Freedom's Landing

by Anne McCaffrey

  “When’s Mitford going to ax him, then? Said he would when he found out all the bastard knows. Seems to me he’d’ve done that by now.”

  “Maybe that’s why he keeps sending him out of the camp? Get something else to waste him?”

  “Next time he might just not come back,” a new voice said with a malicious chuckle. “We don’t need no Cats here.”

  “Ah, you guys make me sick. He’s one man, and he’s been useful. You don’t have to like useful people but you can use them. That’s what Mitford’s doing.”

  Conversation altered when the first man got in the water.

  “Keeee-rist, but that’s cold! Freeze m’balls off, it will.”

  “You have ’em?”

  Kris grimaced and stopped listening as the comments became more personal and derogatory. Men were worse gossips than women. She hunkered down in the shadows, her back against the cold stone, and waited. Fortunately the group was not any more inclined to stay in the cold water than she had been and they were shortly out of it and dressing. She waited another long moment until she figured they had reached the upper corridors of the cave and then she left the lake.

  She stopped by Mitford’s “office” but he had a crowd, all talking and pushing diagrams at each other, so she went to her own cave. Sleep was the next order of her day.

  * * *

  DURING HER LATEST TREK, SOMEONE HAD TAKEN advantage of her absence and stolen some of the brush which formed her mattress, so she didn’t have quite as comfortable a night’s rest as she’d hoped for. Still, she woke rested before dawn. When she got to the main cavern, hunters were grabbing a cup of the hot herbal tea before setting off to check snares or to hunt. With her cup in hand, she wandered hoping to find Jay or Sandy. They’d level with her about Zainal. At this point in time, Kris couldn’t really see Mitford executing the Catteni for any reason. And there was no way Zainal had been “planted” among the prisoners. He was here because other Catteni wanted to get even with him. Sandy was absent, as was anyone else with whom she had some acquaintance.

  Finding an unoccupied rock near the front of the cavern, she seated herself and kept watch of those coming into the cavern for their breakfast, waiting for Zainal’s appearance. She wondered how Coo was doing. They really shouldn’t have let him fuss with that flying thing: that fall had not been good for him, even with Lenny and Kris cushioning his landing.

  She heard the rumble and the warning yell from the sentinels at the same instant. And darting to the outside ledge, tried to see what was making the noise. Whatever it was, it was still some distance, but it sounded awfully like the harvester vessel: big! Only everything had been harvested. Hadn’t it?

  “Where’s Mitford?” was the cry and several of the hunters took off to locate him. Kris went for Zainal.

  She met him, head-on, bouncing off his hard body and cracking her head against the rock on the rebound. His hand grabbed her upper arm to steady her.

  “Another big ship, Zainal,” she said, pointing outside. Still holding her arm, the Catteni drew her along with him, and others who had been roused by the general furor.

  Once again, this time in the dark, everyone who could clambered to the nearest height and peered in the direction of the oncoming airborne vessel.

  “Think they’ve come on reprisals?” someone asked. “With us messing up their mechanicals?”

  “Zainal?” Mitford called.

  “Here.”

  “Any ideas?”

  Kris could see that Zainal had cocked his head, listening intently to the sound.

  “That is Catteni engine sound,” he said. Then pointed as a bulk, outlined by running lights, materialized out of the dawn gloom. Even Kris could see the basic difference in design between the first enormous vessel and this one, which was not as large, if the lights indicated its perimeter. Zainal watched a moment more and then pointed in the direction of the abattoir. “That way.”

  “Jaysus…what’re they doing?”

  “Any chance they’re landing more prisoners, Zainal?” Mitford asked.

  “Yes. Good chance.” And he began to climb down. “Who comes with me?”

  “I didn’t say you should go, buddy,” Mitford said in a tense voice.

  “Only fast runners,” Zainal said, ignoring Mitford. “They must unload.”

