Freedom's Choice

by Anne McCaffrey

  Zainal grunted agreement and surprised her by smiling. “I like a good fight.”

  “You mean, convincing Scott you’re all right for a Catteni? Or getting Phase Two and more fuel for the scout?”

  “Both.” He gave her hand a warm squeeze. “This gets interesting.”

  “Don’t get smug, Emassi Zainal.”

  “Me? Never. This Catteni bastard watches his step.”

  “Zainal! Where did you pick up that language?”

  “Is it not correct?”

  She knew he was teasing and laughed. “I’m damned glad you know as much as you do, particularly right now…”

  “For the brass-heads.”

  She giggled, ducking her head into his chest to muffle the sound. “Brass-heads”—she must remember to tell that to the sergeant.

  * * *

  At Lenvec’s insistence, which was beginning to annoy Perizec both as patriarch and commander, he listened to the record tape and replayed the satellite’s recording of the scout’s takeoff, the suddenly erratic course which straightened into a dive toward the subject planet’s second moon, disappearing beyond the satellite’s visual limitation.

  “But analysis proves that is not Zainal’s voice. None of them are. What has Personnel said about Arvonk?”

  That was the one flaw in Lenvec’s arguments. “There is none of Arvonk, who was only a woman and not in service as Emassi. She was used because Zainal had chosen her several times for intercourse.”

  “There are no other Catteni down there. Who else but another scout could have responded?”

  “Some of the Terrans have learned our language.”

  Perizec snorted. “But not how to operate comunits.”

  “Zainal could teach them.” Lenvec spoke through his teeth with aggravation—an unwise attitude to show his senior and parent, but he had absolutely no doubts that Zainal had somehow escaped capture: had probably piloted the scout off the planet. And then, for reasons Lenvec could not understand in a Catteni Emassi who had been chosen to serve the Eosi, Zainal had returned to the planet. He had not taken refuge anywhere in Catteni space because everywhere he would be hunted: nowhere would he find asylum.

  Zainal’s taunt “I drop, I stay” was like a pulse in the back of Lenvec’s brain. What good did it do Zainal to go back to the planet, no matter what technology had been found there? Could Zainal know the origin of the original occupants of that planet? Was that why he took the scout? What good would such a move do?

  “He has somehow made friends with the Terran dissidents,” Lenvec went on, desperate to persuade his father to believe him. “Now he has transportation. He has some plan in mind.”

  Perizec dismissed that consideration as he rose. “For all the good it will do him.”

  “Sir, for the honor of the family, insist on a second orbital satellite. Geosynchronous does not have sufficient capability to keep a watch on his next moves.”

  “Next moves?” Perizec regarded his son steadily and with such malice that it was all Lenvec could do not to recoil from such scrutiny. “Your next move is to attend the Eosi Selection. No further delay is possible. Is that understood?”

  “Maybe the Eosi will not be so blind,” Lenvec said in a bitter tone, and when the nerve whip suddenly appeared in his father’s hand, he braced himself for the blow. Despite that, the agony rocked him to his knees.

  He had to be helped by his life mate to his quarters, where she disobeyed the protocol that required the recipient to endure a whiplash by administering a nerve block. Clern stayed by his side until the medication took effect. Which was more than she ought to have done but did not, as she had probably hoped, appease his bitter resentment sufficiently for one final sexual interlude. Lenvec could think only what he had been deprived of because Zainal had been the chosen of their bloodline. The opportunities and promotions that Zainal had enjoyed because he had been the chosen. Eosi liked their “subjects” to have rich experiences to bring for them to enjoy, to use as guides in their manipulation of their subject species. Lenvec had had to be satisfied with a circumspect life, learning to manage the family estates and accepting simpler rewards than Zainal gathered. Lenvec had even had to rear Zainal’s children with his own, since being chosen kept Zainal from having a mate. That was the one privilege Lenvec had had which Zainal did not. And now Clern had to be set aside because Zainal had escaped.

