Freedom's Choice

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Whose side is he on, Ray?” Beverly said.

  “My own,” Zainal said with a grin. “I go home now.”

  * * *

  Kris was asleep and she roused briefly when she felt him slide under the blankets beside her.

  “You’ve planned Phase Three, haven’t you?” she murmured, and before he could admit that he had, she was asleep again.

  Zane woke them as night was falling, ready to eat and play awhile.

  “Well, you have, haven’t you?” she said, nursing the baby by the fire while Zainal sat in his big chair, watching the process as he idly stroked one chair arm.

  “I have what?”

  “Planned Phase Three.”

  He grinned at her. “It is only logical to complete what Mitford started. To get the Farmers to notice us and come to see what we have done to their world. That Eosi came is very good. We upset their plans and that has needed doing for many generations.”

  “Don’t tell me other Catteni have wanted to do away with the Eosi?” That surprised her.

  “It has been talked of, privately,” he admitted, and the stroking turned to a drumming of his fingers. “I was on Barevi to speak to…a group about a plan.”

  “You were? And I ruined all that for you?” Kris flushed with chagrin. “Did you mention that to Chuck? Or anyone?”

  Zainal shrugged. “No reason, until now.”

  “Is that why you wanted to be able to leave the planet?”

  “I am thinking that to have a base for those who resist the Eosi would be a very good thing.”

  “More Catteni here?” Kris could think of several hundred people who would object to that. Or maybe they wouldn’t, now that it was pretty well established in people’s heads that it was the Eosi who were masterminding Catteni activities. The problem with that was that so many Catteni enjoyed far too much what they did to subject races.

  “That would cause trouble if it was known,” Zainal agreed, instantly following her thought. “There is that desert continent. No one goes there.”

  “That’s true. And if folks didn’t know there were Catteni…but you can’t keep something like this from the brass-heads, Zainal. They trust you now. They wouldn’t—”

  “Do not worry, I respect their trust. I will tell them if I think I can do what I wish now to do. I would need much assistance from Beverly, Scott, Easley, Yowell, Bert, Raisha. We must rescue more from Earth, too.”

  “The transport ship?” She startled Zane and had to comfort him.

  Zainal nodded. “On board the KDL is much we would need. The star maps, the codes…”

  “Wouldn’t the Eosi change codes? Just in case you get loose?”

  Zainal shook his head, his yellow eyes dancing in the firelight.

  “Drassi learn too slowly to do that quickly.”

  “So you must move more quickly, and soon. Is that right?”

  He nodded. And her heart pounded in fear for him.

  “You’re planning to infiltrate Earth?”

  He gave his head a quick shake. “Barevi is safer for me. Many coming and going and we can find out much information from new prisoners. And ‘transport’ those we need.”

  “You, Emassi Zainal, can just walk in and demand the worst of the prisoners and they’ll be handed over to you?” Anxiety made her sarcastic. “You with a crew of—”

  “Deski and Rugarians, and friends hidden from Emassi and Drassi eyes.”

  “I didn’t know Deski and Rugarians crewed for Catteni.”

  “They will not be the entire crew, only the ones most seen,” Zainal said. Then he rose, in a smooth graceful movement for such a big-boned man, and began to pace. “We are not transport ship. We are from mines at K’dasht Nik Sot Fil,” he said as he paced. “We need certain workers, strong, with perhaps some mechanical experience. We get what we need—and certain things Botany needs…”

  “And no one will be the wiser?”

  “The gray skin stuff? How long will it last on a man’s face?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, but she was beginning to see just how he would be able to cope. “But you can take as much as you need with you.” She ran over in her mind those who had been fake Catteni when the KDL was captured. “But won’t the Eosi be watching everything? What if they’ve already seen the scout getting in and out?”

  Zainal chuckled, pausing by her chair to stroke her cheek, looking down at the hungry baby.

  “I hope that they have.”

  “Yes, but you can’t meet them sneaking out the back door, can you?”

