Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

“What? How would I do that?” she subvocalized.

  “To begin with, you have to see if you can reach any of your companions with your ESP,” the granda told her. “It’s possible that you can get a mental hold of Mikal since the two of you were in the Kitfi gestalt together. That may have given you enough knowledge about the working of each other’s minds to be able to communicate, especially in a situation in which one of you needs the other. Or, you could probe the other members of the group, and find out if any one of them is sensitive. If someone is, then you just alert that person, and he or she does the rest.”

  “I guess I could try that,” Kati subvocalized. “I’m assuming that you can help to extend my abilities, the way you have done before.”

  “Indeed yes. Perhaps you better go into your tent while we try this, so as to cut out distractions.”

  Kati set her empty bowl aside, and turned down a mug of tea which Jocan was offering her. She stood up.

  “I’m going to try something, but I need to be alone to do it,” she told the group around her. “I’ll be in the tent for a while, please try not to disturb me.”

  There were a few raised eyebrows when she did not explain further, but she merely grinned. Mikal gave her a searching glance, then nodded. He was likely the only one, with the possible exception of Jocan, she thought, who had any inkling of what she was up to. That was the way she wanted it. If she could reach any one in the group, they would realize it soon enough. The person she could reach would know what she was doing, when she did it.

  She sat down in a cross-legged position on her blankets and spent a few moments clearing her mind and allowing the granda unfettered access to all of it. She felt relaxed, at ease for once with the node’s presence, vaguely noting that her inner landscape had a different ambience now than it had had in her pre-granda days. It was roomier, and there was a clarity of thought that had not been hers before, at least not to such a great extent. Now she was going to spread even further out, past the edges of her normal mental reach.

  She tried reaching Jocan first, after deciding to leave Mikal for last, for reasons she was not willing to examine. The granda went along with her choice without disputing it. She sat still, thinking about Jocan, picturing him in her mind as he no doubt was at the moment, cleaning up the detritus of the supper as he usually did, passing out mugs of tea he had prepared. Suddenly she felt herself to be outside the tent, watching Jocan pour tea. Mentally she rapped on his skull and tried to speak to him. There was no response from him at all; he was talking to Matto as he poured him tea and he went on doing so even while Kati was trying to divert his attention.

  “It’s not working,” she told the granda, and it agreed with her.

  She tried Matto next, with the exact same result. Then, Yarm; he was not reachable either. Cay and Jess were not any better. Taxom, nothing. She had higher hopes of Chrys, but she, too, was impervious to Kati’s attempts to mentally touch her.

  So, she was going to have to try Mikal after all. But wait, the granda was reminding her that there were four more people in the Caravan: Rober, Kaina, Seb and Sany. Her consciousness wandered off to their campsite where the family were relaxing over tea. She tried Rober first, then Seb, with the now-familiar result of nothing. Then Kaina; there was almost something—Kaina brushed her temple where Kati imagined herself rapping her on the head with her fingers, as if she was brushing off a mosquito bite. But she did not hear what Kati was mentally trying to tell her.

  With a sigh, Kati moved to Sany. The girl went rigid as Kati pretended to poke her in the forehead.

  “Can you read me?” Kati asked. She could sense the youngster’s mind, bubbly, cheerful, filled with delight at the small joys of everyday life.

  “What?” Sany spoke aloud.

  “Something wrong Sany?” Kaina asked.

  Sany stood up and looked around.

  “Kati,” she said out loud, puzzled. “Where is she? She must be around here somewhere. I can feel her presence.”

  “I saw her go into her tent about quarter of an hour ago,” Rober, who was facing the other campsite, said. “She hasn’t come out.”

  “Sany, I’m contacting you mind to mind, and I really am in the tent physically,” Kati told Sany. “You are hearing me, aren’t you?”

  Sany sank back into a sitting position.

  “Yes, I can hear you,” she replied subvocally, while her family stared at her. “I can feel your mind—or whatever—too. Oh, you’re nice!”

  “So are you, kiddo. Bubbly, happy; you’re a joyful person. And I am so glad I could reach you! I am going back now, but come and talk to me in person—physical person—in a few minutes. I think I’m going to need your help, since I can reach you.”

