Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  At last they heard footsteps beyond the circle of the campfire. Apparently the Elder had chosen to walk by the starlight; no torch announced his arrival.

  “Which one of you is the Caravan Leader?” he queried as soon as he came near enough for the group around the campfire to see him—partially. The fire was dying and only his robed lower reaches were visible; the upper half of his body was in shadow.

  Yarm stood up, yawned and stretched.

  “I am,” he said shortly.

  The MerryWater Village Elder came closer to the fire and to Yarm. He was a solemn-looking, tall, thin man, past his middle years. He studied the Caravan Leader for a moment.

  “I know you,” he said then. “You have been through here before—on more than one occasion. You have led caravans before.”

  “Seems like it’s a task I end up with, whether I intend to or not,” Yarm replied. “By now I’ve decided that I may as well volunteer for it right at the start. It’s easier if I’m in charge in the first place, rather than taking over halfway through, once things have gotten messed up.”

  The Elder nodded.

  “You have travelling with you—“ he looked around the campfire searchingly, “—a Whoremaster by the name of Taxom with his latest acquisition, a bonded young woman named Chrys?”

  “Yes,” replied Yarm laconically, “Taxom and Chrys are travelling with the Caravan.”

  “Where are they now?”

  Yarm’s eyebrows rose. “Sleeping,” he replied.

  The Elder’s eyes followed Yarm’s glance in the direction of the two one-person tents in a campsite beyond the one Matto and his friends were occupying. Kati mentally nudged the granda into giving her enough extra night-vision that she was able to check on the site; all was well as far as she could tell. No-one had called for Chrys’ services this evening, and the campsite was silent and dark.

  “The word is that on his way to Oasis City, Taxom boasted of the new girl he was going to get. There are those who do not like him, and like his boasting less. I have been told that along the road, past our village—perhaps between MerryWater and GreenWater, but more likely on the other side of GreenWater—some young men are planning to kidnap the girl, take her to one of the outlying settlements, and put her to work there.”

  The Elder spoke with an apparent distaste for his subject. He was doing his duty by informing the Caravan Leader of the planned attack, but he did not much like anything to do with the matter. At least this was how it sounded to Kati.

  “Thank you for the warning,” Yarm said to the Elder. “Do you know anything about the folk who made the threat?”

  “Very little. I was told that a family from MuddyWater was involved, and perhaps another from the neighbouring oasis, YellowWater. They are not on the direct through route to the herding country, but along a side track. It’s pretty rough country out there; the inhabitants can barely be considered civilized.”

  This display of prejudice surprised Kati.

  “If they’re talking about it, it may well be intended to be more of a prank than anything else,” Yarm mused. “But if they manage a snatch, it’ll slow us down, if nothing else.”

  The Elder was turning to go.

  “We thought that you should be warned about it,” he said. “We don’t have much use for nightladies or whoremasters, but, as my wife pointed out to me, the safety of the road is important to those who live along it, and depend upon it for shipping and travel. Keep your guard up around GreenWater; that’s where the trail to MuddyWater and YellowWater begins.”

  He left, walking back into the darkness.

  Yarm sat back down on the bit of a stump that he had been using for a seat.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. “It would have been smarter of me, this time, to have insisted that Taxom take on the duties of the Caravan Leader. If he’s been enough of an idiot to brag about the nightlady he was planning to pick up in Oasis City for his House....” His voice trailed off even as he shook his head.

  “So what sort of fun would these MuddyWater and YellowWater fellows have planned for the Caravan?” Mikal asked.

  “Oh, I’d say that anywhere between six and a dozen young men will turn up, probably in the early morning, on Narra-back, to snatch Chrys, and to ride with her, either to MuddyWater, or to YellowWater, which ever they have decided upon,” answered Matto.

  “What do you mean, ‘to snatch Chrys’?” Mikal asked. “Grab her from her tent, is that it?”

  “Yeah.” Jess replied. “The idea is to sneak among the tents while it’s still dark, and everyone is asleep, and grab the snatchee so quietly that no-one else wakes up. Cover her mouth so that she can’t yell for help. Then you get her by sunrise to where you’ve left your Narra, and now the beasts are ready to run, and with luck, your crew and the girl are a long way away in the direction of where you want to take her, by the time the Caravan can organize pursuit.”

  “What if the Caravanners wake up? Or if they have left someone on watch who gives the alarm?” queried Mikal.

  “That’s why you have a whole bunch of guys with you,” Jess said cheerfully. “Some of them will take the Caravan’s Narra and lead them away a ways, so as to slow down possible pursuit. Others will keep any chivalrous male Caravanners from helping the snatchee. The idea is to be as non-violent as possible, so as to not piss anyone off too badly. What these guys usually want in ransom are free passes to the Whoremaster’s House. They don’t want to hurt anybody, really; they just want to punish Taxom for bragging about his new girl before he even had her. He was advertising, of course, but these guys don’t have the funds to buy her services anyway, so it just served to really annoy them.”

  “So what you’re saying is that this sort of a thing is a nuisance rather than a danger,” Mikal concluded. “At worst, a rough ride for Chrys and a few days’ delay for the rest of us, but we don’t have to worry for our health.”

