About the Book
When the Catteni ships descended on earth it was one of the most terrifying experiences humankind had ever known. Kris Bjornsen, along with thousands of others, found herself herded by forcewhips into the hold of giant spaceships to be transported to the slave compounds of an alien planet. And even then it wasn’t over. For, after a partially successful escape attempt, Kris was once more shipped across space – to an apparently empty and untamed planet. The Catteni just dumped an assorted load of humans and aliens on the strange world and left them to see what would happen.
Brilliantly the refugees began to organize themselves into a pattern of survival. The planet was eerie and not as empty as it seemed. For someone – something – had built giant storage barns – the planet was being used as a huge larder – for an entity they could not comprehend.
As Kris and her patrol set out to explore the enigmatic world she had yet another problem to contend with – the presence of Zainal, the high-ranking patrician Catteni who had been abandoned with the rest of them. Zainal was strong, brilliant, and … kind, and Kris was puzzled by his presence, his personality, and above all by the tenuous tie she felt towards this man – who was not a man but one of the hated Catteni.
About the Author
Auspiciously born on April Fool’s Day, 1926, Anne Inez McCaffrey was the second of three children and the only daughter.
She, like so many of her time, was shaped by the two World Wars and the Depression. Her father, George Herbert McCaffrey had served as a lieutenant in the First World War and after the war helped the Polish set up their government before returning home to marry Anne Dorothy McElroy.
Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey was a very talented woman with a decent touch of what the family came to call ‘the Sight’. Just before the very worst of the stock market Crash in 1929, she pulled all her money out. Her husband, less trusting of such things, did not.
When not drilling the children in the backyard or maintaining his reserve status with the Army, the ‘Kernel’ – as he called himself – indulged in gardening. He was also a great reader and one of Anne’s first memories was of him at the far end of the hallway reading Kipling’s Barrack-room Ballads while she was sick with scarlet fever.
As Anne got older, she learned to ride horses and thus began a lifelong equestrian love affair.
When the Second World War broke out, the Kernel reported immediately to the draft board, offering his services. Elder brother Hugh had already joined the Army and was stationed in Hawaii, desperately trying to get off the island and go to Officer Candidate School.
During the worst of the Battle of Britain when ‘the Few’ were all that stood between the English and imminent invasion, Anne developed a sense of rapport with the plucky young Princess Elizabeth who, with her family, endured the German ‘Blitz’ on London – Anne being just twenty days the Princess’ elder. And with that was planted the seed that would grow into Dragonflight.
Anne’s little brother, Kevin, was not expected to live. He’d contracted osteomyelitis and had, for several years, been at death’s door. Anne’s mother took charge of caring for ‘Kevie’ which left Anne herself to be sent down south to Stuart Hall School for girls. As a Yankee, and a Catholic to boot, Anne found Stuart Hall not the best of matches. She turned heads and gained the ire of the Dean by insisting on being allowed to go to the local movie theater to see Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ‘Tarzan’.
Kevin did live thanks to the newly-developed penicillin and went on to enjoy a long life. The family was reunited when ‘the Kernel’ returned from his years in the European Theatre of Operations (ETO) but now a man so worn by the cares of war that his two younger children passed him by as they were searching for him among the returnees.
Anne graduated from Radcliffe College, cum laude, and while studying Slavonic languages, she’d participated in several theatre productions. It was at this stage in her life that Anne decided she really wanted to be an opera singer.
She met Horace Wright Johnson, who preferred to be called Wright. Wright, a very handsome man with a great voice, wooed her with The Beggar’s Opera to such effect that they married.
The Kernel went to Japan to help set up their government and volunteered to go along with the UN group to Korea when war broke out there. He contracted Tuberculosis and was returned to the States in 1953.
Alec Anthony Johnson was born August 29th, 1952 and was less than a year old when the Kernel returned. After her first visit to her father in hospital, it appears that little Alec caught a diminished (and treatable) form of TB but Anne was forbidden to return to her dying father for fear of a more serious re-infection. She didn’t have the heart to tell her father that his first grandchild had been infected and the Kernel was deeply hurt that she wouldn’t come see him again. He wrote her out of his Will.
Anne wrote The Ship Who Sang as her catharsis over the death of her father.
Second son Todd was born in April 1956 after a ten months’ gestation. Originally scheduled for March 23rd, young master Johnson knew when he was on to a good thing and clung to the womb for an additional month. When the doctors suggested that he might be stillborn, Anne waved them off. Still, the amniotic fluid was all gone and he was born a wrinkled, yellow baby, called ‘the Chinaman’ by the nurses on staff. They were worried and immediately started pumping him full of liquids until they could finally say, ‘Congratulations, Mrs Johnson! He peed!’
On their third try, the Johnsons produced a beautiful baby girl, Georgeanne Johnson – her name being the sum of her maternal grandparents’ names. When first seen by Uncle Hugh, he said, ‘What a gorgeous George!’ And from that was born her life-long nickname, Gigi.
