Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  Donny had followed them. He had ignored his son, and had stared at his wife instead, a cold smile on his face.

  “You’ve got to admit that I could have done better if I’d put my mind to it,” he had said to her, looking her up and down critically, as she had stood beside Jake, grubby in old jeans and a torn plaid shirt.

  “So why didn’t you?” she had retorted, angry enough to not fall for the assault on her self-esteem.

  Donny had shrugged.

  “The word was that your parents had left you a nice sum of money when they died,” he had answered. He had shifted his attention from her to Jake as he spoke.

  A strangled croak had escaped from her throat; she had been fighting to keep back sobs.

  “So you married me for the money,” she had finally managed to whisper. “For my parents’ life savings, the money that was supposed to pay for my University education.”

  “Whatever.” He had shrugged. “Money’s money. I have plans for it.”

  “Do you, now?” Her stomach had been churning. “If you honestly think that I’m going to sign that money over to you, you’re crazy. It’s ‘the education fund’. If I don’t go to school on it, Jake will. There’s no way you’re going to use it for some stupid scheme of yours.”

  She had known precisely the moment when he had realized that she had meant exactly what she had said. Something in his eyes had changed, and the change had terrified her. She had turned to grab Jake and run but there was no time. Donny had grabbed her instead, shook her and then started hitting her. She had screamed and then he had changed tactics and choked her. Black spots had begun to appear in front of her eyes; she could not breathe. The last thing she had remembered were Jake’s screams; Jake had been screaming as if his world was falling apart.

  John and some of the hunters staying at the Resort had reached them before the damage—the physical damage, at least—had become irreversible. Katie had spent a couple of days in the hospital, and Donny had been arrested for assault. When Anna had accompanied Katie to the lawyers, Katie had renewed the Trust with Jake as her beneficiary, and Anna as his guardian, in the case that it might become necessary. During the same visit she had talked to the young woman lawyer who handled divorces for the firm, setting that process underway. She was assured that in view of the assault on her person, the divorce would be easy to obtain and quick. Not painless, however; her heart had been broken apart and it would take time to heal.

  She and Jake had stayed on at the Resort, in the apartment above the boathouse which John had fixed up for them. It had once been intended for a staff overseer who had never been hired in the end, with the dwelling left unfinished for years. John had told Donny that he had to stay away from home for two years, including his jail sentence, and the younger man had obeyed his father. The story was that he had gone to the country’s North, for a time, to work for a guiding outfit there. Likely it was true; he had returned to the Maki Resort a better guide than he had been before. The Americans whom he guided on their fishing and their hunting trips usually insisted on having his services the following year, too.

  “Well, you certainly married a jerk,” Mikal opined with feeling.

  “Indeed,” Kati sighed. “Fortunately my in-laws rallied around me!”

  “Sounds to me like they knew their son,” Mikal mused.

  “Oh, they, and Anna, knew him, all right. I remember Anna telling me that what upset her the most about Donny, was how he would hurt their parents, over and over again, and never even seem to realize that he was doing that.”

  Kati continued with her story:

  “I began to take University courses over the internet, soon after Jake and I had moved to the boathouse flat; otherwise our lives revolved around the Resort like before. Then, last spring the University contacted me, suggesting that I come to the campus to take the final semesters; I needed to take some lab and seminar courses for my degree, and those were nearly impossible to do over the wire.”

  She had been thrown into turmoil again. She liked the idea of being on campus, in a city, but what was she to do with Jake? Bring him with her and find a daycare for him while she was at school, or leave him at the Resort, with the only family, besides herself, that he had? Either way, she knew that the boy would lose something, and that was hard for Katie to reconcile. Had she the right to deny him the presence of loved ones, for what might be selfish reasons?

  This was the dilemma that had been occupying her mind the day that she, Jake, John and Raisa had gone picking raspberries.

  One of the specialties at the Maki Resort were the wild berry jams and jellies that Raisa made, and that were served with the breakfasts, in the Resort dining room. The preserves varied from year to year, depending on what berries happened to be abundant in the surrounding bush each summer. This year, one of John’s informants about the berry crops, had told him of an excellent wild raspberry patch at the end of a particular logging road, and when the word came that the berries were ripe, the Makis made plans to go picking the very next day; raspberries, once ripe, fall off the plants very quickly. Even a day’s delay can mean the loss of a whole crop. Katie had offered to join the picking expedition with Jake; it was an opportunity to do some deep thinking in the middle of Northern Ontario wilderness. Perhaps Mother Nature would help her decide what to do.

  They had been granted a beautiful summer day for the expedition. The sun had been shining, but the temperature had not been so hot as to make the pickers unduly uncomfortable in the long sleeves and pants which were necessary while scrambling among thorny berry bushes. John had done the walkabout that he always did before he started picking, and had come back with the word that there were no black bears anywhere in the berried area. He was somewhat bemused by that; having to watch out for bears was normal during berry-picking in the wild.

  “It does make it easier”, Raisa had commented carefully, “although we better not let our guard down. They may still show up.”

  John had nodded. He had been holding the cudgel that he had carried during his tour around the berry patch. A lifelong resident of the area, he was familiar with black bear habits.

