Part 15

1

Fleeting impressions, half-seen through a wall composed of darkness and pain. Dim consciousness of being in a ship and landing. Of someone spooning broth at him. Of being carried in a stretcher with rain on the blankets. Of a stone-walled room. Of different faces. Of whispered conversations. Of another stretcher. Of another plane. And a pain in his arm. He sank back into darkness. He thought he was in the drone again. He opened his eyes. He saw Dunneldeen’s face. He must still be in the sea. But no, he was not cold, he was warm.

“He’s coming around,” said someone softly. “We’ll be able to operate soon.”

He opened his eyes and saw boots and kilts. A lot of boots and kilts standing beside what he was lying on.

A plane’s motors? He was in a plane.

He turned his head a little and it hurt. But there was Dunneldeen’s face.

Jonnie saw that he was on a sort of table. He was in a plane, a passenger plane. There was a tall gray man in a white coat on his left side. There were a lot of older Scots on his right side. Four young Scots were sitting on a bench. There was another table with some shiny things on it beyond the doctor.

Dunneldeen was sitting beside him, and there was a tube and a sort of pump connecting Dunneldeen’s arm with his own.

“What’s this?” whispered Jonnie, indicating the tube or trying to.

“Blood transfusion,” said Dunneldeen. He felt he should be very careful about what he said. He was smiling but he was worried and felt very bad. Keep a bright face on it. “Laddie, you are singularly fortunate. You are getting the royal blood of the Stewarts, no less, which puts you into direct line, after me, of course, to the throne of Scotland.”

The doctor was signaling Dunneldeen to take it easy. They all knew that Jonnie might die, that there wasn’t a thirty percent chance of his recovery, not with those two severe skull fractures and other injuries, as well as shock. His respiration was too shallow. In the underground hospital where they had operated for centuries, in a land where skull injuries were common, the doctor had seen too many die in less injured condition than this one. He was looking down at the big, handsome lad with something like pity.

“This is Dr. MacKendrick,” said Dunneldeen to Jonnie. “He’ll handle you all right. You always overdo things, Jonnie. Most would be content with one skull fracture. But not you, laddie, you’ve got two!” Dunneldeen smiled. “You’ll be right as rain in no time.” He wished he could believe it; Jonnie’s face bore the gray of death.

“Maybe I should have waited for you in the drone if you were so close,” whispered Jonnie.

The older Scots let out an incredulous gasp. Chief of Clanfearghus stepped forward. “Naw, naw, MacTyler. The foul thing crashed just a mile north of Cape Wrath! ’Twas almost upon us!”

“How did you find me?” whispered Jonnie.

“Laddie,” said Dunneldeen, “when you light a beacon fire to gather the clans, you don’t do it halfway! The drone went up to ten thousand feet like a flaming rocket and like to have lit the whole of Scotland. That’s how we spotted you.”

The chief of the Argylls grumbled, “That wasn’t what your companion told us, Dunneldeen. They said your what-you-call-it detected a small object in the water and then got a look on a plane and then saw the fire.”

Dunneldeen was very composed. “It makes a better story that way and that’s the way the historian will write it. He lit a beacon fire in the sky!”

The other chiefs nodded firmly. That was the way it should be.

“What day is this?” whispered Jonnie.

“Day 95.”

Jonnie felt a bit confused. He had lost a day, two days? Where had he been? Where was he? Why?

The doctor saw the puzzlement. He had seen it before in head injuries. This young man had lost track of time. “They had to wait for me,” he said. “I was not in Aberdeen at the moment. And then we had to type your blood and find someone with the same type. I’m sorry it took long. But we also had to bring you out of shock, get you warm.” He shook his head sadly. “I should have gone with you all along. I’ll help the others when we get there.”

This upset Jonnie a little bit. “Were there a lot of Scots hurt? You shouldn’t have delayed for me if you had a doctor.”

“No, no,” said the chief of the Camerons. “Dr. Allen, who’s so expert with burns, was sent two days gone.”