Wright worked in public relations for DuPont and when his job offered him a six-month stint in Dusseldorf, Germany, the whole family went. Here Anne met up with a voice coach and worked assiduously to develop her talent as an operatic soprano. Sadly, the coach insisted upon overworking a part of her register with the result that her higher range was forever spoiled and her dreams of opera stardom dashed. Years later, she turned this bitter disappointment into a story, Crystal Singer.
Returning from Europe Anne re-established contacts within the science fiction writing community. At one point she was brought aside by James Blish who asked her why she’d stopped writing. ‘You’ve written one beautiful story, please don’t stop!’
On the way home, Anne thought to herself, ‘Jim Blish says I can write! Jim Blish says I can write! Jim Blish says I can write!’ Enthused, she returned to her writing, producing the short story, The Ship Who Mourned.
In 1965, the family moved up to Sea Cliff, Long Island, following Wright’s job. Anne started working on a novelette, Weyr Search. Her agent, Virginia Kidd, read it and said, ‘Oh, Anne! Do please finish it!’
Weyr Search was followed by Dragonrider and, also by her first full-length novel, Restoree. The ‘Ship’ stories continued and were collected into the anthology, The Ship Who Sang. Anne wrote another novel, Decision at Doona.
Betty Ballantine at Ballantine Books bought all her novels and bought Dragonflight when it was finished. Dragonflight incorporated both Weyr Search and Dragonrider plus new material.
At first, Wright was intrigued by and supportive of Anne’s success; as time went on, less so. Famously he said, ‘You’ll never pay a phone bill with your writing!’
For various reasons, their marriage slid into disarray and Anne finally decided that she had to get a divorce. But where to go? How to live?
She’d been on a trip to Ireland in 1968 with her Aunt Gladdie and loved it. Harry Harrison (of Soylent Green fame) regaled her with the lure of the Irish artists’ tax exemption. The cost of living was much lower in Ireland than on Long Island or in Los Angeles, her other possibility.
And so, with her two youngest kids – her eldest now starting college – she departed for Ireland in August 1970.
Anne and the two children lived in a rented, suburban house in south County Dublin. The kids were already enrolled in nearby Avoca & Kingston School. Once settled, Anne re-wrote Dragonquest, and finished two gothic romances, The Mark of Merlin, and Ring of Fear, and took herself and her two kids on their first journey to England and Wales over the 1971 Easter Spring Break, taking in the English Eastercon, held that year in Worcester. The convention was great, Anne made many friends and afterwards the family toured around, down to Stonehenge and through other beautiful countryside, wending back up through Wales’ scenic but seriously twisty roads.
Next year found them living in a Georgian mansion, Meadowbrook House, and Anne trying – and failing – to write the story of Menolly. ‘It just wouldn’t write!’ she complained. She did manage to complete Cooking Out Of This World and other stories – it was here that she penned The Smallest Dragonboy -but times were tight. Fortunately, her eldest son Alec came over from the United States and took up trawling. As a fisherman he could bring home a share of the catch and the family dined on Monkfish and other rarities. Still, there was a great deal of truth to Gigi’s, ‘Gee, Mom, wouldn’t it be nice to have pancakes for dinner because we wanted them?’
At Meadowbrook House, Anne finally had the room for her beloved horse, Mr Ed.
Beautiful Meadowbrook House was proceeded by Site #11, Rochestown Avenue, and then by the slightly more spacious 79 Shanganagh Vale. Anne’s mother had decided to join her daughter in Ireland and was living with the family at the Rochestown Avenue house. It was then that Anne was invited to be Guest of Honor at Boskone, the New England Science Fiction Association’s (NESFA) annual convention in Boston. They would fly her out, pay her room, and treat her wonderfully. Best yet, NESFA had a tradition that the Guest of Honor would write a short something to be published by their small press – and would she be willing to write a Dragon story for them? Money was very tight right through to 1975 so Boskone’s up-front fee was quite welcome. As an added bonus, her publisher had arranged for her first signing tour in the States.
The downside came on the home front. Anne’s mother, who had moved into her own separate apartment when the difficulties of mixing teens and tinnitus-afflicted seniors became apparent, was found one morning, collapsed – a stroke had crippled her entire left side. Anne’s mother had a second stroke and passed away. Anne was distraught, saying, ‘She wouldn’t have wanted to live that way’.
Anne could never find A Time When she could write the novelette for Boskone, and that’s how its name came about. (That story was later to form the first part of the New York Times’ bestselling novel, The White Dragon.) However, Anne did finish the story for Boskone and it sold well, and she won the prestigious E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith Award, her third major award. The signing tour was a success. Royalties flowed in – enough to turn the telephone back on.
Things started to look up. But the booster-rocket for her career came when Beth Blish, daughter of James Blish and Virginia Kidd (Anne’s agent), suggested that Anne consider writing a Young Adult book on Pern. This time, when it came to writing Menolly, Anne had a ready-made template to hand: Derval Diamond. Derval was one of a growing contingent of teenagers who Anne welcomed into her home, short of supplies though it might be. There were always enough tea bags, instant coffee, milk, and sugar to make do. Sometimes there were biscuits, too.
With Derval as a model Anne wrote Dragonsong. It was finished in 1975, and published in 1976. She and the publisher – Atheneum – quickly agreed on a sequel which became Dragonsinger. Perhaps more than any, these two books contributed to the ever-growing and always-loving fan base that surrounds Anne’s Dragonriders of Pern® series.
