Battlefield Earth

“They are deeply ashamed. They pla

“Well, tell them to get up,” said Jo

“You just saved their lives or maybe more,” said the Coordinator.

“Nonsense,” said Jo

The German pilot was near at hand. It seemed that this was the day for embarrassment. He was explaining to Jo

The Coordinator was introducing chiefs. A small man with a smiling Mongol face, wearing a fur hat, came forward. Jo

And this was Chief Monk Ananda. The man was wearing a reddish-yellow robe. He was big with a very peaceful face. He was a Tibetan and they had a monastery in caves. Any other Tibetans that remained in the country considered him their chief: You see, even before the Psychlo invasion, the Chinese had driven the Tibetans out of their country and they had gone to other lands. The Chinese had suppressed Buddhism-Ananda was a Buddhist– but the caves were very hard to reach, being way up a ravine in a peak, and the Psychlos had never succeeded in rooting them out. The Tibetans were pretty much starved. They were unable to come out to flat places and grow much food and even in this last summer had not been able to grow much due to lack of seeds.

And this man here was Chief Chong-won, head of all the Chinese that were left. Did Jo

Imagine that! There was another tribe up in North China who had taken refuge in an old defense base in the mountains. The base? The Chinese never finished it. It wasn't very much. There were only a hundred or two up in North China. But Chief Chong-won here had three hundred fifty people. They were in a valley that probably had been mined and the Psychlos never went near them, but there was hardly any food. Nothing much would grow up so high. Awfully cold. No, we don't have any trouble talking with the Chinese. They preserved a lot of their university records and are quite literate: they speak Mandarin, an old court language.

Jo

“Speaking of languages,” said the Coordinator, “they had a little show for you. They're all over there, so would you see it now?”

Jo

About eighty people in reddish-yellow robes were sitting now in precise rows.

They were some of Chief Monk Ananda's people. As Jo

“We had trouble last spring,” said the

Coordinator. “Nobody, absolutely nobody could talk to these people. Not in India or Ceylon– that's an island-or anywhere could we find any trace at all of the Tibetan language or this one. We really looked. But we solved it. Listen!” He gave a signal to the old monk.

The Buddhist read a line from the scroll. The whole group sang out as one, a singsong but not a repeat.

It was Psychlo!

The old monk read another line.

The group sang out the translation in Psychlo.

Jo

“He's reading a language that was once called 'Pali,' " whispered the

Coordinator. “It’s the original language in which the canons of Buddhism were written. The monastery for some reason had in its possession a huge library of all the quoted tenets and words of Gautama Siddhartha Buddha, the man who started that religion about thirty-six hundred years ago. And they are literate in that language. But it is extinct. So we got a Chinko-'

“-instruction machine,” finished

Jo

“And they converted it back to Pali! That Psychlo minesite down there is pretty smashed, but it had a dictionary and some other books in a fireproof safe and they've been going like a race horse ever since. So we can talk to them.”

The singsong was going on. They were speaking with a Chinko accent, just like Jo

“You like that, Lord Jo

Jo

“Is this all of them?” said Jo

No, there were about forty more, but it was quite a scramble down here from the monastery. It took ropes and climbing skill and help from the Sherpas.

The idea of a religious teacher's words of peace, as he had heard them in that singsong, being put into Psychlo, where all such sentiments went unused, was marvelous to Jo

Some musicians had recovered their instruments and began to play on small horns and long horns and drums. Some women had gotten fires going and their slight amounts of food were being warmed.

The pilots came back from the minesite with an ore carrier. Jo

“There's a lot of aircraft down there,” said Jo

Jo

Jo

“Got it,” said Du

Jo

The reception had gotten going now. People were over their shock. They were serving food. They were smiling as they passed him. More bows.

Two escort planes were aloft. Jo

Evening had come and they had found enough wood to make a fire. But an enemy would show on a viewscreen up in the sky.

They made speeches. They were grateful to Jo