Jonnie stood outside the ops room door and looked around the bowl. How quiet it seemed.
The older Chinese children had quieted the younger ones and gotten them to bed. The dogs were silent, exhausted from the excitement of a while ago. The emissaries had all gone off to their apartments or guard duty over Schleim. There were no sentries in sight. The place seemed deserted. Even though it was not late yet.
To one brought up in the silences of mountains, the calm was welcome.
It might be the sort of calm that is followed by blasting storm. But it was a moment's calm.
Too many situations were running all at the same time for him to have any peace of mind. Who knew what would happen as a result of the emissary triaclass="underline" he did not trust them. What would occur after this “temporary suspension” of war? What would they find in Edinburgh? In Russia? He told himself he had better not let his mind dwell long on these last two places or he would edge over into anxiety and grief.
That book he had read– that said you could handle things if you did one of them at a time: good advice.
Psychlo! He had been living in such a tornado that the question of Psychlo had become a sort of dull pain like a toothache. Was there any danger of counterattack? Or was that just a shadow?
Ha! This was a thing he had been waiting for. He had a transshipment rig. It was in fine working order. There were no planes in the air, no motors running. Psychlo! He would end right now that question of threat.
He strode over to the console and almost fell over Angus. The Scot was sitting in a pool of light, working intensely with some rods and wheels. He didn't look up but he knew Jonnie was there.
“While you were settling up with Schleim," said Angus, fingers flying around his work, “I parked a picto-recorder on a peak on Tolnep to watch that moon. Reaction motors don't mess up a firing– only teleportation motors do. So I just fired it. But that was the only gyrocage assembled. I’m putting together a spare.
“Angus,” said Jonnie, “we are going to find out what happened to Psychlo! We've got the machine, we've got the time.”
“Give me about half an hour,” said Angus.
Jonnie saw he needed no help and he wasn't going to stand around here and wait.
En route to his room he looked in at the hospital. They had left a woman nurse, an elderly Scot, and she resented being left behind. She looked up from a patient as Jonnie entered. “It’s time for your sulfa and your shot!” she said threateningly. Jonnie knew he shouldn't have come in here. He had just wanted to see how the wounded were doing.
The two fractured-skull cases were lying in their beds. They seemed all right. But being Scots and left behind, they eyed him dully. The two burned antiaircraft gunners seemed all right but, being Scots, they didn't want to be there with Edinburgh burning.
“Take off your jacket!” snapped the nurse. Then she took the bandage off his arm and looked at the arrow wound. “Hah!” she said, sounding disappointed, “it won't even leave a scar!”
She made him take sulfa powder and wash it down with water. She jabbed an inch of needle into his good arm and squirted B Complex stingingly with a savage turn. She took his temperature and counted his pulse. “You're perfectly well!” It sounded like an indictment.
Jonnie had had a lot of practice in diplomacy that day. He felt sorry for these people. Jacket and helmet dangling from his hand he said, “I sure am glad you people stayed. I may need lots of help defending this area.”
After a moment of amazement, they all came alive. They said he could count on them! And when he left they were all chattering about what they could do and smiling– even the nurse.
With the exodus of the adult Chinese, he hadn't really expected to find Mr.
Tsung. But there he was. He had laid out a blue jacket on the bed along with some other items for change. But he was bowing and beaming. With his hands tucked in his sleeves, he was going up and down like a pump.
He was trying to say something but his English wasn't up to it and suddenly he bolted and came back with Chief Chong-won.
“Well, at least you're here,” said
Jonnie. “I thought the place was near empty!”
“Oh, no,” said the chief. “The Coordinators are all gone. But we have guests, you know. The emissaries. So I’m here and the cook; there's an electrician and two antiaircraft gunners.” He started counting off on his fingers. “Must be a dozen people left. We do have one problem.” He saw Jonnie go alert. “It’s the food. I thought we'd be feeding all these emissaries and we got ready to fix the fanciest Chinese food you ever heard of. But they don't eat our food! So we have all this food and nobody to eat it! Too bad!”
To a people who had been pressed starving into the snowy mountains for centuries, it must look like quite a tragedy. “Feed the children,” said Jonnie.
“Oh, we have, we have,” said the chief. “Even the dogs. But we've still got lots too much food. I tell you what we'll do. There's an empty apartment and we'll set it up for a dining room and we will feed you a beautiful dinner.”
"I’ve got something to do,” said Jonnie.
“Oh, no problem, no problem. It is very stylish to eat late. The cook will be so pleased. Here,” and he made a dash outside to the hall and brought back a tray with some soup and small patties of dough and meat. “These are...no Psychlo word...between-meal-bites. Help us out!”
Jonnie laughed. If that was all the problems they had, life would be a basking in the sun!
He sat down in a chair and began to eat the snack. Tsung, after setting up a small table, was back to bobbing again.
“What's he bowing about?” said Jonnie.
The chief waved his hand and Jonnie saw that a fourth viewscreen had been installed, making two for the conference room. “He's been in here all the time you were on that platform, working a Coordinator half to death translating. They've got discs of everything that went on. The second screen was so they could see both you and the emissaries. I looked in here a time or two-'
Mr. Tsung was volubly interrupting him. The chief translated, “He wants you to know that you are the fastest pupil he has ever seen. He says if you had been an imperial Prince of China and his family had still been chamberlains and not exiled, China would still be there.”
Jonnie laughed and would have acknowledged with a return compliment but Mr. Tsung was talking very fast and drawing something from his sleeve. “He wants something,” said the chief. “He wants you to put your 'chop' on this paper. That is, your signature.” He was unfolding it. It was a considerable expanse of Chinese characters.
The chief raised his eyebrows and translated the sense of it for Jonnie. “This says that you approve the cancellation of exile of his family from the Imperial Court and that you recommend its reinstatement as chamberlains to the principal government of this planet and yourself.
"I’m not a member of the government,” said Jonnie.
“He knows all that, but he wants your chop on it. I warn you that he has two brothers and several relatives. They're all educated in diplomacy and such. Oh, he tells me there's a second paper here. Yes. This one restores their rank as Mandarins of the Blue Button– lets them wear a round cap with a blue button on top– noblemen, actually. It 's valid. They are noblemen.”
“But I’m not-' began Jonnie.
Mr. Tsung sang off into half-a-dozen trills of protest.
“He says you don't know what you are. Put your chop on these and he'll
do the rest.”
Jonnie said, “But I have no authority. The war isn't over yet. Not by a long ways! I-'
“He says wars are wars and diplomats are diplomats and there is no point in the game when it ends. I’d sign them, if I were you, Lord Jonnie. They're all studying Psychlo and English. It 's his chance to attain an eleven-hundred-year-old goal. I’ll read these word for word for you.”