Battlefield Earth (27 page)

     The first trouble came from Terl. He had a hangover after his solo binge, and he had been irritated close to anger at the comings and goings and delays.

At first light, Jonnie began to load them as they arrived singly and in groups from their errands to their homes. The people in the meadow had not left but had slept on the ground around fires- no one was going to miss the departure. More Scots, having missed the gathering of the clans due to distance or infirmity, had come in, and the number had doubled.

Jonnie began showing them how to tie down their gear in the military supply locks of the personnel freighter, and how to fasten themselves into the seats, two to a seat, and adjust the belts. He had gotten about six fully settled when two of them promptly got out of their seats again and started showing newcomers where to stow their gear and how to handle the belts.

Some apologized for seeming to bring so little but times had been hard, they said. It was no longer safe to raid in the lowlands. Some thought perhaps they were bringing too much, but one never knew, did one?

Some were a bit late and streamed in a breathless rush, the historian worriedly checking off their names.

The old women came in a clatter of kettles. The parson arrived rolling a keg- in case someone became ill. Jonnie strapped it down tightly, curious: he had never seen whiskey before.

The sun was getting higher. Terl roared from the cab, “Get these filthy animals loaded!” People became very quiet; Jonnie winked at them and they relaxed and got loading going once more.

Finally, they were all there. All eighty-three of them.

Jonnie said: “This flight will take several hours. We will go very high. It will be very cold and the air will be thin. Endure it somehow. If you feel lightheaded it will be from lack of air, so make an effort to breathe more often. Keep yourselves tightly strapped in. This plane can turn in all directions and even upside-down. I am now going to the forward cab to help fly this thing. Remember that one day soon many of you will also be able to fly machines, so observe things closely. Robert the Fox is in charge here. Questions?”

There wasn’t one. He had made them more confident in their new environment. They seemed cheerful, not afraid.

“Take it up, MacTyler!” said Robert the Fox.

Jonnie waved at the crowd out of the side door and they roared back. He slammed and locked the door.

He settled himself in the copilot seat, wound the security belt around himself twice, put on his air mask, and got out the map. Terl was looking sourly at the crowd.

With vicious sudden gestures, Terl recompressed the cab with breathe-gas and ripped off his mask. And Jonnie saw his amber eyes were shot with green. Terl had been going heavy on the kerbango. There was an evil twist to his mouthbones.

He was rumbling something about “late” and “having no leverage on these blasted animals” and “teach a lesson.”

Jonnie stiffened in alarm.

The plane vaulted skyward at a speed enough to crush him into his seat. It was at three thousand feet in the wink of an eye. Jonnie’s map and hands were pressed painfully downward into the copilot control panel.

Terl’s talons snapped at some more buttons. The ship started over on its side.

“What are you doing?” shouted Jonnie.

“I’m going to set an example!” roared Terl. “We’ve got to show them what will happen if they disobey.”

The thick mob in the meadow was a small dot below them as the plane turned downward. Suddenly Jonnie knew that Terl was going to blast them.

The ground came screaming up, the crowd getting large.

No! screamed Jonnie.

Terl’s talons were reaching out for the fire buttons.

Jonnie heaved the map.

Open, it pinned itself against Terl’s face, cutting off his vision.

The ground was coming up with speed.

Jonnie hit his own controls with staccato fingers.

Two hundred feet up, the plane abruptly changed course to level. It s inertia sucked it down to only yards above the crowd’s heads.

Like a javelin it shot forward. Ahead of them, the trees leaping larger, was the mountainside. Jonnie’s fingers stabbed keys.

Branches hit the underbody. The plane rocketed up the mountainside only feet from the ground.

It shot into the clear as they passed the mountain crest. Jonnie leveled it and stabbed it at the distant beaches.

He reversed the tape that had taken them on the incoming voyage and fed it into the autopilot.

The sea sped by only yards below them. They were in the clear, undetectable by any minesite observation post, heading for home.

Jonnie, bathed in sweat, sat back.

He looked at Terl. The monster had gotten the map off his face. Flames were flickering in his green-shot eyes.

“You almost killed us,” said Terl.

“You would have spoiled everything,” said Jonnie.

“I’ve got no leverage on these animals,” snapped Terl. He looked over his shoulder to beyond the cab rear wall. “How,” he added with nasty sarcasm, “do you intend to keep them obedient? With little baby toys?”

“They’ve been obedient enough so far, haven’t they?” said Jonnie.

