Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “Which means that more and more spinning families are going to be chasing a finite amount of Narra-fibre,” said Jess. “So even if we manage to make a deal, someone else may come along in a few months and offer the communities a better one. Always assuming that the buyers are willing to pay more for lower quality in the hopes that they can pass the costs on, first to the weavers, and then to the cloth merchants and the consumers.”

  “Are there any other parts of this planet where Narra could possibly be raised?” Kati asked. “You might have some idea, if anyone does, Yarm.”

  “There are grasslands on the Northern Plains,” Yarm replied. “Whether or not Narra might thrive on them is a question that has not been answered. No-one has thought to import any of the animals there, although it is definitely an idea that I’m going to broach with the members of The Central Council. Truth is, it doesn’t look like the North is going to see much of the good quality Narra-cloth without its own supply of the fibre, considering how much demand there is for fabric of any quality.”

  “I don’t see how you could get any Narra across the mountains. They couldn’t handle the cold,” Matto objected.

  “No, but lot of the land just north of the mountains is plenty warm,” Yarm said. “If you shipped a handful of breeding animals by boat to one of the southernmost ports, you could walk the Narra—or ride them, for that matter—across the land to where you wanted to try to raise them. That wouldn’t be difficult at all.

  “The big unknown is whether or not the Narra would thrive. And you can’t answer that question without running the experiment.”

  “That may eventually solve the North’s Narra-cloth shortage but it won’t help our situation any,” Cay said with a sigh. “Our families will be chasing after the existing supply which is not getting any bigger, in the face of more and more people going into spinning and weaving.”

  “Surely the families are starting to realize that it no longer makes sense?” Kati asked. “With the fibre supply as large as it can get, with more spinning outfits, the supply simply gets cut into smaller portions for each outfit.”

  “Yeah, it does get kind of predatory,” Matto concurred. “That’s why we had to make this trip. Lot of the new families in the business are sending members here to buy the fibre on the spot, and paying more than we, the old spinning families, have contracted to pay. It doesn’t make sense for the GrassWater Fibre Seller, for example, to keep dealing with us if he can get a better price from someone else. So we have to let them know that we’ll match whatever price they’re being offered, just to insure our supply.”

  “And we’ll have to charge the weavers more for our thread to make up the difference,” Cay added. “Which means that the cloth will also be more expensive.”

  “We’ll try to make most of whatever connections we have, of course, when it comes to negotiating the supply, if not the price,” Matto sighed. “I’ll talk up my father’s family name, and all three of us will stress that our families have been buying Narra-fibre for years, unlike the upstarts. How much that’ll help, I don’t yet know.”

  “Wouldn’t it make sense to have an organization of some kind to determine the optimum number of spinners and weavers that the amount of fibre available can support?” Mikal asked. “Then their numbers could be limited to that, and new spinners could be directed to spin other kinds of thread, ones in which there was still room for expansion. Or if all the spinning work is already at capacity, they could be encouraged to take up enterprises in which there’s still room for new blood.”

  “Actually, Mikal, our Councils in the Northern Plains do perform functions such as that,” Yarm said. “We try to do things in a way that allows everyone to make a decent living, and provides all our people with the necessities of life. It does require a high level of co-operation among all of us who live there, and a willingness to put the good of the community before personal gain. But it works amazingly well, as long as everyone keeps an open mind, and nobody insist on having everything his or her own way.

  “For example, I fully expect that one of our Southland Councils will offer to try the Narra experiment once I take the idea back home. Since Narra-cloth seems to be a very useful product, every effort will be made to make it available to our residents. First to the people who will raise the animals, and those who spin the fibre, and weave the cloth, and eventually to everyone.”

  “That sounds very, very sane, to me,” Kati said. “But, people being what they are, don’t they complain that the Councils are trying to run their lives?”

