Freedom's Challenge

by Anne McCaffrey

  She smiled a greeting at the three new Catteni and added Kamiton’s name to her general welcome. Then she saw the two boys, looking in much better condition landing than they had in boarding. But Kamiton signaled to her to ignore them: a signal she obeyed.

  “Zainal says medic for these. We walk.”

  Ray Scott came hurrying out of his office and took charge of Nitin, Tubelin, and Kasturi.

  “Whose are those?” Sally asked when Kris made her way down the gangplank, avoiding those carrying some of the lighter cargo.

  “Zainal’s,” Kris said, “and we have to treat them as Catteni boys are treated.” She gave Sally a sour grimace.

  “What? On Botany? Bring up another generation like the one we’re trying to educate in new ways?” Sally was indignant.

  “To begin with at least,” Kris said with a sigh. “You should have seen the state they were in when Kasturi brought them aboard!”

  “‘The sins of the father’ sort of stuff?” Sally asked, perceptive as ever.

  “In spades,” and she broke off, hearing Zainal’s familiar step on the cargo ramp.

  Zainal looked around and spotted Kamiton, on his way to the infirmary with the boys following a discreet two steps behind him, and nodded. He gave Kris a squeeze on the arm but one that subtly suggested that she should not accompany him, and went to join Ray Scott and the new Catteni recruits.

  She struggled with an uneasy resentment and won.

  “D’you have any questions, Sally? Chuck and Mack marked much of the stuff with English subtitles, as it were, during the return. I can help if you need me,” she said.

  “Nonsense, girl, go soak somewhere and come back looking completely Human. Here,” and she handed over a com unit, “I’ve a spare. If I need you, I’ll contact you.”

  All the Humans on the KDL had removed their yellow lenses as soon as they were safely out of Catteni space: that had been surprise enough for the newcomers. As the supply of water was limited, no one was able to wash the Catteni gray off from more than their hands.

  • • •

  KRIS WOULD HAVE RATHER GONE WITH Kamiton and the two boys to see what their general physical condition was but Zainal had vetoed that. There didn’t happen to be any children the ages of Bazil and Peran on Botany, so Kris wondered how on earth the two could be integrated with a peer group.

  Zainal solved the problem and took his sons down to the Maasai encampment.

  “They are warriors. They have boys the right ages. They will learn Terran ways.”

  “Not in a Maasai camp,” Kris objected vehemently.

  “Why not?” Zainal was surprised, believing he had made a good decision.

  “Because they treat their women the same way Catteni do. I mean, they practically starve a pregnant woman so she’ll have a small baby and no problem delivering.”

  That part of the Maasai culture had been a shock to most of the medical staff for several of the Maasai women were in the last trimester of pregnancy. How the embryos had survived the trip was a matter of considerable speculation at the infirmary. All the women tested had been anemic and undernourished. With some skilful diplomacy on Hassan’s part, he managed to get the Maasai leaders to allow the women normal pregnancy multi-vitamins on the grounds that they would not have the usual herbal digestive medications. These would replace what the women were used to using. Hassan insisted that the tablets contained no milk, which was a taboo for Maasai pregnant women. That the multi-vitamin contained calcium as well as trace elements was not mentioned.

  Kris canceled a half-formed mention of the other extreme racial differences. There were boys the right ages. The Maasai were warriors, even if they used only spears, and their height would ensure the boys respected them.

  “But they won’t learn English,” was the only other protest she could summon.

  “Not now. That will come. When there are males their ages here in Botany.”

  They were his children. She had no right to tell him where to send them or how to raise them. The Maasai at least would be fair to the poor waifs. Which was a distinct improvement.

  The boys were kept overnight at the infirmary in a separate room. They both had intestinal parasites, which could not be spread on Botany.

  “Considering they have been half-starved for a number of months, they’re sturdy boys,” Leon reported to Zainal. “At least the Maasai are also eating well now and that can only improve the general health.”

