Freedom’s Choice (30 page)

“What's the general feeling? Or is it too far away to bother the claustrophics?” she asked, trying not to resent her absence…and Zainal's.

“I think people are glad. The Deskis evidently had a wild night of dancing, singing…if you can call that warble singing…and Coo says there are giants protecting us.”

“Did he see the Eosi?”

“No,” and Mitford shook his head. “And, frankly, I'm just as glad I didn't. Worry's still having nightmares and I think that's why Leon made the latest hooch so strong. Hoooo-eee!” He let out a long whistle. “You can blame them for getting you drunk, not Pete Easley. Which reminds me. Officially you're on sick leave, Bjornsen, so don't get any ideas about doing anything with that busted wing until Leon gives you the okay. Got me?”

“Yes sir, sergeant, sir,” she said, saluting repeatedly with her left hand.

The makers and donors of the furniture were saving spaces for them at a table in the mess hall. Kris lavished praise and gratitude on all for making a cabin into a real home, promising to do as well by them, when their cabins were up, as they had by her. Then the conversation devolved to Baby's mission and Mitford, sipping what
he assured Kris was a well-watered jolt of hooch, brought them up to speed.

* * *

The monitor also tracked the small vessel in its exploration, especially the examination at the barrier, and followed its progress until it landed safely again on the western continent.

B
aby returned safely and with sufficient masses of information to keep all the brass-heads, engineers, miners, and Aggies busy. The mission crew took a longer time to get themselves back down to the surface, they were so high on the experience. Zainal's course had used a minimum of fuel and won the plaudits of the aviators and astronauts. Everyone on board had had instruction from him on how to fly Baby and a little chance at maneuvering.

“We may not have flight simulators, but what're they against the real thing?” Balenquah demanded. “Too damned bad we can't go anywhere in the KDL. Zainal says it's much easier to pilot—had to be since Drassis flew that series. That whole caper of capturing the KDL was a waste of time.”

“No,” Bert Put said, evidently rather fed up with Balenquah's opinions, “it got us extra fuel, a new bridge console, and a lot of tools we'd have a hard time duplicating.”

“Oh, yeah, forgot about them,” Balenquah replied.

“Well, if we have to shift population, it'll be handy enough.”

“There'll be flying in the KDL,” Marrucci said, “maybe only mine and grain runs, but we're not totally grounded, you know.”

“We are for any
real
space work,” the man went on, talking himself into a morose state.

Zainal rose then and muttered something about having to see the admiral and took Kris from the table. Glancing back just as she and Zainal left the mess hall, she saw that others were departing from the table, leaving Balenquah on his own.

* * *

Zainal had been struck dumb with amazement when he saw the cabin. The door—which he admired even before he opened it, with Kris barely able to contain her excitement at what lay beyond it—had required his attention: admiring the detail, the latchstring, which gave him great amusement, pulling it in and out.

Then he entered the room and saw the table and the chair, the pottery and glasses, which Kris had put on the mantel, having no other place to store things—yet. Lenny had promised to teach her how to do mortise-and-tenon joins in wood and make herself proper chests and drawers. But the table and the chair shocked him, with one knee raised for the next step, and he stared and stared, and then inarticulately tried to ask her who, how, where these things had come from.

As she replied, interspersing the explanation with giggles for the surprise yet in store for him, he examined everything, even trying to lift the slate-topped table. He sat in the chair, got up, turned it upside down to see how the legs had been fitted in, and the stringers, and then righted it to sit in it again, stroking the armrests with his big hands.

Maybe Catteni didn't have tear ducts or never cried but Zainal's eyes were certainly full of fluid and though
he tried to speak, he kept shaking his head, speechless.

“I've saved the best for last,” she said, and taking a hand that was attached to a body reluctant to leave the chair that had been made to fit him, she led him to where he couldn't miss the bedstead.

He had an immediate response to that: the very devil of a look in his full eyes, as he swooped her up into his arms and carried her, for all the world the way John Wayne had treated Maureen O'Hara in
The Quiet Man,
and demonstrated how much better he could perform on a resilient surface.

* * *

Mitford took her off the sick list when he wanted their team to find a pass through the western hills to the far shore: he let her go along. He knew very well that she'd be better employed marking klicks, which she could do with her left hand, than left at Retreat, fretting that she was useless.

While that was being organized she spent some time making bricks, since she could fill the molds left-handed. She owed Sarah and Joe for their hand in the Great Furniture Surprise. When some loggers were injured—two badly—she sat in the ward with them, checking pulses and temperatures. There were no blood pressure devices and no thermometers, so it was all hands-on. She also fed Boris Slavinkovin, who had broken both arms and most of his ribs when the rolling log took a shortcut over his body. Being fed by a one-handed aide didn't embarrass him half as much, he told her, because it didn't tie up a whole human who could do jobs other than feeding him. Then he asked her if she could teach him better English since he was now stuck in bed and had to do something.

Ex-teachers had gotten together with an ex-cartoonist and created a language primer for those who wished to learn English. There were fifty copies in print, thanks to
supplies on the KDL, and they were well worn by the time Kris snagged a copy for Boris.

Leon and Mayock managed to dilute the potency of their distillation so that it not only had the faint aftertaste of a Botany nut variety but did not cause such speedy and legless inebriation.

The only person whose metabolism could cope with the previous grain whiskey was Zainal, so rather than water down what was left (which Leon felt was a crime), they gave the remaining keg to him. The first time he sampled it, Kris told him about Pete Easley getting her drunk on barely two half glasses of it and the hangover she'd had the next day. That reminded her that she hadn't seen as much of Pete Easley as usual. But she thought nothing of it, going to her stints at the hospital or the brick factory.

