Freedom's Landing

"You might as well, honey, unless you plan on immuring yourself for ever in the stink."

"If you say so…" Patti Sue was not going to venture anywhere, even with Kris's assurance.

"C'mon, I think I know where we can sit," and Kris hoped that the darkness would be enough to conceal the evidence that part of the ledge had been an abattoir.

She walked, Patti so close behind her that she hoped the girl wouldn't lurch into her and knock them both off the ledge, to a point just above the fire: a fair-sized one, its flames reflecting off the faces seated around it.

"Hey, we'll have a balcony seat to the events," Kris said.

"Front and centre." Kris sat herself down while Patti Sue edged to Kris's right, with no-one beyond her. Yet.

Kris tried to identify the faces in the firelight: she spotted Zainal easily, sitting beside Mitford; Bass, Murphy, a Rugarian and two Deskis just beyond them, and then faces she vaguely recognized from the march but couldn't put names to.

Patti Sue's fearful gasp alerted her to an approach and the girl gripped her arm with surprisingly strong fingers.

"Easy," Kris muttered under her breath, for she recognized the newcomer. "It's only Jay Greene and he's decent. Hi, Jay. Don't know if you've met my buddy yet. Patti Sue, this is Jay Greene and he's a veritable Nimrod with boy scout snares. Join us. You can be our body-guard." Kris regretted that ffippancy the moment it was out of her mouth for Patti Sue tried to get inside Kris's skin, she sat so close.

Kris sternly told herself that she might be as nervous if she'd been raped repeatedly, too.

After all, that imminent possibility had prompted her to dare to steal the ffitter and secrete herself in the forest, hadn't it?

Greene sat down a couple of good handspans from Kris. She took the moment to turn to Patti Sue.

"You're about choking the circulation off in my arm.

Relax!" she murmured and felt the clutching fingers ease their stranglehold. She could almost feel the effort it took Patti Sue to remove her hands from Kris's arm. "What's the scam, Jay? You heard anything?"

"Yeah," and the firelight glinted off his white teeth as he smiled. "I hear that we are not alone!" He spaced the words out so that they sounded like the voice-over of a video trailer.

Patti Sue's hands returned to crush Kris's upper arm.

"I knew that," Kris said and this time just peeled the fingers off, putting the girl's hands back in her lap and giving them a final pat to stay there.

"No, I mean, we're not the only flotsam that got planted on this planet," Greene said.

"Really? Hmm, makes sense, though," Kris said in her most nonchalant tone. Why had she been saddled with such a nerd like Patti Sue! "There were only - what - five, six hundred plonked down in our field. I wouldn't call that an efficient disposition of redundant personnel. That ship they herded us into could handle who knows how many more. I know there were two levels, if not more. Maybe they did a clean sweep of all the holding cells on Barevi.

That would make the journey here economically feasible.

Any more humans?"

"Well," and Greene shrugged, "I'm not sure anyone could tell." Patti Sue let out little whimpers.

"Look on the bright side, will you, Patti Sue?" Kris said. "You weren't one of them and you're safe with us.

Isn't she, Jay?"

"Safe as houses," he said in a warmly reassuring tone, for which Kris gave him a broad smile and a thumbs up with her left hand which Patti couldn't see. "In fact, the more the merrier.

So long as we can exchange information and band together to solve the problems this place poses."

"Any other scuttlebutt?"

"Like what?"

"Did that scouting party Mitford sent out find what brings in the grain harvest?"

"No," Greene said, shaking his head. "They did find other storage caves, all hollowed out of solid rock. And more valleys of fields and stuff. That's where - - -" Kris gave him a quick flash of her hand to stop him saying anything that would set Patti Sue off again. "… Where they could see other heavy vehicles had been parked," he finished off.

They all heard the murmur of voices and saw that people were emptying out of the cave now and either making their way down to the bonfire level or finding spaces on the ledge.

"Do we start off with a national anthem, or a prayer?" Kris quipped to Jay.

"I doubt the good sergeant is religiously inclined," Greene remarked.

"For which I am deeply grateful." Kris felt Patti Sue's body stiffen with resentment at her fiippancy. "We need a realist."

"I second that!" Chuck Mitford had now stood up and raised his hands for quiet.

"This is Mitford speaking, in case any of you can't see me," he said in his gravelly parade-ground voice that echoed slightly in the ravine. "We've had several teams out on recon - reconnaissance to those of you who don't know army slang.

"We've found storage caves with enough grains - which we humans at least can digest - to supply us for years. We don't know who - or what - stored the stuff but they're unlikely to notice what we have taken, and will take, once we get our commissary organized. We're lucky to have some botanists among us, who've figured out what we can and cannot eat of the local stuff- berries and roots As you've all found out, the water tastes pretty good.