Freedom's Ransom

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Git a little drunk and you lands in,” Ferris sang in a cracked tenor voice and pointed to Clune to finish the song.

  “Jay … ill …” was his response, dropping into the deepest part of his lush voice. A burst of applause ensued, which he hushed with his hand. “OF Man River, he just keeps rollin’ along.” He finished the impromptu recital with a flourish and a bow and was accorded another round of applause before he waved his friends to continue with their chore of packing beans.

  Zainal did not know much of singing, but the work did go more swiftly as others asked Clune to sing their favorite songs. By the time Kris called a halt, they had worked their way through twenty-five pounds of dark-roasted robusta beans, and the same of the milder, washed arabicas, sufficient to meet unexpectedly high sales the next day. Sally finished adding up their income from the day’s work and Eric reported on how many appointments he had made for dental work. He had insisted on being paid half of the cost of the work in advance —a fact that kept them solvent for local purchases—and half on completion. The dentistry was going to be a profitable asset of this tour. Zainal went through what he had done with the day’s income and what he needed to do with tomorrow’s.

  “Then, we can take some profit,” he figured.

  “With any luck,” Kris amended, and then covered her lips in apology for the negative comment. “However, I get the feeling that they are all holding back.”

  “I do, too,” Kathy said.

  “As if they were testing us, somehow? Or perhaps simply not willing to trade?” Chuck asked.

  “But from what Natchi and that footless friend of his, Erbri, said, they have had no buyers for what’s in their storage rooms, so why are they not willing to come forward and make what profit they can from us who are willing to buy?” Zainal remarked. “In fact, Natchi’s bringing in two more mechanics besides Erbri to help fix the lifts and other reparable things left to rust. We’ve a good business going in repair and mechanics as a side venture.”

  “Could Kapash be inhibiting the merchants for all he pretends to help?” Kris asked.

  “He’s not been helping,” Zainal said. “He’s determined to thwart us. Be wary of him, all of you.”

  “Why does he have it in for you, Zainal?” Chuck asked, expression bland.

  “I knew him when he dealt in illegal drugs, and he knows I know it.”

  “So he’s the one made sure you were on that colony transport?” Kris asked.

  Zainal let out a long breath. “I don’t know that but I have been asking some discreet questions through Natchi, Erbri, and their coterie. Remember to give any disabled vet at least one cup of coffee, team.” Everyone nodded.

  “What better way to get rid of a possible informer than to put him where he might die from indigenous causes or, with any luck, be executed by angry slaves?” Kris remarked irritably.

  Clune spoke up with great dignity. “Chief Materu said that you make your own luck.”

  “Chief Materu is a great leader,” Zainal said. “Then let us make our own luck!”

  “Right!” Chuck seconded firmly, and there was agreement in the circle of tired bean packers before they rose stiffly to their feet and scattered to their onship quarters.

  “Is this truly a good beginning?” Kris murmured to Zainal when they were abed.

  “You can’t exactly say they beat a path to our door,” he replied, smoothing her hair down, once again reveling in the silk of it, before he cuddled her close to him.

  “Where’d you get that expression?”

  “Ferris, of course,” Zainal said, giving her a little hug.

  He closed his eyes to get on with the business of falling asleep.

  It was a long while, despite her appreciation of his proximity, before she could follow his example. And the morning came far too quickly.

  o~O~o

  Everyone was awake on the call and came out quickly to eat their first meal of the day. Then Peran went to see if Natchi had arrived with his lift as he had agreed the previous evening. Peran had sneaked a piece of good Botany bread, well lathered with honey, to give to Natchi. They had struck up quite a friendship. Natchi was there and grateful for the bread, which he said he had never tasted the like of. Peran had accessed a recipe for the stuff from the ship’s library but didn’t know where some of the ingredients might be had. He didn’t know what “butter” was, or “flour” or “yeast.”

