Chapter 3

It was a long way to the heliport, and especially long when you had only one working leg and a cane on the wrong side. The elevators weren't working and probably never would again. Hobbling along, Jonnie had just begun to appreciate what a great job had been done cleaning up this place when he heard running feet behind him and a sharply barked order in Russian. Two men appeared, one on either side of him, who gripped each others' arms in a chair lift, boosted him into it, and were running with him down the stairs to the heliport.

Somebody must have alerted the standby pilot there, for he was standing beside a mine passenger plane with the passenger door open.

“No!” yelled Jonnie and pointed with his good arm at the pilot side. What did they think he was, a busted-up invalid?

Of course, he was just that. But

Colonel Ivan popped up at the pilot door and opened it. The two Russians literally threw Jonnie into the pilot's seat.

A little confused, the standby pilot started to close the passenger door but was brushed aside by three Russians who, out of breath, had come tearing down the stairs. They leaped into the plane with a clatter of assault rifles.

Colonel Ivan was magically on the other side of the plane helping Robert the Fox and two kilted Scots into the ship and then got in himself.

The pilot was a Swede. He was getting into the copilot seat and saying something in a language Jonnie could not understand. Maybe a South African from the Mountains of the

Moon? No, the pocket of whites there among the Bantu had been contacted too late for anyone to be fully trained yet. Then he realized the pilot was only there for local runs, really a cadet.

Jonnie wrapped himself up in the seat belt, pinning down his relatively useless right arm, and looked around at his passengers. The Russians were in baggy red pants and gray tunics and were finishing getting into their gear. As he turned, Colonel Ivan ripped the bandana off his head and clapped a round, flat, fur cap on him. Jonnie took it off to get it on straight and saw it had a red star set in a gold disc on the front of it.

“We charge!” said Colonel Ivan. Evidently he had worked very hard at his English. Jonnie grinned. They sure were an international contingent!

The wide doors had been left open and sunlight streamed in. He sailed the plane out into a beautiful summer day.

Ah, the mountains, the white mountains, majestic and calm against the dark blue sky! The ravines with their black shadows, the trees with their soft, dark green. And there was a bear. Cantering along a slope, bound on some important errand no doubt. And a whole herd of bighorn sheep, looking up at what must now be the ordinary sight of a plane on this route.

With his left hand romping on the console Jonnie dropped the ship over the last hills of the eastern slope and down toward the plains. Summer. And evidence of a recent rain, for there were flowers. Stretching out to an endless horizon in the east, an undulating landscape spotted with browsing herds, seemingly inexhaustible space in which men could live.

What a beautiful planet! What a lovely planet! Well worth saving.

The standby pilot was watching Jonnie in awe. He was flying with his left hand and left foot only, better than he himself had ever hoped to fly with five hands.

A rider? Jonnie darted down in a swoop to see who or what. Baggy pants? A flat, black-leather hat? A coiled rope in his hands? Gathering up a small herd.

“A Inaner," said Robert the Fox. “South America. They tend the herds now.”

Jonnie flipped his window down and waved and the Ilanero waved back.

What a beautiful day to be his first day out.

And there was the compound. What an awful lot of people! Must be thirty or forty of them looking toward the ship.

Jonnie set it down with a lightness that wouldn't have cracked an eggshell. Thank heavens none of that huge mob of people had gotten onto the alert strip before he did, for now they were flooding over toward them, brown skins, black skins, silk jackets, ragged homespun, women, men...what an awful lot of people!

He opened the plane door and put the first and fourth fingers of his left hand in his mouth and blew a piercing whistle. Above the babble his trained ear heard what it wanted to hear: hoofs! And there came Windsplitter.

Jonnie got out of the security belts and before anyone could interfere slid to the ground– a trick seeing as these Psychlo planes had high cockpits. His right arm got in the way and he shoved the hand in his belt.

Windsplitter was nickering and bouncing about, glad to see him, and almost knocked him down with a tossing nose.