  “That’s about it,” Jess agreed. “If Taxom is sensible, and agrees to see to it that the guys from MuddyWater and YellowWater can get a freebie or two at his establishment, the next time they are in GrassWater, we may not even lose much time.”

  “Well, nothing’s going to happen yet tonight,” Yarm said with a huge yawn. “Let’s get some sleep while we can, and do some planning for this nonsense tomorrow.”

  He headed for his tent. The rest of the group scattered as well, to do whatever was necessary before crawling into their blankets.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Chrys’ face went ashen when she heard about the warning that the Caravan had received from the Village Elder of MerryWater.

  It was the first stop of the day and everyone except the herder family had gathered together to talk about the matter. They had not had a chance to speak about it in the morning; Yarm and the two threesomes had been late getting up and the morning had been a rushed one. Chrys had brought Kati’s underwear from the bath-house when she had fetched hers, and Kati had gratefully stuffed them into her saddlebags, while quickly eating some cold grains and nuts straight from the bag. There had been no tea, only cold water, since time was too short for Jocan to make a fire. Had it not been for Rober, Kaina and their children, who were ready and waiting to go, the whole Caravan might have left a little later, but Yarm decided that it was better to keep to the usual schedule, since at least some of the members were all set to do so. Therefore, the rest of them had had to scramble, and were only now drinking their first mugs of tea.

  “The word at Madame Rosala’s was that such gangs don’t treat nightladies very well,” Chrys said softly. “They have no respect for us; they think rape is okay because to them it’s not that much different from what we do for a living anyway.”

  She swallowed. “They don’t understand the difference,” she finished, a bit lamely.

  Jess, who had been giving out the information about the snatches the night before stared at her thoughtfully.

  “That could be,” he said slowly. “I hadn’t thought of their weird
attitudes. My friends and I—I have relatives in the farming country outside of Oasis City--played some snatching pranks when I was a teen, but we made sure never to hurt anyone.”

  “That’s close to the city,” Matto pointed out. “These are back country louts. They may well have different attitudes, and the Children of the Survivors do have a thing about nightladies.”

  “They’re hypocrites.” This was Taxom who seldom joined the conversation of the others. “They call the girls names; they call me names. Yet they make use of the services every chance they get, any time they have the extra coin to spend. I don’t want Chrys snatched—“ he almost growled that, “—and not just because I mind losing money, although it does lose me money if she’s mistreated.”

  “Maybe they’ll agree to not try that if you get the word out that you’ll give a freebie to each man from MuddyWater and YellowWater who shows up at your House in GrassWater,” suggested Matto.

  Taxom thought about this for a moment or two.

  “If we can get the word out, somehow,” he finally said, “I’m willing to offer a free session with a girl their choice, but not Chrys, to ten men from MuddyWater, and ten from YellowWater, at my GrassWater House, in the next quarter year.”

  “We can try to get the word out,” Yarm said with a nod. “Maybe we can talk about it to the folk in GreenWater—assuming that we don’t run into trouble before then.”

  “It sounds like a fair deal to me. My friends and me, we would have thought that a deal like that was heaven sent,” Jess said with a laugh.

  “You and your pals were kids on a lark, Jess,” Matto told him. “These are guys who have lived rough all their lives, and likely feel hard done by. And their hormones are raging, while the neighbourhood girls are too holy to even kiss. The more I think about this, the less I like it.”

  “You figure that we may have to deal with some unpleasant characters?” Yarm said, directing his words to Matto.

  “There are always a few of those around,” Matto replied. “They often end up living in rough areas because no-one much wants to be around them. These could be such. MuddyWater and YellowWater are not among the choicest of the oases, from what I’ve heard.”

  “How dangerous are these guys?” Mikal wanted to know. “What sort of weapons might they have, or are we talking unarmed hand-to-hand combat at the worst?”

  “Maybe knives. Or sticks,” Matto answered. “Nothing more than that. Anything else would be expensive, and well beyond their means.”

  “Yeah, if they had money for pellet-guns, they’d have money to buy nightladies; they wouldn’t have to snatch them,” Jess said with a chuckle.

  “Do you have any off-world armaments?” Yarm asked Mikal.

  “Kati, Jocan and I each have a stunner,” Mikal replied. “As a Federation Peace Officer I’m not authorized to carry lethal weapons, nor am I allowed to kill in the line of duty. So if I’m going to be involved in this, it’ll have to be a defence operation that leaves no dead bodies behind.”

  “I’m not exactly keen on leaving dead bodies behind, myself,” said Yarm. “I’m just hoping that the fellows we’ll be dealing with have similar scruples.”

  “They should,” said Matto. “After all, even if they are the rough edge of a fringe group, they still are descendants of the Children of the Survivors. The Children have a lot of scruples.”

  “Well, we’re going to have to think on how to protect Chrys and the rest of ourselves,” said Yarm. “If anybody comes up with any brilliant ideas, I’d like to hear them at our next rest stop.”

  *****

  “My idea,” said Kati, “is that we should let them make the snatch, but with me in Chrys’ tent so that they get me instead of her.”

