Freedom's Landing (34 page)

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THERE WERE TIDES ON THIS WORLD, JUDGING BY THE
high-water marks and the flotsam deposited along the beach.

“With so many moons, tides would be complex,” Joe remarked.

“Swim?” Astrid wistfully asked Kris, though she peered at Zainal for permission.

They approached the beach a kilometer or so from the building. Hiking through the white sands had been hot work,
for the shifting surface made the going difficult even where it was somewhat held in place by tufts of a sturdy grassoid and, in one place, a plantation of reeds. Joe took samples of each plant in case one or more of these supplied trace elements that would help the Deskis. The sea might be several days' journey from the main camp, but not inaccessible. Another stumpy-branched growth which reminded Kris of wind-stunted cedars bore a hard fruit of some sort. Joe stuffed the harvest from two bushes in his pack.

Zainal swung his glance right to the building, which now seemed to be hovering above the sandy ground, an optical illusion, Kris was sure. Then, for a long moment, he watched the sea itself and finally shrugged.

It'd be ironic, Kris thought, to have survived all the dangers the land was providing to get drowned by some sea creature, but she couldn't see any disturbance on the lightly rippled sea: certainly nothing that would indicate underwater denizens. Then Zainal strode down to the edge of the water, and scooped up a handful from the next incoming ripple. He smelled it, then stuck his tongue into the liquid. “Salt. You swim first,” and his finger pointed from Sarah to Astrid to Kris. “We watch.”

“Us?” Sarah piped up impishly but she was already walking down to the water's edge, opening her coverall.

Kris had lost a great deal of her conditioned notions of modesty over the last few weeks so she followed Sarah, Astrid trotting ahead of both of them, shedding her coverall with haste and nearly tripping as she removed the right pant leg. She threw the coverall away from her, where the sand was still dry, and then ran the rest of the way into the water.

“Don't go too far out,” Joe called, and then he and Oskar hunkered down on the sand. Zainal remained standing, scanning the sea constantly.

The sea wasn't as salty as Kris remembered the Atlantic on her eastern seaside vacations, though there was sufficient to make it quite buoyant as she settled into a crawl. Sarah was whooping and splashing.

“Hey, I like this. A sea I can swim in without worrying about sharks.”

“Don't go so far out,” Kris called, all too aware that Botany was quite likely to put up a few seaborne surprises. She was a bit surprised that Zainal had let them swim at all. “Let's keep close enough to shore to get there before anything out there,” and she waved at the innocuous spread of water, “can get us.”

“Good thinking, mate,” Sarah said and paddled back toward her.

Astrid swam with studied economy of stroke, Kris noticed, while Sarah thrashed about with little expertise. They didn't stay in long, out of deference to the men who were keeping watch and who probably wanted the refreshment of a swim as much as they did. But Kris felt better for the bath and waved to the men that they were coming out now. Zainal was still watching, but not the three nude women emerging from the ocean. Joe and Oskar had politely turned their heads as the girls came out.

“Okay, guys,” Kris called when they were dressed again. “Your turn.” She went up to Zainal. “I'll keep watch.”

He shook his head. Then, with a wide sweep of his arm, gestured Joe and Oskar to go in without him.

“Don't you swim?” Kris asked, amused.

“Too quiet,” he said cryptically and continued his scanning, not just the horizon but the beach on both sides of them.

“On Earth—Terra—fishermen usually go out at dawn, or on the tide,” she said conversationally. “So the machines, if there are some,
would
be quiet this time of day, I think.”

“I have never been to sea before,” Zainal replied in the same tone.

“You look a bit like a lighthouse, though,” and Kris giggled, “standing like that.”

“Light house?” He frowned but didn't pause in his vigilant and careful scrutiny.

“Hey, I think this planet has clams,” Sarah cried. She went down to her knees and starting digging with her hatchet. The next little wave ripple flooded over her legs.

“Didn't know you had clams in Australia,” Kris said as she strode down to Sarah.

“Biggest clam beds ever outside of Sydney. And oysters.”