  “Okay. I’ll be glad to help if I can.”

  Kati slipped back into her physical self in the tent.

  “We better try Mikal yet,” the granda said, “just in case.”

  “All right.”

  She slipped back outside with an ease that surprised her. Wandering about without bothering to haul her body around apparently got simpler each time that she did it.

  “Maybe eventually I won’t even bother to move around physically at all,” she told the granda, and received a mental snort for an answer.

  She approached Mikal and concentrated on him. The granda resurrected the memories of what his consciousness had felt like to her when the Kitfi Farseer had held both their minds in communication with her, and each other. She wrapped that memory of him around her being, and tried to use it to connect to him where he sat on a log by a campfire, drinking tea and talking to his companions.

  This was not the simple act that connecting with Sany had been. Kati felt herself pushing against a barrier, a barrier that she understood to be something that most people constructed around their mental selves because they believed that their consciousnesses needed protection from other minds. For whatever reason, some persons, such as herself and Sany, and Murra on Gorsh’s ship, did not build such barriers, and therefore could reach, and be reached, by others of their kind. Mikal, however, was barriered. The Kitfi Farseer had the ability and the knowledge to by-pass such barriers, but Kati did not.

  “Yet you are aware of his barrier,” her node pointed out. “With the others you just slid by on the outside of the barrier, without even registering its presence. This is a start.”

  She tried again. “Mikal,” she whispered, mentally. “Mikal, Mikal, I’m knocking at the door, let me in.”

  Suddenly Mikal broke his speech in mid-sentence and abruptly stood up. He brought his hands to his head and rubbed his face.

  “Damn!” he exclaimed. “Kati’s trying to reach me! I know it; I just know it! But I don’t know how to help her to do it!”

  Kati found herself back in her body so suddenly that she felt disoriented. She drew a deep breath to calm herself, and crawled out of the tent into a night illuminated only by the campfires, theirs and, farther out, that of Rober and his family.

  “So were you, Kati?” Jocan asked her immediately as she returned to the campfire. “Were you trying to mentally reach Mikal?”

  He found her mug and poured the last of the tea in the pot into it.

  “Yeah, I was,” she replied, sitting down and accepting the tea with a nod of thanks. “But Mikal’s got the usual barriers around his mind, the same as most people, and I couldn’t get through them. But I guess I did make an impact of some kind, since he was aware of my attempt.”

  “Think you can wake him up out of sleep that way, if necessary?” Yarm asked her, looking at her curiously. “That seems to be what you have to do, for your plan to have any hope of working, right?”

  “I don’t know if I could,” Kati replied, “but there may be another option.”

  “Did you try to reach the rest of us,” Jocan asked.

  “Yeah. All of you.” She shook her head. “All of you around this campfire, except for Mikal, there was not a twinge. You are all so well-barriered that I slid right aro
und your defences without even being aware of them. It was hopeless.”

  “That’s too bad,” Jocan said.

  “I guess we’re just a bunch of psychically insensitive louts,” Jess laughed. “No help at all.”

  Just then the family of Narra-herders arrived at the fire. Everyone turned to look at them as they came to stand near where Kati was seated between Mikal and Yarm.

  “What’s this all about, Mistress Kati?” Rober asked her. “Sany tells us that you spoke to her, mind to mind, a few minutes ago, even though you were in your tent at the time.”

  “Yes,” Kati replied. “I did do that.”

  “See, I told you that she did, Dad!” Sany cried, and then turned to Kati. “He didn’t really believe me!”

  “Things like that are supposed to be impossible,” Rober said heavily. “At least that is what we have been taught. The Children of the Survivors are not to reach for that which is not possible to attain.”

  “It’s possible,” Kati stated flatly. “To be honest, I didn’t know how possible until on the slave ship I met Murra, a young boy from, I have no idea where, who could communicate with me mentally, and who told me that on his world, people who had the talent to do so were highly valued, and they were trained to use their ability efficiently. So when I had the idea of using my ESP to get a warning out as soon as I’m snatched by the louts coming after Chrys, it occurred to me to try and see if I could mentally reach any member of the Caravan. Sany was the only one with a mind unbarriered enough for me to contact.”

