Freedom's Landing

by Anne McCaffrey

  Suddenly Zainal held out the slip of bark with its symbols and, with one thick fingertip, explained them.

  “This says ‘drop,’” and he pointed to the intricate hook in the center of the first glyph. “This says ‘food,’” and he ran his finger halfway around the next curlecue. “This Deski creatures. This means”—and he moved to next glyph—“‘danger to the death surrounded by urgent.’ Fourth one says ‘medicines for infection.’ Four only. Easy to make, easy to read from distance.” His tone was cold and firm.

  “Okay, okay, man, I believe you,” Mitford said. “Just had to ask.”

  “These my people, too, now,” Zainal added, straightening his wide shoulders as if he, too, would assume some of that burden from Mitford.

  “We are one people now, or by god I’ll know why!” Mitford said so fiercely that Kris almost recoiled. The Sergeant saw her reaction and gave her a quick grin. “I could even get to like being in charge of this motley crew. So when will you be able to travel, Zainal?”

  “Sunrise…”

  Kris started to protest but Mitford held up a hand to silence her. “If he thinks he can, he can. Those Deskis need the right food. And we can use the Deskis’ abilities. You go with him, Kris. How many will you need to carve the message, Zainal?”

  The Catteni waved his hand to indicate he’d go alone.

  “Stuff it, buddy, man,” Mitford said irritably. “You’ll need help making those figures large enough to be seen from that altitude. I know. Had to do it in Nam once. Even SOS takes time to make.” He turned to Kris, an almost wistful expression on his face. “You don’t happen to speak any Scandinavian language, do you?” And when she shook her head, he sighed. “New guys are all I have to send with you, but you can break ’em in to our new ways at the same time. And I’ll pick you one that speaks English and the rest’ll be told what to do. Got it?”

  “Got it, sarge,” and she rose, recognizing a dismissal when she heard it. Zainal extended one hand to Mitford, which the Sergeant took readily enough and shook.

  “You will not be sorry,” Zainal said as he rose.

  “I sincerely hope not,” Mitford replied. “Esker will have a patrol ready at first light.”

  Chapter Ten

  THE NEXT MORNING, THOUGH ZAINAL WALKED slowly, he did not appear to favor the injured leg. But, as they left Camp Rock, Kris realized that last night both men—maybe unintentionally—had avoided discussing what would happen if the Mecho Makers appeared first. Of course, with winter approaching…but it struck her as unrealistic to think that everything mechanical went down with the close of the growing season. Surely there was some sort of supervisor, or superintendant or overseer on the planet? Maybe on one of the other continents? Nevertheless, some thing must be in overall charge. When there was no response from the garages now that the solar panels were disconnected, some thing must register the lack of response. And check up.

  And response was what they hoped to get. Or had Mitford’s objectives changed now he was getting accustomed to being the top man here on Botany?

  Well, as her grandmother used to say, why borrow trouble? It finds you soon enough.

  * * *

  DESPITE A BROKED NIGHT’S SLEEP—SINCE TWO OF their roommates were so restless that any long period of sleep was impossible—Kris and Zainal were up well before dawn on Botany. They’d eaten—Bart was absent, asleep, one of the other cooks said, yawning—and were getting their travel rations when Esker came in with six people, five men and a woman who was nearly as tall as Kris. She seemed relieved to see that Kris was in the party.

  “I speak English,” she announced. “I am named Astrid. These are Ole, Jan, Oskar, Bjorn, and Peter. We lived near Oslo. Esker has told us we go with you to dig?”

  “Yes, dig,” Kris said, with a reassuring smile because she obviously thought it an odd job. She shook hands all round. “This is Zainal, our leader.”

  “You have Catteni as leader?” Astrid asked in a startled whisper.

  “Good one, too, or you’d all been eaten.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The scavengers? The things that go bump in the night on this planet?” And Kris made a mouth of one hand and bit her other arm. Astrid reacted to that, jerking back and away from the demonstration.

  “I do not always understand,” Astrid said apologetically. “We are still alive. We keep others alive?”

  “Exactly! To help the Deskis keep alive we send a message.”