  “Bert Put goes up and takes a quick look to see if…the shore is clear?” He lifted his eyebrows in query.

  “Coast is clear…”

  “Good, and I take Catteni speakers, too.” Now he started pacing again, rubbing his hands together as he thought out loud. “Have you forgotten all Barevi?” he asked in that language.

  Startled, she replied in the Barevi affirmative. Could she go with him? Did she want to go with him? She certainly didn’t want to stay behind. But Zane?

  “Chuck would be useful,” she added. “And Jay Greene…”

  He had paused by her and looked down at Zane, who had nursed himself to sleep. “I need you, too.”

  She almost burst into tears, her heart so full of love for both, her responsibilities pulling her in two directions at once.

  “Sandy has more milk than a cow,” she said, not daring to look at Zainal just then. She added more briskly, “And this is the sort of situation we set up the crèche system for, isn’t it?”

  She heard Zainal tap out call numbers. “Chuck? Are you free to talk over an idea this evening?”

  * * *

  Chuck Mitford immediately said they had to talk this over with the brass-heads.

  “Only a few of them, at that,” he added, grinning and rubbing his hands together because Zainal had included him as the crew foreman. Chuck hadn’t even taken that as a slur because he was indeed the build and height of many Catteni. Handsomer than most, however, as Kris could not resist saying.

  Scott had to be consulted—especially as Chuck wanted him to play Catteni, too. And John Beverly, Gino Marrucci, Ninety Doyle, Dowdall, Mack Su for his electronics knowledge, Yuri Palit, and several others who had been in the original commando group because they had some knowledge of Catteni.

  “I don’t see why we can’t go straight to Earth,” was Scott’s first objection.

  “I do not have codes for Earth…KDL is Barevi-based. I figure that we speak with latest transports from Earth…”

  “What about stealing another ship with the right codes?” Marrucci wanted to know, flexing his fingers as if already settled in a cockpit and about to take off. “I sure would love to get back to good ol’ Terra Firma.”

  Zainal grinned. “That is also a possibility. If one just happens to be ready to fly.”

  “You can’t leave the crew around…” Scott began.

  “There are other valleys here,” Zainal said. “The KDL can get in and out of Barevi with no problem. That is important. I know I can get supplies that we need with no problem.”

  “We get to make a wish list?” Rastancil said, brightening.

  “No, a need list.”

  “Medical supplies?” Chuck asked, hopefully, taking his pad and pencil stub from his pocket.

  “If we can find any,” Zainal replied, reminding Mitford that Catteni medicine was rudimentary at best. “Good steel we can get,” he added, knowing that the fabricators needed better materials to form proper surgical instruments.

  Chuck wrote “steel” and underscored it.

  “This time we have clean Catteni uniforms to wear?” Yuri Palit asked, wrinkling his nose.

  Zainal shook his head. “You must smell like Catteni, too, and you don’t.” Yuri made a grimace and sighed. “Wear what you have on voyage, then change at Barevi,” Zainal added with a grin. “Now,” and he took out the sheets he had worked on to show Chuck, of the Barevi spaceport and its environs, “
we must know where to go and you must learn what to answer to questions. If you walk fast as if you know where you’re going, that you are taking a message, no one will question. So you must know!”

  They readily agreed to that, but, along with the language lessons, came questions, especially from those who had not been enslaved on Barevi and were unfamiliar with it. That was where Kris came in because she had flitted all over the city with her owner.

  “Can’t we just steal flitters and not walk everywhere?” Dowdall asked.

  “You may rent flitters,” Zainal corrected him. “We must fit in or be noticed. If we fit in right, we can come back again.”

  “Hey, I like that,” Ninety Doyle said, grinning. “There’s a couple of Tudos…”

  Zainal pointed his pencil at Ninety. “You will be good Tudo and follow your Drassi’s orders.”

  “Yeah, sure, boss, gotcha, boss Drassi,” Ninety said good-naturedly, tugging at an imaginary cap and nodding agreement.

