Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  Apparently, that was exactly what he had done. Instead of whining about the boredom of having to keep himself available for the two sick friends who might retch or beg for water, or need help getting to the head, at any time, he had hauled out the language books and studied them. Instead of standing about in the hallway gossiping with Miri and the other two passengers who had remained healthy, he had put the time to use by learning to read the local writing. He was a motivated man, certainly. And if she did not watch it, he was going to get way ahead of her in the reading lessons. He had a two-day advantage on her already.

  Kati opened the reader and began to study it.

  *****

  That first week on board The Seabird was defined, for the passengers, at least, by motion sickness. Because The Seabird was first and foremost a cargo vessel, and only secondarily a means of travel across the ocean for paying passengers, the amenities for the travellers were few and simple. They had their cabins, they were allowed on the deck whenever the weather was clement enough to allow unnecessary traffic there, and they took their meals in the dining area off the galley with the crew. Also, the cabins that made up the guest quarter had their own washroom and a head.

  “Likely we get that much only because so many of us spend the first part of the trip sick; the crew would not want to have to share with us,” Kati muttered one day when she had had to stand in line to use the facilities.

  “Don’t complain,” Mikal had playfully admonished her. “Think of what it must be like in the summer when all these cabins are full.”

  Kati shuddered at the thought. Mikal laughed at her.

  “How’s Susana?” he asked her then.

  Kati had taken to spending some of her time helping Miri out with Susana and Mea. Mea and her husband Evo had begun to slowly recover from the sea-sickness, even as Jocan and Ren had, but Susana was still very ill. Miri was worried enough about her that she had spoken to the Captain about her, and he had come down to take a look at her himself. Everyone was shaking his or her head about Susana’s prospects of recovery; how long could the old girl last when her stomach was refusing to keep in nourishment?

  It had become a bit of a dark joke among the healthy passengers; Miri would feed broth to Susana and Susana would throw it all back up. Miri would try again after a few hours; the result was the same. In the beginning nobody had thought anything of it; all the sick passengers had been unable to keep much of anything in their innards. But once Kati was all better, and four of the other ill were able to keep broth in their stomachs, Susana’s inability to thrive became noticeable. She was getting very thin, as well as “dried up”, as Miri put it, but Miri’s broth would not stay inside her, nor did much of the water that the medic forced her to drink.

  “Awful,” Kati answered honestly.

  She had stopped in Mea and Susana’s cabin on her way back from the head. Miri had not been there at the moment and the tiny room had seemed eerily silent. Mea was asleep on one bunk, her healthy colour beginning to show again from under the pallor of illness. Susana, on the other bunk, had been lying motionless under the covers, her face having almost a greenish cast, her breathing laboured.

  “I don’t know how long she can last,” Kati said running a hand over her face. It was depressing.

  “Can’t you do anything?”

  She stared at Mikal. “What could I possibly do that Miri can’t—or you, for that matter?”

  “You have some—if not schooled—PSI powers. You have a granda node inside—well, partly outside—your skull. Surely that old, bloodthirsty node that’s wedded to your nervous system can magic some healing ability from your psychic energies.”

  Kati turned her attention inwards.

  “Well, what of it, granda?” she inquired of her node.

  “Possibly,” it subvocalized in return. “We can only try. Let’s go back to that cabin with the half-dead woman in it. We’ll see if I can’t calm her belly enough to accept nourishment.”

  “He’s willing to try,” Kati said to Mikal, directing her attention outward into the world again.

  “Good,” Mikal replied. “It’s a chance for that granda node to atone for its sins.”

  “He’s a damn prig,” the granda subvocalized, as Kati left Jocan’s room and Mikal in it.

  “Take it easy Grandpa,” Kati subvocalized back. “I’m kind of fond of that prig.”

  “I’ve noticed.” He sounded positively sour. Kati held back a burst of laughter.