Buoyed by so much and distracted by the fact that the lovely rental home of 79 Shanganagh Vale was discovered to be suffering from a severe structural failure (the middle wall running the length of the house was built on nothing), Anne decided to reach for her biggest dream – a home of her own.
She found it in a marvellous four-bedroom bungalow house in what was then the wilds of County Wicklow, in Kilquade. She is buried not far from there. Anne named her home Dragonhold, and it was there that she finished The White Dragon, picking up from where she’d left off with A Time When. Michael Whelan’s gorgeous cover sold that book and put it on the New York Times bestseller list.
In 1984, Anne bought a farm, Ballyvolan Farm and established Dragonhold Stables there, which Derval managed. Anne decided that her farm was too far from her home and so, with typical directness, she decided to build a home – to her design – on lands of the farm. It required a certain ‘finesse’ with the county planning board, including a fair bit of excavation so that the house wouldn’t mar the view (according to the county council) and thus it acquired its name, Dragonhold-Underhill.
There Anne lived the rest of her life, becoming a grandmother to four grandchildren and remaining a ’universal mum’ to many men and women, young and old, near and far. Between writing and living, Anne travelled abroad to promote her works or gain more awards, including the prestigious SFWA Nebula Grandmaster Award, induction in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Literary Achievement Award for Young Adult Literature, and a further slew of honors too lengthy to recall but all gratefully received by the green-eyed Dragonlady.
Also by Anne McCaffrey
Anne McCaffrey’s books can be read individually or as series. However, for greatest enjoyment the following sequences are recommended:
The Dragon Books
DRAGONFLIGHT
DRAGONQUEST
DRAGONSONG
DRAGONSINGER: HARPER OF PERN
THE WHITE DRAGON
DRAGONDRUMS
MORETA: DRAGONLADY OF PERN
NERILKA’S STORY & THE COELURA
DRAGONSDAWN
THE RENEGADES OF PERN
ALL THE WEYRS OF PERN
THE CHRONICLES OF PERN: FIRST FALL
THE DOLPHINS OF PERN
RED STAR RISING: THE SECOND CHRONICLES OF PERN
(published in US as DRAGONSEYE)
THE MASTERHARPER OF PERN
THE SKIES OF PERN
and with Todd McCaffrey:
DRAGON’S KIN
DRAGON’S FIRE
DRAGON HARPER
DRAGON’S TIME
SKY DRAGONS
by Todd McCaffrey:
DRAGONSBLOOD
DRAGONHEART
DRAGONGIRL
Crystal Singer Books
THE CRYSTAL SINGER
KILLASHANDRA
CRYSTAL LINE
Talent Series
TO RIDE PEGASUS
PEGASUS IN FLIGHT
PEGASUS IN SPACE
Tower and the Hive Sequence
THE ROWAN
DAMIA
DAMIA’S CHILDREN
LYON’S PRIDE
THE TOWER AND THE HIVE
Catteni Sequence
FREEDOM’S LANDING
FREEDOM’S CHOICE
FREEDOM’S CHALLENGE
FREEDOM’S RANSOM
Individual Titles
RESTOREE
DECISION AT DOONA
THE SHIP WHO SANG
GET OFF THE UNICORN
THE GIRL WHO HEARD DRAGONS
BLACK HORSES FOR THE KING
NIMISHA’S SHIP
A GIFT OF DRAGONS
The Petaybee novels
written in collaboration with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
POWERS THAT BE
POWER LINES
POWER PLAY
CHANGELINGS
MAELSTROM
DELUGE
The Acorna Series
ACORNA (with Margaret Ball)
ACORNA’S QUEST (with Margaret Ball)
ACORNA’S PEOPLE (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S WORLD (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S SEARCH (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S REBELS (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S TRIUMPH (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S CHILDREN: FIRST WARNING (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S CHILDREN: SECOND WAVE (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S CHILDREN: THIRD WATCH (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
and published by Corgi Books
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
A Random House Group Company
www.transworldbooks.co.uk
FREEDOM’S LANDING
A CORGI BOOK : 9780552160407
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448152155
Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, a division of Transworld Publishers
Bantam Press edition published 1995
Corgi edition published 1996
Copyright © Anne McCaffrey 1995
The Estate of Anne McCaffrey, Literary Trustee, Jay A. Katz
Anne McCaffrey has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction, and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found
at:www.randomhouse.co.uk
The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
L’envoi
Also by Anne McCaffrey
Copyright
About the Author
This book is dedicated to
the memory of a special fan friend,
Judy Voros
Hope Heaven has chocolate
(but it must!)
Chapter One
KRISTIN BJORNSEN WONDERED if summer on the planet Barevi could possibly be the only season. There had been remarkably little variation in temperature in the nine months since she’d arrived there. She’d been four months in what appeared to be the single, sprawling city of the planet during her enslavement and now had racked up five months of comparative freedom – albeit a parlous hand-to-mouth survival – in this jungle, after her escape from the city in the flitter she’d stolen.
