Freedom’s Choice (34 page)

The figures began to dissolve.

“How are you called?” the judge asked, taking a quick step forward in an effort to prevent their leaving.

“You have named us Farmers. It is appropriate.” The spokesman smiled in the most benign way.

Kris mused that this entity would have been well cast as Jesus Christ.

“He is not among you?” was the thought inserted in her mind.

“Don't leave,” Zainal said, also stepping forward, one hand raised, “not yet. How do we avoid force when it is used against us? How do we free ourselves and our friends from Eosian domination?”

“Are we allowed to stay here? On your planet?” Kris jumped forward, startling Zane awake. He let out a yell.

One of the Farmers glided forward. The legs moved but the female—she appeared subtly feminine to Kris as she approached—did not make contact with the ground in an actual walk.

“They observe well.” Again a thought was inserted in her head as the being reached her and looked down at Zane. Despite Kris' attempts to soothe him, the first yell segued into soft, fearful crying. Not that she blamed Zane for reacting to the tension, the disappointment, and the fear that clogged the air around him. Certainly those were her feelings.

“We have so much to ask you. So many questions,” Easley said beseechingly.

“This is your child!” the female said, and she turned back to Kris.

Kris could no more have refused to display her son than she could have resisted the contractions that had expelled him from her womb. She turned Zane, his face reddening in baby distress, toward the entity. The entity bent over him, slid one graceful, almost transparent hand over his face, and he instantly switched to smiling contentment, burbling charmingly up at his newest admirer.

“There are many new young here,” she said, and Kris thought she sounded envious. “We are!”

“Then we may stay?” Kris asked earnestly.

“You stay. We will observe but we do not interfere.”

“May we leave?” Zainal asked, making a sphere with his hands.

“It is for your protection,” the first speaker said.

“We are grateful,” Judge Bempechat said, shooting a warning look at Zainal.

“That is more than the others were.” The thought crept into Kris' mind, and the female reversed her glide to rejoin her group.

The instant they were all together again, they disappeared.

Like zap! Kris thought, as her son gurgled happily in her arms.

Everyone started talking at once then, the main argument being that they had learned very little, and who had made the judge the spokesman, and why hadn't more questions been asked while they had the Farmers' attention? And who did Zainal think he was, demanding assistance from obvious pacifists?

Scott called for quiet. Judge Bempechat said in a humble tone that he had certainly not intended to speak for everyone but suddenly was speaking. Balenquah railed at Kris for her stupid “Hello.”

“Well, we couldn't ask them to take us to their leader, could we?” she responded, “and keep your voice down around my baby!”

“Were you going to give him to them?” Balenquah demanded.

“Don't be such an idiot. She wanted to look at him,” Kris said, and walked away from the egregious pilot. She'd thought Aarens was obnoxious, but Balenquah opened up a whole new category of insufferable.

“NOW LISTEN UP,” Scott said, raising his voice over the babble. “We are allowed to stay. That is the most important fact we needed to know, wasn't it?”

As he spoke, the sound of excited voices and the hum of air-cushion vehicles nearing the hangar could be more clearly heard.

“Hey, they came. We can stay,” Lenny Doyle was shouting as he jumped from the air-cushion and ran into the hangar. “They just appeared outside the mess hall
and—” He broke off, being close enough to see expressions. “We
can
call them Farmers,” he finished, his words trailing off. “They were here, too?”

Worrell, Leon Dane, Mayock, and two nurses were next, piling out of the air-cushion flatbed that doubled as ambulance. Their faces were wreathed with the elated grins of people big with news, which faded as they, too, realized that their experience was by no means unique.

“How many shape changers came?” Kris said into the silence.

Then the main comunit was buzzing as all lines into the office seemed to go off at once.

“Rather unusual mass hallucination then,” Dane said wryly. “Should we compare notes? We can stay, or so they said, and we can refer to them as the Farmers…”

“Since that is appropriate,” the judge added in a tone much like Leon's.

“Did we all ask the same questions?” Leon asked, looking at Scott and then Zainal.

“We'd better compare notes,” Scott said, “after we've answered those calls. Kris, Yowell, Zainal, help me with these…” and he gestured to the busy com board.

* * *

“How
many
were there?” Kris asked when there was time to review the astonishing simultaneous manifestation of Farmers to all major groups on Botany. Even the miners had had a visitation of ten.

No group of Farmers had been larger than those they had confronted. The five people on watch at the command post had been approached by three; those at the mess hall, where the majority of people had been having breakfast, had counted thirty. The hospital had been favored with fifteen.

“All at the same time?” Leon asked, astounded.

“Fifty at least, and they could not all have fit in that orbital!” Beverly said.

“That depends on how much space shape changers need,” Kris remarked.

“If they appeared to all of us, why didn't someone find out more about them?” Scott demanded, exasperated. “We all had the chance to make the confrontation substantive.”

“We all had the same chance,” Rastancil said, “but I sure couldn't get my wits to work fast enough, nor did I notice you asking leading questions, Ray.”

Despite the way Rastancil phrased it, Admiral Ray Scott took umbrage.

“Nonsense,” Kris said, “they've had a lot more practice with third-kind encounters than we have. We're young, we are,” and she giggled. “But you really think we'd get direct answers from a species that has the technology they have? We're far too young to deserve more than the few minutes they spent here with us.”

“Let us look at the positive aspects of that confrontation,” Pete Easley said, holding up a restraining hand to Scott, who seemed to be the one most offended by the lost opportunity. “We now have permission to stay. I got the distinct impression,” and he turned to Zainal for confirmation, “that we may even be able to get through the Bubble but others, like the Eosi, won't be able to.”

Zainal nodded.

