Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  Sometime later, someone—most likely a female someone, I’d say—noted that the fibres that the Narra shed could be spun into thread and woven into cloth, a very strong, useful cloth, as a matter of fact. It had wonderful insulating properties which came in handy in the making of tents and awnings against the heat. Soon enough, someone else figured out that it was possible to shear the fibre from the Narra once or twice a year, instead of laboriously collecting what the animals shed. When people from the colder climates found out that the Narra-cloth could keep heat in as well as out, its popularity truly took off.

  “Now, these ingenious people are the descendants of those original farmers in the area who did not perish in The Disaster. But, Matto, if you have the background, you can no doubt explain them to Kati, filling in the details that I cannot.”

  He gestured in the youth’s direction, to encourage him to continue.

  “To the Narra-herders, or The Children of the Survivors, as they call themselves, everything began with The Disaster,” Matto began, in a serious tone of voice.

  He kept surprising Kati; his behaviour could be very foolish and shallow one moment, but then become surprising sensitive, the next.

  “For the population out of which they came, everything ended with The Disaster, of course. The heat came and the rains dried up. Topsoil blew away with the winds, leaving behind only sand and dust. People died of hunger because crops could no longer be grown; animals died for the same reason. Many people left, only to quickly find out that the rest of the world was not in much better shape. Disasters of one sort or another were happening everywhere. The breadbasket of the Northern Continent may have disappeared inside of a few years and people and animals may have died like flies, but at that time the whole world was under siege from climate change, so there was no help to be had. Whoever survived had to do it on their own, had to manage however they could.”

  He drew a deep breath and sipped at his beer.

  “There are always a few of those who survive a disaster, somehow; by crawling into holes and staying there till everyone else is gone, perhaps. I don’t know how the Survivors did survive, but they did, hungry and emaciated, very likely; hoarding food and keeping it from their neighbours, most likely. So, after The Disaster there were a few people scratching a living from the soil around the Oases and in the few areas around the fringes of the desert that would support plant life, and within a few decades a scanty population base did re-establish itself in the area.

  “It was to these people that the Preacher Llammas began to speak. He was one of them, a Child of the Survivors he called himself, and his followers took the designation for their own. He believed that they owed God a debt for allowing them, so few of them as there were, to live. God had let their parents stay alive, at least long enough to have begotten a new generation, small as it was, and for that they should give thanks. For that mercy they should be happy to live simply, shun the worldliness of the cities and towns (not that there was much left of those), and live righteously and kindly, in harmony with all things that were of God. And since everything natural was considered to be of God, this meant living in harmony with all things natural, including other human beings.

  “Living in harmony with nature was not a problem. There was more of it than of people, and it made its demands known, and they were exacting demands. There was not much the Children of the Survivors could do about nature except to try to follow the dictates of the seasons in as much as seasons still existed, in their endeavours to grow the few simple crops that were left to them, and to husband a few animals, to keep themselves and their families fed.

  “Living in harmony with other people was not a problem either—in the beginning. The Children of the Survivors were few to begin with, and other people on this world were not numerous either, although perhaps their numbers never dwindled to such an extent as the population of the new desert did. There was almost no contact at first, between the Children and the other descendants of survivors. Travel was difficult, and distances were vast; in the desert only the successors to Preacher Llammas took long trips, and they only because the Elders of the Children believed that it was necessary to keep contact among the isolated pockets of their people in some fashion, and the preachers were the ones who could be spared for the job.

  “Then the Narra came into the Children’s lives, and travel became easier. That meant that more of the known, but distant, oases could be farmed, and tracts of grassland became useful as grazing grounds. There began to be more contact with outside folk as the Oasis City became reachable. Living righteously, and in harmony with the part of Nature known as Man, grew more difficult for the Children. As did the ideal of the Simple Life. It was looking like the God of the Preacher Llammas was demanding more of the Children whose survival he had ensured.

  “And if living with an easy means of transportation was not awkward enough, for the Children of the Survivors, soon afterwards they were confronted with the fact that they had the means to produce something for which other people were willing to pay very good money. Narra-hairs proved to be a miracle fibre, not just for the manufacturers who turned it into thread, and then into cloth, and, eventually, into cold-weather clothing as well as hot-weather hats, tents and awnings. The Narra-fibre forced the herders to rejoin the world, such as it is. Families moved into the grasslands to tend large herds of the animals so that they could meet the demand for the fibre, a demand which grew large enough that customers would fight over the supply.”

  Matto stopped long enough to gulp down a half-a-mug of beer. Mikal had a quick conference with Yarm and the waitress in the meanwhile, the upshot of which was that the server brought Matto another mugful, which Mikal paid for with a coin that he fished out of his pocket. Kati suppressed a smile. Mikal had begun to handle money at long last. Surely his deferral to her on that for so long, had more to do with an unwillingness to deal with the little metal bits, rather than an inability to learn to do so!

  “Now the Children of the Survivors are wealthy, if not according to everyone’s terms, at least by their own.”