Her sleeveless one-piece tunic was made of an indestructible material, but it wouldn’t suit cold weather. The scooped neckline was indecently low and the skirt ended midway down her long thighs. It was closely modelled, in fact, after the miniskirted sheath she’d been wearing to class that spring morning when the Catteni ships had descended on Denver, one of fifty cities across the world that had been used as object lessons by the conquerors. One moment she was on her way to the college campus; the next, she was one of thousands of astonished and terrified Denverites being driven by force-whips up the ramp of a spaceship that made the Queen Elizabeth look like a tub toy. Once past the black maw of the ship, Kris, with all the others, swiftly succumbed to the odourless gas. When she and her fellow prisoners had awakened, they were in the slave compounds of Barevi, waiting to be sold.
Kris aimed the avocado-sized pit of the gorupear she had just eaten at the central stalk of a nearby thicket of purple-branched thorn-bushes. The bush instantly rained tiny darts in all directions. Kris laughed. She had bet it would take less than five minutes for the young bush to re-arm itself. And it had. The larger ones took longer to position new missiles. She’d had reason to find out.
Absently she reached above her head for another gorupear. Nothing from good old Terra rivalled them for taste. She bit appreciatively into the firm reddish flesh of the fruit and its succulent juices dribbled down her chin onto her tanned breasts. Tugging at the strap of her slip-tight tunic, she brushed the juice away. The outfit was great for tanning, but when winter comes? And should she concentrate on gathering nuts and drying gorupears on the rocks by the river for the cold season? She wrinkled her nose at the half-eaten pear. They were mighty tasty but a steady diet of them left her hungering for other basic dietary requirements. By watching the creatures of the jungle, she’d been able to guess what might be edible for her. Remembering her survival course gave her the clue to superficial testing on her skin. She’d had two violent reactions to stuff that the ground animals seemed to devour in quantity, but the avians had guided her to other comestibles. Her term in the food preparation unit of her ‘master’ had given her other commodities to look for – though few of those grew wild in this jungle. Still, there were little yellow-scaled fish from the river that had provided her with both protein and exercise.
A low-pitched buzz attracted her attention. She got to her feet, balanced carefully on the high limb of the tree. Parting the branches, she peered up at the cloudless sky. Two of the umpteen moons that circled Barevi were visible in the west. Below them, dots that gave off sparkles of reflected sunlight were swooping and diving.
The boys have called another hunt, she mused to herself and, still smiling, leant against the tree trunk to take advantage of her grandstand seat. The jungle had quite a few really big, really savage creatures which she had managed to avoid, making like a jungle heroine and taking to the trees and vines. By dint of hard work and sweat, she had used the useful tools from the kit on the flitter to tie vines to trees that led to and from her favourite food-browsing spots and to the river. Her escape routes were all aerial.
Before she had taken absence without leave from her ‘situation’, Kris had done her homework on more than what was edible on Barevi. She had picked up a good bit of the lingua Barevi, a polyglot language, made up from the words of six or seven of the languages spoken by the slaves and used by the ‘masters’ to convey orders to their minions. She had gleaned some information about those who had invaded Earth, the Catteni. They were not, for one thing, indigenous to this world but came from a much heavier planet nearer galactic centre. They were one of the mercenary-explorer races employed by a vast federation. They had only recently colonized Barevi, using it as a clearing house for spoils acquired by looting unsuspecting non-federation planets, and a rest-and-relaxation centre for their great ships’ crews. After years of the free-fall of space and lighter-gravity planets, Catteni found it difficult to return to their heavy, depressing home world. During her brief enslavement, Kris had heard the Catteni boast of dying everywhere in the galaxy except Catten. The way they ‘played’, Kris thought to herself, was rough enough to ensure that they died young as well as far from Catten.
Huge predators roamed the unspoiled plains and jungles of Barevi, and the Catteni considered it great sport to stand up to a rhinolike monster with only a single spear. That is, Kris remembered with a grim smile, when they weren’t brawling among themselves over imagined slurs and insults. Two slaves, friends of hers, had been crushed under the massive bodies of Catteni during a free-for-all.
Since she had come to the valley, she had witnessed half a dozen encounters between the rhinos and the Catteni. Accustomed to a much heavier gravity than Barevi, the Catteni were able to execute incredible manoeuvres as they softened their prey for the kill. The poor creatures had less chance than Spanish bulls and, in all the hunts Kris had seen, only one man had been injured and that had been a slight graze.
As the flitters neared, she realized that they were not acting like a hunting party. For one thing, one dot was considerably ahead of the others. And by God, she saw the light flashes of the trailing flitters’ forward guns firing at the ‘leader’.
Hunted and hunters were at the foot of her valley now. Suddenly black smoke erupted from the rear of the pursued flitter. It nosed upwards. It hovered reluctantly, then dived, slantingly, to strike the tumble of boulders along the river’s edge, not far from her hiding place.
Kris gasped as she saw a figure, half-leaping, half-staggering out of the badly smashed flitter. She could scarcely believe that even a Catteni could survive such a crash. Wide-eyed, she watched as he struggled to his feet, then reeled from boulder to boulder, to get away from the smouldering wreck.
