Freedom Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “Whose idea was that table? Not even Zainal could tip it over and how’d you get it down here?” she asked.

  “We were going to do it while you and Zainal were gone, surprise you on your return,’ Chuck Mitford said with a sly grin at her. “But with you on the sick list, seemed a good idea to put up the bed . . .

  and then what was a bed without a table and the chairs!” ‘Well, it was very, very much appreciated. Especially that thick mattress on that wide bed! Drunk as I was, I appreciated that!” Then she caught Mitford’s odd expression. ‘Oh yes, Pete Easley got me high as a kite just in case you hear rumours that I was drunk. I was. I slept through an entire Botany night without so much as moving. Mavis came by this morning and said they were going to cut the last batch. I said they’d better . . .

  bed?”

  “Oh, the Doyles and me. I cut the timber, and Lenny did the posts and showed me how to make the joints and stuff. He and Ninety did the table and the chair. Said it was the least they could do for the guy who kept them from becoming frozen steaks in a Farmerst freezer. Joe and Sarah did the mattress and pillows; Sandy Areson the pottery and glassware, of course; Whitby the benches. Coo traded for the pots and the skillet. No big deal.” ‘No big deal?” she exclaimed, and a faint reminder of her hangover made her head ring with the loudness of her voice. ‘You furnish our cabin and it’s no big deal.

  It’s a real big deal to me,’ and she leaned over and kissed the sergeant on the cheek before she knew she was doing it. ‘There! And don’t blush like that, Chuck Mitford. I do appreciate what you all did and, besides, no-one saw me kiss you.” She giggled when the sergeant lifted one hand half-way to his cheek and then dropped it quickly back to his lap. He was still red-faced.

  “You finished your cabin first, so you’ll have a chance to help others furnish theirs when they’ve built,’ he said in a gruff voice.

  “By the way, stood a tour on the KDL, and the mission’s going a-okay.

  Not a wrinkle on the balloon as far as they’ve gone.

  Seamless. All the tech heads are scratching their arses over what was used.” ‘What’s the general feeling? Or is it too far away to bother the claustrophobics?” she asked, trying not to resent her absence . . .

  and Zainal’s.

  “I think people are glad. The Deskis evidently had a wild night

  it was damned near lethal. Who made the of dancing, singing . .

  . if you can call that warble singing . . . and Coo says there are giants protecting us.”

  “Did he see the Eosi?”

  “No,’ and Mitford shook his head. ‘And frankly, I’m just as glad I didn’t. Worry’s still having nightmares, and I think that’s why Leon made the latest hooch so strong. Hoooo-eee!” He let out a long whistle. ‘You can blame them for getting you drunk, not Pete Easley.

  Which reminds me. Officially you’re on sick leave, Bjornsen, so don’t get any ideas about doing anything with that busted wing until Leon gives you the okay. Got me?” ‘Yes sir, sergeant, sir,’ she said, saluting repeatedly with her left hand.

  The makers and donors of the furniture were saving spaces for them at a table in the mess hall. Kris lavished praise and gratitude on all for making a cabin into a real home, promising to do as well by them, when their cabins were up. Then the conversation devolved to Baby’s mission and Mitford, sipping what he assured Kris was a well-watered jolt of hooch, brought them up to speed.

  The monitor also tracked the small vessel in its exploration, especially the examination at the barrier, and followed its progress until it landed safely again on the western continent.

  Baby returned safely and with sufficient masses of information to keep all the brass-heads, engineers, miners and Aggies busy.

  The mission crew took a longer time to get themselves back down to the surface, they were so high on the experience.

  Carnal s course had used a minimum of fuel and won the plaudits of the aviators and astronauts. Everyone on board had had instruction from him on how to fly Baby and a little chance at manoeuvring.