  “Some do. But they’re usually the ones who are trying to increase their share of the wealth at the expense of other contributing members of our common society. So no-one takes them all that seriously; we just let them belly-ache and ignore them.”

  “If there were enough of them, couldn’t they join together and cause trouble?” Jocan asked.

  “I suppose so,” Yarm replied, smiling again. “If there were enough of them, and if they could persuade others to support them. Two pretty big ‘ifs’. Most of our people are happy with their lot in life; they have enough of everything they need. And we work very hard to try to make sure that everyone does have what they need, or want, in so far as filling wants is possible.”

  “I suppose that the folk in Oasis City could get together and form a Council such as you people have in The North,” Jess said, a trifle hesitantly. “I guess that everyone would have to understand its benefits, for it to work.”

  “Actually, you needn’t start with anything that complicated,” Mikal objected.

  He leaned back in his chair and looked around at the table, a grin on his face and playing with his beer mug.

  “Remember the other night when Kati was telling the story of our arrival in River City?” he asked his listeners.

  There were nods all around. Kati raised her eyebrows at Mikal. Where was he going with this?

  “She was explaining how, as the Lady Katerina, she checked out the Inns on the Square while I was looking for a likely lad—our Jocan, here—to hire as an errand boy, remember? The Lady Katerina was quite appalled at the safety features—or the lack of them—at all the Inns. Kati, would you kindly repeat what you said that the arrangement of the accommodations you looked at, made you think, at the time?”

  Kati wrinkled her nose at him. What was Mikal up to?

  “I thought to myself that considering the consistency of the questionable safety features that those rooms displayed, it looked liked the Inns must have had an arrangement with the local Thieves’ Guild to rob the patrons.”

  “Aha.” Mikal looked like a pleased little boy. “The local Thieves’ Guild!”

  “I’m totally lost,” Matto conceded with a shake of his head. “What’s a Thieves’ Guild got to do with our problem, anyway?”

  “But, you do know what a Thieves’ Guild would be?” Mikal asked him.

  Understanding was starting to dawn on Kati. The look on Yarm’s face told her that he, too, was catching on. The younger men still looked puzzled, however.

  “Yeah, an association that thieves form to regulate the activities of their membership in a given...,” Matto’s words faded even as a light went on in his eyes. “You’re suggesting that we form a Spinners’ Guild in Oasis City, right?”

  “Or a Spinners’ and Weavers’ Guild. Maybe call it a Cloth Makers’ Guild.” Mikal was beaming, like a teacher at a prize pupil.

  “If the spinners and weavers agree, that to operate a spinning or a weaving business a person or a family has to be a member of the Guild, they can regulate their numbers themselves,” he continued. “I should imagine that it would not be all that difficult to get the herding communities to agree to sell fibre only to Guild members; after all, they run their own operations in a co-operative manner, and therefore should be open to encouraging co-operation among others.”

  “So I guess that’s going to be our next task, boys, once we get back home,” Matto said cheerfully, nodding at Cay and Jess. “We
’ll have to persuade the spinners and weavers into organizing into a Guild, and regulating the industry.”

  “Hah, we’re out to change the world!” Jess lifted his mug into the air. “I’ll drink to that!”

  They all did and the conversation meandered off to other subjects.

  *****

  It turned out that Yarm was also staying at Ula’s Inn, so the four of them did not have far to go to make it to bed at the end of the night. Kati, Mikal and Yarm called it a night quite a bit before the young men were ready to leave the Alehouse. Mikal instructed Jocan to try to be quiet when he came to sleep in their room; he was not overly keen on being awakened before the morning. Jocan promised to be silent as the dead on his arrival, but Kati took that vow with a grain of salt, and rolled her eyes at Mikal.

  “Well, Kati, if you don’t believe Jocan, you can always let me come and sleep on your floor,” Mikal said with a droll expression on his face as the three of them walked away from the tavern.

  “No can do, my friend,” Kati replied her eyebrows comically high. “T’would ruin my reputation.”