  “I’m not sure that I like this,” he had said slowly. “It seems unnatural, somehow.”

  Nevertheless, they had taken advantage of the absence of bears by spreading out more than they normally would have. They also had left their full berry pails to sit on the ground, in the shade of the bushes, rather than stowing them into the back of John’s old truck the moment they had been filled. Jake had been able to wander from one adult to another freely, following the voices, as one or another of them had called to him. He had enjoyed himself enormously, chatting with his grandparents who, for once, had the time to converse with him even as they worked. He had even managed to gather a few berries into his picking bowl every now and then, proudly emptying them into the nearest pail.

  After lunch, which had been a pleasant break, what with all the goodies that Raisa had packed into her coolers, Katie had taken Jake with her to a patch that was heavy with berries but which she had only observed earlier. She had found it just before Raisa had called for the lunch break, and had noted the presence of a small grassed clearing, surrounded by lush raspberry bushes covered with the red, succulent fruit. It had been a bit further away from the truck and her in-laws than she would normally venture, but since no bears had appeared during the morning, she had figured that it would be safe enough. So she had gathered an empty pail, two picking bowls and her son, and told her in-laws that she would give them a break from Jake, and had pointed in the direction she was heading. They had smiled and let them go; an indication, she had thought, that they could, indeed, use a break from their grandson’s incessant chatter.

  For some time Jake had been his talkative self, entertaining his mother with observations on all and sundry around them, and a lot that was not. Katie was filling the berry pail quickly; she really had lucked into a rich patch. Then, when she was emptying what she thought ought to be
her second-last bowlful into the pail, Jake had suddenly balked.

  “Mommy, I’m tired,” he had told her. “Can we go home now?”

  “Well,” she had responded, studying the pail. “You know, sweetie, I only need one more bowl of berries to fill this pail. How about I pick it and then we’ll go back to the truck and see how Grandpa and Grandma are doing? If they’re done, too, maybe we can head home early.”

  It was a possibility. Raisa had mentioned at lunch that the picking was going much faster than she had expected it to, and likely they could call it a day by the middle of the afternoon.

  “I can’t wait, Mommy,” Jake had protested. “I’m sleepy now.”

  He had yawned. He truly had been tired and sleepy.

  Katie had made a quick decision. There were no bears around. Most other wildlife in the bush gave human beings a lot of room. It ought to be safe enough for Jake to take a short nap beside the berry pail while she finished the picking. With the abundance of berries, she would be done quickly and there was no need for her to go far. She would be out of sight only because the berry bushes would be between her and her son.

  “Why don’t you curl up for a nap on the ground beside the berry pail?” she had suggested. “I’ll finish the picking, and then I’ll get you up and we’ll go to the truck.”

  Jake must have been tired, likely from all the fresh air and the sun exposure, for he settled down on the grass in the shade, by the pail, without further ado. He let out a huge yawn, grinned at his mother and closed his eyes.

  Katie had thrown a kiss to him and hurried off to finish her picking.

  Her berry bowl had been nearly full when she heard the scream, Jake’s scream. She had tucked the bowl under her arm and had started to run, crashing through the bushes between her and the clearing. At first, when she had broken into the open she had not seen Jake; he had not been by the berry pail where she had left him. Then she had caught sight of him, being dragged by an odd-looking furry, clothes-wearing creature—definitely not a bear—towards the far end of the bare ground!

  She had shouted something, and rushed towards the creature and her son whose mouth was covered by a paw, and whose eyes were wide with fear! She had taken the berry bowl into both her hands and smashed it with all the force she could muster into the creature’s whiskery face!

  It had growled and let go of Jake, raising its paws to remove the bowl and the smashed berries from its face. Katie had grabbed Jake by the arm, intending to run away with him.

  Then she had seen the second creature—it had looked much like the first one—coming towards them at a fast pace. She had realized immediately that they could not outrun it, and she had no weapon left to use on it!

  There was only one thing to do and she had done it immediately! She had turned Jake to face the road where the truck and his grandparents would be.

  “Run to Grandpa!” she had ordered him, giving him a quick shove to start him on his way.

  Then she had turned to face the new menace, determined to make certain that she would keep it from going after her son! When it had reached her, she had attacked it with her bare hands, and with her feet, kicking the creature and grabbing its clothes and fur, clearly annoying it into growling at her dangerously! Finally it had managed to grasp a solid hold of her left arm, she had felt an odd prickle on that arm, under the paw on it, and then she had blacked out.

  “And when I came to, I was on the floor of Gorsh’s ship, with Roxanna and Ingrid helping me, and all those children surrounding us.

  “That’s it. And now it’s your turn to talk.”