Kris' one seaside vacation had included hunting for quahogs on a Cape Cod beach, so she recognized the little holes left where mollusks had opened an air passage. She began to dig, too.

“What you do?” Astrid asked, joining them.

“Dig and…oh…” Sarah closed her fingers around something and hauled it out of the wet sand. “What on earth?” She rinsed the rest of the sandy mud off the shelled creature and showed it to the others. It was oblong with a shell obviously “built” around it, rough like an oyster, not smooth like a clam.

“Well, it's like both clam and oyster,” Kris said. “And with no claws it's not a crab. Oysters are good for you, and so for that matter are clams. Might even have the trace elements the Deskis need. Sea stuff is full of minerals and junk.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes. “I drank enough cod liver oil as a kid. Hey, Joe, c'mere a minute, will ya?”

Joe, totally unselfconscious about his nudity, joined them and took the “clam” from Sarah.

“We will have to go the empiric route, I suppose,” he said without real enthusiasm. “At least it won't eat us first.”

He took Sarah's hatchet, held out his hand for Kris' and, using one as a counter, hit the shell with the other.

“Oops, hit it too hard,” he said, looking down at the mashed stuff that oozed off the side of the blade. “Get me another one.”

After the capture and dissection of three more mollusks, Joe decided the “flesh” might indeed be edible. He dressed and they all went to find something burnable. No one quite had the courage to try the mollusk raw, though they all thought it smelled as seafood should. Joe was game enough to be the guinea pig when the first one turned brown and a prod with the knife point went easily into the meat.

“A bit chewy but rather tasty, chums. Rather tasty.”

Sampling another morsel, Oskar agreed and immediately went out to gather more shells. Zainal only smiled and, although he put a piece in his mouth, did not swallow it, shaking his head.

“You don't have things like this on Catten?” Kris asked him, teasing.

He shook his head. “Eat land animals only.”

“Fish has better protein content and less fat,” Kris said, enjoying his reaction.

Zainal went back to watching.

Making a camp in the dunes, out of sight of the building and shielded from the light breeze that had sprung up, they ate a meal that began with clams broiled on the half shell and then cold rocksquat. Joe suggested that they wait and see if any of them had a reaction to the mollusks before they went on a binge of them. Oddly enough, they all wanted to eat more.

“Probably they contain some trace elements our present diet is not supplying,” Joe suggested. “Sometimes our bodies know better than our heads what is required. But let's give it the overnight test. If no one's had diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, or dies on us, the clams should be fairly safe to eat.”

“Fresh,” Kris added.

“By the seaside, by the beautiful sea,” Joe warbled.

Then the talk shifted to the point of whether or not scavengers lived in the sand dunes.

“Maybe something even worse,” Sarah suggested, shuddering.

“I'd kinda looked forward to making a sandy bed,” Kris said wistfully. “At least you can get it to conform to your bumps and lumps, which rock won't.”

Joe whistled. “Yeah, great contours!” and he made a show of leering at her. Sarah pinched his thigh, calling him to order.

“I do miss mattresses,” Kris said, sighing. “I honestly don't miss much else. Most of the time, that is. But I'd really,
truly, deeply give my eyeteeth for even a pneumatic camping mattress,” she said, hugging her knees to her. She caught Zainal's amused glance where he sat opposite her, his eyes twinkling in the firelight.

“Eyeteeth?” he asked.

She bared her lips and showed him.

“What good are your eyeteeth to anyone else?”

“They aren't. It's just a saying.”

The remainder of the evening was spent in language lessons. Oskar was picking up more and more English and Astrid's was becoming more fluent. She was also picking up some of Kris' pet phrases though such flattery made Kris just a little uncomfortable.

When fatigue made longer and longer pauses between conversations, Zainal announced the watch roster. He suggested that the sentinel stomp, and that was the word he used with a grin at Kris, around the perimeter from time to time, just in case the sand did harbor a species of underground scavengers. The others were to bed down in the sand around the fire, which the sentry would keep going.

“In between stompings?” asked Sarah irrepressibly.