  “We may not have flight simulators, but what’re they against the real thing?” Balenquah demanded. ‘Too damned bad we can’t go anywhere in the KDL. Zainal says it’s much easier to pilot - had to be since Drassis flew that series. That whole caper of capturing the KDL was a waste of time.” ‘No,’ said Bert Put, evidently rather fed up with Balenquah’s opinions, ‘it got us extra fuel, a new bridge console and a lot of tools we’d have a hard time duplicating.” ‘Oh, yeah, forgot about them,’ Balenquah replied. ‘Well, if we have to shift population, it’ll be handy enough.”

  - .

  .

  .

  .

  .,

  “There’ll be flying in the KDL,’ Marrucci said, ‘maybe only mine and grain runs, but we’re not totally grounded, you know.” ‘We are for any real space work,’ the man went on, talking himself into a morose state.

  Zainal rose then, muttered something about having to see the admiral and took Kris from the table. Glancing back just as she and Zainal left the mess hall, she saw that others were departing from the table, leaving Balenquah on his own.

  Zainal had been gob-smacked, as Lenny Doyle would say, when Kris who had kept quiet about the surprise until he got into their cabin saw the gifts. The door - which he admired even before he opened it, with Kris barely able to contain her excitement at what lay beyond it had required his attention, admiring the detail, the latch-string, which gave him great amusement pulling it in and out.

  Then he entered the room and saw the table and the chair, the pottery and glasses which Kris had put on the mantel, having no other place to store things - yet. Lenny had promised to teach her how to do mortise-and-tenon joints in wood and make herself proper chests and drawers. But the table and the chair shocked him, with one knee raised for the next step, and he stared and stared and then inarticulately tried to ask her who, how, where these things had come from.

  As she replied, interspersing the explanation with giggles for the surprise yet in store for him, he examined everything, even to trying to lift the slate-topped table. He sat in the chair, got up, turned it upside down to see how the legs had been fitted in, and the stringers, and then righted it to sit in it again, stroking the arm-rests with his big hands.

  Maybe Catteni didn’t have tear ducts, or never cried, but Zainal’s eyes were certainly full of fluid and, though he tried to speak, he kept shaking his head, speechless.

  “I’ve saved the best for last,’ she told him and, taking a hand that was attached to a body reluctant to leave the chair made to fit him, she led him to where he couldn’t miss the bedstead.

  He had an immediate response to that: the very devil of a look

  in his full eyes as he swooped her up into his arms and carried her, for all the world the way John Wayne had treated Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man, and demonstrated how much better he could perform on a resilient surface.

  Mitford took her off the sick-list when he wanted their team to find a pass through the western hills to the far shore; he let her go along. He knew very well that she’d be better employed marking klicks, which she could do with her left hand, than left at Retreat fretting that she was useless.

  While that was being organized, she spent some time making bricks since she could fill the moulds left-handed. She owed Sarah and Joe for their hand in the ‘Great Furniture Surprise’.

  When some loggers were injured - two badly - she sat in the ward with them, checking pulse and temperatures; there were no blood-pressure devices and no thermometers, so it was all hands-on.

  She also fed Boris Slavinkovin, who had broken both arms and most of his ribs when the rolling log had gone over his body for a short-cut.

  Being fed by a one-handed aide didn’t embarrass him half as much, he told her because it didn’t tie up a whole human who could do other jobs than feeding him. Then he asked her if she could teach him better English, since he was now stuck in bed and had to d
o something.

  Ex-teachers had gotten together with an ax-cartoonist and created a language primer for those who wished to learn English. There were fifty copies in print, thanks to supplies on the KDL, and they were well-worn by the time Kris snagged a copy for Boris.

  Leon and Mayock managed to dilute the potency of their distillations so that it not only had the faint aftertaste of a Botany nut variety, but did not cause such speedy and legless inebriation.

  The only person whose metabolism could cope with the previous grain

  whisky was Zainal so, rather than water down what was left (which Leon

  felt was a crime), the remaining keg was given to him. The first time

  he sampled it, Kris told him - l

  about Pete Easley getting her drunk on barely two half-glasses of it, and the hangover she’d had the next day. That reminded her that she hadn’t seen as much of Pete as usual. But she thought nothing of it, going to her stints at the hospital or the brick factory.

