Freedom's Landing (26 page)

This was not terrain she was familiar with and Kris was relieved to see the sun coming up and clearing off the shadows, so there was less danger of her stumbling on the rough ground. That was the one thing she did fear—an injury that their meager first aid supplies could not remedy. Or unfamiliar infections that were life-threatening. The Catteni antiseptic lotion was not a specific cure for everything that could happen to the unwary. And the anesthesia from the darts could be a boon.

Zainal was bounding up the hill in front of them now, then
switching to a zigzag on the steeper parts. He waited on the height for her and pointed. Two fields over she could see the cubes of Catteni supply crates and the fringes of space occupied by inert bodies. At this distance, she couldn't tell if they were being beset by scavengers yet.

Zainal cupped his mouth and hollered a weird cry. It was answered, she thought, by one of the aliens following. He nodded satisfaction and began the descent. This hillside was covered with some sort of thorny growth that clung to the fabric of their coveralls with a tenacity which made her glad it wasn't her flesh that was bared. Zainal, caught on a thick limb, hauled out his hatchet and hewed the limb. Even separated from the mother bush, it still clung.

“Careful,” Zainal said, holding up his free hand to warn her back. “Chop first,” he added, pointing to the bushes in her way.

“Can I help you?”

“Go down. Hurry,” he said, gesturing emphatically to the field, now out of sight behind the next rise. “Stamp, yell.”

She hesitated a brief moment more but the flash of his eyes when he glanced up from disentangling the thicket branch from his coverall was enough to send her on her way. She used her hatchet to slash and bash a way in front of her and succeeded in reaching clear ground, covered by a stubble of harvested crops, with no delays. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him finally free of the branch. So she ran on, across the field, neatly leaping the low hedge on the far side and down into the next. She thought she heard cries rising from the drop field. That made her run faster, shouting, giving the cowboy yells she had practiced as a tomboy. She paused long enough at the separating hedge to pick up handsful of stones. Then she leaped that hedge and almost landed on someone's face. A human. In fact, every body near her was human. Some had already been attacked by the scavengers.

First she threw her rocks in as wide an arc as she could, shouting as she did so. Then she stomped her way up the long side of the field, sometimes running and jumping down
as hard as she could on landing, yelling and yodeling as she stamped until she reached the upper boundary. There were no signs of the scavengers in the center of the field, so she continued her progress around the outer edge, stamping, yelling, pausing only when she had to get her breath and try to moisten the dry tissues of her mouth. She'd completed two sides of the big field when she saw others arriving and yelled and gestured at them to square the field in the other direction.

Then she spotted several people rousing from their drugged sleep and went to assist them. Once again the Catteni had dropped people comfortably near water and she borrowed cups from belts to give people that much comfort in recovering from their ordeal.

Dowdall was opening the crates, going first for the first-aid kits and blankets while the others did what they could for those the scavengers had attacked. She was so busy she didn't at first realize that Zainal was not among the rescuers.

“Tesco, where's Zainal?” she asked when she did notice his absence.

“Saw him back there,” and Tesco pointed vaguely over his shoulder before kneeling to give water to a groggy woman.

Reassured, Kris moved to the next group, who happened to be Deskis. A glance around the field gave her the irritating information that none of the rescuers were doing doodly to help the aliens, so she concentrated on them. Not that she found herself kindly disposed toward the Turs, who regarded the water with great suspicion until she took a sip herself and deposited the cup on the ground beside them. They could do as they chose. Three Ilginish had been badly chewed and before any one could stop them, they suicided, evidently by swallowing their own tongues and suffocating. Their face skin turned from a normal dark green to almost black. Other Ilginish came to view the dead, then piled the bodies to one side under the hedges. Ilginish “faces” did not register any expression, so Kris didn't know if they were upset or not, but as quickly as she could, she doled blankets and knives out to them, and indicated the first-aid kits.

More people arrived from the camp, including Mitford. She was surprised to see him away from his “office” but glad of his presence. That's when she realized she still had not seen Zainal.

“Sarge, you seen Zainal?”

“No, I haven't,” Mitford said, frowning as he looked about the field where more and more of the latest arrivals were regaining consciousness.

“Did you come down the thorny hill?”

“No, Su was there to warn us away from it. Why?”

Kris didn't answer but, grabbing up a first-aid kit and a handful of blankets from the nearby crates, she started off at a fast trot, dodging around groups and leaping over still-sleeping bodies. She flew across the intervening field, now entirely visible in the full morning light, hurdling the low hedge without losing her stride, and pelted to the thornbushy hill. They weren't like Barevian thornbushes, but where she was damned sure she had hacked her way through was now as solid a vegetation patch as if she hadn't cut it back. There was no sign of Zainal.

Scared now for him, because Zainal of all people should have been able to free himself unscathed, she looked anxiously around. Since he wasn't up at the field, he had to still be around here, somewhere. And, if the thorns had been toxic enough to slow down a Catteni, he'd have sought water. The thornbushes were not tall enough to have hidden his big frame, and anyway his browny-gray coverall would have made him visible even in the dense undergrowth. Water!

There was always water on these damned mechanically cultivated fields. While this field had been harvested, there had to be water nearby. She listened hard. Her ears finally caught the unmistakable sound of running water. Downhill there was a small copse of some of the diamond-leaved bushes. Those seemed to grow near the streams.

She heard a low groan, the sort that would reluctantly escape tightly closed lips. With a new awareness that the bushes on Botany could be dangerous, she parted the
branches of the diamond-leaf and saw Zainal, half-in, half-out of a little brook which welled up from the rocks around which the diamond-leaves clustered. A boot had been cast aside and his right pant leg was rolled up over his knee, exposing the injury.

