Freedom's Landing

by Anne McCaffrey

  “From those Eosi you were telling me about?” Mitford demanded, scowling, his body tense.

  “We work for the Eosi, who own most planets good for humans, Catteni, and others. You do not want to meet them,” Zainal said, shaking his head.

  “Oh, yes I would if they’re the ones responsible for this whole schtick,” Mitford said, his scowl black.

  “That’s what we heard back on Earth at any rate,” Worrell said. “Not that we saw any Eosi on Earth. Just their mercenaries.” He grinned. “We’d made the planet a little too unsafe even for the occupying forces.”

  “And all this time I thought the Catteni were our enemies,” Dowdall said, trying to digest the information. “While they’re just hired hands.”

  “Now you know,” Mitford said, scowling.

  “How come we’re only finding out about these Eosi now?” asked Dowdall, shooting an accusing glance in Zainal’s direction. He wasn’t a man who liked surprises.

  Zainal grinned. “First I have no words. Second you do not ask. Do not debrief me.”

  The Doyles and Worrell laughed and Dowdall, now no longer quite as hostile toward Zainal, managed a weak grin.

  “Eosi make good use of all peoples,” Zainal said. “Very clever species.”

  “Then let’s take all the heat off Zainal,” Kris said. “Let’s make the bad guys the Eosi and spread the word.” A second thought struck her and she hurried on. “Do you speak Eosi, if they came to investigate this place again?”

  Zainal considered that question. “If report goes high enough, I think they send but not Eosi. High Emassi. But I do speak with Eosi.”

  He didn’t much like to, either, Kris decided from his expression.

  “So do we wait until some high muckymuck reads a report sometime this century or what?” demanded Tesco.

  Zainal looked briefly at Mitford, who nodded and took over the reply to Tesco.

  “We do as we have been, what we can with what we have. If a mecho ship comes to look Botany over, we grab it if we can.”

  “And go where with it?” Tesco asked sardonically. “Not even NASA got beyond Jupiter.”

  “I take ship. I am space captain,” Zainal said, “but will need crew.”

  “Well, that’s a great idea but how’ll you do it? If you Cats don’t know about the species which farms this planet, how would you know how to pilot one of its spaceships?”

  “If ship has living pilot, we make pilot take us back,” Zainal replied, not at all confounded by the snide query. “If mecho, it will return to base: that is what it is made to do. We ride on it.”

  “And then what?” Tesco demanded surlily.

  Zainal shrugged. “First, ship has to come here. Where there is much…Yankee in-gen-oo-it-tee.”

  Kris let out a laughing cheer, seconded by some of the other Americans present.

  “Those of us from Oz aren’t that bad in the make-do line either,” Worry said staunchly.

  “Which ship comes first, then we make plans. Right?” Zainal said and turned to Mitford, who stood up again.

  “That’s it, Zainal, right on the nose. So, listen up, folks. We gotta get the latest recruits settled in and let ’em know the score. Worry, you call a meeting at the Rock as soon as you get back and tell ’em what happened. All patrols are to make housing their priority so hunt out some more garages. We’ll need to get ready for the next group. I’ll get on the blower to Shutdown and BellaVista,” and he glanced fondly down at the comunit attached to his belt. “We might even claim Botany as ours! And the hell with Eosi or whatever.”

  “Long live King Mitford…” Lenny Doyle said facetiously.

  Mitford’s expression turned sour instantly and he waved an angry finger at Lenny.

  “Can that sort of crap, Doyle. I’m no king nor want to be. Anyone else wants to carry the can on this planet, they’re welcome to it!” He glared around him and no one doubted the sincerity of his wish to step down, but no one offered to take over either.

  “Ah, I was kidding, sarge,” Lenny said contritely. “You’re doing great.”

  “I’ll second that,” Worry spoke up, lifting his hand to raise a cheer. Which was unanimous.

  “Well,” and Mitford was only partially mollified, “I didn’t ask for it, but someone had to organize you sorry collection of individuals.”