  Then they were ready to leave on their exploratory mission, and it was a great relief to all the team to be back together again and out on their own.

  “One can get too accustomed to the comforts of home,’ Sarah announced, settling back in her seat on the big air-cushion truck.

  “Though I wish we could have started the cabin before we left.

  And thanks again, Kris, for all those bricks. Worry’s put his name in for a hundred, and so did Jay Greene. We should have enough by the time we get back.” ‘We do appreciate the ones you did for us, too,’ sai4Leila in her often inaudible voice. She was holding hands with Whitby, while hanging on to a strap with the other.

  Leila looked a bit white, Kris thought, and wondered if she too was pregnant. Sarah was, and very cocky about it, taking it in her stride like any modern woman.

  “Sure thing, Leila. Kept me out of mischief,’ said Kris.

  And actually, kept mischief away from her, for any of the importunate men who tried to charm her found themselves also making bricks, if that’s where they caught up with her, or feeding a bed-bound patient, which was scarcely a romantic setting for the sort of offers they hoped to make.

  Boris Slavinkovin put in his bid and she had to threaten him with her absence at mealtimes if he kept it up.

  “You’ll have to some time, you know,’ Sarah said bluntly.

  “Oh, I will, I will,’ Kris said airily, and did not meet Zainal’s eye when he glanced at her beside him. ‘Ah, that’s another klick, isn’t it? We’ve gone one thousand pleas again.” She added a slash to her sheet.

  They found a way through the hills, through twisting but connecting ravines, separated by banks which the air cushion could manage easily.

  They marked the more accessible routes

  Al

  with Os in the blue, almost luminous paint that was a recent innovation.

  (Red and yellow had already been produced from local vegetable dyes.)

  The cur-de-sacs were marked with an X.

  For some reason, Zainal found the procedure very amusing but wouldn’t tell her why. They did not find any blind valleys nor night-crawlers, but they did find a new variety of rocksquat and some avians that were almost as good eating as chickens, though some caught closer to the sea left a fishy aftertaste in the mouth.

  They made their way down the coast until the rocky terrain was impassable even for the remarkably manoeuvrable vehicle.

  They were headed back up the eastern coast two weeks later when Kris experienced some fleeting nausea first thing in the morning. For a couple of days she was sure it was caused by the ripe soft fruits that flourished in the almost tropical weather this far south, and she ignored the minor discomfort until one morning when Joe was replacing the splints and bandages on her arm. The bandage material came from the legs and arms of Catteni coveralls, cut in strips, softened slightly by much washing and use and adequate for their purpose. Her arm was sweating so much in the heat that she was glad to change the wrappings with the extra roll of bandage that Joe had in his medical kit.

  “Arm’s healing well,’ he said, feeling the breaks with careful fingers. ‘I can feel the thickening of the bones where they’ve knitted.” ‘Doesn’t hurt any more either,’ she told him, though she sighed as he replaced splints and bandage strips.

  He gave her an odd sideways glance. ‘Trip’s done you good.

  You were looking a little off-colour before we left.” ‘Which reminds me? Anyone else having trouble digesting that pink-fleshed fruit we had last night?” she asked.

  Joe was not only medic but botanist.

  “No, but we didn’t gorge on it either. Why? Got the runs?” ‘No, a

  touch of indigestion, I guess,’ and she shrugged it off, but Sarah had

  overheard her query and joined them, peering into her face with an

  intensely disturbing grin on her

  i

  face. ‘So?” Kris demanded when Sarah didn’t explain.

  “Breasts hurt? Had your period? How long have you noticed the nausea?” Defensively, Kris crossed her arms over her breasts, and as if Sarah’s comment had been a curse they were tender. She didn’t dare change the position of her arms as her mind raced to the conclusion Sarah had obviously just reached.