“Twenty-one hurt,” said Dunneldeen. “The one being you. Only two died. Very light casualties. The others will all recover.”

“Who are they?” whispered Jonnie, making a slight motion with his hand to the four young men on the bench.

“Why, those,” said Dunneldeen, “are four members of the World Federation for the Unification of the Human Race. The first one is a MacDonald and he speaks Russian now. The second is an Argyll and he speaks German. . . .” That wasn’t why they were there at all. They were the others they’d found of Jonnie’s blood type, waiting in case more transfusions were needed.

“And why am I in a plane?” whispered Jonnie.

That was the question they didn’t want to answer. The doctor had told them not to worry this young man. They had him in a plane and were rushing him to the huge underground defense base in the mountains. There was some chance of a Psychlo counterattack. They had no idea at all whether the bombs sent to Psychlo had succeeded or failed. The Chamco brothers had told them about the force screen on Psychlo’s transshipment area and that the early recoil had shown evidence of the screen’s closing. The Chamcos had also told them that common salt neutralized the kill-gas completely. Angus had gotten mine ventilation fans into the old base and they’d found salt for filters of air. A group of excited, imported, awed Russians were at that very moment cleaning up the old base and the parson was burying the dead there. And they were not about to leave Jonnie MacTyler anywhere but safe in that base!

Dunneldeen answered, “What? Why not in the plane? You want to miss the victory celebration? We can’t have that!”

A Scot helping Dwight up in the cockpit area came back and whispered in Dunneldeen’s ear. He was dragging a mike on a long cord. They had it on the planetary band.

Dunneldeen turned to Jonnie. “They want to hear your voice so they can believe you’re alive.”

“Who?” said Jonnie.

“The compound, the people. Just say something about how you are.” Dunneldeen put the mike very close to Jonnie’s mouth.

“I’m fine,” Jonnie whispered. Then something told him he should try harder. He tried to speak louder. “I’m just fine.”

Dunneldeen gave the mike back to the Scot who hesitated, not sure the message had gone out. Dunneldeen waved him away.

“I hear other planes,” whispered Jonnie.

With a glance at the doctor for permission, Dunneldeen helped him turn his head. Jonnie looked through the plane ports.

There were five planes out there, stacked in a long echelon. He turned his eyes and looked out the other port. There were five planes out there in another echelon.

“It’s your escort,” said Dunneldeen.

“My escort?” whispered Jonnie. “But why? Everybody helped.”

“Aye, laddie,” said the chief of Clanfearghus. “But you were the one. You were the bonnie one!”

The doctor disconnected the tube. He felt Jonnie’s pulse. He nodded and motioned the others to silence. He had let this go on too long. The plane was not vibrating; the flight was very smooth. He had his patient out of shock. He wished he were in his own operating cave. But the others would not leave this young man there. And he himself, having heard but a small part of it, could share their awe and respect for what he had done.

“If you’ll just drink this,” said the doctor, “it will make things easier.”

They held the cup to Jonnie’s mouth. It was whiskey and it had heavy herbs in it. He managed to drink it. Shortly the pain grew less and he seemed to be floating.

The doctor signaled them all to be quiet. He had a trephine in his hand. The brain was being pressed upon in three places, not two, and the pressure must be relieved.

Dunneldeen went up to the cockpit to help Dwight. He glanced at their escort. Most of them were flying with one pilot. They had each smashed their minesites and come hammering back here when he put out the call for a massive patrol to the north of Scotland. They all should have gone home, but they wouldn’t hear of it when they knew about Jonnie. They’d gone down with a Scot war party and gotten more planes from the Cornwall minesite after shooting the few Psychlos staggering around, and those not ordered back for urgent duty had been sitting, waiting for news about Jonnie. Now they were escorting him home.

“You better tell them he’s all right,” said Dwight. “They keep calling in every two or three minutes for news. And so does Robert the Fox. Takes one man just to handle the radio!”

“He’s not all right,” said Dunneldeen. And he looked down the long corridor to where the doctor had begun the operation.

Dwight glanced at Dunneldeen. Was the young prince crying? He felt like it himself.

