Freedom's Choice

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Who else? Since the warship had to blast its way out,” Zainal said. “The watch did not report anything happening in space?”

  “Just that the Catteni orbital seemed to have developed a shadow,” Marrucci said. “I was watch officer when the Catteni arrived. There was nothing, nothing there then.”

  “Is the shadow still with the orbital?”

  Marrucci grinned. “Can’t see that far anymore.” But he did call up the log for that period and showed them the tiny shadow behind the orbital.

  “If that’s the gadget that did the trick, why didn’t it move fast enough,” Mitford said in a low grumble, “to keep the Eosi from getting in at all?”

  “Maybe it just took time to spread out,” Beverly suggested. Then he turned to Marrucci and added, “Even that Tholian Web took time, didn’t it, to enclose the Enterprise?”

  “The Enterprise?” Kris exclaimed in surprise. “The Tholian Web? Oh, I remember that episode.”

  “D’you remember how the Enterprise got free?” Marrucci asked hopefully.

  “No,” she replied sheepishly.

  “You’re no help.”

  “Enough,” Scott said, making a cutting gesture to stop their levity. “This episode has no happy ending. This planet is now enclosed.”

  “To keep us in?” Kris asked softly, and knew the others had the same question in their minds. “Maybe they want to be sure their machinery stays intact. Even if they can’t differentiate between us and loo-cows, they surely will look at a warship that big with some uneasiness.”

  “But the Catteni ships were coming in and out of here like yo-yos,” Mitford said.

  “But the Farmers weren’t alerted to the change in…tenants, shall I say?” and Scott gave a mirthless smile, “until that homing device was sent off…”

  “By the way, whose bright idea was that?” Beverly asked, frowning.

  “It got a reaction, which is what we wanted,” Mitford said, declining to name a name. Which, Kris felt, was more forbearance than Dick Aarens deserved.

  “Not for—how many months was it…” Beverly asked, “before the whiz-ball arrived?”

  “Seven,” Zainal said, “and then only three weeks until the big ship arrived to replace the machines.”

  “What I can’t understand,” Kris said, “is why that scan of theirs hasn’t apparently taken any notice of the existence of a new type of life-form on their planet? Loo-cows have six legs, noticeably, and we have only two. Surely that was noted somewhere?” She raised her hands in a puzzled gesture.

  “And the barrier did let the Catteni warship out,” Beverly said in a puzzled tone.

  “For which I, and I’m certain, Zainal, too, is very grateful,” Kris said in an undertone. Beverly shot her an understanding smile, his eyes flicking over Zainal beside her.

  “Indeed,” Scott said, clearing his throat nervously.

  “Very grateful,” Zainal added in a low, fervent tone, leaning back in his chair, stretching out his long legs, and giving a sigh of relief.

  “But why did it?” Scott asked, pursuing the puzzle.

  “Because the ship used weapons against it?” Zainal asked.

  “That is a possibility, of course, if the Farmers are pacific by nature,” Scott went on. “But we don’t know that, do we?”

  “We know by the valleys,” Zainal said, “which were to keep something in, or something out. But not to kill it. Only now we are kept in and danger is kept out.” He pointed to the screen where the Catteni ship’s departure was on replay. “I think the Eosi have been given much to think about.”

  “But where does that leave us,” and Scott glanced around those on the KDL’s bridge, “in relation to the Farmers?”

  “Remember that we all felt we’d been scanned?” Mitford began, making sure he had everyone’s attention. “Okay, so the whiz-ball orbital did an inventory and the supply ship dropped off what was needed to fill in the gaps. Let’s say that, like all the Farmers’ stuff, it was programmed to expect certain life-forms and recorded a great many more of an unidentifiable sort. Maybe that’s why there’s a bubble around us, until the Farmers can come and have a closer look with something that isn’t programmed.”

  “You’re just hoping that’s the case, Mitford,” Scott said. “It would vindicate everything you originally aimed to do. Attract their attention and their help.” When Mitford nodded, he went on. “Only your plan’s gone aglae, as the Scotsman said.”

