Battlefield Earth Part 93

Once Pliss was away from the craft, Jonnie cautiously removed the ear pads and started to duck down out of the turret to resume his work.

The Tolnep alarmed the guards by pausing and swinging open the side door of the tank. He almost got himself shot. But Jonnie gestured for them to back up. He could shove the screwdriver into the Tolnep's teeth if he tried to bite.

"You people aren't Psychlo-commanded, are you?" said the Tolnep, hanging in the door. Getting no answer- since Jonnie was not going to volunteer information to a potential escapee no matter how remote escape might be- the Tolnep said, "What are you trying to do with that tank motor?"

Jonnie just looked at him for a moment and then it occurred to him that as a Tolnep officer, Pliss might have been trained on these things. "You know how this works?"

"Blast no! And neither does anyone else in any universe that I ever heard of," said Pliss. "We've never raided this planet but we have raided other Psychlo bases. According to the textbooks, we've brought in thousands of these things just for the experts to look at." He smiled a rather frightening smile. "I'll bet my next month's pay, which I'll never get, that you people are up against the same thing that everybody else is up against."

Allowing for possible malice, Jonnie looked encouraging.

"We've gotten their textbooks, their mathematics texts even. We've actually captured a transshipment console intact. It said in the text that it worked once and then as soon as they tried to find how it was built, pop, no console.

"The very best Tolnep commanders have interrogated Psychlo engineers," continued Pliss, "and nothing happened. Some use that is. They chew you up and kill themselves.

Been going on, I read once, for three hundred and two thousand years!"

The Tolnep changed the subject. "You got a metals sample room around here? I'm hungry and maybe I can find something."

Jonnie told the guards to take him there.

"So good luck," said the Tolnep with a sarcastic-sounding hiss. They took him away.

Possibly it was just malice, Jonnie thought. But he didn't believe it.

He'd lost track of the sequence of actions he had been involved in when interrupted. So he started all over again. He put the console b.u.t.tons in "right here" and tapped the power switch to start the tank motor.

Nothing happened. He checked the connections. All usual.

He tried to recall whether the Tolnep had touched anything, and the Tolnep hadn't.

He once more tried to start the motor. Nothing.

What had Ker told him once about consoles? They'd had a blade machine back up. The canopy had been open because Jonnie didn't need breathe-gas and a torrent of dirt had come spraying down on the console and the blade machine wouldn't start afterward. Oh, yes. Ker had said to leave it, that he'd get an engineer on it. Not a mechanic but an engineer! And an engineer had come down and disconnected the console and taken it off to an underground workshop with a small traveling crane.

Jonnie had been more interested in the crane at the time. The cranes had magnetic plates in a circle with springs between them. They didn't have any motors. The arms of the crane moved by applying power to the magnets. Jonnie wished he had watched when they pulled the console out.

What had he done before the Tolnep arrived? Let's see. He had loosened the top-plate screws. Psychlos once in a while used screws. Most of the time they just annealed metal with a molecular adhesion/cohesion blade.

But they were a bit unusual.

He now took all the screws out and lifted off the plate. The screws went into a black material that held, on its underside, all the complex components of the console.

The screws. They must connect something to something in addition to holding the cover on. But he couldn't find any switch. They just seemed to be screws. But turning one or another of them had certainly disabled this console.

He put it back together. He looked at another console and found the angle the screws were supposed to be set at. He set the Basher's console screws at the same angle.

It would not start again, no matter what he did.

It must be the screws. When that blade sc.r.a.per quit, maybe a dirt clod had hit a screw and turned it.

He went through all the motions for the fifth time, trying to align screws.

But that was it. He had a dead-motor Basher tank.

Jonnie finally gave it up.

He went down to the lake and threw rocks at the crocodiles. Then he became ashamed of himself for teasing the beasts.

They were very amiable creatures compared to Terl.

A tri-wheeler came down from Sir Robert who wanted to tell Jonnie it was unwise to be in the open without air cover. The visitors might send somebody down.

"Would you like to shoot a Psychlo?"

Jonnie asked a startled messenger. d.a.m.n Terl! d.a.m.n all Psychlos!

And it wasn't any comfort to know that thousands of races had been saying the same thing for three hundred and two thousand years.

