Battlefield Earth Part 9

In a scurry several big rats raced out of the shack. Jonnie had started his throw and then stopped. Only in the dreariest of a starving winter would one eat rats.

But he had no time and he saw no rabbits.

He picked up a rock and threw it against the shack. Two more rats streamed out and he threw his kill-club straight and true.

A moment later he was holding a dead rat in his hand, a big one.

Did he dare light a fire? No, no time for that. Raw rat? Ugh.

He took a piece of the sharp, clear stuff from his pouch and stepped back to the stream. He cleaned and washed the rat.

Hunger or no hunger, it took some doing to bite into the raw rat meat. Almost gagging, he chewed and swallowed. Well, it was food.

He ate very slowly so that he wouldn't get any sicker than he felt at eating raw rat.

Then he drank some more water.

He wrapped a last piece of the rat in a sc.r.a.p of hide and put it in his pouch. He kicked some sand over the debris he had left.

He stood up straight and looked at the distant mountains. He took a deep breath, bracing himself to start again on his run.

There was a low whistle in the air and something fell over him.

He rolled.

It was a net.

He couldn't get free.

The more he tried to get out of it, the more tangled up he became. He stared wildly around. Through an opening he saw the truth.

The monster, without haste, was moving forward out of the trees, taking in the slack of the rope to which the net was attached.

The thing exhibited no emotion. It moved as though it had all the time in the world.

It wrapped Jonnie up in the net and tucked the whole bundle under its arm and then began to rumble along back toward the compound.

Chapter 5.

Terl, fiddling with forms at his desk, felt very cheerful.

Things were working out fine, just fine. Security techniques were always best. Always. He now knew exactly what he had wanted to know: the thing drank water and drank it by plunging its head and shoulders into a stream or pond. And more importantly, it ate raw rat.

This made things very easy. If there was any animal available near the compound, it was rat.

He guessed he could teach the old c.h.i.n.kos a thing or two. It was elementary to let the man-thing loose and elementary to keep him under surveillance with a flying scope. It was, of course, a little trying to be out in the open wearing a breathe-mask and yet make speed over the ground. That man-thing didn't run very fast compared to a Psychlo, but it had been a bit of an exertion. It was hard to exert oneself while wearing a breathe-mask.

But he hadn't lost his skill in casting nets, old-fashioned though it might be. He hadn't wanted to use a stun gun again: the thing seemed frail and went into convulsions.

Well, he was learning.

He began to wonder how many raw rats a day the thing had to consume. But he could find that out easily.

He looked with boredom at the report before him. The lost tractor had been found along with its Psychlo driver at the bottom of a two-mile-deep mine shaft. They ate up a lot of personnel these days. There'd be a yowl from the main office about replacement costs. Then he cheered up. This fitted very well into his plans.

He checked around to make sure he had no more work to do and put his desk in order for the end of day.

Terl went over to a cabinet and took out the smallest blast gun he could find. He put a charge cartridge in it and set it to minimum power.

He took some rags and cleaned up his face mask and put a new cartridge in it.

Then he went outside.

Not a hundred yards north of the compound he saw his first rat. With the accuracy that had won him an honored place on his school shoot team, even though the thing was in streaking motion, he blew its head off.

Fifty feet farther, another rat leaped out of a culvert and he decapitated it in midair. He paced off the distance. Forty-two Psychlo paces. No, he hadn't lost his touch. Silly things to be hunting, but it still took a master's touch.

Two. That would be good enough to start with.

Terl looked around at the hateful day. Yellow, blue, and green. Well, he'd get quit of this.

Feeling very cheerful, he rumbled up the hill to the old zoo.

His mouthbones stretched in a grin. There was the man-thing crouched down at the far side of the cage, glaring at him. Glaring Glaring at him? Yes, it was true. It was the first time Terl had noticed it had emotions. at him? Yes, it was true. It was the first time Terl had noticed it had emotions.

And what else had it been doing?

It had gotten to the packs- he remembered the thing clutching at them when he had returned it to the cage yesterday- and it was now sitting on them. It had been doing something else. It had been looking down at a couple of books. Books? Now where the c.r.a.p nebula had it gotten books? Didn't seem possible it could have gotten into the old c.h.i.n.ko quarters. The collar, the rope were all secure. He'd investigate that in due course. The thing was still here, which was what was important.

Terl advanced, smiling behind his mask. He held up the two dead rats and then tossed them to the man-thing.

It didn't jump hungrily at them. It seemed to withdraw. Well, grat.i.tude wasn't something you found in animals. No matter. Terl wasn't after grat.i.tude from this thing.

Terl went over to the old cement bear pool. It didn't seem to be cracked. He traced the piping. The piping seemed to be all right.

He went outside the cage and fumbled around in the undergrowth, looking for the valves, and finally found one. He turned it. Hard to do with a valve that old. He was afraid his great strength would just twist the top off.

From the nearby garage he got some penetrating oil and went back and worked the valve over. Finally he got it open. Nothing happened.

Terl traced the old water system to a tank the c.h.i.n.kos had built. He shook his head over the crudity of it. It had a pump but the charge cartridge was long expended. He freed up the pump and put a new cartridge in it. Intergalactic was never one for innovations, thank the stars. The cartridges the pump needed were the same ones still in use.

