Freedom's Choice

by Anne McCaffrey

  Despite the way Rastancil phrased it, Admiral Ray Scott took umbrage.

  “Nonsense,” Kris said, “they’ve had a lot more practice with third-kind encounters than we have. We’re young, we are,” and she giggled. “But you really think we’d get direct answers from a species that has the technology they have? We’re far too young to deserve more than the few minutes they spent here with us.”

  “Let us look at the positive aspects of that confrontation,” Pete Easley said, holding up a restraining hand to Scott, who seemed to be the one most offended by the lost opportunity. “We now have permission to stay. I got the distinct impression,” and he turned to Zainal for confirmation, “that we may even be able to get through the Bubble but others, like the Eosi, won’t be able to.”

  Zainal nodded.

  “I’d like you to organize a flight to test that, Zainal. Today, if at all possible,” Scott said, grasping a point he could understand and react to. “I don’t know if that advances your Phrase Three plan but…” and he shrugged.

  “What did they mean, ‘That is more than the others’?” Kris asked.

  Scott, Zainal, and the judge regarded her with surprise.

  “When you asked to have the Bubble removed, Zainal, and the judge said we were grateful for the protection, one of them said, ‘That is more than the others were.’ Didn’t you hear it?” Kris glanced around. “Was I the only one?”

  “What else did you hear, Kris?” Judge Bempechat asked, smiling at her in a way that suggested that he might have had private thoughts inserted in his mind, too.

  “They envy us having children,” she said, looking around. And caught Pete Easley’s eyes. He smiled at her and then she remembered the female’s remark: “This is your child!” And the female had been looking at Pete, not at Kris.

  The truth will out, won’t it? Kris thought to herself, and nodded. She had been mean not to tell him before: depriving him of that knowledge out of spite. He smiled back at her, a really happy smile, before pointing at Scott, who was repeating a question aimed at her.

  “I’m sorry, Ray, what did you ask me?”

  “What else did you ‘hear’ that we didn’t?”

  “I dunno,” she said with a shrug. “I never thought I was telepathic. I thought we were all hearing the same things. Did anyone else besides the judge and me get special treatment?”

  “I heard plainly that they will be examining this quadrant for sentient species which have developed since their last visit,” Zainal said, looking around.

  “Last visit?” Pete Easley exclaimed. And whistled.

  “They have been at Deski world,” Coo said, rather proudly.

  “You come off better than we humans do, then,” Judge Bempechat said, grinning broadly.

  Kris noticed that Scott had been about to speak and the judge had forestalled the admiral with a much more diplomatic comment. Scott closed his mouth.

  “I think,” the judge went on, reaching for pen and paper, “we had best organize that astonishing interview as best we can recall it. And insert whatever we individually may have heard with the public comments.”

  “Good idea,” Leon said.

  “We might have more in the composite than we got individually,” the judge said. “We must ask the miners to do the same, and those at the command post. Everyone who met our shape-changing Farmers.”

  * * *

  Zainal left at midmorning, with Marrucci, Balenquah, and Beverly, to fly to the Bubble and see if it permitted them to pass.

  “More importantly, come back,” Kris said stoutly, when Zainal told her they were going.

  It took most of the day to transcribe the various interviews, and more information had been exchanged when it was all written down on paper.

  “I wonder. Are they doing this sort of rehash on their way back home?” Kris said at one point in the painstaking reconstruction of who had said what, when and where.

  “I doubt it,” Rastancil said. “They picked our brains quite easily, so they’d probably all know what went on everywhere else.”

  “Probably as it was being done,” Worry said with a sniff. Most uncharacteristically, he had a distinctly unworried expression on his face.

  Almost everyone—or at least those who worried about special problems—had been given “private” information. Leon Dane, fretting over medical problems for which he had no treatment and waiting for a chance to ask for advice, had been told which specific plants to find, and, “like some sort of a superblast into my head,” he got the method of refining and the beneficial dosages to use.

