Freedom's Challenge

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Are they still trying to burst our Bubble?” asked Fred Gambino, who was serving coffee. “Only one cup allowed, you know.”

  “That’s better than none. I’ve really missed my caffeine hits,” she said. “And no, the Bubble’s holding.”

  Fred leaned across the counter. “I got a place picked out where I’ll never be found.”

  “You do?” Kris managed to imbue her tone with surprise and amusement. “I doubt you’ll need it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure as I can be about anything apart from death and taxes, and we don’t pay taxes here, now do we?”

  “Hmm. Well, it may come to that…taxes, I mean.”

  “Weren’t you among those who met the Farmers, Fred?”

  He gave her a long look. “Yeah…”

  “Haven’t they done what they promised? Kept us safe here on Botany?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, hold that thought because that Bubble’s there to stay.”

  “Yeah, but where are the Farmers if we need them? They don’t have any satellites buzzing about us like the Catt—’scuse me—Eosi do.”

  “Who’s to say they haven’t?”

  That brought his eyebrows up but she put one finger to her lips and winked. A harmless enough white lie if it helped reduce panic.

  “Thought the Farmers were sent a message?”

  “They were. I suspect that they have a lot of other planets and systems to manage, too. If we really get into trouble, they’ll be back. They don’t approve of injuring any species.”

  “I know one I’d like to take apart, bit by bit,” Fred said, making tearing motions with his hands.

  Kris merely smiled at him, took her coffee and a hunk of fresh bread, and found a table at the side where she had a good view of those eating. Fred had probably expressed what many were thinking or fretting about. And he had a hidey-hole picked out? Interesting.

  Fragments of arguments, some of them heated, reached her. Most concerned the possibility that the Bubble would be breached. She heard snatches of complaint about being saddled with more groups who wouldn’t pull their own weight. Community service hours were long enough as it was and why did they have to keep on increasing the population. There were already enough here. Some were earnestly discussing the deplorable conditions on Earth and would they have to go back and help rebuild, just when Botany was beginning to have at least some amenities. Where would coffee grow on this planet? All right, rationing at least gave everyone a cup a day but when you were used to having as much as you wanted, a cup barely got you started. How much more food crops would they have to plant to feed more new arrivals? What would happen if a Catteni warship did manage to sneak through the Bubble? Or one of the ships that left so precipitously got captured and was used to penetrate the Bubble with all the Eosi ships right after it? That could happen, couldn’t it? There were Humans who were vile enough to collaborate with the Catteni, weren’t there? Shocking to turn against your own kind like that. One of the nearer tables composed of women only were discussing how best to cope with the outrageous behavior of their foster children. The waifs had initially seemed so happy to have the basic essentials instead of having to scrounge whatever they could, you’d think they’d be more grateful to be well fed, well housed and not complain about the chores they were assigned. Everyone worked on Botany. This colony didn’t tolerate freeloaders. Didn’t hurt anyone to sweat? Making bricks wasn’t that hard. Or weeding.

  Then Kris realized she’d better make tracks for the hangar and her shift.

  • • •

  BABY WASN’T THERE, BUT THEN, THE PLAN HAD been for it to be used for a fast round-trip to obtain sufficient olkiloriti. One of the K’s was gone but not the KDL, which she had crewed on so often with Zainal. She took over the com watch from Matt Su.

  “They’re still pounding away,” he told her as he rose from the station. “My ears burn from some of the stuff they’re saying about us and…what they’ll do when they get in.”

  “Well, they can’t and they won’t,” Kris said because there was just the hint in the Chinese’s dark eyes that he was worried. “They have tried the heaviest stuff they have, haven’t they?”

  “Then why haven’t they just left?” Matt asked, dubious.

  “Well, the shan will hit the fit if they fail. More likely, they just don’t know when to give up.”

  “That Mentat Ix is some mule,” Matt said. “It’s roaring more and more, and I think it axed some of the captains. I’m hearing new names.”