  “Ah, she’s right,” Yarm laughed. “Do you really think you’d stay on the floor?”

  “You don’t know the amount of self-control I have, Yarm,” Mikal replied. “Of course I’d stay on the floor.”

  Kati giggled.

  “You may have oodles of self-control,” she said, “but don’t count on me having as much. Nope, Mikal, you’ll sleep in your own room and if you’re smart you’ll lock the connecting door—from your side. I feel like I had a beer or three this night and I’m not to be trusted.”

  “Your wish is my command, Lady Katerina,” Mikal said and saluted in a slightly odd manner.

  “Hey, Lady Katerina and her faithful servant Mik! That was a lot of fun making them up!”

  “Yeah, and we didn’t have to stay in character long enough for it to get boring. Which was just as well; acting’s not my strong suit,” Mikal laughed.

  “You did fine.” She turned to Yarm and added:

  “The disguises did come in handy since an awful lot of people in River City were not exactly friendly towards strangers of any kind. Now that strikes me as kind of odd, since everywhere else that we have been, people have been most welcoming towards us.”

  “River City,” Yarm said musingly. “I stopped there once on my travels through the Southern Continent. That would have been about ten years ago, at least. It was an unfriendly place towards strangers even then; I didn’t linger. What you said about the Inns on the Square, Kati, brought back memories, definitely; I ended up staying the night at the home of some people who befriended me. They refused to let me take a room at any of those inns; they told me that I’d get robbed for sure if I stayed at one of them.”

  “Gorsh and his criminals are having a bad influence on the inhabitants, I’d say,” Kati commented. “They are interfering with this world, and not in a good way!”

  “I don’t know if Mistress Sye was running her Inn then,” Yarm added. “If she was, I didn’t come across it.”

  They had reached Kati’s door. She dug her key out of a pocket and used it. With a quick good-bye she slipped into her room, leaving Mikal and Yarm to continue the discussion if they chose to, and glad that she had a bed to sleep in for at least a couple of nights.

  *****

  In the morning Mikal and Kati had a strategy session while Jocan was still sleeping off his evening at the Alehouse with Matto, Cay and Jess. Mikal had been enterprising enough to fetch a breakfast and a pot of tea from the Inn Restaurant, and had showed up at Kati’s door with the tray as soon as she had finished dressing. She had still been brushing her hair.

  “Hey, what do I owe this to?” she asked Mikal as she answered the door, and saw the covered tray in his hands.

  “To the fact that a teenager is asleep in my room,” he replied with a laugh as he crossed her room to the table under the window. “We need to discuss an idea I had, anyway, so I thought that we might as well do it over breakfast.”

  “A good thought, that,” Kati agreed, putting away her hair brush and coming over to help him uncover the food. It smelled delicious.

  Mikal’s eyes were on her shoulder-length dark brown curls, her animated face, and her slim figure. He was delighted with the opportunity to be in the room with her. This was a woman who could look great the first thing in the morning, after weeks of riding across a desert, and be grateful to have breakfast brought to her...well, he was a fellow who knew a treasure when he saw one, and he was looking at one right that moment!

  “Hey, where did you go?”

  She was waving a mug at him, offering it to him even as she was digging the tea pot out of the wrappings meant to keep it hot.

  “Distracted, I guess, but only for a second,” he answered, accepting the mug and seating himself at the table.

  She finally got the tea pot loose and poured two mugfuls while he set out the utensils for the meal. For a few minutes they ate in a companionable silence; then Kati asked:

  “So what was this idea that you wanted to discuss?”

  “How’s our money situation?” he asked in return. “Do you think we could afford to hire Yarm as a guide on this last leg of the trip?”

  “I imagine that our funds will hold out to cover that easily enough,” she replied between bites. “Why? He’s coming along anyway, and I didn’t think we needed a guide, not really. Is there something here that I’m missing?”

  Mikal’s grin was broad.