  However, Natchi knew a great many things and would work on the problem. At least they had the method to make bread and knew its ingredients. You couldn’t know if you could make things until you knew what they were comprised of. Which was why Peran’s father was here on Barevi—to find the component parts needed for the comm satellites and other such highly technical things, which were supposed to make a vast number of things “better.” Peran already thought “life” was different and “better” when he recalled—which he did not often do—that time of his life spent without his father and being punished by his aunt and uncle for things that, for the most part, Peran didn’t even know he’d done wrong. He’d warned Bazil and thus prevented his brother from receiving like measures of “corrective” discipline. Now that his father was here, it was always “better.” He would have liked being with his father sooner, but life in the Masai camp had been very interesting, too, and Chief Materu fair in his judgments. He never had understood what his father, who acted in all ways honorably, had done to deserve being an outcast from his family.

  Peran, with Bazil’s assistance, transferred the cartons of packed beans to the lift. By then everyone was ready to go, Clune carrying the bottle of coffee left over from breakfast. He had poured a cup for Natchi, who was quite willing to drink it down with the bread Peran had given him.

  “The last of the bread is in today’s sandwiches,” Kris announced as she deposited the basket—a hand-woven one from Botany—on the lift bed.

  “Is it hard to make bread, Kris?” Peran asked, winking at Natchi.

  “No, but you need certain things one can’t find here on Barevi.”

  “I thought Barevi had everything,” Bazil replied, eyes wide in surprise.

  “Not quite everything,” Zainal said, laughing and ruffling his son’s hair.

  “What, for instance?” Peran asked.

  “Milk . . ‘>

  “That white stuff you made us drink. The cow’s milk? From Kenya?”

  “Very nutritious,” Kris said firmly.

  “Doesn’t it come in cans, too?” Ferris asked.

  “It does, but I haven’t seen any here in the food stalls,” Kris replied.

  “What else?”

  “Flour, usually fine ground from wheat or corn.”

  “And?” Ferris prompted since Kris’s intonation suggested flour was not the final missing ingredient.

  “Yeast. Which I haven’t ever seen here. Yeast is a leavening, which causes the bread flour to rise in the baking. Similar, I think, to your meal cakes.”

  “Meal cakes. Phooey,” Bazil said, having eaten too many under—and overdone meal cakes as a child.

  “But you like bread,” Kris countered.

  “Botany bread, yes,” Bazil agreed amiably, qualifying his taste.

  “Surely we can find a substitute for yeast, and maybe cans of milk,” Ferris said.

  “Quite likely,” Zainal replied, noticing Ferris’s speculative expression. “But these are not things easily found or … acquired.”

  Kris rolled her eyes because Ferris was not above proving doubters wrong, and Zainal had probably just piqued him professionally. She devoutly hoped that Ferris would take the hint, and he must have, be cause he shot her a hurt, accusing look. She wondered whether she should warn Floss and Clune to reinforce her warning to curb his acquisitive tendencies. On the way to their stalls, she made sure to point out the triangle, where minor market offenses were punished with lashes of a particularly nasty whip. There were no such things as trials or sentences in Barevi. Corporal punishment for infractions of th
e market laws, like thieving, was swift and did not allow for appeals. While Ferris looked sturdier than Ditsy, his undernourished bones were fragile. She didn’t want to think of him under the whip.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning started very well indeed, with an impatient clutch of people waiting for them to start serving the coffee. There were even some wanting to trade, and Zainal managed to obtain a palette of truck batteries, a real prize.

  Captain Harvey was attempting to repair the damage to the iridium comm sat they had scooped out of the skies above Earth. In her talks with John Wendell, she had learned that many of the satellites the Catteni had damaged could be repaired in situ. The one they had in the BASS-1 needed only the necessary LNB, low-noise block-down converter. They now had the solar replacement vanes that would power the comm sat once it was back in space. They had found two antenna “ears” that had been sliced off, but needed two connecting boards so the individual units of the satellite could exchange information. The controlling mechanism, which Harvey called the mission package, had survived and was operational.

