Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “Shit!”

  Katie found that she was reeling and Ingrid had grabbed hold of her to steady her. “I guess I’m still not as healthy as I would like to be,” she said to excuse her lapse.

  Roxanna switched the force field back on and they left the newest prisoner alone.

  *****

  “Am I the only one who is having trouble getting used to having a translation node invading my brain?” Katie asked the other three when they had returned to their seats.

  “I had some trouble in the beginning,” said Roxanna, “but I feel well adjusted by now. As a matter of fact, I really like having it, and I’m the one who was the most leery of it.”

  “I’m fine with it, too,” added Ingrid. “Yeah, it was weird at first, being able to talk languages that, earlier, I would not have understood at all, and it really freaked me out to be able to instantly translate measurements, like distance and time, from what I was told to terms that had meaning for me. Like, how is it possible? But now I’m used to that, too, and I accept it as normal.”

  “The transition was quite easy for me,” Murra said in his turn. “I think that it has to do with the fact that as a trained telepath I am familiar with the notion of making room for something other than myself in my mind. Since you also have telepathic powers, Kati, I would think that you will become quite comfortable with the node once your initial discomfort passes. Do not forget that you are a fair bit older than any of us others, even Ingrid and Roxanna, and therefore your adjustment will take longer.”

  That was a long speech for Murra, in Katie’s opinion. Her train of thought, however, was interrupted by the opening of a door and the arrival of the burly man who usually brought the food cart. He was pushing it ahead of him this time, too, but he also was carrying a sack of some equipment on his shoulder.

  “Oh, it’s time,” said Ingrid, getting up. “Roxanna, let’s you and me do this. Katie still needs her rest; Murra, you may as well entertain her while we’re busy playing nurse to Mr. Goldenhair.”

  Roxanna and Ingrid hurried towards the new arrival, who released the sack from his shoulder into Ingrid’s hands with a few words. Ingrid drew a food packet from it, and passed it to Roxanna, who brought it over to Katie.

  “You’re still getting special feed, Katie,” she said as she dropped it on Katie’s lap before following Ingrid to the comatose prisoner’s corner.

  The children now seemed to require little oversight at meals. They had already formed a line, and before the door had shut behind the crew member, that line was snaking by the food cart, each child picking up a single packet as she or he walked by. When they were done Murra went and picked up one for himself, leaving the last two on the cart for Ingrid and Roxanna.

  When he came back Katie felt his mental touch push against her mind. There was something indefinably different about it now; she attributed this to the node on his neck.

  He was now mentally acute enough to catch that half-formed thought of hers.

  “Yes,” he commented telepathically. “I believe my mind must feel different to you now, even as yours feels different to me. However, the difference in yours is familiar; its tone is like that of the contact we had with something when the Captain was telling us things, before the implantations. The granda node chose you, right?”

  Katie saw no point in denying it.

  “It’s true. I suspect that that’s partly why I’m having a hard time adjusting to it. There’s a personality associated with it which I don’t always find compatible. However there is also a huge amount of information and knowledge that may well turn out to be very useful.”

  “You and the node are agreed on the need to escape, right?”

  “Let us say that it is intent on escape, and I am determined to get away, and then find a way to get the rest of you out, too. So help me, the granda is going to give me a hand with that.”

  “Yes.” There was a touch of amusement behind Murra’s thought. “You will find a way to do that, and since the granda chose to throw its lot with you, it will help. I know this to be so because I have been having mental discussions with another prisoner on board this ship—well, whenever he has been fit to converse with me.”

  “What? There’s someone else! Murra, what has been going on?” She recalled how Roxanna and Ingrid had suspected that Murra had an unknown source of information, considering what he knew. They had been right!

  “Yes, indeed, that is so.” He had again followed her thought flow. “You three had me worried for a while. But I did not want anyone to know then that I could contact the Xeonsaur. The ship’s personnel have been drugging him with tangle-juice just like they are doing with the new man. Only it affects the Xeonsaurs differently, since they are cold-blooded creatures, lizards, in fact.”

