Freedom's Landing

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Being careful not to bang my skull open like you just did,” he said, grinning. There was that in his quickly averted glance that told her he was there for another reason entirely.

  “Was I supposed to leave him out there to die?” she demanded.

  “Don’t jump on me, Kris, I like the big guy,” Lenny said. “Mitford just doesn’t need any trouble.”

  “Mutiny on Botany, huh?”

  “Huh?” Lenny echoed, totally nonplussed by her cryptic remark. “Look,” he added hurriedly, “Dane’ll be around again soon. Go get some breakfast. I’ll be here till you get back.”

  “It’s ridiculous with all Zainal has done for the camp that he has to have a guard.”

  “Now, look, Kris, I’m not so much a guard as I am a sort of orderly,” and Lenny looked embarrassed, “in case he needs help. You know what I mean?”

  “I’m paranoid, I guess,” she said, relaxing a little. “Dane said anything about his chances?”

  Lenny shrugged. “Didn’t ask. I just volunteered. I’m on duty for them, too,” he said and gestured to the opening obliquely across the tunnel. “We got a lot of patients. Oh, and that Missus Bollinger had a baby boy while we were gone. Fine big lad.”

  Kris smiled through her sigh of relief. “That kind of good news is very welcome.”

  “Don’t worry. Mitford’s got everyone organized already,” and Lenny’s grin was mischievous. Then he gave her a little push toward the tunnel entrance. “G’ wan. Eat. You’re off duty today, anyway, with your buddy on the sick list.”

  Kris didn’t hear any nuance in his use of “buddy” so she relaxed. She could safely leave Zainal in Lenny’s charge.

  “G’wan,” he said, smiling kindly, and gave her a half turn toward the entrance. “Eat. Bread’s getting better now the chemist lads’ve got a good yeast going.”

  She took her time, peering in at the various units in this “hospital,” noticing a lot of unfamiliar faces, some obviously in a good deal of discomfort, to judge by their expressions.

  She saw Anna Bollinger, sitting up in her “bed,” nursing her infant, and would have passed by but Annie saw her and waved her in.

  “How’s the Catteni? I heard he was badly hurt,” she said. Then added in a hard voice and with a scowl, “How?”

  From the “doorway,” Kris answered, wondering about the change in her voice. Anna had good reason to be grateful to Zainal. In a neutral voice she said: “On his way to keep people from getting scavengered in the dark, he got a thorn in the calf of his leg and had to carve it out.”

  Anna shuddered. “Ooo, nasty. Give him my regards,” and she looked lovingly down at the swaddled mite in her arms. “I’d never have had my baby if he hadn’t helped me get here.” She sighed. “I’m just glad it was…I mean…He’ll be all right?”

  “Yes, Anna, and thanks for your good wishes. I’ll tell him. And thanks,” Kris said and strode the rest of the way to the outer ledge feeling that perhaps, after all, she’d been imagining things.

  The sundial indicated the time as near Botany’s noon and, for a wonder, Mitford was absent from his “office,” though there were others, busily bending over the desk-stones at their tasks. There were other people, the newest arrivals since she didn’t recognize any of the faces, evidently revived enough to take part in the business of the camp. There was also a handful, just sitting in the sun, eyes closed: a mixed bag because she could spot some Asians as well as the dusky skin of the East Indians. Above their heads, tacked to the south-facing wall of the ravine, was displayed a veritable mural of rocksquat hides, indicating the continued prowess of the camp’s hunters. How much farther were the hunters having to go to catch enough to feed the multitude now here?

  She shivered and not so much because the air felt cool to her despite the sunshine but because she worried about the tactical problems of supply. For instance, would there be enough hides to give everyone a warm coat this winter?

  And, if a Botany day was twenty-eight hours long, how long were their months? Years? How long till spring? How many more loads would the Catteni drop down on this unsuspecting planet? How would they cope with this influx, much less more? She was hungry and that always made her attitude negative.

  Sandy hailed her as she came into the cook cavern.

  “Hi there, gal, got something just out of the oven for the likes of you.”

  “The likes of me?” Kris said in a low voice as she hunkered down by Sandy. She’d glanced quickly about the cavern and saw welcoming grins on other faces: people she did recognize.

