Freedom’s Choice (38 page)

In the next rectangle over, Kris found fabrics of all kinds, colors, and patterns and materials, some of which she recognized as Terran manufacture, which both pleased and upset her. The Catteni must be looting the Earth right, left, and center. She suppressed resentment and went about bidding for whole bolts, in different shades and weights for children's clothes. The local weaving industry would suffice for any females who wanted something to wear that wasn't made over from Catteni coveralls, but the kids' needs were different. Kris bought enough to make the shopkeeper ask if she was a trader.

“Drassi is,” she said as if she thoroughly disapproved, pointing with no real attention to what she was buying. The last shop also sold needles and indifferently she threw a handful of packets on the counter and made the shop owner scrawl a receipt for her. “Drassi requires.” Which was all she needed to say. “Deliver by sundown and will get extra,” she said, winking as she had seen her steward master do from time to time.

Then she looked around for her shipmates and found them near a fruit seller's stall as Balenquah tried to restore his throat lining.

“I told you no good,” she said, and took a gorupear from the display pile. She turned her head slightly so
the stall-keeper would not see that she did not have Catteni-size teeth as she tore off the tough peel as any good Catteni soldier would do and spat it out on the street. One thing sure, she never thought she'd be eating these lovely winy fruits again. My, she'd come a long way from that forest. She pointed to a net of the pears, asking the price.

“Four,” she said, and then began haggling for a discount, just like in the old days. She got them at a good price—enough for everyone to enjoy on the way back to Botany—and tied the nets together, slinging them over one shoulder. Yuri and Marrucci were watching her. “Tell you later,” she said in Catteni. “This way.”

They went through another arcade, doors open to display and Wares of the more permanently sited merchants, to where she thought she'd find ironmongery. The mess hall had also asked for some big stewing pots and cooking sheets. That sort of thing would be there, and sure enough, she acquired five cauldron-size kettles and some huge baking tins. She also saw other items that were definitely Terran in origin, like the fabrics. If there was so much looting on Terra going on, maybe they'd be lucky enough to find medical equipment. Leon Dane had patiently drawn out the tools he especially needed. If she did, they'd basically filled today's list. She wanted to be out of the market area soon. Once the guard changed, there'd be all kinds of gangs of them off duty, drinking and looking for trouble: any trouble. She wanted to get out of the area before the guards arrived.

Knives of the fine size and shapes Leon Dane had wanted were indeed available, in one of the arcade stores, but at a price higher than Zainal had estimated. She bought what they had funds for—bundles of scalpels, lancets, and the retractors, small-headed hammers, surgical saws. It looked from the display as if Earth hospitals had been thoroughly looted. Still, she bargained
so hard that the trader wanted to know why she needed such Terran things.

“Terran? What's that?” and she pretended to try to find the name on the scalpel's handle.

“Where you been?”

“There and back,” she said with an indifferent shrug.

“Make it fast,” Marrucci said in an irritable tone, and jerked his head over his shoulder at a gang of Catteni entering the rectangle at the far end, six abreast and brushing past everyone and everything in their way.

“Pack them. We have other business today,” she said, and managed enough saliva to spit into the gutter with. Turning her head, she was able then to gauge the speed at which the gang moved. “Get Bal to a flitter,” she told Marrucci. “Yuri stays.”

She didn't trust Balenquah if those Catteni muscled him out of the way.

“What takes you so long, Foto?” she snapped at the storekeeper, who was making quite a job of packing the tools, but then the blades were very sharp.

Marrucci did get Balenquah out of the way: thanks to the pilth, he was in no condition to argue much. She had just got her hands on the packet from the shopkeeper when Yuri was bowled into her, knocking her into the shopkeeper's cabinet, causing half his stock to tumble about and several pieces—since the cabinet was open on his side—to stick into him. He was howling with pain and rage as he plucked sharp objects from his thighs.