  “Chuck, can you remember the exact layout of where slaves were held?”

  “Can do, have done,” and Chuck, too, took out a sheet on which he had earlier drawn an outline. “We better learn some Catteni symbols, too, you know…to follow hall markings…”

  * * *

  Preparations took ten days, with long learning sessions for those who were chosen to take part. The selection was restricted to those whose physical appearance was closest to Catteni, who already had some knowledge of the language and some experience with Barevi. Scott, Marrucci, and Yuri did not but they could be paired with those who did, like Chuck, Ninety Doyle, Dowdall, and Mack Su. Coo, Slav, and Pess were a bit nervous about going but they would be required to contact their own ethnic groups for what news they had. Kris was an essential addition for her knowledge of the city and familiarity with the flitters. The legs of one Catteni uniform had to be lengthened to fit her but, with her hair skinned back with the gray mud that would disguise Terran locks and with the gray powder makeup, she passed well enough. She also knew enough Catteni and Barevian lingua to hire flitters and bargain properly. Someone not bargaining with Barevian shopkeepers would immediately be suspect. On both the KDL and the scout enough Catteni scrip and coin were found. Zainal then told them that the habit was for ships to charge to their number, and the charges would be sent back to a central bank to make payments.

  “And we’ll be long gone before the reckoning,” Doyle chuckled, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

  “What happens, Zainal,” John Beverly asked one morning during the planning sessions, “if someone recognizes you?”

  All at the table, and Sandy Areson was sitting in that morning to explain about the gray makeup, turned toward him.

  “I am dead,” Zainal said, shrugging off that consideration. “No one will expect to see me, especially in Drassi uniform,” he added.

  Sandy tilted her head and then, rising and reaching across the table, turned him by the chin from one profile to the other.

  “No problem,” she said. “We add cheek pads so he looks fatter, another in front, and some lines down his face to make him look older, and his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.”

  “What is this? Pads?” Zainal asked, somewhat dismayed.

  “I used to do makeup for our theater group, Zainal. Trust me. You won’t recognize yourself. I’ll bring some over to the cabin and show you,” and Sandy added when she saw other skeptical expressions, “you won’t know him either. Trust me.”

  When she demonstrated to Kris and Zainal later that evening, it was remarkable the change those few alterations made.

  “I’d slump if I were you,” Sandy remarked. “Drassi are small men and don’t walk proud like an Emassi, you know.”

  Zainal grinned as he thanked her, a grin that was substantially altered from his normal one with the pads in place.

  “Take them out,” Kris said when Sandy had left. “I’m not sharing this cabin with a total stranger. A very unattractive total stranger, I might add.” And she gave a shudder of dismay until he had removed the pads and looked himself again.

  * * *

  The arrival of the Ix Mentat and its two juniors at the Catteni main Earth spaceport in Texas, near what had been Houston, caused major security problems. Its reason for coming caused consternation, since the military governor was somehow sure that he would be forced to honorably end his life because he had not been able to reduce the rebellion of the indigenous population, despite the severe measures he employed. He had scrupulously followed orders sent to him by the Mentats on Catten but seemed no closer to dealing with the tides of revolt and producing the wealth available from the planet than he had been in the first months of occupation.

  When High Emassi Bulent learned the sort of equipment the Mentats had brought with them, he turned ashen, until he also heard that the mind probes were to be used on humans, not on ineffective Emassi.

  Therefore he listened intently to the Ix Mentat’s wishes, organized the search, and rounded up as many of the required subjects as could be found. Some could be proven dead: others might well have been already transported, since they had resided in the fifty cities originally depopulated in the first wave of Catteni suppressions.

  Bulent could almost feel sorry for the men and women rounded up and crammed into the open slave pens, for the summer heat was intense, though he himself reveled in such temperatures. There were casualties from the heat and the crowding. He had the unenviable task of explaining to the Ix Mentat that humans could not endure the solar rays that Catteni hides could, particularly humans in this upper age group as most of the new prisoners were. So they were moved to a huge shed that had been cleared of its exhibits.