  “Yeah, but you’d get there fast enough to take off with them, wouldn’t you?” Mitford said in a hard tone, coming out of the darkness to grab Zainal by the arm.

  Kris caught her breath. Maybe, after all, Mitford wouldn’t object to a summary execution of the Catteni, and Kris did not, definitely did not want to see Zainal killed. She liked him too much!

  “Don’t do anything foolish, sarge,” she said. “I’ll go with him.”

  “Of course you will,” Mitford said cryptically. They had to pause now because the noise of the overflying craft drowned out any conversation. Zainal kept his eyes on the vessel, then nodded.

  “Transport. More people. We must try. It is night still,” Zainal said and, pulling Kris by the hand, hauled her with him down from the height.

  “Try what?” Mitford called out in the same breath that Kris echoed his question but Zainal was already sprinting down the ravine in the direction the long ship above them was headed, dragging Kris along with him.

  She was aware of some conflicting and confused orders behind them as Zainal ran onward. In the first few strides, she wondered why he was so keen on having her along, but then she had to concentrate on her footing to keep up with him. The fact that she could was a plus. She was sure fitter on this crazy planet than she’d ever been. She could hear others following, cursing at the dark and the bad footing, but she concentrated on watching Zainal’s movements and the track in front of them.

  They were well ahead of those pursuing when Zainal allowed her to pause for a few moments. They were on the downside of the ridge, the lights of the vessel obscured by the lay of the land. She quickly recovered her breath enough to speak.

  “Will they stop the same place they dropped us off?” she asked.

  “That would be good,” he said. “Nothing there.”

  She took that to mean that the field would be empty and thus a good spot to dump more unconscious bodies. She wondered how long it would take, or did the Catteni have some way of just rolling bodies out of the ship’s hold that didn’t require individual handling? Then she remembered, all too vividly, what happened to living creatures lying on fields on this fecking world. No wonder Zainal was in such a hurry. Dawn was still far away. Would they get there soon enough to prevent slaughter?

  He started off again and she followed, all too aware that it had taken them two days to reach the caverns from that site. Even at the pace Zainal had set, would they make it to the field before the ship took off again? Well, they had to try. Or maybe he was hoping to attract attention from one of the hill points overlooking the field? They clambered up a slope now, and Zainal stopped, so abruptly that she ran into him.

  “Hey, warn me, will…” Her voice trailed off as she realized that the running lights were higher than they should be for a ship that might be landing. They hadn’t seen its gradual ascent. Zainal cursed, whirled, and looked back the way they had come, running his hand and arm along the line the ship had traveled as if trying to impress the direction in his mind. He started back up the slope they had just slid down, digging his toes in and slipping in the urgency of his passage.

  Shaking her head, Kris followed him, pausing only briefly when the roar of engines told her that the ship was boosting out of planetary gravity. The flame of its propellant was as vivid as she remembered launches from Cape Kennedy. She would have liked to watch but had to keep up with Zainal.

  They met up with the others in moments, due to the pace that Zainal was setting.

  “The ship’s already dumped its load,” she told them, clinging to someone as support as she gasped out an explanation. “Back that way. We gotta get there before the scavengers murder ’em al
l.”

  “Was that why the Cat was in such a flaming hurry?”

  “Hell, he wanted to catch up with them and get off this bleeding planet,” another man managed to gasp out.

  “Think what you will, but are you going to help?” Kris cried, shouting the last of her challenge over her shoulder as she took off after Zainal.

  They did gather more help as they went back through the ravine again. Dawn was brightening the sky, so it was easier to see where to put your feet. Where the track split, right down into the ravine, or left to continue on the upper ridge, Zainal signaled for Kris to report to Mitford, who was standing in his “office,” fists on his belt as he saw them emerge on the height.

  “Need Slav badly,” Zainal added and then charged off again.

  “What’n’ell’s going on?”

  Kris stopped, hands on knees, catching enough breath to speak. “We need Slav. Ship took off. It’s already dropped its load. We gotta get there or the scavengers will.”

