make animal operators, profits would come back.”

“That’s your idea.” It ’s a good idea!” snapped Terl.

“All right. I’ll be frank. You ever try to keep machines going without mechanics? Your animal operators would have just messed up equipment. One just did, didn’t it?”

“You messed that up,” said Terl. “You realize that if this occurred on your report, you’d be out of work.”

“It won’t occur on my report. There are no witnesses. Numph even saw me walk off before the thing went wild. He would never forward the report. Besides, they all thought it was funny.”

“Lots of things can be funny,” said Terl.

Zzt motioned with the blaster barrel. “Why don’t you just walk out of here and have a nice crap.”

Leverage. Leverage, thought Terl. He was fresh out of it.

He left the garage.

     Jonnie was a mound of misery in the cage.

The monster had pitched him in there before going off.

It was cold but Jonnie could not hold a flint in his hands to start a fire. His fingers were a mass of blisters. And somehow, right then, he didn’t want much to do with fire.

His face was scorched, eyebrows and beard singed away. Some of his hair was gone. The old Chinko uniform cloth must have been fireproof- it had not ignited or melted, thus saving body burns.

Bless the Chinkos. Poor devils. With their polite phrases and brightness they had yet been exterminated.

That was one lesson to be learned. Anyone who befriended or sought to cooperate with the Psychlos was doomed from the beginning.

Terl had not made one motion in the direction of that burning vehicle to salvage him, knowing he was tied to it. Compassion and decency were no part of the Psychlo character. Terl had even had a gun and could have shot the flexirope in half.

Jonnie felt the ground rumble. The monster was in the cage. A boot toe turned him over. Slitted, amber eyes appraised him.

“You’ll live,” grunted Terl indifferently. “How long will it take you to get well?”

Jonnie said nothing. He just looked up at Terl.

“You’re stupid,” said Terl. “You don’t know anything about remote controls.”

“And what could I have done, tied to the seat?” said Jonnie.

“Zzt, the bastard, put a remote control under the hood. And a firebomb.”

“How was I supposed to see that?”

“You could have inspected.”

Jonnie smiled thinly. “Tied to the cab?”

“You know now. When we do it again

I’ll-“

“There won’t be any ‘again,’ ” said Jonnie.

Terl loomed over him, looking down.

“Not under these conditions,” said Jonnie.

“Shut up, animal!”

“Take off this collar. My neck is burned.”

Terl looked at the frayed flexirope. He went out of the cage and came back with a small welding unit and a new coil of rope. It wasn’t flexirope. It was thinner and metallic. He burned off the old rope and welded the new one on, ignoring Jonnie’s effort to twist away from the flame. He fixed the far end of the new rope into a loop and dropped it over a high cage bar out of reach.

With Jonnie’s eyes burning holes in his back, Terl went out of the cage and locked the door.

Jonnie wrapped himself in the dirty fur of a robe and lay in sodden misery beneath the newly fallen snow.

- Part IV -

It had been a very bad winter in the mountains; snowslides had early blocked the passes into the high meadow.

Chrissie sat quietly and forlornly in front of the council in the courthouse. The wind whined and moaned through the gaps in the walls, and the fire that had been built in the center of the room sent harried palls of smoke into the faces of the council.

Parson Staffor lay very ill in a nearby hut. The winter had sapped what little vitality he had and his place was taken by the older Jimson man they were now calling parson. Jimson was flanked by an elder named Clay and by Brown Limper Staffor, who seemed to be acting as a council member even though he was far too young and clubfooted-he had begun to sit in for Parson Staffor when he became ill and had just stayed on, grown into a council member now. The three men sat on an old bench.

Chrissie, across the fire from them, was not paying much attention. She had had a horrible nightmare two nights ago- a nightmare that had yanked her, sweating, out of sleep and left her trembling ever since. She had dreamed that Jonnie had been consumed in fire. He had been calling her name and it still sounded in her ears.

“It’s just plain foolishness,” Parson Jimson was saying to her. “There are three young men who want to marry you and you have no right whatever to refuse them. They village population is dwindling in size; only thirty have survived the winter. This is not a time to be thinking only of yourself.”

Chrissie numbly realized he was talking to her. She made an effort to gather the words in: something about population. Two babies had been born that winter and two babies had died. The young men had not driven many cattle up from the plains before the pass closed and the village was half-starved. If Jonnie had been here…

“When spring comes,” said Chrissie, “I’m going down on the plains to find Jonnie.”

This was no shock to the council. They had heard her say it several times since Jonnie left.

Brown Limper looked through the smoke at her. He had a faint sneer on his thin lips. The council tolerated him because he didn’t ever say much and because he brought them water and food when meetings were too long. But he couldn’t resist. “We all know Jonnie must be dead. The monsters must have got him.”

Jimson and Clay frowned at him. He had been the one who brought to their attention the fact that Chrissie refused to marry any of the young men. Clay wondered whether Brown Limper didn’t have a personal stake in this.

Chrissie rallied from her misery. “His horses didn’t come home.”

“Maybe the monsters got them, too,” said Brown Limper.

“Jonnie did not believe there were any monsters,” said Chrissie. “He went to find the Great Village of the legend.”

“Oh, there are monsters, all right,” said Jimson. “It is blasphemy to doubt the legends.”

“Then,” said Chrissie, “why don’t they come here?”

“The mountains are holy,” said Jimson.

“The snow,” said Brown Limper, “closed the passes before the horses could come home. That is, if the monsters didn’t get them, too.”

The older men looked at him, frowning him to silence.

“Chrissie,” said Parson Jimson, “you are to put aside this foolishness and permit the young men to court you. It is quite obvious that Jonnie Goodboy Tyler is gone.”

“When the year has gone by,” said Chrissie, “I shall go down to the plains.”

“Chrissie,” said Clay, “this is simply a suicidal idea.”

Chrissie looked into the fire. Jonnie’s scream echoed in her ears from the nightmare. It was completely true, what they said: she did not want to live if Jonnie was dead. And then the sound of the scream died away and she seemed to hear him whisper her name. She looked up with a trace of defiance.

“He is not dead,” said Chrissie.

The three council members looked at each other. They had not prevailed. They would try again some other day.

They ignored her and fell to discussing the fact that Parson Staffor wanted a funeral when he died. There wouldn’t be much in the way of food and there were problems of digging in the frozen ground. Of course he was entitled to a funeral, for he had been parson and maybe even mayor for many years. But there were problems.

Chrissie realized she was dismissed, and she got up, eyes red with more than smoke, and walked to the courthouse door.

She wrapped the bearskin more tightly about her and looked up at the wintry sky. When the constellation was in that same place in spring she would go. The wind was cutting keen and she pulled the bearskin even tighter. Jonnie had given her the bearskin and she fingered it. She would get busy and make him some new buckskin clothes. She would prepare packs. She would not let them eat the last two horses.

When the time came she would be all ready to go. And she would go.

A blast of wind from Highpeak chilled her, mocked her. Nevertheless, when the time came she would go.