Numph sank back, doubt hitting him. “If you’re thinking of . . . what was their name . . . Chinkos, they were all wiped out ages back.”
“Not Chinkos. And I congratulate Your Planetship on his knowledge of company history. Not Chinkos. There is a potential local supply.”
“Where?”
“I am not going to say any more about it right now, but I want to report that I am making progress and that it is very hopeful.”
“Who are these people?”
“Well, actually, they are not ‘people,’ as you would say. But there are sentient beings on this planet.”
“They think? They talk?”
“They are very manually adept.”
Numph pondered this. “They talk? You can communicate with them?”
“Yes,” said Terl, biting off a bit more than he really knew. “They talk.”
“There’s a bird down on the lower continent can talk. A mine director there sent one. It could swear in Psychlo. Somebody didn’t replace the air cartridge in its dome and it died.” He frowned. “But a bird isn’t manually—”
“No, no, no,” said Terl, cutting off the bumbling. “These are little short things, two arms, two legs—”
“Monkeys! Terl, you can’t be serious—”
“No, not monkeys. Monkeys could never operate a machine. I am talking about man.”
Numph looked at him for several seconds. Then he said, “But there are only a very few of them left, even if they could do what you say.”
“True, true,” said Terl. “They have been listed as an endangered species.”
“A what?”
“A species that is about to become extinct.”
“But a few like that would not resolve our—”
“Your Planetship, I will be frank. I have not counted how many there are left—”
“But nobody has even seen one for ages. Terl . . .”
“The recon drones have noted them. There were thirty-four right up in those mountains you see there. And they exist on other continents in greater numbers. I have reason to believe that if I were given facilities I could round up several thousand.”
“Ah, well. Facilities . . . expense . . .”
“No, no. No real expense. I have been engaged on an economy program. I have even reduced the number of recon drones. They breed fast if given a chance—”
“But if nobody has even seen one . . . what functions could they replace?”
“Exterior machine operators. Over seventy-five percent of our personnel is tied up in just that. Tractors, loading rigs. It’s not skilled operation.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Terl. If nobody has even seen one—”
“I have one.”
“What?”
“Right here. In the zoo cages near the compound. I went out and captured one—took a bit of doing, but I made it. I was rated high in marksmanship at the school, you know.”
Numph puzzled over it. “Yes . . . I did hear some rumor there was a strange animal out in the zoo, as you call it. Somebody, one of the mine directors, I think . . . yes, Char it was, laughing about it.”
“It’s no laughing matter if it affects pay and profits,” glowered Terl.
“True. Very true. Char always was a fool. So you have an animal under testing that could replace personnel. Well, well. Remarkable.”
“Now,” said Terl, “if you will give me a blanket requisition on transport—”
“Oh, well. Is there any chance of seeing this animal? You know, to see what it could do. The death benefits we have to pay on equipment accidents would themselves tip the profit-loss scale if they didn’t exist. Or were minimized. There’s also machine damage potential. Yes, the home office doesn’t like machine damage.”
“I’ve only had it a few weeks and it will take a little time to train it on a machine. But yes, I think I could arrange for you to see what it could do.”
“Fine. Just get it ready and let me know. You say you’re training it? You know it is illegal to teach an inferior race metallurgy or battle tactics. You aren’t doing that, are you?”
“No, no, no. Just machine operation. The push-pull of buttons and levers is all. Have to teach it to talk to be able to give it orders. I’ll arrange for a demonstration when it’s ready. Now if you could just give me a blanket requisition—”
“When I’ve seen the test there will be time enough,” said Numph.
Terl had risen out of his chair, the prepared sheets of requisitions half out of his pocket. He put them back. He’d have to think of some other way—but he was good at that. The meeting had come off pretty well. He was not feeling too bad. And then Numph dropped the mine bucket on him.
“Terl,” said Numph, “I certainly appreciate this backup. Just the other day there was a dispatch from home office about your continued tour of duty here. They plan in advance, you know. But in this case they needed a security chief with field experience on home planet. I’m thankful I turned it down. I recommended you for another ten-year tour of duty.”
“I had only two years left to run,” gagged Terl.
“I know, I know. But good security chiefs are valuable. It will do your record no harm to show you are in demand.”
Terl made it to the door. Standing in the passageway he felt horribly ill. He had trapped himself, trapped himself right here on this cursed planet!
The glittering vein of gold lay in the mountains. His plans were going well in all other ways. It would take perhaps two years to get those forbidden riches, and the end of this duty tour would have been a personal triumph. Even the man-thing was shaping up. Everything had been running so well.
And now ten years more! Diseased crap, he couldn’t stand that!
Leverage. He had to have leverage on Numph. Big leverage.
9
The explosion had been sharp and loud. Completely unlike the dull roar that every five days regularly shook the cage and compound.
With some skill and agility, Jonnie had found that he could go up the bars, using a cage corner, and, bracing himself there, look far and wide across the plains to the mountains and down on the domed compound of the Psychlos. Feet braced against the crossbars, he could almost relax in this precarious position.