“You ruined this whole trip for me,” said Terl. He relapsed into moody silence. At length, he rubbed at his aching head and fumbled around for his kerbango. He brought up an empty container and threw it down. Jonnie clipped it into a rack so it wouldn’t go adrift. Terl found another one under the seat. He chewed off a slug of it and sat there gloomily.

“Why,” asked Terl, at length, “were they cheering yesterday?”

“I told them the end of the project would see them highly paid,” said Jonnie.

Terl thought that over. Then, “They were cheering because of pay?”

“More or less,” said Jonnie. Terl was suspicious. “You didn’t promise any gold, did you?”

“No, they don’t know anything about gold. Their currency is horses and such things.”

“High pay, eh?” said Terl. He was suddenly very jovial. The kerbango was taking effect. He had just had a wonderful thought. High pay. He knew exactly the pay they would get. Exactly. At the muzzle end of a blast gun. He cheered up enormously.

“You fly this thing pretty good, rat brain, when you’re not trying to kill everybody.” This struck Terl as very, very funny and he laughed from time to time all the way home. But that was not what pleased him. How stupid these animals were! High pay, indeed. No wonder they’d lost the planet! He had his leverage. He’d never heard such enthusiasm!

     Forty-eight hours after their arrival at the “defense base,” Jonnie was very glad he had Robert the Fox along. He had to handle a threatened war.

Two of the young men, amid all the flurry of settling in, had yet found time to discover the remains of a weapons cargo. A truck, in the last days of man’s civilization, had apparently run into a road cutbank and a cave-in had covered it. There it had remained for more than a thousand years until Scot hands uncovered it.

Jonnie had just come in to the base with a group driving wild cattle before them. He had been very busy settling the group in. He had lots of help. No one required much in the way of orders. They had swept out and apportioned off an old dormitory.

They had dug latrines. The parson had made the chapel useful. And the old women had found a place that could be protected from deer and cattle and, being near the water, was ideal for a vegetable garden; Jonnie had used a drilling machine to plow it up and the women assured him that now nobody would get scurvy- they had brought seeds, and radishes and lettuce and spring onions would be up in no time in this sunlight and deep soil. The schoolmaster had appropriated the ancient academic building and had a schoolroom set up.

The Scots had proven remarkably ingenious with machinery; they seemed to know what some of these pipes and wires were all about, having heard of them and read of them in their books.

Thus Jonnie was not too startled to find a youth- Angus MacTavish-holding out an ancient piece of metal to him and requesting permission to “make this and the rest of the lot serviceable.” Jonnie had not thought that among all this bustle anyone would have time to dig up an old wrecked man-truck and its contents.

“What is this thing?” said Jonnie.

The youth showed him some stamped letters. The object was covered with what must have been a very thick grease that, down the ages, had become rock-hard but had preserved the object. The letters, which the youth had cleaned off, said “Thompson submachine gun….” It had a company name and serial number.

“There’s case on case of them,” said Angus. “A whole truckload. And airtight boxes of ammunition. When the grease comes off these, they might be fired. The truck must have run off the road and gotten buried in the cave-in. May I clean it up and test it, MacTyler?”

Jonnie absently nodded and went on with the cattle. He was thinking about getting over to the base and getting a horse. There were plenty of wild horses but they needed to be broken, and driving in cattle for food on foot was not the safest occupation he knew of. He was also speculating about using one of these small Psychlo trucks to do the job. Food shortage had been a problem for the Scots and there was no reason they could not be very well fed; it would make them even tougher and more able to stand the work ahead.

He was not prepared for the deputation that came to him as he finished supper. A mess hall had been set up, and although the women were cooking outside, eating was being done inside- off broken tables with much eroded cutlery. Robert the Fox was sitting there with him.

Angus MacTavish held out the weapon to him. “It works. We cleaned it and figured out how to load and operate it, and the ammunition will fire.”

Jonnie could see that others in the mess hall were giving them their silent attention.

“There’s lots of these and lots of ammunition,” said Angus MacTavish.

“If you climb the hill and look over to the east, off in the distance you can see the Psychlo minesite.” He smiled. “A group could sneak over tonight and blow them to pieces!”

There was an instant cheer from the rest.

Young men from other tables stood up and crowded around.

Jonnie had a horrible vision of slaughtered Scots and blasted plans.

Robert the Fox caught Jonnie’s eye. He seemed to want a nod and Jonnie gave him one. He stood up.