  Mikal glared at her.

  “You have a wish to be raped, Kati?” he queried sharply.

  “Of course not. Don’t be silly,” she protested. “But I’ll have my stunner with me, and I’m not totally hopeless when it comes to looking after myself. I can kick, and scream, and bite, with the best.”

  “I can kick, and scream, and bite, too,” Chrys said gloomily. “But I don’t expect it to do much good.”

  “They’ll tie you up Kati,” Matto said. “Once you’re tied up you won’t be able to protect yourself.”

  “Well that’s where you guys come in,” she argued cheerfully. “I’ll be expecting my knights in shining armour to come and rescue me before anything horrible can happen. Thing is, if they’re hauling a tied-up woman with them, they’re not going to be able to move as efficiently as without me, nor fight as well either.”

  “She might have a germ of an idea there,” Yarm said to Mikal who was still glaring at Kati.

  “If we tie up the Narra, so that the snatchers can’t scatter them without making a racket, we should be able to get a quick start after them,” said Cay. “Other than tying up the Narra, we should make it look like we’ve had no warning, and are travelling along merrily, not worried about anything.”

  “We’ll set up the tents the way we usually do, the only difference being that Chrys and I change places,” continued Kati.

  “I guess if I can expect to be tied up I may as well lend my stunner to Yarm,” she went on, planning as she spoke. “Only thing is, there has to be a way for me to wake someone up when they do the snatch; I’m sure they’re plotting it for a moment when nobody in the camp is going to be awake.”

  “We fellows could take turns keeping watch at night,” Jess suggested. “The watcher could alert everyone else as soon as he heard noises.”

  Yarm laughed.

  “After a full day’s riding, what are the chances that any one of us men, with the possible exception of Mikal who is in the prime of life—neither young enough to sleep like a log, nor old enough to have tired bones—could stay awake through the silent hours of the night?” he asked.

  “Especially the witching hours before dawn,” Kati added. “The time of deep sleep. No doubt the very time when we’ll be attacked.”

  “And if the watcher keeps a roaring campfire going, or sings songs to keep himself awake, he’ll give the game away, and probably one of the snatchers will sneak up on him, and clout him on the head for his pains,” Jess agreed with a sigh. “It’s a problem.”

  “There is no way I’m going to agree to this unless we can figure out a way for you, Kati, to wake us up,” said Mikal. “And I haven’t agreed to it yet.”

  Kati just grinned at him. She was sure that she would come up with a way to awaken her companions without alerting her captors, if only she thought about it hard enough.

  *****

  There was a three days’ ride between MerryWater and GreenWater, and the side trail to MuddyWater and YellowWater forked off at GreenWater, so the Caravanners were fairly certain that they had at least one peaceful night left before the snatch would be attempted. Yarm pointed out that it would make sense to make their plans that evening, the last one they could count on being quiet. Suppertime, therefore, turned into a brainstorming session, an attempt to put together a workable defence scheme.

  Kati had spent the last stretch of riding that day trying to think of a solution to the problem of letting her co-conspirators know when she was abducted, without alerting her abductors to what she was doing. It was a problem she was determined to solve, and not just because Mikal had gone all “Peace Officer” on her, and was refusing to sanction her plan without that particular wrinkle dealt with. She had no desire to be abused by strange men, any more than she wanted them to abuse Chrys. Possibly she could gain some leverage by informing the snatchers that they had the wrong woman, that she knew zilch about the arts of a courtesan; but there was always the chance that this would just annoy them, and make it more likely that they would harm her. She did not want to spend much time in the hands of men she was starting to think of as “desert louts”, even if, in truth, they were some women’s sons, just as surely as she had a son herself.

  “Can you come up with anything?” she had subvoca
lized to the granda when she had exhausted her own store of ideas.

  “I can put my mind to the problem, yes,” the node had answered acerbically. Apparently it was feeling put upon, once again. Kati had sighed. It would have been nice if the damn thing had been willing to do a bit of figurative boot-licking, for a change.

  “Do so, please,” she had encouraged it, returning her own attention to the business of riding Ceta, the Narra.

  Now, finishing off the bowl of stew that Jocan had created with dried meat and what was left of last night’s vegetables, she found herself watching the campsite of Rober and Kaina, and their children, Seb and Sany. That family had distanced themselves from the doings of the rest of the Caravan, especially after the night that they had spent with their friends at RichWater. Kati vaguely wondered why; had the rest of them turned out to be too worldly for these descendants of The Children of the Survivors? Had the kindness that she and the others had shown towards Chrys, the fallen woman in these folks’ book, turned them against all the rest of them?

  Thoughts along that line were not solving her problem, however. Was there some kind of a noise she could make that would wake up one of the others but not alert the snatchers, she wondered. Could she attach a string to Mikal’s foot—that ought to remain unseen in the dark—and tug on it to awaken him before the “desert louts” managed to gag and tie her up? But she had gone through these ideas already earlier in the day, and decided that they were not workable; too many ifs, buts and whatevers left hanging.

  “I’d say that you need to try to use your PSI powers,” the granda interrupted her thoughts.