  “Yeah, you’re a heroine, didn’t you know?” Sandy winked as she held up the pitcher, waiting until Kris hurriedly undid her cup from its belt loop. “Right up there with Mitford, charging down the ravine like a berserker.” She put a pottery plate, almost a perfect circle, on the rock nearest Kris: it held a browned piece of rocksquat, a slice of nicely toasted bread, and some fried circles. “Not quite potatoes but as near as nevermind,” Sandy told her, passing over a gracefully carved fork.

  Kris grinned, looking down at the utensil and turning it over in her hand.

  “Chantilly silverware it isn’t, but better than risking sharp knife points in your mouth.” Sandy poured herself a fresh cup and settled close to Kris. “How’s the Cat—’cuse me, Zainal—this morning?”

  “I don’t know. His leg is swollen awful big.”

  “The medics are trying a bread poultice. Penicillin it isn’t, but my grannie was big on a bread poultice for boils and things.” Sandy patted Kris’ knee encouragingly. “They’re tough, Catteni. Imagine him, cutting the thorn out of his own leg!” She clicked her tongue at such courage. “And we got quite a board of medical men now.” She chuckled. “And other specialists. Most of ’em seem to have been taken from Sydney. From Botany Bay to Botany,” and she chuckled again.

  “Hey, this is good,” Kris said, having tried a fried tuber. It was not unlike a sweet potato in texture and taste. “Say, are those thornbush leaves doing the Deskis any good?”

  Sandy nodded. “Made a tea when Coo explained what he wanted and we’ve dosed even the sickest.” Her expression altered. “We lost three, you know, while you were out on that last patrol.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Kris stopped chewing. “They look so frail…”

  “They are if they don’t have the right food.” Sandy remained grim. “Their bones break if you so much as touch them hard. You know who helped nurse ’em? Patti Sue!”

  That did surprise Kris.

  “She’s not much heavier than they are and has a light touch. She volunteered.” Sandy grimaced. “She feels safe with the Deskis and even the Rugarians, you know.”

  “Jay Greene?”

  Now Sandy chuckled. “He’s going slow but it was him who suggested she’d be good at tending the Deskis. She has been, but it damned near kills her to lose one.”

  “Look, they got the same rations we all did back on Barevi. I thought the ration bars were enough,” Kris said.

  “Ah, Coo says they were allowed ‘plursaw,’ too, and that’s what they have to have in their diet to keep their bones from going soft. A kind of calcium additive, I guess. There isn’t an equivalent here…unless that thornbush junk fills the gap. He looks better, I know, but he’s a young one.”

  “I didn’t know,” and Kris was remorseful. “I never asked either.”

  “There now, Kris, don’t take on about it. It isn’t as if you’ve had time to be social, you know, in and out of camp as you are.” Sandy reached over for a covered pot set to one side of her hearth. “Made this special for Zainal. It’s sort of a broth and the nearest thing to chicken soup I can put together here. It is nourishing and it doesn’t taste too bad. Maybe you can get some down him. Leon says injured Catteni sometimes have a problem with dehydration. ’Bout the only thing that can debilitate them.”

  Kris thanked Sandy, deeply touched and much reassured.

  “Would you know Aarens?”

  “Yeah,” and there was no j
oy in Sandy’s reply.

  “Is he around?”

  Sandy gave a malicious chuckle. “Him! Boy, didn’t he luck out. Seems there’s some good to him after all. He’s a genius with gadgets. Don’t worry about him.”

  “I don’t worry about him. I worry about his mouth.”

  “Don’t.”

  Kris thanked Sandy again and then made her way back to the hospital. She paused briefly when she saw the line of laden hunters returning to camp. She grinned to see the loaves and fishes that were being supplied to the multitude. She should have asked Sandy how many had been on the latest drop. And her patrol had found yet another nest of empty barns.

  Lenny was gone from his post and the small room was crowded by those attending Zainal: Leon among others she identified as medical personnel. She made herself small and inched in, carefully ducking under the lintel and looking for someplace safe to put the pot of broth, which was hot. Leon rose to his feet just then.

