Freedom's Landing

A neatly curved doorway gave into a storage area beyond the main cavern but the door was closed. Store shut!

Someone had also been successful in blowing glass, Kris realized, noticing that the corridor lighting had glass shades: sort of lumpy and blurred but glass nonetheless.

Mitchelstown not only boasted a carved nameplate, the letters outlined in black against the lighter stone, but also some rough bedsteads and mattresses, covered by the ubiquitous thermal blankets and probably filled by the fluff. At least it wasn't raw dirt or stone. Little alcoves had been cut into the wall for shelf space and there were thick wooden pegs hammered into the wall for hanging things.

As if they had something to hang. But Kris did now - the map case which Worry had told her to hang on to for their next patrol and the comunit, which she carefully put on the pegs.

"Well," Kris said, settling tentatively down on the nearest bed, "all the comforts of home. What?"

"You did not give eye-teeth, Kris," Zainal said, his eyes twinkling at her "Didn't have to, she said, laying down fully but starting upright so quickiy that Zainal looked around anxiously to see what had startled her. "Muddy boots," she said and unfastened hers, kicking them off. "Definitely the comforts of home." She lay back again.

"What was your home on Terra like, Kris?" Zainal asked, removing the accoutrements from his belt and neatly bestowing them on the shelf above the bed next to hers.

"It wasn't a cave, that's for sure," she said, unexpectedly irked to be asked such a question. Suddenly she had a glimpse of why others could dislike Zainal simply because he was Catteni: his presence reminded them of what they had been taken from. She pushed down that irritation and, as civilly as she could manage, described the split-level ranch-style house she, her parents and her brother and two sisters had lived in: her neighbourhood, her friends. She rattled on, unable to stop talking about her black-and-white cat, about the dormitory she'd lived in at college, until Joe and Sarah appeared in the opening, Astrid and Oskar just behind them.

"Is this our home from home?" Joe asked in a bright voice.

"Yes, it is," Kris said and was suddenly impelled to leave.

Rising from the bed, she stamped back into the boots she had removed, left the room and half-ran across the cook cavern and out, taking the steps as fast as she could without any caution, and across the ravine and campfire site, beyond the stocks and up onto the heights, down behind them and off up the next rise, where she was away from anyone.

There she sat herself down and, burying her hands in her face, cried. She didn't know why she'd reacted in such a childish way, unless it was just that the "loss' had finally caught up with her. Up until the moment Zainal had asked her, she hadn't allowed herself to think about home, her family, and all the things that were dear and familiar. She had forced herself to concentrate on first, surviving, and then on the challenge of patrolling with Zainal, of proving herself useful on this crazy world.

She'd kept up, she'd done all that was asked of her, but that didn't make up - at this moment - for the future she had once planned for herself.

She sensed, rather than heard or felt, someone near by. Whirling around on her bottom, she saw Zainal.

"It was all your fault…" The moment the words were out of her mouth, she cried out. "NO! I didn't mean that, Zainal. I didn't mean it! Don't go." He stood where he was, rock solid and unsmiling, but apparently concerned enough to make sure she did herself no harm.

"Sarah says to cry is good."

"How did she know I'd cry?" A twitch of one huge shoulder. "She is woman, Terran like you. She was right, wasn't she? You cry."

"Don't blab it all over the mountain, damn it," she said, blotting her cheeks so she had a reason for keeping her want Zainal to see her crying: she didn't. "Do Catteni women cry?"

"Yes," he said so stoutly that she knew he was lying.

"You're lying in your teeth." The knowledge that he would prevaricate made her feel better.

"My eye-teeth?" And the rumble of his voice under her ear was tinged with laughter "You're Jag at me.. -" she said in an ominous tone.

"I am laughing at the thought of teeth with eyes as if teeth can see." "Yes, that is a bizarre concept, isn't it?" Zainal had eased himself closer to her and his proximity was comforting. He had a different body odour to human males, she realized. It wasn't an offensive pong, not oniony like most guys, but she couldn't identify what it did smell like, except that she liked it.

"I rarely get silly," she said briskly. She didn't want a sentry to come by and see her: this meeting could be misconstrued and she didn't want any more rumours about Zainal scooting about the camp.

"What is your home like or will that make you sad enough to cry?" The notion of a Catteni in tears made her giggle.

"You are better now," Zainal said and, putting a hand under her chin, tilted her face up.

Kris was nearly unbalanced by the unexpected tenderness in his warm yellow eyes. Why had she ever thought them an odd colour?

Then he slid an arm around her shoulders. "Are you better now?