  “We’ve already tested most of the plants as being either noxious or damned well fatal. But, of course, minute and diluted dosages of dangerous substances have often had therapeutic value if properly administered. I just got a short hard course in the local botanical resources. Seems there’s a shrub, located on that dry continent, that can provide a general anesthetic, but they would prefer us to use our one lone acupuncturist. She’s to teach others her skills.”

  “They liked us making bricks,” Sandy Areson said, “and I now know where to get five different varieties of clay…”

  “And I was told what other bushes have seedpods like the fluff which we can use to spin into cloth,” Janet said. “He was so like Jesus Christ.”

  “Who is with us,” Kris added.

  “What did you say?” Janet was indignant.

  “‘He is not among you?’ was what I heard,” Kris said.

  “And you will note,” Janet went on, drawing herself up with great dignity, “that they appeared to us in human form. So we now have confirmation of the Almighty’s appearance. Human!”

  “That’s because you had neither Rugarians nor Deski in with you at the time,” Sandy Areson said, but she spoke without her usual irreverence for Janet’s overt religiosity. “We had both Deski and Rugarians because that’s who were having breakfast with us humans.”

  The sentries at the command post had been kindly informed that their presence there was no longer needed. The miners had been assured that the Farmers did not object to the use of mineral and metallic resources. The loggers had been asked not to cut down the oldest trees and were given permission to thin the other varieties grown on the second farmed continent, as these were softer woods, more suitable for “the making of useful artifacts.”

  Universal had been the permission to remain on the second continent, acceptance of the term “Farmers,” and conveyance of the fact that they did not condone “species injury.”

  “They were sad to see us so far from home,” Coo admitted.

  “And?” Judge Bempechat prompted when it was obvious Coo had been told more than that. “Did they suggest returning you home?”

  “Not now,” Coo said. “We are better here.” Then he smiled in his fashion. “Much better here.”

  “We, too,” Slav added. “No one safe with Catteni.” He drew his brows together and managed to suck his lips inside his mouth, indicating great displeasure. “Farmers not see danger?” he added, looking from the judge to Scott, Worrell, and those still left in the office.

  “Not if it causes species injury, which they do not seem willing to commit even on territorially aggressive races like the Catteni…” the judge began, and when Kris cleared her throat, “I stand corrected, my dear…like the Eosi…who command the Catteni subordinates to do so without compunction.”

  “Hey, he’s there, and I think he’s doing it,” shouted Bert Put.

  Everyone in the office crowded around the screen to watch the minute speck that was Baby. The speck disappeared. Most cheered and clapped at this verification of the tacit Farmer permission. Kris, however, held her breath.

  “I wouldn’t,” Easley said, who was standing next to her. “He could be out awhile.”

  Inadvertently Kris met his eyes and exhaled with a weak smile. She had been trying to avoid any conversation with him.

  “So much hooch that day I honestly don’t remember what I did, or that I did,”
he continued in a low voice. “He’s a good baby for you?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” she said, looking fatuously down at the sleeping Zane. “Thank you.” And then she added, to keep him in his place, “I think.”

  Pete Easley chuckled wryly at her amendment and gave her shoulder a squeeze before he moved away. She would almost rather that he had stayed because the wait was a long one. She bet anything that Zainal was making sure the Eosi knew he’d been outside the Bubble, probably spinning the scout on its axis around the orbital as well as the geosynchronous satellite. Just like him! Although what she thought he could accomplish, she wasn’t sure. She was certain, however, that he did have some sort of a new Phase Three plan. And cocking a snoot at the Eosi was part of it. Of course, that blew the painstaking false trail he had laid to get them to believe he was elsewhere in the galaxy. But wasn’t he taking an awful risk for all of them? What if the Bubble would give way to the Eosi warship now?

  In her arms, Zane sighed and snuggled closer to her. No, she thought, he would do nothing to jeopardize his son.