2

Jonnie had been in a coma for three days.

They had brought him to the ancient underground military base in the Rocky Mountains where salt filters could be dropped into place at once if a counterattack materialized from the planet Psychlo.

The hospital complex was very extensive. It was all white tile, hardly any of it cracked. The Russians had cleaned it all up and the parson had buried the crumbling dead.

Fifteen of the wounded Scots were there, including Thor and Glencannon. They were in a separate series of rooms from Jonnie’s, but one could hear them now and then, especially when the pipe major gave them an afternoon concert. Dr. Allen and Dr. MacKendrick had already discharged five of them as reasonably well and certainly too restless and impatient to keep idle when so many things were going on elsewhere.

Chrissie had been in constant attendance at Jonnie’s bedside and she rose when Dr. MacKendrick and Angus MacTavish came in. They seemed angry with one another and Chrissie hoped they would go soon. MacKendrick put a hand on Jonnie’s forehead and stood there for a moment looking at the ashen pallor. Then he turned to Angus with an expressive hand that seemed to say, “See?” Jonnie’s breathing was shallow.

Three days before, Jonnie had awakened and whispered to her to send for somebody. There was always a Scot guard at the door, his assault rifle blocking out would-be visitors, of which there were too many. Chrissie had brought him in and watched worriedly while Jonnie whispered a long message to Robert the Fox, and the guard got it on a picto-recorder mike held close to Jonnie’s lips. The message had been to the effect that if another gas drone appeared in the sky they could probably stop it by landing thirty recon drones on it with magnetic skids and racing their engines on reverse coordinates so the gas drone’s motors would burn out. Chrissie didn’t understand the message, but she did understand that it was too tiring to Jonnie. He had relapsed back into a coma, and when the guard came back to say Sir Robert sent his thanks and would do that, Chrissie was quite cross with him.

The same guard was on again when Dr. MacKendrick and Angus were let in, and Chrissie vowed she would reason with him. MacKendrick, yes. Angus, definitely no!

MacKendrick and Angus went out and the guard closed the door behind them.

“Look,” said MacKendrick, dragging Angus into one side room after another. “Machines, machines, machines. This was once a very well appointed and outfitted hospital. Those big things over there—I have seen them in an ancient book—were called X-ray machines. It was a subject called radiology.”

“Radiation?” said Angus. “No, man, not on Jonnie! Radiation is for killing Psychlos. You’re daft!”

“Those machines let you look inside the body and find out what is wrong. They were invaluable.”

“Those machines,” said Angus, angrily, “were run by electricity! Why do you think we light this place with mine lamps?”

“You must get them running!” said MacKendrick.

“Even if I did, I see by that one they have tubes. The gas in those tubes is over a thousand years old. We can’t get any more of it and couldn’t get it into the tubes if we had any! You’re daft, man.”

MacKendrick glared at him. “There is something pressing on his brain! I can’t just go plunging into it with a scalpel. I can’t guess. Not with Jonnie MacTyler! People would slaughter me!”

“You want to see inside his head,” said Angus. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” Angus went off muttering about electricity.

He told a standby pilot at the heliport that he needed to get to the compound fast. The pilots were very few and they were being run ragged. They were zipping off to all parts of the world; they had a sort of inter-national airline going that was beginning to visit every remaining pocket of men on the planet at least once a week. They were ferrying World Federation coordinators and chiefs and tribal leaders as fast as they could. More pilots were in training, but right now they only had thirty plus the two in hospital. So a casual request, even from a Scot, even from a member of the original combat force, was not likely to get much heed. Travel from the underground base to the compound was usually by ground car.

Angus told him it had to do with Jonnie, and the pilot said why hadn’t he said so, and pushed him into a plane and said he would wait for him to come back.

With grim purpose, Angus went to the compound section where they kept the captive Psychlos. A small area of the old dormitory level had been rigged to circulate breathe-gas and “unreconstructed” Psychlos were there under heavy guard. They numbered about sixty now, for occasional ones were brought here from distant minesites when they surrendered peacefully. Terl was captive elsewhere.