The old veteran was one of the few Scots who had ever seen a Psychlo up close before the freighter had arrived. Raiding for cattle down into the lowlands where cattle now wandered amid ruins, Robert the Fox had once encountered a party of Psychlo hunters from the minesite in Cornwall. The Psychlos had wiped out the other members of the party. But Robert, clinging to the belly of a horse, had been able to flee the carnage unobserved. He was well aware of the power of the Psychlo weaponry and the murderous character they exercised.

“This young man,” said Robert the Fox, pointing to Angus MacTavish who was standing there holding his man-machine gun, “has done very well. It is a credit to be resourceful and brave.”

The young man beamed. “But,” continued Robert the Fox, “it is one of the great wisdoms that one best succeeds at what one prepares totally. One minesite destroyed will not end the power of the Psychlos. Our war is against the entire Psychlo empire and for this we must work hard and prepare.” He became conspiratorial, “We must not wipe out just one base and alert them to our intent.”

That did it. The young men thought this was very wise and happily finished their dinner of roasts and steaks.

“Thank you,” said Jonnie to Robert the Fox. The precipitate war was averted for the moment.

A bit later, in the lingering twilight, Jonnie took the older men down to show them the trench.

He had begun to realize he had a sort of council. It consisted of Robert the Fox, the parson, the schoolmaster, and the historian.

Jonnie probed about in the grass, looking for iron bits, and at last he uncovered the almost totally eroded frame of a weapon that might have been similar to the Thompson. It was very hard to tell what make it was, but it had been a gun.

Jonnie told his council the history of the spot according to Psychlo records.

They hardly needed to get the point. Such weapons had not stopped the Psychlos.

Then the historian- Doctor MacDermott- looked about curiously. “But where are the remains of the tank?”

“It defeated them,” said Jonnie.

“Now that is very odd,” said the historian. “Not that they were defeated here, but that there’s no rusting remains of any Psychlo battle equipment.”

“This was a defeat,” said Jonnie. “The Psychlos may have suffered damage, maybe not. But they would have taken any damaged equipment from the field.”

“No, no, no,” said the historian. And he told them about a handwritten romance in the university library about a similar battle. It had occurred on a line between two ancient villages known as Dumbarton and Falkirk, at the narrowest point above where England and Scotland had once met, just below the Highlands. “And the remains of Psychlo tanks can be detected there to this very day.”

“That’s true,” said Robert the Fox. “I have seen them.”

The historian said, “No Psychlo has ever come north of that point- not until you, MacTyler, flew in your demon. It is the only reason we can still exist in the Highlands.”

“Tell me more of this romance,” said Jonnie.

“Oh, it is quite badly written,” said the historian. “A curiosity, not literature. It was scribbled by a private in the Queen’s Own Highlanders who escaped north from the battle. A sapper, I think he was. They handle land mines.”

“Land mines?” said the parson. “Mines for ore?”

“No, no,” said the historian. “I think they used the word ‘mine’ for explosives buried in the earth- when the enemy crossed them, they exploded. The private used the term ‘tactical nuclear weapons.’ He goes on about how a fragment of a regiment that had been in bunkers escaped the gassing and withdrew north. The captain, I think, had a girl in the Highlands. And they laid a string of mines from Dumbarton to Falkirk. Psychlo tanks in pursuit hit them and these mines exploded. The Psychlos were not out of tanks or troops. They simply withdrew south and they never came back to recover their dead or their equipment. The romance says it was due to the spirit of Drake intervening, for drums could be heard….”

“Wait,” said Jonnie. “Those were nuclear weapons.”

“Whatever those are,” said the parson.

“Uranium,” said Jonnie. “There must still be a band of uranium dust between those two towns.” He explained to them about Psychlo breathe-gas.

“Aye, it fits,” said Robert the Fox.

The historian looked enlightened and drew his shabby old cloak around his shrunken shoulders. “It sounds like the magic ring of fire, or the geometric signs the creatures of the netherworld dare not cross.”

Jonnie looked at the eroded remains of the weapon in his hands and then along the trench. “These poor men didn’t have any uranium, didn’t even really know about Psychlos. They had only these.”

“They died like brave men,” said the parson, removing his cap.

The others also removed theirs.

“We just have to be sure,” said Jonnie, “we don’t wind up like them!”

“Aye,” said Robert the Fox.

Jonnie laid the remains of the gun down and they walked back thoughtfully toward the cooking fires. The wail of a piper was soft in the night wind.