Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  He’s left-handed, Kati found herself thinking and right then someone, Jocan, ran past her up the stairs; he stunned Guzi before he had fallen to the deck.

  Kati lay the rifle carefully on the deck, and sat down beside it. She pressed her face into her hands, and shook, physically shook, for a short while. Meanwhile Dorn finally made it to the deck, too, with only pants on, chest bare, holding his rifle in his hands. He was late only because things had happened so fast, not because he was slow, that was obvious.

  Dorn stood in the middle of the deck of his boat surveying the scene. A flit landed at the stern with two stunned people, one on either side of it, the male bleeding from his shoulder. Loka at the tiller, not looking where the boat was going, a stunner hanging in the fingers of one hand, her face grim. Jocan staring at the flit and the two beside it with avid, curious eyes. And, Kati, shaking like a leaf, sitting on the highest step with her face buried in her hands. Dorn had heard the rifle shot; she had used the gun on the man, clearly; she had shot him in the shoulder.

  “So the women and children took care of things!”

  Dorn’s laughter boomed over the boat and the surrounding water. He turned to stare at the flying craft and its former occupants.

  “Their timing was good! Hah! But not good enough, ‘cause the women and children were on the job!”

  Suddenly there was weak shouting from down below. Kati raised her face from her hands, listening.

  “Dorn, come and take the tiller!” Loka called to her husband. “Our patient is awake!

  “No, Kati, you just sit there and get your head on straight,” she said to the younger woman as she went by her, patting her on the shoulder as she did so. “I’ll see to him.”

  Gratefully Kati sat for a few moments longer, waiting for the shaking to stop. She had come this close to killing another human being! She almost was a murderess! How could she ever have lived with herself, had she shot Guzi in the head? She felt a sudden explosion of anger towards the granda, that alien interloper in her mind, the cold-blooded killer whose nervous system was so intimately connected to hers that it had almost turned her into a killer, too! She rooted in her head savagely, only to find that the node had made itself pretty much mentally invisible, was, in fact, hiding from her. She let out a long sigh and stood up.

  “How long are they going to stay stunned?” Jocan asked her, his attention on his biological father and his partner.

  “A couple of hours anyway,” Kati replied. “And if we need them under longer we can stun them again before they come to. We’ve got the upper hand now, at least for the time being.”

  “What are we going to do with the flying machine?” Jocan was studying it speculatively.

  “Good question. Get rid of it somehow, I’d think.” Kati walked over to where the flit sat, partly on the deck and partly on the railing. “I don’t want the two of them to have it after we drop them off wherever we drop them off. If they’re gonna keep following us they can damn well travel at planet-speed just like we do.”

  “Think Guzi’s going to bleed to death?”

  Jocan’s voice was hard and cold. There was not much affection between father and son, that was for sure. Probably Jocan would not mind if Guzi died, but she would. His death would make her a murderess.

  “I’ll see if there isn’t some kind of first aid kit in the flit,” Kati said. “Maybe there’s something to stop his bleeding.”

  She approached the flit from the crew-woman’s side, stepping over her as she did so.

  “Dakra, I believe her name is,” she muttered as she looked at the face.

  She could not remember how she knew the woman’s name but the memory had to be from her ship-time. It did not matter anyway. She climbed into the listing machine.

  “Okay, you damn, cursed node,” she muttered to herself inside the flit. “You know where the first-aid kit is. Find it for me.”

  She waited.

  Slowly her body angled in a certain direction. She made an effort to relax and her hand started moving towards a compartment; she opened it almost automatically, and pulled from it a medium-sized case, and thumbed the locks on the case open. She shook herself, gave a curt mental nod to the node, and exited the flit with the case.

  And came face to face with Mikal, leaning onto Loka’s shoulder but on his feet and fully awake.

  “Welcome to the world of the awake,” she greeted him, her down mood dissipating at the sight of him on his feet.

