Freedom's Ransom (37 page)

Kris sniffed. “You have some of the Kenyan robustas. My nose got better in Barevi.”

“So I heard,” Leon said with a broad grin. “So, can I possibly get some stuff on your next trip?”

“You assume there will be one?” Zainal asked, raising his brows in surprise.

“Hell's bells, man, I think that was just the start. You are going to bring back coffee plants, aren't you?”

“Where'd you hear that?” Zainal asked.

Leon scratched his head, contorting his face to aid his memory. “Dunno now. Probably Sarah McDouall or possibly Chuck. He reminded us about the equatorial peninsula. She thought it would be climatically appropriate for coffee beans and maybe even bananas and sugarcane. Say, that unrefined brown sugar you brought in is the best treat. I did scrounge an orange.”

“Good for you, Leon.”

“Bananas went down well in the pediatric ward. Not that the kids knew what they were. They just liked the taste.”

“Wish we knew more about banana and coffee culture,” Kris said, wistfully.

“Just give us a chance. Ol' trial and error is a great instructor,” Leon said airily.

“Ain't it just,” Kris replied, sneaking a glance at Zainal to see his reception of such ideas.

“We'd have to trade for what you need,” Zainal was saying. “Maybe something you've been using here on Botany would work.”

“I'll get Sarah to do up some botanical files and slides and see how we can send specimens for their investigation,”
Leon said, and slapped his hand on the table as he rose to his feet. “Gotta go. Just wanted to say thanks.” He drained the last of his coffee and detoured on his way out the door to put his cup in the dirty-dishes basket.

“I wish we could do something spectacular for Earth,” Floss said. “While you were off in Manhattan, we got to talking to some of the airport crews. None of them knew anything about Botany or the Catteni forced colonies. I think everyone wanted to smuggle on board the BASS-One and come back here.”

“Neither world is problem-free, Floss,” Kris said.

“No, but we got a better deal going here than they do,” Floss remarked. “C'mon, Clune, I'm due for my shift.”

“And me for mine,” Clune said, checking whether the other mugs on the table were empty before clearing them off, deftly slotting his fingers through the handles.

Zainal turned a surprised expression to Kris. “She's due for kitchen cleaning and she goes willingly? My, what is it you say about wonders?”

“May wonders never cease,” Kris said. “I think she learned something from our travels.”

“It would appear so. Now, my dear heart, we have some planning to do.”

“I rather thought we might. You've been very thoughtful lately.”

“More of my”—he raised his right arm in an expansive gesture—“wild imaginings.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I have time before the Farmers collect their harvest. And we have gathering of our own to do.”

Just at that moment, Gino Marrucci entered the mess hall and came over to Zainal with a clipboard, on which a sheaf of papers fluttered from the speed of his entrance.

“Hi, glad I caught you, Zainal.” He looked down at his notes. “Got supplies lined up for all of the KDMs and the KDLs. Did you plan to use Baby, too?”

“She should be ready to fly in case we need her. Did Peter and Aarens manage to figure out a long-distance homing device?”

“Not for the distances we'll have to travel.”

“Well, we can use Baby to check out that old Eosi excavation on our moon.”

“D'you think an Eosi actually hid stuff there, too?”

“It's a remote possibility,” Zainal admitted.

“So were the bread-loaf chests in the junkyard,” Kris reminded him. He gave a diffident shrug.

He went over the supply sheets with Gino and initialed the crews. “This is all contingent, you know,” he reminded Gino.

“Every kid, including your own, is out hunting rock squats and the kitchen is prepared to roast and toast until they're all done.”

“Hope someone finds some nests and eggs. We can get an incubator for the trip out and present them with rock squat chicks,” Kris remarked. “Personally, I don't like rock squat eggs but they're better than nothing.” She had a vision of rock squat farms taking over from the piggeries on the Secaucus meadows, and Murray as a squat farmer. She giggled and waved off Zainal's look of inquiry. There was of course the problem of bringing alien life forms to Earth. The first incursion had not been a success.