  During those long last hours of his single being, Lenvec toyed with suicide but the dishonor would have deprived Clern of wealth and protection, and his sons of their inheritance, which would be considerable. If he could have also deprived his father of honor by taking his own life, Lenvec might well have murdered himself.

  His hatred of Zainal, his sense of betrayal, his keen awareness of the injustice done, consumed Lenvec, even when, supported by a blood pride he had not known he possessed in such depth, he was accompanied by Perizec to the vast complex reserved for Eosi. He entered with the three other Catteni being presented by their fathers, and Lenvec’s resentment flared and deepened. They had been chosen: they had had the privileges Zainal had enjoyed and he had been denied. But he had as large a measure of Emassi pride as any of them and so he went, seething with hatred and the now deeply embedded ambition to somehow get even with Zainal.

  That kept his back straight, his knees stiff as he faced the Eosi Mentat who would engulf him, making him no more Lenvec but all Eosi. A fearsome entity even to an Emassi who had seen what Catteni became when subsumed by Eosian Mentats: that shining immensity in a giganticized Catteni form. That one thought, of eventual triumph, sufficed Lenvec as the subsumption occurred. It kept him from screaming as two of the others, previously willing and proud young men, did as they were engulfed.

  Certainly the intense emotion intrigued the Eosi as it settled into the strong new body, and the shell it had been using drifted like the dead thing it had been for centuries onto the highly polished floor of the chamber. Quite unusual, in fact, for the Eosi had made such transfers frequently and was delighted by a novel experience as the last of the personality which had once been Lenvec totally dissolved within the Mentat.

  The shell, crumbling into dust, was swept into a receptacle and returned with proper ceremony to Perizec, who waited with other fathers to receive the discarded husks. Of them all, Perizec was the most relieved. He had greatly feared that Lenvec would be found unacceptable, and the dishonor to their bloodline would have been catastrophic. But honor had been served and their family would continue to supply young men to the Eosi and reap more worldly rewards than other, less favored families.

  However, Perizec must still discover where the cowardly Zainal was hiding and make sure he paid the price of his evasion. Perizec smiled at the thought of a suitable execution. Private, of course, but the event could be enjoyed by Clern, who had been deprived of her mate, and should be seen by Zainal’s sons so that they would have to live with his dishonor as their lifelong penance.

  He took the receptacle of his great-grandfather’s dust to the family crypt and placed it in the niche prepared for it. He looked at the array of ancestors who had done their duty. Then did his final task: listing first Zainal and then Lenvec as dead. Too bad he could do nothing punitive to Zainal’s sons, but that would expose the reason why Lenvec had had to stand in for his brother. There were other, subtler ways to make them pay for their father’s defection.

  * * *

  Quite a considerable galactic distance from the Eosian home planet and its expanding sphere of influence, the homing device arrived in the slot designed to receive it on the huge moon installation where such devices were processed. When no message was displayed, the container was routinely overhauled for the malfunction. Such homing missiles were rarely dispatched without cause. No malfunction was discovered. The device had been well engineered and had always operated within its design parameters. The lack of any message was unusual. The container was sent to Processing to identify its point of origin. Since that planet was not one in any sense cr
itical, or even very important, the errant device was shunted to the agency that, from time to time, investigated anomalies. The appropriate galactic coordinates were tagged for investigation during the next regular maintenance circuit.

  CHAPTER 4

  If those intimately connected with Phase One slept, it became obvious to Zainal and Kris when they quietly exited their quarters at dawn, that others had not.

  A weary duty cook had propped her chair back against the wall, her head lolling to one side as she caught what rest she could while the knot of men and women at the table farthest from her murmured urgent conversations and passed papers back and forth.

  Though Kris and Zainal had entered the mess hall quietly, their arrival immediately curtailed the discussions. Almost every head turned to see who came in.

  “Zainal! Kris!” Peter Easley half rose from his seat and beckoned them over. “Grab something to eat and drink, will you? And join us?”

  The cook slept on, snoring slightly, so Kris and Zainal helped themselves to the food kept warm in the pans and the tea in the kettle.

