Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “My Mum says you’ve gotten stuck babysitting that whore,” Sany said, then covered her mouth with her hand, looking scared.

  Jocan looked annoyed. He grabbed the money Kati handed him, and headed off, pulling his light from a pocket to show the way.

  “Come on then, kids,” he shouted over his shoulder.

  The younger children ran to catch up with him. Kati shook her head in the near-darkness. No-one saw it; Mikal was busy hauling blankets into the tent that they had just finished setting up.

  Kati was in much better shape this evening than she had been the previous day. Chrys, however, was worse, if anything. Kati found her lying face down on the ground beside her Narra, the saddlebags still on the animal. With a sigh she set about untying them, in the meager light of her tiny lamp. Thank goodness for those off-world gadgets, she thought to herself, ignoring the girl on the ground while she looked after the riding beast. Fortunately there was still a scant bowlful of water in Chrys’ waterskin so she did not have to go looking for more. Mikal had taken their skins to the well when she had left to see to Chrys, so she did not have to worry about cooking water. Then she got out the small tent the blonde slept in, set it up—the folk on this world were rather ingenious in tent design so it was only a matter of minutes for her to do so—and tossed into it the girl’s blankets.

  Chrys groaned pitifully when Kati finally went to her and shook her awake.

  “Up with you,” she said, mercilessly, to the girl. “Let’s use the numbgel on your legs, and then you can do the stretches again. You have to eat yet before you can sleep—let’s get some of those cramps out of your body.”

  Kati helped Chrys with the salve; then she forced the blond girl to stumble up on to her feet. She looked none too steady in that pose, but Kati gave her no quarter.

  “Okay, stretch up, stretch out and down. Again.”

  She kept an eye on the girl, watched her repeat the stretches again and again, until her body seemed to acquire a modicum of grace. Eventually, it seemed to her that Chrys had shed the worst kinks off her physique, and she let her stop.

  “Need the latrines?” Kati asked her. “I’m off to them, and since I have this little light you might want to come along. Easier to see where to step, and where not to.”

  “Sure,” Chrys answered, still sounding exhausted. “Have to, whether I want to or not.”

  After the latrines, Kati dragged her to her camp site where both Mikal and Jocan had returned from their respective errands, and Jocan was planning the evening meal.

  “Oh, I was going to bring my foodstuff and my spoon and plate,” Chrys said in a whiny tone, “but I forgot. I’m not sure I can walk that far and back again right now, not after all the stretching exercises Kati made me do.”

  “She’s a slave-driver, our Kati,” Mikal said with a laugh. “If you don’t mind me digging in your saddlebags, I can go and get them. I’m not really needed here at the moment anyway; I can’t cook, and it’s Kati’s turn to look after the Narra.”

  It probably was her turn to take care of the animals, Kati thought as Mikal left, shining his light in front of him. She got up from where she had sat down on the ground beside Chrys, and hunted up the animals’ bowls. She found herself spending a good deal of time with the beasts, caressing them as they ate and drank their allotments. By the time she was finished with them, Mikal had returned with Chrys’ food sack, her utensils, and her empty waterskin.

  “We’ll fill it in the morning when we’re refilling ours,” he told her. “In the meantime, if you need to drink or wash, or something, you can use the water in our skins. I just filled them at the well so we have plenty.”

  *****

  “You seem to be in much better shape tonight,” Mikal said to Kati after they had eaten and helped Chrys stumble back to her tent.

  “Yeah. Tried to mend a few fences with the granda,” she replied. “I guess it’s being helpful. Otherwise I would be in as rough a shape as Chrys is tonight. If I remember correctly, the way it works for people without nodes to run interference for them, is that when you start a new, strenuous activity, the first day is awful, the second day is beyond awful, and the third day your body begins to adjust, and from then on you’re okay.”

  “So, by your reckoning, Chrys should start perking up tomorrow,” said Mikal, eyebrows raised.

  “So I would expect. Why do you care?” Kati knew that she sounded waspish, but could not quite manage to bite her tongue.

  “Not because I’m planning to book her services,” Mikal threw back, but with a grin.

