Battlefield Earth (58 page)

     Jonnie threw the book from him and pushed away his lunch untouched.

The guard at the door looked in through the glass, abruptly alert. Colonel Ivan whirled in an automatic response, combat ready: it had sounded like the thud of a grenade for a moment.

“It makes no sense,” said Jonnie to himself. “It just makes no sense!”

The others, seeing it was no emergency, relaxed. The sentry returned to his usual position and the colonel went on wiping down the white tile.

But Chrissie remained alarmed. It was almost unheard of for Jonnie to be irritable, and for days and days now, ever since he had started to do nothing but study books- Psychlo books they seemed to be, though she could not read- he had been getting worse and worse.

The untouched lunch worried her. It was venison stew with wild herbs cooked especially for him by Aunt Ellen. Weeks ago she had rushed to the old base to give him a glad and relieved greeting and to tell him that though her fears for him had almost come true, here he was alive! She had stood around suffused with delight until she suddenly saw what they were feeding him. The old village was only a few miles away down the pass, and either personally or through a small boy mounted on one of the horses Jonnie had left, Aunt Ellen routinely sent him his favorite dishes to be warmed up and served from the hospital galley. The boy or Aunt Ellen usually waited to take back the utensils, and when Aunt Ellen saw the food had not been touched she would be upset. Chrissie vowed to get the sentry to eat some and maybe gobble a few bites herself. It wouldn’t be polite to send back an untouched venison stew.

Had he been able to walk easily, Jonnie would have gone over and kicked the book. Normally he had vast respect for books, but not this one! It and several similar texts were all on the subject of the “mathematics of teleportation.” They seemed incomprehensible. Psychlo arithmetic was bad enough. Jonnie supposed that because Psychlos had six talons on their right paws and five on their left, they had to go and choose eleven as their base. All their mathematics was structured around the number eleven. Jonnie had been told that human mathematics employed a “decimal system” involving ten as the radix. He wouldn’t know. He only knew Psychlo mathematics. But these mathematics of teleportation soared above normal Psychlo arithmetic. The book he had just thrown down had begun to give him a headache, and these days his headaches had almost vanished. The book was called, “Elementary Principles of Integral Teleportation Equations.” And if that was elementary, give him something complicated! Nothing added up in it at all!

He pushed back from the metal dolly table and rose shakily, supporting himself with his left hand on the bed.

“I,” he said in a determined voice, “am going to get out of here! There is no sense just waiting around for the sky to fall in on us! Where is my shirt!”

This was something new. The colonel went over to help Jonnie stand and Jonnie brushed him away. He could stand by himself.

Chrissie turned around in a flurry and opened three or four wrong bureau drawers. The colonel picked up a handful of assorted canes and sticks that stood in the corner and knocked half of them down. The sentry, ordered to report any unusual happenings to Robert the Fox, got on the radiophone right away.

Jonnie chose a “knobkerrie.” MacKendrick had had him practicing with a lot of different canes. It was difficult because both his right arm and right leg were seemingly useless, and carrying a stick in the left hand and hopping on the left leg didn’t work very well. The knobkerrie had been brought in as a gift from a chief in Africa who didn’t know Jonnie was crippled. The black wooden stick was beautifully carved; they used them as throwing weapons as well as canes. They must be big men down there because it was the right length. It also had a comfortable palm grip.

Jonnie hobbled over to the bureau and half-sat on it and got rid of the military hospital robe. Chrissie had found three buckskin shirts and some perverseness made him select the oldest and greasiest one. He got it over his head and let her lace the thongs across the front of it. He got into some buckskin pants and Chrissie helped him with a pair of moccasins.

He struggled with a drawer and got it open. One of the shoemakers had made him a left-handed holster and had more properly fitted the old gold belt buckle to a wide belt. He put them on over the shirt.

The holster had a .457 magnum Smith and Wesson on it with radiation slugs, and he lifted it out and laid it back in the drawer and got out a small blast gun, made sure it was charged, and dropped it in the holster. At the colonel’s odd look, Jonnie said, “I’m not going to kill any Psychlos today.”