“As you say,” Zainal agreed, nodding.

The long night passed with no alarms and Kris, comfortably positioned on the sand, slept deeply and well. As usual everyone roused well before the Botany dawn. Since no one had suffered any alimentary reaction to the clams, a beach party was organized. In the dim predawn light, they dug clams and when they decided they had enough for a good feed, they took a quick dip in the sea to wash off the clinging shore mud.

Rather a festive breakfast ensued. Then Zainal suggested they use the last of the night to approach the building and scout it out. No one had yet figured out how long a day's charge of solar power lasted in the collectors since the mechs were usually inactive during darkness.

The building was bigger than they'd originally thought and seemed to expand as they approached it. Zainal, whose night vision was superior to the rest of the patrol's, discerned some
curious superstructures on the front of the building and a railed runway leading down into the water.

“A launch site?” Joe suggested.

“On Terra, fishing is done in the old ways,” Astrid said. Joe and Sarah agreed.

“Do they have an automated boat, then?” Kris asked.

“Maybe they whistle the fish into their nets,” Joe murmured.

“Haven't heard a mechanical make any noise apart from ‘clank-whir,'” Kris said facetiously.

Machinery did not need windows, either, and the building had none. It looked as if the entire front of the building opened to permit the exit of whatever machinery was stored inside. The largest solar panels they had yet seen occupied the roof, held up by a heavy stem, which implied the panels altered direction to accumulate as much of the sun's rays as possible. That was a new wrinkle in the mechanicals' technology.

Zainal could find no exterior slit or lock or anything that would give them access within. He even had Joe up on his shoulders, searching the seaward walls as high as he could reach.

So they waited at a discreet distance to see if the building would open itself up once daylight had arrived. They waited until the sun was at its zenith, and occupied themselves by trying to fish, using the thinnest possible strips of blanket attached to a pole, and a piece of thin wire bent into a hook with a portion of clam attached as bait. When they caught nothing from the shore, they waded out as far as they could without losing their balance and finally caught some flatfishes. These they grilled for lunch, taking cautious bites.

“What I'd give for a testing kit!” Joe sighed wistfully. “You miss mattresses, Kris, I'd give my eyeteeth for just a magnifying glass.” He paused. “And a few odd chemicals to test for toxicity. I'll not even dream of having a microscope.…”

“Don't!” Sarah said.

“Look, why put such tools past our panel of talented
DIYs,” Kris said, “considering what they've managed to produce so far,” and she tapped the comunit.

At high noon, when no activity emanated from the building, Zainal said they would take measurements of this, the biggest facility they'd yet seen.

“Maybe it only goes after certain types of fish that aren't running right now,” Joe suggested.

“Or maybe there's a satellite up there,” and Sarah pointed skyward, “that tells it when to go fishing.”

Zainal shook his head. “No satellite or Catteni do not explore.”

“Are you
aware
then,” Kris asked, startled by the concept, “that there
are
other sentient space-traveling species?”

Zainal gave her a slightly patronizing look. “Space is very big. Many planets can be settled,” and he added with one of his engagingly broad grins, “not always this way.” Then he added, “It is a mark of honor, not unhonor.…”

“Dishonor,” Kris interposed.

“To be transported.”

“I could have done without the honor,” Sarah said drolly, then added quickly, giving Zainal's arm the briefest touch: “But then I wouldn't have met you, or learned that we Terrans are pretty damned good!”

“You are!” Zainal gave his head one of his quick affirmative nods. “Honor to me to be here.”

“Well,” Joe remarked, obviously gratified.

“Now we go search more,” he said, and raising his arm over his head, gave the move-out signal.

Kris was gratified, too, by that little exchange. She was even pleased that Sarah had touched Zainal: up until that gesture of conciliation, no one had made any physical contact with Zainal—except herself. And Leon, medically, but not socially.
Touch him, he's real live flesh and bleeds red blood
, she thought sourly as they moved out, matching his easy jog pace: a disciplined squad, fit and able to cope with anything Botany had so far meted out.