FREEDOM RISES LIKE THE SUN

1563 4D

His legs began working. One evening, for the first time since his arrival at the farm, he staggered to the table to share a steaming meal of bread and thick stew. Deen said, “Congratulations. Now eat.” He did.

“You know, young man, you’re very well put together,” Deen said as he savored the stew. “If I were a young woman again—" He stared at her smile.

“Oh, Deen,” Marra said, waving her hand as if to shoo the words from the room. Andrew took another piece of bread. It tasted wonderful.

“Now come on, Marra, you’ve been taking care of him too. The muscles on you, Andrew! You must be tough. After months in that hole.” She touched his arm. “And Marra told me—“

“Shut up, Deen! I didn’t say it to any one but you.”

Andrew smiled inside as he chewed a big bite of stew-soaked bread. “What did you say about me?” he asked Marra. She ducked her head.

“She said your wife must be a very happy woman.” At this, Marra stood up and stamped her way to the kitchen.

Andrew changed the subject. “How do you make it up here? And the shareworkers. How do they make ends meet?”

“We choose crops very carefully, and sell them in just the right places.” Deen motioned to Marra, who had peered back in from the kitchen, her face a little redder brown. “Get some more honey, dear.” Marra vanished.

Deen went on. “We lease the younger people our space. This land can carry a few grain crops, and one or two vegetables and fruits. So we found some nut and fruit hybrids that the City people pay a lot for. We ship them through our own channels.” She dabbed quickly at her face with a small cloth. “Arlen and Durlow and the others couldn’t find anything worth stealing up here — no minerals or ores. Not like where you were. They even buy chender, the fruit especially, and tarquat from us.”

“Do they keep monitoring your farm license? They did mine.” Andrew‘s legs burned where they were healing. He held his head up, still triumphant at his first walk.

Deen poured herself some more stew. “For the first few years they did. They wanted to send us back underground, back to the City like most of the others. The inspector at the government office down in Forblaine got kickbacks each time he stripped another farmer, so we got him stripped instead. ArCorp found his skin tacked around a tree, in one piece.” She giggled, and Andrew stopped chewing again. “There’s a new inspector now who takes his job seriously. The farmers like this one.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Andrew asked her. She shook her head, rose abruptly, and went into the kitchen, calling for Marra.

Andrew stared at the piece of bread in his hand, and his stomach sank. He had forgotten his mealtime procedure. He had to do it at least once a day, especially when he got extra food.

He took the bread in both hands and divided it carefully, very carefully, down the middle. He set one piece on half the plate. Then he took the other piece and divided it again, putting one half on a quarter of the remaining plate space. He kept dividing one of the two smallest pieces until he had reached pieces the size of his little fingernail. Then he began to eat them, from the smallest to the largest. They tasted infinitely good. He couldn’t let himself forget.

Marra came in. “What are you doing?”

“I’m eating.”

“Like this?” She came over to him and pointed at the bits of bread.

“Every day.”

“A minute ago you were eating like a hungry man should. Why this, now?”

“Because I want it to last. I never knew when…"

As he paused, a new realization of his freedom dawning in him, she bent and looked at him, and tears welled up in her eyes. She took his head in her arms and held him against her warm bosom. “It’ll last, now,” she said.