Freedom’s Choice (9 page)

“And our landlords, the Farmers.”

They both heard the faint rumbling sound from above, followed by a more vigorous rustling as Slav, Fek, Joe, Sarah, Whitby, and Leila pushed through the hedgerows just beyond them.

Kris managed one startled glance at Mitford, wondering if their very private conversation had been overheard. He winked and pointed to the team, who were panting as if they'd been running a good distance.

“Fek hear,” the Deski said, grinning. “Scout comes.”

Slav pointed and they could see the speck in the sky that rapidly increased in size. The noise became not louder but clearer. Suddenly more avians than any of them had ever seen at one time swarmed around it: some
bodies dropped as oak seeds might, flittering and twisting groundward; some dropped more quickly as disparate sections, while those left alive did astonishing aerial maneuvers and flew away as fast as they could.

“That's handy to know,” Mitford said with an approving grunt, and climbed out of the runabout. He stood, arms crossed on his chest, his eyes narrowing as he watched the ship's steady approach.

Was Zainal piloting, Kris wondered, or had he let Bert? Whoever it was made a very neat touchdown about twenty yards from the onlookers with a final burst of steamy exhaust from the portside thruster. The hatch moved open and Raisha jumped down, grinning radiantly. She snapped a salute to Mitford, which he returned.

“Mission accomplished, sir. All present and accounted for.” Then she threw her right arm in the air and let out an exceedingly unmilitary yell.

With everyone else, Kris moved toward her, trying to peer around for a sight of Zainal, and Bert, too.

“That Zainal…he even let Bert land her,” Raisha cried, shaking hands with everyone, even Fek and Slav, who were now accustomed to that odd human habit. “You should see this place from outer space, sarge. It's even more beautiful than Earth. I know that sounds like heresy but it's true! And we know where the satellite is, so Zainal says there'll be an easy way to avoid it by taking different windows out because it's positioned geosynchronously for this area. No way of telling how long it's been up, so it's possible that, even if it was in geosynch with this landing area, it might not have seen the Farmers' ships.”

Kris grinned at Raisha, recognizing the high she was on, but Kris also kept looking for Zainal.

“Oh, he's still explaining some of the finer points to Bert. You'll have to drag them out of there,” Raisha said. “Sarge, we got good views of the other continents
during our landing orbit. It looks like only one other one is being farmed as intensively as this. It'd be smart to have a look and see if it isn't wiser to transfer everything to an unoccupied continent and just put the farms back to the way they were before we got here. Just think how that'd confuse the Catteni.”

“Easy now, Raisha,” Mitford said, grinning at her babble.

“Oh!” She looked over to the others. “I should just debrief to you, shouldn't I? But they all know about Phase One, don't they? It's…” and she stopped, took a deep breath, brushed sudden tears out of her eyes. “It's just that once the Catteni took over, I never thought I'd make space in a real ship.” She dashed more tears from her eyes and made an obvious effort to control herself. “One helluvan astronaut I'm making.”

“You did just great, ma'am,” Mitford said in military tones, and that did the trick.

“Thank you, sergeant. I appreciate having had the honor to go.”

“‘Where no human has gone before.'” Kris heard herself repeating the
Star Trek
phrase.

Mitford inched closer to the open hatch but Kris reached it first.

“Zainal?” she called, damning herself for acting like a possessive female.

“On the bridge!” He sounded elated, too.

As Raisha had said, he was still explaining to Bert yaw and roll procedures and which toggles and handles were used in which situations.

“You landed her on a dime,” Kris said, looking from one to the other, and it was Bert who smiled proudly back at her.

“Zainal insisted. Damn near wet myself,” he said, but Kris only laughed at him. “There seem to be only so many ways to arrange controls and panels, so it wasn't actually that hard. Not that Zainal wouldn't have taken
over if I glitched…” He pointed to the right-hand position at the bridge. “Mind you, those predators coming at me like F-88s were scary…”

“I don't think they'll be back anytime soon,” Kris said. “Those that lived to fly away.”

“They don't appear when transports do,” Zainal said, thoughtfully.

