Battlefield Earth

Everybody wanted to help and simply helped.

“There is no control of it,” Robert the Fox told Jo

Jo

The historian, except for Jo

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 Jo

But Jo

The Council was not having a happy time of it.

Chapter 4

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

The secret behind Jo

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 Jo

Jo

After putting down the breakfast, he had drawn back and was standing there at the stiffest attention Jo

A Coordinator came slipping in the door, the Scot sentry scowling and privately vowing to send for Sir Robert by ru

Jo

The Russian bowed from the hips and straightened up, looking stiffly ahead. “How do you do Jo

Jo

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

“That's all the English he knows, Jo

Chrissie, with a broom in her hand, her cornsilk hair tied out of her eyes with a buckskin thong, bristled at this violation of proper a

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 Jo

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

The Coordinator was already in awe of Chrissie and Jo