“I'd like you to organize a flight to test that, Zainal. Today, if at all possible,” Scott said, grasping a point he could understand and react to. “I don't know if that advances your Phrase Three plan but…” and he shrugged.

“What did they mean, ‘That is more than the others'?” Kris asked.

Scott, Zainal, and the judge regarded her with surprise.

“When you asked to have the Bubble removed, Zainal, and the judge said we were grateful for the protection,
one of them said, ‘That is more than the others were.' Didn't you hear it?” Kris glanced around. “Was I the only one?”

“What else did you hear, Kris?” Judge Bempechat asked, smiling at her in a way that suggested that he might have had private thoughts inserted in his mind, too.

“They envy us having children,” she said, looking around. And caught Pete Easley's eyes. He smiled at her and
then
she remembered the female's remark: “This is your child!” And the female had been looking at Pete, not at Kris.

The truth will out, won't it?
Kris thought to herself, and nodded. She had been mean not to tell him before: depriving him of that knowledge out of spite. He smiled back at her, a really happy smile, before pointing at Scott, who was repeating a question aimed at her.

“I'm sorry, Ray, what did you ask me?”

“What else did you ‘hear' that we didn't?”

“I dunno,” she said with a shrug. “I never thought I was telepathic. I thought we were all hearing the same things. Did anyone else besides the judge and me get special treatment?”

“I heard plainly that they will be examining this quadrant for sentient species which have developed since their last visit,” Zainal said, looking around.

“Last visit?” Pete Easley exclaimed. And whistled.

“They have been at Deski world,” Coo said, rather proudly.

“You come off better than we humans do, then,” Judge Bempechat said, grinning broadly.

Kris noticed that Scott had been about to speak and the judge had forestalled the admiral with a much more diplomatic comment. Scott closed his mouth.

“I think,” the judge went on, reaching for pen and paper, “we had best organize that astonishing interview as best we can recall it. And insert whatever we individually
may have heard with the public comments.”

“Good idea,” Leon said.

“We might have more in the composite than we got individually,” the judge said. “We must ask the miners to do the same, and those at the command post. Everyone who met our shape-changing Farmers.”

* * *

Zainal left at midmorning, with Marrucci, Balenquah, and Beverly, to fly to the Bubble and see if it permitted them to pass.

“More importantly, come back,” Kris said stoutly, when Zainal told her they were going.

It took most of the day to transcribe the various interviews, and more information
had
been exchanged when it was all written down on paper.

“I wonder. Are they doing this sort of rehash on their way back home?” Kris said at one point in the painstaking reconstruction of who had said what, when and where.

“I doubt it,” Rastancil said. “They picked our brains quite easily, so they'd probably all know what went on everywhere else.”

“Probably as it was being done,” Worry said with a sniff. Most uncharacteristically, he had a distinctly unworried expression on his face.

Almost everyone—or at least those who worried about special problems—had been given “private” information. Leon Dane, fretting over medical problems for which he had no treatment and waiting for a chance to ask for advice, had been told which specific plants to find, and, “like some sort of a superblast into my head,” he got the method of refining and the beneficial dosages to use.

“We've already tested most of the plants as being either noxious or damned well fatal. But, of course, minute and diluted dosages of dangerous substances have often had therapeutic value if properly administered. I
just got a short hard course in the local botanical resources. Seems there's a shrub, located on that dry continent, that can provide a general anesthetic, but they would prefer us to use our one lone acupuncturist. She's to teach others her skills.”

“They liked us making bricks,” Sandy Areson said, “and I now know where to get five different varieties of clay…”

“And I was told what other bushes have seedpods like the fluff which we can use to spin into cloth,” Janet said. “He was so like Jesus Christ.”

“Who is with us,” Kris added.

“What did you say?” Janet was indignant.

“‘He is not among you?' was what I heard,” Kris said.

“And you will note,” Janet went on, drawing herself up with great dignity, “that they appeared to us in human form. So we now have confirmation of the Almighty's appearance. Human!”

“That's because you had neither Rugarians nor Deski in with you at the time,” Sandy Areson said, but she spoke without her usual irreverence for Janet's overt religiosity. “We had both Deski and Rugarians because that's who were having breakfast with us humans.”

The sentries at the command post had been kindly informed that their presence there was no longer needed. The miners had been assured that the Farmers did not object to the use of mineral and metallic resources. The loggers had been asked not to cut down the oldest trees and were given permission to thin the other varieties grown on the second farmed continent, as these were softer woods, more suitable for “the making of useful artifacts.”

Universal had been the permission to remain on the second continent, acceptance of the term “Farmers,” and conveyance of the fact that they did not condone “species injury.”

“They were sad to see us so far from home,” Coo admitted.

“And?” Judge Bempechat prompted when it was obvious Coo had been told more than that. “Did they suggest returning you home?”

“Not now,” Coo said. “We are better here.” Then he smiled in his fashion. “Much better here.”

“We, too,” Slav added. “No one safe with Catteni.” He drew his brows together and managed to suck his lips inside his mouth, indicating great displeasure. “Farmers not see danger?” he added, looking from the judge to Scott, Worrell, and those still left in the office.

“Not if it causes species injury, which they do not seem willing to commit even on territorially aggressive races like the Catteni…” the judge began, and when Kris cleared her throat, “I stand corrected, my dear…like the Eosi…who command the Catteni subordinates to do so without compunction.”

“Hey, he's there, and I think he's doing it,” shouted Bert Put.

Everyone in the office crowded around the screen to watch the minute speck that was Baby. The speck disappeared. Most cheered and clapped at this verification of the tacit Farmer permission. Kris, however, held her breath.

“I wouldn't,” Easley said, who was standing next to her. “He could be out awhile.”

Inadvertently Kris met his eyes and exhaled with a weak smile. She had been trying to avoid any conversation with him.