  “Thanks. Taking drugs unwillingly seems to have become a bad habit.” His eyes wandered around the boat deck, taking in everything. “Jocan and Loka tell me that we were attacked.”

  “Yeah, it all happened so fast ....”

  “That the women and children had to take care of things!” Jocan quoted Dorn, laughing.

  Kati looked at the kit in her hand, then at Guzi lying crumpled on the deck, bleeding.

  “I guess I’ll have to try to staunch that bleeding. I shot him in the shoulder with one of Dorn’s rifles. Made a bit of a mess, I’m afraid....”

  “Oh, Kati, let me see to that,” Loka interrupted. “Here, Jocan, come and help Mikal. Kati, you have to take the bullet out before you bind up the wound; it won’t heal up properly if you don’t.”

  Kati opened the first-aid kit.

  “There’s knives and things you can use here, and stuff for sterilizing utensils. Antiseptics, antibiotics, gauze, faux-skin, anything you might need.” Her node was helping her itemize things; clearly it was back in action.

  Loka straightened out Guzi’s body on the deck and called for scissors with which to cut off his shirt. Kati found such in the kit and Loka went to work while Kati assisted her.

  Mikal had lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the deck.

  “Kati, what the hell were you doing, shooting him with a pellet-gun?” he asked, sounding tired but angry.

  She looked at him in surprise.

  “The rifle is what I had to shoot with,” she answered. “All the weapons we had were the two stunners and the two rifles that Dorn had tucked away in the captain’s cabin. I took one of the rifles and gave my stunner to Loka because she can’t shoot a rifle, but I can.”

  “What about the second stunner?”

  “Jocan had that. When Loka yelled from the deck that we were being attacked, I grabbed the rifle and told Jocan to wake up Dorn who was sleeping. It all happened so fast—I barely had time to get into a shooting position on the stairs when the flit was already on the deck and the two of them were coming out. Loka stunned Dakra—she got out a fraction of a second before Guzi did—and I got Guzi before he had a chance to blast Loka to kingdom come. Then Jocan ran up and finished Guzi by stunning him.”

  “And all that happened just a few minutes ago,” added Loka. “Dorn had barely made it up on to the deck when we heard you waking up and I ran down to check.”

  “Where the hell did you learn to shoot a pellet-gun, Kati?”

  Mikal sounded upset. Kati looked up from what she was doing (on her knees, beside Guzi, handing items to Loka as she needed them), and looked at his face. It was cold, closed. Why? A short while ago she had been freaking because she had come very close to killing a man, thanks to the granda’s interference. Now she was bristling because Mikal seemed to be questioning her judgement.

  “At home, on the Resort.” Good grief, that seemed like so long ago!

  “Why? Was there a need? What was the point?” Mikal was agitated and she did not understand why.

  “It was shortly after I’d married Donny.” She spoke slowly, carefully recalling what had happened. “There were lots of wild animals around that summer. Pest animals. Rabbits were at a peak and they were eating up my mother-in-law’s garden. Porcupines were hanging about, eating the bark off the pine trees that my father-in-law had lovingly planted, killing many of them. Skunks moved into the empty space under the boathouse. Donny was keen on protecting the Resort by shooting the critters and he wanted to teach me how to shoot them, too. So we d
id a lot of target practice, which was okay. When he thought I was good enough, he took me with him to shoot animals, and I did shoot a porcupine, but I was not okay with that. I cried after I shot it, and Donny was furious with me, and that was that.”

  “Was there no other way to deal with the animals?” Mikal looked appalled.

  “Of course there was. My father-in-law built a chicken-wire fence around the garden, and he brought home moth-balls to stuff under the boathouse to get rid of the skunks. After a while the porcupines went away on their own, and left the trees alone.”

  “But you went along with the shooting thing, willing to kill living things in their own habitat? When it was really not necessary?”

  The face he had turned on her mirrored distaste. She felt sick to her stomach.

  “I was barely eighteen years old,” she protested. “Until my parents died I’d lived a sheltered life; I didn’t understand about a lot of stuff. I was desperately in love with Donny and I wanted to please him.”