With a stunningly brilliant flare, the craft exploded. Fragments whistled into the underbrush as far up the slope as her retreat, and the idiotic thorn-bushes she had recently triggered sprayed out their poison-tipped little darts.
The smoke of the burning flitter obscured her view now and Kris lost sight of the man. The other flitters had reached the wreck and were hovering over it, like so many angry King Kongish bees, swooping, diving, trying to penetrate the smoke.
An afternoon breeze swirled the black clouds about and Kris caught glimpses of the man, lurching still farther from the crash site. She saw him stumble and fall, after which he made no move to rise. Above, the bees buzzed angrily, circling the smoke and probably wondering if their prey had gone up in the explosion.
Catteni didn’t hunt each other as a rule, she told herself, surprised to find that she was halfway down from her perch. They fight like Irishmen, sure, but to chase a man so far from the city? What could he have done?
The crash had been too far away for Kris to distinguish the hunted man’s features or build. He might just be an escaped slave, like herself. If not Terran, he might be from one of the half-dozen other subjugated races that lived on Barevi. Someone who had had the guts to steal a flitter didn’t deserve to die under Catteni force-whips.
Kris made her way down the slope, careful to avoid the numerous thorn thickets that dominated these woods. She had once amused herself with the whimsy that the thorn were the gorupear’s protectors, for the two plants invariably grew close together.
At the top of the sheer precipice above the falls of the river, she grabbed the vine she had attached there for speedy descent. Once on the river bank she stuck to the dry flat rocks until she came to the stepping-stones that allowed her to cross the river below the wide pool made by the little falls. Down a gully, across another thorn-bush-filled clearing, and then she was directly above the spot where she had last seen the man.
Keeping close to the brown rocks so nearly the shade of her own tanned skin, she crossed the remaining distance. She all but tripped over him as the wind puffed black smoke down among the rocks.
‘Catteni!’ she cried, furious as she bent to examine the unconscious man and recognized the grey and yellow uniform despite its tattered and black smeared condition.
With a disdainful foot under his shoulder, she tried to turn him over. And couldn’t. The man might as well have been a boulder. She knelt and yanked his head around by the thick slate-grey hair which, in a Catteni, did not indicate age: they all had the same colour hair. Maybe he was dead?
No such luck. He was breathing. A bruise mark on his temple showed one reason for his unconscious state. For a Catteni, he was almost good-looking. Most of them tended to have brutish, coarse features but this one had a straight, almost patrician nose – even if there was a lot more of it than an elephant would want to claim – and a wide well-shaped mouth. The Catteni to whom she had been sold had had thick blubbery lips, and she’d known that Catteni were developing a sexual appetite for Terran women.
A sizzling crack jerked her head around in the direction of the wreck. The damned fools were shooting at the burning craft now. Kris looked down at the unconscious man, wondering what on earth he had done to provoke such vindictive thoroughness. They sure wanted him good and dead.
The barrage pulverized what was left of the flitter, leaving the fire no fuel. The wind, laden with coarse dust, blew an acrid stench from the wreckage. The man stirred and vainly tried to raise himself, only to sink back to the ground with a groan. Kris saw the flitters circling to land on the plateau below the wreck.
‘Going to case the scene of the crime, huh?’
It was completely illogical, Kris told herself, to help a Catteni simply because there were others of his race out to get him. But … She backtracked his route, just in case he had left any marks for them to follow. She went as far as she could on the bare rock. Where dirt began, ash had settled in a thick layer, obliterating any tracks he might have made. After all, the Catteni might stumble on her if they did a thorough search, thinking their victim had escaped the crash.
He had got to his feet when she returned to him, dazed, heavy arms hanging by his sides as he tried to get his eyes to focus. She attempted to guide him but it was like trying to direct a mountain to move.
‘Come on, Mahomet,’ she urged softly. ‘Just walk like a nice little boy to the river and I’ll duck you in. Cold water should bring you round.’
A sharp distant gabble of voices made her start nervously. God, those Catteni had got up that rock-face in a hurry. She’d forgotten they could take prodigious leaps on this light-gravity planet.
‘They’re coming. Follow me,’ she said in lingua Barevi.
He groaned again, shaking his head to clear his senses. He turned towards her, his great yellow eyes still dazed with shock. She would never get used to such butter-coloured pupils with black irises.
‘This way! Quickly!’ She urgently tugged at him. If he didn’t shake his tree-stump legs, she was going to leave him. Good Samaritans on Barevi had better not get caught by Catteni.
She pulled at his arm and he seemed to make a decision. He lurched forward, one great hand grasping her shoulder in a vice-like grip. They reached the river bank, still ahead of the searchers. But Kris groaned as she realized that the barely conscious man would never be able to navigate the stepping-stones.
The shouts behind them indicated that the others were fanning out to search the rocks. Urgently she grabbed several fingers of his big hand, leading him to the base of the falls.
‘If you can’t float, it’s just too damned bad,’ she said grimly. She dropped his hand, stepped back and leaping forward again, shouldered him into the water.
She dived in, right beside him, and when he continued to sink, she grabbed and caught him by the thick hair. Fortunately, the water made even a solid Catteni manageable. Exerting all her strength and skill as a swimmer, she got his head above water and held it up with a chinlock.