  “Ouch. Didn’t mean to sound like a prude: I’m trying very hard not to be one.”

  “I think you’ll get plenty of opportunity to try not to be a prude.”

  Mikal was rising from the cross-legged sitting position that all three campers had adopted after Kati and Mikal had returned from walking Chrys to her tent. The cloud cover had lightened enough in the past hour or so that some of the starlight was getting through, and Mikal was, as he rose, staring intently in the direction of Taxom and Chrys’ camp site.

  Just then Yarm arrived.

  “Want to come with me to check this situation out, Mikal?” He was staring in the same direction as Mikal was.

  “What’s up?” Kati asked, as she and Jocan also got up on to their feet.

  “Looks like Taxom’s rounded up some custom for Chrys’ services,” Mikal said softly, his eyes on the three men arriving at the girl’s tent.

  The granda enhanced Kati’s sight, allowing her to see the threesome extraordinarily clearly. She sent a quick thought of thanks to the node, even as she studied the men. Beside her, Jocan was squinting into the half-darkness.

  “You can see them?” Yarm asked, looking from Mikal to Kati. “I only know what’s going on because I was out getting water and happened to see, and hear, Taxom talking to the two men; then they followed me at a bit of a distance when I returned with my waterskin.

  “That girl is in no shape to be bothered tonight, whore or not.”

  “Yes, I think we better point out to the customers that they won’t be getting their money’s worth tonight, no matter what Taxom claims,” Mikal said giving his body a good stretch. “Kati, come with us and give your expert opinion about when she can be expected to recover.”

  “Expert opinion?” Yarm stared at her curiously. “You seem to have recovered pretty quickly yourself.”

  “Mikal’s joking, of course,” Kati replied even as they started walking across the camp ground towards the three men. “But I did happen to mention to him earlier tonight, that the way I figure it, Chrys should start recovering from the riding tomorrow. From then on, her body will be gathering strength, and riding will soon become pretty much effortless.”

  “Gee, I never went through anything like that,” Jocan said. Clearly he was coming along with them. “I was okay yesterday, and I’m pretty much okay today.”

  Mikal laughed.

  “Aren’t you glad now you hauled on all those ropes aboard The Seabird to help Rosine?” he chortled to Jocan. “You were in such a good shape when you started riding that your body did not have much trouble adjusting to the new demands.”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember I was exhausted there for a couple of days, after I started working on The Seabird. But I didn’t really know Rosine then so I couldn’t admit I was tired; I just had to hang in there, and things got better after a while.”

  “Thanks, Jocan; you just proved my theory,” Kati laughed.

  They heard footsteps behind them and stopped and turned to see Cay, Jess and Matto running towards them.

  “If there’s going to be trouble, we want in on it,” Cay said. He was the first to reach them.

  “Actually, we’re hoping to prevent trouble,” said Yarm. “I’m not nearly as prudish about the likes of Taxom and Chrys as that herder family seems to be, but I don’t like to see abuse. And asking that girl to provide services tonight is, quite simply, abuse. Surely it doesn’t make that much of a
dent into Taxom’s finances if he gives her another night off, to recover from riding.”

  “Riding a Narra across the desert has got to be tough on a woman used to earning her living on her back,” said Cay. “The three of us have found these two days pretty rough, and we were doing apprentices’ work details, in a thread warehouse before we got permission to pack up to travel inland.”

  “Yeah,” chimed in Jess. “We’ve been too tired to be noisy, and pains in the rear, to the rest of you. Last night we just slept, and tonight we probably would have turned in within minutes if we hadn’t noticed you guys moving off.”

  “Tiredness means nothing if something interesting is happening,” added Cay.

  Taxom and his potential customers must have heard, and perhaps seen, the seven who were approaching them, because they had stopped to stand still, peering in their direction. Kati’s group continued its advance until they were a few paces from the others.

  “What’s happening here, Taxom?” Yarm asked in a conversational voice. “Who are these villagers? What are they doing on the campground?”