  The granda node came to life.

  “An Xeonsaur! An Xeonsaur under the influence of the mind-tangler! This is information that we have to get to the Star Federation!”

  Murra took this shift in Katie’s mental make-up in stride.

  “Yes,” he said. “And to the Xeonsaur home world. He tells me that it is very important to get word of his captivity there. The things these humans—short-lived gnats, he calls them—are making him do go against all the rules that he has been taught since he broke out of his egg! That is what he tells me!”

  “Indeed.” This was still Katie’s node communicating. “He must be navigating this ship. And that explains a lot!” But the granda did not explain the “lot”, merely retreated to the back of Katie’s mind.

  “Therefore, Kati, the Xeonsaur and I will do all we can to help you escape. The Xeonsaur has a mental plan of the ship that he can transmit to you through me, assuming that you can hold it in your mind.”

  “Can I?” She directed this to her node.

  “Of course. Get used to your enhanced abilities, young woman. We will need you to use them.” With that the granda slid away again.

  “Also,” Murra added, “the Xeonsaur tells me that the slavers have been using excessive quantities of the mind-tangler and will have to stop to pick up a new shipment at a regular stop of theirs. This will mean an actual landing of the ship, on a backward planet. Captain Gorsh does not trust the felines with trading, but only with the picking up of slaves. The Xeonsaur suggests that this landing would be the perfect time for an escape attempt. He thinks that it is possible that the granda node may have some past familiarity with the planets the criminals use as trading stops; if that is so it would be an invaluable asset to the granda’s host, that host being you, Kati.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight,” Katie sent to Murra. “An opportunity to escape is coming up, since the slavers who picked us up have to make a landing on some planet, to buy from some other crook the drug they use on their more important prisoners--the mind-tangler, that is. This creates an opportunity for only a single person, or two at best; I better forget any notion of being a Pied Piper leading away the children. First, I’ll have to get off the ship, undetected, then I have to stay hidden until the ship has resumed its journey, and then I’ll have to find my way to civilization. I’ll have to make it to this Star Federation that granda talks about, presumably.”

  “And then you send word to the Xeonsaur world. It does have dealings with the Star Federation even though it is not a member, so that part should not be difficult.”

  “And then I raise hue and cry, and get somebody interested enough in helping me to trace all of you that I’ll have to leave behind.”

  “That should not be difficult once we reach the Star Federation.” The granda node joined the mind talk once again. “Slavery is an anathema there; much of the work of the Peace Officers involves trying to keep it from happening, even on the Fringe Worlds and their Space Stations. I expect that the fellow whom your teenage friends are right now tending, with much more kindness than the ship personnel would have accorded him, was caught while investigating a lead that brought him too close to what he was looking for.”

  �
�Well, great.” Katie knew her thoughts were dripping with sarcasm but there was no help for it. “This all really sounds to me like one impossible thing after another. Let us hope that we have a little luck with us, at the very least.”

  “Don’t forget that you will have me with you every step of the way,” the granda node reminded her. “I’m worth a lot more than a little luck.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Katie, along with Murra, Ingrid and Roxanna, stood at a respectful distance while Captain Gorsh and Doctor Guzi conferred , in low voices, over the body under the force field. Katie thought to ask the granda if it could enhance her hearing enough to make out the words, but the node was ahead of her, as it often was, and she found that she had no trouble hearing the discussion.

  “How much of the drug do we still have?” the Captain was asking the doctor.

  “Not nearly enough. Two more days to go before we get to the rendezvous and this vial is all I have left. And we have to keep the Xeonsaur on full dosage; I won’t answer for the consequences if he’s not kept fully under, physically. He’s been immobilized for a long time now; he’ll be furious if he gets loose. It’s better to stint this one; we can keep him under the force field full time if necessary. It’ll slow down the breaking of his mind blocks, but that can’t be helped.”

