Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “What’s on the Northern Plain is probably the largest concentration of people left on this world,” Yarm was saying in answer to Mikal’s questions. “Unlike the rest of this world which, as far as I can tell from my travels, is an arrangement of local governments centered in cities, and surrounded by areas of farm country which supply them with food, the Northern Plains have a government to serve all the people. We have a Central Council to which all cities (and their hinterlands) send representatives, and this Council deals with matters of common interest to all members. The Council brokers agreements when there are disputes about borders. It is where agreements about trade among the regions are made, where laws common to the whole Plain are forged, and matters such as improvements in transportation and ways to achieve technological advances are debated.

  “Approximately a couple of tens of years ago, the Central Council determined that it needed information about the rest of the world. The Northern Plains are a self-contained area; people grow the food that they eat, build what they need using wood from the forests that snake down into the grasslands from the mountains, and have adapted some old technical know-how into use, such as getting energy from windmills and water-wheels. For a long time after The Disaster, people were happy just to be alive, and uniting to form a single political entity overseen by the Central Council was as daring as they got. However, all things change. Strangers who claimed to be off-worlders, started to drop by, asking about things that the Northern Plainsmen knew nothing about. Some of them wanted to know where they could buy this amazing cloth that was supposed to originate on the planet. Did we have extra children, orphans or something like that, that the strangers could take with them as workers? Where could they access the caches of the pre-Disaster technological equipment?

  “Reports of such questions, and the strangers who asked them, reached the Councillors. The decision was made to send some individuals to travel all over the world to find out what exactly was happening on the rest of the globe. I am one of those that the Central Council sent out to find out what I could, about the rest of the world. I have been back to give reports a few times in the past fifteen years, but always I have returned to do more research.

  “The latest assignment I’ve taken on, is to find out as much as possible about the Narra, and the Narra-cloth. My employer, the Council, is convinced that it is that fabric which is drawing the most off-world interest to us. They are not necessarily happy with the existence of that interest; outsiders can be disruptive to a society that is used to functioning in isolation.

  “Does that answer your questions, Mikal?”

  Mikal grinned.

  “Possibly,” he replied, “although there’s more where those queries came from. But...,” he turned to Kati: “Did you pull down your map? How’s it look?’

  Kati nodded. “I did take a look. It’s a big plain, about the same size as all of the Southern Continent. There are rivers running from the mountains into the ocean on three sides. Also, a number of what look like large settlements along the rivers, not many along the coasts, however.”

  “The Disaster taught us to not live along the coasts,” Yarm said. “Where we do, we build our dwellings far from the water. Do I get to look at the map you have?”

  Kati shook her head.

  “Sorry. The map is in my head; someone who knows much more than I do about creating maps, and about turning them into mental constructs, made it and stuffed it into my mind. Maybe folk on Mikal’s home world, Lamania, have the knowledge to enable me to share it, I don’t know. Right now, the only way for me to share is to talk about it.”

  “From what I understand,” Mikal was saying carefully, “it’s not all that detailed a map anyway Right, Kati?”

  “Right.” She nodded at him. “It gives an over view of the planet, where the oceans and the land masses are, what the terrain is like, the big rivers, and settlements if they’re of any size. As for where the roads are, you pretty well have to guess that from where the cities and towns are; roads usually connect them.”

  “Even at that level of detail, it would come in useful,” Yarm said a little wistfully. “I could sure have used a map like that.”

  “I’ll put down global mapping on my list of ways that the Star Federation could be helpful to this planet,” Mikal said. “I will also mention that there is a well organized central government on the Northern Plains. I would expect that any Federation officials who came here to check out the situation would choose to get in touch with your Central Council first of all.”

  “You’re saying that the so-called Star Federation would find our under-populated, backward world of interest to them? I could have understood an interest in us five hundred years ago; at that time we were fairly close to achieving space flight. But now—well, our ancestors made a mess of things, to put it mildly.”

  “There are a few things that have come to my attention during the time Kati and I have been travelling, that are going to bring some serious attention to this world. In fact, I’m glad to hear about the Central Council of the Northern Plains and the Councillors’ interest in what is happening in the rest of the world. I have tried to interest the odd intelligent person in worrying about some of the things that are going on here, but most people’s concerns seem pretty well limited to the daily grind of making ends meet.”

  “There are so few of us and a world is large. What happens a thousand kilometres away seems of little importance, when that thousand-kilometre stretch between you and it, is empty of people,” said Yarm.

  “That’s true, of course, especially since travel by foot, beast and sailing ship is slow. However, it is the vey emptiness of this planet, as well as the fact that the people who do live on it tend to concentrate on their daily lives, that makes this world interesting to the criminal elements of the Space Lanes. Some of those strangers whom you mentioned, the ones asking questions, would have been Free Traders, who I don’t have a problem with, except for the circumstance that the crooks tend to follow in their wake. It’s logical that they would, of course; the Free Traders wrest a living from space by buying things where they are abundant and selling them where the same items are rare, thereby making a profit that allows them to meet the costs involved in running even a small private spacecraft. The criminals are on the lookout for easy profits; if they can take a product and a market out of the hands of the Free Traders who opened up that trade in the first place, often they can make extraordinary profits for a short time. And if they can grab or steal other items of value, while they’re at it, so much the better, according to the way they think.”