  “Maybe it’ll have another fit and die,” Kris said, very much wishing that was possible. Though how Lenvec’s subsumed personality could have had any effect on his host Eosi, she didn’t know. She’d ask Zainal. The Ix was certainly the bête noire—wanting Zainal’s hide for sure.

  • • •

  SHE STOOD HER WATCH, COLLECTED ZANE, AND took a turn at playing with other children: some of the five-year-olds who had been rescued. Most of them had to be taught games that children seemed to know instinctively.

  “Well, none of them had a childhood, did they?” Anna Bollinger said, treating Kris in a very stiff and almost insulting manner, as if somehow this were Kris’ fault. “Some of their personal habits are revolting.”

  Ah, thought Kris, she doesn’t want her little darlings corrupted, does she?

  “At least they have good role models now,” Kris said mildly, pointing to Anna’s well-grown youngster, nattering away to two boys, so undernourished at five that her three-year-old appeared older.

  “I’d prefer that Jackie had proper children his own age to play with.”

  “Jackie seems to feel that it is his job to rectify their ignorance,” Kris said. Chattering away, Jackie was showing the others how to build a little cabin out of the small logs that had been whittled as toys. They watched, their faces expressionless, even if their faces were now clean and their cheeks rounder and tanned.

  One of them sent a foot into the log cabin and scattered the blocks. Anna gave an exclamation of concern but Kris caught her arm. “Let’s see how Jackie handles it first.”

  “Really, Kris, you exceed your authority. I’m in charge of the…” Her voice trailed off as Jackie’s reached the two women.

  “Now that was very naughty of you,” he said, hands on his hips and sounding exactly like his mother. “You collect them, and we’ll start over. On Botany, we make things. We don’t break them. That’s what the Catteni do and you don’t want to be Catteni, do you?”

  The boys glanced over at the two women watching: Anna’s expression was stern enough to frighten anyone. Kris grinned and made a gesture that suggested that it was wiser to obey. After a little more hesitation, possibly to show that they were making up their own minds about this, they bent to gather up the logs.

  A little girl caught her finger on something sharp and she came rushing over to them, sobbing. Anna’s whole countenance altered to one of concern and sympathy. Kris let her handle the consolation and first aid. For all her other faults, Anna was a very good mother and the children—at least the Botany-born—trusted her.

  • • •

  ZAINAL WAS IN THEIR CABIN WHEN SHE returned with Zane and their evening rations from the main mess hall. He was busy with lists and diagrams and a curious gadget on the table, which, when she picked it up, Kris recognized as an inhaler bulb. The sort she’d seen asthmatics on earth use to forestall an attack.

  “Think you can get close enough to a Mentat to give him a dose of this?” she asked.

  Zainal looked up, saw the bulb, and took it from her. He squeezed it.

  “There’s nothing in it,” he said as she instinctively swatted it away from his face.

  Her heart pounding, she exhaled. “Don’t scare me like that.”

  Zainal chuckled.

  “Baby got off all right? The Ix was still at it when I finished my shift.”

  “They must have ordnance—that’s the English word, isn’t it—”

&nb
sp; “Right on.” Kris grinned.

  “Resupply vessels. Only a Mentat would continue like this,” he said.

  “The Mentat, who once was your brother,” she said and when he nodded, she continued. “Is there any connection? I mean, would…the Lenvec personality have any influence on the Mentat?”

  Zainal leaned back, idly sliding a pencil through his fingers, up and down on the surface of the table.

  “It could, but I’m not certain how. The subsumation takes in the entire personality and then the dominant Mentat is in total control…” He paused. “Although it was the Mentat Ix, once my brother, who investigated Ayres Rock and then seemed to be searching over the sea we were safely under…possibly for me.”

  Kris began to assemble dishes and utensils to serve their meal. Zane was playing with his goes-inters—the shapes that Zainal had made for him to fit together. These afforded the child hours of pleasure. As she leaned over to put a glass before Zainal, she got a better look at the diagrams.