  If Leon did not concur with Zainal’s disposition of his sons to the Maasai, he said nothing to that point. He did mention that word had reached him from one of the incoming ships that Joe Marley had managed to secure a fair number of the plants the Maasai considered essential, including the olkiloriti though he could give no reassurance that they would survive on Botany. The boys could go on the transport with the plants when they arrived.

  “I will go with them, too,” Zainal said.

  As such matters sometimes work out, it was Kasturi who took them as Zainal was needed to pilot Baby which, with the two K-class ships that had already been “accepted” by the Bubble, was needed to get the G-class ships past it. But Zainal delayed his flight long enough to give instructions to his sons.

  “You are going to a warrior camp to train with your age group as befits your rank,” he told them in Catteni. “They are different folk but known for courage and (a word which Kris did not recognize.) But you will consider them Emassi as I am, and you are. You will learn from them as you need to know their ways, too.”

  Small bruised fists hit cleanly clothed chests in the Catteni farewell gesture and, without a backward glance, Bazil and Peran boarded the float and sat among the various bushes, shrubs, grasses, and two saplings in their plastic-covered cans of hydroponic solutions. They each wore a replica of Zainal’s Catteni face.

  One day, Kris promised herself, they would learn to smile and use expressions instead of those awful alien deadpans.

  • • •

  GETTING THE G-SHIPS THROUGH TOOK ALL THE available Botany fleet to bring them into Botany space.

  “We sandwiched them in,” Gino said when he returned. “Even then, we had to push the stuffing well back of the bread. That Bubble doesn’t fool easy.”

  “What happens when we want to get them out again?” Bert Put asked. He’d been piloting one of the G’s and privately confessed that he thought he’d never get home. It was his ship which had brought back the Maasai plants as well as others: roots steam cleaned and tested to be certain they brought in no Terran parasites. Seed as well had been irradiated to ensure purity as a much more varied diet was needed, especially the complex proteins. Rocksquats bred fast but not as fast as the population of Botany was growing. Loo-cows produced one calf at the height of the Botanical summer. The actual birth took place in a tight, deep circle of other loo-cows, all tramping round and round the female to deter night crawlers reaching the newborn, attracted by the bodily fluids also exuded by the birthing female. The wonder was that the newborn was not inadvertently stamped to death before it could get to its six wobbly legs.

  Not so many refugees had been accommodated on the G-ships, but some families of those of the First Drop had been located and there were happy reunions, as well as tearful ones for those relations who had not been found.

  There was a celebration for the placement of the permanent Botany com sat when it was connected to the inner arrays. The NASA folk had managed to jury-rig one to serve in the interim.

  The infirmary, which now had satellite clinics dotting the continent, had received much needed diagnostic equipment, an ex-ray machine, and generators large enough to power them. And sufficient oil and gasoline to run them. (Empty barrels were then recycled as anti-night crawler defenses and the bases for stilt homes.)

  Nitin, Tubelin, and Kasturi began to learn enough English to respond to greetings. They would not conduct meetings with the Head Council in anything but Catteni. Kris often sat in as translator, so did Chuck Mitford, Mack, and Ninety. Their
trips had at least improved vocabulary and usage. Though there were a few phrases which none of the men would translate for Kris. She decided they must be so pejorative and anti-female that she’d rather not know.

  Nitin was agitating for speedy returns, to acquire more spaceships—and missiles. He wanted to see the total destruction of all Eosi on Catten. He dismissed the problem of getting armed ships past the space station that guarded the planet from attack, even a sneak one, by units of its own space force. The ships used in attack missions were based in another system. He pointed out that he knew all the code words to gain access to naval ordnance: there was even a high-ranking officer who was a member of their covert group. But he had been an administrator until he had been dismissed from his post and a much younger junior with excellent blood and Eosian connections had taken his place. That had been sufficient for Nitin to wish to retaliate against a hierarchy that had not rewarded his many years of devoted service.

  “Almost Human of him,” Hassan Moussa said with a chuckle. “Happens often in Israel.”