  “Ah, he’s back inside!” Bert let out another loud crow, which caused Zane to stir uneasily. “Heading home!”

  Relieved that Zainal had succeeded, Kris decided that she could now leave discreetly. Zane would need to be fed when he woke this time, and changed, and she’d run out of fluff pods. She was tired, too, with all the excitement of meeting the Farmers, and then the rehash of who had heard what and where. Once she fed her son, she’d have time for a rest before Zainal touched down.

  * * *

  The orbital duly recorded the emergence of a small vehicle from the protective veil: its emergence, its brief run around the fixed satellite, and then its insertion. Nothing could be recorded past the obstacle, but this brief flight was enough of a phenomenon for the orbital to send an immediate message to its home base.

  The report, when it was received, went immediately to the Ix Mentat, who was enraged. Very quickly the vehicle was identified as similar in design to the scout ship in which Zainal was supposed to have exited the system.

  “Removing the markings fools no one,” the Ix said. “And if a scout, with limited power, can penetrate that obstacle in both directions, so can we!”

  The warship, the AAI, plus its sister ship which had just passed its test flights and been commissioned were supplied and crewed for the fastest possible return to the system in question. Twice the firepower of the previous visit would certainly punch a hole through whatever it was that had impeded their exit and then refused to readmit the AAI.

  “This time Zainal will return for appropriate punishment,” the Ix Mentat said, turning over in its mind the sorts of physical abuse that would wreak the worst pain and humiliation on the chosen who had failed to present himself at Eosi command. It savored scenes of dismemberment, of flaying alive, of the application of noxious substances to the few tender portions of Catteni anatomy.

  Meanwhile, the impetus to reach new heights of technological development extended to every single Eosi. They had been idle too long, complacent in their mastery of seven solar systems, their exploitation of the riches available to them, but with so many worlds still to be discovered and turned to Eosian advancement and enjoyment. They were on the threshold of a new era in Eosian domination! Let no one curtail their pleasure in achievement. The galaxy would eventually be theirs!

  * * *

  When attacked by the might of Eosian naval strength, the barrier remained impervious to any combination of the missiles, beams, and force available: the attack was useless against the barrier, and the bombardment of weapons of all kinds proved insufficient to pierce it. Only those on the planet remained unaware of the attempt.

  Throughout the Eosian-dominated systems, captains and governors were apprised of this unexpected insult. Word filtered down to the suppressed on Rugarian, Deski, Ilginish, Tur, and Terran home worlds and on the compulsorily colonized planets. Hope was reborn! Reborn and thwarted by the savagery of Eosian frustration, which now focused on extracting some means of penetrating the barrier from whatever source that might come. The Eosi had been unpleasant at any time; now they turned vicious. All effort was aimed at combating the first real test of Eosian supremacy since the Mentats had sloughed off their corporeal forms to find a type of immortality by using the strong Catteni bodies.

  And still the barrier remained impregnable.

  So the Ix Mentat sent every available scout out, far beyond previously explored sectors, to find any trace of those whose advanced technology prevented it from achieving the revenge it now craved.

  CHAPTER 12

  Baby slipped through like an eel,” Marrucci said, grinning broadly as he wiggled his clasped hands in demonstration. “Mind you, Zainal had us at dead slow and that might be the trick. Come charging at it and it bounces you back as it did the first time we nosed around.”

  “I think we were a little speedier reentering,” Beverly said on consideration.

  “We could have blasted the Eosi orbital. Baby’s armed. Blown it out of the skies as a warning,” Balenquah said, sullen as ever. “We should have, you know! Proven we can do something positive against their surveillance! And we didn’t get so much as a whisker sensor stripped off.” He added a “Ha!” of satisfaction before he wandered off to grab some of the sandwiches set out on the table and left the office.

  “Glad you were along, general,” Marrucci said softly. “That guy grosses me out.”

  “He is a good pilot,” Beverly said, but without much enthusiasm.