  Bulent’s staff then had to assign numbers to the types of specialists the Ix wished to interrogate in order of rank within the science humans had practiced.

  The Ix, Co, and Se made trial examinations on lesser-known individuals with varying results. After four deaths with little information retrieved from the bursting brains, the instrument had to be recalibrated. It had originally been used to upgrade Catteni mentality by expanding cerebral and cortical areas and stimulating certain centers in both lobes. The result had been the intelligent Emassi subset of Catteni who had originally been primitive and little more than upright animals. But what could be enhanced could also be withdrawn. That was the purpose of using the equipment on the humans.

  The actual examination could take up to half a day, if the initial information plucked from the more accessible areas of the mind looked interesting. That is, if the subject was worth treating carefully. Otherwise an hour’s viewing would suffice but the subject rarely recovered much personality and memory. Incontinence was a frequent problem and some retained insufficient intelligence to feed themselves. These were quietly disposed of.

  In more judicious use of the mind probe, the Ix and its juniors gained the codes to private files in research laboratories, but much of the material dealt only with human concerns. The Mentats found top-security codes but they weren’t interested in the politics, considering them very commonplace and predictable in the extreme—though there were one or two ploys that the Ix might use if the need arose.

  Among its victims were the remaining heads of state who had not met with either transportation or execution, revealing the names of more important officials whose brains were full of sometimes amusing if petty details. Some investigations were more fruitful, leading the Mentats to find out what particular scientific studies were in progress and where. This was what the Ix had been searching for, and it gave the High Emassi a list.

  The High Emassi Bulent sent his minions scurrying to find these people: often they returned empty-handed with stories that the named persons had died or had possibly been transported, but certainly could not be found. Several of these, the Ix decided, must be found unless proof of death could be established beyond doubt. So Bulent dispatched his best people, including several of the renegade humans, with instructions and promises of t
itillating rewards for success, to make a thorough sweep of known hiding places and refuges.

  The Ix exhausted all avenues to discover what little the humans had learned about the galaxy, the universe, their incredibly primitive methods of star travel, as well as theories that, over its millennium of existence, it had already investigated, and implemented or discarded.

  The resultant human chaff that remained alive from these sessions was loaded on transports and sent to Barevi, to be sold as slaves for whatever use could be found for the near-mindless.

  Then the Ix closed itself in its vessel and began to sift carefully through all it had learned, in the hope that perhaps there might be even one theory that could spark its high mentality toward a viable line of research.

  * * *

  On the off-chance that they could hijack another ship, Bert Put and Balenquah would come along as auxiliary pilots. It fell to Raisha, then, to pilot the scout to the Bubble and see if the coast was clear. Beverly and Marrucci had plotted the next five windows available that would avoid the orbital satellite, so it only remained to check on the absence of any Catteni ships in the general area.

  Kris found it both hard and easy to leave Zane in Sandy’s charge. She had been able to partially wean him and he was already eating pureed foods. But Sandy promised she would not stint him. And Kris could trust her. Pete Easley put in an appearance when she brought Zane to the crèche, feeling treacherous and unnatural because part of her was dying to go on this adventure and another part would miss her darling son terribly.

  “He’s a good size, isn’t he?” Pete remarked to no one in particular as Kris started to hand him over to Sandy. He was awake and in one of his giggling moods, the kind that are hard to ignore. “Here, give him to me,” he said, and gave Kris no chance to refuse.

  Being the adaptable personality he was, Zane had no problems with being passed around, and gurgled as happily up at Pete Easley as he would have at Zainal.

  Kris, watching the transfer, suddenly realized that Pete was telling her he intended to watch out for his natural son during her absence. His proprietariness was both welcome and disturbing. But should the unthinkable happen, Kris knew that Pete Easley would assume responsibility for Zane, and, she had to admit, he had a right.