Then they were ready to leave on their exploratory mission and it was a great relief to all the team to be back together again and out on their own.

“One can get too accustomed to the comforts of home,” Sarah announced, settling back in her seat on the big air-cushion truck. “Though I wish we could have started the cabin before we left. And thanks again, Kris, for all those bricks. Worry's put his name in for a hundred and so has Jay Greene. We should have enough by the time we get back.”

“We do appreciate the ones you did for us, too,” Leila said in her often inaudible voice. She was holding hands with Whitby, while hanging on to a strap with the other.

She looked a bit white, Kris thought, and wondered if she, too, was pregnant. Sarah was, and was very cocky about it, taking it in her stride like any modern woman.

“Sure thing, Leila. Kept me out of mischief,” Kris said.

And actually, kept mischief away from her, for any of the importunate men who tried to charm her found
themselves also making bricks, if that was where they caught up with her, or feeding a bed-bound patient, which was scarcely a romantic setting for the sort of offers they hoped to make.

Boris Slavinkovin put in his bid and she had to threaten him with her absence at mealtimes if he kept it up.

“You'll have to sometime, you know,” Sarah said bluntly.

“Oh, I will, I will,” Kris said airily, and did not meet Zainal's eye when he glanced at her beside him. “Ah, that's another klick, isn't it? We've gone one thousand plegs again.” She added a slash to her sheet.

* * *

They found a way through the hills, through twisting but connecting ravines separated by banks which the air-cushion could manage easily. They marked the more accessible routes with 0's in the blue, almost luminous paint that was a recent innovation. (Red and yellow had already been produced from local vegetable dyes.) The cul-de-sacs were marked with an X. For some reason, Zainal found the procedure very amusing and wouldn't tell her why. They did not find any blind valleys or night crawlers but they did find a new variety of rocksquat and some avians that were almost as good eating as chickens, though some, caught closer to the sea, left a fishy aftertaste in the mouth.

They made their way down the coast until the rocky terrain was impassable even for the remarkably maneuverable vehicle. They were headed back, up the eastern coast, two weeks later when Kris experienced some fleeting nausea first thing in the morning. For a couple of days she was sure it was caused by the ripe soft fruits that flourished in the almost tropical weather that far south. She ignored the minor discomfort until one morning when Joe was replacing the splints and bandages on her arm. The bandage material came from the legs and
arms of Catteni coveralls, cut in strips, softened slightly by much washing and use, and adequate for their purpose. Her arm was sweating so much in the heat that she was glad to change the wrappings with the extra roll of bandage that Joe had in his medical kit.

“Arm's healing well,” he said, feeling the breaks with careful fingers. “I can feel the thickening of the bones where they've knitted.”

“Doesn't hurt anymore either,” she said, though she sighed as he replaced splints and bandage strips.

He gave her an odd sideways glance. “Trip's done you good. You were looking a little off-color before we left.”

“Which reminds me…. Anyone else having trouble digesting that pink-fleshed fruit we had last night?” she asked.

Joe was not only medic but botanist.

“No, but we didn't gorge on it either. Why? Got the runs?”

“No, a touch of indigestion, I guess,” and she shrugged it off, but Sarah had overheard her query and joined them, peering into her face with an intensely disturbing grin on her face. “So?” Kris demanded when Sarah didn't explain.

“Breasts hurt? Had your period? How long have you noticed the nausea?”

Defensively, Kris crossed her arms over her breasts and, as if Sarah's comment had been a curse, they were tender. She didn't dare change the position of her arms as her mind raced to the conclusion Sarah had obviously just come to.

“I can't be pregnant,” she said, jerking her chin up. “I've never—”

“Never what?” asked Sarah with a sly expression on her face.

Kris closed her eyes, remembering the potent hooch she'd had for her arm, remembering Pete Easley offering
more, and more, and enough so that she had…

“I'll kill him,” she said, meaning it fervently. No wonder he had kept out of her way. Just wait till she got back to Retreat. She'd—

“Is something wrong with Kris' arm?” Zainal asked, and Kris wanted to seep into the ground like a night crawler.

“Nothing, nothing's wrong with my arm,” and she shot to her feet, glaring at Sarah and Joe.

“No, but she's pregnant,” Sarah said, gleefully.

Kris hauled back her left arm to punch Sarah but Zainal caught her around the waist.

“You had to go blab it!” she shouted, trying to reach Sarah, who had nimbly danced out of her way, with the grinning Joe moving into position to protect his mate, hands out in a placatory move.

“Now, Kris, don't go off half-cocked,” he said as Leila and Whitby came running over to see what could possibly have happened.

“Kris is preggers, too,” Sarah crowed.

Then Zainal was holding her so tightly to his chest, leaving her feet dangling above the ground, that she had to hang on to him for balance.

“Thank you, Kris,” he murmured into her ear, and all the fight went out of her.

She hung limply against him as his arms around her assumed a kinder hold, a loving one. There couldn't be many males on any world that would thank a woman who got pregnant by another man.

“You're welcome. I think,” she added, and squirmed to be released. When he put her back on her feet, she apologized to Sarah and Joe with as good a grace as she could manage. “I wanted to be sure,” she said mendaciously. “It could have just been the ripe fruit.”

“So, tell us who the lucky guy was?” Joe asked with the familiarity of an old friend.

Kris chuckled, deciding on an entirely different course
of action that meant she couldn't publicly go after one sweet-talking lothario of a Peter Easley, but neither would she confirm it to him or anyone…unless of course the newborn gave some clue to its paternity. That would serve that so-and-so right. Taking advantage of a girl in her condition…and yet…. She suppressed any recollection of an incident that would result in a lasting and visible proof.