Zainal got touchier and touchier during the afternoon and she worried about him. He had done so much already. What did he expect of himself? Certainly far more than others expected of him.

Sally Stoffers called in briefly to deliver a note.

“There never was a quotation on the stock market for the value of Catteni bunts against American dollars or English sterling. But Mike suggested we use the gold rate as a standard: those coins are twenty-carat gold, just enough impurity to keep them from being too soft for use or clipped.” She handed him her note. “That gives the equivalent, and it's far more than we borrowed from Mike Miller. That doesn't even include the jewelry, just the coin. The stones in some of those necklaces and rings
and stuff would buy what's left of Manhattan. If it was still on the gold standard.”

When Zainal finally decided it was time to go to the evening meeting, he looked more woebegone than ever and Kris couldn't think of anything to cheer him up.

“I didn't get everything I said I would get,” he remarked as they reached the hall. Then he squared his shoulders and walked boldly into the meeting.

It was even better attended than the previous one, which encouraged Kris even if Zainal did not seem to notice. Brone sat in the front row with the two boys, who waved wildly to catch their father's attention before Brone murmured something to them. They both sat on their hands then and tried to contain such un-Catteni-like reactions. Ditsy, Clune, and Floss sat behind them, and Floss, her hair trimmed and neat around her face, wore the second of her two new dresses: the bright blue patterned one. Their shipmates had taken seats in the same row and were beaming at the entrance of Kris and Zainal, which caused a ripple of comment throughout the hall.

Dorothy Dwardie, Dr. Hessian, and the other members of the Botany Management Board, including Worry, took their places on the platform, so this time Judge Iri Bempechat was last in, raising his gavel, preparatory to starting the meeting. A respectful silence fell over the hall.

“As you know, Zainal and his exploratory crew have safely returned and our coffee mugs are full. He wishes to explain in detail what occurred and why. Please give him your complete attention.”

Zainal did not go up on the platform but faced the audience on their level.

“We did well, but not as well as I led you to believe we would,” he said and was surprised when someone booed.

“You got back, you brought us coffee and a whole raft of materials we can't get anywhere else, Zainal. What's your problem with that?” It was Worry who had spoken,
and Kris was relieved that it had not been one of the more vocal detractors.

“Sally Stoffers has a record of what I traded the Botany resources for,” Zainal said, pointing at Sally in the audience.

“He did real good, folks. We all did. Got quite handy with bargaining, even when those Barevian merchants were being damned stingy.”

Zainal gave her a grateful nod for her comment.

“I didn't do as much as I promised you I would and could.”

He was not apologizing, Kris realized, but explaining. “Barevi's a different world now than the one I knew.”

“Yeah, they lost the war.”

“That isn't what I meant,” Zainal replied, exasperated and possibly unable to explain what was prompting him to make this confession. “Though on balance, I think your planet has made the better adjustment.”

“Good for Earth!” Someone hoisted a clenched fist skyward in an old gesture of supremacy.

“Botany is in an extraordinary situation,” Zainal went on. “Both worlds are at a crossroads, I think. I know.” Kris could see his chest rise as he took a deep breath. “I would like to think that we can do more . . . both for Earth, your planet, and for mine.”

“Invade them?” someone called.

“The Eosi were manipulative and . . . and evil,” Zainal said. “They perverted my world and subjugated many more. Many more.”

“That's their problem.”

“No, it is ours as well. We inhabit the same galaxy. There is more we can do to assist recovery on your own world. I would like to have the same discretion to help mine . . . and ours!” He hurried on lest someone interrupt him. “The Botany Space Force would be invaluable to both worlds, or I should say, all three, including Barevi.” He took another quick breath. “I would like you to consider using our ships—”

“The ones we stole from the Catteni in the first place?”

“Yes, those. To bring what's needed on Earth from Barevi. We were able to discover two chests of Eosi treasure with which we can probably buy out everything in all the storage rooms on Barevi and bring it back to Earth. They trade there, you know. If we make the Barevi merchants hire our ships, we can see that everything gets back to Earth!”

“Wow!”