  “I thought that Mikal didn’t understand money,” Kati subvocalized to her node.

  “There’s nothing wrong with his grasp of basic economic theory,” the granda responded tartly.

  Kati and the granda had made peace—sort of. She had allowed it back into her daily life and it was doing its best to help her out whenever necessary. They had not exchanged thoughts on its bloodthirsty tendencies, since Kati had decided “to let sleeping dogs lie”, for the time being.

  “It’s the criminals that I’m concerned about,” Mikal was saying to Yarm. “Did you. or your Central Council, for that matter, realize that they are already on your world, using it as a meeting place, as well as a source of, at least some, illegal merchandise?”

  Yarm stared.

  “Are you serious? What could our poor disaster-torn world produce that could possibly be of interest to crooks who have the freedom of the Space Lanes? Surely you are joking?”

  Mikal slowly shook his head.

  “It’s no joke. I think what brought them here in the first place, besides discovering that Free Traders had begun making stops here, is the proximity to the Trade Lanes. Location, closeness to a lot of worlds much more developed than this one is. That is the only explanation that makes sense of the rendezvous spot that they have set up in the mountains of the Southern Continent.”

  “And you’re sure about the existence of this meeti
ng place?”

  “That’s where Kati and I escaped from Gorsh’s slave ship. Or to state it more correctly, Kati escaped, with the help of friends on-board, and hauled me, half-drugged, along, because it occurred to one of her co-conspirators that having a Star Federation Peace Officer with you, when you’re on the lam, could be useful.”

  “But, aren’t the criminals of the Space Lanes terribly dangerous, armed-to-the teeth killers?”

  “They are that, it’s true.” Mikal threw a half-grin in Kati and Jocan’s direction. “However, I have found that when it comes to ingenuity and intelligence, the locals, together with Kati and myself, can outmatch them every time. It helps that Gorsh wants me alive, if at all possible, and that during the time Kati was enslaved he developed some kind of romantic feelings for her—he wants to take her home to his world as a second wife.

  “For example, the first time we had to face Guzi and Dakra in person, on the river between River City and Delta, on the Southern Continent, I was comatose from an unexpected drug dosage that they had managed to shoot into my hand. So Kati, Jocan and the boater couple, Loka and Dorn, faced them, with their flit and blasters, with two stunners and two pellet-guns—and put them out of action.

  “Did I ever tell the two of you how proud I was of all four of you that time? Probably not; I was still fighting the effects of that dratted mind-tangler that those slavers love to use.”

  Kati’s eyebrows rose at that last. The way she remembered the incident, Mikal had given her heck for shooting Guzi in the shoulder with the pellet-gun. But then, she had come very close to killing the man, what with the granda inside her, thirsting for blood.

  “Then when they caught up with us again, after being reequipped by their employer in the meantime, on Sickle Island, the group that took them and brought them to local justice was made up of Jocan and a group of sailors from the ship we were on, The Seabird. The Seabird’s Raiders, they called themselves. An efficient bunch, I must say; it was a joy to do crime control with them, especially since Kati and I were busy finding and disabling their flyer with some Islanders.”

  Mikal was grinning ferally, as he spoke.

  “That was fun,” sighed Jocan. “Catching Dakra and Guzi, and turning them over to the local law enforcement, that is.”

  “How long have these criminals been coming to our world?” Yarm asked, looking scandalized. “How long have they had this...this meeting place on the Southern Continent?”

  Mikal turned to look at Jocan.

  “You’re the one who would know, if one of us does,” he said. “How long has Guzi been dropping in on River City?”

  “At least seventeen years,” Jocan replied drily. “I’m sure of that.”

  “Seventeen years, minimum,” Yarm muttered. “Still, if they haven’t made a habit of interfering with the lives of the locals....” His words trailed off...

  ...while Jocan shook his head vigorously.

  “They were interfering in local affairs,” he asserted. “Kati and Mikal, you noticed how suspicious of strangers people in River City were, how willing to cheat anyone who wasn’t one of them, and even some who were? I’ve thought about that because I’ve noticed that elsewhere that we’ve been, people are much friendlier and more trusting of each other.

  “There’s also what Guzi did to my mother, and the children he rounded up and took away, presumably to be sold as slaves.”

  “What did he do to your mother?” Yarm asked mildly.

  Jocan drew a ragged breath. Kati covered his hand, which was on his knee, with hers for a moment. The youth gave her a grateful glance.

  “She was only a girl, just past her first menses,” he recited in a monotone. “Guzi paid my grandpappy a sum of coin to keep her with him, while he was on planet. He told grandpappy that no-one would know, that he would make sure she wouldn’t get pregnant. That was a lie; I’m proof of that lie. Afterwards my mother had to make a living for us like Chrys makes her living, and the citizens of River City were not nice to women who live that way—they had words other than ’nightladies’ for them.”

