Freedom's Landing
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Catteni Sequence #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Freedom's Landing». Краткое содержание книги:
The alien Catteni value strength and intelligence in their slaves—and Kristin has managed to survive her enslavement while hundreds of other humans have not. But her trial has just begun, for now she finds herself part of a massive experiment. The aliens have discovered a new world, and they have a simple way of finding out if it’s habitable: drop hundreds of slaves on the surface and see what happens.
If they survive, colonization can begin. If not, there are always more slaves.
The lingua Barevi had had more rhythin and tone to it than the languages in which Zainal had spoken to both Slav and Coo.
As they hiked on, they reached another plateau where a second break was called: another knot in the tally string.
When Zainal told her how many pleg each knot represented, she realized they were travelling at slightly better than four miles an hour… that is, if Zainal was stopping every hour. So, in the next onward push, she counted the minutes while he counted his paces. She thought she might have lost a few minutes because she got sidetracked watching the Deski check the vegetation on the plateau what there was of it because there were no fields or hedges or much of anything. But just when she felt they had been marching the hour, Zainal called a halt.
"Gee, man, you got a clock in your head?" she asked as he made a third knot.
He raised a querying eyebrow at her. It made his face seem more humanish, less Cattenish.
"Lordee, how do Catteni tell time?" she muttered to herself, trying to remember if he'd had some sort of digital device on his wrist, like good space farers should, when she'd first encountered him.
"Time," he picked up on that word and tapped his skull.
"Time kept here. Good time.
"Now, don't tell me your home world has long days and nights like Botany?" The two of them spent the rest period explaining and understanding that concept.
"Full turn of planet is not as long as here," he said in the best English sentence he had so far made.
"Boy, you sure learn fast."
"Is "boy" a good thing to say of me?" Again that quizzical expression.
"Well, yes," Kris replied, grinning, delighted with his sense of humour: something she hadn't thought Catteni possessed. "But you are a man, I am a woman. Boy is a young man. I'm using it in the context of a slang expression so it doesn't mean the same thing as the word should." He grinned in such aolite way that she wasn't sure if he understood her explanation at all before he gestured them to take up their journey again.
The day grew warm on the plateau, which had no shade at all on its sandy and gritty surface, only the wiry plants with their odd-shaped leaves that didn't look like anything on any Earth. Coo kept tasting plants and even different coloured patches of soil as they went, usually spitting the samples out, so that Kris wasn't sure what verdict was being rendered. She was becoming so thirsty that her tongue felt swollen so on what was the midday rest stop she didn't have the desire to banter with Zainal. The others took out "lunch', gnawing off good hunks from their bars, but she didn't think she had enough saliva in her mouth to chew much less swallow.
"You bite, you chew, be better," Zainal said kindly and rolled his mouthful about to show that he wasn't swallowing either.
She tried a small piece and discovered that something in the bar helped generate some moisture. She didn't eat as much as the other three but felt better for what she did put in her stomach They travelled on then, the plateau gradually sloping down to a lusher sort of terrain. And a stream. She had to summon up all her self-restraint not to prostrate herself in the stream but carefully to re-educate her mouth and throat to wetness.
"God, what I'd give for a canteen.
"What is this "god" so many call on?" Zainal asked.
"Another "boy"?" Coming as the question did in Zainal's rich guttural voice, it sent Kris into a fit of the giggles. She'd often been told that she had an infectious laugh - and had proved it from time to time by setting a whole classroom off - but it pleased her no end that the effect extended to another species. The Catteni's chuckle sounded very human. Slav cocked his head at her and frowned while Coo merely looked at her in consternation, as if the Deski thought Kris was having a fit or convulsion.
"I won't answer that question now, Zainal," she said when she had reduced giggle to grin. "God" was never a boy! I will explain another time when we have several years at our disposal." Zainal frowned, not having understood all she said.
Which was about par for the course, she thought. And just as well.
Having drunk sufficient water to revive herself, Kris now pulled out the rest of her lunch-time bar and finished it. She was ready to go then but Zainal did not urge them away from this pleasant spot, as much because there were new varieties of plants along the stream bank which Coo was sampling with great eagerness. He came back with something which he showed to Kris, the first time he had done that.
"Looks like a kind of watercress to me, she said, testing one of the stems and a leaf. "Can you eat it?" she asked, gesturing to her mouth with the sample.
The Deski nodded, popped a stalk into his mouth and chewed with every indication of pleasure. Kris nibbled carefully and, feeling her lips and gums go slightly numb, buried her face in the water and gargled vigorously. She felt Zainal's hands on her shoulders supporting her. She rinsed and gargled, being careful not to swallow, and rinsed and rinsed until the sensation was washed away.
"Thanks, Zainal," she said and then saw how concerned all three of her companions were. "Oh, I'm fine. I didn't swallow any of it. All yours, Coo, all yours." The Deski nodded vigorously and made a show of clutching the rest of the sample plant to his chest.
"No more try," Zainal told her sternly.
"You bet!" His concern altered to a glare of frustration. "More "boy" words?"
"Well," and Kris rocked one hand back and forth to indicate neither one nor another. Lord, but she'd never appreciated how complex English is. Or did she mean idiomatic American?
They went on then, until Kris wondered how much longer she could ignore the swelling of her feet which the wrap-around boots were not compensating for. And she'd thought she was fit! Ha! She had dropped behind the two aliens - two of her companions, she amended quickly and found herself watching the rippling of the hairs on the Rugarian's legs. His feet did look funny in the wrap-around Catteni footwear and he didn't seem to have "muscles' where humans did: but depressions came and went with each stride sort of laterally instead of up and down the way calf muscles did. And in front of him, Coo seemed only to have leg bones, no muscular movement at all, only the tendons - or what passed for tendons on a Deski - on either side of the one leg bone, lifting and lowering it, like the shaft of a crane. She tried to imagine the anatomy of her companions, sans skin, and failed utterly. Biology had not been one of her stronger subjects. Oh, the gaps in her education.
Well, there's nothing like on-the-job training, she thought, or whateve? it was they were now doing.
Some place and time later, she was able to stop moving her legs and was sat down on a rock. There was a small fire enclosed in a circle of rocks and around a cairn of rocks. Odd formation, she thought bemusedly. Then, as the buzz of fatigue allowed it, Kris could hear the babbling of a brook near by. Water! She half rose and then was pushed back onto the rock and presented with a big leaf.
"Drink!" She grasped the leaf, feeling the thickness of it, and found a "lip' from which to drink. The water was ever so cold and tasted ambrosial. Real Adam's ale!
"More?" asked Zainal, looming over her.
She struggled to rise. "I can get my own water - Ohhh, no," and her voice came out just this side of a wail. Zainal's big hand pushed her back onto the stone just as she realized how weak she was.
She sipped this time and was able to take in more of her surroundings. Someone was chipping rocks?