Jonnie used the time otherwise as well.
He went down to Salisbury and, with Thor to back off the elephants and black mambas, dug into the man-books trying to find anything about “whirling spirals” being held in front of people's faces.
He found one reference to it in a booklet named, “Hypnotism for the Millions.” Seemed kind of silly. He made one and, with Thor holding a small deer, spun it in front of its face and all the deer did was stare at it.
Thor said to try it on him and he did, but Thor just went into gales of laughter.
According to the book, you put people to sleep and told them things and then the people would do them afterward without knowing it was an order. Jonnie guessed Psychlos must be different if it worked on them. Anyway, he had an idea of what the "catrist" had been attempting with Maz. There had been some effect but not enough without the capsule.
What a weird world those Psychlos had lived in! imagine putting a whole population under a mental cloud! But the idea wasn't solely Psychlo's, for there it had been among the spider webs of the old man-library! And it had been a man-book which had led him on to the capsules.
How could any being consider itself so right to think it should make all other beings into robots to do its bidding? He thought of Lars. Had Hitler been doing things like that?
As Maz, according to a call to Victoria, was still going strong, Jonnie went back to tackle Soth. If anyone knew math, he should.
Jonnie was determined to get motors into production. And after all this time of getting trouble from Psychlo mathematics he was feeling quite willful about it. This had to be revealed. There were no two ways about it. Terl and his condemned equations that wouldn't balance, that never made any sense! Why, if something happened with a console, he'd never know what was wrong with the circuit. He couldn't figure one out. Not with Psychlo math.
Suddenly he remembered the Voraz letter. Hundreds of thousands of inventions and the formulas all in
Psychlo math. To really get the crashed arms companies converted over to consumer products, those hundreds of thousands of inventions-even though accumulated for millennia and probably stolen by the Psychlos from now defunct races-could very well spell the difference between booming prosperity across the galaxies and having to face a new conference of emissaries howling for his blood. Nobody would be able to figure them out unless he could pry the secret of Psychlo math out of these ex-company employees. Mr. Tsung had been right. It could become a “diplomatic” matter. It could even become war.
Chapter 4
Soth, Jonnie found, did not live in the dormitories. Apparently he coughed at night and kept other Psychlos awake, and they had insisted he be berthed in a small former storage room that was hooked into the breathe-gas circulating system. And that was where Jonnie found him.
The room wasn't too bad. The old Psychlo had cut down the original storage shelves and fabricated some bookcases and tables from them; the cases were utterly jammed with books and the tables covered with a litter of paper.
Soth was sitting on a high stool as Jonnie entered. His fur was splotchy with blue hairs, sign of an aged Psychlo. The amber eyes were a bit blurry with white matter at the corners. He was dressed in a wraparound robe and he had a small cap on his head.
He peered near-sightedly at Jonnie, evidently seeking to see who it was. Then he remarked the belt gun.
“So you have come to ship me on,” said Soth. “I was wondering when someone would notice.”
“You seem to have a lot of books here,” said Jonnie, seeking to change the subject.
“I was fortunate,” said Soth. “When that attack first came on the compound, I was in my office and I heard the fire gongs going. I knew there'd be a lot of water so I ran down to my room and put everything I had into waterproof ore bags. Then when we were to leave for here, I asked a nice young human if I could go get them and bring them. And he permitted it.”
Jonnie was looking at the titles. He couldn't read most of them. They were in scripts he had never seen before.
“They usually let me keep my books,” said Soth. "In cross-firing, they don't much care what weight or cubic space there is for there's nothing else going. Will you let me keep them when you cross-fire me this time?”
Jonnie was afraid for a moment that this old Psychlo must be in his dotage.
Then he realized they wouldn't really know that there were no other Psychlos alive; they might think there were other captives elsewhere.
"I’m not here to cross-fire you. We're sure there are no Psychlos on other planets now.”
Soth digested this. Then he let out a little snort. “Funny way to end a hundred thirty years of exile. But it's not ended. I’m still exiled even if I stay here.”
Jonnie had him talking. He had better keep him talking. “How did it start?”
Soth shrugged. “The way it always starts. Being impolite to a catrist. Isn't it in my record?” As Jonnie shook his head, Soth went on. “You might as well know. Lately I have had this strange feeling that I should be more honest. And I do appreciate your fixing my fangs for me. Two were quite painful.
Anyway, we had this young Psychlo in school and he got confused about his lessons and wanted a better explanation-”
“About mathematics?” said Jonnie.
Soth looked at him for quite a while. “Why do you ask that?” he said finally. A sort of a cloud had passed over him and gone away. Then, as Jonnie didn't reply, he went on. “Well, yes, it was about mathematics in a way, I suppose. It was how you calculate ore bodies in semicore mining.” He sighed. “Somebody must have reported him because the catrist of that school wing came in and started shouting at him and then started shouting at the whole class. It was very disruptive. There's no excuse for what I did really, but for years I used to think it was because my mother was a member of an underground church group. They believed that sentient creatures had souls and they felt very strongly about it.
“It wasn't that she was caught or anything. But some of it must have rubbed off on me to make me do what I did. This catrist was standing there screaming at the class that they were all animals and they better remember they were animals. And he was making so much noise I must have gotten confused. I did want him to quiet down because I had a class to teach. And it just slipped out.”
He sat for a long time. “It’s sort of painful to talk about this. I never do. If word of this got back to the-' Then he let out a slight gasp. “I just realized. They're all dead. It 's all right if I talk about it!” Then he looked closely at Jonnie. “It is all right, isn't it?”
“Sure,” said Jonnie. “I don't even know what a 'catrist' is.”
“You know,” said Soth, "I’ve come to believe I don't either, really. But because of what it did to my life, I pieced a lot of it together. There's lots of books on lots of planets. Two hundred fifty thousand years ago, Psychlos were really a different people. They didn't even have the name 'Psychlo.' I think sometime or other they must have gotten frightened of somebody invading them or something.
“As near as I could piece together, there was this group of carnival performers– you know, mountebanks, frauds. They were the original Psychlos. They used to hypnotize people on the stage and make them do funny things to get the audience to laugh at them. Just trash. Actually, just criminals.
“When this panic came on, they went to the emperor and told him something or other because the next thing anyone knew, they were in charge of the schools and medical centers. The race before that had been called after the current emperor according to books on other planets. Well, right at that time, they began to be called Psychlos. That was the name of these carnival performers. So instead of being called after the ruler, the race was now called after the 'Psychlos.' It means 'brain,' according to some old dictionaries. Another form of the word also means 'property of.' Everyone became the property of the Psychlos.