  “You don’t miss much, kiddo,” he said. “I’d hate to try to put one over on you.

  “Yarm and I talked for a while last night after you crawled into bed. I mentioned that you’d probably have to stop at a money-changer’s today or the next day, since Jaymo’s services were not likely to come cheap, and he said that he was going to have to try to arrange for a loan from the town’s money-changer since the funds that the Central Council had provided him with were pretty much spent. It seems that this trip has taken longer than he had expected it to, and the prices for services are higher than they had been the last time he had been here. I didn’t say anything to him yet since I figured that I’d have to discuss this matter with you, our financial expert, but it did occur to me that it would be silly to not pay his way with the Kitfi gold, if we still had plenty of it. We won’t be needing it once we reach the beacon, and call for a ride to Federation Space.”

  “I see. And hiring him would allow him to accept the money with his pride intact, instead of it looking like charity, right?”

  “Smart woman. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. What’s your take on it?”

  Mikal pushed his empty plate away. There was still lots of food on the platter on the tray.

  “We still have plenty of Kitfi gold,” Kati said. “I don’t know how many gold coins you still have in your boots, but I have several in mine. I checked yesterday. Yeah, I think your idea is a good one—I bet that we’ll get our money’s worth of work out of Yarm, no problem. He’ll insist.”

  She pushed her empty plate away, too.

  “I guess we’ll have to get Jocan up to finish off this food,” she added, looking at the platter. “Did you plan it that way?”

  He winked at her, on his way to the door connecting the two rooms.

  “Indeed, I did. It’s time for the sleepy head to get his butt into gear. We have things to do today.”

  *****

  The four of them went to Jaymo’s together to plan out the next portion of the journey. Yarm had accepted the offer of a guide’s job with obvious delight when Kati had offered it to him that morning. Jocan, also, had been thrilled when Kati and Mikal had told him of the plan, while he had polished off the rest of the breakfast at the table in Kati’s room.

  Kati had noticed that Jocan had developed a fondness for the older man, who on his part, seemed to take a fatherly interest in the lively boy and his antics. It pleased her, since it would make it easier for her to leave Jocan behind when the
time came. It was true, as Mikal had said, that Jocan was the type to land on his feet, no matter how high the drop, but she felt better about leaving him, if he had someone at hand, who could fill in a little for the family that he lacked.

  “It’ll take me a couple of days to gather together the necessary equipment and to get some maps drawn up to guide you on your way,” Jaymo said to them when they discussed business with him. “Then I’ll have you look over the runnerbeasts I have available for sale, and you can choose your mounts according to your tastes and the amount of coin you have available. Remember, you can always sell the animals when you get to where you are going; it is quite possible that you’ll get as much for them there as you paid for them here.”

  “You can get maps drawn up?” Mikal asked, surprised.

  He, Kati and Jocan had not seen a map on their travels, other than some approximations that Kati had drawn out for them from her mental globe, which she had received from the Xeonsaur in Gorsh’s space ship, at the beginning of the journey, a very long time ago, it now seemed.

  “There are a few folk around who have travelled the trail between here and the Northern Plains. One or two of them are good at noting down where they have been. Some time ago I asked one of them to draw a chart of his travels as he remembered them, and he did so; later I asked another couple of travellers to check his chart and draw in whatever details they could add. We ended up with a passable map of the route, and I usually have my assistant trace a copy for any group heading that way. I charge a small fee for the map, and I share it with the original mappers; it doesn’t earn them more than pocket-money, but it does make them feel that their contributions have some value.”

  “Sounds fair enough to me,” Mikal said. “I don’t think that we’ll begrudge the coin.”

  “Then I’ll get my assistant working on it. He has the cost estimates ready too, if you want to know them. I don’t expect payment yet; we’ll do the actual money transaction once you have picked out your runnerbeasts. But the estimates will let you know what sort of an expense you will be faced with.”