“The scout makes a sort of whistle…” Kris suggested, and he nodded. She wanted to do something more than stand there with both hands at her sides, something to show Zainal how very, very glad she was to see him. She wished Bert anywhere but on the bridge.

Then Zainal stepped to her side, pulled her so that their cheeks touched and his lips brushed her ear before he stepped back. “I go debrief to Mitford.” He turned back to Bert. “Go through the sequences. We must put her out of sight before we close her down.” Then he pushed Kris around and down the narrow passageway. “We now know much more about Botany that is useful to know.”

All Kris could think of was that he was back and Phase One complete and Mitford was willing to go to Phase Two. As she stepped out onto the field where she had lain unconscious and vulnerable nine months ago, she could scarcely believe the change in fortune. And all because she'd rescued a fugitive Catteni.

* * *

As Kris discovered, while the curious—and they came in droves down from Camp Narrow—inspected the scout ship, Zainal's debriefing with Mitford dealt more with the details of what he had observed of the rest of the planet during the landing orbit than with the flight. He had piloted in the initial stages, past the satellite, given the scout some rolls and yaws.

“To look out of control,” Zainal said with a grin, “and then I went behind the moon and out of the satellite's range.” Of Bert and Raisha, he said, “They
know more than they think they do. Well trained. Able to drive while I looked. The scout makes fast…sketches…” He looked inquiringly at Kris, who supplied, “photos.” “Yes, photos, details of other continents. Got very close on last pass.” Zainal grinned. “Much better than what we were given.” And he paused, twitching one eyebrow in irritation over the earlier reluctant handouts.

“Raisha said something about only two continents being farmed.”

Zainal nodded. “One is empty but greening. Other not too good, I think. But I am not farmer.”

“You want us to shift our living space?” and Mitford waved over his head to mean the campsites the colonists now occupied, “and keep us out of trouble with the real landlords?”

“Land…” and Zainal separated the two words in puzzlement, “lords?”

“The race which first claimed this planet.”

“Ah, landlords. Yes. This is considerable. A people who could make a prison of that valley we explored do not act as Catteni or Eosi do. They kept something in there, or kept something from getting in. That is not how Catteni or Eosi work.”

“Nor even humans, if you look at history,” Mitford said in a droll tone, crossing his arms on his chest again.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Zainal gave Mitford a long look.

“Phase Two, sarge?”

Mitford chuckled, dropped his arms to slap his hands on his knees. “You found weapons?”

“Enough to overpower stupid Drassi,” Zainal said almost contemptuously.

“Things are getting more and more interesting, aren't they?” Mitford said to no one in particular.

Someone nearby cleared his throat and Kris looked over her shoulder at a group of men she vaguely remembered
were formerly military and naval brass. Instantly she was alarmed for Mitford's sake. She didn't want him summarily replaced by newcomers who figured they knew more about running this world than Mitford. It was Peter Easley who had cleared his throat.

“Sergeant, when you have a chance, we'd like a few words with you?”

“More than a few and your being here saves me sending for you,” Mitford said, stepping down from the driver's seat. “Have you met Emassi Zainal and Kris Bjornsen yet?”

There was a formal shaking of hands all round, hands which Kris noticed were callused and hardened by “civilian” labors. She noticed that everyone was respectful to both her and Zainal and told herself that she was imagining “hostile takeovers.” The cordiality of all nine did not seem forced. Their comments ranged from “Well done” to “A terrific boost to morale here.”

“What Earth rank is ‘Emassi' equal to, Zainal?” Mitford asked, and winked at Kris.

“‘Emassi' is captain,” Zainal informed Mitford, regarding him blandly. “Emassi outranks sergeant,” he added, and grinned.

“Beg pardon,” Peter Easley said, leaning forward politely, as if he thought he had missed something.

“Old joke,” Mitford said. “Have you been in the ship yet, gentlemen?”

They all nodded and grins widened.

“Might we get filled in on the details?” asked a silver-haired man—one of the generals, Kris thought. His eyes traveled from Zainal to Kris to Mitford and then Easley. “The implications of such a capture are staggering. Rastancil, Major General,” and he added with a rueful expression, “retired.”

