Jonnie got him some silver and mercury so the doctor could make an amalgam for filling. He also fashioned a breathe-mask for them which used the nosebones and made some plugs which could block the mouth air passages and force the Psychlo to breathe only through the nose. He also found some small drills.
The plan was to tell all the Psychlos that it was a new regulation that they have their teeth repaired and polished. They said it could be painful so it was being done under an anesthetic. The Psychlos, as a group, when being briefed, were a little dubious, mostly because the company had never had any concern for employee health. But new place, new ways.
The team set it up as an assembly line. The Psychlo would be brought in, put under, and have the capsule or capsules removed, and then would be pushed down to another table where the younger doctor, taking advantage of the anesthesia, would fix and polish up the fangs and back teeth.
In this way, after the first one, each Psychlo entering would see another Psychlo lying there, unconscious, getting his teeth fixed on another table. The metal analyzer on the first table was explained as necessary to find cavities.
They rolled up their sleeves and began to roll.
The assembly line went off without a hitch. A Psychlo would come in, get the metal removed from his brain, be shunted over to get his teeth fixed, and then be wheeled back on a mine cart to the Psychlo area of the compound to recover.
It took one hundred forty-four working hours, twelve days, to get the whole lot through.
The early ones were all up and about before the last one was finished. They had had a lot of cavities, even some minor extractions. But their gleaming fangs! My, were they impressed. Walking about, whenever they passed a reflective surface, they could be seen holding their breath, lifting their breathe-masks, and inspecting anew their beautiful new “smiles.”
A Psychlo admiring beauty was a major change in itself.
They did not become more polite. But they became more pleasant and agreeable.
Ker couldn't stand the others getting all this without himself getting into the scene. He didn't even know he didn't have any capsules, but he did know his fangs weren't shiny bright. So they had to pull him in, put him under, and polish his teeth. And that finished the lot.
The medical team took the cricks out of their backs and began to pack up.
“It’s all over to you now, Jonnie," said MacKendrick. “Be careful as we have no guarantee they won't retain some residual behavior pattern based on tradition and education. I hope you finally solve their math.”
And the team went back to Aberdeen. Jonnie was on his own.
Chapter 3
Chirk collected the company personnel records for him, and Jonnie went through them, one by one, as they were handed to him. Just now she had a big, thick, tattered folder that was all water-stained and mildewed.
Jonnie took it. It was the record of one named Soth, an assistant mine manager who had served in the compound near Denver. Jonnie had never seen him there: he must have kept to his room or his office. Some of the reason was visible in the record: Soth was one hundred eighty years old; a Psychlo life span was around one hundred ninety and it meant that Soth could not have been feeling all that spry.
But there was more in the record. Since the age of fifty, Soth had never returned to Psychlo. He had been shipped all over the universes, serving two years here, four years there. But never a return to Psychlo. He had even been cross-fired on rigs every time, a thing that was very unusual as almost all cargos went via Psychlo and Jonnie had thought that all personnel did. In fact, this insistence on using Psychlo as a transfer point was the main bottleneck on the expansion of the Psychlos: the transshipment platform there could only handle so much cargo and firings in a day. Jonnie had already started doubling up platforms in places, one to receive and one to fire.
Jonnie studied the record. Soth, after graduating from mine school, had been an under-professor of “ore theory.” It all seemed quite usual right up to the age of fifty when abruptly he had been assigned as an assistant mine manager to a very remote planet. And for the next one hundred thirty years he had been shifted continually, always retaining the same rank.
It was an oddity. Jonnie went through the reams of records on him. And finally found one of the same date as his original transfer from Psychlo. It said, “Unsuitable for teaching profession. Fla, Chief Catrist, Gru Clinic, Psychlo.”
That little slip of paper had condemned a being to obvious exile for a hundred thirty years! No other black marks evident. Always seemed to have done his work, nothing negative otherwise. Instead of going straight to Soth, Jonnie instead made a test with Maz. This Psychlo, at whom Ker was mad, was one of the biggest Jonnie had ever seen. He had been the local planning engineer.
Remembering the Chamco brothers,
Jonnie loaded up a hand blast gun just in case, positioned himself in a room where he had lots of space to back up, and had Maz brought in.
Maz's teeth were gleaming behind his faceplate. He sat down easily enough. He was a bit surly.
“I hear that Ker clown has been saying I won't work,” began Maz with no preliminary. “Contract or no contract, if you think you can put a midget operations officer over the head of a planning engineer, you think trouble!”
“He just wants to get the tungsten mine going,” said Jonnie.
“What's the point? You can't ship it to Psychlo. You finished that!”
Jonnie thought he might as well dive in now rather than drag it out. "If you'll give me the mathematics to compute the location of the next ore body, I’ll work it out.”
Maz scowled. Jonnie prepared to draw.
“Somehow,” said Maz, and his scowl deepened, “I don't think I’m supposed to talk mathematics with an alien.” He thought it over. He lifted a back strap of his breathe-mask and scratched under it.
A considerable time passed.
“I can't think where I got that idea. Mine school? Yes, mine school. Say, this is funny. I got a picture of somebody holding a whirling spiral in front of me....” He yawned. He thought a while. “Hey!” he said explosively. “That's the catrist in charge of our group. You know, I haven't thought of him for years. Funny old . He used to spend hours with the youngest males– when he wasn't down in the sex shops of the old town. Yeah, it was him. What were we talking about?”
“Showing me how to do mathematics,” said Jonnie.
Maz shrugged. “Why bother? Take a lot less time for me to do the calculations myself. What's he going to do with the ore?”
“Cross-fire it to other planets,” said Jonnie.
“That's kind of illegal. How much bonus? For me, I mean.”
“The usual,” said Jonnie.
“Tell you what. You tell that Ker he ain't no boss of mine and mind his manners and you double my planning bonus per ton and I’ll calculate the ore body.” He laughed. “There's a lot more tungsten there than I ever told the company! Is it a deal?”
Jonnie said that it was and Maz left. It was an inconclusive test. But he hadn't been attacked. He waited for two days for Maz to commit suicide. But he didn't. He just went out and started giving Ker a hard time, but in the process he broke out his analyzers and instruments and stakes and shortly was shooting "glow-stripes" into the earth to give workers lines along which to dig.