  “Right on!” And Mitford snapped into action, yelling for Slav, Pess, Tesco, Su, Dowdell as she took up her chase of Zainal.

  She finally caught up with him when he stopped by one of the many streams to rinse out his mouth. The sun wasn’t up yet and the air was cool, but she was hot from her exertions and wondering if she would last the distance.

  “Mitford’s organized more help. Is it far?”

  He shook his head. “Ship climbing.” He looked up at the lightening sky. “Lucky.”

  She hoped so, but how long did those creatures scavenge? Would this half-light be sufficient to send them wherever they spent the daylight hours? She had her breath back and now dropped to her belly, burying her hot face in the cool water, intaking a mouthful to moisten her throat and letting only a little trickle down to her stomach. She was on her feet when he was.

  And they ran on.

  Actually this wasn’t a bad pace, she thought, now she had her second wind. She tried to keep her mind off what scavengers could do to a field full of nice juicy warm live bodies. Now that wasn’t productive thought! At least it should now be clear to everyone at the camp that Zainal had been motivated to “save” people, not get himself off this planet. Though she wouldn’t blame him if that had been his goal. Would he have taken her with him? That, too, was not a productive thought, but she was beginning to appreciate how much the big man meant to her. She’d never found anyone else who treated her as a competent equal, had never once tried to come on since the day she had floored him in the flitter. She knew from comments made back in the kitchens at Barevi that, while the Catteni were equipped, to put it discreetly, much the same way as human males were, only more so as one woman had said dryly, the two species were incompatible as far as propagation was concerned. No Catteni-Human offspring would be forthcoming. But, since the day she had clobbered him in the flyer back on Barevi, Zainal had never visibly lusted after her. And she was quite familiar with that sort of look. Zainal treated her not quite as he treated the male members of their patrols, but with a courtesy she found unusual and maybe even special to her. Even when he knew that it was her fault he was stuck with this bunch of suspicious, unappreciative, and sometimes intolerant mixed bag of humanoids. Oddly enough, though the Catteni were the “subjugating” race, the Deskis and Rugarians didn’t seem to feel any animosity toward Zainal…certainly not as much as the Terrans did.

  This was not terrain she was familiar with and Kris was relieved to see the sun coming up and clearing off the shadows, so there was less danger of her stumbling on the rough ground. That was the one thing she did fear—an injury that their meager first aid supplies could not remedy. Or unfamiliar infections that were life-threatening. The Catteni antiseptic lotion was not a specific cure for everything that could happen to the unwary. And the anesthesia from the darts could be a boon.

  Zainal was bounding up the hill in front of them now, then switching to a zigzag on the steeper parts. He waited on the height for her and pointed. Two fields over she could see the cubes of Catteni supply crates and the fringes of space occupied by inert bodies. At this distance, she couldn’t tell if they were being beset by scavengers yet.

  Zainal cupped his mouth and hollered a weird cry. It was answered, she thought, by one of the aliens following. He nodded satisfaction and began the descent. This hillside was covered with some sort of thorny growth that clung to the fabric of their coveralls with a tenacity which made her glad it wasn’t her flesh that was bared. Zainal, caught on a thick limb, hauled out his hatchet and hewed the limb. Even separated from the mother bush, it still clung.

  “Careful,” Zainal said, holding up his free hand to warn her back. “Chop first,” he added, pointing to the bushes in her way.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Go down. Hurry,” he said, gesturing emphatically to the field, now out of sight behind the next rise. “Stamp, yell.”

  She hesitated a brief moment more but the flash of his eyes when he glanced up from disentangling the thicket branch from his coverall was enough to send her on her way. She used her hatchet to slash and bash a way in front of her and succeeded in reaching clear ground, covered by a stubble of harvested crops, with no delays. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him finally free of the branch. So she ran on, across the field, neatly leaping the low hedge on the far side and down into the next. She thought she heard cries rising from the drop field. That made her run faster, shouting, giving the cowboy yells she had practiced as a tomboy. She paused long enough at the separating hedge to pick up handsful of stones. Then she leaped that hedge and almost landed on someone’s face. A human. In fact, every body near her was human. Some had already been attacked by the scavengers.