  “You’re saying that you are this Guzi’s son?” Yarm inquired.

  At Jocan’s curt nod he went on: “And he’s an off-worlder?”

  “He claimed that he wasn’t,” Jocan said. “He always said that he was originally from this planet but had hooked up with Gorsh, his employer, somehow, he never explained how. He said he liked to come back to his home planet every so often, just to see how things were going.”

  “But he wasn’t from the River City?”

  “Definitely not. He has red hair like mine, and very white skin, whereas the folk in River City, including my mother are dark-haired and darker-skinned than I am. The Weaver Gerrard’s wife Alia, in Oasis City, said that there were some wild tribes on the other side of herder country who had red hair and pale skin. When I heard that I thought maybe he came from there originally.”

  Yarm shook his head.

  “I don’t think that can be the case. I have spoken to young women who have run away from the Wild Tribes. It’s hard not to run into the odd one of such in the herder country. Every one of them told more or less the same story about the famed red-hairs of The Wild Tribes. They are disappearing. They were few in number to begin with, only one family was truly a family of red-heads, is the way the story goes, and the necessity to intermarry into the other families has been diluting the trait for generations. Even the present Chief of the Alifs, who traditionally must be red-haired, has only somewhat coppery-coloured hair, according to a former Alif girl to whom I spoke.”

  “But Jocan’s hair is as red as Guzi’s,” Kati protested. “And his skin is maybe a tiny shade darker than his. What’s going on?”

  “Clearly the colouring Guzi passed on to his son is a dominant trait, not a recessive one,” Mikal stated. “Usually that’s not true of red hair and light skin, but I’m sure that if I had the opportunity to do a bit of research in a Federation library I would come up with a few examples of populations where that is the case. At the moment, the only conclusion that I can draw from what we know is that Guzi is indeed an off-worlder, from some planet unfamiliar to me.”

  Jocan stared at Mikal, saying nothing. He seemed to be digesting what he had just heard.

  “So,” Yarm said in a low voice, almost talking to himself. “We have Free Traders from the Space Lanes coming for Narra-cloth, trading precious metals for them, metals that they themselves don’t seem to value very highly. We have off-world criminals who have set up a meeting place in one of the more inhospitable areas of this world. They are interfering, to some extent, with the lives of the inhabitants on the continent to which they’ve been coming. Two of these criminals have been detained by the Sickle Islanders for breaking their local laws.

  “Mikal, Kati, Jocan: you have given me disturbing additions to the report which I will be making to the Central Council.”

  “You might want to tell them as well, that they should expect a visit from some officials of the Star Federation in the not-too distant future,” Mikal suggested. “There is no question in my mind but that it will happen. Your Council should also understand that they have a say in how things will be dealt with, and how much contact they—and the people of this world—want with the Star Federation or the Space Lanes of Trade.”

  “Well, you have given me much to think about tonight,” Yarm said, getting up.

  He drained the last of his tea which must have been cold by now, and clutching his mug, which he had brought with him, got ready to leave. The night was brighter than the previous one had been; there was only a thin layer of clouds between the stars and the ground.

  “Tomorrow night we’ll be in RichWater,” he added before wishing the others a good-night, “and there, I think, Kati you’ll find out more about the Narra-herders if you are still interested.”

  “What I really want to know about RichWater,” said Kati as she crawled into her blankets on one side of the shared tent, “is whether or not t
here’s a bathhouse there. After sleeping in my clothes for three nights, and riding in them for four, or is it five?—I need a bath.”

  “Every member of this caravan needs a bath by tomorrow night,” Mikal muttered in the dark. “If there are no facilities in RichWater I think we’re going to be hosting vermin.”

  “Oh no, I hadn’t thought of that!” Kati found herself cringing inside her blankets. “Lice! Fleas! What fun!”

  Jocan giggled and Mikal chortled.

  “Such are the delights of travelling across a desert on riding beasts,” Mikal said, yawned and rolled over. Moments later Kati could hear his breathing grow even; he had fallen asleep. Jocan started snoring lightly, even as she was thinking how nice it was that Mikal did not snore.

  “I hope I don’t,” she muttered almost inaudibly, and the granda interrupted to tell her that, of course, she did not, it was taking care of her air passages.

  This is all so weird, she had time to think before dropping off to sleep.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There was an inn with bath facilities, public but separate for men and women, an arrangement that seemed to be common on this world. Mikal, Kati and Jocan took rooms for the night, spending the money for their usual arrangement of two rooms: one for Kati and another with two beds for Mikal and Jocan. Rober, Kaina and their children elected to stay with friends that they had in town, but the rest of the caravan members were spending the night at the campground, only coming to Lazo’s Inn to use the bathing rooms, which they could access for the price of a copper per person. Kati invited Chrys to come to her room when she was ready to go bathe; they would go together. Chrys came there as soon as she had set herself up for the night, just as anxious to wash as Kati was.