Freedom's Landing

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Oh, lord,” she breathed, seeing the massive inflammation on the outside of his wide muscular calf. The thorns of Barevi had been dangerous in a nuisancy way, but this injury looked serious. Bending over him, she checked first for any signs of blood poisoning. Not that gray Catteni flesh might exhibit such a trauma. He had blood, as red as any human’s, and it had clotted almost black where it had run down his leg. That was when she realized by the size of the wound that he had evidently carved the thorn out of his own flesh.

  “Ouch!” she murmured, shuddering convulsively. She sorted through the first-aid supplies for the Catteni antiseptic. That was definitely in order. And it would sting like billybe-damned when she poured it in that open wound but what other choice had she? She took a deep breath and emptied the entire vial of the solution into the crater he had made in his leg.

  “Rorrrrrrgh!” Zainal shot to sitting position in protest to the treatment, his right hand cocked back to strike, his left arm up in guard.

  Kris lurched backward, away from him.

  “It’s Kris, Zainal. I’m trying to help!”

  His eyes focused on her face, wild in reaction to the pain and alarm, but, in that brief instant, he recognized her.

  “You came,” he said in a barely audible voice before he seemed to collapse inward and fell back on the ground. His eyes rolled upward, the lids fluttering as well as any southern belle flirt could have done under different circumstances, and then he passed out again.

  “Did I do the right thing, Zainal?” She shook, or rather tried to shake, the massive shoulder to rouse him. She retrieved the first-aid bag, which had fallen off her lap, and tried to think what else she could do to help him. Swollen tissue could respond to cold compresses. With all the antiseptic in the wound, there wouldn’t be much in the water that could exacerbate the wound.

  There were sheets of some sort of material in the kit, so she soaked those until they were cold and placed them on the wound. He moaned a little but didn’t writhe in pain so she felt it was safe to continue with that treatment. She made a pillow of one of the blankets she’d brought, brushing the leaves and pebbles off his surprisingly fine, soft gray hair, and covered his big frame with another.

  It was Mitford himself who came looking for her. She emerged from the brush in response to his calling. Beyond him she saw the lines of the newest immigrants starting the trek back to the camp. He hadn’t lost any time deciding to take them in, even if another four or five hundred souls to tend must be the lowest option on his agenda.

  “What’s the matter, Kris?” he said, trotting up to her in an effortless lope. How he kept so fit with all the sedentary work he was now saddled with, she didn’t know, but he rose another notch in her estimation.

  “Warn people off those thornbushes,” she said first, pointing urgently to the slope. But the line seemed to be taking the less direct route, around the inhospitable-looking incline. “Zainal’s down, with a thorn wound. He carved the thorn out of his own leg but it was toxic enough to knock him out. We’ll need to make a litter to carry him back.”

  Mitford winced and scratched his head, half-turning in the direction of his new charges.

  “I know, you gotta get them back first, but considering how much Zainal has done…” And she was surprised at the bitterness in her voice.

  “Now, now, easy does it, Bjornsen, I’m not about to abandon him. He is too damned useful.” In the Sergeant’s voice, she caught the nuance that Zainal might be useful, but not popular, and knew that some of the gossip about him was true. “We’re all in the same boat or,” and Mitford gave her a wry grin, “on the same planet, but this new dump isn’t going to help!” He sighed deeply.

  “Don’t mean to add to your problems, sarge,” she said apologetically.

  “Dammitall, Bjornsen,” and now he was angry at her apology, “you’re not a problem and I won’t let him be. Can you hang on until I see this bunch installed?” With one hand, he gripped Kris’ right arm, emphasizing his intent while he hauled his blanket over his head and dropped it beside her. Then he handed over the other sack he carried. “Food, firing, and other stuff. Now, where is he?”

  She led him to where Zainal sprawled. When Mitford lifted off the temporary dressing, he curled his lip and recoiled slightly at the look of the puncture, then carefully replaced the bandage.