  “Not much aglae, sir. Not yet, at any rate.”

  “It would if the Farmers decide that we’re some sort of malignant life-form which has contaminated their planet.”

  Kris glared up at Scott, appalled that he’d say such a thing. Then she paused and amended her thinking: that he’d say what possibly everyone else feared. His expression gave no apology for his blunt speech.

  “No,” Zainal said into the dismayed silence Scott’s observation caused. “No,” he added in a stronger tone, and sat forward, clapping his big hands to his knees to emphasize that denial. “The Farmers are cultivators, a race that protects. The valleys prove that to me. The scan could have killed a malignant life-form but did not. The barrier could have destroyed the warship. It did not. But it let it out. We will prove we are cultivators, savers, protectors, too. When the Farmers come…”

  “You think they will?” Marrucci asked, his thick eyebrows raised in hope of a negative response.

  “I think they will but I will not wait until they do,” Zainal said with a wry grin on his face. “I will not worry until they do. I will live well until they do.”

  “I think I agree with you on that, Zainal,” Beverly said.

  “Me, too,” said Marrucci.

  “I may have reservations, Zainal,” Scott said, “but worry is futile, especially,” and now he flung out both arms in a gesture of resignation, “when faced with a far, far superior force.”

  “This planet has a great potential,” Beverly said in a quiet, affirmative voice. “Let us make as much of it as we can and hope that the Farmers see us as cultivators and, perhaps, useful tenants.”

  “Amen to that,” Marrucci added, and made the sign of the cross.

  Kris ducked her head respectfully even as she reached for Zainal’s hand. He did not mention Phase Three but, by the way he returned the pressure of her hand, she knew that he had not forgotten it.

  CHAPTER 9

  While the brass-heads, with Peter Easley, Yuri Palit, and Chuck Mitford, visited the various communal mess halls set up around Retreat Bay and farther inland to counteract rumors and explain what had happened, Zainal and the flyboys discussed a quick run in the scout to examine the Bubble. Bert Put, Marrucci, Raisha, Beverly, and Vic Yowell were dying to see the phenomenon. The argument had been that, if the satellites could no longer see what they were doing on the surface, there was no harm in making use of the aircraft for exploratory purposes. And one of the first things to be explored was the Bubble. “As close as one could get to it.”

  “Or in it,” Kris had added, staying in the background but determined to go along for the ride for a variety of reasons. She’d learned all she could about the new equipment and had driven the Tub often enough to have gotten the hang of the Catteni-size finger pads on the control boards. She might never learn to pilot, but there were always other duties during a flight for which she felt herself well qualified.

  She also had a feeling that Zainal had no intention of giving up his plan to “hitch a ride” on the next Farmers’ vehicle that darkened Botany’s skies. How he could achieve that goal she hadn’t a clue, and he was giving her none, though there were times when he stared blindly out at nothing with unfocused eyes, and she knew him well enough to know that he was turning over ways and means of doing it. Considering how quickly the supply ship had made its deliveries, would he have time enough to reach it before it took off again at its incredible speed? The scout was equipped with a tractor beam and she suspected that’s what he hoped to use to secure himself to the exterior
. But what if he got knocked off when the Farmers’ ship accelerated or activated whatever it used to travel the immense distances they were now convinced it traversed?

  She kept hoping that when his plans were completed she’d be part of them. For all the good friends she now had on Botany, she did not wish to be left here by herself. Especially since Zainal’s presence protected her from importunities. Already she’d had several distressing interviews with men who wanted to be on her “paternity” list. They professed themselves willing to forgo a natural conception but they wanted her to bear their child.

  She had managed to thank them for their interest—when she really wanted to clout them as hard as she could—and told them she would consider their offer. And made sure to stick closer to Zainal’s side than ever, even though it meant stopping work on the quarters they were building. She did what she could without his help—until guys started showing up with offers of assistance…and the paternity requests.

  Then Raisha discovered she was pregnant and deferred to whoever wished to take her spot.