  Mikal commented on Kati’s tale in a light tone of voice—to put her at ease, she assumed—and then launched into his story:

  “I live on the world Lamania, as I believe I did mention, and have lived there most of my life, although I was born on Borhq, which is my father’s world. My mother, a Lamanian, spent some time on Borhq as a young woman-- she was there to do a cultural study for the Star Federation--and she met my father there. An unlikely pair they were, to be sure. She was a small, delicate, large-headed but hairless Lamanian, pale as a ghost; my father’s people must have found her very strange-looking. However, my mother is, and was, a bright, outgoing person and apparently my father, a big, bronze-skinned, hairy Borhquan was utterly smitten. He wanted to marry her, and not just according to the free-mate arrangement, which is the usual way between partners from different worlds in the Star Federation, but insisted on the formality of getting his tree-family to accept her into their circle, so that he could marry her according to the old rituals. I think my mother would have been just as happy with a simple civil partnership, but apparently my father was a stickler for tradition, even though he chose to marry a woman from a different world.”

  “His ‘tree-family’?” Kati queried.

  “Oh, everyone on the Northwestern Continent of Borhq belongs to a tree-family. Trees are and have forever, it seems, been very important to the livelihoods of my father’s people. Clan groups live together in extensive houses built into trees. I’m speaking of very large trees of course, the branches of which can support the weight of these constructions and everything and everybody inside them. When a clan grows, the house grows, extending into neighbouring trees in a manner that looks haphazard from the outside but, most certainly, is not. A tree-family is led by its oldest women, as a Council of Elders. So it would have been such a Council that my father had to persuade to accept my mother, although I believe that Mother did some of her own persuading, too. In any case, because both my parents ended up as part of my father’s tree-family, I belong to it too, even though I have spent little time on Borhq as an adult.”

  “So, something happened?”

  “My father died. I was less than two years old at the time, so my memories are few. With the help of my node, I have been able to dig up a small assortment of recollections, so I know, for example, what my father looked like through my own childish eyes, rather than having to depend on Mother’s image of him.

  “My mother returned to Lamania, taking me with her. We were supposed to be there only to visit, but my maternal relatives persuaded her to remain, and several years later she remarried, and I ended up with two siblings, a brother and a sister who are fully Lamanian. I returned to Borhq as a teenager to take training in certain aspects of masculinity which the Northwest Continent Borhquans insist that their men excel at. The two years I spent there were good ones, my tree-family is a very inclusive group and I felt welcomed and loved, and I grew close to many of my cousins.”

  “Is that to say that you did not feel as comfortable on Lamania?” Kati asked.

  Mikal laughed, a touch ruefully.

  “Lamania is a very different place from Borhq, at least the Northwest Continent. I hear some of the other parts of Borhq are different, even peculiar, but not having visited any of them I cannot really judge. Lamanians are a very cerebral people, an ancient civilization. They were at the forefront of the creation of the Star Federation more than a thousand years ago, when it became clear that all the people of the various worlds were going to lose the benefit of the translation nodes, unless they could agree on a way to protect the Brain World from being ravaged in a power struggle between different planets. Many of the functions of the Star Federation are carried on in offices in the Second City on Lamania—my home town at present—and on the Space Station orbiting Lamania. You could say that the Lamanians have a genius for organizing and governing: their cities, their planet, the Federation. However, even though they run their society very efficiently, fairly and with concern for humans of all kinds, and creatures of every sort, they are not generally known as the warmest humans in the galaxy. My mother is a notable exception, and my sister seems to have inherited her graciousness, but, mostly, Lamanians are not given to emotional expression. As a half-Borhquan, I sometimes find this difficult, that is all.”

  Kati decided that it made sense to shift the topic to something more neutral.

  “You li
ve, and work, in the Second City? I assume that that means the existence of a First City on Lamania. Am I right?”

  “Of course. Although, the Second City is really the more important of the two, having been for a thousand years a centre of Federation bureaucracy. The actual Senate and the Councils of the Federation are on the Space Station orbiting Lamania, but at the beginning, someone decided that there ought to be solid ground underneath at least some of the Federation functions. The Second City, as the main Space Port on Lamania was the obvious choice for the location. The First City, or Lamania Prime, as it is usually referred to, is the seat of Lamanian Government. The government of the planet Lamania, that is, and it is a nice, bureaucratic place, but a lot smaller city than the Second City. It has no space port and, therefore, must deal with extra-planetary matters through the Second City.”

  “And your family, your Lamanian family, do they also live in the Second City?”

  “No. My step-father runs a vineyard and a winery out in the countryside. My mother has given up cultural anthropology and is perfectly happy pruning grape vines and making wine. My brother has apprenticed into the business and will eventually take over. My sister takes after my mother and is considered the problem child of the family. She has a mind of her own and likes to keep it.”

  “That doesn’t sound problematic to me,” laughed Kati. “You should have met some of the problem children I knew as a teenager. I bet it would have caused you to think kindly of your sister.”

  “I suppose. Still, you wouldn’t understand about the culture of Lamania. Lamanians expect their own to be rational and sane above all. Myself, since I’m half Borhquan, I get some leeway, as would you if you were on Lamania; you would be classified as coming from one of the Wilder Worlds and a great deal of effort would go into trying to make you feel at home. The Lamanians see people from other worlds as a useful addition to their society, especially when it comes to the jobs with the Star Federation bureaucracy. Things need to be done that no sane Lamanian would wish to do, but if you have a large population of foreigners and mixed bloods, you can always find somebody to do what is necessary.”