  “Someone will read?” Astrid was clearly amazed. One of the men shot her a quick sentence in the oddly liquid Norwegian language. She answered him as quickly and turned back to Kris. “I don’t believe.”

  “Believe. We will carve the symbols on the ground to be seen in the air,” and she pantomimed the actions.

  “Oh,” Astrid said and explained to her compatriots, who nodded in vigorous understanding.

  “Kris?” and Kris recognized one of the Australian nurses, hurrying into the cavern, waving a sack made from part of a blanket, the ubiquitous material used for anything from aprons to tents. “More fluff dressings for Zainal’s leg.” Then she shot an accusing look at the Catteni. “I knew you’d go off without them—and that leg still needs support and dressings every day. I don’t care if you are some kind of superman, you bleed red like the rest of us. Here!” And she jammed the sack into Zainal’s hand and whirled about and ran out again.

  With a half-grin, Zainal managed to look slightly embarrassed as he stowed the sack into the larger one he was carrying.

  “Now we go,” he said. Whether he had seen Mitford’s gestures on their first trek or not, he raised his arm above his head and brought it down in the direction they were to travel.

  Reassured by his manner, Kris motioned for the rest of the patrol to follow her and they left, as a good team, she thought.

  While Zainal was not setting the pace he had on the first patrol Kris had done with him, he certainly didn’t amble. By the first rest stop, Kris knew that the Norwegians weren’t going to slow them down. Probably skied all winter in Norway. She kept her eyes on Zainal, though, to watch for any signs of an unconscious favoring of his injured leg. Then she became aware that he was watching her watch him.

  “You tell us names of things?” Astrid asked during the break.

  “I don’t know as we’ve named much, Astrid,” Kris admitted, taking a swig of water from her pottery bottle. Sandy’s kiln worked and she’d found a glaze, so the canteen, while still breakable, didn’t leak. She even had a proper pouch for it, now attached to her belt. “There’re botanists going about checking plants to see if they’re edible and stuff like that, but I can’t say as I’ve kept up with what they’re doing.”

  “You are out on patrol?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “What are these machineries?” She looked puzzled.

  “Ah, yes, well,” and Kris explained, pausing while Astrid made quick translations to her compatriots until Zainal gestured for them to take the road again.

  “You have done most well,” Astrid said when Kris finished her brief history of Botany. “We are glad we drop here.”

  “Got dropped here,” Kris corrected automatically. “Ooops, sorry, Zainal has me helping his English.”

  “Oh, help my English, too.”

  “You…teach…us?” one of the other men, Ole, Kris thought, asked her. She hadn’t quite sorted the guys out yet.

  “Might as well. English lessons on the march.”

  “We have no Deskis to hear flying danger,” Astrid said, her eyes wide with apprehension now. “We were told that there is danger that flies,” she added when Kris regarded her with astonishment at her knowledge.

  “The nearby garages are all disabled, so I don’t think we’re in danger of any avians swooping down on us.”

  “Pardon?” Astrid’s English was not up to Kris’ comment.

  “My pardon,” and she rephrased the remark in better English.

  “Explain ‘boy’ now,” Zainal su
ddenly said, dropping back so that he was abreast of the two women.

  “Oh, yes. Well,” and Kris floundered briefly. “‘Boy’ can mean several things. No, I guess many. A boy,” and she held up one finger, “is a young male person: too old to be a baby and too young to be considered a man yet. Okay?”

  “‘Boy’? Is only that?” Zainal twisted his face into a perplexed expression.

  “We have what we call slang in English: patois, idiom, in other languages,” Kris continued determinedly. “‘Boy’ used as slang is an expression of amazement, amusement, pleasure, and it’s usually said as ‘oh, boy!’ or ‘oooo, booooy!’ ‘Oh, boy!’” And she emphasized the different emotions with exaggerated gestures and tones.

  “All boy?” asked Zainal. “I don’t understand how a boy, a young male person, can be surprise, funny, good times.”

  “I think you do, Zainal,” Kris said, suddenly realizing that he was teasing her. “G’wan with ye now, m’boyo!”