Winter had come. The mountains for some time now had been white. But today they were invisible under white gray skies.
To the east of the compound there lay a curious huge platform. It was surrounded by widely spaced poles and wires. It had a flooring that was bright and shiny, some sort of metal. At its southern edge there was a domed structure from which Psychlos came and went. At the northern side of it was a different kind of field, a field where strange, cylindrical craft arrived and departed.
The craft would land with a cloud of dust. Their sides would open and rock and chunks of things would spill out, and the vessel would rise again into the air and fly away, dwindling to nothingness beyond the horizon.
The dumped material would be pushed onto a belt that ran between towers, carrying the load over to the huge area of bright and shiny flooring.
Through the days, craft after craft would come, and by the fifth day there would be an enormous pile of material mounded up on the platform.
It was then that the most mysterious thing would occur. At exactly the same time of the day, exactly every fifth day, there would be a humming. The material on the platform would glow briefly. Then there would be a roar like a low thunderclap. And the material would vanish!
It was this one feature, of all the mysteries that surrounded him on his post at the top of the bars, that riveted his attention.
Where did it go? There it would be, a small mountain of material. And then—hum-roar-bang—it would be gone. Nothing ever reappeared on that shiny platform. The material was brought in by those flying objects, taken over by the belt. And there it vanished.
Jonnie had seen it happen often enough now that he could predict the minute, hour and day. He knew the dome to the south would light up, the wire
s around the platform would vibrate and hum, and then roar-bang, the piled material would be gone.
But that wasn’t what had happened down there today. One of the machines that pushed the material onto the belt had blown up. A swarm of Psychlos were down there around it now. They were doing something with the driver. And a couple more were putting out a fire on the machine itself.
The machines had big blades in front and were covered with a transparent dome where the driver sat. But the dome was off that one now, apparently blown off.
A squat vehicle came up. The driver had been stretched out on the ground. They now put the body in a basket and put it into the squat vehicle, which was driven away.
Another machine with a blade came over and pushed the damaged vehicle off to one side out of the way, and then went back to pushing material onto the belt. The Psychlos went back to their machines and the dome.
An accident of some sort, thought Jonnie. He hung there for a while but nothing else was going on.
Yes, there was. His cage bars were trembling. But this was near to hand and ordinary. It was footsteps of the Psychlo who kept him caged. Jonnie slid down to the floor.
The monster came to the door and unfastened it and entered. He glared at Jonnie.
The monster was quite unpredictable of late. He seemed calm one time and ruffled and impatient the next.
Right now he was very impatient. He made a savage gesture at Jonnie and then at the language machine.
Jonnie took a deep breath. Every waking hour for months he had been at that machine, working, working, working. But he had never spoken a word to the monster.
He did so now. In Psychlo, Jonnie said, “Broke.”
The monster looked at him curiously. Then it went over to the machine and pushed down the lever. It didn’t work. The monster shot a glare at Jonnie as though Jonnie had broken it and then picked the machine up and looked under it. That was quite a feat in Jonnie’s eyes, for he himself couldn’t budge it an inch on the table.
The machine had just quit that morning, shortly before the explosion. Jonnie moved closer to see what the monster was doing. It removed a small plate in the bottom and a little button dropped out. The monster read some numbers on the button and then laid the machine on its side and left the cage.
He came back shortly with another button, put it in the same place, and put the plate back on. He righted the machine and touched the lever. The disk turned and the machine said, “Forgive me, but addition and subtraction . . .” And the monster put it in neutral.
The monster pointed a talon at Jonnie and then urgently back at the machine.
Jonnie plunged again. In Psychlo he said, “Know all those. Need new records.”
The monster looked at the thick original sheaf of recordings, hundreds of hours of them. It looked at Jonnie. Its face was grim, back of its face mask. Jonnie was not sure he wasn’t going to get knocked halfway across the cage. Then the monster seemed to make up its mind.
It yanked the pack of disks out of the back of the machine and left. Shortly it returned with a new, thicker stack of disks and shoved them into the storage compartment of the machine. It took the old disk off and put the next sequentially numbered one on. Then it pointed at Jonnie and back at the machine. Plainly, Jonnie was supposed to get to work and get to work now.
Jonnie took a deep breath. In Psychlo he said, “Man does not live on raw rat meat and dirty water.”
The monster just stood there staring at him. Then it sat down in the chair and looked at him some more.
10
Terl knew leverage when he saw it.
As a veteran security officer, he depended on leverage at every turn. And advantage. And blackmail. A method of forcing compliance.
And now it was turned around. This man-thing had sensed that it had leverage.
He sat there studying the man-thing. Did it have any inkling of the plans? No, of course not. Possibly he had been too insistent, day after day, so that this thing sensed he wanted something of it.
Possibly he had been too indulgent. He had gone to the trouble every day or two to go out and shoot rats for it. And earlier, hadn’t he gotten it water? And look at all the cunning and difficulty of establishing what it ate.