  “But does that attitude assure us of his loyalty?” Ray bluntly asked Zainal.

  “Considering that his family bloodlines date back to the Original Hundred, yes, it does. He needs to wipe that dismissal from his family’s history,” Zainal replied.

  The latest news from Earth was both good and bad—the good being that the Eosi had given up their mind-wipe program. The bad was that they were now concentrating on razing cities, towns, settlements of any size, to the ground.

  • • •

  ZAINAL SEEMED TO HAVE NO TROUBLE PLAYING with Zane in the affectionate way he had always used with the child who was walking without assistance. If he fell down, he got himself up. If he bruised himself in doing so and started to cry, Zainal would cock his head and the tears would dry up.

  Kris didn’t approve of Zainal’s attitude toward perfectly reasonable tears. They had another fight over that.

  “If he is badly hurt, he may cry,” Zainal said. “But, on Botany, he must learn to take tumbles and get up and walk on,” he added. “As you did on our initial treks.”

  “I was an adult, not a baby.” She was also stung that he would bring up those incidents, so long ago she’d forgotten them.

  “If Zane walks, he is no longer a baby.”

  “He’s my child and I’ll dictate what he may or may not do.”

  “Tell him not to bother me then.”

  “Bother you?”

  “He seeks my company.”

  “And you never push him away.”

  “No, but I will if you do not like the way I treat the son of my mate.”

  Zainal’s face had assumed the cold Catteni look that devastated her, and she caved in.

  “I want you to be fatherly toward Zane. He couldn’t understand you changing,” she said more meekly than she meant to sound.

  “I do as I see other fathers here do, Kris,” he replied in a quiet, kinder tone. Then he caressed her cheek. “And when my sons learn that you are really Emassi in spite of being female, I would like you to be elder mother to them.”

  “Truce?” she said, holding out her hand.

  “Truce? Yes, truce. We two should not be angry at each other over nothing.”

  “Nothing?” That was enough to get her back up all over again but Zainal stopped the incipient quarrel by kissing her so thoroughly that she had to cling to him to keep upright.

  He was learning some other tricks of Human males, too, she thought as he carried her to their bed. It was nearly midday but neither was due for duty for another hour or so. Zane was already in the crèche. They had not been together often enough recently, she thought. No wonder they were fighting.

  When they had finished a very satisfactory passage in arms, Kris asked Zainal how plans were going for the next series of “raids.” Despite the inconveniences of masquerading and enduring the heavier gravity of Catten, she realized there must be a piratical—certainly a Viking—streak from her ancestry that gave her such enjoyment in these forays. It was so very satisfying to sneak in under Catteni noses and get away with such good plunder. Though she gave a little shudder thinking what might happen if they didn’t get away with their deceptions. She quickly gave up thinking about that.

  “The Council thinks hard about the next step. We,” and Zainal turned his thumb in on himself so that Kris knew he meant the other Catteni, “must make additional contact with those who can help with our challenge to Eosi domination.”

  “Will that mean only you go?” she asked. After being with him again, she hated to be separated. Not that they could indulge in intimacies aboard even the larger KDL, but she would miss him acutely no matter how short a separation.

  • • •

  BY THE FALL OF NIGHT THAT DAY, THE RESIDENTS had another problem. Some of those brought in on the last G-class ship were young folks, aged between five and twelve: children who had grown up knowing nothing but the Catteni domination. Most of them were either orphaned or had been separated from their parents, and three could not even remember their names. Dorothy Dwardie turned the most violent over to Dr. Hessian since his Freudian training would be valuable in these instances. Their childhoods, if one could use the word, had been so traumatic that, unless therapy was used, they would be neurotic by their teens.

  “Children can survive the most appalling circumstances,” Dorothy said as she addressed those who had volunteered to house the orphans, “but the one thing they have, which adults often lack, is resilience. Shown kindness, especially fair play, will do much to show them what we, here on Botany at least, consider ‘normal’ behavior.”