  Astrid translated to the others, grinning and laughing and saying “oh, boy” in different tones of voice.

  “Oh, boy, and isn’t this getting out of hand,” Kris said, shaking her head at her predicament.

  “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,” Zainal said and, to nonplus her further, he put one arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug.

  “You’ve been talking to other people,” she said, throwing off his arm and stalking ahead of him. Then she realized she was overreacting. Why on earth, when she really wanted to get close to him, had she repudiated his friendly gesture? Regretting her behavior, she slowed up and caught his hand, holding it while they walked.

  At the second rest stop, Zainal struck off northerly, pointing to broad fields of golden stubble that spread upward to a rocky summit. If, as Zainal had suggested, the Catteni kept to the same line to make their drops, those fields would be visible if they were going to buzz Camp Rock again.

  They reached their objective by midafternoon. Zainal sent Kris and two of the men off to hunt for rocksquats sunning themselves. Oskar and Bjorn were proficient with the bows and arrows they had been supplied with, while both were congratulatory when she brought down four creatures with well-placed slingshots. Of course, she’d missed six so she didn’t think that much of her accomplishment.

  The men were obviously accustomed to good hunting practices because, as soon as they found the next stream, they skinned and dressed down the meat without directions from her. They washed all the carcasses and pelts well before going back to Zainal’s field. They were setting about to bury the entrails when she indicated they should leave them.

  Kris spotted some nourishing types of greens in the hedgerows and harvested them. She kept her eyes out for the tubers, which also grew wild at the edges of fields. Fried, they’d be a good addition to the roast meat and the travel rations.

  Zainal had had the others helping him outline with rocks the glyphs that they would have to hack out of the soil. He was pacing out the second huge pattern, putting down the bordering rocks while the others gathered more. Kris could also see, at the top of the field, a circle of stones with a nice fire burning in it, fueled by the loo-cow droppings collected on the way. They’d be only a step away from the safety of the rocky height, which was just fine by Kris. The scavengers foraged in crop fields as well as pastures, and only the stompstomp of the loo-cows’ six legs kept them from being fair game. Was that why the loo-cows had six legs? More to stomp with? But the scavengers were no doubt the reason why Kris had noticed that the loo-cows seemed to sleep during the daylight hours. Those loo-cows probably had to do an all-night stomp to stay alive.

  The hunters displayed their spoils, and Kris set about finding the right size of flat rock to cook them on. She’d been warned to be careful about overheating her newly issued cooking pot, since it was after all only glazed clay, but she’d been assured by Jay Greene that it would bring water close to the boil…and that would mean she could cook the greens. She took them to the ubiquitous stream to wash and fill the pot, and very shortly the stones were hot enough to start cooking rocksquat.

  By then, Zainal had outlined all four huge glyphs. After a good dinner, he suggested that they start hacking out the soil to bare the dark ground.

  That was tougher work than they had anticipated, for the ground cover had deep, tough root systems and Kris found these had to be cut out: the roots wouldn’t just pull away like any well-behaved Terran weed would. Her arms and shoulders ached from her labors and she was quite glad to break off to heat water for the nighttime beverage.

  The medics had come to the decision that the herbal-type tea that had been concocted contained useful trace elements, so a bedtime cup was standard issue. A nice homey touch and no reason not to continue it out in the rocky wilds of Botany. With warmth in the belly, it was easier to sleep.

  The turf-cutters made themselves as comfortable as they could on the rocks and those who had later watches had no trouble falling asleep.

  * * *

  IT TOOK THEM FIVE DAYS TO COMPLETE THE glyphs: five days of fingernail- and back-breaking, arm-bruising and blister-making toil, since the only tools they had were hatchets and knives. They’d been issued with spares of each tool and had needed them to complete their task, re-sharpening the dulled edges every night. Then, determined that his message would be seen, Zainal had them outline the cuts with the sparkling white stone that comprised this rock outcrop. The full sunlight that fell on the glyphs caused the mica in the rock to glint. Almost as good as neon. Exhausted as she was, Kris had to admire the final result.