  “Those damn cats have a habit of using way too much of the juice when they do their pick-ups,” complained the Captain. “But try talking to them. The stuff’s expensive, too. I’ll have to get good prices for this cargo to make up for all the tangler we’re using these days.”

  “You’ll get it.” The doctor sniffed. “Not too many ships supplying human cargo these days, what with the Star Federation sticking its many noses in places that are none of their business.”

  He turned the force field off and gave a swift kick to the lying man’s posterior. The man’s body shuddered in a spasm, and Katie heard Ingrid catch her breath in angry shock, then let it out, slowly and carefully. Neither of the men reacted, even though for a split second Katie feared that they had heard it, too. Then she relaxed; either the two had not bothered to node-enhance their hearing, or else they simply did not care what the cargo thought.

  “I’ll give him a half a dose now, and the same again tomorrow at this time,” the doctor was saying, setting the drug injector on the top of the vial he was holding and sucking up a small amount of the liquid into it. “After that, well, we better make it to the rendezvous on schedule and your sources had better be there on time.”

  He pressed the injector onto the man’s upper arm, squeezed its trigger, and pulled it out again. Then he reset the force field while the Captain walked over to where the four young people waited for instructions.

  “There’s going to be a change of routine for a couple of days in regard to this prisoner,” he told them. “He’s to be fed and toileted as usual, but don’t bother showering him. He’ll be fine without being washed for a couple of days. Got that?”

  “Yeah,” Roxanna responded tartly. “Our patient gets to eat and to use the john. But he’s to live in his dirt; he’s not to be washed. We get it.”

  The Captain gave her an icy stare, and nodded, tight-lipped. Then he and the Doctor left.

  “Careful, Roxanna, don’t piss off our august Captain too much.” Katie shook her head at the dark girl.

  What sort of a price was the slaver was going to get for Roxanna, she found herself wondering. What sort of a future would he sell her into? Katie sighed, and did not add to her comment the words that had been on the tip of her tongue. Every passing event seemed to add to the urgency she felt to get away and get help, no matter how impossible the prospect might seem!

  “Two days ‘til the ship sets down!” she subvocalized to Murra, wanting to protect Ingrid and Roxanna as much as possible by keeping them out of the loop. “You and me, my granda and your Xeonsaur are going to have to make some plans! Somehow this plot has to got to work!”

  *****

  The Xeonsaur might have been physically restrained by the mind-tangler—now, there was an interesting oxymoron, thought Katie, and a definite indication that the Xeonsaur biology was rather odd—but its vast mind seemed to be working perfectly well. As far as Katie could judge anyway, which was not very far, even with the mind enhancement that the granda node provided. The Xeonsaurs were a cold-blooded race, and they were so long-lived that to them humans were as fire-flies were to Katie’s kind. Which is why this particular specimen was not all that upset by his captivity and physical immobility, although he was not about to let Captain Gorsh know that. What he was most upset about was the fact that Captain Gorsh and Doctor Guzi had been able to use their new contraband drug to force him to navigate the ship down paths that Xeonsaurs considered roads not to be taken. That is why he was eager to aid Katie and her granda in their quest to get off the ship, and to make their way to the worlds of the Star Federation. He wanted Gorsh stopped and punished for his crimes against, not human law, but the laws of space and time.

  The task of passing the necessary knowledge about Gorsh’s ship from the cavernous mind of the Xeonsaur to Katie’s much less spacious one, and to make that transfer via Murra’s mind, turned out to be a challenge in itself. It had to be done piece by piece, and more than once during the process Katie regretted the fact that she had nothing so elementary to hand, as a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Instead of drawing a schematic of the ship as the information slid into her mind, she had to depend on the granda’s ability to visualize information, and to retain it. Fortunately the node’s abilities to do so were phenomenal by her standards. Therefore, when the process was finished, Katie knew exactly what was where on the ship, and how to get to it, or around it. It was as if she now had a living map of the ship inside her mind, and could refer to it at will.