  Tears were stinging her eyelids and she turned back to what she was doing, barely able to see the first-aid kit in front of her. What the hell did she care about what a damn pacifist thought, anyway?

  She heard Mikal get up off the deck and then head downstairs with Jocan, Jocan promising to feed him soup in the galley, to build up his strength. She did not look up.

  “Well, that was a little rough on you, and here you had just saved our backsides with that gun,” Loka said, spreading faux-skin on the now-clean wound in Guzi’s shoulder. “Ah, I could get used to this stuff in that case you found, Kati; it’s all so much easier to use than what’s in the boat’s first-aid kit.”

  Kati closed the case and handed it to Loka.

  “As far as I’m concerned, you might as well have it,” she said, fighting back an impulse to run to the boat’s head, and cry and cry and cry. “You know how to put it to use.”

  *****

  Mikal took charge of what to do with the flit and its occupants.

  He was still very weak from the drug and the few days of inactivity, so the others did most of the physical tasks while he did the directing. First, he had Kati and Jocan empty the flit of useful contents, including a small package marked “lifeboat”. That packet he told Kati to set aside for the time being. Jocan emptied the pockets of the two stunned persons and added what he found to the pile of off-world goods on the deck.

  “We’ll take the stunners,” Mikal said, surveying the pile, “but, Jocan, you might as well put the blasters back into the flit.”

  There were two of each. Obediently, Jocan took up the blasters from the heap and returned them into the flit.

  “Kati, you know which of the packages are food. Please set them aside beside the lifeboat.”

  Kati did so.

  That left three rolls of rope and several small lights—probably those that had been burglarized from Mistress Sye’s Inn, Kati thought—bags of clothes obviously belonging to Guzi and Dakra, and a handful of local coins: one gold, a few silver but mostly copper.

  “The coins,” Mikal shrugged. “Dorn, Loka and Jocan may as well divide them among themselves. Is that acceptable to you, Kati, as the financial expert of the expedition?”

  Kati shrugged. It was a feeble attempt at humour and she was not in a mood to placate him.

  “Yeah, it’s a fine idea,” she then added for Dorn and Loka’s sake, and for Jocan’s. They did not need her acting the grouch.

  Dorn looked at the pile of coins. He picked up the gold, examined it, and handed it to Jocan.

  “You may as well have that, son,” he said. “You’ve earned it. It’s not nearly as good quality gold as the piece we received for the boat rental, but it should nevertheless exchange to at least seven silvers.”

  He scooped up the rest of the coins and handed them to Loka.

  “You may as well take these to our cabin,” he said to her.

  “Wait,” Mikal said as Loka started to leave. “Take one of the stunners, too, for the Captain’s arsenal.”

  She had given the one with which she had stunned Dakra back to Kati, earlier.

  “You’ve got the one I had, right Jocan? So I’ll keep the one that’s left.”

  Loka left with the money and the stunner. Jocan handed the remaining weapon to Mikal who lay it down beside him after quickly examining it.

  “Now, Dorn, is there a way to get down to water level without going for a swim?” he asked then.

  “Sure is.”

  Dorn grinned and went over to the part of the railing which could be opened and did so. Then he showed the others the built-in ladder on the side of the boat, and how he could use the two planks that had formed the ramp to the dock at Seven Willows to create a platform upon the water, by roping them to the ladder.

  “Good enough,” Mikal commented when the narrow platform was in place.

  “This I will have to do myself,” he added, walking slowly back away from that side of the boat—and to the flit.

  He entered it and closed all the doors and windows. Moments later as the others watched, the machine hummed to life and rose into the air, from the awkward position into which Guzi and Dakra had landed it. Mikal did a circuit above the boat, then landed the machine on the water, floating it next to the makeshift platform. Dorn and Jocan climbed down to the platform, and after doing something to the controls, Mikal opened the hatch, and, with the help of the other two, climbed out. He slammed the hatch shut behind him, with the flit motor still humming.

