Freedom’s Choice (31 page)

“That's for me to know, and you to guess,” she said, delighted to be able to pay Sarah back for blurting out what Kris would rather have kept secret.

* * *

The long trek up the Eastern Coast went well, all other events considered. Everyone settled down to the fact of her pregnancy. At night Zainal held her against him with a tenderness she certainly had not expected of him: enough to make her eyes water and make her wish, with all her heart, she might have transcended the barriers of species biology and been pregnant by him.

By the time they got back to Retreat Bay, she felt better than she ever had in her life. She had to see Leon about her arm and he was very pleased with its progress. He wanted her to keep the splints on anyway, since she insisted on working, but she could use her right hand now. He also confirmed her pregnancy and had the grace not to inquire further.

“Actually, you're lucky you're here on Botany. Doesn't take as long,” Leon said with a wry grin.

“What do you mean, it doesn't take as long?”

“Average pregnancy is two hundred and sixty to eighty days. But it'll only take you two hundred and twelve point eight Botanical days to gestate.” When she blinked in confusion at him, he grinned and added, “Thirty-hour days don't change the development rate of a fetus but it sure alters the
days
you stay pregnant.”

“Oh!”

“Most of my OB patients find that comforting.”

“I'll remember that.”

* * *

Word of her pregnancy got around and she could find additional comfort in the fact that her “admirers” went elsewhere with their persuasions. And when she saw Pete Easley across the crowded mess hall one evening, she merely gave him a cheerful wave and left him wondering. She did like the man, in spite of that dirty trick. He'd been drinking that day, too. Maybe she was assigning his solicitude to exterior motives because he'd been drinking as much of that hooch as she had. How could she fault him for getting drunk and doing what was natural enough? Pregnancy was also mellowing her.

The temperature was definitely warming up and bushes were blossoming, spreading a heady smell that the inland breeze wafted down to the bay area. The agricultural teams had plowed during their absence and sowed the fields with seed purloined from the now deserted Bella Vista camp in a special trip of the KDL. As no ship had come to collect what was left of the grain, the KDL did, for the supplies brought across the channel were low.

The silos were swept clean for this year's storage.

On the continent that had been evacuated, the machines had been plowing, too, and many of the fields sown. Some wit among the Aggies set up a competition, one-sided though it was, as to the growth and health of their crops versus the Farmers' and the resultant yield per acre. The Aggies had already elected to use fields the same size the Farmers had, since the arable land seemed to divide into such sections: another clue that this continent might once have been farmed, too. The rustled loo-cows grazed the less desirable fields and the hillsides.

About the time the crops were a good six inches high and thriving, a most unpleasant discovery was made:
there were night crawlers again. Not many, but enough to let them know that there was a resurgence of the menace.

Astrid put forward the theory that the loo-cows excreted internal parasites that had a second cycle as night crawlers. There were a few who agreed with her, but it made for an interesting argument in the evenings, and had those with wooden floors in their huts replacing them with thick slate or flagstones. And many of those who had not sited their dwellings moved nearer the better-traveled areas. No one walked out at night on any field and the sentinel positions were either made of stone or set high above the ground on stilts.

This was, however, a very minor setback. Compost heaps were hastily shifted to stone tubs, and the disposal of noxious wastes was no longer a problem. Not that anyone wanted night crawlers in a latrine. Since such facilities no longer had to be dug, it became a punishment chore to do the late-evening dumps, far enough from the rapidly expanding community to reduce the hazard of night crawler infestation to the populated areas.

Spring lasted months but the fine weather assured the Aggies of excellent crops, as good or even better than what the Farmers were cultivating. The varieties of tubers and pulses occupied half as many fields as the grain crops, and caves were found to store the harvests rather than having to search ever farther afield for the edibles. The night crawlers were not attracted to vegetable matter unless it was mixed with bloody substances, so these crops were not disturbed. The rocksquat compound flourished and it was discovered that baby rocksquats were far more delicate in flavor and texture than the adults.

Evening classes in various skills were given. The nights that Admiral Ray Scott threw his first successful pot, or Bull Fetterman completed a set of six dining
chairs, or Marrucci managed a creditable mortise-and-tenon drawer for his chest remained landmarks in the assimilation of the disparate ex-professionals into true Botanicals.

There were failures, as Mitford put it: people who refused to do their share of work or felt themselves put upon by “authority” to always have to do the less glamorous tasks. Judge Bempechat gave each offender three chances to redeem him or herself in the eyes of the community. Then the unrepentant had a one-way trip back to the old continent, where they could fend for themselves, with cup, blanket, knife, and hatchet. After the expulsion of the first dozen or so, delinquency was reduced significantly.

Once a month, the two valley prisons were visited. The Turs disappeared one by one until the valley was empty. The Catteni eventually put up shelters, and when they asked for supplies, like nails or meat as a change from a fish diet, these were provided. But nothing that could provide them any assistance in escaping. Zainal doubted they would try.

“They are Drassi and Tudo. They have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and that is sufficient.”

“I can't imagine anyone not wanting to better conditions,” Marrucci had said, for he was often in the pilot's seat in one of the two small airships that did the run. “I mean, when you consider we're damned near city size with our own distillery…” Marrucci was hoping to add wine to the spirits and had already been south for the soft fruits as a basis for his “cordial.”

“They like it the way they have it now,” and Zainal shrugged.

“D'you think the Turs did escape?” Marrucci asked.

“Who cares?”

“You got a point there.”

* * *

The Tub went regularly to the mines with supplies for the men and women working there, to rotate personnel and bring back ore. The judge often gave a month's sentence at hard labor for misdemeanors, and only one ever found mining an enjoyable occupation. He stayed on.