  “Isn’t that the space station?”

  He nodded.

  “When is the brave captain Venlik and his crew likely to set out for another mining expedition?”

  Zainal gave a shrug. “First Baby has to return. Then we have to wait to see what Beverly finds out about the other drop planets.”

  “There’s a good deal of feeling that Botany’s population is large enough right now,” she said.

  “We know,” he said and jotted down something else in a combination of Catteni and English. He gave her a wry smile as she chuckled at the mish-mash. “It is difficult for me now to remember which language to think in for the words I need.”

  The barrage of the Bubble continued but in nowhere near the force that had been first launched against it. All four Catteni found that amusing as well as reassuring.

  “It takes time to call in sufficient Mentats and senior Eosi to deal with an obsession like the Ix’s,” Zainal explained. “I will worry more when it stops.”

  • • •

  OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, CERTAINLY while Baby was on her mission, Kris sensed that Zainal was hiding something. She couldn’t think what because they had had no previous secrets from each other, and he was as willing as ever to talk about any subject: especially the upcoming forays. Several times Zainal was dragged out of bed in the middle of their sleep period to race to the hangar to speak to some of the Catteni dissidents on the com link. He used a code that had proved successful. At least none of their group had been arrested by Eosi, or suspected by High Emassi supervisors.

  The bombardment turned sporadic and occasionally a force tried to penetrate another point on the Bubble, or several at once, since they had failed to pierce it with all their might.

  Kasturi, Tubelin, and Kamiton—not so much Nitin, though the older man, for all his pessimism, seemed to be a vital key in the subversive actions—were able, by means of careful codes, to be in contact with many of their adherents. What was being set up, Zainal did not say, or if even something was. Contact had to be made, though, especially with those dissidents in command positions on other Catteni-dominated planets.

  “We have to be sure our people are warned, and ready, to take over. They must take control,” Zainal did tell her. “We could lose one or two but more would be disastrous. We’ve worked so long and hard to get our men where they are right now.”

  “A good point. Have you someone on all the Eosi-controlled planets and installations?”

  He shook his head. “Hardly. There are a great many more than we have personnel to cover but the most critical positions are.”

  • • •

  BABY RETURNED WITH THE HARVEST OF olkiloriti leaves. Raisha had reminded Chief Materu that this dust was a weapon of significant power so he helped to make it on that condition. Parmitoro had shown them how he preferred to prepare the powder and taken his turn at the mortar, working alongside the other Humans of the crew.

  Although the back of the job had been broken on the way home, Leon had off-duty personnel from the infirmary helping to complete the manufacturing process. There was also a small, very dirty, and scraped box of inhalers among the supplies Baby had had time to collect, but the bulbs had not been broken.

  “We went all over the place,” Raisha said, presenting it with due ceremony to Leon. “I thought we’d have to scavenge from drugstores, where we could find any not already cleaned out. But we got in touch with the underground, and they found us these. Are they enough?”

  Leon rubbed away enough of the mud to check the quantity. “Three dozen ought to be enough.”

  “Enough for what?” Kris asked.

  “For the job to be done.”

  “There are a hundred Eosi,” she said.

  “Catch ’em all in the same spot and that’ll do it.”

  “And here, we got the nose plugs in a scuba diving place Bert Put suggested.” And Raisha handed over a smaller rectangular box.

  “For them who shouldn’t breathe deeply,” Kris said, quite relieved to know that Zainal and his friends weren’t going on some sort of a suicide mission, sacrificing themselves to get all the Eosi.

  • • •

  JOHN BEVERLY RETURNED WITH CHEERING news, having left behind some volunteers to help. And bad news, because two of the planets were inimical to Humans. Remnants of the usual Catteni crates and supplies had been found, bits and pieces of gnawed leather but no sign of a Human, even when they had done a low-altitude search for life signs. Nor any Deski, Rugarians, Turs, or other known “slave” species. On the other three planets that had been used as experimental colonies, people had made the best of what was available. Although on one, even the Human groups had widely separated and wished no contact with others, especially the other species. The other two had not turned to any form of anarchy or lawlessness but formed communities not unlike Botany’s.