  “Watch this!” he shouted to the others, glancing back on deck to make sure that Kati, and Loka, who had returned from her errand, were also paying attention.

  The flit was motionless for about a half-minute. Then it rose up out of the water, climbed to a height that would have taken it over the tallest of trees, and turned downriver. It accelerated suddenly to a very fast rate of speed and disappeared out of view within seconds.

  “Automatic controls,” Kati said to Loka who was staring into the distance into which the flit had disappeared.

  “Where’s it going?” she heard Jocan asking.

  “The ocean. Far enough into open sea that I very much doubt that anyone will ever be able to retrieve it.”

  “A pity,” said Dorn. “It’s a great pity.”

  “Thing is, Kati, Jocan and I can’t cross the ocean with it, and I don’t want those two criminals, lying on your deck, to get their hands on it again. If they’re going to follow us, from now on they can do it the same way we travel—using the local modes of transport.”

  Kati raised her eyebrows to Jocan as Mikal unconsciously echoed her earlier comment to the boy. Jocan grinned back at her to acknowledge that he had noted it, too.

  Mikal then called to Kati to bring the lifeboat to him. When he had the package he opened it, pulled off a tab, and dropped it into the river. They all watched as an air-filled raft grew into existence; it was easily large enough to hold the two stunned persons, and the gear that was left to them. Dorn and Jocan, on the temporary platform by the boat grasped hold of it before the current took it, and with Kati and Loka’s help got Guzi and Dakra into it, along with their gear. Mikal fetched the stunner he had taken as his own and gave each of the two another shot from it.

  “Just making sure that we have a good head start on them.” he explained.

  At the water level Dorn, Jocan and Mikal manoeuvred the life raft into a position in which its front pointed upriver. Then Mikal fiddled with a small mechanism which he uncovered in its rear. Some kind of a small motor woke into action and the raft started to move, heading upriver at a steady pace.

  “It’ll keep moving for about two hours before the charge is used up. And it’s capable of avoiding other craft as well as following the curves of the river. When our un-friends wake up they’ll be far behind us.”

  “They’ll be up the stream without a paddle,” Kati said with satisfaction.

  *****

  That evening Kati climbed up on the deck to get away from
the small quarters below and to admire the star-filled sky that was so different from the one she remembered from home. Dorn was at the wheel; she nodded hello to him, but, wanting to be alone, did not speak to him but went to the aft of the boat and stood at the rail upon which the flit had rested that afternoon.

  She did not know how long she had stood there when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to look and saw Mikal walk towards her. He came to stand beside her, also admiring the river and the sky.

  “Loka said that I should apologise to you for being a ‘prig about non-violence’, as she called it, to you this afternoon,” he said to her in a low voice. “She pointed out that you hadn’t actually killed anyone, and that if you hadn’t shot Guzi, he certainly would have killed her, and very likely others of us, today. She’s right, of course.”

  “Thanks. Apology accepted.” She did not feel much better, really.

  “As a Peace Officer it’s my duty to see that as little damage as is possible is done during the course of my duties, and I have sworn to take no lives. I realize that you’re not bound by that code...but I do worry about that node of yours. It does get a little bloodthirsty at times.”

  Kati sighed.

  “Yes. I worry about it, too. A lot, as a matter of fact. I meant to shoot Guzi in the hand that was holding the blaster, and then I realized that I was aiming at his head. I managed to move the barrel enough while pulling the trigger to hit him in the shoulder instead, but.... It was very disturbing.”

  “Good Lord! That thing has got to learn some control!”

  “Or I have to learn to control it better!”

  He gazed at her in the starlight, and there was a shadow of a wry grin on his face.

  “Yes, one or the other of those,” he said softly.

  Map Two – The Ocean Journey

  CHAPTER NINE

  The boat arrived in Delta.

  Delta was considerably bigger than River City had been, at least the inhabited River City. It was on the ocean, at the river mouth, but there was no delta in or about it.