He got the pump whirring but no water came. Finally he found the pond. The old pipe was simply not in the water, so with one stamp of his boot he put it back in.

Up at the tank the water began to run in. And down in the cage the pool began to fill swiftly. Terl grinned to himself. A mining man could always handle fluids. And here too he hadn't lost his touch.

He went back into the cage. The big center pool was filling rapidly. It was muddy and swirling since it had been full of sand. But it was wet water!

The pool filled up to the top and slopped over, spilling across the floor of the cage.

The man-thing was hastily picking up its things and jamming them into the bars to escape the inundation.

Terl went back outside and shut off the valve. He let the tank on the hill fill and then shut that off.

The cage was practically awash. But the water was draining off through the bars. Good enough.

Terl slopped over to the man-thing. It was clinging to the bars to keep out of the water. It had the hides way up, jammed over the cross braces. To keep them dry?

It was holding on to the books with one hand.

Terl looked around. Everything was in order now. So he had better look into these books.

He started to take them out of its hand but it held on. With some impatience, Terl smashed at its wrist and caught the two books as they fell.

They were man-books.

Puzzled, Terl leafed through them. Now where could this thing have picked up man-books? He drew his eyebones together, thinking.

Ah, the c.h.i.n.ko guidebook! There had been a library in that town. Well, maybe this animal had lived in that town.

But books? This was better and better. Maybe, like the c.h.i.n.kos had said, these animals could grasp meaning. Terl could not read the man-characters but they obviously were readable.

This first one here must be a child's primer. The other one was some kind of child's story. Beginner books.

The animal was looking stoically away in another direction. It was useless, of course, to try to talk to it- Terl halted his thought in mid-blink. Better and better for his plans! It had been talking! He remembered now. What he had thought were growls and squawks like you get from any animal had been reminiscent of words!

And here were books!

He made the thing look at him by turning its head. Terl pointed to the book and then at the thing's head.

It gave no sign of understanding.

Terl pushed the book up close to its face and pointed at its mouth. No sign of recognition occurred in the eyes.

It either wasn't going to read or it couldn't read.

He experimented some more. If these things could actually talk and read, then his plans were sure winners. He turned the pages in front of its face. No, no sign of recognition.

But it had books in its possession. It had books, but it couldn't read. Maybe it had them for the pictures. Ah, success. Terl showed it a picture of a bee and there was a flicker of interest and recognition. He showed it the picture of the fox and again that flick of recognition. He took the other book with pages of solid print. No sign of recognition.

Got it. He put the small books in his breast pocket.

Terl knew what to do. He knew every piece of everything in the old c.h.i.n.ko quarters and that included man-language discs. They had never written up what man ate but they had gone to enormous trouble with man-language. Typically c.h.i.n.ko. Miss the essentials and soar off into the stratosphere.

He knew tomorrow's program. Better and better.

Terl checked the collar, checked the rope, securely locked up the cage, and left.

Chapter 6.

It had been a damp, cold, thoroughly miserable night.

Jonnie had clung to the bars for hours, loath to sit down or even step down. Mud was everywhere. The gush of water had taken the sand and dirt in the pool and spread it all over the cage and the dirt of the floor had avidly soaked it up. The mud became ankle deep.

But at last, exhausted, he had given in and slept lying in the mud.

Midmorning sun was drying it somewhat. The two dead rats had floated away out of reach and Jonnie didn't care.

Already dehydrated from his previous experience, he felt the hot sun increase his thirst. He looked at the muddy pool, contaminated with slime from the cage. He could not bring himself to drink it.

He was sitting miserably against the bars when the monster appeared.

It stopped outside the door and looked in. It was carrying some metallic object in its paws. It looked at the mud and for the moment Jonnie thought it might realize he couldn't go on sitting and sleeping in the mud.

It went away.

Just as Jonnie believed it would not come back, it reappeared. This time it was still carrying the metal object, but it was also carrying a huge rickety table and an enormous chair.

The thing made tricky work getting through the door with all that load, a door too small for it in the first place. But it came on in and put the table down. Then it put the metal object on the table.

Jonnie had at first believed that the huge chair was for him. But he was quickly disabused. The monster put the chair down at the side of the table and sat down on it: the legs of it sunk perilously into the mud.

It indicated the mysterious object. Then it took the two books out of its pocket and threw them on the table. Jonnie reached for them. He had not thought he would ever see them again and he had begun to make out of them a kind of sense.

The monster cuffed his hand and pointed at the object. It waved a paw across the top of the books in a kind of negative motion and pointed again at the object.

There was a sack on the back of the object and it had discs in it about the diameter of two hands.

The monster took out one of the discs and looked at it. It had a hole in the middle with squiggles around it. The monster put the disc on top of the machine. There was a rod there that fitted into the middle of the disc.

Jonnie was extremely suspicious, his hand bruised from the cuff. Anything this monster was up to would be devious, treacherous, and dangerous. That had been adequately proved. The game was to bide one's time, watch, and learn- and out of that possibly wrest freedom.

The monster now pointed to two windows on the front of the object. Then it pointed to a single lever that stuck out from the front of it.

The monster pushed the lever down.

Jonnie's eyes went round. He backed up.