  “No one’s going to snatch you,” Kaina said. “They have no interest in you.”

  “They’ll snatch me if I’m the one sleeping in Chrys’ tent when they come along,” Kati stated. “They have never seen Chrys so they won’t know that I’m not her. And if I can get a warning to the rest of the Caravan before they take me away, without alerting them to what I’m doing, our bunch of daring, chivalrous knights can come and save me from Chrys’ fate before anything bad can happen.”

  Rober shook his head.

  “That’s crazy,” he said.

  Kati sighed. “Have you got a better idea for keeping Chrys out of their clutches? I’m open to suggestions.”

  “I think Kati’s plan has merit,” Yarm interrupted. “For one thing, she has experience of handling herself in tight situations, whereas Chrys has none. Secondly, it sounds like she can get the warning out to Sany, who then can wake up the Caravan as soon as the rascals are out of sight. I realize, Mikal, that you don’t much like it that she has offered to put herself in danger to save Chrys pain and mistreatment, but you do have to admit that of the two, she’s the one who has the better chance of handling the situation, if it can, in fact, be handled.”

  “I don’t disagree, Yarm,” Mikal said with a sigh. “I just wish there was some official body on this world to deal with folk like these ‘desert louts’, as Kati calls them. I don’t mind improvising ways to deal with idiots when it’s only my own neck I have to worry about, but to have to choose between two women, which one to throw to the wolves—I just don’t like it.”

  “We could try and stay alert and fight them as soon as they come,” Matto suggested.

  “Yeah,” Kati snorted. “Who’s going to stay awake every night, waiting for those louts when we don’t know even which night they’ll show up? We’ve got what?—three stunners to defend ourselves with. Against how many men? I’m sorry, but it seems to me that guile is a better tactic in this case than brawn. And as for calling the cops, as I gather you’re suggesting, Mikal, clearly there aren’t any on this planet, so we can just forget that.”

  “Kati, I know that.” Mikal sighed again. “I guess I just want to keep you safe.”

  “’Calling the cops’?’’ Jess muttered, looking puzzled. “What the heck is ‘calling the cops’?”

  “On a lot of worlds the governing bodies hire people to enforce their laws,” Mikal explained. “If you’re under a threat from lawless individuals or groups, you can ask for their protection.”

  “I understand that this was true of our world, too, before The Disaster,” Yarm said, “On the Northern Plains we’re trying to organize such a protective force. Here, in the desert, there isn’t much in the way of governing bodies, except at town and settlement level, and not many laws to enforce, or anybody to do the enforcing.”

  “Which is why we’re trying to improvise a way to deal with this situation,” added Kati.

  “What about accepting whatever happens as God’s will?” interjected Kaina.

  “Ack! No!” Chrys cried, her eyes wide with terror.

  “I find it hard to believe that any God has anything to do with the plans these fellows have made,” Yarm said drily. “And since the Village Elder at MerryWater took the trouble to warn us, my guess is that The Children of the Survivors don’t think so either. No, we do have a moral obligation to try to prevent their plot from succeeding. The disagreement among us has been about the how, not about the what.”

  “And what exactly is this idea of Kati’s that would involve my daughter helping her?” Rober wanted to know. He had sat down on the end of a short log of which Yarm occupied the other half, and he was looking at the faces around him curiously.

  “It’s actually quite simple,” Kati replied enthusiastically. “I want us to lay a trap for those guys, since they very likely outnumber us.

  “I’m assuming that they know Taxom’s tent from his trip to Oasis City—they’d be idiots if they hadn’t done a little bit of information gathering. So they’ll figure the tent beside Taxom’s is that of the nightlady he’s bringing back with him, Chrys, that is. They are, Jess tells us, planning a silent snatch: that is, slip into her tent, gag and tie her before she can make noise to wake up others, and get her out onto the back of a Narra, and if the whole thing is done close to sunrise, the Narra will be ready to move fast as soon as the sun comes up. Meanwhile others in the group collect, and lead away, and hide if at all possible, our mounts, so pursuit can’t happen until the camp has woken up and has found and recaptured them.