By sheer good luck, they had surfaced in the space between the arc of the falls and the cliff, the curtain of water shielding them from view. As the Catteni began to struggle in her grasp, the five hunters leapt spectacularly into view in the clearing by the pool. Her ‘Mahomet’ was instantly alert and, instead of struggling, began to tread water beside her.
The Catteni were arguing with each other now and each seemed to be issuing conflicting orders to the others.
Mahomet released himself from her chinhold, his yellow eyes never leaving the party on the bank. They watched, hands making as little movement as possible although the falls would conceal any ripples their motions made.
One Catteni, after a heated debate, crossed the wide pool in a fantastic – to Kris – standing leap. He and another began to move downstream, carefully examining both banks and casually surmounting up-ended barge-sized boulders with no effort. The other three went charging back the way they had come, still arguing.
After an endless interval, during which the icy water chilled Kris to the bone, the refugee touched her shoulder and nodded towards the shore. But when she realized that he was going to head back the way they had come, she shook her head emphatically, pointing to the other side.
‘Safe! That way,’ she shouted at him over the noise of the falls. He frowned. ‘I’ve a flitter to hide in.’ She jabbed her finger in the direction of her hidden vehicle. Stunned as she suddenly realized what she had just said, she stared at him. ‘Oh, God!’
He raised an eyebrow in surprise, and she hoped for one long moment that he had not understood what she had said. But he had, and now his yellow eyes gleamed at her in the gloom with a different sort of interest.
He’s like a great lion, Kris thought and almost choked on fear.
‘You have aided a Catteni,’ he said in a deep rumbling voice in the lingua Barevi. ‘You shall not suffer for that!’
Kris wasn’t so sure when she tried to climb out of the river and found herself numb with cold, and strengthless. He, on the other hand, strode easily out of the water. He looked down at her ineffectual struggles, frowning irritably. Then, with no apparent effort, he curled the long fingers of one hand around her upper arm and simply withdrew her from the water, supporting her until she got her balance.
Shivering, she looked up at him. God, he was big: the tallest Catteni she had yet seen. She had inherited the height of her Swedish father and stood five-foot ten in her bare feet. She had topped most of the Catteni she had encountered by several inches, but his eyes tilted downwards to regard her. And his shoulders were as broad as the scoop of a JCB.
‘Where is this flitter?’ he demanded curtly.
She pointed, furious that she obeyed him so instantly and that she couldn’t control the chattering of her teeth or the trembling of her body. He reached for her hand, relaxing his grip a little at her involuntary gasp of pain.
Replace ‘grubby paws’ with ‘high-gravity paws’, she told herself in an effort to keep up her spirits as she stepped out in front of him.
‘I’ll have to lead the way through the thorns,’ she said. ‘Or maybe thorns don’t bother Catteni hides?’ she added pertly.
To her surprise, he grinned at her.
‘It is perhaps fortunate for you that they do.’
As she turned, she realized that she had never seen a Catteni smile before. She noticed, too, that he was following carefully in her footsteps. It was good to know that he was no more anxious to disturb the thorn-bushes with their vicious little barbs than she was.
They were halfway to the hidden flitter when both heard, off to the right in the valley, the staccato volley of loud Catteni voices.
Mahomet paused, dropping to a half-crouch, instinctively angling his body so that he did not touch the close-growing vegetation. He listened, and although the words were too distorted for Kris to catch, he evidently understood them. A humourless smile touched his lips and his eyes gleamed with a light that frightened Kris.
‘They have seen movement here. Hurry!’ he said in a low voice.
Kris broke into a jog trot; the twisting path made a faster pace unwise. When they broke into the dell just before the extensive thicket, she paused.
‘Where? Are you lost?’ he asked.
‘Through those bushes. Watch. And when I say move, move!’
He frowned sceptically as she picked up a handful of small stones. With a practised ease and careful gauge, she threw in a broad cast to left and right, watching and counting the thorn sprays to be sure she had triggered every bush. To be on the safe side, she scooped up one more handful of pebbles and threw that in a wider arc. No further thorns showered.
‘Move!’ His reaction time was so much faster than hers that he was halfway across the clearing before she got to the v. She dashed in front of him. ‘We have five minutes to cross before they re-arm.’
An expression that was almost respectful crossed his face. Impatiently, she tugged at him and then began to weave her way among the bushes, following her well-memorized private route through this obstacle. When she made the last turn and he saw the flitter, its nose cushioned in the heavy cluster of thorn-thicket limbs, he gave what Kris assumed was a Catteni chuckle.
She waved open the flitter door and regally gestured for him to enter. He walked straight to the instrument panel, grunting as he activated the main switch.
‘Half a tank of fuel,’ he muttered and cursorily checked the other readings. He glanced up at the transparent top, camouflaged by the intertwining leafy limbs, at the bed she had made herself on the deck, at the utensils she had fashioned from spare parts in the lockers.
‘So it was you who stole the commander’s personal car,’ he said, looking intently at her.
Kris jerked her chin up.
‘At least I landed it in one piece,’ she said.