  “Mind your own business Yarm,” Taxom replied, an edge to his voice. “My affairs are not your business and my visitors don’t have to report to you.”

  “I am the Caravan Leader and the well-being of everyone in the caravan is my business,” Yarm stated, keeping his voice steady.

  “What I, or my wife, do during our travel is not of your business! You have no right to meddle in our affairs!”

  Taxom’s response would have sounded righteously condescending, clearly the tone he was after, except that as he finished speaking, one of the villagers giggled. It was a young, high-pitched, nervous giggle; the giggle of a youth who had not much experience with hypocrisy—or at least, that was Kati’s take on it.

  Behind Kati, Matto answered the giggle with a chortle of his own.

  “C’mon, Taxom!” he shouted. “Don’t talk shit! You’re selling that poor, tired girl’s ass! Look, I saw her sitting and eating Jocan’s cooking; they’ve got those cool little lights, Mikal, Kati and Jocan do! She could barely sit up long enough to finish her plateful; then Kati and Mikal had to help her to her tent!”

  “You, damn prig!” Taxom yelled back.

  “No!” Matto shouted back. “Not me! Not a prig! Hey, I’ve been known to buy a whore now and then, you name-calling jerk! But not when the poor girl is too tired to spread her legs! Leave her be tonight, Taxom! Leave her be tomorrow night, too! Let her rest, and she’ll be worth more to you later!”

  Kati found herself listening to Matto’s tirade, her mouth half-open. Where was that coming from? Why did Matto care? The people of this world were constantly surprising her; at the beginning of the trip Matto had struck her as a callow youth. Yet, here he was, the first one to defend Chrys’ right to rest when she was tired, whore or not.

  Shifting her eyes, she saw Mikal watching her. He was grinning. She shut her mouth, and took a deep breath. Then she made a face at him. He winked back.

  Their little by-play passed unnoticed by the others. Taxom was breathing hard, probably visualizing the coin he had hoped to have Chrys earn for him this night, slipping through his fingers.

  “Well,” Yarm was saying calmly, “Matto has stated the case, made the objections that I also have to the starting up the bordello business tonight. Not all of us take the view that the herders, Rober and Kaina, do of such things. Me, I’m perfectly willing to live and let live as long as common sense prevails. But it is not common-sensical to require a tired girl to work on her back in the night, when she has to ride again tomorrow. I insist that you let her sleep in peace tonight, Taxom, and tomorrow night as well. By the time we get to RichWater, she ought to be used to the exercise of being all day on Narra-back, and if she’s willing, I’ll allow you to do as you wish.”

  “Well if that’s the way of it,” said the second one of the villagers, this one clearly a middle-aged man, “my son and I will just mosey on home.”

  He turned to look at Yarm and the group around him.

  “I had thought that I’d introduce my boy to the pleasures a woman can give him, but if the nightlady is exhausted, she won’t be much fun, will she now? We’re herders here as much as farmers, and most of my neighbours have the same view of things as your Rober and Kaina do, so it’s pretty hard for a young lad to get any experience of women. The nightladies who travel with the caravans are about the only chance a lad has; the local girls are taught to value abstinence.

  “Well, there will be other caravans. My boy’s a young lad yet.”

  He gestured his son, an awkward, pimply adolescent, to follow him and turned to go in the direction of the village. Taxom glared at Yarm for a second or two, then turned towards his own tent.

  “A nightlady; that’s an interesting term,” Kati said as the seven walked back towards their campsites. “I have never heard it before.”

  “It’s a good word,” said Yarm. “One of the better terms. It’s not disrespectful; I was surprised to hear a man who calls himself a herder use it.”

  *****

  Sometime during the first day out of NearWater the river bottom that they were following began to change. The water that flowed underneath it must have been closer to the surface here, because vegetation began to appear. At first it was sparse, a tuft of grass here and there, but slowly building up to a mat on both sides of the trail the Narra were running along. When the caravan made the second rest stop of the day the animals began to graze on the grass around them, ignoring the grain the riders were offering them.