  “Which you have done admirably,” Kris said. “No one else could have! So relax, sarge.”

  “Ahhhh,” and he made a mock swipe at her and then his expression cleared. “Is there any of that beer left?”

  The moment beer was mentioned, Kris noticed that the tension oozed out of the air. She was willing for a few pints herself until she saw Zainal edging toward the door. With the general movement and shifting in the room, she slipped after him.

  It was full dark out, no moons up yet. She could see Zainal moving across the light shining out of the next barn door, left partly ajar.

  “Zainal,” she called softly, knowing he could hear an even softer whisper. She saw him pause, saw him stride out a few steps, and then she ran to catch up with him, catching him by the arm. “Don’t you dare run out on me, buddy!”

  He strode on, making her half run to keep up. “Do they still not understand? We Catteni are not our own masters…either!”

  “No, I don’t think they did understand. I certainly didn’t.”

  “We do Eosi…dirty work. Explore for Eosi, fight for Eosi, police for Eosi, kill…” and that word came out violently, in great repugnance, “when killing needed. People hate Catteni. They better hate Eosi!”

  The pent-up outrage within him had carried them well past the barns now and into the openness where the meat crates had been stacked.

  “I didn’t know that, Zainal. I think it will be easier for you when everyone else does.”

  “I do not ask easy,” he said, angrily whirling toward her, a dark shape, his gray skin making him more invisible in the shadows.

  “Yeah, but you don’t need hate. And there are, I have to say, a couple of people…”

  “Couple? More than couple. Couple only two, yes?”

  “Yes, perhaps, but they are stupid people who don’t like any one not just like they are. So let’s make them hate the real villains, the Eosi. Catteni have to take orders, though it never occurred to me you guys were taking orders from anyone.” She paused, trying to sense if she was saying the right things. “So what are these Eosi like that they can command tough, big, brave Catteni?”

  “They…” and there was more to Zainal’s pause than a search for an appropriate word. For the first time she sensed fear from him. “They are brains,” and he tapped his forehead, “who know…everything.”

  “Brainy know-it-alls,” she began, with laughing irreverence, and he caught her hands.

  “Do not laugh at Eosi until you have met one.”

  She caught the tremor in his hands and heard it in his voice.

  “You have?”

  “Yes, as a child, I go with father to be…examined by Eosi.” He inadvertently squeezed her hands so hard, it took a great effort not to cry out. The examination must have been a painful process if his response to the memory of it was this fierce.

  “You passed?” she asked, more curious than flippant.

  At that, Zainal straightened his shoulders and stood more erect. He probably hadn’t even noticed that he had been unconsciously contracting in on himself.

  “I am Emassi. We speak to Eosi.” Then she could see his teeth, whiter than his skin, even in the shadows he stood in. And he was not smiling.

  Kris thought of the Cabots and Lodges of the old Boston proverb. Well, it was one way of shaking off the aura that Zainal’s fearfulness of the Eosi had put into the atmosphere around them. But that chain of command did explain why the transport captain didn’t dare ignore Zainal.

  “Maybe no one will come to Botany and we won’t have to worry about Catteni or Eosi or even the mechos’ makers,” she said soothingly.

  Zainal snorted.
“No, they will come. The Eosi will send high Catteni.” He paused a moment, evidently considering what he had just said.

  “And the mechos will send their representative and they’ll come together in a head-on collision and leave us to get on with our lives.” She spread her hands wide and then banged both fists together, knuckles to knuckles. “Poof! They all disappear in a cloud of smoke and that’s that!”

  He had her in his strong hands then, and she was being lifted up a few inches off the ground so that they were eye to eye. He was smiling now.

  “Is that how you wish it?”

  “Sure, why not? The wheels of the universe turn in mysterious ways,” she said, airily bending several aphorisms to her purpose. “Terrans will make so much trouble that the Eosi will have to give up on our planet. Or better yet, the Catteni will get a dose of the smarts and start collaborating with the irresistible Terran forces and go out against the Eosi domination and free the entire galaxy! You do come from this galaxy, don’t you?”