  “That’s the most delicate of the stuff on board,” Captain Harvey told him. “It’ll keep the comm sat in the orbit where we place it.” She cleared her throat. “Replace it, actually, because it’s already programmed to stay in its proper orbit … except when Catteni use it for target practice. But then, they have to practice on something, don’t they, to keep their edge?”

  Harvey could surprise him with some of her wry comments and Zainal tilted an amused expression up to her. He hoped they could find more relatively undamaged comm sats on their return. They also needed to build some from the spare parts in the lower cargo level.

  “What’re the part numbers for these needful connector boards, Captain?” he asked her, wondering yet again at the greed that had occasioned looters to take such unusable items back to Barevi. The merchants could not sell everything: there had to be buyers who wanted the items. Of course, they now had them in Zainal’s mission.

  She yanked a scrap of paper out of her top pocket and handed it to him. “Got them from the schematics last night.” She aimed the small tool in her hand at a bunch of twisted plastic on the floor. “That’s what was left of them, so’s you got an idea what you’re looking for. Spiders, only you don’t have spiders, arachnids, a multi-legged creature, on Barevi, do you? Once I have those to hook the system up, we can test to see if all parts are running. You can see the part numbers, loud and clear.”

  “I can?” Zainal cupped his ear, though he suspected she was using one of those maddening vernacular phrases Terrans so enjoyed.

  “You’re some kidder, Emassi,” she replied with a grin and a waggle of her elbow.

  The Terrans had so many of these little sayings, cryptic comments that confused him. It was as well that his sons were being exposed to such verbal wordplay. They would be able to speak Terran very well. So far he was quite pleased with Brone. The young pilot had proved firm with them and had gained their respect. Zainal brought himself sternly back to the work at hand: he must list the numbers for Ferris, in hopes the boy could discover who owned the relevant storage shed. Zainal had also told Clune and Ditsy to be on the lookout for anyone holding parts with the FICA logo on them and briefed both Natchi and his sidekick, Erbri, a footless man whom Natchi presented as thoroughly trustworthy and who knew every alley in the market. Why didn’t the Terrans assign just one worker to the completion of a project, and then one would only need to find the worker and know from which “industry”—the word came to him—he had acquired the original parts? Of course, a single man could not construct an entire spaceship by himself but a comm sat, once the components were collected, would be within a good workman’s compass.

  So Zainal mused as he passed on the numbers for the connector units, explaining how important they were to Ferris before he resumed his bargaining position. His next client was a burly man named Kierse, a Drassi who had left space for the more secure port life. He had brought with him a list of the items he wished to sell, and Zainal felt a thrill of anticipation as he saw so many FICA listings.

  “I do not know what good these Terran bits and pieces will do you, but I have developed a taste for this coffee, and you are apparently in possession of many sacks of the cooked beans. They are ready, I understand, to be ground and filtered.”

  “You understand correctly.”

  From a pouch Kierse wore on one shoulder, he took out a handful of what Zainal now easily recognized as vacuum-packed plastic sleeves, each containing a bouquet of wires of different colors with tips of different shapes, including several bars of tiny holes on a black plastic strip. As little as Zainal knew about comm sat innards, these looked like the blackened discards that Captain Harvey had pointed to on the floor of the cargo hold. Zainal covered his excitement by asking Floss to fill a cup for Emassi Kierse.

  “I am not Emassi,” Kierse said with a twitch of irritation to his lips. “I am but Drassi.”

  “You have the manner, however, and should be treated accordingly,” Zainal said graciously, knowing that many Drassi were of the Emassi class but had failed some part of their training and thus were unable to use their birth-rank.

  “These are useful to you?” Kierse asked, neatly dealing the packets of parts into a line across the table so the identifying part label was clearly visible.

  Zainal quickly scanned his eye down the labels, having committed to memory the numbers of the ones he sought.

  “Possibly,” he murmured discreetly.

  “They have the numbers I am told you are seeking,” Kierse replied, settling into his chair to haggle.