  “Certainly unsophisticated but the best we have to hand. Ah, Kris,” and she could see how tired he was, though his hazel eyes were very much alive and keen in his saturnine face. “We’re using a bread poultice to draw the infection. Now that providentially you lot have rediscovered bread on this godforsaken planet.” He grinned. “Great bunch of improvisors here. She’s the one found that anesthesia…if we could only figure out how to dilute it without losing its effectiveness.” His grin extended to his colleagues, who acknowledged her appearance with smiles or nods. “Are you available to watch him? Lenny’s off duty.”

  “I am,” she said. “Sandy gave me broth for him.”

  “I’ll be right with you,” Leon said as the others moved out of the den, all being careful to duck on their way out. “Good-o on the broth. When I was treating Catteni in Sydney for wounds, dehydration was the big danger. See you get as much in him as he’ll swallow, even if it’s only water,” and he pointed to a condensation-beaded covered pitcher on the floor out of Zainal’s immediate reach. “But he’ll need the nourishment in the broth, too. Catteni are big, strong, and tough but they need to keep their internal economy turning over.”

  “I’ll see to him.”

  “Good,” and Leon glanced down at a slip of the bark paper. “Who’s next?”

  “That leg fracture,” one of the men said, also consulting a slip.

  They all left and Kris got a good look at Zainal’s now poulticed leg. She could smell the yeast of the hot bread as she bent over him. He was motionless, his breath slow and steady, but his skin, when she touched one broad flat cheek, was as hot as ever.

  She rinsed out the fluff that was being used as a compress and cooled his face. Then, taking a spoon—the bowl of this utensil was deep enough to hold a respectable quantity of liquid and the rim was smoothly polished—she dribbled water onto his lips. Automatically he licked and swallowed. She got maybe half a cup down him with patience and then bathed his hot face, moving down to his chest and arms. His coverall had been removed at some point and a decorous and swift peek of curiosity showed that he’d been given some sort of a modesty cloth to cover his private parts, relieving her of embarrassment. He wasn’t quite as heavily muscled as she’d thought, with the bulky coverall disguising a body that, by any standards, was beautiful. She shook her head at that wayward thought. What the hell’s wrong with admiring a beautiful bod on a guy? Nothing, unless you also think of that body next to your own! Whoops, girl. Down! she told herself sternly. She allowed herself to stroke his skin, softer than its grayness looked. And exhaled, trying to shake off a sensation in her gut. Lusting after a Catteni, girl? You are the pits!

  Nevertheless, the opportunity to touch him in more than a nurse-patient relationship was too much to resist. She smoothed back his silky gray hair, as fine as a baby’s. In repose his features were even more patrician, when she compared him to some of the other Catteni she remembered. Yes, decidedly he was several castes above the average male mercenary. She was so accustomed to the look of him now that he didn’t even seem alien anymore. Hmmm. Well, that attitude was better than rampant xenophobia!

  Between her sessions of watering him—she also got him to take some of the broth, which had cooled enough to be dripped into his mouth—she rested on her bed, drowsing occasionally. She wondered if he knew they were trying their best to help him, because he lay stolidly unmoving, even when the poultice was still hot. The only response he gave was to swallow when moisture was offered.

  Time to water him again.

  * * *

  MORE NOISE OUTSIDE, MUTED THOUGH IT WAS, warned her of increased activity in the hospital. Lenny popped his head in.

  “He may not be eating but you should.”

  Until he mentioned it, she hadn’t realized how empty her stomach was.

  “So, what’s for din-dins?” she asked facetiously.

  He grinned and brought a plate from behind his back, complete with pottery-domed lid.

  “We’re getting quite fawncy, this weather,” he said. Then he lifted the top.

  “My god, it looks human,” she said in pleased surprise. For the meal consisted of more tubers, boiled by the look of them, a section of avian, to judge by the configuration of the wing, and two portions of greens.

  “Just what the doctor ordered! Leave you to it! Oh,” and he reappeared in the doorway, “mass meeting this evening at the sound of the gong!”

  “Gong?” she asked but he was out of earshot.

  She ate with good appetite and the food was delicious. The ration bars and the travel meal had doubtless been nutritious, but real food of differing texture, now that was civilized.

  Leon came bustling in when she had finished, and he was looking rested.

  “Got some sleep, did you? Report?”