  “That’s okay,” Yarm told Mikal who wondered if the riding beasts were getting enough nourishment from just the grass. “They know what they’re doing, and I do believe the local grasses are considered ideal for the Narra. Besides, they’re getting some moisture; you’ll note that they won’t be drinking as much from now on.”

  The rest of the desert around them was still the same expanse of sand as before; sand with only an isolated mound or bare remnants of rock walls to remind the travellers that what they were crossing had once been inhabited farmland. There had been no sign of the rumoured ghosts, however; Kati, for one, had been sleeping well at nights, and, she thought, with her PSI abilities, no doubt she would have been among the first to know if there were lost souls lingering among the dunes.

  Chrys, as Kati had foreseen, had regained some of the sparkle to her eyes. In the morning she had brought her Narra and her possessions to Kati’s camp, asking her, Mikal and Jocan if they would be kind enough to let her ride with them. They had agreed, of course, and Taxom had not objected, at least not yet. The three young men, situated between her and Taxom now, cheered her on and Rober, Kaina and their kids ignored her. Yarm had not commented on the change either, although he did his usual rounds, checking up on everyone’s well-being at each stop, and in the morning, and at night.

  The caravan members were falling into patterns of behaviour. As things had developed, at least this early in the trip, it was the herder family that seemed to be the fish out of water, certainly more than the “nightlady” whom they shunned, now that she no longer required Kaina’s pity. Taxom, too, made himself unwelcome among the rest, but he seemed thoroughly oblivious to the others’ dislike of him; clearly he was what he was, and he felt no pangs of a guilty conscience on account of his business. He seemed to have few questions about life, except, as Jocan put it in one conversation, “as to how much coin he was making, and how could he quickly increase that amount”.

  Yarm was spending much of his free time with Mikal, Kati and Jocan. He seemed to consider Mikal the other responsible adult male in the caravan. At first Kati was somewhat surprised that he chose Mikal, the off-worlder, as his peer instead of Rober, who was actually closer in age as well as a product of the same planet as Yarm was. However, she was catching on that there was something about the Narra-herders that set them apart from other people; she had not quite figured out what it was, although tantalizing clues were showing up a
lmost daily.

  That evening, when Yarm had come by to their camp site to drink a cup or two of the tea that Jocan often made in the evenings, she broached the subject with him. The four of them were sitting cross-legged around the little stove that Jocan used for cooking; a campfire it was not, but they had gotten into the habit of treating it as if it was. Chrys had retired to her tent after sharing supper with the threesome; she was recovering her physical strength, but not fast enough to want to make an evening of it. Yarm had come only after she had left, and now the four of them were drinking tea and contemplating the little blaze that Jocan had managed to keep going with a bit of dry grass and a few arid nuggets of Narra-dung.

  “It seems to me,” Kati began her quest for information, “that these herders, like Rober and Kaina and their children, stand somewhat apart from the rest of the inhabitants of this part of the Northern Continent. For one thing, they appear to live according to a different moral code than, for example, you, or the three boys at the next campsite, do. I guess I’m a little bit curious about that; are there historical reasons for that, or something?”

  Yarm smiled at her a touch ruefully.

  “I wish I had a full answer for you but it just so happens that I don’t know all that much about the Narra-herders myself, although maybe I know a bit more than you do. You see, I’m actually not a local; my apologies for letting you people think that I was. I’m actually from the Northern Plains of this continent, travelling around the world gathering information. As it happens, I have been moving back and forth along this caravan route for some months now, trying to tease out information about the Narra herders, the animals themselves, the fibre they produce, and what use is made of the fibres.”

  “The Northern Plains of this, the Northern Continent?” Mikal interrupted, inquiringly. “What’s there? Someone who wants information, but about what?”

  Kati closed her eyes and brought to her mind the image of this world as a globe. She zeroed in on the Northern Continent, but this time shifted her attention farther north than the area she had been interested in before, past the mountains where the town was in which their beacon ought to be. Yes, the map showed a vast plain there, crossed by rivers flowing from the mountains into the three oceans surrounding it. Several large settlements were indicated along the rivers; was this the area of the world that had suffered the least damage at the time of The Disaster?