Freedom's Landing (3 page)

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 downward to regard her. And his shoulders were as broad as the scoop of a road-grader.

“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 thornbushes 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 humorless 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 skeptically as she picked up a handful of small stones. With a practiced 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 rearm.”

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 nearby?” He peered out the one portion of the wrap-around 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 defenses. 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 defenses 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 learned 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 airships. Clumsy but showing some signs of developments to come.”

“Thanks.”

He raised his eyebrows queryingly. “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 prideful 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 unlivable. 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 grayish 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.