  Kris identified not only Scott and most of yesterday’s brass but others, obviously called in from the other camps for this session.

  “You started something, Zainal,” Peter said, rising and gesturing for Zainal to take his place, while he hooked over chairs from the next table for Kris and himself.

  “Phase Two?” Zainal asked, settling himself, and eyeing the mass of papers and charts and lists that littered the table. He sipped.

  “You bet,” Easley said while several men at the other end of the table resumed their interrupted debate. “I sent Mitford off to bed at third moonrise. He couldn’t keep his eyes open.”

  “How can you then?” Kris asked.

  “Oh, I caught a coupla hours before we changed guard,” and Easley winked at her conspiratorially.

  She was somewhat reassured although she had not previously considered Easley, for all the help he gave Mitford during drops, as a surrogate for the sergeant.

  “We have discovered a lot of droppees have had military training, and more than enough have commando, SAS, or similar training in their own countries so that we can have our pick of the force to make Phase Two successful,” Easley explained in a low voice. “What is needed now is information from you on—”

  “What weapons there are aboard the scout,” Scott interrupted, “some idea of the interior of a transport ship and what weapons they’d have so we can properly train our personnel.”

  Zainal took a sip of the hot beverage and gestured that he be given paper and writing implement.

  “Breakfast first?” Kris said in a caustic tone, lifting a spoonful from her bowl of porridge. “Army…and navy, I’m sure…still function better when fed.”

  “Miss Bjornsen,” Scott began ever so politely.

  “Knock it off,” Zainal said in a very quiet voice, but he gave Scott a brief, warning look, before he began to sketch the long void of a transport ship outline, sipping as he did so. “Twenty crew, only Drassi armed with weapons. Others have nerve whips…” Zainal gave Scott a long look. “You know about nerve whips?”

  Scott nodded slowly and it pleased Kris to no end to realize that he had had at least one incident of intimate knowledge with that persuader.

  “Crew carry on back,” and Zainal demonstrated tying the whiplash to a handle and slinging the imaginary item to his back. “People unconscious no problem.” He outlined the bridge area, the main crew quarters, where they seemed to sleep stacked nearly as closely together as their passengers would be, and then indicated the engine room, air plant, and other essential elements of the transport, including cargo areas that did not have oxygen. That left an empty midsection across which Zainal now drew a series of parallel lines.

  “Sleepers don’t need much space. Empty one deck, remove, shift upward, empty two deck…”

  “We were crammed in like sardines then,” Easley remarked with a bit of a shudder. “What do they use to keep us in suspended animation?”

  “Asleep?” Kris whispered, because she knew Zainal would recognize those words.

  “Eosi make. Not even Emassi know in-gre-di-ents,” Zainal said with one of his indifferent shrugs.

  “So we would have to get the guards, storm through here to secure the bridge…”

  Kris didn’t recognize the voice, nor identify the slight accent, much less the long nonwhite finger that had done the walking, and looked up. The slender man had angled in beside Scott and Fetterman. He grinned at her and touched a nonexistent hat brim.

  “Hassan Moussa, late of the Israeli forces,” he said.

  “No,” and Zainal shook his head. “First they unload, then we do not risk lives. They will not expect attack. With dropping done, they are also tired. We stun those outside, maybe all will be. Then we…” and Zainal grinned at Moussa, “storm through to bridge and surprise Drassi.”

  Moussa wasn’t the only one who chuckled at Zainal’s suggestion to let the Catteni unload.

  “I’m reliably informed that not everyone is unloaded with any caution,” said the British Ainger.

  “I will be there, of course, to see,” Zainal remarked.

  “Hey wait a minute,” Kris said, and she wasn’t the only one to see the folly of that.

  “Not when the Catteni tried to kidnap you…” Rastancil said, frowning.

  “Drassi will not know that,” Zainal said, “but they obey Emassi orders anytime.”

  Open disagreement broke out and, after listening a few moments, Zainal began to eat his porridge, ignoring the dispute.

  “He tells us he’s a kidnap victim…”

  “A transport was slated to pick him up the first time, wasn’t it?”

