Freedom's Landing Part 11

"Now, don't tell me your home world has long days and nights like Botany?" The two of them spent the rest period explaining and understanding that concept.

"Full turn of planet is not as long as here," he said in the best English sentence he had so far made.

"Boy, you sure learn fast."

"Is "boy" a good thing to say of me?" Again that quizzical expression.

"Well, yes," Kris replied, grinning, delighted with his sense of humour: something she hadn't thought Catteni possessed. "But you are a man, I am a woman. Boy is a young man. I'm using it in the context of a slang expression so it doesn't mean the same thing as the word should." He grinned in such aolite way that she wasn't sure if he understood her explanation at all before he gestured them to take up their journey again.

The day grew warm on the plateau, which had no shade at all on its sandy and gritty surface, only the wiry plants with their odd-shaped leaves that didn't look like anything on any Earth. Coo kept tasting plants and even different coloured patches of soil as they went, usually spitting the samples out, so that Kris wasn't sure what verdict was being rendered. She was becoming so thirsty that her tongue felt swollen so on what was the midday rest stop she didn't have the desire to banter with Zainal. The others took out "lunch', gnawing off good hunks from their bars, but she didn't think she had enough saliva in her mouth to chew much less swallow.

"You bite, you chew, be better," Zainal said kindly and rolled his mouthful about to show that he wasn't swallowing either.

She tried a small piece and discovered that something in the bar helped generate some moisture. She didn't eat as much as the other three but felt better for what she did put in her stomach They travelled on then, the plateau gradually sloping down to a lusher sort of terrain. And a stream. She had to summon up all her self-restraint not to prostrate herself in the stream but carefully to re-educate her mouth and throat to wetness.

"G.o.d, what I'd give for a canteen.

"What is this "G.o.d" so many call on?" Zainal asked.

"Another "boy"?" Coming as the question did in Zainal's rich guttural voice, it sent Kris into a fit of the giggles. She'd often been told that she had an infectious laugh - and had proved it from time to time by setting a whole cla.s.sroom off - but it pleased her no end that the effect extended to another species. The Catteni's chuckle sounded very human. Slav c.o.c.ked his head at her and frowned while Coo merely looked at her in consternation, as if the Deski thought Kris was having a fit or convulsion.

"I won't answer that question now, Zainal," she said when she had reduced giggle to grin. ""G.o.d" was never a boy! I will explain another time when we have several years at our disposal." Zainal frowned, not having understood all she said.

Which was about par for the course, she thought. And just as well.

Having drunk sufficient water to revive herself, Kris now pulled out the rest of her lunch-time bar and finished it. She was ready to go then but Zainal did not urge them away from this pleasant spot, as much because there were new varieties of plants along the stream bank which Coo was sampling with great eagerness. He came back with something which he showed to Kris, the first time he had done that.

"Looks like a kind of watercress to me, she said, testing one of the stems and a leaf. "Can you eat it?" she asked, gesturing to her mouth with the sample.

The Deski nodded, popped a stalk into his mouth and chewed with every indication of pleasure. Kris nibbled carefully and, feeling her lips and gums go slightly numb, buried her face in the water and gargled vigorously. She felt Zainal's hands on her shoulders supporting her. She rinsed and gargled, being careful not to swallow, and rinsed and rinsed until the sensation was washed away.

"Thanks, Zainal," she said and then saw how concerned all three of her companions were. "Oh, I'm fine. I didn't swallow any of it. All yours, Coo, all yours." The Deski nodded vigorously and made a show of clutching the rest of the sample plant to his chest.

"No more try," Zainal told her sternly.

"You bet!" His concern altered to a glare of frustration. "More "boy" words?"

"Well," and Kris rocked one hand back and forth to indicate neither one nor another. Lord, but she'd never appreciated how complex English is. Or did she mean idiomatic American?