At that he gave one bark of laughter.
‘Dropping it in a thicket like this?’
‘On purpose!’
‘You’re one of the new species?’
‘I’m a Terran,’ she said with haughty pride, her stance marred by a convulsive shiver.
‘Thin-skinned species,’ he remarked. He looked at her chest, noticed the slight heave from her recent exertions that made her breasts strain against the all too inadequate covering and slowly started to stroke her shoulder with one finger. His touch was unexpectedly feather-light – and more. ‘Soft to the touch,’ he said absently. ‘I haven’t tried a Terran yet …’
‘And you’re not going to start on this one,’ she said, jumping as far away from him as she could in the confines of the cabin.
His expression altered from bemusement to annoyance.
‘I will if I so choose.’
‘I saved your life!’
‘Which is why I intend to reward you suitably …’
‘By raping me?’ She felt for and found a heavy metal tool. Not that such a comparative ‘toothpick’ would do a Catteni much damage but she was determined to try. A Catteni was not her idea of a candidate for the role of lover.
‘Raping you?’ His surprise was ludicrous.
‘Did you think Terran women would faint with joy to be had by the likes of you?’ she said, speaking in a low menacing voice and resetting her grip on the tool.
‘None have complained …’ He broke off, ducking with incredible reflexes to a crouch as they both heard harsh cursing.
In the next instant, he had one large hand over her mouth and was pinning her body to his like a fly to sticky paper. The metal tool dangled uselessly in her hand. Neither of them had closed the flitter door and the vrrh vrrh as the thorn-bushes released their darts was plainly audible. There were loud exclamations of disgust and further cursings. Screwing her eyes around, she could just see the Catteni’s face and his left eye dancing with malicious amusement.
An authoritative voice uttered a rough command, and even Kris understood that it would probably translate ‘get the hell out of here. Nothing came this way.’
Mahomet shifted her slightly, looking down at her face as he dropped his hand from her mouth, a gesture that was in part a challenge for her to scream. She glared back at him. He knew perfectly well that she stood to lose more if she did cry out.
They stayed like that until wildlife noises were again to be heard outside the flitter. Then he stood her back on her feet and glanced about him again.
‘This car has been gone five months. Why have you stayed so long alone? Are there others of you near by?’ He peered out of the one portion of the wraparound window that had a view of more than branches.
‘Just me.’ She still had the metal tool in her hand and was wondering if she could hit him hard enough to knock him unconscious. ‘Why were other Catteni so bent on catching you?’
‘Oh,’ and he shrugged negligently, ‘a tactical error. I was forced to kill their patrol leader. He had insulted a brother emassi,’ and now she caught the syllables of the strange word. ‘As I was without allies, I withdrew.’
‘He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day?’
‘The next day,’ he corrected her absently.
‘The next day!’
‘Certainly. It is the Catteni Law that a quarrel may not be continued past the same hour of the following day. I have only to lie hidden,’ and he grinned at her, ‘until tomorrow at sun zenith and then I can return.’
‘They won’t be waiting for you?’
He shook his head violently. ‘Against the Law. Otherwise, we Catteni would quickly exterminate each other.’
‘You honestly mean to tell me that, if they can’t find you before noon tomorrow, they have to give up?’
He nodded.
‘Even when you killed their patrol leader?’
He looked surprised. ‘It was a fair fight.’
‘I didn’t know you Catteni fought fair.’
‘We do,’ and he bridled at her accusation, then his face cleared of irritation and he grinned. ‘Oh, you think it wasn’t fair of us to take over your planet?’
‘Precisely.’
He straddled the pilot’s chair and rested his heavily muscled forearms on the back of it, highly amused by her indignation.
‘Your planet had no defences. It was pathetically easy to subjugate.’
‘You do that a lot, then?’
‘A highly profitable business, I assure you … How have you fed yourself?’ he asked and she heard the most incredible sound coming from him, and realized that Catteni stomachs could rumble with hunger just like humans’. Oddly enough that made him seem less menacing.
‘There’s a lot edible in this forest and I fish from the river.’
‘You do?’
‘I come from an ingenious species,’ she said. ‘I’ve had no trouble at all keeping myself well fed.’
He inclined his head respectfully. ‘Have you any supplies in here?’
Deciding that she did not care to come within grabbing distance, she nodded to the basket on the control panel behind him. ‘Gorupears and the roots of a white plant that I have found quite edible.’ As he turned, she caught him wrinkling his nose and heard him sigh. ‘No diet for a Catteni, I’m sure, accustomed as you are to the best viands in the galaxy but the simple fare will stop your stomach roaring. The noise of it could give our position away.’
He did not, as she had observed some Catteni do, cram the entire pear in his mouth. He also picked up one of the roots which had a sweetish taste, not unlike a carrot, and switched from one hand to the other, taking polite mouthfuls. Finishing the first pear, he turned to her and raised his eyebrows in a polite query.
‘Thank you, no. I had just eaten when I saw the dogfight.’
‘Dogfight?’
‘A Terran term, derived from the aerial combat of fighter planes.’
‘Fighter planes?’
‘We had achieved space flight, too,’ she added, wondering as pride made her speak out, if any of the SAC units had been launched when the Catteni had invaded Terran space.