  Zainal wondered who had given that information to the market. Clune and Ditsy were notably close-mouthed. What had Kris been warning him about? Ah yes, Ferris stole. Or were Natchi and Erbri as trustworthy as advertised? No, Zainal reassured himself, Natchi definitely was and he had vouched for Erbri. And here were the connectors Captain Harvey required.

  “What good did you think these leggy things would do you when you bought them?”

  “Wait for someone who needed just such oddities,” Kierse replied, then refreshed himself with a sip of the mountain mild that was currently on offer. As Zainal considered his next gambit—the sounds of the marketplace closed around them—the rat-tat-tat of Eric’s eternal hammering, the scurry of feet on the dry aisles between stalls, the occasional raised voices as people pounded out a suitable bargain.

  Zainal hefted one of the packets experimentally. “Not very heavy. Since you like coffee, perhaps beans would be acceptable.” He leaned forward. “We have been trading weight of beans for weight of the packets. Is that satisfactory to you?”

  “You may weigh them and we will see what the total comes to—in beans and then in the gold I understand you are using for barter.”

  “Coffee beans have been referred to as ‘black gold,’ Drassi Kierse.”

  “I thought that was the thick stuff they put into barrels. Oil.” Kierse, who was much sharper than he looked—certainly for one of Drassi rank— pronounced the word in two syllables: Oy-yill.

  “I have heard the term ‘black gold’ used for both,” Zainal said blithely, “though I believe the barreled stuff is undrinkable.”

  Kierse chuckled and Zainal worried about the bargaining abilities of this client. Beans he had in plenty, but the gold was in much shorter supply. Still, that standard would be in keeping with the value—to him—of these particular parts and he wanted to conclude a deal with Kierse.

  It didn’t take long to put the: packets into the weighing pod and the scales swung past and then settled on 50 grams. Zainal did not wish to part with that much gold no matter how essential the parts were to repair the connectors. It would take most of the dust they had in the little safe. And since the man had specified gold, he would probably not consider the lesser ores that Zainal still had available.

  “If we deal with the beans, I am willing to throw in a grinder. The filtered bean gives a fine
r taste and goes further.” Zainal hoped this would tip Kierse in his favor..

  “I know how one makes this brew,” Kierse said, dismissing Zainal’s suggestion. “But, in truth, I do not have a grinder. Let me see it working. I prefer the filtered drink to the boiled grounds.”

  Floss, who had been listening to the exchange, immediately stepped forward with sacks of several varieties of bean.

  “Which would you prefer, the milder roast or the hearty robusta bean?”

  Floss, skilled now at tipping a handful of beans into one of the little saucers, filled two packets, one with the mild mountain and the other with the richer roast and offered each in turn to Kierse. Zainal made a little bet with himself and won. Kierse preferred the stronger brew.

  “There are, as I am sure you know, Kierse, several methods of obtaining coffee. The percolator provides a stronger flavor. Grind the beans,” Zainal began but Kierse waved off a discussion of the process and the percolator pot, which Floss displayed for him.

  “Filtered. And that darker bean.”

  Floss withdrew the dismissed ones from consideration and reached under the table for the appropriate packages. These she placed in the other scale, casually adding a trickle of beans until a balance was achieved between the product and its payment. Zainal held his breath. Kierse looked longingly at the casket of gold, which Zainal had left on the table. Then he took another sip of the coffee in his cup.

  “I have more packages. We will deal with the gold then,” Kierse said and extended his hand to Zainal, accepting the barter.

  Quickly Floss transferred the bags of beans to a carrier, wrapped the grinder and placed it on top, handing the convenient package to the new owner.

  Zainal rose and gave the obligatory courtesy bow, which Kierse mirrored, though there was a smile in the man’s eyes that Zainal read as anticipating a return with more valuable stock. As Kierse left, Zainal signaled for Ferris to follow him. He might merely go to his home with such a package, but he might also return to his stall to gloat over what valuable merchandise he still wished to sell to the bean man. Perhaps Ferris could discover exactly what else might be of value to them.