Here it stood, brave and strong, telling him it didn’t eat that. Terl looked at it more closely. Well, not brave and strong. It looked pretty sickly, really. It had a worn robe around it and yet it was almost blue with the coldness of the day. He glanced over at the pond. It was frozen over, dirt and all.
He looked around further. The cage wasn’t as dirty as it might have been. The thing evidently buried its jobs.
“Animal,” said Terl, “you had better get to work if you know what is good for you.” Bluster sometimes made it even when one didn’t have leverage.
“The winter weather,” said Jonnie in Psychlo, “is bad for the machine. At night and in rain or snow I keep it covered with a deerhide from my pack. But the dampness is not good for it. It is becoming tarnished.”
Terl almost laughed. It was so funny to hear this animal actually speaking Psychlo. True, there was some accent, probably Chinko. No, maybe not Chinko, since all the polite phrases, the “forgive me’s” and “pardon me’s” Terl had heard when he checked the records, were not there. Terl had never met a Chinko since they were all dead, but he had met a lot of subject races on other planets and they were carefully servile in their speech. As they should be.
“Animal,” said Terl, “you may know the words but you do not understand a proper attitude. Shall I demonstrate?”
Jonnie could have been launched on a flight to the bars with one sweep of those huge paws.
He drew himself up. “My name is not ‘animal.’ It is Jonnie Goodboy Tyler.”
Terl absolutely gaped at him. The effrontery. The bald gall of this thing!
He hit him.
The collar almost broke Jonnie’s neck as the rope brought him up short.
Terl stalked out of the cage and slammed the door. The ground shook like an earthquake as he stamped away.
He had almost reached the outer door of the compound when he stopped. He stood there, thinking.
Terl looked at the gray white world, felt the cold glass of his face mask cutting his gaze. Blast this stinking planet.
He turned around and walked back to the cage. He opened the door and went over to the man-thing. He picked it up, wiped the blood off its neck with a handful of snow, and then put it standing in front of the table.
“My name,” said Terl, “is Terl. Now, what were we talking about?” He knew leverage when he saw it.
But never in their association thereafter did he ever address Jonnie as anything other than “animal.” A Psychlo after all could not ignore the fact that his was the dominant race. The greatest race in all universes. And this man-thing—ugh.
Part 3
1
Zzt was banging around in the transport repair shop, throwing down tools, discarding parts, and generally making an agitated din.
He caught sight of Terl standing nearby and he turned on him in an instant attack.
“Are you at the bottom of this pay cut?” demanded Zzt.
Mildly, Terl said, “That would be the accounting department, wouldn’t it?”
“Why has my pay been cut?”
“It’s not just your pay, it’s also mine and everybody else’s,” said Terl.
“I’ve got three times the work, no help, and now half the pay!”
“The planet is running at a loss, I’m told,” said Terl.
“And no bonuses,” said Zzt.
Terl frowned. This was not the time or place for a favor. Leverage. He had no leverage at all these days.
“Been a lot of machines blowing up lately,” said Terl.
Zzt stood and looked at him. There was more than a hint of threat in that. One never knew about this Terl.
“What do you want?” said Zzt.
“I’m working on a project that could solve a
ll this,” said Terl. “That could get our pay and bonuses back.”
Zzt ignored that. When a security chief sounded like he was doing favors, watch it.
“What do you want?” said Zzt.
“If it’s successful, we’d even get more pay and bonuses.”
“Look, I’m busy. You see these wrecks?”
“I want the loan of a small mine car puller,” said Terl.
Zzt barked a sharp, sarcastic laugh. “There’s one. Blew up yesterday down at the transshipment area. Take that.”
The small bladed vehicle had its whole canopy blown off and the green bloodstains had dried on its panel. Its interior wiring was charred.
“What I want is a small pulling truck,” said Terl. “A simple one.” Zzt went back to throwing tools and parts around. A couple narrowly missed Terl.
“Well?”
“You got a requisition?” said Zzt.
“Well—” began Terl.
“I thought so,” said Zzt. He stopped and looked at Terl. “You sure you haven’t got anything to do with this pay cut?”
“Why?”
“Rumor around you were talking to the Planet Head.”
“Routine security.”
“Hah!”
Zzt attacked the wrecked bladed vehicle with a hammer to remove the remains of its pressure canopy.
Terl walked away. Leverage. He had no leverage.
In deep gloom he stood in a hallway between domes, lost in thought. He did have a solution of sorts. And there were signs of unrest. He made a sudden decision.
A compound intercom was near to hand. He took hold of it and called Numph.
“Terl here, Your Planetship. Could I have an appointment in about an hour? . . . I have something to show you . . . Thank you, Your Planetship. One hour.”
He hung up, pulled his face mask off a belt hook, donned it, and went outside. Soft snowflakes were drifting down.
At the cage he went straight over to the far end of the flexirope and untied it.
Jonnie had been working at the instruction machine and he watched Terl warily. Terl, coiling up the rope, did not fail to notice that the man-thing was now using the chair to sit in. A bit arrogant, but it was good news, really. The thing had one of its hides rigged to the bars to keep snow off a sleeping place. There was another one tented over the machine and work place.