  “My idea is for us to pretend that we have had no warning of the attack, and therefore are being merrily carefree, and sleeping well. Except that we do a good job of tying up and hobbling our Narra for the night; we’ll use the off-world rope that Mikal and I have been hauling with us, since it’s hard to cut, and dulls the local knives when you try. Jocan, I trust that the sailor girls on The Seabird taught you to tie a good knot or two. Chrys and I will change places for the night; I’ll be sleeping alone in her tent and she’ll be safe but crowded in the tent Jocan, Mikal and I normally share. When the attack happens, I get a mental hold of Sany, since she’s the one and only person I can reach that way, and she alerts the rest of the Caravan as soon as I ask her to.

  “Then all the brave knights who are coming to my rescue, rush to their Narra, untie the knots that the louts weren’t able to loosen, and ride to catch up with us. Since these fellows don’t have guns, and since they’ll be busy riding and shepherding the Narra carrying me, it shouldn’t be that hard for the knights to use our three stunners on them. When they are all stunned, the knights can untie and ungag me, and bring me back, and we’ll be off on our trip once again. And the louts who were stunned will be feeling pretty awful when they wake up, what with having been lying on the sand, unconscious for a few hours. If we send their mounts off homewards without them, it’ll be quite some time before they’ll want to even think about coming after us again.”

  “Well, it makes a pleasant tale, that’s for sure,” Rober laughed. “But does it have a reasonable chance of succeeding?”

  “Yarm thinks so,” Matto replied, “and I have to say that I agree with him. What with Kati being able to mentally reach Sany, as long as Sany’s willing to be woken up in the night to give the alarm, I think Kati’s plan is the best one any of us has come up with.”

  “I want to do this,” Sany said, her eyes shining. “I do want to do it. This is the most exciting thi
ng that has happened to me, ever.”

  “Just so long as Kati can get you awake,” Seb snorted. “You’re pretty good at sleeping through noise, and pinches, slaps even.”

  “I think I’ll have no problem waking Sany up,” Kati said. “There will be no noise involved, and any pinches will be purely mental.”

  “We could try it tonight,” Sany suggested. “If you wake at night, you can try to wake me up and see how much effort it takes to get me up and alert.”

  “That’s actually a good idea,” Yarm broke in. “We should do a dry run, in any case, and tonight’s the last time we can be sure of having peace. So let’s figure out the knots and tie up the Narra; Jocan, you did say that you had learned some really good sailors’ knots on The Seabird. Let’s go try them out.”

  *****

  When Kati crawled into Chrys’ tiny tent she found herself being grateful for the opportunity to have a bit of privacy for a change. Not that Mikal or Jocan were ever anything but polite to her during the enforced togetherness, neither of them snored much, and she did understand the desert practise of not hauling along any more gear than was necessary, but there were times when sharing a tent with two male companions, no matter how decent, did grate. It was delightful to have a chance to sleep all alone no matter the reason. Poor Chrys, she thought to herself, she just lost her privacy. But, likely Chrys did not mind, since the lack of privacy also meant safety. According to the thinking of the outfitters who catered to desert travellers only a nightlady needed her own tent, and she only because sometimes she might conduct business in that tent. Paradoxically, now that she was sharing a tent with Jocan and Mikal, Chrys had the appearance of a respectable woman, so no lout would dream of bothering her. In her solitude, Kati had a good guffaw at the absurdity of it.

  She asked the granda to awaken her an hour before sunrise the next morning. That would be somewhat earlier than the Caravanners usually arose; she could perform the test of getting Sany up using her ESP before anyone else was up. It was handy having the internal alarm, and the granda was good at that; it never failed to get her up when she wanted it to do so. She kept her clothes on, even as she did when she was sharing a tent with Mikal and Jocan; she was not about to use sleeping alone as an excuse to discard caution. Not even this night, when there was supposed to be no danger of being actually attacked, would she tempt fate. If the desert louts were expecting a nightlady in frilly frippery, they were going to be disappointed.