Battlefield Earth

“You'll live,” grunted Terl indifferently. “How long will it take you to get well?”

Jo

“You're stupid,” said Terl. “You don't know anything about remote controls.”

“And what could I have done, tied to the seat?” said Jo

"Zzt, the bastard, put a remote control under the hood. And a firebomb.”

“How was I supposed to see that?”

“You could have inspected.”

Jo

“You know now. When we do it again

I’ll-"

“There won't be any 'again,' " said Jo

Terl loomed over him, looking down.

“Not under these conditions,” said Jo

“Shut up, animal!”

“Take off this collar. My neck is burned.”

Terl looked at the frayed flexirope. He went out of the cage and came back with a small welding unit and a new coil of rope. It wasn't flexirope. It was thi

With Jo

Jo

Part IV

Chapter 1

It had been a very bad winter in the mountains; snowslides had early blocked the passes into the high meadow.

Chrissie sat quietly and forlornly in front of the council in the courthouse. The wind whined and moaned through the gaps in the walls, and the fire that had been built in the center of the room sent harried palls of smoke into the faces of the council.

Parson Staffor lay very ill in a nearby hut. The winter had sapped what little vitality he had and his place was taken by the older Jimson man they were now calling parson. Jimson was flanked by an elder named Clay and by Brown Limper Staffor, who seemed to be acting as a council member even though he was far too young and clubfooted-he had begun to sit in for Parson Staffor when he became ill and had just stayed on, grown into a council member now. The three men sat on an old bench.

Chrissie, across the fire from them, was not paying much attention. She had had a horrible nightmare two nights ago– a nightmare that had yanked her, sweating, out of sleep and left her trembling ever since. She had dreamed that Jo

“It’s just plain foolishness,” Parson Jimson was saying to her. “There are three young men who want to marry you and you have no right whatever to refuse them. They village population is dwindling in size; only thirty have survived the winter. This is not a time to be thinking only of yourself.”

Chrissie numbly realized he was talking to her. She made an effort to gather the words in: something about population. Two babies had been born that winter and two babies had died. The young men had not driven many cattle up from the plains before the pass closed and the village was half-starved. If Jo

“When spring comes,” said Chrissie, "I’m going down on the plains to find Jo

This was no shock to the council. They had heard her say it several times since Jo

Brown Limper looked through the smoke at her. He had a faint sneer on his thin lips. The council tolerated him because he didn't ever say much and because he brought them water and food when meetings were too long. But he couldn't resist. “We all know Jo

Jimson and Clay frowned at him. He had been the one who brought to their attention the fact that Chrissie refused to marry any of the young men. Clay wondered whether Brown Limper didn't have a personal stake in this.

Chrissie rallied from her misery. “His horses didn't come home.”

“Maybe the monsters got them, too,” said Brown Limper.

"Jo

“Oh, there are monsters, all right,” said Jimson. “It is blasphemy to doubt the legends.”

“Then,” said Chrissie, “why don't they come here?”

“The mountains are holy,” said Jimson.

“The snow,” said Brown Limper, “closed the passes before the horses could come home. That is, if the monsters didn't get them, too.”

The older men looked at him, frowning him to silence.

"Chrissie," said Parson Jimson, “you are to put aside this foolishness and permit the young men to court you. It is quite obvious that Jo

“When the year has gone by,” said Chrissie, “I shall go down to the plains.”

"Chrissie," said Clay, “this is simply a suicidal idea.”

Chrissie looked into the fire. Jo

“He is not dead,” said Chrissie.

The three council members looked at each other. They had not prevailed. They would try again some other day.

They ignored her and fell to discussing the fact that Parson Staffor wanted a funeral when he died. There wouldn't be much in the way of food and there were problems of digging in the frozen ground. Of course he was entitled to a funeral, for he had been parson and maybe even mayor for many years. But there were problems.

Chrissie realized she was dismissed, and she got up, eyes red with more than smoke, and walked to the courthouse door.

She wrapped the bearskin more tightly about her and looked up at the wintry sky. When the constellation was in that same place in spring she would go. The wind was cutting keen and she pulled the bearskin even tighter. Jo

When the time came she would be all ready to go. And she would go.

A blast of wind from Highpeak chilled her, mocked her. Nevertheless, when the time came she would go.

Chapter 2

Terl was in a furious burst of activity. He hardly slept. He left the kerbango alone. The doom of years of exile on this cursed planet haunted him; each time he slowed his pace he collided with the horrible thought and it jabbed him into even greater efforts.

Leverage, leverage! He conceived himself to be a pauper in leverage.

He had a few things on employees here and there, but they were minor things: peccadillos with some of the Psychlo female clerks, drunke

This Numph. Now there was one. He had potential leverage on Numph but

Terl did not know what it was. He knew it had something to do with the nephew Nipe in home office accounting. But Terl could not dig out what it really was. And so he dared not push it. The risk lay in pretending to be wise to it and then, by some slip, revealing he didn't have the data. The leverage would go up in smoke, for Numph would know Terl had nothing. So he had to use it so sparingly that it was almost no use at all. Blast!