  “We do.” He sounded cheerful again. Then his expression altered as he looked down at her. “You like this Catteni?” he asked. “This Emassi, this Eosi-speaker?”

  She swallowed for she picked up on his sudden uncertainty.

  “Yes,” she said, trying not to sound as eager as she was. Catteni wouldn’t scare off easily, or would they? One kiss, a few hair touslings.

  “I go slowly, like Jay,” and he grinned. “You are not like Patti Sue…”

  “I should hope the hell I’m not.”

  “But you will have heard things about Catteni…”

  “I know you, Catteni Emassi Zainal,” and she jabbed a finger at his chest so hard she nearly bruised the tip. “You’re the one I worry about.”

  “You worry about me?” and if the notion pleased him, it also amused.

  “Why, they could have shot you where you stood yesterday morning. My heart was in my mouth the whole time.”

  “You worry about me?” He caught her by the arms, picking her up as if she weighed no more than…than a Deski, her legs dangling.

  “Yes, you great lummock. And with me you don’t need to go slow. I’ve been hoping you’d make some sort of a move on me for the…”

  He kissed her then, and the mere touch of his lips to hers was the catalyst for a storm of emotions within her, emotions and sensations that coursed up her veins and bones so that she had to fling her arms about his neck to be sure she wasn’t reeling.

  But Catteni don’t kiss, she thought irrationally along with some other more sensual observations. His lips were firm and he seemed to know exactly how to kiss with great effectiveness. Oh, lordee, but of course he’d seen Joe and Sarah exchanging affectionate kisses in the evenings. Oh, lordee, but he’d learned fast.

  With one arm pinning her to him, his other hand made short and devastatingly accurate examinations of her body. But he’d said, back in the flitter—oh, ages ago—that he hadn’t tried a Terran before. That was when she’d had to deck him. She wanted to deck with him.

  “Catteni are good lovers,” someone else had told her more recently.

  Well, she was going to find out, like real soon. She wriggled a bit to get some space and shoved her hand into his coverall, to feel the sexily smooth skin she had admired during his illness.

  He murmured against her lips and then began to move off, taking great eager strides wherever he was hauling her. Wherever could he be taking her? There was so little privacy to be had in any camp, and Kris wouldn’t have thought they could find a secluded spot in a place currently jam-packed with bodies, but Zainal seemed to know exactly where he was going. Had he planned any of this? Then he altered his stride, grunted as he climbed up and over and into something metallic.

  By the smell she knew it had to be one of the reconverted mechos she’d heard about and she was now being laid down in the load bed. On piles of blankets. Oh, they were in one of the reconstructed air-cushion vehicles that had collected the stores from the drop field.

  She didn’t think about much after that because Zainal’s hands, gentle for all the size and strength of them, were peeling off her coverall and she was trying to do the same with his, only their hands were entangling.

  “Always you must help…” he said on a laughing note.

  She threw her arms over her head. “So you do it.”

  Nor did he waste time. He had hauled off her boots and shucked her out of the coverall in seconds. Then she saw him, a gray blur above her, as his hands pushed back her hair and his fingers outlined her face, in such a gentle, tender, loverly fashion that her senses were overwhelmed. Who’d’ve thought a Catteni could behave like this?

  She felt him lean into her, carefully, as if afraid to crush her with his mass. One other fact about Cattenis sprang to mind: they were big! She could feel that he was, too. And she had a pang of fright.

  “I do not hurt you,” and his voice was no more than a hoarse whisper. “Not you, Kris. Do you believe? I go slow, slow, slow…” and she could feel the pressure that was slow…oh, much too slow. She squirmed, trying to force herself down and him in.

  She heard his gasp but he would not accede to her whispers but kept up the slow penetration until she was moaning for completion.

  Never in her albeit brief experience at this sort of dalliance had she been so eager to accept all a man could give her. Not even with Brace Tennemann, and she’d thought he was the best-looking man on the football team in her sophomore year.