“Oh, lord,” she breathed, seeing the massive inflammation on the outside of his wide muscular calf. The thorns of Barevi had been dangerous in a nuisancy way, but this injury looked serious. Bending over him, she checked first for any signs of blood poisoning. Not that gray Catteni flesh might exhibit such a trauma. He had blood, as red as any human's, and it had clotted almost black where it had run down his leg. That was when she realized by the size of the wound that he had evidently carved the thorn out of his own flesh.

“Ouch!” she murmured, shuddering convulsively. She sorted through the first-aid supplies for the Catteni antiseptic.
That
was definitely in order. And it would sting like billybe-damned when she poured it in that open wound but what other choice had she? She took a deep breath and
emptied
the entire vial of the solution into the crater he had made in his leg.

“Rorrrrrrgh!” Zainal shot to sitting position in protest to the treatment, his right hand cocked back to strike, his left arm up in guard.

Kris lurched backward, away from him.

“It's Kris, Zainal. I'm trying to help!”

His eyes focused on her face, wild in reaction to the pain and alarm, but, in that brief instant, he recognized her.

“You came,” he said in a barely audible voice before he seemed to collapse inward and fell back on the ground. His eyes rolled upward, the lids fluttering as well as any southern belle flirt could have done under different circumstances, and then he passed out again.

“Did I do the right thing, Zainal?” She shook, or rather tried to shake, the massive shoulder to rouse him. She retrieved the first-aid bag, which had fallen off her lap, and tried to think what else she could
do
to help him. Swollen
tissue could respond to cold compresses. With all the antiseptic in the wound, there wouldn't be much in the water that could exacerbate the wound.

There were sheets of some sort of material in the kit, so she soaked those until they were cold and placed them on the wound. He moaned a little but didn't writhe in pain so she felt it was safe to continue with that treatment. She made a pillow of one of the blankets she'd brought, brushing the leaves and pebbles off his surprisingly fine, soft gray hair, and covered his big frame with another.

It was Mitford himself who came looking for her. She emerged from the brush in response to his calling. Beyond him she saw the lines of the newest immigrants starting the trek back to the camp. He hadn't lost any time deciding to take them in, even if another four or five hundred souls to tend must be the lowest option on his agenda.

“What's the matter, Kris?” he said, trotting up to her in an effortless lope. How he kept so fit with all the sedentary work he was now saddled with, she didn't know, but he rose another notch in her estimation.

“Warn people off those thornbushes,” she said first, pointing urgently to the slope. But the line seemed to be taking the less direct route, around the inhospitable-looking incline. “Zainal's down, with a thorn wound. He carved the thorn out of his own leg but it was toxic enough to knock him out. We'll need to make a litter to carry him back.”

Mitford winced and scratched his head, half-turning in the direction of his new charges.

“I know, you gotta get them back first, but considering how much Zainal has done…” And she was surprised at the bitterness in her voice.

“Now, now, easy does it, Bjornsen, I'm not about to abandon him. He
is
too damned useful.” In the Sergeant's voice, she caught the nuance that Zainal might be useful, but not popular, and knew that some of the gossip about him was true. “We're all in the same boat or,” and Mitford gave her a wry grin, “on the same planet, but this new dump isn't going to help!” He sighed deeply.

“Don't mean to add to your problems, sarge,” she said apologetically.

“Dammitall, Bjornsen,” and now he was angry at her apology, “
you're
not a problem and I won't
let
him be. Can you hang on until I see this bunch installed?” With one hand, he gripped Kris' right arm, emphasizing his intent while he hauled his blanket over his head and dropped it beside her. Then he handed over the other sack he carried. “Food, firing, and other stuff. Now, where is he?”

She led him to where Zainal sprawled. When Mitford lifted off the temporary dressing, he curled his lip and recoiled slightly at the look of the puncture, then carefully replaced the bandage.

“Nasty, all right. Hope he got all the thorn out, but probably he did,” and there was approval in the Sergeant's tone for the measure of the man he knew Zainal to be. “Hell's bells, he can't be comfortable like that,” Mitford added, so the two of them pulled the big body out of the water. Then, when Kris had hurriedly cleared a space and spread two more blankets, they managed to roll him into a more level, comfortable position.

Mitford stood then, surveying the area, kicking at the roots of the bushes. “How'd they find enough soil to grow in?” he muttered. “Rocky enough so those scavengers can't come at you.”

“They come out at night,” Kris began and then realized that it might indeed be nighttime before help for a Catteni arrived.

“Firing's in there and some of those matches Cumber made. We found sulfur, y'know.”

“No, I didn't,” and she wondered if sulfur had any medicinal qualities.

“Look, I'll send a litter back for him as soon as possible. Get some more firing when you can.” He surveyed the massive Catteni's prone body. “Hope he doesn't get delirious on you or something.”

“I'll manage, sarge,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“'Luck, Bjornsen, but you're the kind who can handle things.”

As Kris watched him make his way out of the little copse,
she was somewhat heartened by his confidence in her. Mitford didn't often praise, and while that might be a bit backhanded, she appreciated being thought capable.

She went back to her patient, resigned to a long wait, knowing that Zainal's welfare would be low on the list of everyone else's priorities. She wet the compresses again, glad of the almost indestructible quality of Catteni materials, and then she moistened Zainal's lips.

You had to keep people from getting dehydrated if they'd been poisoned, didn't you? His lips parted as if the moisture was what he needed, so she managed to dribble water down his throat and he swallowed eagerly. A good sign. His forehead and cheeks felt warm, but not hot-hot. She couldn't remember from her previous contacts with him just what a normal body temperature for a Catteni would be. She also couldn't tell if his skin had altered as a human's would with fever. While one part of her was glad that Catteni were not totally impervious to natural hazards, she was damned sorry Zainal was laid low by as silly a thing as a thorn.