Angus got an air mask and the Scot guard let him in. The place was very dim and the huge Psychlos sat around in attitudes of despair. One didn’t walk in the place without being covered by the guard. The prisoners expected a Psychlo counterattack and were not too cooperative.

The Scot engineer located Ker and dug him out of his apathy. He demanded of Ker to tell him whether he knew of any mining equipment that would let one look through solid objects. Ker shrugged. Angus told him who it was for and Ker sat there for a while, his amber eyes thoughtful. Then suddenly he wanted to be reassured as to who this was for, and Angus told him it was for Jonnie. Ker was turning a tiny gold band around in his claws. Suddenly he sprang up and demanded that Angus give him an escort and a breathe-mask.

Ker went down to the shops and in a storeroom there dug up a strange machine. He explained it was used to analyze the internal structure of mineral samples and to find crystalline cracks inside metals. He showed Angus how to work it. You put the emanation tube under the object to be examined and you read the results on the top screen. There was also a trace paper reader that showed metals in alloys or rocks. It worked on some wavelength he called sub-proton field emanation, and this was intensified by the lower tube, and the influence went through the sample and you read it on the top screen. Being Psychlo, it was quite massive, and Ker carried it for him to the waiting plane. A guard took Ker back and Angus returned to the military base.

They tried it with some cats they had that were cleaning the rat population out, and the cats afterward seemed cheerful enough. The screen showed the skull outline very nicely. They tried it on one of the wounded Scots who volunteered and they found a piece of stone in his hand from a mine injury, and he too seemed fine afterward.

About 4:00 that afternoon they used it on Jonnie. By 4:30 they had a three-dimensional picture and the trace paper.

A very relieved Dr. MacKendrick pointed it out to Angus. “A piece of metal! See it? A sliver just below one of the trephine holes. Well! We’ll just get him ready and I can have that out with a scalpel soon enough!”

“Metal?” said Angus. “Scalpel? On Jonnie? No you don’t! Don’t you dare touch him! I’ll be right back!”

With the metal trace paper flying behind him, Angus fifteen minutes later charged in on the Chamco brothers. They worked in a separate breathe-gas dome at the compound, industriously trying to assist Robert the Fox to put things back together. Angus shoved the trace under their pug nosebones: “What metal is this?”

The Chamcos examined the trace squiggles. “Ferrous daminite,” they said. “A very strong support alloy.”

“Is it magnetic?” demanded Angus. And they said yes, of course it was.

By six o’clock Angus was back in the hospital. He had a heavy electrocoil he had just made. It had handgrips on it.

Angus showed MacKendrick how to guide it and MacKendrick worked out the best path to bring the sliver out with the least damage to tissue.

A few minutes later they had the broad sliver in their hands, withdrawn by the magnet.

Later the Chamco brothers identified it with closer analysis as a piece of a battle plane skid strut “which has to be very strong and very light.”

Jonnie had not been conscious enough to tell anyone what he had done on the drone and Chrissie had shooed off the historian when he tried to find out earlier. So it was a bit of a mystery as to how a sliver piece of a strut could have been daggered into Jonnie’s head.

But whatever they had done to him, Chrissie was extremely relieved. The fever he had had dropped. His breathing improved and his color got better.

The following morning he came out of the coma and smiled a little at Chrissie and MacKendrick and dropped into a natural sleep.

Planetary radio was not slow in crackling with the news. Their Jonnie was out of danger!

The pipe major paraded his pipes and drums all around the compound on the heels of the crier who was yelling it out to work parties. Bonfires blazed both there and in various other parts of the world, and a coordinator in the Andes relayed the news that the chiefs of some peoples they had found there had declared this an annual celebration day, and could they come now and pay homage? A pilot standing by with a plane in the Mountains of the Moon in Africa had to get help from both coordinators and chiefs of that small colony in order to get space to take off again, so mobbed had the field become with celebrating, jubilant people. The compound radio operators had to double up on shifts to handle the message traffic roaring in on them as a result of the announcement.

