Leverage!

Sitting there in the semidark he thought and thought. And after several days, he knew he had it. Every point in its torturous pattern of events was perfectly channeled, perfectly conceived, and ready to be put in train.

The primary stage was to get himself put in that cage. Good! He would do it.

So it was that a very mild, personable Terl noted one morning that the sentries no longer wore kilts. Gazing out through the revolving panes of the food slot, he carefully concealed his elation. He sized the creature up. It had long pants, strapped boots, and a half-wing insignia on its left breast.

Terl might be a top graduate of company schools but he was no linguist: that was part of the arts, and what self-respecting Psychlo had anything to do with those? So an element of luck had to enter in here.

“What,” said Terl in Psychlo through the intercom installed in the door, “does that half-wing stand for?”

The sentry looked a bit startled. Good, thought Terl.

“I should have thought it would have two wings,” said Terl.

“That's for a full pilot,” said the sentry. "I’m just a student pilot. But I’ll have my full wings someday!”

Terl laid aside his conviction that you couldn't understand animals. While arrogance demanded nonrecognition of them, necessity demanded he recognize them. This thing was talking Psychlo. Chinko accent, as would be expected, but Psychlo.

“I am sure you will earn wings,” said Terl. “I must say your Psychlo is excellent! You should practice it more, though. Talking to a real Psychlo would help.”

The sentry brightened up. Suddenly he realized that that was perfectly true. And here was a real Psychlo. He had never talked to one before. It was quite a novelty. So he told Terl who he was, that being easy to discuss. He said he was Lars Thorenson, part of the Swedish contingent that had arrived some months ago for pilot training. He did not share the ferocity of some of the Scots against the Psychlos, for his people, way up in the Arctic, hadn't had any previous contact with Psychlos. He thought maybe the Scots exaggerated things a bit. And by the way, was Terl a flier?

Oh, yes, Terl told him, and it was quite true. Terl was a past master in all types of flight, battle tactics, and stunts like flying right down into five-mile-deep mine shafts and picking up an endangered machine.

The sentry had drawn closer. Flight was very dear to him and here was a master. He said that their best flier was Jonnie, and did Terl know him?

Oh, yes, Terl not only knew him, but back in the old days before there had been a misunderstanding, he himself had taught that one a few tricks: it was why he was such a good flier. A very fine creature, actually; Terl had been his firmest friend.

Terl was elated. These were cadet sentries, standing watches in addition to their schooling to ease the considerable load on regular personnel.

For several days, each morning, Lars Thorenson improved his Psychlo and learned the ins and outs of combat flying. From a master and a one-time friend of Jonnie's. He was quite unaware that if he put some of these “tricks” into use he would lose the most elementary fight in the air, and later others would have to shake the nonsense out of him before he got himself killed. Terl knew well it was a risk to play this trick, but he just couldn't resist it.

Terl corrected the sentry's Psychlo up to a point. And then one morning he said he himself would have to exactly clarify certain words and really they should have a dictionary. There were lots of dictionaries, and so the next morning the sentry gave him one.

With considerable glee, Terl went to work with the dictionary when the sentry was off duty. There were a lot of words in the composite language called "Psychlo" that were never actually used by Psychlos. They had leaked into the language from Chinko and other tongues. Psychlos never used them because they could not really grasp their conceptual meaning.

So Terl looked up words and phrases like “atone for wrongs,” “guilt,” “restitution,” “personal fault,” “pity,” “cruelty,” “just,” and “amends.” He knew they existed as words and that alien races used them. It was a very, very hard job, and later he would look on this as the toughest part of his whole project. It was all so foreing, so utterly alien!

Soon Terl was satisfied he was ready to enter his next stage.

“You know,” he said to the sentry one morning, “I feel very guilty about putting your poor Jonnie in a cage. Actually, I have a craving to atone for my wrongs. It was my personal fault that he was subjected to such cruelty. And I wish with all my heart to make amends. I am overwhelmed by guilt and I pity him for what I did. And it would be only just if I made restitution for it all by suffering in a cage like he did.”

It made Terl perspire to get it all out, but that only added to his contrite look.

The sentry had made a habit of recording their conversations, for he studied them later and corrected his own pronunciation, and since he had never heard a lot of these words in Psychlo before, he was glad he had it all on disc. Terl was also glad. It had been an agonizing performance!

The sentry, having the evening free, digested all this. He decided he had better report it to the Compound Commanding Officer.

There was a new Compound Commander, an Argyll, very well noted for his prowess in raids in earlier days and very experienced– but not in America. The ease with which a radiation bullet could blow up a Psychlo had given him a bit of contempt for them in their current state. And he had a problem of his own.

Literal mobs of people from all over the world got off planes and took tours of the compound. The Coordinators showed them around and pointed out where this had happened and that had happened. Many-hued and many-tongued, they were a bit of a nuisance. And almost every one of them wanted to be shown a Psychlo. Most had never seen one, no matter that they had been oppressed by them for ages. Some very important chiefs and dignitaries had enough whip with the Council to get special permission. That meant an extra detail of guards the commander did not have; it meant taking people down into the dormitory levels where they should not be; it actually meant a bit of danger to them for some of those Psychlos down there were not reconstructed!

So the commander toyed with this idea. He went out and looked at the cage. Evidently it could be wired– in fact it was wired– with plenty of voltage to the bars. If one put up a protector in front so people would not touch the bars and get hurt, he would be relieved of these nonsense tours into the dormitory.

Further, it appealed to him to have a “monkey in a cage.” It would help morale. And it would be an added attraction. He could plainly see that somebody might want to make restitution and do amends. So he mentioned it sketchily to a Council meeting. They were very busy and had their minds on other things and he omitted to tell them it was Terl.

Technicians checked to make sure the cage wiring was live and could be shut off easily from the outside where the connections and box had been fastened to a pole, and that a barrier was erected to keep people from electrocuting themselves.

It was a very elated– but carefully downcast– Terl who was then escorted under heavy guard and put in Jonnie's and the girls' old cage.

“Ah, the sky again!” said Terl. (He hated the blue sky of Earth like poison gas.) “But I must take no pleasure in it. It is only just that I will be confined here, exposed to public view and ridicule,” (he had looked up some new words) “and mocked. It serves me right!”

And so Terl went about his duty very honestly. The crowds came and he looked ferocious and leaped about, glaring at them through his breathe-mask glass and making little children scream and flinch outside the barricade. He had heard of gorillas-beasts over in Africa– beating their chests, so he beat his chest.