  Mea was awake when Kati entered the cabin, slipping in quietly so as not to wake up any sleepers. Mea was looking quite good; she was definitely recovering. But she had a worried look on her face and her eyes kept going to the mound that was her mother.

  “Mama looks like she’s not getting any better,” she whispered as Kati came to stand between the bunks.

  “She’s having a hard time of it,” Kati acknowledged.

  “Maybe it was a mistake for Evo and me to take her along with us on this move,” Mea said, laying her head back on the bed. “But with my father dead, and me being an only child, I honestly thought that she’d be better off with us; there would have been no family in Delta to look out for her once we were gone. And she didn’t seem to mind; she said it would be interesting to live in a new place across the ocean. But now...,” her voice trailed off.

  “I’m going to try something,” Kati said slowly. She did not know how to explain to Mea what she wanted to do. Heck, she did not know how to explain it to herself!

  “I have no idea if it’ll help or not,” she added. “I do know that it won’t harm her.”

  “If there’s even a small chance....” Mea drew a breath. “Give it your best shot.” She closed her eyes and withdrew into herself.

  Kati sat down on the edge of Susana’s bunk. The body on the bunk was so thin, so insubstantial that the mound it created under the covers was almost non-existent. According to the granda’s instructions, Kati grasped the blanket that covered Susana and folded it down so that the night-gown-covered chest and stomach came into sight. The cool air thus allowed to the body made Susana shudder but it did not awaken her.

  “Allow me to envelope myself in your ESP energies,” the granda requested.

  Kati allowed the granda to have control of most of her mind. She removed her own consciousness to the rear somewhat reluctantly and remained completely alert there in the background, watching the proceedings carefully. She did not fully trust this being that had spent lifetimes who knew where doing Lord knew what. As Mikal had stated, it was, at least at times, bloodthirsty. She was not about to give it freedom to do whatever it wanted to with her body; she was ready to take back control if the granda tried anything stupid. However, it did not, this time, seem interested in overstepping limits. Perhaps trying to exercise this new power was enough of a rush for it; in any case nothing untoward happened. Instead, with the granda guiding Kati’s PSI energies, Kati was able to sense the chaos within Susana’s body: the jangled nerves, the confused digestive system, the erratic beating of the heart.

  The granda helped her to enter the failing body and to begin to affect its functioning. Let’s get the heart beating normally—speed up this part, now, slow down that. All right, that’ll do; we’ll go on to the digestion. Loosen the tenseness in the peristaltic muscles, lower the acid content or else the stomach is going to start to consume itself, and the intestines too. Relax, relax, let’s get all of these parts to stop fighting each other, and to relax; maybe then they’ll remember how to function. Now to the nervous system—that’s an easy transition, the digestive and the nervous systems are joined after all (Kati was a little surprised at this—she had not known it). Again loosen, relax, the nerves this time, let’s get the neurons to do their thing smoothly instead of firing randomly.

  All right—she and the granda slipped out of the frail body and Kati found herself once again sitting on the edge of the bunk, listening to Susana breathe, a thousand times more normally now! She picked up a thin wrist and fel
t for a pulse; it was steady and stronger, thank the Heavens! She looked at the woman’s face: her eyes were open and she was smiling.

  Kati reached for the water skin at the end of the bed and the cup laced to it. Gently she held Susana up in her arms and placed the cup of water to her lips. The old woman drank greedily.

  “Do you want some broth?” Kati asked her.

  “Yes.” The voice sounded weak and rusty, but it was there.

  “Mama!” cried Mea, sitting up on her bunk to stare at her mother. Then she gazed upon Kati her eyes shining. “You did it, Kati! I don’t know what you did, but it worked!”

  “I’m going to get some of Miri’s broth,” Kati said, grinning.

  *****

  She was still grinning when she brought Miri and her broth back to the room. Miri was thrilled to see Susana recovering and immediately began to feed her and to fuss over her. Kati slipped back out and returned to her own room.