“Hey, man, think
big.
”

“We'd charge the Barevis for the shipping, wouldn't we?”

“What about the captives, Zainal?” a woman asked, nearly having to shriek to be heard over the comments from the audience.

“Well now, I've thought about that a lot, since some of you may know that Kris and Kathy nearly got sent to a slave colony. It's one of my plans. Look, if we start transporting Botany ores and metals to Earth, and to Barevi, we will hurt their markets, which, I must tell you, are already hurting. One”—he held up his hand as he ticked off his points—“Earth gets the ores it needs to start manufacturing again and, two, cuts off the market for the slave colonies' produce. If they don't need slaves to work, maybe we can buy their freedom. That's what we all want, isn't it? The slaves freed?”

“This civil war has to do with planetary rights,” someone with a marked southern accent cried.

“D'you think it'd work?” a woman called.

“I'd like to give it a try,” Zainal said. “Now, what I'm going to say may distress some of you, but I was talking to the judge,” and Zainal swiveled his body so he could see the judge, who was nodding encouragingly, “and, with all due respect, we—Catteni and Humans—are not that different.”

“Yeah? Since when?” No one was quick enough to see who had asked that.

“Since I know that both our species want to explore
space and both our populations need additional worlds on which to develop.”

“A point well taken,” the judge said with a little tap of his gavel.

“Are you suggesting we make partners of the Catteni?” Dick Aarens jumped to his feet.

“Why not? They couldn't dominate you, could they? Your tactics made them leave.”

“But partner the Catteni?” Aarens objected.

“Beat them at their own game?” the judge suggested.

“It's better than fighting them,” Dorothy Dwardie said firmly. “Where would Earth be if we had had Catteni technology?”

“Look, I don't know what the coordinators on Earth—the effective governors of Earth, I should point out—what they'll think about this notion, but I'd like to put it to them and bring them some essential supplies that we
know
they need. And bring back to Botany coffee plants and banana trees and other Terran plants that might adapt here, as well as people who can teach us how to grow them properly.”

“We're all for the coffee,” someone yelled.

“Tea bushes would do well here, too,” a woman suggested. “They grow tea in Kenya, you know.”

Zainal nodded and made a note on his clipboard.

“It wouldn't cost Botany anything,” Zainal said, “now that we have how much, Sally?”

She stood. “I figured out that the Catteni gold coins equal about three quarters of a billion dollars on the last gold-exchange figures.”

“That's enough to buy out everything the Barevis looted from us, if we get good prices,” Zainal said. “I want to ask the coordinators in the metropolitan New York area if we can use Newark Airport for the swap meet of this century. We'll supply the coinage, which we got free anyhow, and your planet can ransom back all they need to reequip abandoned manufacturing. Why should we waste our time and fuel bargaining at Barevi
when we can make money off them by carting it all to Earth and getting other folks to haggle?”

“Haggling's the fun of it,” a female voice protested. Worry got to his feet and waited until there was silence. “I think Zainal's suggestions have merit and provide positive advantages—to us, to Earth, and, however inadvertently, to Barevi. I was talking to Chuck and Kathy Harvey about their adventures on our home world. It'd be real fun to outsmart the Catteni, no offense meant, Zainal, but you're more Botanical than Catteni anymore. In any event, since you don't really need our approval, being a free citizen and the person who helped us acquire the ships that comprise our Space Force, I think you ought to have a say in how they are used. And if it takes some shenanigans to free the slaves, why, work away. No one else's doing anything to get them back, are they?”

While that straight talk ruffled some sensibilities and caused an outbreak of loud conversations and rebuttals, the judge permitted it to continue until he felt the need to curb some of the more vociferous arguments.

“Let us vote first on whether or not Zainal should go back to Earth with the goods he acquired for them by trading coffee beans on Barevi.”

Chuck sprang to his feet. “I request that the assembled allow Zainal to return to Earth and deal with the authorities there on how best to relieve their shortages. I request that he be allowed to suggest to the Terran coordinators that the Botany Space Force can transport Barevian goods to Earth for the purposes of barter.”