  Matto pushed his empty mug to the side, and pulled the full one in front of himself with a nod of thanks to Mikal. He left it to sit there, and went on with the tale:

  “Living a simple, pious, righteous life has become more and more difficult. Folk have to make the sort of decisions that they never had to, earlier. For example, one of the plants that the Narra-herders have always grown is the falu-plant, for its long, silky fibres which can be woven into a light cloth that makes excellent hot weather wear. However, it does not grow well in the desert; it requires a lot of water to grow the beautiful threads that make good cloth. The version that the Children grow, and have worn for generations, makes a much shabbier cloth. Should people now give up growing falu, and buy this cloth from Oasis City whose merchants are happy to sell them excellent falu-cloth? Or is doing so an act of disobedience against the God of Preacher Llammas, the God they have honoured since The Disaster?

  “Then there are the women like Chrys, the nightladies. They have become very common since the Narra-fibre has been packed out in quantities, and the coin has been flowing in. Even some of the devout men say that young boys should have the opportunity to learn a few tricks from the nightladies, before they partner up. And as for the Elder fathers who, when taking their sons to a nightlady’s tent, take advantage of her presence themselves; well, that’s no affair of mine. Officially the preachers and the Elders disapprove of the women who sell their bodies, and they certainly look down upon them. No herder’s daughter can take on the work of a nightlady, not if she intends to stay in the community.

  “The conflicts that the changes in fortune have brought into the lives of the Children of the Survivors are many. They are a people who have found a measure of success, but dare not truly enjoy it except guiltily, because they have been taught to feel, first by Preacher Llammas, and later by his successors, that they are guilty just being alive, when so many others died. They
have been taught that they have no right to enjoy life, but must be grateful merely to live.”

  Matto gulped down some more beer.

  “Okay,” he sighed. “That was a long lecture. I’m finished.”

  “Do we get a question and answer session now?” Kati asked before anyone else had a chance to comment.

  “A question and answer session?” Matto’s eyebrows went up as he puzzled this out. “You mean, where you guys ask me questions about what I was telling you, and I answer them?”

  “That’s the idea.” Kati grinned.

  “Sure, why not? If I can answer the questions; if I can’t—well, I can’t.”

  “Sounds fair to me,” Mikal threw in.

  “Let me get in here before Mikal comes out with some complicated, philosophical question,” Kati said before Mikal had time to say more. “You said earlier, Matto, that you have relatives among the herders but you don’t count yourself as one of them. What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, ever since the Narra first opened up the society of the Children of the Survivors somewhat—that would be when they first started being used as runnerbeasts—a small number of the young people have found the outside world, mainly Oasis City, preferable to life among the narrow confines of their own folk. Often you had a situation in which a parent, or parents, brought their offspring into the city while running an errand and the said offspring found the place fascinating.”

  “”How do you keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?’” Kati muttered very, very quietly. Only Mikal could possibly have heard her with his node-enhanced hearing—had he for some reason, wanted to.

  “Later, perhaps after some difference of opinion with his or her parents, back at home, that offspring would pack his personal possessions on Narra-back and ride for Oasis City. Even though the social and economic life of Oasis City has always centred on families, there’s still need for unaffiliated workers here and there. Sometimes, like at present, the need is great, at other times in the past it has been much less, but it’s always there, and a smart young person has always been able to find a way to make a living. Perhaps it would be a meagre living, but the offspring of The Children were used to that. Often, later, a pretty girl or a comely lad would find herself, or himself, marrying into one of the established families, and thereby gain family status in the City as well as already having one in the grasslands or the desert.

  “My family is one of these blended affairs: my father was a herder’s son who was drawn away from the desert by the bustle and life of the Oasis City. My mother belongs to one of the old spinner families—so old, in fact, that until my father introduced the spinning of Narra-fibres into the family repertoire, they had been refusing to spin anything but the best falu thread. My father has improved the fortunes of both his own family and his marriage family by persuading the innovation to be accepted. Because of that, his prestige on both sides of the family has risen quite high. As a matter of fact, I’m going to meet with that side of my family and see if it is possible for them to increase Narra-fibre production further. The weavers are clamouring for the thread; they are claiming that they know of some amazing, possibly unlimited, markets for the cloth, and clothes made of it.”

  Kati remembered what Gerrard’s wife, Alia, had told her and Mikal about her background. It had been a story very like Matto’s.

  “And Jess and I were sent by our families, neighbouring spinners all, to see if we could not make some connections with the herders, too,” piped up Cay. “It seems that there is so much call for the fibres that about the only way to make sure of a supply is to have personal contacts.”

  “Me, I’m thinking to find me a nice, likely, herder lass and marry her, thereby gaining a family connection of my own,” said Jess cheerfully. “I’m about ready to settle down and some of those girl-Children are good-looking, not to mention healthy, modest—aw! name your virtue, they’ve got them! Not to mention the matter of Narra-fibre which our spinning business can use!”

  Matto shook his head.