They went on then, until Kris wondered how much longer she could ignore the swelling of her feet which the wrap-around boots were not compensating for. And she'd thought she was fit! Ha! She had dropped behind the two aliens - two of her companions, she amended quickly and found herself watching the rippling of the hairs on the Rugarian's legs. His feet did look funny in the wrap-around Catteni footwear and he didn't seem to have "muscles' where humans did: but depressions came and went with each stride sort of laterally instead of up and down the way calf muscles did. And in front of him, Coo seemed only to have leg bones, no muscular movement at all, only the tendons - or what pa.s.sed for tendons on a Deski - on either side of the one leg bone, lifting and lowering it, like the shaft of a crane. She tried to imagine the anatomy of her companions, sans skin, and failed utterly. Biology had not been one of her stronger subjects. Oh, the gaps in her education.

Well, there's nothing like on-the-job training, she thought, or whateve? it was they were now doing.

Some place and time later, she was able to stop moving her legs and was sat down on a rock. There was a small fire enclosed in a circle of rocks and around a cairn of rocks. Odd formation, she thought bemusedly. Then, as the buzz of fatigue allowed it, Kris could hear the babbling of a brook near by. Water! She half rose and then was pushed back onto the rock and presented with a big leaf.

"Drink!" She grasped the leaf, feeling the thickness of it, and found a "lip' from which to drink. The water was ever so cold and tasted ambrosial. Real Adam's ale!

"More?" asked Zainal, looming over her.

She struggled to rise. "I can get my own water - Ohhh, no," and her voice came out just this side of a wail. Zainal's big hand pushed her back onto the stone just as she realized how weak she was.

She sipped this time and was able to take in more of her surroundings. Someone was chipping rocks?

She looked around and saw Slav and Coo hammering a hole out of the slab of rock not far from the fire. They were on an outcropping that edged yet another of the fields, a metre above ground level.

Large-leaved plants formed a bit of a canopy over the portion of the cliff, affording them some shade. Beyond this small campsite she saw the spray from a little cataract that spilled off the rock and down into a pool, then on down across the field. A crop field, she noticed.

Looking back, she realized with a start of amazement, they were making a rock cauldron. On the far side of the campfire were the limp carca.s.ses of rock-squatters and some other smallish beasties she hadn't seen before - six-legged - which, she thought idly, would make skinning them tedious. Then Zainal knelt to perform that task. Rather deliberately, she thought, he gathered up the entrails and threw them off, onto the field below.

"Zainal," said Slav and pointed to the now sizeable hole they had chipped into the rock.

"Water," Zainal said, and Slav and Coo, reaching up to pluck more big leaves from the trees shading them, made several trips each.

When the hole had been filled to within a handspan of the top, Zainal threw in the dissected joints of the animals and Coo added some roots, similar to the ones already in use at the cave. Then Zainal, deftly using a forked stick, started transferring hot rocks into the improvised stew pot.

Kris was delighted and clapped her hands that someone was making use of her suggestion. She reached about her and gathered up more stones which she piled in the centre of the fire. They'd probably need a lot to get the stew cooked enough.

Full dark and first moonrise had occurred before they were able to eat, using twigs like chopsticks to get the pieces from pot to leaf. A little salt would have made it even more palatable but hot food in the stomach was enough of an improvement in itself over dry, hard rations no matter how nutritious.

When they had eaten as much as they could, Coo covered the "pot' with a flat rock, wiping his hands as any human would for the finish of a good job.

"Slav, first moonset," Zainal said. "Then Kris, to second moonset. I third, Coo, final.

No-one argued but Kris was glad to have a long enough sleep to restore her energy. She visited the waterfall, drank and then, unfastening the boots, presented her swollen, tired feet to the cascade. She had to set her teeth against the pain but soon enough the abused flesh was too cold to send any other messages to her brain. She stood the cold as long as she could before she hobbled her way back to the fire. She thought her feet flesh had been reduced but she couldn't be sure, they were so numb. Coo and Slav had been off on a necessary absence, too, but they all arrived back to settle down for the night.

She unrolled her blankets, spread them and settled herself on the rocky surface, her freezing feet towards the fire. A good pile of dead material had been piled near at hand to feed the fire through the night. What primeval hold-over made her feel better for having a fire?