  Scott leaned across his desk, gesturing for the two to do the same. “Is what Balenquah said accurate? You weren’t beyond the Bubble long enough to be seen by the orbital?”

  Beverly grinned. “Of course we were. Zainal even booted us past the geosynch sat. That was Zainal’s main object in seeing if he could breach the Bubble, to get the exit, and reentry noticed.”

  “Won’t that just make the Eosi madder’n ever?”

  “Frankly, I hope so. With Farmers protecting us…”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Scott sat bolt upright. “What makes Zainal think they will if we pull damn fool stunts like that?”

  “If you’re on the top of the pile by many light-years, you don’t need to do ‘species injury’ to maintain the position—not with the technology the Farmers have. But the Eosi don’t. That’ll piss them off, according to Zainal, and I think he’s right. If they keep trying to storm Botany, won’t the Farmers object?”

  “Damn Zainal. He’s going to get that Phase Three of his started one way or another.” And there was a touch of admiration in Scott’s tone. “But damnation, he should take us into his confidence on such decisions. We have to consider the good of the entire community. And where is Zainal? I need to do more than debrief him now.”

  “Oh, he dropped us off and went on to check the Catteni valley, to see if the Farmers visited them. I thought you knew.”

  “Me? I certainly didn’t suggest it.” Scott’s frown deepened. “That damned Cat!”

  “Frankly, Ray, I’d like to know if the Farmers did appear to them. Mind you, I’m comfortable enough here on Botany, but there were a lot of things left undone on Earth and I’d expected to have a major part of their doing,” Beverly said, giving a final nod of emphasis.

  “A soldier’s first duty is to return to his unit if at all possible?” Scott said with a slightly condescending smile.

  “You got it. As far as I’m concerned,” and Beverly folded his hands together, “I’m not stopping until Earth is free of the Eosi. A lot of us here feel the same way. And I suspect more than you’d guess would back Zainal in an attempt to get active Farmer support.”

  Scott considered that and sighed. “If we could…” Then, in an altogether different voice and with a rueful smile, he added, “Not that I haven’t learned some very valuable lessons here on Botany.”

  “We all have,” Beverly agreed with a wry expression, and he looked down at the calluses on his hands.


  * * *

  When Zainal returned, he immediately reported to Ray Scott that the Farmers had appeared to the Catteni and scared them so badly, two were still in shock. The others refused to believe that they had not been visited by Eosi and pleaded with him to take them to a safer place.

  “I told them these were not Eosi but the true owners of the planet and if they tried to leave the valley, worse would happen to them.”

  “What would be worse than Eosi?” Scott asked with a snort.

  “What they do not know is always worse,” Zainal said with one of his shrugs. “They will never leave the valley.”

  “Had they been trying to?”

  Zainal gave another shrug. “No. The Drassi has authority over them only on the ship. They will do nothing.”

  “You stayed long enough outside the Bubble to let both satellites have a good look at you?”

  “As John told you,” Zainal said.

  “Tell me, Zainal,” and Scott made himself lean back, as if totally at ease, “is it wise to aggravate the Eosi this way? How can we be sure the Farmers will protect us if we taunt our enemy? We know very little of their philosophy and society, or their technology, except that it is superior to everything any of us have seen.”

  Zainal grinned, and the look in his eyes was menacing. “Right now, the Eosi are very worried. Some other group is more advanced than they are. They will not stand for that. They will be doing two things: searching for the Farmers and trying to take as large a technological leap forward as they can.”

  “Yes, but are they capable of it? I mean, matter transmission such as the Farmers used is a huge step forward, I would think,” Scott said.

  “Wars have a habit of improving technology,” Beverly said. “We should know that better than most, Ray.”

  “A lot of good our improved technology did us when the Catteni landed,” Scott said with a bitter laugh.

  “Did they ever track down the subs?” Beverly asked.

  Scott glared at him, tilting his head at Zainal.