  “You go too slow, Zainal,” she cried, again trying to pull him as close as his firmly propped arms would let her, kissing whatever part of him was in reach, sensuously caressing the marvelous skin of his body.

  “Slow makes it better,” he said, his tone rippling with laughter, possibly with delight at her urgency. “Slow is better for me, too.”

  And slowly he continued his seduction of her willing self, until she was so strung out with the incredible sensations he was producing she wondered how she could survive the climax. Then it came over her, and him at the same instant, for they cried aloud in the same instant: cries of joy and immeasurable elation.

  Just when she felt she could stand no more of the exquisite relief, it began to ease, and she was able to feel the shudders still rippling through him. They were both gasping for breath and he fell to one side of her, limp with such a massive release.

  “You go that slow the next time, Zainal, and I’ll kill you,” she murmured.

  “Slow is better for you and very, very good for me,” he said, almost smugly but his hand, running softly down her body, expressed his tender concern for her.

  “This is going to be an equal opportunity partnership, buddy,” she said. “I get to call the pace now and then.”

  “Oh, do you?” To her total astonishment, he moved to cover her again.

  “My god!” Where did he find the energy so quickly?

  He chuckled in her ear. “Like the thorns of Barevi, it doesn’t take a Catteni long to rearm.”

  “Oh, my god!”

  “No, oh boy oh boy oh boy?” he asked teasingly.

  “No, man oh man oh man!” She paused, taking a deep gulp of breath. “I think we…do…it your way again. Please!”

  Emassi Zainal was only too happy to oblige.

  * * *

  SOMETIME, DURING THE NIGHT, ZAINAL MOVED her back to their assigned sleeping places, clothes and all. She grinned when she woke up and found herself discreetly clothed, her boots at the side of the straw mound she was occupying. Zainal was, it was true, on the other side of her, but beyond him were Joe and Sarah, much as they had bedded down all together during the patrol. It was very considerate of him to think of her reputation: if, indeed, he had given it a moment’s thought in the midst of last night’s ardor. She was, when she stretched, quite sore, despite his go-slow policy, and understood precisely why most human females would have felt terribly violated by their treatment in Catteni hands. But it does indeed depend on the man! Catteni or human!

  Som
eone was moving outside in the aisle, rattling each barn door in turn to rouse the residents. Another Botanical day was starting.

  This one was filled with sending people on to BellaVista, Shutdown, or the Rock. The word was that Camp Narrow would concentrate its efforts on recycling the mechos so those with mechanical skills or technical training would be based there. Now that they had the two vehicles, they could collect what they needed from the other garages, including “body” parts to make more useful vehicles. More comunits were being assembled and more mobile carriers made out of existing chassis.

  “Not speedy, but they sure do maneuver the obstacles,” Lenny told her at noontime. “Some of these lads are really clever,” he went on enthusiastically. “They figured out how to short-circuit, or whatever it is you do with programming chits…”

  “Chips.”

  “Chips, then, how to keep the versatility but give control to the driver. Clev…er!”

  “Indeed.”

  “They don’t have much speed, which the lads are still trying to improve.”

  “Personally, I’d rather not ride over this landscape at speed,” Kris said.

  Lenny just grinned. “You’ve never done it.”

  Kris went back to debriefing, but was called over to help Mitford and his aides figure out where best to place the remaining recruits.

  “How long does it take a person to become the ‘indigenous personnel’?” she asked Mitford at one point. She was finding it necessary to shift position a lot to ease her soreness. But it was worth it. Zainal smiled a lot today as he went from one group of aliens to another.

  “Huh? Oh,” and Mitford grinned, leaning back to stretch his arms and ease his shoulder muscles. “Here, let’s just say until they have to help a new batch in-flow. Say, tell me about this seaside building your patrol found?”

  “There’s not much to tell. It was closed up tight even though Zainal tried every which way to get inside. Maybe the fish aren’t running.”

  “I do like seafood. Like clam chowder, too,” and Mitford for once sounded a little wistful. Kris was rather pleased that she was audience to that mood.