  “Can we really trust him?”

  “If it’s that easy to take the transport, why hasn’t anyone tried?”

  “You haven’t seen bare hands against nerve whips, have you?”

  “So, if Drassi and Emassi never mix, who would recognize him?”

  “And the risk is better than the twenty-five percent casualties.”

  Kris identified Leon Dane’s voice. “Leon can make like an Emassi from the shadows,” she said, broadcasting her suggestion over the other voices. That stopped them. “It’s the tone they respond to, not the figure.”

  “Good idea,” Zainal said, licking his lips. “He sounds Emassi. Could…fool…me.” And he cast a mischievous side glance at Kris as he continued to eat his breakfast.

  “We can decide on that stratagem later,” Scott said firmly. “If you’ve finished,” he addressed Zainal, who had indeed just emptied both bowl and cup, “let’s go through the numbers…of the crew…again.”

  “One Drassi captain,” Zainal dutifully ticked off on his fingers, “one Drassi navigator, one Drassi com, one Drassi engineer, four more to take turns, and twelve to unload.”

  “That makes twenty. Do all unload?”

  Zainal nodded. “Off-duty help, so sixteen unload. Others relax here,” and he pointed to the bridge. “Not much security,” he added. “Stand from here,” and he put his finger on the portal, “and stun all.”

  “Stun?” The look on Scott’s face was ludicrous.

  “Why not? Killing weapons messy.”

  “And wasn’t it decided,” Kris got in, “that they’d at least have a chance to run for it?”

  “Why?” The mood around the table turned ugly.

  “Because then we’re not the same as Catteni,” John Beverly said, raising his voice above the vengeful babble.

  “General, I don’t think the population here will appreciate leniency,” Bull Fetterman said.

  “I don’t see why not,” Hassan Moussa said with a vulpine grin. “It could provide some sport.”

  “Now, wait a bloody minute.” Kris felt her breakfast roiling about in her stomach. “We are not Catteni. We are human beings…”

  “They can be tried as war criminals,” Moussa said, still grinning, and looked down at Zainal to see his rea
ction, but the Catteni was adding details to the sketch, apparently oblivious to the moral issue.

  “Take a camp vote,” Yuri Palit said, standing up at the end of the table.

  “That’s always assuming that we take the damned transport in the first place,” Beverly said.

  “Now wait a minute, general…”

  “Beverly, if we can’t overpower twenty—”

  “Referendum!”

  “Everyone needs to know—”

  “Those guys murdered—”

  “We don’t have to do the same—”

  Kris got up from the table, taking her dishes and Zainal’s before she heaved up breakfast listening to such vengeful talk. She did, she told herself as she stalked to the cleanup area, understand why they wanted to take it out on any Catteni they could, but the slaughter still made humans no better than Catteni and polluted this new world, and this fresh start, with all the old hatreds and prejudices that bubbled just skin-deep and could be sublimated by attacking a new species-victim.

  She almost threw the dishes down but spotted the still-sleeping cook and slipped them quietly in the warm dishwater to soak. Possibly, if she had to, she could kill a Catteni in cold blood. She hadn’t minded when Fek and Slav had killed the kidnappers but her blood certainly hadn’t been cold then—it had been frozen with fear that the ruse would be uncovered and Zainal taken. All the arguments were specious. It was the principle that was important. And more important here on Botany than at any other time in her life…even when she had feared rape by the brutish Catteni steward on Barevi.

  “Kris!” Zainal’s voice had not been pitched loudly but he stood at the exit and beckoned to her. The “strategists” were so involved in arguing points of honor, law, principle, integrity that his departure had not been noticed. Except by Easley and Rastancil, who hurried toward him.

  “Zainal?” Easley’s quiet voice held a note of apology and Rastancil’s expression was entreating.

  “We will see what weapons and other useful junk is on scout,” Zainal said. “That is next step to take to prepare for Phase Two.” He exited first, turned to wait for Kris, Rastancil, and Easley, and added, “You are men of sense.”