Robert the Fox just went around grinning at everybody.

3

As the days wore on into weeks, it became obvious to the council, originally composed of the parson, the schoolmaster, the historian and Robert the Fox, and now augmented by several clanchiefs who left deputies in Scotland, that Jonnie was brooding about something.

He would smile at them from his bed and talk to them when spoken to, but there was something deep in his eyes that was dull and moody.

Chrissie tried not to let them come very often, and when they did she was a bit impatient with them if they overstayed.

Some of the Russians and some Swedes were rebuilding parts of the Academy due to the desperate need for pilots. Until the ancient capitol building in Denver could be rebuilt, the council had a room at the Academy. They could get to both the compound and the underground military base from there, and all their berthing quarters were there.

At this particular meeting, Robert the Fox was walking up and down, his kilt flaring out each time he turned, his claymore held snug enough by an ancient officer’s belt from the base—which also held a Smith and Wesson—knocking against chairs. “Something is bothering him. He is not like the old Jonnie.”

“Does he think we are doing something wrong?” said the chief of Clanfearghus.

“No, no, it isn’t that,” said Robert the Fox. “There’s not a scrap of criticism for anyone in his makeup. It’s just he . . . he seems worried.”

The parson cleared his throat, “It just could be his side has something to do with it. He cannot much move his right arm and he cannot walk as yet. He is, after all, used to being about and very briskly as well. After all, the lad had a dreadful time of it, all alone, injured. I can’t think how he managed. All that time in a cage, earlier . . . You’re all expecting too much, too fast, gentlemen. He is a brave spirit and I have faith. . . .”

“Could be worry over the possibility of a Psychlo counterattack,” said the chief of Clanargyll.

“We must reassure him somehow,” said the chief of Clanfearghus. “Heaven knows, we are working hard enough on planetary affairs.”

And they were. The World Federation for the Unification of the Human Race had been formed from those Jonnie had not accepted for the group that had come with him to America. Some two hundred young Scots and another fifty oldsters had done their beginning work well. In two dangerous but successful raids, one to the site of an ancient university named Oxford and another to a similar ruin at Cambridge, they had obtained language books and a mound of material on other countries. They had worked out where isolated groups of humans might still be and had formed up a unit for each language they thought might still be in use. Their selection was proving not far off, and ruler-bruised hands attested to the diligence of their study. They called themselves “coordinators” and they were making a vital contribution all over the world where groups were being found.

The current estimate was that there were nearly thirty-five thousand human beings left on Earth, an astonishing number that, the council agreed, was far too great for any one town. The groups were mostly survivors who had withdrawn to mountainous places, natural fortresses their forebears had mined, as in the case of the Rockies. But some were in the frozen north in which the Psychlos had had no interest, and some were simply overlooked strays.

The duty of the council, as they saw it, was to preserve the tribal and local customs and government, and install over all of it a clan system, appointing local leaders as clanchiefs. The coordinators spread the news and were extremely welcome and successful.

The hard-worked pilots were ferrying in chiefs and visitors and simply anyone who got on their passenger planes. If there were too many going or coming they simply told them to wait until next week and that was fine.

But there was no really organized forward motion. Local control of the tribes was often slack. Some had retained literacy in their language, some had not. Most of them were poor, half-starved, ragged.

The one incredible fact that after over a thousand years there was freedom from Psychlos, even if possibly temporary, united them in a wave of hope. They had once gazed from their mountains on the ruins of cities they dared not visit; they had looked upon fertile plains and great herds they dared not benefit from; they had seen no hope whatever for their dying race. And then suddenly men from the sky, speaking their language, telling them of the remarkable feats that led to possible freedom, had brought them soaring hope and reburgeoning pride in their race.

The council’s existence they accepted. They joined it and, with radios parked on rocks and in huts, communicated with it.

They all had one question. Was the Jonnie MacTyler of whom the coordinators spoke a part of this council? Yes, he was. Good, no more questions.

But the council well knew that Jonnie was not an active part of the council now. Completely aside from the political significance of it, every council member was himself personally concerned for Jonnie.

