The Coordinator was introducing chiefs. A small man with a smiling Mongol face, wearing a fur hat, came forward. Jonnie shook his hand. The Coordinator said this was Chief Norgay, head of what remained of the Sherpas. They were famous mountaineers and used to run salt caravans clear across the Himalayas in Nepal above India. They used to be very numerous, maybe eighty thousand, but there were only a hundred or two now: they had hidden high up in inaccessible places. There was very little food; even though they were good hunters the game was scarce in high places.
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 Jonnie know there used to be six or eight hundred million Chinese?
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.
Jonnie shook hands. They would bow. So he bowed and this pleased the Chinese enormously.
“Speaking of languages,” said the Coordinator, “they had a little show for you. They're all over there, so would you see it now?”
Jonnie glanced a bit uneasily at the sky. An escort was up there, very alert. He himself was not too far from the plane. He sent the German over to stand by his. Yes, he'd see the show. He felt bad; all their banners were on the ground, their musical instruments upside down in the turf.
About eighty people in reddish-yellow robes were sitting now in precise rows.
They were some of Chief Monk Ananda's people. As Jonnie approached he could see that they were anywhere from eight years old to fifty. They all had shaved heads. They were boys, girls, men, and women. They were trying to be very solemn as they sat with legs folded under them but a gleam of mischief was in their eyes. An old monk was standing in front of them with a long scroll.
“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.
Jonnie was incredulous. The performance went right on, singsonging along.
“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
Jonnie, “and taught them Psychlo from scratch!”
“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 Jonnie and the pilots!
“You like that, Lord Jonnie?” said Chief Monk Ananda in Psychlo. “They not only sing it out, they also talk it really well.”
Jonnie applauded them loudly and they cheered. He knew what he was going to propose here.
“Is this all of them?” said Jonnie.
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 Jonnie.
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. Jonnie got massive amounts of help and they manhandled the patrolcraft into the big plane and put the Tolnep in it, very securely strapped down.
“There's a lot of aircraft down there,” said Jonnie's copilot. “The Scots that hit it must have set off an explosion in the compound. They must have blown the breathe-gas-the domes are scattered in pieces over about five acres. They didn't bother to blow up the ammunition and fuel dumps. The hangars are on a lower level. There are about eighty or ninety battle planes in there. Some are singed but they look all right. There's a lot of tanks and machinery. And there are about fifty of these ore carriers, lord knows why. Bunch of shop and storehouse material. Looks like they shipped a lot of bauxite from here. No live Psychlos."
Jonnie made up his mind. He went to his plane and put the radio on planetary. He called the American base-Dunneldeen.
Jonnie remembered Dunneldeen's joke. “You didn't know I had fifteen daughters. It 's quite urgent they wed.”
“Got it,” said Dunneldeen and broke the connection.
Jonnie knew he would have fifteen pilots– even though not all were graduated– within the next ten or twelve hours. Dunneldeen knew where he was.
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. Jonnie's and the third plane were ready to scramble.
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 Jonnie many times and he was a welcome quest. Then it was Jonnie's turn.
He was flanked by a Coordinator who knew Chinese and a monk who also knew Sherpa. Jonnie had to speak in English for the Chinese-speaking Coordinator and in Psychlo for the monk, and the monk had to translate into Sherpa or Tibetan or whatever it was so it took a bit of time waiting. But not too much.
After some pleasant responses to their speeches, Jonnie got right down to it. “I can't leave you here,” he said and pointed at the sky. “And you can't leave any you have left at home.”
Oh, they surely agreed with that!
Jonnie looked at their fire lit faces as they sat in their different groups. “It is cold in these mountains.” They certainly agreed with that, particularly the Chinese. “There apparently isn't much food.” Oh, he was so very right; Lord Jonnie was very perceptive and he knew how thin their children were. “There are ways you can help. Ways you can help to defeat the Psychlos, possibly forever, if they come back. Ways you can help defeat the aliens in the sky.”