  “I can’t be pregnant,’ she said, jerking her chin up. ‘I’ve never . .

  .”

  “Never what?” asked Sarah with a sly expression on her face.

  Kris closed her eyes, remembering the potent hooch she’d had for her arm, remembering Pete Easley offering her more, and more, and enough so that she had . . .

  “I’ll kill him,’ she said, meaning it fervently. No wonder he had kept out of her way. Just wait till she got back to Retreat.

  She’d . . .

  “Is something wrong with Kris’s arm?” Zainal asked, and Kris wanted to seep into the ground like a night-crawler.

  “Nothing, nothing’s wrong with my arm,’ and she shot to her feet, glaring at Sarah and Joe.

  “No, but she’s pregnant,’ Sarah said gleefully.

  Kris hauled back her left arm to punch Sarah, but Zainal caught her around the waist.

  “You had to go blab it!” she shouted’trying to reach Sarah who had nimbly danced out of her way, with the grinning Joe moving into position to protect his mate, with hands out in a placatory move.

  “Now, Kris, don’t go off half-cocked,’ he said as Leila and Whitby came running over to see what could possibly have happened.

  “Kris is preggers, too!” Sarah crowed.

  Then Zainal was holding her so tightly to his chest, leaving her feet dangling above the ground, that she had to hang on to him for balance.

  “Thank you, Kris,’ he murmured into her ear and all the fight went out of her. She hung limply against him as his arms around her assumed a kinder hold, a loving one. There couldn’t be many males on any world who would thank a woman who got pregnant by another man.

  “You’re welcome, I think,’ she added and squirmed to be released.

  When he put her back on her feet, she apologized to Sarah and Joe with as good a grace as she could manage. ‘I wanted to be sure,’ she said mendaciously. ‘It could have just been the ripe fruit.” ‘So, tell us who the lucky guy was?” Joe asked with the familiarity of an old friend.

  Kris chuckled, deciding on an entirely different course of action which meant she couldn’t publicly go after one sweettalking lothario of a Peter Easley, but neither would she confirm it to him or anyone . .

  . unless of course the newborn gave some clue to its paternity. That would serve that . . . so-and-so right.

  Taking advantage of a girl in her condition . . . and yet . . .

  she suppressed any recollection of what she hadn’t been able to remember of an incident that would result in a lasting and visible proof.

  “That’s for me to know, and you to guess,’ she said, delighted to be able to pay Sarah back for blurting out what Kris would rather have kept secret.

 
; The long trek up the eastern coast went well, all other events considered, and everyone settled down to the fact of her pregnancy. At night Zainal held her against him with a tenderness she certainly had not expected of him: enough to make her eyes water and wish, with all her heart, that she might have transcended the barriers of species’ biology and been pregnant by him.

  By the time they got back to Retreat Bay, she had never felt better in her life. She had to see Leon about her arm and he was very pleased with its progress, but wanted her to keep the splints on anyway, since she insisted on working, though she could use her right hand now. He also confirmed her pregnancy and had the grace not to enquire further.

  “Actually, you’re lucky you’re here on Botany. Doesn’t take as long,’ Leon said with a wry grin.

  “What do you mean? It doesn’t take as long?”

  “Average pregnancy is 260 280 days. But it’ll only take you 212.8 Botanical days to gestate.” When she blinked in confusion at him, he grinned and added, ‘Thirty-hour days don’t change the development rate of a foetus, but it sure alters the days you stay pregnant.”

  “Oh!’

  “Most of my o.b. patients find that comforting.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  Word of her pregnancy got around, and she could find additional comfort in the fact that her ‘admirers’ went elsewhere with their persuasions. And when she saw Pete Easley across the crowded mess hall one evening, she merely gave him a cheerful wave and left him wondering. She did like the man. He’d been drinking, too. Maybe she was assigning his solicitude that day to exterior motives because he’d been drinking as much of that hooch as she had. How could she fault him for getting drunk and doing what was natural enough? Pregnancy was also mellowing her.