  First she threw her rocks in as wide an arc as she could, shouting as she did so. Then she stomped her way up the long side of the field, sometimes running and jumping down as hard as she could on landing, yelling and yodeling as she stamped until she reached the upper boundary. There were no signs of the scavengers in the center of the field, so she continued her progress around the outer edge, stamping, yelling, pausing only when she had to get her breath and try to moisten the dry tissues of her mouth. She’d completed two sides of the big field when she saw others arriving and yelled and gestured at them to square the field in the other direction.

  Then she spotted several people rousing from their drugged sleep and went to assist them. Once again the Catteni had dropped people comfortably near water and she borrowed cups from belts to give people that much comfort in recovering from their ordeal.

  Dowdall was opening the crates, going first for the first-aid kits and blankets while the others did what they could for those the scavengers had attacked. She was so busy she didn’t at first realize that Zainal was not among the rescuers.

  “Tesco, where’s Zainal?” she asked when she did notice his absence.

  “Saw him back there,” and Tesco pointed vaguely over his shoulder before kneeling to give water to a groggy woman.

  Reassured, Kris moved to the next group, who happened to be Deskis. A glance around the field gave her the irritating information that none of the rescuers were doing doodly to help the aliens, so she concentrated on them. Not that she found herself kindly disposed toward the Turs, who regarded the water with great suspicion until she took a sip herself and deposited the cup on the ground beside them. They could do as they chose. Three Ilginish had been badly chewed and before any one could stop them, they suicided, evidently by swallowing their own tongues and suffocating. Their face skin turned from a normal dark green to almost black. Other Ilginish came to view the dead, then piled the bodies to one side under the hedges. Ilginish “faces” did not register any expression, so Kris didn’t know if they were upset or not, but as quickly as she could, she doled blankets and knives out to them, and indicated the first-aid kits.

  More people arrived from the camp, including Mitford. She was surprised to see him away from his “office” but glad of his presence. That’s when she realized she
still had not seen Zainal.

  “Sarge, you seen Zainal?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Mitford said, frowning as he looked about the field where more and more of the latest arrivals were regaining consciousness.

  “Did you come down the thorny hill?”

  “No, Su was there to warn us away from it. Why?”

  Kris didn’t answer but, grabbing up a first-aid kit and a handful of blankets from the nearby crates, she started off at a fast trot, dodging around groups and leaping over still-sleeping bodies. She flew across the intervening field, now entirely visible in the full morning light, hurdling the low hedge without losing her stride, and pelted to the thornbushy hill. They weren’t like Barevian thornbushes, but where she was damned sure she had hacked her way through was now as solid a vegetation patch as if she hadn’t cut it back. There was no sign of Zainal.

  Scared now for him, because Zainal of all people should have been able to free himself unscathed, she looked anxiously around. Since he wasn’t up at the field, he had to still be around here, somewhere. And, if the thorns had been toxic enough to slow down a Catteni, he’d have sought water. The thornbushes were not tall enough to have hidden his big frame, and anyway his browny-gray coverall would have made him visible even in the dense undergrowth. Water!

  There was always water on these damned mechanically cultivated fields. While this field had been harvested, there had to be water nearby. She listened hard. Her ears finally caught the unmistakable sound of running water. Downhill there was a small copse of some of the diamond-leaved bushes. Those seemed to grow near the streams.

  She heard a low groan, the sort that would reluctantly escape tightly closed lips. With a new awareness that the bushes on Botany could be dangerous, she parted the branches of the diamond-leaf and saw Zainal, half-in, half-out of a little brook which welled up from the rocks around which the diamond-leaves clustered. A boot had been cast aside and his right pant leg was rolled up over his knee, exposing the injury.