  *****

  About a week after all the passengers of The Seabird were on their feet again, the travellers got their first taste of bad weather. The ship sailed from bright, if cool, day into a windy darkness beneath black clouds, and, moments later, rain began to fall, starting softly but within minutes escalating to torrents. Captain Lomen ordered the passengers down to their quarters; they were told to remain there unless directly summoned to help with some task or another. Food was to be dry rations; the galley could not be used for cooking under storm conditions.

  Kati stumbled down the passageway to the head and on the way back stopped to visit with Mea and Susana who had strapped themselves into their bunks with the belts provided for that purpose. It was dim in the room with only a little light coming in from the porthole. The only other lighting in the cabin was provided by the odd little bowlfuls of glowing fungus that the crew cultivated for that very purpose. When Kati had asked about the fungus, Miri had told her that it was native to the Northern Continent and liked the damp, salty air of the ocean and therefore was easily grown aboard ships. On dry land it could rarely be coaxed to form colonies big enough to provide even somewhat adequate illumination.

  “Ah, Kati,” Susana called out, peering at Kati as she entered. “Good to see you. Were you up on the deck when the rain started? Mea and I have stayed here pretty much the whole day; it was too chilly and windy for us, even in the morning.”

  “That was probably the wisest course,” Kati concurred, easing herself into a cross-legged position at the foot of Susana’s bed. The older woman was so small that there was plenty of room there for Kati to sit comfortably. “Mikal and I were the last passengers on the deck; Captain Lomen kicked us downstairs a short while ago. Jocan wasn’t with us; it seems that one of the young crew-women has taken a fancy to him and very likely is giving him lessons in love.”

  “Oh dear, isn’t that a bit worrisome?” Susana asked.

  “I guess I’ve ended up taking the attitude that it’s not my worry,” replied Kati with a sigh. “He’s not about to take orders from me about that sort of a thing. And Miri assures me that the girls on the crew know how to take care of themselves; a shipboard woman cannot afford to get pregnant, so every female crewmember knows how to keep herself safe from that.”

  “Youngsters of both sexes are pretty wilful at that age,” contributed Mea from the other bunk. “I can remember being sixteen, Mama, and doing things that would have made your hair stand on end, if you had known. And look at me now! I’m a respectable married woman who adores her husband!”

  “You turned out just fine in the end, Mea,” Susana conceded. “Although no thanks to your father. He indulged you every chance he got.”

  Mea giggled.

  “Yes,” she said, “Papa and I got on really well. If he had been as tough as you were, Mama, life would not have been half the fun!”

  Susana shook her head.

  “It’s a good thing you fell for a decent sort like Evo. If you had decided to run away with some no-goodnik, I couldn’t have stopped you!”

  Kati sat and listened to this good-natured sparring even as her mind wandered. Jocan’s interest in the opposite sex was having the awkward effect of reminding her that she herself was a young, healthy woman with the usual appetites of a person her age, and no opportunity to indulge them. Mea’s talk about her youth and subsequent marriage to Evo added to her sense of deprivation. She had lived only for her son after her marriage had come apart, and for a time that had been enough. But now she did not have Jake with her (and that was a whole different heartbreak, with which she was not, at the moment, ready to deal in any way, other than to acknowledge its existence). She needed a man in her life, a man to love, and to, well, share a lot with. But on a journey like the one she was on, there was little time to get to know anyone to the extent that she needed to know a man before she was willing to allow intimacy. Other than for Jocan and Mikal, she was constantly leaving people behind. And Jocan was a child and Mikal was...well, whatever Mikal was. He was kind and pleasant to her, he was smart and capable; he had a lot of good qualities but he seemed to have little interest in romantic attachments, at least so it seemed to her. He had implied that he had unfinished issues about relationships and was not ready for anything resembling a romantic entanglement.