“Let's see the leg,” said Jonnie, kneeling and trying to get hold of the left front hock that had seemed injured in the run down the cliff. But Windsplitter thought he was trying to do a trick Jonnie had taught him– to shake hands– and almost reprovingly he hefted his right hoof and offered it, succeeding only in practically knocking Jonnie flat. Jonnie laughed.

“You're all right,” and shook the offered hoof.

Jonnie had worked out how he could mount. If he sprang up belly down and threw his left leg over fast he would make it. He did. Success! He didn't need all this help.

Now to ride around and find the confounded Chamcos. And find out about the delay in this transshipment rig.

But people were pressing around his horse. Black faces, brown faces, tan faces, white faces. Hands touching his moccasins, hands trying to give him things. And all talking at once.

He felt a twinge of guilt. Smiling faces, welcoming faces. It put a trifle of a blot on his day. If these people only realized it, he might very well be a total failure. And those lovely skies up there might soon go gray with death.

His lips tightened. He had better get about his business. Adulation was, if anything, a little embarrassing, particularly as he strongly felt he might not have earned it.

More hoofs. The voice of Colonel Ivan barking Russian at somebody. Leading six horses at a dead run, another Russian sprinted up. A barked command and Colonel Ivan and four Russians mounted up and Robert the Fox was mounting. There must have been a Russian and horses waiting at the compound.

The two kilted Scots pushed their way through the crowd to either side of Windsplitter's head and began to gently part the throng so Jonnie could get going. There must be fifty people there now!

Just as he thought he was going to get moving, a small boy in a kilt elbowed his barefoot way to Windsplitter's head and dropped a lead rope on it. His piping voice came out of the hubbub: “I am Bittie MacLeod. Dunneldeen said I could come and be your page and I am here, Sir Jonnie!" The accent was thick but the determination and confidence brooked no rebuke. The small boy started leading Windsplitter toward the compound.

Even though Windsplitter guided only with a heel and other signals, Jonnie didn't have the heart to say no.

Behind him came five Russians with long poles– lances?– in their stirrups, pennons on the poles, assault rifles across their backs. A Ilanero dashed up on a horse and took position with them. A squad of Swedish soldiers rushed into view from the compound and presented arms. Workers were coming out of the compound. A big passenger plane came into the landing area and thirty Tibetans on a pilgrimage to the compound spilled out and joined the mob. Two flatbeds roared up to the fringes and about forty people from the city just to the north tumbled off. Another flatbed tore up from the Academy.

Jonnie, his horse walking dead slow behind Bittie MacLeod, looked over this joyous mob. They were shouting and waving at him and cheering. He had never seen so many people since the gathering of Scotland. There must be three hundred here!

White hands, black hands with pink palms, yellow hands; blue jackets, orange dresses, gray coats; straight blonde hair, brown hair, fuzzy black hair; languages, languages, languages: all saying, “Hello Jonnie!"

He looked up apprehensively at the bright blue sky. For an instant he was startled by a drone...no, it was a recon drone; they had a lot of them constantly patrolling, watchful for any invader.

The voices were a continuous roar. A woman was pushing something into his hand– a bouquet of wildflowers-and she was shouting, “For Chrissie!" He nodded to thank her and didn't know what to do with them, so he put them in his belt.

The people of Earth, their hopes kindled, could rise and be alive again.

He felt more guilty than ever. They didn't know he might have failed. Aside from not enjoying adulation, he also felt he certainly didn't deserve it, not all this.

Robert the Fox had worked his horse up beside him. He saw that Jonnie was troubled. Robert didn't want the first day out spoiled. “Wave to them a bit, laddie. Just raise your left hand and nod.”

Jonnie did and the crowd went wild.

They had been working their way up the hill toward the old Chinko quarters. There was the morgue over there. There was the dome behind which Terl used to have his quarters and where so often he had stood out the night....

Jonnie stared. There was Terl in a cage with a collar on. Terl was capering and leaping about. A vague unease took Jonnie and he persuaded the Scot boy to lead him over toward it.