He'd have to think of something, some plan, no matter how desperate or dangerous, or this planet was finished!

Chapter 2.

Winter had come to Denver.

But the cold wind and snow flurries could not dampen the elation of Brown Limper Staffor.

The new bank note had arrived.

A packet of them lay on his desk and four of them were spread out before him. How beautiful! They were bright yellow, printed on one side, and there, right in the middle, was an oval picture of Brown Limper!

What an awful lot of trouble they had had getting that picture. Brown Limper had tried innumerable poses, facing this way and that; he had tried countless expressions, frowning or scowling; but none of these would do.

Lars Th.o.r.enson had finally had to give him a hand. Lars had explained that it was the beard that was wrong: Brown Limper had a black mustache and beard, and whereas the mustache was all right, the beard was thin and scraggly. So the thing to do was shave off the beard and trim the mustache until it was a bushy tuft just under the nose; that was the sort of mustache the great military hero Hitler had had and so it must be correct.

Then there had been the problem of a proper costume. n.o.body seemed to find anything proper. General Snith came to the rescue. He had heard one of his men report that there was an old graveyard that had air-sealed coffins in it. Several had been dug up, looking for a corpse that had been properly dressed: but after more than a thousand years the fabric wouldn't hold together. The only outcome of all that was a sickness that had hit the Brigantes: two had died and a doctor, pa.s.sing through, had said it was "formaldehyde poisoning," whatever that was.

Somebody had finally found a bolt of gray cloth in a bas.e.m.e.nt that didn't tear very much and somebody else had found a pattern that said "chauffeur's uniform" on it and some Brigante women had sewn it up. They had also found a black-visored cap that lasted long enough for the picture.

Snith had a handful of jewelry he'd found- which Brown Limper knew couldn't possibly be rubies or diamonds and was probably colored gla.s.s- and they'd put that on the left breast of the coat so he would have "medals."

The final posing was solved by using a picture Lars had of somebody called "Napoleon," also a great military hero of ancient man. The pose had the fingers of one hand tucked into the coat edge on the breast.

MacAdam had been a bit difficult. He had asked Brown Limper whether this was what he really wanted by way of a portrait and Brown Limper had been cross about it. After all that trouble. Of course that was what he wanted!

So here was the new bank note at last. It was a hundred-credit note: MacAdam had said he could only print one denomination and it had to be a hundred credits. Brown Limper realized that that made this a far more important bill. It had the bank name on it. It was only printed in English and no other tribal language. And right there, loud and clear, it said "One Hundred American Credits"! And it said "Valid for the payment of public and private debts in America."

One of the conditions MacAdam had made was that all earlier money in the country be collected up and exchanged for these new bills. It was hard to do because the earlier issue was a one-credit bank note and this American issue was a one-hundred-credit bank note. But the dream of having all Tyler notes gone gone was so alluring, Brown Limper had made up the differences in exchange out of his own pocket. was so alluring, Brown Limper had made up the differences in exchange out of his own pocket.

This victory was doing much to improve Brown Limper's spirits: they had been very low as of late.

When that Tyler had not only not gone to his b.o.o.by-trapped home in the meadow but had walked right out of the country, Brown Limper had been so dispirited he had wanted to call off the whole Terl project.

But Lars had talked to him. Lars seemed to have developed a hatred for Tyler. (He did not say it was from the degradation of hiding under sc.r.a.p metal in the garage and envy over the way Tyler could fly, but the emotion was very well understood by Brown Limper who considered it natural.) Lars had said that if they went ahead and actually transshipped, Tyler was certain to reappear.

Terl had talked to him. Terl said that when they fired a shipment to Psychlo, Tyler would be right there, and he had traps for him that even Tyler could not get around.

So Brown Limper had continued with the project.

Other things were going wrong, though. He did not hear much anymore from the tribal chiefs. Lars explained it was natural- they trusted him to run things. No pilgrims came anymore to the minesite. But that was natural- it was winter.

People had been disappearing. First the hotel cook. Then some Swiss shopkeepers. Then another and another until now the hotel was no longer operating and no shops were open at all.

The shoemakers had vanished. The Germans who repaired things were no longer to be found. The llaneros had driven the large herds south- where they would have better winter feed, they said- and then they had vanished.

