The food in their breakfast packets helped to energize them. They were making better time in their tortuous progress. A kilometre was not that far to walk, Kati thought, back home she could have done it in fifteen minutes. This was much worse terrain, however than the paths on the Resort had been, and there seemed to be some other difference to this planet that she found energy-sapping.
“The gravity is a wee bit higher than you are accustomed to,” the granda told her, helpfully returning from the mental crevice into which she had forced it.
“And the humidity doesn’t help either,” she muttered out loud, drawing a puzzled glance from Mikal. “Oh,” she added in explanation, “my node just explained to me that this world has higher gravity than I’m used to; that’s why I’m not moving as fast as I think I should be. I guess I’m just whining.”
“It’s just as well that the gravity ‘s slowing you down,” Mikal replied with a sigh. “If it wasn’t, I don’t think I’d be able to keep up.”
Moments after this exchange, they heard a mechanical whining sound behind them.
“We better find that hiding place you mentioned!” Mikal shouted. “That’s the sound of a flit!”
“Allow me to run your body for a moment,” the granda requested inside Kati’s head, polite again. “The SFPO is right, and if you aren’t under cover, it’ll take only one circuit of this landscape for them to find you. They don’t even need heat-seekers.”
With a great effort she relaxed her control of her body enough for the granda to take over.
“This way,” it shouted to Mikal in Kati’s voice. “Hurry!”
She was running faster than she had known she could run, Mikal trailing behind her, but doggedly following her as fast as he could. It could not have taken long but to Kati that trek seemed to last forever! How quickly could the ship’s personnel flit across the ground that they had been traversing for at least a half an hour? It would not take long, she was sure of that.
She was headed towards a giant boulder; suddenly it was looming in front of her. The granda quickly examined the ground in front of it, then ran Kati along its bulk to a spot where there was sand.
“Yes!” it subvocalized and began to kick the sand away from the boulder. Sure enough, Kati could see that there was a hollow under the rock, or there would have been without the sand.
As soon as the granda had dug a small hole under the boulder it took Kati’s pack off her back, crawled her body into the hole, feet first, holding the rucksack above her head. By now, Mikal had arrived, panting and sweaty.
“Do as I’m doing,” her node told him, “as soon as I’m gone. There’s no time to lose. I don’t know how high the drop is but I doubt it’s long enough to hurt us. I’ll get out of your way as soon as I hit the floor.”
Then she was falling in the dark. Moments later her feet hit a solid surface; she bent her knees to break the fall, letting go of her pack in the process. It fell with a thud beside her. The granda let her resume control of her body, and she took pleasure in the physical sensations as she scrambled away from the drop in the dark, grabbing hold of her pack as she did so.
Mikal thudded down beside her, breathing hard.
“That was close,” he said between gasps. “I saw the flit coming our way as I crawled into the hole.”
“Shit. I wonder if they noticed you and guess what we have done,” Kati muttered.
“Only if they know about the cave system.” Mikal spoke thoughtfully. “I don’t see why they would if this is just a world which they use for meeting buyers and suppliers. But possibly you know more about what they know and don’t know than I do.”
“The Xeonsaur would never have given them more information than they demanded of him,” subvocalized the granda to Kati, and she shook her head at Mikal.
“My node tells me that it would be very unlikely,” she said out loud.
“Well, then, I guess we wait here until our pursuers decide that finding us is hopeless, and take their ship back into space.”
Mikal had pulled out one of the small lights that they had stuffed into their packs in the ship’s storeroom. He was moving its beam around them, apparently trying to gain some idea of their surroundings.
“There’s been water running through here at one time,” he commented. “Lots of water, as a matter of fact. Wonder what would give you that much water, this high up in the mountains?”
“Possibly glaciers melting, if it happened fast enough,“ answered Kati, thinking of home, Greenland suddenly coming to her mind. “Big glaciers.”
“You might have something there,” her companion acknowledged, still busy with his examination, cursory as it had to be with the small light.
“Any ideas about how we’re going to get back up to daylight?” he then inquired.
In the very dim light she could see that he had turned to look at the bright patch from which they had tumbled down onto the cavern floor. It was not particularly far up, but it was in the middle part of the open area that they were in. A pile of sand lay on the floor below it, but it was too small to offer a climber any purchase.
“We do have ropes and bolts,” Kati said tentatively.
“But nothing to shoot bolts with,” Mikal pointed out. “And even with you standing on my shoulders..., no I don’t think so. It’s too high and too awkward; there’s nothing to catch hold of to pull yourself up.”
He shook his head.
“Still, we’ll have to think of something.” He did not sound in any way defeated. Clearly he expected them to work a way out of the dilemma.
“I suppose,” Kati said, “that we could spend some of our waiting time exploring these caverns. Possibly we’ll come across an easier exit.”
She summoned to mind the global map that was stored somewhere within the neuron system she now shared with her node. The granda gave her as good a magnification of the image as he could. Unfortunately the detail on the cave system was a lot less impressive than it was on the above-ground features. Even the Xeonsaur had its limits, evidently. Nevertheless, the empty spaces underground appeared to stretch for long distances. There were tunnels that extended into the remarkably high and broad mountain range, the bulk of which loomed over the lesser range in which the ship had landed. And there were other branches that headed into lower country and appeared to have openings to the outside world where the foothills met the plains.