  “I’ve been up and it was wonderful,” she said, her eyes shining with the memory, “but I don’t want to whoopsie in free fall, thank you.”

  That condition was becoming widespread, Astrid, Sarah, and the three girls who had been Catteni decoders all announcing their pregnancies. She kept as close to Zainal as she possibly could, even sitting through repeated instructions at the scout’s control board to avoid the “infection.” No wonder so many individual quarters were being built in the bay area.

  There was no problem filling Raisha’s place and Bert magnanimously offered to step down, too. Beverly and Marrucci went over the credentials of all those who volunteered for the flight and selected Antonio Gedes for Raisha’s spot, but Zainal insisted that Bert remain, having had some experience with the craft and in space, while two other pilots, Alejandro Balenquah and Sidi Ahmed, were added to the flight list.

  “Not that we’re ever likely to go far,” Balenquah said gloomily.

  He was swarthy, with deep-set black eyes that surveyed his surroundings with reserve. Kris wasn’t sure she liked his noncommittal posture when here he was being offered what half a dozen less qualified men and women would have killed to get. Well, not would have killed, but definitely envied.

  “Look at it this way, mate,” Bert Put said, also displeased by the man’s attitude, “you never know, do you? Did you ever think you’d drive a ship in space again? Well, you’re doing it now, and here.”

  “I guess,” and Balenquah altered his attitude. He was actually the quickest of the three new men to become easy with the unusual equipment and the finger pad boards.

  The flight had been planned in spite of severe reservations from Reidenbacker and Ainger. They were ground personnel, Marrucci had remarked privately to Kris, and suspicious of air and space maneuvers. If the satellites were no longer visible on the screens of the KDL and the scout, then it was two to one that the SATs couldn’t see within the Bubble. It was therefore not only safe but a wise precaution to see what the barrier was like up close.

  “Not to mention the fact that you’re dying to go up again,” Kris said, and he grinned, more boyish than ever despite having reached the rank of colonel in the air force.

  “You got it, Bjornsen,” and he cocked a double-jointed thumb at her, making the rest of his hand into a mock pistol before dropping the thumb. He also had a habit of cracking his knuckles when he was nervous, a routine which fascinated Zainal, who could not, to Kris’ relief, duplicate the action. Having one person do it in the confines of a pilot compartment was enough.

  Zainal also wanted to see if he could locate a Farmers’ satellite, or whatever was controlling the Bubble.

  “If they spy on us, it is good. They want to know more before they come.”

  “That’s your interpretation,” Kris said.

  He regarded her with his yellow eyes and a slight smile on his lips. “And what is yours?”

  She thought for a moment and then laughed. “Yeah, we could very well be a mouse run.”

  “A what?” Zainal asked, puzzled, so she suggested they take a break from house building while she explained about laboratory mice and labyrinths to test intelligence and learning ability.

  “To add to whatever that scan of theirs discovered about us.”

  “But we do what we want,” Zainal said, still puzzled.

  “Maybe we just think we do,” she replied, just now identifying that possibility.

  “Scott would not like to think someone else commands him,” and he chuckled as he got back to his feet and reached for another brick.

  “No, he sure as hell wouldn’t,” Kris agreed, and laughed as she rose to join him. “We’ve got just enough mortar mixed for another course,” she said, scooping up a trowelful. “I’m getting quite adept at this.”

  Then she remembered Sandy Areson’s remark that plastering was like feeding an infant and that she’d use the same skills when she had one of her own. She tapped the next brick in place with such force that it split in half.

  “That’s the fourth one tonight,” she said irritably. “Maybe they need to bake them longer or something.”

  Sandy was in fact in charge of the brick firing, so Kris knew it was no fault of the manufacture. Brick making was another chore shared throughout the community. But there was something soothing about shoveling the wet muck into the molds and knowing you were building your own place from scratch—including the ones on your arms, hands, and legs, collected in, the process of building.