“As I said,” Mitford began, “I was going to send for you as soon as I could report that Phase One was successful.” He gestured toward the ship, frowned briefly
as there was a scuffle at the hatch. Cupping his hands over his mouth, he let out his parade-ground voice. “EASY DOWN THERE! OR NO ONE GOES IN! LATORE, DOYLE, MAKE 'EM FORM A PROPER LINE. Sorry about that,” and he turned back to the brass. “It is successful and I think it's time I turned the matter over to Tactics or Strategy or whatever you want to call an appropriate body.”

“Sergeant, if you got this much done,” Rastancil said, “you've more than earned the right to sit in on a Phase Two, if you mean what I think you do.”

Mitford nodded sharply. “A Phase Two and a Phase Three.” He gestured to Zainal again. “Yeah, we do need to talk.” More sharp yells of protest from the spaceship. “Lemme handle this first,” he said, and slipping back into the runabout, his expression ominous, he circled down to the crowd around the hatch.

“Just what had you in mind for Phase Two, Emassi Zainal?” one of the naval men asked. He had a definite British accent, so Kris placed him as Geoffrey Ainger.

“I am Zainal, no more Emassi,” he said. “I will tell you about Phase One.”

“Then do it up at Narrow, why don't you?” Kris suggested as yet more people swarmed across the field to set eyes on the space vehicle. “I'll wait here for the sergeant.”

“We will all wait for the sergeant,” Easley said, but he gestured to a point farther up the field, well out of the traffic from camp to the parked ship, where there was a slope up to the hedgerow, providing seating.

If there were one or two men who cleared their throats or raised eyebrows in surprise at that firmly delivered suggestion, Easley was so deft at easing them the way he wanted them to go that they all complied. When they got to the spot, Zainal crossed his ankles and sank gracefully to the ground. Kris sat beside him and Easley on Zainal's other side, facing the others as they made themselves
comfortable. He gave a concise report of Phase One, from the first report by Coo to the moment it landed. Kris was particularly proud of his English, maybe not perfectly grammatical, but concise.

When he was finished, a balding, stockily built man with a weather-beaten face and a fine scar from jaw to temple, held up his hand. “Why would you have been the object of such a concerted kidnap attempt, Zainal?”

“How much do you know of Eosi?”

“More than I like but not enough to understand why they'd hunt out one man,” was the reply.

“You are the American general, Bull Fetterman?” A nod answered Zainal's question and Kris gave him full marks for having sorted out names and ranks. Zainal kept himself informed of what sort of people had been dropped, and knew, from Mitford's report, of the presence of military and naval officers. “Then you will know that Eosi command Catteni maneuvers.” Fetterman wasn't the only one who nodded. “They pick Emassi to make longer their lives.”

“Say what?” Bull Fetterman assumed a posture and an expression that had undoubtedly given him his nickname.

“They subsume the Catteni totally,” Kris said. “Zainal would have become a zombie…or worse…. He wouldn't be dead but he wouldn't have any personality left. Like Heinlein's Puppet Masters' yarn.”

“And the first scout came to take you back because you'd been chosen?” Easley asked.

Zainal nodded.

“I heard it was some sort of honor,” Rastancil said, though his expression suggested he didn't consider it so.

“It is.” And then Zainal grinned. “But I was dropped. I stay.” He made a scissors motion with his big hands. “I am off the honors list.”

Easley blinked and grinned. Rastancil did, too.

“But it was duty?” Fetterman said.

“Not once I was dropped here,” And Zainal pointed emphatically at the ground.

“Someone has to take your place?” asked a black officer—late forties, Kris judged his age.

“Another male of my line. There are several,” Zainal said with a shrug.

“What about reprisals here?” another man asked. Kris thought he was Reidenbacker. She'd been reviewing in her mind all the names and occupations on drop lists and was putting them now to faces.

“The last place they will look is here,” Zainal said.

“You're sure of that?” Admiral Scott asked, his tone barely civil.

“He's got a point, Ray,” Rastancil replied. “If you were deserting, the last place you'd go to is the place you deserted from.”