  “Do all Catteni read?” she asked Zainal.

  “Those on watch do,” he assured her.

  His leg was a bit swollen from his unremitting labors, but the flesh was gradually filling in and he took a brook-shower night and morning. Cold as the water was, Kris liked the new type of ablution. She and Astrid bathed upstream of the fellows, but the rivulet was deep enough for a person to lie down on the sands and let the water cascade over her in a horizontal shower. The sand was very fine and provided a rough but effective cleanser. Besides, you were so cold you didn’t feel the abrasions. Or so Kris told herself.

  The rocky height was home—or had been home—to a huge colony of rocksquats. The patrol took some time out each day to hunt and cut the excess meat into strips to dry on the hot rocks the next day. Kris was very pleased to be so productive—especially since there were so many more mouths to feed.

  Each night, however, reminded them that a colder season was approaching and Kris did worry about how cold that would be! Fortunately the Catteni-issue thermal blankets were efficient in containing body heat inside them. The evening showers blessed them on schedule but those were no longer as violent as they had been: more like a gentle watering than torrential rains.

  On the sixth day they started back to camp, hunting when they could, for additional protein was always welcome. Zainal set a faster pace this time, to allow for interludes of hunting, and they reached the caverns to find them still crammed with people. Bart took their offerings with profuse thanks and then asked Kris if she’d take a hearth and cook what they’d brought in. As she certainly couldn’t refuse the man when he looked so harried, and the cook cave was obviously pushed to the limit, she obeyed. Astrid lingered, as much because she didn’t know where to go as anything else, and Kris was a familiar face. Until a messenger came for Kris to report to Mitford.

  “I watch you. I now know to cook,” Astrid said, taking the long-handled fork Kris had been using and pushing her on her way.

  Zainal and Ole, who did have some English, were in Mitford’s “office.” The pile of bark sheets was higher than the stone he used as a desk and was weighted down by what looked like a gold nugget, a lump of iron, and a greeny mess that had to be copper.

  “Gold in them-thar hills?” Kris asked when he motioned her to a seat.

  “That and more. We’ve been busy while you’ve been carving that mayday.”

  “You’re never not busy, sar
ge.”

  “Patrol found the remnants of another drop and nine survivors. Eight Deski and a guy from Atlanta, Georgia, who had the sense to stick with the aliens. Damn it,” and Mitford’s face was suffused with anger, “I shoulda had you put a PS on that message: make the drops in daylight. I hate it when I lose people like that.”

  “But they weren’t ours, yet, sarge,” Kris said, trying to be conciliating. Mitford gave her a dirty look. Hey, she thought, he’s really into this Leader bit. Well, it’s not as if anyone else had volunteered for the responsibilities—and the headaches. And look at all that Mitford had gone and done.

  “They could’ve been. And another garage was found and deactivated. Twenty more barns to be made into domiciles.”

  “Now that’s good. And the supplies?”

  “We put them in the barns. Easier that way, but I’d rather have the people to go with them.”

  Zainal had been constructing another glyph and now held it off to inspect the result. He made a few more strokes as adjustments, then turned it to Mitford and Kris. “That should do it,” he said.

  Mitford reacted to that almost unaccented remark. “You learn quick, doncha?”

  “I have to,” Zainal replied. “Take two three days there and back.” He rose, glancing up at the sundial. “Have enough light to travel.”

  “How’s your leg?” Mitford frowned at it as he could see nothing past the bulky pantleg. Then he caught Kris’ surreptitious headshake. “No, better start fresh tomorrow. The others are only Terrans, not as tough as you Catteni.” His little snort took the sting out of that remark as he looked up at Zainal towering above him. “You think your guys’ll listen?”

  Zainal nodded solemnly. “They don’t know the dangers here. They don’t know scavengers. They wish this planet…col-on-nized. We have survived,” and he shrugged, “so they think all can.”

  “But even the report you saw said there were dangerous animals down here.” Mitford’s scowl deepened.

  Zainal shrugged and grinned broadly. “We have survived. Water, air, animals, light gravity, better than Catten!” As if that answered the necessary criteria.