  Still, it would be a nice place, when it was finished. She and Zainal had picked the spot together, on that first trip. They had a splendid view of the bay, with enough clear ground around to plant vegetables and berry shrubs, with a stand of “young” lodge-pole trees behind them. After months of barracks living, nearly everyone on Botany wanted privacy and the bay area certainly afforded that.

  The Narrow Valley mess hall had been disassembled, loaded aboard the KDL, and reassembled on a height above the bay. Smaller “offices” clustered around it on the natural terraces and levels below and above it. The hospital was the only other large single structure and Leon Dane announced that the medical staff did not have time to build a separate maternity wing. He was, however, training midwives for home births since he was certain all the babies would decide to be born at the same time.

  Private accommodations spread out around the bay in all directions, at first built from the lodge-pole tree timber before the brick manufactory got production up to a useful level. Those involved in cutting timber made the interesting discovery that even the smallest of the lodge-pole trees that had grown down into the plateau were at least a thousand years old.

  “They have rings, just like trees on Earth,” said Vigdin Elsasdochter, the environmental specialist in charge of responsible logging, ready to show the section she carried around with her. “And tight rings to indicate the climate has not changed much throughout the millennium: no drought, no bad winters, no hot summers. Some of the larger trees may be ten thousand years old.”

  Once again the question was brought up of how long the Farmers had been in possession of the planet. Especially since the “new forest” of “young” trees had been seeded by the much older ones. Even Worrell refused to worry about it.

  “I got other more important things to worry about,” he’d said one night in the mess hall. “Like allocating glass to people who want to have picture windows and stall showers! Of all things,” and he’d flung a hand toward the bay, “as if we don’t have a great big bathtub out there.”

  * * *

  Those who had been in the building trades on earth, like the Doyle brothers, were kept busy offering advice, showing novices how to do things he’d learned, Lenny said, “at me da’s knee, so to speak.” Some of the Asians had the most trouble since they had been accustomed to different building materials. After assigned chores were done and the evenings gradually lengthened, everyone worked on thei
r homes, and lent a hand to neighbors for jobs that required a gang.

  While some of the brass-heads were living in the cliff hangar and bunking down on pallets in their offices, all of them had picked out sites but keeping track of work assignments for nearly ten thousand people and aliens took most of their time.

  “Someone has to do it,” Mitford remarked when Kris complained that the admiral seemed to be the unelected head of everything. “And hell, Kris, I might have run the battalion to all intents and purposes, and managed to whip us into some sort of order there at the first, but he had an aircraft carrier and they carry ten thousand. He’s used to dealing with that kind of numbers. I’m not. I was only too glad to hand him the can, you know.”

  Mitford remained in charge of exploration and mapping, attempting to fill in the spatial map with the details necessary for further expansion of the farming and ranching. “If you can call loo-cows ranch animals.”

  Knowing that the sergeant was truly happier on reconnaissance in the Tub, Kris decided not to harbor any ill feelings toward Ray Scott. There was no question that he was working all the hours God gave the day here on Botany. And some days he seemed almost agreeable, as if Botany was mellowing him. At other times, she was certain he disliked and distrusted Zainal, and her by virtue of her association with the former Emassi officer. He vacillated between extreme cordiality when deferring to Zainal’s knowledge of some matters and total dismissal of Zainal’s opinions. He didn’t have command all his own way, which somewhat mollified Kris, and she supposed that having run an aircraft carrier, he had the requisite experience. She had occasion to be grateful it was Scott who issued most of the orders, rather than Geoffrey Ainger, whom she didn’t like at all. He was so British that he was almost a caricature of a ranking officer, and she knew he considered Zainal a dangerous commodity. She got along well with Rastancil, Fetterman, and Reidenbacker; John Beverly was the nicest of the lot because he always looked straight at her when he asked or answered questions. And Easley, but then he was as his name—easily to get along with. In fact, meetings seemed less tense when he was involved, and often more productive. He had such a knack for gently redirecting tensions and making suggestions that kept discussions going around, instead of stopping at Ray Scott all the time.