  Some of the wildest had had to be sedated throughout the trip. Laughrey, who had been captain of the purloined ship, said his crew had been totally unable to cope with this group.

  “We did find out that, when we brought them to the ship…the first time,” and he grimaced, “we were Human quislings and were taking them to work to death as slaves. When we rounded them up again, we had to sedate them. Most were covered with infected sores—well, you’ve seen their scars—and wounds. In my opinion, they’re worse off than the Victims. And they’re just as much Victims of the Eosi as the mind-wiped.”

  Every attempt was made over the next few weeks to integrate the children. The placements were not universally successful, though Sarah and Joe lucked out with a five-year-old girl. Once she realized that she was safe, she refused to be separated from her foster parents and either Sarah or Joe had to have her in tow. She also didn’t speak, but Dorothy Dwardie felt that, once she felt really, truly safe, she would talk.

  “Children pick up speech patterns from their carers. If they’ve had no carers, of any kind,” and Dorothy shrugged. “There’s certainly no impediment in her vocal equipment.”

  The psychologist grinned, reminding the foster parents of the screams the child had uttered when she was given her three-in-one injection. Two of the children on board the G-ship had had measles so preventative shots were essential.

  Maizie, the name Sarah and Joe had given their waif, was derived from her constant look of amazement at food—all she wanted to eat—and clean covers on a bed that only she occupied. She did take to carrying the fluff-filled pillow with her everywhere. That was a useful habit, not only reinforcing her sense of security, but because she was inclined to take unexpected naps, both hands clutching the pillow.

  “I don’t think she ever slept on Earth,” Sarah told Kris. “At this rate, you won’t have to have a second child,” and she cocked her head at Kris. “Especially now Zainal’s got his two sons here.”

  “Kasturi hid his family away before he defected, and he wants to bring them in. He has daughters. I just hope he doesn’t do a Maasai on them,” Kris said in a jaundiced tone of voice.

  “If you ask me, it wouldn’t hurt some of our latest drop-ins to be sent down to Chief Caleb Materu,” Sarah said.

  “I believe that’s also occurred to our noble leaders. Dorothy’s against it,” and Kri
s paused.

  “So are you,” and Sarah snorted. “But I catch any of them bullying some of the littler boys again, I’m going to thump ’em.”

  There was a hard-core group of eighteen who had banded together: six black, eight white, two Japanese, one Chinese girl, and one French lad: ranging from seven to the eighteen-year-old black lad, Clune, who was their acknowledged leader. They had actually been rounded up by the Catteni, as they were old enough to survive the drugged journey. Laughrey freed them from the DC-area holding pens where they awaited transportation.

  They had become a unit, fourteen males and four females, calling themselves the Diplomatic Corp. They were still a unit, despite being assigned to foster parents. They refused to work but managed to acquire food whenever they wanted it. Several sessions in the stocks for Clune, and his two “consuls,” Ferris and Ditsy, failed to correct their attitude. Twice their unit disappeared from Retreat and had to be tracked down by Rugarians and Deski, with Chuck Mitford in command. The second time, he marched them back without a single rest break.

  Not even demonstrations of what night crawlers could do seemed to deter them from defecting from Retreat. The supplies they had acquired on both occasions showed that they could access anything they chose to have: including com units. And they were clever enough to have opened secure premises to get the weapons they wanted. Oddly enough, among the goods they took from infirmary supplies were condoms. One of the group, the seventeen-year-old who called herself Floss, had insisted that none of the girls should get pregnant: an unexpected display of common sense.

  It became clear within the first two weeks that they had no intention of integrating. They were not, in Leon’s medical opinion, physically well enough—after four or five years of eating whatever they could scrounge for the unit—to look after themselves in one of the closed valleys. Which had been suggested as one remedy to their recalcitrant behavior. Floss had been acting as their medic, since she had taken a first-aid course before the invasion, but she would not be capable of dealing with the serious wounds nor the various infections, external and internal, which plagued the young folk.