He was engaged in stuffing his right hand into the belt to get it out of the way- that arm tended to dangle-when an uproar broke out in the passageway.

Jonnie was intent on leaving so he gave it little heed. It would be just Robert the Fox or the parson rushing over to fuss at him about Council business.

But it wasn’t. The door burst open and the base officer of the day, a big middle-aged Scot in kilts and claymore, a man named Captain MacDuff, rushed in.

“Jonnie sir!” said MacDuff.

Jonnie had the definite impression they were objecting to his leaving, and he was about to be impolite when the captain sputtered the rest of the message: “Jonnie sir, did you send for a Psychlo?”

Jonnie was looking for a fur cap to wear. They had shaved his hair off for those operations and he felt like a singed puma bareheaded. Then the import of the question hit him. He got the knobkerrie and unsteadily hitched forward and peered out the door.

There stood Ker!

And in the glaring mine lamps out there he was a very bedraggled creature. Ker’s fur was matted with the filth clinging to it; his fangs seen through the faceplate were yellow and stained; his tunic was all ripped down one side and he had on only one boot, no cap. Even his earbones looked messed up.

They had put four chains on him with a soldier at the far end of each one. It looked so overdone on the midget Psychlo.

“Poor Ker,” said Jonnie.

“Did you send for him, Jonnie sir?” demanded Captain MacDuff.

“Bring him in here,” said Jonnie, leaning back against the bureau. He felt amusement mingling with pity.

“Do you think that’s wise?” said MacDuff. But he waved them forward.

Jonnie told the soldiers to drop the ends of the chains and leave. Four more soldiers he hadn’t noticed backed up, assault rifles trained on Ker. He told them all to leave. The colonel was flabbergasted.

Chrissie wrinkled her nose. What a stink! She’d have to clean and air the whole place!

No one wanted to go. Jonnie saw the pleading look through Ker’s breathe-mask. He waved them all out, and it was with enormous reluctance that they closed the door.

“I had to tell the lie,” said Ker. “I just had to see you, Jonnie.”

“You sure haven’t put a comb to yourself lately,” said Jonnie.

“It’s a devil’s cauldron they’ve got me in,” said Ker. “I’m half-crazy these days. I dropped from His Planetship down to gooey dirt, Jonnie. I got only one shaftmate and that’s you, Jonnie.”

“I don’t know how or why you got yourself here, but-’

“It’s this.” Ker dove a dirty paw inside his torn shirt, oblivious of the fact that a more nervous Jonnie might have shot him. Jonnie could draw, if a trifle slowly, with his left hand. But Jonnie knew Ker.

Held before Jonnie’s eyes was a bank note.

He took it with some curiosity. He had only seen these at a distance in the hands of Psychlos paying off wagers and he had never held one before. He knew they were a basic symbol of exchange and greatly valued.

It was about six inches wide and a foot long. The paper felt a bit rough but it seemed to glow. One side of it was printed in blue and the other side in orange. It had a nebula pattern and bright starburst on it. But the remarkable thing was that it was worded in what must be thirty languages: thirty numeral systems, thirty different types of lettering-ah, one of them was Psychlo. Jonnie could read that.

He read: “The Galactic Bank” and “One Hundred Galactic Credits” and “Guaranteed Legal Tender for All Transactions” and “Counterfeiters Will Be Vaporized” and “Certified Exchangeable at the Galactic Bank on

Presentation.”

It had a picture of somebody or something on the blue side. It looked like a humanoid, or maybe a Tolnep somebody had mistaken Dunneldeen for, or maybe…who knew? The face was very dignified, the very portrait of integrity. On the reverse it had a similar-sized picture of an imposing building with innumerable arches.

All very interesting, but Jonnie had determined to do other things today. He gave it back to Ker and started to fish out his own cap again. He felt sort of embarrassed with such a shaved head.