It also didn't matter that there was no way to cus.h.i.+on her hips and shoulders on the hard rock: she was too tired to care. Briefly her mind dwelt on the distance they would have travelled that day but she hadn't really noticed how many tally knots were on Zainal's string.

Well, a good night's sleep mended many aches.

Slav woke her and the first thing she noticed was that the first moon was still visible in the sky. But it gave enough light for her to see that Slav was agitated - all the fur on his head was standing up.

He had also roused Zainal. He pointed down to the field and gestured for them to come. Whatever it was did not require either stealth or quiet.

Slav just pointed and looked at them for their reaction.

Kris wanted to throw up. Zainal simply watched the - . things: things with long tentacles and writhing hairs, and seemingly no body unless the body was still underground: the things were crawling over the intestines that he had discarded onto the field. There wasn't that much left of the entrails, for whatever was feeding on them absorbed the matter quickly and, before many minutes had pa.s.sed, there was only the gra.s.sy covering left, no trace of the refuse. Maybe she had l.u.s.t imagined the squirmy, wriggling roundnesses that had feasted.

Zainal was nodding his head as if this was what he had expected.

Kris swallowed. Was that what had happened to those who had bled on the other field? And the bodies that had been left on the one she had awakened on?

"Neat," she said softly. "An internal garbage collection!

Sure keeps the neighbourhood clean. And those are not "boy" words." In the moonlight his teeth showed whitely "You knew?" she asked him.

"A thinking."

"Thought, you mean.

"Think, thought?"

"Right."

"Sleep now. Show's over." Now where had Zainal picked up that one? Kris wondered as she returned to the warmth of her blankets.

She sighed, maybe she should stay awake and give Slav l.u.s.t that much more uninterrupted rest. But she was asleep again so quickly and without a single dream - until Slav roused her, to a moonless sky.

She stood her watch, walking the perimeters of their rocky outcropping. Was that why Zainal had picked this camp? Or was it because they could make a stew pot in rock? Not that she didn't put it past this planet to have rockdwellers of horrific abilities, too.

There was no sign of any further activity on the ground, however. And she was a little tempted to throw another piece of garbage down there to see what happened: the sort of compulsion one has to be sure that what one saw was just as horrible the second time as the first.

Night time and silence were great aids to imagination and she had to keep her mind firmiy on the positive things: she was alive, her stomach was full, she was as safe as anyone else in the camp, even if this planet had too many anomalies and mysteries to give anyone peace of mind. So, to keep from thinking of the wrong things, she reviewed all the camping trips she'd ever made the stone pot was a good notion to see if she could remember any other "do-ables'. A knife, a hatchet, a cup and a blanket were not much to survive on, with, by. Not that they hadn't been doing pretty well with just that basic equipment. But there were so many things they lacked. A pail to carry water in, a frying pan to cook food in, a fork or two would be right handy. Why, when she needed it the most, did she not have her Swiss Army knife?

Boy, that item would be worth its weight in platinum!

Of course, there were spare blades back at the main caves. Wasn't there someone at the camp who thought he could manipulate blades into other useful tools? Her stomach began to rumble. d.a.m.n this planet!

Even meal times were skewed. She slowly ate half a ration bar.

Nowhere near as tasty as that stew.

Despite such a positive bout of thinking, she was glad enough to rouse Zainal to take over sentinel duty The next morning Zainal had already heated up the remainder of last night's stew for breakfast and a hearty one it was - to fill night-empty stomachs. They cleaned up the leftovers, sopping up the last of the juices with another ration bar. Kris was stuffed but she'd work it off soon enough.

She asked Zainal how far they had travelled the day before and he showed her the tally string. She whistled appreciatively: they'd made forty klicks, no mean feat when you considered the ups and downs they'd had to negotiate. Her feet, which she had bathed again in cold water, certainly knew they'd walked that far. Maybe she shouldn't have asked.

It made her feel tired to think she'd trekked that far.

Zainal kicked out the fire and used the stew pot rocks to make a cairn before he signalled them all to move out.

"Where are we heading for today?"

"Circle," he said, gesturing a wide arc, and ending with his finger pointing to the cairn. "Find what is find."