There were all kinds of things happening over the world, most of the actions taken without even informing the council. People were moving about. A group of South Americans, with baggy pants and flat leather hats, swinging wide lariats and riding almost as well as Jonnie once did, had suddenly walked off a plane with their women and lariats and saddles and said, through their Spanish-speaking Scot coordinator, that they were llaneros or gauchos and they knew cattle—but would find out what to do with buffalo—and were taking over the management of the vast herds to preserve them and make sure the people at the compound and base were properly fed. Two Italians from the Italian Alps had shown up and taken over the commissary after making peace with the old women. Five Germans from Switzerland had shown up and opened a factory in Denver to salvage and service man-equipment such as knives and tools, you name it, and if you sent it to them they would make it shiny and working and send it back. This put a freight line into an already overburdened pilot zone. Three Basques showed up and simply started making shoes; the difficulty was that Basque as a language had been omitted by the coordinators, and the shoemakers were learning English and Psychlo while they turned out shoes from the hides the South Americans dedicatedly furnished them. Many others came in.

Everybody wanted to help and simply helped.

“There is no control of it,” Robert the Fox told Jonnie one day in the hospital room.

Jonnie simply gave him a small smile and said, “Why control them?”

The historian, except for Jonnie’s account of the drone, which was too sketchy to be called history, was getting bogged down in assembling tribal histories of the last thousand or more years. The coordinators sent him all kinds of stuff and he couldn’t even keep it in order. Some serious-eyed Chinese from a mountain fastness there had shown up to help him, and they were furiously studying English, but were not of much help yet.

It seemed at first that language would be an obstacle. But it soon became clear that the future educated person would speak three languages: Psychlo for technical matters; English for arts, humanities and government; and their own tribal language if not English. The pilots chattered Psychlo at each other: all their equipment was in Psychlo as well as their manuals and navigation and related skills.

There was a lot of protest at speaking the language of the hated Psychlos until the historian learned that Psychlo as a language was really a composite of words and technical developments stolen from other peoples in the universes, and there never had been a basic language called “Psychlo.” People were glad of that and thereafter learned it more willingly, but they liked to refer to it as “Techno.”

The parson had his own problems. He had about forty different religions on his hands. They had one thing in common: the myths of the conquest a thousand or more years ago. Otherwise, they were miles apart. He had witch doctors and medicine men and priests and such flooding his doorstep. He knew very well the wars that can develop out of different faiths, and he was not going to evangelize any one of them. Man wanted peace.

He explained to them that man, being divided and internally at war, had advanced too slowly as a culture and so had been wide open to an invasion from elsewhere. They all agreed man should not be at war with man.

The myths—well, they knew the truth of it now. They were happy to abandon those myths. But on this question of which gods and which devils were valid . . . well . . .

The parson had neatly handled the whole thing for the moment. He would disturb no beliefs at all. Every one of these tribes was demanding to know what was the religion of Jonnie MacTyler? Well, he wasn’t really of any religion, the parson told them. He was Jonnie MacTyler. Instantly and without exception, Jonnie MacTyler became part of their religions. And that was that.

But Jonnie was lying a bit wan, trying each day at Chrissie’s and MacKendrick’s persuasion to walk, to use his arm. And when the parson tried to tell him he was getting woven into the pantheon of about forty religions, he said nothing. He just lay there, not much life or interest showing in the depths of his eyes.

The council was not having a happy time of it.

4

He lay half-awake in his bed, not really wanting to try.

The secret behind Jonnie’s lethargy was the feeling that he had failed. Maybe the bombs hadn’t landed on Psychlo. Maybe all this was just a brief interlude of peace for man. Perhaps soon the beautiful plains of his planet would once more be denied the human race.

And even if the bombs had landed and Psychlo was no longer a menace, he had heard of other races out there in the universe, savage races as pitiless as the Psychlos. How could this planet defend itself against those?

It haunted him at every awakening; it plagued his sleep. People now looked so happy and industrious, so revived. What cruelty if it were just a brief interlude. How crushed they would be!