  “Nasty, all right. Hope he got all the thorn out, but probably he did,” and there was approval in the Sergeant’s tone for the measure of the man he knew Zainal to be. “Hell’s bells, he can’t be comfortable like that,” Mitford added, so the two of them pulled the big body out of the water. Then, when Kris had hurriedly cleared a space and spread two more blankets, they managed to roll him into a more level, comfortable position.

  Mitford stood then, surveying the area, kicking at the roots of the bushes. “How’d they find enough soil to grow in?” he muttered. “Rocky enough so those scavengers can’t come at you.”

  “They come out at night,” Kris began and then realized that it might indeed be nighttime before help for a Catteni arrived.

  “Firing’s in there and some of those matches Cumber made. We found sulfur, y’know.”

  “No, I didn’t,” and she wondered if sulfur had any medicinal qualities.

  “Look, I’ll send a litter back for him as soon as possible. Get some more firing when you can.” He surveyed the massive Catteni’s prone body. “Hope he doesn’t get delirious on you or something.”

  “I’ll manage, sarge,” she said, gritting her teeth.

  “’Luck, Bjornsen, but you’re the kind who can handle things.”

  As Kris watched him make his way out of the little copse, she was somewhat heartened by his confidence in her. Mitford didn’t often praise, and while that might be a bit backhanded, she appreciated being thought capable.

  She went back to her patient, resigned to a long wait, knowing that Zainal’s welfare would be low on the list of everyone else’s priorities. She wet the compresses again, glad of the almost indestructible quality of Catteni materials, and then she moistened Zainal’s lips.

  You had to keep people from getting dehydrated if they’d been poisoned, didn’t you? His lips parted as if the moisture was what he needed, so she managed to dribble water down his throat and he swallowed eagerly. A good sign. His forehead and cheeks felt warm, but not hot-hot. She couldn’t remember from her previous contacts with him just what a normal body temperature for a Catteni would be. She also couldn’t tell if his skin had altered as a human’s would with fever. While one part of her was glad that Catteni were not totally impervious to natural hazards, she was damned sorry Zainal was laid low by as silly a thing as a thorn.

  Chapter Nine

  JAY GREENE, SLAV, THE DOYLE BROTHERS, A MAN she didn’t recognize and, surprisingly, Coo, returned by second moonrise. By then Zainal was sweating copiously and she tried to cool him off with the compresses. There was such a lot of him to cool! He was restless but not so energetically that she’d had any trouble keeping him prone. But she was getting more and more worried. Faint slithers had caused her to fear that the scavengers might be bold enough to penetrate the rocky dell. She’d taken to periodic stampings about the small clearing, hoping to scare them away. It was only quiet victims they went after, cowardly as they were.

  She nearly cried with relief, though, when she heard her name called. She heaped firing on the little campfire to show the way to them.

  “This is Dr. Dane, Kris,” Jay said, urging the medical man through the thicket. “He’s even treated Catteni back on Earth.”

  “Thank God!” Kris breathed, anxiously urging the doctor to his patient and whipping off the latest compress to show the ugly wound. It looked even worse in the flickering firelight.

  “G’day,” Dane said in an unmistakably Australian accent, giving her a keen look before he knelt by the patient. “Did a proper job on himself, didn’t he?” With deft fingers he pressed the sides of the gaping wound mouth. “Got it all, I’d say
. Tough bastards, these Catteni. Pour the whole bottle in, did you?” and now he grinned at her. “Fair do.”

  “It was all I had and it is Catteni issue,” she said, noticing that she was wringing her hands.

  “Did the right thing, all right.” He felt Zainal’s skin, placed a hand over the chest and then to the large neck vein. “Not so ragged after all. Right then, let’s get him back. Hey, what?” He had straightened up after his examination and saw Coo coming to crouch in the firelight, something in his hand which he wanted to inspect.

  The Deski’s hand was trembling—with fatigue, Kris wondered, deeply grateful to the alien, in his own debilitated state, for wanting to help an injured Catteni. What Coo was examining was the lighter gray crown of a thornbush, the new growth, since vegetation even on this godforsaken planet seemed to follow certain botanical precedents. Then, before she could say anything, Coo had popped it in his mouth and was masticating with every evidence of enthusiasm and relief. In the act of springing upright, the Deski also turned and, with more energy than he had shown in days, plunged toward the hillside.