“Have you any suggestions as to how we’d find our way back to this place if we go off wandering?” Mikal asked her. “It’s pretty easy to get lost underground.”
“Well, I guess, leaving a trail of bread crumbs is out of the question,” Kati answered flippantly.
“Huh?”
“Never mind. A joke from back home.” She thought for a minute. “I guess the rope we took from the ship would work for short distances; we could unroll a ball of it and then knot the end of a new ball to the old one when we needed to.”
They had several balls of thin, lightweight, but seemingly very strong string in their back-packs. There were no indications on them as to how much line each of them contained, but Kati guessed that it was considerable.
“That would allow us to travel for some distance,” Mikal said slowly. “Is your map any good on the tunnels?”
Apparently his mind and hers were following similar paths.
“No, not particularly. Mostly it just shows where the underground passages are; nothing about what’s in them. Although I’m grateful even for the detail we have. Otherwise we’d have gotten caught already.”
They were sitting on the cavern floor, in the dim lighting provided by the hole that they had made in the roof by their entrance, and the flickering of Mikal’s light, as he varied the direction and the size of its beam in his effort to determine what exactly was around them.
“So, how did you end up a prisoner on Captain Gorsh’s ship?” Kati asked suddenly. It was as good a time as any to satisfy her curiosity. There was not much else that they could do except talk.
<
br /> Her companion said nothing for a moment; she had time to wonder if he did not want to answer her question. But then he began to speak:
“It’s complicated,” he said, weighing his words carefully. “To understand, you‘d need to know that I work with the sector of the Star Federation Peace Officer Corps that enforces the Federation ban on Human Trafficking. The Federation members generally abhor slavery in any form, and it is rarely a problem among the inner membership, and if it is, the particular worlds themselves are quick to act to put a stop to it. Where a problem does exist is among what are known as the Fringe Worlds, or the Wilder Planets. They are inhabited worlds on and around the periphery of the Federation; some of them are nominally members but many are not. These worlds are at different stages of sentient development; I think that it’s quite likely that this world we’re on right now is one of them.”
He paused to draw breath and the granda drew Kati’s attention to its concern.
“My node insists that I should ask you about the beacons, whatever they are. It tells me that one of the reasons it wanted you on this escape is that it figures that you can find the beacon on this world.”
Mikal chuckled.
“Indeed. If this is a beaconed world, and if it is a Fringe World, as it most likely is, yes, then I should be able to find and operate the beacon.”
“And the beacon, if I’m reading the granda correctly, makes it possible for us to get away from here, and to civilization.”
Now Mikal laughed out loud.
“The beacon enables us to get picked up by a ship, or a representative of, the Peace Officer Corps of the Star Federation,” he said. “We’ll get a ride to one of the inner planets, Lamania, where the office I work out of, is located. I suppose that it constitutes civilization, or as close to such as is necessary.”
He then continued: “My job is to investigate reports that trafficking in humans may be happening, anywhere that is under Federation influence. My colleagues and I have a lot of latitude in our task. There are very few Wilder Planets that sell nothing to, or buy nothing from, one or another of the Federation members. Our usual complaints come from communities on the more isolated worlds that have had some of their people snatched by slave collectors, and have found out that we will take their tales seriously. We try to find out who did the snatching, and what they did with the live cargo. And, of course, we try to get the people involved back home, and the criminals responsible, to justice.
“The fringes being what they are,” he sighed, “I’ll have a job for a long time to come. There are places that run their rug-hooking businesses with child slave labour. There are brothels on certain space stations that are staffed with a never-ending stream of bought teenagers of both sexes. There are mining operations on inhospitable planets which are cheaper to operate with slave labour than with machinery. Even if the slaves die young, if you can keep getting new ones, under some circumstances they’re preferable to fractious, stupid, breakable machines.
“Then there are politics. Every so often one of the slave-using worlds will send a delegation to the Federation Senate to complain about the Peace Officer Corps interfering with their business model. Usually the Senate sends for my boss to do a little explaining; fortunately she is very good at what she does, including explaining the actions of her Corps sector. She is quite fond of pointing out that none of the people we have liberated from the hands of slave-owners, have ever complained about our interference. And really, as she says, if they are confining their practices to their own world as they claim, why is it that we’re finding people snatched several star-systems away, in their factories, or mines, or brothels?”
“Wow! Go on!” Kati interjected.
“To get back to my part of the story, a while back one of our operatives on a slave-using world found out that the very illegal slave market at which, each year, the slave procurers auction off their wares to the buyers, was to be held on that planet. He let us know about it, and then rushed off to the city that was to be the site of the market. He managed to get himself a job with the catering company that supplied the refreshment stands at the auction, and therefore was able to see and hear much of the goings-on, even though entry to the arena where the main sales took place, was restricted to those with permits. It seemed that the sensation of the market was Gorsh and his Company, because they were providing slaves that he guaranteed could not be traced to homes and families. Apparently he had about a hundred ‘pieces’, according to slavers’ lingo, a mixed bag of humanoids, mostly children but some teenagers as well, and he got very good prices for them.