Yuri reacted, ducking under the first swing of a squat Catteni guard and then kicking out at the assailant's kneecaps with a double strike that had the guard howling with pain and dropping to the ground. The shopkeeper shouted for help and grabbed at Kris, almost tearing the precious package from her hand. But she twisted her arm down and up and freed herself. When he came around the cabinet, bleeding from the cuts, she got him square in the guts with a karate kick, thrusting him backward
and into another glass-fronted cabinet. She heard him scream as a shard of glass penetrated his backside, but she didn't stop.

“Out of here,” she yelled in good Catteni, fright thickening her voice as she grabbed at Yuri's uniform just as he flipped another Catteni to his back.

Several of his mates, reacting to his groans and curses, started after them but Catteni are not good runners and Yuri and Kris had very good reasons to run as fast as they could.

They nearly ran over Marrucci, who had come back for them, and so they all made tracks to the flitter where Balenquah slumped, victim of the pilth.

However, the state of him—or rather the smell that emanated from him, added to the bruised gorupears that had split open in the nets Kris had been carrying over her shoulder—made the flitter driver waste no time in getting them back to the dock. When they arrived, the merchandise had, too, with Pess, a cloth bolt in each arm, dealing with the loading.

“Did the plursaw come?” Kris asked, racing up the extruded gangway.

Pess grinned and nodded, speaking Barevi. “First thing. See me, ask questions. I say Drassi orders. Don't know
what
he orders.”

Well, she could hope no one heard her speak in English. Marrucci and Yuri were angling the unconscious Balenquah out of the flitter. She went back to pay the driver.

“We the first?” she asked Pess as she helped him stow the cloth away, making sure that the needles had been included.

Pess nodded. “What's wrong with pilot?”

“He drank pilth,” she replied. Then grinned as she added. “I told him it was no good.”

Pess smiled broadly and she managed to look away
from that yawning cavern of greenish gum without giving him offense.

* * *

Beverly and Bert Put came out of hiding and, though they seemed somewhat distracted, listened to their adventures, chuckling over Balenquah's mishap. They approved her purchases, especially the spices, salt, vinegar, and pepper.

“We had to quit because there was a roving band of Catteni looking for trouble,” Yuri said. “We'll go for the electronics tomorrow,” he added, looking at Kris for confirmation.

Kris shared out the gorupears and they all agreed that the fruit was very tasty indeed. “We can keep the pits and start our own bushes back on Botany,” she said, and was looking for something to store them in as she asked if there was any word from the other parties.

“Zainal reported in when he and Mitford reached the restaurant. So did Coo and Slav,” Beverly told them. “But they had upsetting news.”

“How upsetting?”

Beverly and Bert exchanged anxious glances.

“It's not going to get any better waiting,” Kris reminded them, but a sick feeling started in her stomach.

“There are large numbers of Terrans here now, waiting to be shipped out.”

A pause.

“What's new in that?” she asked.

“Coo says they're damaged,” and Beverly tapped his skull. “They sit or stand and do not speak.”

“
What
?”

She, Yuri, and Gino reacted simultaneously and stared in horrified consternation at Beverly.

“Coo says he heard their minds were taken from them.”

“The Eosi have mindwipes?” she whispered, appalled.

“Does Zainal know?” Marrucci asked, equally shocked.

“Coo says everyone talks about it—quietly. Even the Catteni. Zainal will also hear.”

Marrucci swore inventively and without repeating himself. Yuri looked pale under his gray face paint. It was cracking around the natural creases of his face and, absently, she reminded herself to tell him to powder up before he went outside again.

“Zainal won't do anything drastic until he can check with you, will he?” Kris asked Beverly. “What do the Eosi intend to
get
out of minds? They wouldn't know about us.”

“Coo said they are older men, mostly, some women…”

“Scientists, I bet,” Kris said, and Beverly nodded sadly. “Oh, God, what did we start?”

Beverly covered her hand with a reassuring grip. “We started a rebellion, Kris, as we wanted to on Earth, and couldn't. But Zainal knew how and has.”

“But the cost!” She gripped her hands together, holding in the pain of guilt.

“When was there ever a war without casualties?” Yuri said in a bleak voice, absently doodling with the water spill on the table until it was spread out in a Rorschach blob.

“What about Ninety and Dowdall?”