"What we can discover, find, see, know." Kris had never thought of herself as a pedagogue but she had this intense itch to correct Zainal and improve his language skills.

Thank goodness he was amenable to learn-as-you-go.

They jumped down off the outcroppmg and made their way across the field. Zainal moderated his pace from yesterday's stride but not by much. Maybe his feet hurt, too? How much walking did a s.p.a.ce trooper get to do?

Coo found some green globes in one of the hedges, which he gobbled juicily, humming happily to himself but Slav curled his upper lip in distaste - a process which fascinated Kris, as Slav really did curl his lip up and into a fold above his uneven set of teeth. She wondered again how Rugarians kept from seriously biting the insides of their lips with such dental equipment.

Everyone kept their eyes open, surveying behind them and above them, especially when they were out in the open. A rear-view mirror would have been right handy, Kris thought. Dead things got sucked into the ground at night but clearly the avian critters patrolled by day for their sustenance on things that moved.

"3' The fields were endless on this gently rolling terrain.

Streams were laid on at such intervals that Kris's earlier wish for a canteen was redundant. There were no roads, no bridgs, no fly-overs, nothing more serious than rather abrupt little hillocks of stone that seemed to rise straight up out of the ground. She'd seen something similar somewhere on Earth but it took her some time to dredge up Ethiopia from her memory. Most of the hillocks were bare but a few seemed to have caught enough soil to support bushes, and one or two were crowned with the almost-trees that baby bushes became if they had a chance to live long enough.

Then they came to a whole series of fields that had recently been harvested. No track to tell them what direction the harvesters had come from or gone to.

Although the direction would take them out of the circular loop Zainal had proposed they make, they followed the harvesting signs.

They heard it before they saw it and only had time to take cover before the mechanical gadget floated over the intervening hedge in the very next field.

"Do we stand or run?" Kris whispered hoa.r.s.ely to Zainal. He shrugged but he was stuck as far into the hedge as he could get, and stock still. She imitated him, wincing as branches dug into the softer parts of her.

They could smell hot metal, combined with odder smells that must have been fuel - only that begged the question in Kris's mind, Who manufactured the fuel, not to mention the machiny? They waited in this position until she got a knotting cramp in one side and grimaced, trying without moving much, to relieve the spasm.

When was that mechanical going to move on? Or, and the thought pierced her with a good deal of fright, was it waiting for reinforcements? Did the machiney on this planet learn? Very carefully craning her neck up, she could see through the funny-shaped foliage of the hedge material that the Dalek hadn't moved a smidgeon: it l.u.s.t hovered there, on the other side of the hedge.

She poked Zainal who was also watching for movement, and when he carefully turned his head to her, she raised her eyebrows in query.

Just then Coo came alert - not that the Deski hadn't been tense with the waiting. He turned his glance down the field and very carefully pointed out a direction. Something was coming for them? The fliers always seemed to come out of the sun at them. What would be coming up the hill? And should they leave? If they could, with the mechanical monster an arm's length away. And if they did make a run for it, where would they go? There wasn't even a hillock close enough that they could scramble up.

Kris didn't like this at all.

She liked it even less when Coo let out a whimper and pointed with more agitation down the hill.

The things moved so fast that Kris barely saw the glint of them in the sun when they were upon them - and -shooting their little darts.

She felt the p.r.i.c.k and she lost consciousness from one moment to the next.

She just avoided tripping over a sleeping beastie of some

Chapter Six.

A hand rocking her shoulder roused her from the stupor caused by the drugged dart.

"Kris, wake up." Zainal's voice.

"Lemme sleep." She ached and she was so-o-o-o tired.

"No, we go now or not.

That brought recent events back and she shot up so fast she nearly cracked her head on Zainal's as he knelt beside her.

It was dark all around, but she could make out both Slav and Coo, and then the odd stamping and heavy breathing, as well as animal smells, gave her another clue. They'd been dumped in a barn?

Cla.s.sified as animals by the mechanical? She didn't know whether she was amused or indignant.

"Water?" And Zainal handed her a full cup which she sipped to revive her parched mouth and throat.