  The matter of the rendezvous planet came next. The Xeonsaur knew what planet it was, and where on the planet they were to land. Katie received an image of a globe with landmasses and oceans detailed on it; the granda grasped that image avidly and stored it for future reference. Then came the information as to where this globe was in relation to stars with which the granda was familiar. The node was pleased with this information; apparently at least a portion of one of its many past lives had been spent on that world. It would therefore have some useful knowledge to pass on to Katie once they were on the planet. It did express some puzzlement about the global map’s landmasses; it did not recognize their shapes or number, from its previous visit. However, the Xeonsaur insisted that his identification of the world was correct, and even a granda node could not argue with that.

  “This planet has some extensive cave systems, I believe. Is our landing site anywhere near any of those?” The granda passed this question to the Xeonsaur through Katie and Murra.

  The answer came quickly: Yes, the rendezvous site was in an uninhabited, mountainous area which had an extensive system of caverns associated with it.

  “That’s a piece of luck,” the granda subvocalized. “Heat-seekers don’t work through rock. We can hide underground.”

  “Heat-seekers?” Katie muttered half out loud. Like she needed more things to worry about.

  *****

  That night Katie worried about “what was passing as a plan”, as she privately referred to the sketchy outline of action that the Xeonsaur, Murra, the granda and she had come up with. It was sketchy because there were still so many unknowables in the picture that coming up with a well-defined scheme was impossible. Meanwhile, the granda was insisting that she must drag the Star Federation Peace Officer with her, when she escaped.

  “But he’s almost comatose!” she had protested when the node had brought the topic up, imagining herself literally dragging the man behind her as she made her way out of the ship, stunning guards as she went.

  “That’s utter nonsense,” the granda had countered. “He’s on half-dosage right now, and they only have enough drug for one more half-dose. By the time the ship lands, it’ll be mostly out of his
system. He’ll be in just the right state of withdrawl—able to act, but not clearheaded enough to argue. It should be easy to take him with you: just lead, and ask him to follow you.”

  “And you know this, how?” she had queried.

  “I’ve been on board this ship for some time,” came the answer. “Like I’ve said before, these idiot people could not confine me in a box. I knew that there was a reptile on the ship, but I assumed that it was of the lesser species, since it had been physically immobilized by the slavers, and since it showed no interest in mentally contacting me. Plus, I did know that the felines were using the mind-tangler to put the children out, so they were easy to snatch without damaging them. I have been watching the effects of the tangle-juice on human-like sentients for a while now, and that includes you, of course.”

  “All right, then,” Katie agreed, feeling rebellious, nevertheless.

  She was vaguely aware that none of her ship-board companions ever seemed to have differences of opinion with their nodes; yet that was happening to her all the time. Was it time spent inside peoples’ brains that had created the distinct and self-confident personality that she now had to handle?

  The thing was, there was no point in feeling rebellious towards the granda. Katie well knew that without the knowledge, and the enhanced mental abilities that her node added to her brain, she could not make the escape attempt. Even with the help of the Xeonsaur and Murra—no, it would be impossible. Without the granda, she would be totally ignorant of the world that the ship would land on for the rendezvous. She was, she reminded herself, merely a human being from the planet Earth, of the twenty-first century, yes, but naive for that time, having lived her whole life in a sparsely populated corner of that globe, which was still mostly in its natural state. How she was supposed to get from the slave ship to the Halls of Justice—or whatever—of the Star Federation, she had not a clue.

  “Well, now you are showing some good sense.” The granda sounded almost pleased with her. “You have great stores of resourcefulness as well as an open mind. Those qualities will come in handy in our quest, even as will your stubbornness, although the stubbornness can be a double-edged knife. Also, if you insist on knowing, the reason we will take the SFPO with us is because he can help us reach the ‘Halls of Justice’ you were contemplating.”