Brown Limper had taken it up with Snith. Did this have anything to do with Brigantes? Even Terl put the question to him. But Snith swore up and down he and his men had behaved.

The Academy was still there and operating. There seemed to be a vast number of pilot trainees and a vaster number of machine operators. But they stayed down at the Academy and all one saw was an occasional plane doing practice flights.

All his office radios and teleprinters were gone. They broke down and had to be taken away to be repaired and then they never came back. But never mind, Brown Limper couldn't operate them anyway and couldn't really trust anyone else to.

This new bank note was making a world of difference to his morale. He decided he would not pay the pilots in it. He'd get even with them.

People would be hanging him him, Brown Limper, on their walls now!

On sudden impulse, he decided he had better mend his political fences with his own tribe- and show them this bill, of course. He called Lars and General Snith and they got into a mine pa.s.senger plane Lars kept in the parking lot and took off for the new village he had put his people in.

Brown Limper was still admiring one of the bank notes he held in his hand. The thought of showing it off to the village people warmed him. He did not even mind the harrowing way that Lars Th.o.r.enson flew.

Narrowly missing snow-covered peaks that were not even on their route, Lars set them down near the old mining town.

But it all seemed deserted.

Not a single plume of smoke rose from a fire. Not even the smell of it remained.

Carrying a Thompson, Snith scouted the place. Empty! Not even a trace of belongings. Nothing.

Brown Limper searched, looking for a clue, dragging his clubfoot through the smooth snow from building to building. Finally he found where they must have had a meeting. There were some torn sc.r.a.ps of paper lying about. And then, under a table where it might have fallen off a pile of papers unnoticed, he found a letter.

It was from Tom Smiley Townsen.

Brown Limper looked at it and went into an immediate rage. Not at what it said, but at Tom Smiley's having the effrontery to know how to write. What arrogance! But then he saw it was not really written, it was printed, and rather crudely at that. Even the signature was printed. So he decided to be tolerant and read it.

The letter went on and on about how nice some area known as "Tashkent" was. Big mountains, endless plains of wild wheat, lots of sheep. And a mild winter climate. And how he had gotten married to some...? Some Latin! Latin! Disgraceful. No blood purity there. Disgraceful. No blood purity there.

Brown Limper threw the letter down.

Well, maybe the village people had gone back to their old home. They had not wanted to move. But he was surprised that the Indians and the people from the Sierra Nevadas and the other British Columbian fellow had not remained here for they hadn't cared for the old village- too cold and too heavy a prospect of starving every winter.

They flew to the old village. Lars had trouble setting down and almost landed in the middle of one of those uranium circles. When he could let go his grip on the seat, Brown Limper looked around.

No smoke here, either.

Brown Limper poked into some of the houses. When they had moved at such short notice people had had to leave most of their personal possessions behind and Brown Limper thought they must still be there. But no. Every house was empty. Not ransacked the way Brigantes left places. Just neatly empty.

With a bit of fear- because it had been b.o.o.by-trapped- he approached the old Tyler house. It was still standing. Maybe the b.o.o.by traps hadn't gone off.

Then he saw that some of the roof was bulged and he went around to the other side to where the front door had been. The door had been blown off. Lars and Snith were poking at something in the snow.

It was the remains of two Brigantes. What hadn't been burned had been torn apart by wolves. It was obvious they had tripped the b.o.o.by traps and quite a while ago.

General Snith poked at the sc.r.a.ps of money, skin, and bones with the muzzle of the submachine gun. "Mus hab come oop here browling fer loot!" said Snith. "Waste of good meat!"

Brown Limper wanted to be alone. He dragged his foot up the slope to the place they once had buried people. He turned at the top and gazed down at the empty village, falling apart and now abandoned forever.

Something had been nagging at him and now it hit him.

He was a tribal leader without a tribe.

From five tribes he had descended to one- the Brigantes! And they were not native to America.

Numbly he realized he had better keep this awfully quiet. It undermined his whole position.

Something caught his eye. A monument? A small stone shaft sticking up out of the ground. He moved around it. It had an inscription:

TIMOTHY BRAVE TYLER.

A good father Erected in Respectful Memory By his loving son

J.G.T.