‘Ah, yes, so you had. Primitive defences but manned by brave fighters.’
Her heart sank. So often lately, the answers she discovered were not the ones she wanted to hear. One of the slaves in the compound from the Chicago area had said that surface to air missiles had been fired at the Catteni vessels. Terran national leaders had been slow to take a defensive position, not knowing who or what had penetrated so far into the atmosphere. They had dallied too long to make any difference. Bill had been wearing his Walkman and had heard the broadcasts up till the time he had been whipped into the Catteni ship. By talking amongst themselves, the captives had learnt that not all big cities had been attacked and looted: just sufficient so that the entire world recognized the superiority of the invaders. Not much consolation for those who had been abducted but enough to restore some, pride.
‘We disarmed most of them’, Mahomet went on in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘and grounded the air ships. Clumsy but showing some signs of developments to come.’
‘Thanks.’
He raised his eyebrows queringly. ‘For what?’
‘Such praise for the primitive savages!’
Then he threw back his head and indulged in a loud guffaw.
‘Ssssh, they’ll hear you. You bray like an ass!’
‘And you talk like a Catteni female!’
‘Do I take that as a compliment?’
‘You may,’ and he inclined his head in her direction, his yellow eyes twinkling in a humorous response she had never seen in other Catteni.
‘You’re not at all like the others’
‘Which others?’
‘ALL the other Catteni I’ve met, and observed.’
‘Of course I’m not. I’m Emassi,’ he said with a quiet pride, splaying his great hand across his chest in what she could interpret as a proud gesture.
‘Whatever that is.’
‘A high rank,’ he said. With a dismissive flick of fingers sticky with gorupear juice in the general direction of the city she had escaped from, he consigned the local Catteni to an inferior status. ‘I order. They obey,’ he added, making certain she understood the distinction.
‘And those trying to kill you? They obeyed?’
‘Their patrol leader’s dying words,’ he said, with a negligent shrug and a grin, ‘to make me pay for his death.’ Then he frowned, looking down at the floor as if reconsidering their import. ‘Never mind. By noon tomorrow all will revert. Now,’ and as he began to rise from the chair, intent plain on his face, Kris no longer hesitated.
With a karate-style leap, she flung herself at him, both hands on the metal tool, and brought it down with all the strength in her body on the side of his head. With a groan he collapsed to the floor.
Had she killed him? Horrified at taking a life, even that of an arrogant Catteni, she knelt beside him, noting that red blood flowed from the creased skull, and felt his throat. If he had blood, he had veins: and since he was shaped like most humanoids, he ought to have a pulse in the neck to carry blood to the brain she had just tried to smash. He had! It wasn’t even faint but a firm throb against her seeking fingers. Which quickly became sticky with the blood that pulsed from his head wound.
Oh, this would never do, she told herself. The little nasty stingers would smell blood and come searching for the source. The flitter would be unliveable. First she bound up the wound with the absorbent material she had found in the lockers. Then she carefully cleaned up the rest of the blood on his face and rubbed the exposed greyish skin with gorupear juice. That had neutralized the smell for stingers on other occasions: a handy survival tip she had serendipitously discovered on her own.
One of his massive legs had caught on the chair as he fell. It looked uncomfortable that way, and the fabric of his trousers was caught against his genitals, outlining the size of them in a way that made her acutely embarrassed for him. And affected her in the oddest way. Well, she told herself, she had no reason, really, to offend the dignity of another living being if she objected to indignities herself. Kris had a strong sense of fair play. She might have conked him to protect her virtue, but that done, she felt obliged to make him as comfortable as possible. How long would the blow keep him unconscious? And, once he regained his senses, what would he do to her? Well, she thought, she could always cite the Catteni rule about reprisals! Quite likely that rule did not apply to slaves or non-Catteni. She looked through the lockers to find something to tie him up with. There was a length of sturdy rope but no chains and that was the only sort of restraint that might prove effective against Catteni strength.
She sat down on the pilot’s chair and rethought her circumstances. It had been a tiring day. And nearly at its end. Well, what if she returned him whence he had come? With darkness falling, there’d be a fair amount of traffic back into the city so this purloined flitter might not be recognized: not after five months. How long did Catteni keep up ‘wanted’ notices? Twenty-four hours? Perhaps for Catteni emassis but not for escaped slaves – that is, if anyone had even noticed her disappearance. She switched on the controls, reassured that he had said the tank was half full. She couldn’t remember how the gauge had stood when she absconded but the little aircraft was supposed to be economical, which was why there were so many in use.
She knew the co-ordinates of the city, a good two-hour flight from here, but surely there’d be enough fuel for her to get back. No matter. She had to dump Mahomet. She’d get him to the outskirts where a limp body wouldn’t be that uncommon. Well, maybe not the outskirts where the slaves and hangers-on lived in semi-squalor, but there were all those assembly areas where Catteni held drills and public meetings. She’d been to one or two with the cook who found such displays helpful in maintaining discipline. One view of a miscreant lashed to death with the force-whips was enough for her. Enough to revive her desire to get as far away from such a discipline as possible.
–