  “What was that all about?” the doctor asked, in surprise.

  “I think Coo’s located something to take care of his dietary deficiency,” Kris said drolly.

  “One man’s meat’s another’s poison,” the man replied philosophically. “Now let’s get this poisoned boyo back to civilization. Quite a setup Mitford’s organized,” he added with approval.

  “Good ol’ Yankee know-how,” Jay said with a grin.

  “What about Irish improvisation?” Lenny Doyle said, pretending offense as he unlashed the ties on stretcher poles.

  “Ya think this is strong enough to hold ’im?” Ninety asked, measuring Zainal’s bulk against the litter design.

  “Those blankets are indestructible,” Jay said.

  It took all of them, with Kris holding up heavy Catteni feet, to get the unconscious Zainal onto the litter. Strips of torn blanket secured him for the arduous journey back to camp.

  Kris kicked out the fire and stored the remaining firing into the sack Mitford had given her and followed them. In the bright light of the big rising moon, Coo was busily, and carefully, plucking the very tops of the thornbushes and stuffing them into the open blouse of his coverall.

  “Is that what you need, Coo?” Kris called. “Can I pick, too?”

  “Noooo,” Coo said, shaking his head emphatically. “Baaaad for oomans.” With one hand he kept fanning the air to reinforce his warning for her to keep back while he kept nipping the crowns with the other.

  She tried to recall how many of the newest “immigrants” were Deski but, suddenly, thinking was beyond her strained and tired mind. She fell in step behind the litter bearers, relieved that her long and anxious watch had concluded.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE TOOK HER TURN AS A LITTER BEARER, for she insisted on that, Leon Dane gave her some interesting and oddly welcome news: Earth was fighting back against the Catteni invaders—an evidently unprecedented reaction.

  The Catteni method of subduing a planet by swooping down and carrying off whole cities of people generally cowed a species totally. Not so with Terrans. Despite the invasion, resistance began almost as soon as the great Catteni transport ships began loading hostages. Leon Dane had remained in Sydney, using his position as a physician to relay important information to a very active unit in the Blue Mountains. On orders, he had volunteered to treat Catteni for, despite thick hides, they broke bones and had “accidents” that would have killed humans.

  “If you know your invader’s weaknesses, you have a better chance of striking back.” He turned a grin on Kris as they moved across the second field. “That was my job. Unfortunately there isn’t much that gets a Catteni down and they seem impervious to any of the Terran toxic materials I tried on ’em. To see the clinical reactions, of course. But, oh my word, they can mess each other up on their little twenty-four-hour vendettas!” He whistled appreciatively. “I spent a lot of time sewing ’em up. They don’t break easy but they sure do lacerate a treat.”

  “I guess I’m glad you were willing to help Zainal. He was a victim of one of those twenty-four-hour vendettas.”

  “Was he? And they dumped him in with you lot?”

  Kris nodded, finding that talking and keeping up her corner of the heavily loaded litter was tiring.

  “How’d you get caught?” she asked the doctor.

  “Ha! We had orders to riot at a certain time and place and I was sent from my hospital to officiate. I got gassed along with everyone else. The Cats don’t ever ask questions. They’re effective that way. But sending one of theirs to colonize…” He shook his head in surprise. “Whaddid he do?”

  “He killed a patrol leader,” Kris said. “I watched the pursuit from where I was hiding.”

  “You were hiding?”

  Kris grinned. “On Barevi.”

  “Barevi?” He shot her a quirky smile. “Sounds Aborigine.”

  “Does, doesn’t it—Catteni Aborigine, at least. Barevi’s one of their big distribution and R and R planets. Only one big city and spaceports. Slave trading’s the biggest industry there. And resupply of Catteni ships. I figured out, from watching the guy who owned me, how to drive one of those little flitters of theirs and appropriated it one evening.” She grinned at Leon. “Managed quite handily in the jungle there until he,” and she jerked her head back at Zainal, “dropped in on me. I was taking him back to where he belongs when I got caught in a riot-gassing, too.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “He knew a bit about this planet, enough to save a lot of us from getting eaten by those scavengers or caught by the avians.”