  She acknowledged that things would have been easier for her if she had been the kind of a woman who could satisfy the need for physical intimacy without wanting it combined with emotional intimacy. There were always possibilities for short-term liaisons; she was not unaware that all she needed to do, was give him a positive sign, and Captain Lomen would happily take her to his bed. But the Captain was married to his ship, and she had promises to keep.

  “Kati, Kati, Kati!”

  Susana’s voice broke into her meanderings.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said sheepishly, returning to the present.

  “Where did you go?” Mea asked her curiously.

  “Just –woolgathering,” Kati said with a laugh. “Got lost in thought, and forgot where I was and who with. I bet I missed a bunch of conversation,” she added a bit ruefully.

  “You didn’t miss anything except an old woman nattering with her daughter,” Susana said lightly, but then she added, determinedly: “But I did want to ask: what was it you did to bring me back from the edge, when I was so sick? I’ve meant to ask, but haven’t quite had the courage; now I decided to face whatever I owe my life to, fair and square.”

  “Good question. I sort of entered your physical being with a portion of my mind—“ Kati tried to choose her words carefully, “—an augmented portion; I could not have done it alone. Once there I could sense what was going wrong, and, very carefully, set things right.”

  There was a short silence in the room.

  “That’s the best explanation I can give you,” Kati added, a little defensively. “I don’t really understand it myself; Mikal was the one who suggested that I might be able to do it, although neither of us knew for sure if I could.”

  “Hm. You said you could not have done it alone?” Susana’s eyes on her were shrewd. “Who do you think was helping you? God?”

  “God!” Kati laughed, while aware of the granda preening. “A trickster god, maybe!”

  She realized that Susana and Mea were looking somewhat offended.

  “Sorry,” she added quickly, penitently. “I don’t want to rain on anyone’s religion, believe me, but, anyway, the situation is a little bit ridiculous and I’m not sure I can explain it.”

  “Have you one of those—node things—implanted into your head?” Mea asked. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

  Kati took a deep breath and swallowed.

  “I didn’t realize you would be familiar with such things,” she said mildly.

  “Oh, certainly. Delta isn’t a rural backwater like River City. It’s a pretty sophisticated place.” This was Susana talking. “We know what goes on in the world, and some about what goes on, off it. We were sure Mikal had one of those implants, but I wasn’t sure a
bout you since you don’t come from the Federation.”

  “So Federation people show up here every now and then?” Kati queried.

  “Very rarely, to be honest,” Susana replied. “Mikal is the first that I’ve seen or heard of in my life time. But our Great Disaster was of interest to them of course; I believe there were scholars studying it from space, during the events, and after. Some of them, the stories say, were lizard-people.”

  “Didn’t they try to help?” Kati asked.

  “What could they have done? They weren’t gods or anything. We as a people had done what we had done, and had to deal with the consequences.” Susana’s voice was quite serene.

  When Kati looked at her face in the dim light, it looked perfectly serene, too. And, she was, Kati thought, very likely right. Once the situation on the planet had reached a certain point, The Disaster had become an inevitability.

  Kati returned to her own cabin in a somewhat disturbed state of mind. Since there really was nothing else for her to do, she strapped herself into her bunk and lay back to think about things while the elements buffeted the vessel that she was in, and its crew dealt with whatever the sea was throwing at them.

  The granda was there, in her mind, like it always was, sometimes more obtrusively than at other times. She had begun to doubt that having a granda node was such a wonderful thing as the slaver Captain Gorsh had seemed to think it was. Perhaps the reason why a node spent a long time among humans had more to do with its innate developmental difficulties than with anything else? Perhaps being a node was akin to being a human in some of the theories about reincarnation she had read about? The slower a learner you were, the more lives you had to go through, that was the gist of it, was it not? So, even though her granda had accumulated a lot of knowledge about life in the corner of the universe in which both of them now existed, perhaps he was taking a long time acquiring wisdom? And maybe that was what its present task was: acquiring wisdom. And as its host she was destined to try to help it do just that.