“The scuttlebutt, according to our operative, was that this was the fourth year that Gorsh had brought such a load to the market, and so far none of his earlier customers had had any trouble with the Star Federation law coming after their acquisitions. Which meant that Gorsh was getting better prices than any of the other sellers.
“My boss found this very alarming. Where was Gorsh getting his cargoes? People, even on primitive planets, rarely just hand over their kith and kin to slavers, so he had to be snatching them somewhere. Where? So a group of us were sent to make inquiries; first of all to talk discreetly to our operative, and then to try to trace the movements of Gorsh and his ship. I had the interesting task of interviewing Gorsh’s wife and family, and of looking over his home arrangements. Those were fascinating, indeed. The Madame, his wife had a considerable amount of young help around the estate; that seemed rather curious to me, considering that the world Gorsh lives on is nominally a member of the Federation.”
“Nominally a member of the Federation? What does that mean?”
“It means that at some time in the thousand-year span of the Federation’s existence, that planet applied for, and was granted, member status. At that time it agreed to honour the Federation laws, and in return received a seat in the Federation Senate, and the right to participate in various Councils. The Federation also charges certain taxes on inter-Federation and external trade—that’s where the funds for my job come from. But the world Gorsh lives on has not been remitting the proper taxes for some time, nor has it been sending a Representative to the Senate. However, the Federation government considers it wiser to keep some of the worlds in default, on the books as members, rather than kicking them out; planetary governments and conditions change, and besides, as long as a planet is considered a Federation member, the Federation has some say in how they conduct their affairs. That’s why I was able to insist that Madame Gorsh had to talk to me, a Federation official.”
Kati let out a whoop.
“I happened to find out that Gorsh’s plan for me was to take me home to his Estate as a sister-wife for the Madame, named Milla, I gather,” she said.
“And you didn’t much cotton to the idea of being the Captain’s second wife,” Mikal observed, chuckling. “Smart choice, I’d say. Milla would have made your life miserable, if I’m any judge of character.”
“Gorsh would have made my life miserable,” Kati muttered, grinding her teeth. “I made the mistake of marrying a charming rogue once; I’ve had it with rogue husbands. I think that overhearing that conversation about the Captain’s plan is what cemented my decision to try to escape. From then on my granda had a willing accomplice.”
“To finish off my story, the Madame must have got word out to her husband that there were Peace Officers sniffing around the Estate. I didn’t even make it off-planet. Clearly Gorsh has influence on his home world; at least on the landmass on which his Estate is. I was ambushed on an open city street and taken prisoner. Then, interrogated, or rather, subjected to an attempted interrogation, and, after that, drugged—I have no memory of being taken aboard his spacecraft. In fact I have no memories of the intervening time until the last little bit when I realized I was being looked after by a couple of attractive girls. It’s been very strange. That’s some drug he’s using! It must be something new, and very illegal!”
“It’s their favourite drug,” Kati commented. “I go
t to experience its wonders, too, although for a lot shorter spell than you did. They call it the mind-tangler or tangle-juice and in my experience the names are appropriate!”
“Yeah, the stuff does seem to stick to a person’s mental essence, doesn’t it?”
“I suspect that the red-haired doctor Gorsh keeps on the ship, could tell us a lot about that drug. Not that I ever got the opportunity to ask.”
“Well, now that I’ve told my story, Kati, how about yours? How did you end up on that vessel?”
“Not by choice, believe me. As a matter of fact Gorsh’s pet cats weren’t after me at all. They were after my five-year-old son, Jake.” She could hear the tremor in her own voice. Mostly she tried not to think about Jake because it hurt. “We were in the bush—on my home world--picking raspberries with Jake’s grandparents. We had no idea that there were strangers around. I was on the last bowl of berries and Jake had settled down to rest beside the pail of picked berries when I heard him scream. I ran to him and saw that he was being dragged off by what my granda calls a ‘feline’. In an instinctive reaction, I rushed at them, and smushed my bowl of berries into the cat’s face. It let go, but there was another one of its kind coming at us. I sent Jake running off to his grandparents, planning to stop the second cat-man somehow, I don’t know how. It grabbed me, I felt a prick on my arm and the next thing I knew I was trying to clear the fuzzies out of my brain on the floor of a space ship.”
“Ye gods,” Mikal’s voice was a whisper. Then, louder: “I realize that you must miss your son terribly, but understand, you saved him from slavery, Kati. What you did was brave; you have the right to be proud of yourself.”
Kati realized that her eyes had filled with tears.
“Yeah,” she sniffed. “He’s home with people who love him dearly, even if he has lost his mother. And I’ll live to get the rest of the kids in that prison room out of Gorsh’s clutches.”
“I doubt that it was the only filled prison room on that ship,” Mikal said. “The shipment that he brought to market last time was around a hundred individuals; I would expect this to be at least the same size.”
Escape from the Drowned Planet Page 8