  “The Cats didn’t leave much for us to go on with,” he said in a gloomy tone.

  “Zainal says that’s how they’ve colonized a lot of places.” She shot a look at him and wondered if she’d offend with her next comment. “Sort of like you Aussies were. We voted to call the planet Botany.”

  “Did you now?” And Leon Dane shot her a startled look, but he grinned. “Well, it fits. Australia—well, the Sydney area at least—was settled by convicts.”

  “Made a good job of it, too, didn’t they?”

  “I take the point, Kris Bjornsen. And they had as little as we have. Maybe less. We at least have a lot of specialists.”

  “Many aliens? Deskis, Turs, Ilginish, Rugarians?”

  Leon shrugged. “I was working more on the human injuries. But I noticed some strange-looking creatures in the hospital cave. Stick-thin, like the one that came with us to fetch you.”

  “The Deskis. They’re not doing well here. Missing some essential ingredient in their diet.”

  “Is that why that bloke was picking the thornbushes?”

  “Hope so.”

  Then Lenny and Ninety declared they were rested enough to take over. Kris was quite willing to give up her end of the litter, guilty though it made her feel for the rest of the way back to the camp.

  * * *

  LIT BY MANY TORCHES, MITFORD, MURPH, GREENE, and Dowdall were still interviewing new arrivals when the rescuers arrived by third moonrise. In spite of the late hour—or was it early?—there was a great deal of activity and the smell of freshly roasted meats.

  Instead of going into the main cavern, however, the bearers swerved to one of the lesser caves.

  “Hospital,” Lenny said when Kris wanted to know. “Quite a setup now.” But there was something about the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes that bothered Kris.

  “I’ll stay with him,” she said firmly. “He’ll need…”

  “You”—and Leon Dane prodded her chest with a firm finger—“need rest.” In the better light of the torches, she realized that he was a good-looking man in his mid-thirties, spare as so many Australians seemed to be.

  “I’ll rest better with…my buddy,” and she added that designation with defensive pride. Dane was looking at her now in a way that made her refer to him in that fashion.

  “T
hat way, is it?”

  “NO! Not that way,” she said, fiercely now. “But I got him into this mess and I’ll stand by him.”

  “Good on you, sheila,” Dane said, and squeezed her arm in approval. “But he’ll be tended while you”—and he prodded her chest with one finger—“sleep.”

  It was a small cave and anyone entering had to stoop or risk a crack on the skull. Inside there was more headroom, sufficient even for Zainal when he recovered. She said “when” as positively as she could to herself though he lay far too still to suit her when his litter was placed on the waiting mound of blanket-covered boughs. There was another bed on the other side of the den and she looked longingly at it. Then turned back to see Dane checking the wound again and Zainal’s pulse.

  “He’ll do. Tough bastard,” he said. “You,” and he pointed at Kris and then the bed, “get some rest. I’ll check in during the night.” He gave her a grin. “Haven’t lost a Catteni patient yet.” Then, when she did not immediately obey his injunction, he hauled her the step to the bed and pushed her down on the boughs, spreading the blanket over her. “Sleep.”

  She did, rousing once or twice when she heard movement, but it was always caused by Dane, checking on his patient.

  When she finally woke up, she stretched luxuriously, knowing that she had slept herself out. But a low moan brought her alert instantly and scrambling to Zainal’s side. His injured leg, bare of covering apart from the compress, was twice its normal size well up into the thigh. The flesh when she gingerly touched it was almost burning to the touch. The compress was dry and clung to the suppurating flesh when she tried to check the wound.

  “Oh, lordee,” she murmured and then banged her forehead on leaving the den. “Ouch!”

  “Gotcha, did it?” said Lenny sympathetically, rising from a stool by the entrance.

  “What are you doing here?” she said, inhaling against the pain of her scraped forehead. Her hand came away with dots of blood.