Oh, yes, Terl not only knew him, but back in the old days before there had been a misunderstanding, he himself had taught that one a few tricks: it was why he was such a good flier. A very fine creature, actually; Terl had been his firmest friend.
Terl was elated. These were cadet sentries, standing watches in addition to their schooling to ease the considerable load on regular personnel.
For several days, each morning, Lars Thorenson improved his Psychlo and learned the ins and outs of combat flying. From a master and a one-time friend of Jonnie's. He was quite unaware that if he put some of these “tricks” into use he would lose the most elementary fight in the air, and later others would have to shake the nonsense out of him before he got himself killed. Terl knew well it was a risk to play this trick, but he just couldn't resist it.
Terl corrected the sentry's Psychlo up to a point. And then one morning he said he himself would have to exactly clarify certain words and really they should have a dictionary. There were lots of dictionaries, and so the next morning the sentry gave him one.
With considerable glee, Terl went to work with the dictionary when the sentry was off duty. There were a lot of words in the composite language called "Psychlo" that were never actually used by Psychlos. They had leaked into the language from Chinko and other tongues. Psychlos never used them because they could not really grasp their conceptual meaning.
So Terl looked up words and phrases like “atone for wrongs,” “guilt,” “restitution,” “personal fault,” “pity,” “cruelty,” “just,” and “amends.” He knew they existed as words and that alien races used them. It was a very, very hard job, and later he would look on this as the toughest part of his whole project. It was all so foreing, so utterly alien!
Soon Terl was satisfied he was ready to enter his next stage.
“You know,” he said to the sentry one morning, “I feel very guilty about putting your poor Jonnie in a cage. Actually, I have a craving to atone for my wrongs. It was my personal fault that he was subjected to such cruelty. And I wish with all my heart to make amends. I am overwhelmed by guilt and I pity him for what I did. And it would be only just if I made restitution for it all by suffering in a cage like he did.”
It made Terl perspire to get it all out, but that only added to his contrite look.
The sentry had made a habit of recording their conversations, for he studied them later and corrected his own pronunciation, and since he had never heard a lot of these words in Psychlo before, he was glad he had it all on disc. Terl was also glad. It had been an agonizing performance!
The sentry, having the evening free, digested all this. He decided he had better report it to the Compound Commanding Officer.
There was a new Compound Commander, an Argyll, very well noted for his prowess in raids in earlier days and very experienced– but not in America. The ease with which a radiation bullet could blow up a Psychlo had given him a bit of contempt for them in their current state. And he had a problem of his own.
Literal mobs of people from all over the world got off planes and took tours of the compound. The Coordinators showed them around and pointed out where this had happened and that had happened. Many-hued and many-tongued, they were a bit of a nuisance. And almost every one of them wanted to be shown a Psychlo. Most had never seen one, no matter that they had been oppressed by them for ages. Some very important chiefs and dignitaries had enough whip with the Council to get special permission. That meant an extra detail of guards the commander did not have; it meant taking people down into the dormitory levels where they should not be; it actually meant a bit of danger to them for some of those Psychlos down there were not reconstructed!
So the commander toyed with this idea. He went out and looked at the cage. Evidently it could be wired– in fact it was wired– with plenty of voltage to the bars. If one put up a protector in front so people would not touch the bars and get hurt, he would be relieved of these nonsense tours into the dormitory.
Further, it appealed to him to have a “monkey in a cage.” It would help morale. And it would be an added attraction. He could plainly see that somebody might want to make restitution and do amends. So he mentioned it sketchily to a Council meeting. They were very busy and had their minds on other things and he omitted to tell them it was Terl.
Technicians checked to make sure the cage wiring was live and could be shut off easily from the outside where the connections and box had been fastened to a pole, and that a barrier was erected to keep people from electrocuting themselves.
It was a very elated– but carefully downcast– Terl who was then escorted under heavy guard and put in Jonnie's and the girls' old cage.
“Ah, the sky again!” said Terl. (He hated the blue sky of Earth like poison gas.) “But I must take no pleasure in it. It is only just that I will be confined here, exposed to public view and ridicule,” (he had looked up some new words) “and mocked. It serves me right!”
And so Terl went about his duty very honestly. The crowds came and he looked ferocious and leaped about, glaring at them through his breathe-mask glass and making little children scream and flinch outside the barricade. He had heard of gorillas-beasts over in Africa– beating their chests, so he beat his chest.
He was a real hit. The crowds came, they saw an actual Psychlo, they even threw things at him.
They had heard that he put Jonnie in a collar, and young Lars visited him one day and told him, through the bars, that the crowd wanted to know where his collar was.
Terl thought that a great idea. A couple of days later, five guards came in and put a heavy iron collar and chain on Terl and fastened him to the old stake.
The Compound Commander was quite happy about it. But he told the guards that if Terl showed any sign at all of trying to escape, they were to riddle him.
Terl's mouthbones wore a private smile as he capered and postured. He rumbled and roared.
His plans were working out perfectly.
Chapter 2
Jonnie threw the book from him and pushed away his lunch untouched.
The guard at the door looked in through the glass, abruptly alert. Colonel Ivan whirled in an automatic response, combat ready: it had sounded like the thud of a grenade for a moment.
“It makes no sense,” said Jonnie to himself. “It just makes no sense!”
The others, seeing it was no emergency, relaxed. The sentry returned to his usual position and the colonel went on wiping down the white tile.
But Chrissie remained alarmed. It was almost unheard of for Jonnie to be irritable, and for days and days now, ever since he had started to do nothing but study books– Psychlo books they seemed to be, though she could not read– he had been getting worse and worse.
The untouched lunch worried her. It was venison stew with wild herbs cooked especially for him by Aunt Ellen. Weeks ago she had rushed to the old base to give him a glad and relieved greeting and to tell him that though her fears for him had almost come true, here he was alive! She had stood around suffused with delight until she suddenly saw what they were feeding him. The old village was only a few miles away down the pass, and either personally or through a small boy mounted on one of the horses Jonnie had left, Aunt Ellen routinely sent him his favorite dishes to be warmed up and served from the hospital galley. The boy or Aunt Ellen usually waited to take back the utensils, and when Aunt Ellen saw the food had not been touched she would be upset. Chrissie vowed to get the sentry to eat some and maybe gobble a few bites herself. It wouldn't be polite to send back an untouched venison stew.