For evening entertainment, those with any talent provided shows, managing to remember enough of a musical comedy or even a play to put on abridged versions or invent dialogue and action to add to what they remembered. Decks of cards were manufactured from the heavy wrappings on stores in the KDL and Baby. The cards didn't shuffle well but that didn't keep the players from betting an hour's work or a special bit of scrimshaw to make it interesting.

Gold had been found but it was decided, not without heated debate, that barter made a better system for a small community like theirs where everyone was expected to work community hours, not pay to get out of the labor. Among the diverse trades of the colonists, there were several jewelers. They would contract to produce jewelry for those who found gold, and even a few gemstones, and decided among themselves what was fair payment in grams of the metal.

Iri Bempechat had taken on several assistants as legal advisers in disputes, most of which could be settled by compromise. The ex–military personnel had formed a lower court but their decisions could be appealed, leaving Judge Bempechat to give the final verdict on an issue.

“We don't need a formal government,” Beverly had said one evening, when the topic came up again in a mess hall that was more crowded than usual due to an unusually heavy fall of rain. (It was the beginning of many such rainfalls, which limited themselves to night-times.) “Why complicate what has been working rather smoothly?”

“If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” Mitford called out, and got a good laugh for the old army axiom.

“We have a form of government, actually, though most of you don't realize it. We just don't have elected officials or a nominal head of state. Nor do I believe one is required,” Iri said, his cultivated and mellifluous voice reaching to the farthest corners. “Those of us with special expertise have taken on the duties required to ensure peace and tranquillity. Community hours handle public services, such as they are, and the rest of us work where we can be useful and at our previous professions for the most part, even in the limited fashion due to the constraints of supplies. I suppose we should thank our lucky stars that we have so many skills among us. Practically every walk of life is represented. Our alien associates,” and he gestured to the Rugarians, sitting in their usual group, and the Deski, who were more apt to mix in with humans, “have supplemented us in many ingenious ways. I think some of us may have a chuckle comparing what we used to do with what we're doing now, but frankly, I think it's been beneficial as well as instructive. We're all doing very well indeed. And able, for the most part, to do what we do the way we want to. Certainly without any bureaucratic interferences and certainly without a thread of red tape. You don't know how happy that makes me!”

Good-natured chuckles greeted that sally.

“Why indeed should we fix something that isn't broken?” he added, raising his hands in appeal.

“Yeah, but what happens to our pleasant Utopian dream when the Farmers come?” Balenquah asked, glancing around.

“Leave it to Balenquah,” an anonymous male voice said.

“What does
that
mean?” the pilot asked, rising from his chair and staring around, trying to discover the source.

“It means,” Marrucci said, reaching across the table and hauling Balenquah down, “you're out of order, off course, and being a pain in the arse again. You're alive, you're sure kicking, you're even flying, and if that isn't better than starving in a Catteni prison for blowing up their freighter, you're gone in the head.”

“Don't say another word,” Beverly put in from a nearby table, “if you want to fly again.”

“That's just what I mean,” Balenquah said. “We need a formal government, so you know who's got the right to give orders.”

“That's enough out of you, Balenquah,” Scott said, seconding Beverly's admonition.

“You're not an admiral of anything here, Scott,” Balenquah said.

“Oh, booming,” drawled one of the “ladies” from two tables over. And she yawned ostentatiously, which made the others at her table howl with laughter.

“You are, you know,” Marrucci said, shaking his head at Balenquah, who had colored with such open ridicule, “a real bore with all this gloom and doom and I'm obviously,” and now he turned to look at the ladies' table, “not the only one who thinks so.”

Balenquah rose, his right arm cocked, but even before Marrucci could rise to defend himself, Scott had nodded to the man beside him and they rose and captured Balenquah's arm and were hustling him out of the mess hall and into the rain.

“Add bouncer to my list of new-world occupations,” Scott said to Beverly as the two returned to their seats.

At their table, Kris found herself sharing a bit of Balenquah's pessimism. The problem of the Farmers was just beneath the surface of everyone's thoughts, despite the fact that most people carried on as if there were not that threat hanging over them. Zainal kept insisting that the Farmers were benign. He could give no other reason for that than the way this planet had been tended for
thousands of years, if the new forest of lodge-pole trees was any indication.

“And it has been months since the Bubble was blown up,” he reminded her, as they walked back to their cabin when the rain had stopped. Flagstone pathways had been laid around much of Retreat Bay now, to hinder night crawlers, although walkers automatically stamped hard every third step.

Kris let Zainal do it for them both as she didn't like jarring the baby she could now feel move, in little flutters, within her: normal activity at five months. Sarah kept complaining that her little dear kicked like a soccer star, but she was eight months along. By now, almost every female of childbearing age, including the Deski and Rugarians, was expecting, which meant that Retreat Bay would have a baby boom of 2,103 new souls. Anna Bollinger may have given birth to the first human baby on Botany but there had since been thirty-four born to women who had been captured pregnant. Now the new crop—which had been plowed on Botany, as someone had remarked in a biblical fashion—were reaching term. Patti Sue was first, and prideful about producing a son for Jay Greene.

Kris didn't know which she wanted, apart from being healthy and not too much resembling its sire. Somehow she couldn't ask Zainal what his preference would be. And yet, he would act in loco parentis to whatever she produced.

Most of the pregnant women carried on in their specialty as long as possible: and Kris, Sarah, and Leila were no exceptions. In fact they had arguments with the sergeant that he was assigning the team the “easy” trips. So he organized Zainal to take Baby to the smallest continent—really more of a very large island than a continental landmass—to circumnavigate it, the coastline being the only part that was green.

“Bit like Australian outback,” Sarah remarked as
Zainal guided Baby crisscross the interior. “Like Nullarbor. Nothing for klicks! Not even mulga or brush…sand and rock,” she added in disgust.