Ker looked a bit let down. “That’s a hundred credits!” said Ker. “It isn’t a Psychlo bank. The Psychlos and everybody else use those. It ’s not counterfeit. I can tell. See how it glows? And these little fine lines here around the signature-”

“You trying to bribe me or something?” said Jonnie, discarding the cap he’d found and looking for a colored bandana instead.

“Why no!” said Ker, “Look, this money is no good to me now, Jonnie. Look!”

Jonnie propped himself more comfortably on the bureau edge and obediently looked.

Ker, with a glance at the door to make sure he had his back to it and that only Jonnie could see, dramatically threw aside his lapels and pulled the tattered tunic apart.

There was a brand on his chest.

“The three bars of denial,” said Ker. “The criminal scorch. I don’t think it’s any news to you I was a criminal. That’s one of the holds Terl had on me. That’s why he felt he could trust me to run around and teach you. If I was returned to Psychlo, having been found to hold false papers and employment, I’d be vaporized. If Psychlo recaptured this place they’d be sure those of us alive were renegades, and they’d examine us and find this. My papers are false. I won’t burden you with my real name: not knowing it you can’t be hit as an accessory. Got it?”

Jonnie didn’t have it at all, especially since the Psychlos would kill him on sight and not be troubled at all about “accessory.” He nodded. All this wasn’t getting anywhere. Where had Chrissie put the bandanas they’d found?

“And if in addition they found two billion Galactic credits on me, they’d do a slow vaporization!” said Ker.

“Two billion?”

Yes, well it seemed old Numph had been screwing the company for the whole thirty years of his duty tour here. Things not even Terl had dug up; things like commissions from the female administrators who charged; things like double prices on kerbango; maybe even selling ore to aliens who picked it up in space shifts…who knew? But Numph slept on four mattresses, and Ker thought it was funny they crinkled like that and he liked only one mattress, so he’d ripped open an end and there it was!

“Where?” said Jonnie. “Out in the hall,” said Ker.

The midget Psychlo closed his coat and Jonnie beckoned at the guard in the small door window. Ker darted out through the door, loose chains dragging, alarming everyone out there, and came back lugging a big box which he dumped. Then he rushed out and got another box. Although a midget, only a bit taller than Jonnie,

Ker was very strong. Before anybody stopped him and despite the flapping chains, Ker shortly had the room bulging with old kerbango boxes, and every one of them was overflowing with Galactic credits!

“There’s more in his numbered accounts on Psychlo,” said Ker, “but we can’t get that.” He stood there panting a big smile, very proud of himself. “Now you can pay the renegades like the Chamcos in cash!”

Captain MacDuffhad been trying to tell Jonnie they’d checked the boxes while making sure there were no explosives and still ask what was this stuff? all the while wanting to know how Jonnie had sent a message to the compound without it being known to the sentries, and was it all right that they had let Ker bring it? He was flustered. He had a Pyschlo running around flapping chains and Jonnie was laughing.

“And you want-?” said Jonnie to Ker.

“I want out of that prison!” wailed Ker. “They hate me because I was over them. They hated me anyway, Jonnie. I know machines. Didn’t I teach you to run every machine there is? I heard they have a machine school over at what you call the Academy. They don’t know anything about those machines. Not like you and me do! Let me go help teach them like I did you!”

He stood there so pathetically, so pleadingly, he was so convinced he had done the right thing, that Jonnie laughed and laughed and shortly Ker’s mouthbones started to grin.

“I think it’s a great idea, Ker,” said Jonnie. At that moment he looked up and saw a frosty Robert the Fox in the door. Jonnie shifted to English. “Sir Robert, I think we have a new instructor for the schoolmaster. It ’s true he’s a great machine operator and he knows them all.” He smiled at Ker and said in Psychlo, “Terms of employment, a quart of kerbango a day, full pay and bonuses, standard company contract omitting only burial on Pyschlo. Right?” He knew very well Ker probably had buried a few hundred thousand credits on his own.