  “Common sense prevailed,” John Beverly told those who assembled in the open hangar to hear him, “although they were very grateful indeed for some of the supplies we brought.”

  “Did they give you any shopping lists?” Sandy Areson called out.

  “Oh, yes,” John agreed. “Our compatriots on Dystopia…” some of the audience groaned, others laughed, “offered the most amazing amount of metals, gemstones, gold, silver, and stuff to purchase any spare ship we’d give them.”

  “Do ’em no good unless they have an Emassi,” someone else said, and Kris smiled appreciatively at this oblique salute to Zainal.

  Since Kris was privy to so many of the Head Council meetings, she knew that Dorado’s attitude toward alien species made it low on the list of help. Dystopia and NoName (so called because no one had come up with a name that a majority could approve) were at the top for whatever could be spared of medical instruments and medicines that would supplement what the colonists had found useful and effective by the same sort of trial-and-error method the colonists on Botany had used. That meeting concluded that basic medications, part of the results of their raids on Catteni-held Earth, and what extra medical equipment could be spared should be delivered as soon as feasible.

  “When we explained, they did say that they’d even consider working with an Emassi, if this is what resulted,” and he waved over at the G-ship. “So we got friendly neighbors, establishing the banners of Humankind. Kinda good to know.”

  • • •

  NATHAN BAXTER HAD BEEN ONE OF JOHN’S crew in his professional capacity as photographer. He had brought back pictures of the other planets, both from space and on the surface, including some group photos of inhabitants and examples of how they had settled in. When these were developed, there were lines of those waiting to see the pictures up on the bulletin board outside the mess hall.

  The infirmary actually treated more work injuries than diseases so, between what Kris had got on Barevi and others had found on Earth, they had enough to share. A second trip, and three cargo holds of wheat and dried rocksquat and loo-cow flesh, was planned. Microscopes, surgical tools, and othe
r basic supplies were packed. Dystopia had only Humans while both NoName and Dorado had mixed populations. So some plursaw was sent along for the Deski inhabitants. The Turs had killed each other off in some sort of a bloody battle that had also taken many Human lives.

  There had been no official census taken on any of the other planets but, during his flyby of the surfaces, John Beverly estimated that all three had more inhabitants than Botany.

  “Basically, we’re way ahead on the amenities,” he told the Council. “I’d suggest we try to set up some sort of a com link…”

  “Not with the Catteni ships likely to make more drops,” Rastancil said.

  “Which reminds me, John,” Ray began, “did you see much Catteni traffic in space?”

  “We kept our com open all the time and there was a lot of chatter on the various channels, but I’d no really fluent Catteni speaker aboard. There was a lot of interference, too. Jamming, I think.”

  “Possibly high-security messages,” Zainal said, after asking Kamiton a quick question in Catteni. To which Kamiton nodded. “Many?”

  “Com officers logged them if you want to check the records,” John said.

  Kasturi leaned forward eagerly. “Ask if they kept voice records?”

  “Oh yes,” Beverly grinned toothily. “We figured you guys might be able to understand them.”

  “You have them?” Kasturi stood up, eagerly holding out his hand.

  The ex-air force general laughed as he reached for the sack that he had deposited on the floor at the beginning of the meeting and handed it over. “Every last one we caught.”

  “We leave. We listen. Where?” Kamiton asked Ray.

  Ray glanced at Kris, jerking his thumb toward his private office, and she pushed back her chair to lead the way. She stayed to help because while Kamiton had been learning English with almost the same speed that Zainal had, neither could write English without a lot of false starts. So Kasturi made the initial transcriptions and then she and Kamiton translated them.

  “They are convening the Mentats,” Kamiton said suddenly, when they had gone through about half the recordings. He raised both arms, waving his fists with great satisfaction. He and Kasturi exchanged broad and gratified smiles.