“They say the pens are full of humans. They also heard about the zombies,” Beverly said. “They're on their way back, too, before the guard changes.”

“Dowdall remembered that, did he?” Kris said, nodding with satisfaction.

* * *

Zainal, Scott, and Mitford returned in a silence that spoke more profoundly of the tragedy than words. The first thing Zainal did was remove the cheek and chin pads that disguised him.

“We managed to get into one compound,” Scott said, slumping into a chair and taking the glass of hooch that Kris immediately poured for all three. “I recognized a few faces from articles and newspapers. You'd probably recognize more, John, Gino. The ones I could identify were top people in quantum physics, organ transplants, and laser applications.”

“Lasers can be used as weapons,” Kris murmured.

“Eosi have such already,” Zainal replied, also speaking in a low voice.

“Will they…recover?” Kris asked.

Zainal shook his head but added, “It depends how long they were subjected to the probe. The Eosi have little pity.”

“Other news is good, though,” Scott said shaking off that dispiriting vision. “Earth continues to rebel and Catteni are looting on a massive scale.”

“I wondered about that,” Kris said. “I bought nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, salt, bolts of Earth-made fabric and needles, surgical equipment: no doubt part of that loot. I hadn't enough money with me to buy everything Leon said he needed. Do we have more to spend?” she asked Zainal, who nodded.

“No electronics?” Scott asked, perturbed. “We need them more than surgical tools.”

“If the Catteni have looted as thoroughly as it looks like they have, we'll find all the Terran electronics we could possibly want. But we encountered an off-duty squad,” Kris said, and Zainal grunted. “And left.”

“We did, too,” Dowdall said. “The spaceport's full. We were lucky to get a berth.”

“Any damage?” Zainal asked.

“Not to us.” Kris grinned. So did Dowdall.

“Where's Balenquah?” Scott asked, looking around.

“Sleeping off a full glass of pilth,” Kris replied, still grinning maliciously.

Zainal roared with laughter.

“I told him it was no good,” Kris said as Yuri and Marrucci chuckled.

“Serves him right, too,” Marrucci said, but Kris gave him a look and he didn't elaborate.

“Did you get the Deski plursaw?” Zainal asked. She nodded.

“At a good price, too. I got as much delivered as I could. Pess has most of it already stored away. ‘Drassi says,'” and she smiled at him for the efficacy of that cryptic explanation.

Coo and Slav returned then, Slav with a cut over one eye and Coo with visible abrasions down one side of his slender frame.

“Trouble?” Zainal asked, on his feet.

Coo held up one hand reassuringly. “Catteni gang. Hate aliens.”

“They hate anyone,” Dowdall said forcefully. “Here, lemme fix that cut for you, Slav,” and he took him over to the cabinet containing the few medical supplies they had. Slav endured the ministrations though the brown Catteni antiseptic stung like fire—even for Catteni.

“Bad news,” Coo said, joining the others at the table.

Mitford fixed herbal tea when Coo politely refused to drink the hooch already on the table.

“They're after your people, too?” Scott asked.

Coo shook his head. “We do not make machines.”

“My people must work in noisy places,” Slav said, scrubbing his chest hair in agitation. “We are strong.”

“You Earth no good working,” Coo said, grinning. “Too much trouble.”

“We make trouble,” Slav said, “if word is given.” And he looked pointedly at Mitford.

“All suppressed minorities rebelling at one time would be difficult for the Eosi to handle,” Scott said, immediately savoring the notion.

Zainal, however, snorted and shook his head. “More species injuries.”

Scott slammed one fist onto the table so hard the hooch bottle jiggled. “Damn it, Zainal, there're already species injuries, on my people. You saw the state of them. How many more will be put through the same torture? Then sold off as mindless zombies and die who knows where.”

Kris had never seen Scott so emotional, but then, she could only imagine the horror of seeing brilliant people reduced to imbeciles.

“The Eosi look for ideas from your people,” Zainal said, and there was no doubt from the perturbation on his usually inscrutable face that he felt for the victims and agreed with Scott. “When they find none they can use, they will stop.”