  “Jess is starry-eyed to the point of foolishness, my mother would say. He may well end up with a young woman with a sharp tongue. There are plenty of those among the Children, but they usually keep rein on what they say in public, so you won’t necessarily know what you’ve got, until you’ve got it for good.”

  “As an aside, I’d like to ask Yarm something,” Mikal broke in.

  Yarm nodded at him and the others turned to pay attention.

  “Is much of the Narra-cloth making its way into the Northern Plains?”

  “Some,” Yarm replied thoughtfully. “Not as much of it as the Council would like to see, and the word is that much of it is of a lower quality than what the earliest importers had claimed it would be. It’s not that easy to get it to the Plains; it’s actually faster to ship goods to the Southern Continent from Oasis City. The established routes go to the Southern, and though there’s an ocean to cross, much of it is the shallows above the old Low Continent. The ships voyaging to the ports of the Northern Plain have to skirt the bulk of the continent, yet stay close to the coast, since the deep ocean waters can be treacherous. It is hard to get up much speed while plying the coastal waters, especially if the winds are against you, which they always seem to be, at least in my experience. The Northern Plains will likely be the last part of our world to be supplied with the desired amount and quality of the Narra-cloth; what has been going there simply does not meet the standards claimed by the original importers. The Central Council finds it hard to believe that they were intentionally misled; one of the reasons I’m travelling here this time is to find out what is happening with the industry. Are there problems, and are they such problems that they can be corrected, given good will and effort?”

  “Our weaver friend in Oasis City, Gerrard, mentioned that there were a lot of families quickly setting up weaving shops to take advantage of the demand, and producing substandard cloth in their haste to supply the market,” Mikal said quietly.

  Matto laughed, humourlessly.

  “These weavers who are in such a hurry are buying thread from spinners who are also rushing into the business, and as a result producing less than ideal thread. I don’t doubt but that there’s a lot of low-quality Narra-cloth out there, bolts of it being loaded on to ships, and sent to other parts of the world, to people who either don’t know good Narra-cloth from bad, or else are in no position to complain. My father knows Gerrard, it so happens; Gerrard buys a lot of thread from us. His uncle did business with us before him, and he always demanded good thread. In fact when my family started spinning Narra-fibre they worked with Gerrard’s uncle, so as to have, as the end product of their combined labours, the very best possible cloth for clothing.”

  “Gerrard also mentioned that he is selling Narra-cloth to an off-world Free Trader who pays him excellent prices for the best cloth. The trader only takes the best cloth, as a matter of fact,” Mikal added.

  “Now, there’s a reason why at least some of the overseas customers buying Narra-cloth get saddled with inferior product.” Matto shook his head. “We spinner families don’t see them but we do hear the weavers talking. Gerrard has one Free Trader coming to him; the weaver next door to us has another one patronizing his shop. The family over on the next street sells to a third off-worlder, and the one on the street beyond that, speaks of still another. There are a number of them and each one deals with a different weaver; the Free Traders avoid stepping on each other’s toes, is what I have heard. To find out how many of them there actually are coming to Oasis City and loading up their space ships with as much of the best Narra-cloth the city can provide, a person would have to question every weaver in the city. But there are enough of them, to judge from my haphazard knowledge, that they are taking a large portion of the best cloth off-world.”

  “Where do they take it?” Jocan, who had been quiet for a very long time, asked.

  “There are winter worlds out there,” replied Mikal. “And those whic
h have winter in one hemisphere while there is summer in the other, and then things reverse.”

  “That’s how it was on this world before The Disaster,” Yarm put in.

  “Most of them have their own various fibres, whether of plant or animal, or of whatever origin, which can be used to insulate people from the cold,” Mikal continued. “I don’t doubt, but that they do that just as well as the Narra-fibre does. But the Narra-cloth is a novelty; it is new and it is different. It comes from far away and it costs a lot; only a few people on any world outside of this one are going to be wearing clothes made from it. It is an expensive luxury, and a luxury it will remain everywhere among the Space Trade Lanes except here—unless of course someone manages to transplant the Narra to another world.”

  “Now, there’s an interesting thought,” murmured Yarm.

  “Is that possible?” Matto asked, his eyes on Mikal.

  “I don’t know,” Mikal answered. “I imagine that it would take a concentrated effort, at the very least. First, a suitable climate with nourishing—nourishing to Narra—food sources would have to be found, or provided. Then the animals would have to be transported from here to there, as embryos, most likely. Which would mean having suitable mothering animals available—or artificial uteri, if such were within reach. Then, of course, there would be the wait, to see if the transplant would take.

  “Anyway, the way I see it is that you, the people of this world, should be discussing all these things among yourselves. You should be thinking about how you want the Narra-cloth trade to play out. Do you want to keep selling a lot of it to off-worlders? Or would you rather provide the planetary inhabitants with good cloth first? Would you be willing to send embryonic Narra to another world if an off-world government made that request?

  “How would you make any decisions about matters like these? The Northern Plains have their Councils, including their Central Council to make such decisions. Here in the southern part of the Northern Continent, you have what?”