Today would be just another day. He would get up, and a Russian attendant would bring in his breakfast and help Chrissie straighten the room. Then MacKendrick would come and they would exercise his arm and he would try to walk a bit. Something about there being nothing wrong, really, just having to learn to do it again. Then Sir Robert or the parson would come over and sit uncomfortably for a while until Chrissie shooed them out. A few more dull routine actions and another day would be gone. His failure oppressed him. He saw more clearly than they did how cruel a letdown this would be if the Psychlos counterattacked. He felt a little guilty when he saw a glad face: how soon it might turn to grief.

He had given the historian, Doctor MacDermott, a colorless outline of the drone destruction, all from the viewpoint of what one could or could not do if another one appeared, and Doctor Mac had well supposed there was far more to the action than that, but he had been chased out by Chrissie.

Chrissie had just washed his face and he was sitting at a trolley table when he noticed something odd going on with the Russian attendant. It really did not thoroughly challenge Jonnie’s interest, for there were always Scots guarding him in the outside passage against intruders or disturbance—a guard he had at first protested and then accepted when they all seemed so upset at the refusal.

Jonnie had not seen this particular Russian in two weeks; others had been taking his place. Once this Russian had come in with a great big black eye and a triumphant grin on his face; questioned, Chrissie had explained that the Russians sometimes fought among themselves over the right to serve him. Well, this fellow looked like he could win any fight. As tall as Jonnie, heavyset with slightly slanted eyes, and dressed in baggy-bottomed trousers and a white tunic, he was quite imposing, his bristling black mustache standing straight out on both sides of his big nose. His name was, inevitably, Ivan.

After putting down the breakfast, he had drawn back and was standing there at the stiffest attention Jonnie had ever seen.

A coordinator came slipping in the door, the Scot sentry scowling and privately vowing to send for Sir Robert by runner the moment the door was closed.

Jonnie looked at the Russian questioningly.

The Russian bowed from the hips and straightened up, looking stiffly ahead. “How do you do, Jonnie Tyler sir.” His was a very thick accent. He did not go on.

Jonnie went on eating oatmeal and cream. “How do you do,” he said indifferently.

The Russian just stood there. Then his eyes rolled appealingly at the Scot coordinator.

“That’s all the English he knows, Jonnie sir. He has some news and a present for you.”

Chrissie, with a broom in her hand, her corn-silk hair tied out of her eyes with a buckskin thong, bristled at this violation of proper announcement. She looked like she was going to hit both of them with the broom. Jonnie motioned her to be still. He was slightly interested. The Russian was so imposing and was fairly bursting with what he had to say.

Ivan barked off a long string of Russian and the coordinator took it up. “He says he is Colonel Ivan Smolensk of the Hindu Kush—that’s in the Himalayan Mountains. They are descended from a Red Army detachment that was cut off there and intermarried locally; there are about ten groups in the Himalayas; some speak Russian, some an Afghanistan dialect. They really aren’t army units. ‘Colonel’ to them means ‘father.’ They’re really Cossacks.”

The Russian thought this was going on too long—it was more than he had said. So he rattled off another string. The coordinator cleared up a couple of points and turned to Jonnie.

“This is very irregular,” said Chrissie, her black eyes flashing.

The coordinator was already in awe of Chrissie, and Jonnie had to tell him to go on. “It seems like when they found they could travel around—the steppes there are huge—a troop—that’s their name for a family unit—rode clear over to the Ural Mountains. They got on the radio to him—anybody can use a radio it seems—and they gave him some news. Our coordinator there had told them about this base and that troop for some reason thought there might be a Russian base.

“They came back and radioed Ivan here about it and he took off—anybody can hook a ride on a plane; they schedule ’round the various tribes about once a week—and he rode like the wind, he says, on their very swift horses and he went to check it personally and he’s just come back and wants to tell you.”

“He should tell the council!” said Chrissie. “Jonnie is in no condition to be holding what they call audiences!”