  “He’s been taking both water and broth whenever I offer them and I’ve cooled him down in between. But he doesn’t move much,” she ended lamely, looking expectantly at Leon Dane.

  “Hmmm. They don’t. Real adherents of the grin-and-bear-it brigade. They suffer in silence. I suspect he’s more conscious of what’s going on than you realize. Zainal?”

  Leon leaned over the Catteni, hand on his brow and then on the main artery on the left of his neck. He proceeded downward, checking the temperature of the skin and then palpating the thigh tissues. “Hmmmm.”

  “Your ‘hmmms’ are getting longer,” Kris remarked sardonically.

  “When in doubt a thoughtful ‘hmmm’ is reassuring.”

  “To whom?”

  “Whommmm does it as well, y’ know,” and Leon was now delicately prodding the wound area, having lifted the poultice. It had turned an obnoxious shade of gray/orange/green. “Yes, indeed. I think that’s doing it.”

  “You do?” and Kris leaned over to see what he could possibly have taken as encouragement. The ghastly hole did look…healthier was the only word she could find. Nicely red instead of raw red, and the swelling had noticeably subsided so that the kneecap was once again visible. “I think I agree.”

  “Keep on with watering him. Ah, you’re with us,” Leon added suddenly when Zainal startled them both by opening his eyes.

  “I need to lose water,” Zainal said clearly.

  Laughing, Leon collected a cleverly shaped pottery utensil at the end of the bough bed which Kris hadn’t actually noticed before and she beat a hasty retreat while Leon attended the patient.

  He came out with the utensil in his hand, chuckling to himself. “He’ll do fine. Just fine. Don’t forget the meeting tonight, will you?”

  “How long have you been awake, Zainal?” Kris asked in a diffident tone of voice.

  “Off and on,” he said, his eyes closed, but he held out his hand and when she took it, his eyes opened. They held a look which made her chest swell with some unidentifiable emotion, so strong that her eyes began to water. His grip was very delicate and his skin still more than warm. “I knew you were here. You were there, by the water, too. Good of you, very good of you.”

  “Not at all,” and
she covered his hand with her free one. “You’re…we’re buddies. We look out for each other.”

  His eyes flicked open. “Buddies?”

  “For lack of a better term, yes. I won’t let you down.”

  “That I know.” Then he released her hand and dropped his arm to his side, closing his eyes again. “Water? I am no longer full.” And his lips lengthened in a slight smile. “The tasty water.”

  “We call it broth.”

  “Good.”

  She fed him and felt good about it.

  * * *

  THE MEETING WAS VERY WELL ATTENDED THOUGH Kris missed some of Mitford’s usual satellites, the Rugarians, as well as the Doyles. Even patients who could be moved out to the ledge in front of the hospital were present: Anna and her baby, the fracture cases—everyone except Zainal.

  Kris was obliquely offended by that but talked herself out of indignation: plainly Zainal was too ill to be moved and she could report to him—and defend him if necessary. Now why was she feeling so defensive about the Catteni?

  Jay Greene had Patti Sue on one side of him. She joined them, leaning against the rock face on Jay’s left side.

  “What’s up?”

  “Oh, a Mitford morale-building session and the latest news.” Jay grinned.

  “What latest news?” Kris demanded, knowing he was baiting her and giving him an ingenuous grin.

  “The batch you and Zainal discovered weren’t the only drops that night. Mitford sent off an exploratory patrol to see how many fields got seeded in what we believe is the typical Catteni drop pattern.”

  “More people?” Kris gave a frantic glance around the cave system, certainly overcrowded by the latest group of refugees. How were they going to cope? Then a rattle of the alarm triangle brought a wave of hush over the congregation. Mitford stood up, waiting until he had complete silence.

  “Okay, folks, listen up. There’re more drop-ins…” He paused until the mutter—Kris thought she heard resentment as well as surprise and concern—had subsided. “I take it as a good omen, considering what debriefing I’ve had.” He chuckled. “The Catteni aren’t finding it as easy to subdue good ol’ Earth as they expected.” A cheer went up. “And they’ve just increased our specialist department by four doctors, eighteen nurses, nine computer specialists, fourteen engineers, some good ol’ hunter types from Australia, and a bunch of other real useful individuals, including some professional cooks, so we oughta be eating even better in the near future.”