The Russian let out another string. The coordinator timidly translated (he did not like crossing Chrissie; she was such a beautiful woman and such a celebrity herself). “There is such a base. It is as big as this one and just as full of atom bombs and hardware and dead men.”

Jonnie was vaguely interested. Might serve them as a refuge if there were a counterattack. “Well, tell him that’s fine and why not clean it up and use it.”

A brief interchange between the coordinator and the Russian, and then fireworks! Russian splattered off the very walls.

Robert the Fox came in short of breath from hurrying, thoroughly disapproving of anyone disturbing Jonnie, as well as short-circuiting proper channels. But he paused. Jonnie seemed interested. Not much, but more than Robert had seen for a while. The veteran leaned back against the wall and signaled the coordinator to go on.

The coordinator was getting overwhelmed. He was quite used to dealing with important tribal heads and notables, but here he was in the company of three of the most important names this planet had ever had, especially Jonnie sir. But Colonel Ivan was almost stomping his feet for him to translate.

“He says that’s what ruined the whole human race. He says the valiant-Red-Army, trying to fight the capitalist-imperialist-warmongers (these are just names to him, Jonnie sir, he doesn’t have a political axe to grind) had their attention on each other and didn’t cooperate when an invader landed; and he says while tribal wars will and do happen, international wars among whole peoples are against the good welfare of the people. He says he is for the people of Earth and people didn’t stick together, but fought, and this must not happen again. He’s very emphatic, Jonnie sir, and he says all the other Russian tribes are also.”

Jonnie pushed back the tray, and the Russian, suddenly remembering his duty, picked it up. He let out another broadside of Russian.

The coordinator pulled out some papers. “They’ve retained literacy, sir, and he and some of the chiefs drew up some papers—they don’t have much paper so excuse its condition, I think they found it in that base—and they want your agreement to it.”

Jonnie looked tired to Robert the Fox. “This is council business. The Himalayan chiefs are members of the council.”

The Russian seemed to divine what he was saying and rattled off more Russian.

“He says no,” said the coordinator. “This council is over here on this continent and that base is over there on that continent. He says there are silos of nuclear weapons aimed at this continent and have been for a thousand years or so. And he doesn’t want anything to happen to you, Jonnie sir. So he wants a force of South Americans and Alaskans—he knows there are almost no North Americans left—to take charge of that base over there on your authority. He says if the Russians have charge of this base here, they won’t fire at Russia. And if people from this continent take charge of that base there, they won’t fire on this continent. They’ve got it all worked out, Jonnie sir. It’s all here. They worked it out in Russia. If you say all right, and put a little initial here . . .”

Robert the Fox was watching Jonnie. This was the first thing he’d seen the lad take even the slightest interest in. Robert knew it would probably be all right with the council. He saw Jonnie looking at him. He nodded. Jonnie took the offered pen and wrote his initials on the paper.

The Russian seemed to almost deflate with relief. Then he rattled away at the coordinator, who presently said, “He now has a present for you.”

Ivan put down the tray and reached into his tunic pocket. He brought out a gold disk with a big red star in the center of it and two lapel tabs of ancient braid. He gave them to Jonnie, waiting for him to accept.

The coordinator said, “That is the cap ornament they found on the marshal of the Red Army who was in charge of that base and those are his lapel tabs. He wants you to know that they are yours. And you are in charge of both bases.”

Jonnie smiled slightly and the Russian promptly kissed him on both cheeks and rushed out.

Robert the Fox was holding the papers and Chrissie put the gifts in Jonnie’s buckskin pouch.

“If this had happened a thousand or so years ago,” said Robert the Fox, “maybe things would have been different.” Chrissie was shooing him to leave. Jonnie looked tired. “The council will put this through and handle it. There might be vital materials in that base.”

“You might get it cleaned up and filtered,” said Jonnie. “It might help them if gas drones come again.”

When Dr. MacKendrick came to exercise his arm and get him to walk, he told Jonnie he was improved.

Jonnie alarmed him. “Not improved enough!” said Jonnie, a bit bitterly. “I may not have been so smart after all.”