Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “Next stop’s going to be a money-changer’s place,” Kati muttered to Mikal. “I suppose either Jaymo or Yarm can direct me to one.”

  “I noticed a sign for such on our way here, yesterday,” Mikal told her.

  Kati’s eyes opened wide.

  “I didn’t see anything like that. Hm, seems like you’ve gotten ahead of me in school; you’re reading the weird signs much better than I can. You get to go to the top of the class, Mikal, and have earned yourself a page full of gold stars.”

  “Make fun of me, woman, will you? You’ll get to handle the money-changer, though; you seem to understand coins much better than I do. I’d probably get cheated, in every transaction.”

  “You don’t have to worry about cheats in this town,” Jaymo broke into their repartee. “We haven’t had problems with people taking advantage of one another, or of strangers, for some time. Ever since we all got together and set up the system in which everyone shares in the Narra-herding, and gets a fair portion of the proceeds, people have behaved with laudable honesty. I guess it has to do with everyone being able to make a decent living, and it doesn’t hurt that we all know who is getting what, in terms of returns for their contributions.”

  “That’s good to know,” Kati said heartily. “Especially since Mikal is exaggerating about my prowess with money. I do know more about coins than he does but only because I have more experience—apparently where he comes from they don’t bother with the stuff.”

  “That sounds like the ideal world to live in,” Jaymo commented cheerfully. “Although it seems to me that people would still need some way of toting up their contributions to the community, and how much of a return they are entitled to.”

  “Oh, we have a system for that, of course,” Mikal said. “Your right, Jaymo. It’s necessary to have that sort of a thing.”

  “So you do have money of sorts,” Kati said a bit crossly. “You just don’t call it that.”

  “Excuse me?” Mikal looked genuinely puzzled.

  “Money,” Kati said, hauling out her coin bag and emptying its presently slight contents on Jaymo’s table. “Coins. These things are a medium of exchange. The fact that the metal they are made of has some actual value in this society, is a convenient incidental; it doesn’t really matter. The gold of coins is never turned into a filling for teeth or into jewellery; the silver is never melted down to form goblets; the copper is never twisted into wiring. No, these metals are too valuable for that, and they would be just as valuable if they were mere pieces of paper which everyone agreed to value highly. In fact on my own world most money is paper money, or even just electronic notations in an artificial intelligence system. What gives money its worth is that people agree it’s worth something: I can exchange this half-copper for a jug of beer at Ula’s Alehouse, for example. These coins are just a way of, as Jaymo said, ‘toting up people’s contribution to the community and how much of a return they are entitled to’. So there. End of lecture.”

  “With coins, however,” piped up Yarm who had not spoken on the topic up until now, “some people can pile up value, and even take value which belongs to others, for themselves, often without being punished for it. Because people tend to look upon coins—or money in any form, I should imagine—as valuable in and of itself, its connection to the social contributions and rewards becomes tenuous, and it becomes possible to take a man’s rewards by stealing his coins.”

  “That’s definitely a shortcoming of the system,” Kati agreed. “There are others, of course. I should like to think that whatever system Mikal’s home world has chosen to use, eliminates at least some of the problems with money; isn’t that why they would have devised a different system in the first place?”

  Mikal shook his head, staring at her.

  “You’ve got me,” he said. “I’m not a scholar; I’m a peace officer. My training did not include the intricacies of social contributions and rewards. But Kati, if you have the bent of mind for that kind of scholarship, I am sure you will find a place to pursue it on Lamania.”

  Kati shook her head.

  “I can’t and you know it. I have promises to keep.”

  “And that means that you’ll be staying in my line of work for at least the foreseeable future once we get to Star Federation Territory.” Was there relief in his expression as he looked at her?

  “I intend to keep my promises; that’s a fact.”

  *****

  The following days were spent in a whirl of activity.

  Jaymo suggested that the travellers obtain some new items of clothing, heavier and warmer than what was needed in the hot desert country, in preparation for mountain travel.

  “Narra-fibre clothing is a good choice actually,” he said, “and you won’t get it at a better price anywhere than in the GrassWater shops. It is made from our own fibres, the stuff that we keep for our own clothing and for items to be sold locally. Our women spin the thread, weave the cloth and sew the clothes. They do a fantastic job, creating an excellent product, even if I say so myself. Truth is, we don’t need such clothes all that much since it’s hardly ever cold here; we wear them more because we can, rather than as necessities. But since you’re going into the mountains, you will actually be making proper use of them, and I think you will not regret the purchases.

  “In the mountains you’ll be able to buy woollens, of course, since sheep are commonplace there, but wool is scratchy and Narra-fibre never scratches.”

  Thus, one afternoon, Kati bought several comfortable outfits at a store run by local women while Mikal, Jocan and Yarm were next door, where men’s clothing was sold. At the end of the session she was quite pleased with the riding habits she obtained; besides being warm and comfortable, they were also well-made and attractive. The cost had her habitually frugal mind reeling, but she reminded herself that the ‘Kitfi Fortune’ did not have to keep her and Mikal going much longer. And Jocan would be fine; she was sure of that now. He would consider any coins that she and Mikal might leave to him, a stroke of fortune, and not something that they owed him. Besides, he was no doubt spending just as much of their money on Narra-cloth outfits for himself, as were Mikal and Yarm.

  Yarm had begun to earn his guide’s wages immediately. He had taken the map that Jaymo’s assistant had traced and, after getting the names of the men whose knowledge had been used to create the original, had located these worthies and questioned them in detail. He had succeeded in adding a few new items onto his copy, and then had brought it to Kati, asking her to relate it to the portion of her globe that it was supposed to depict. Kati’s globe was less detailed than this new map, but she was able to make correspondences between the two, and it seemed that her map tended to be more accurate on elevations and distances, even while it lacked all the very useful bits of information obtained from the actual travellers’ recollections.

  “Well, I think we have a trail map as accurate as we can get in this town,” Yarm said with satisfaction when they were finished. “It definitely ought to help us decide where and when to stop for the nights. Also we’ll have some idea as to where to pick up food and other supplies as we run out of them. It’s not much fun travelling on an empty stomach for any length of time; fortunately it seems that we won’t have to worry about water. From what the men I talked to said, I gather that potable water is plentiful along this route.”

  “What about trouble spots?” Kati asked. “Are there places where we might run into ambushes plotted by robbers or thieves, or maybe folk so poor that what we have would look like riches to them?”

  “The only trouble the informants talked about were the Lands of the Wild Tribes,” Yarm replied. “They’re beyond the Grassland, and the Tribes demand a Fee of Passage, but Jaymo’s on that. He knows what the usual fee is and he will include the required items with our equipment.”

  “But these Wild Tribes can cause trouble nevertheless?” Kati persisted. “Even if we’re prepared with their fees?”

  “Apparently they can be unpred
ictable,” Yarm conceded. “They have some odd quirks. That’s why Jocan is with Chrys right now, getting that red hair dyed brown; it’s an attempt to keep from getting caught in Tribesmen’s weirdnesses.”

  “Yeah, we’ve heard a lot about that red-hair fetish or hatred—I’ve haven’t quite figured out which it is,” Kati said with a sigh. “All I know is that anyone with red hair—and Jocan’s is of course very red—is assumed to be either a threat, or a long-lost relative who must be kidnapped on the spot.”

  Yarm laughed.

  “I can enlighten you on that count,” he said cheerfully. “One of the fellows whom I questioned about the map, actually had a pretty coherent explanation of that situation. He didn’t spout the confusing gobbeldy-gook that all the GrassWater gossip seems to amount to, outside of dire warnings to not show a smidgen of red hair in the Tribal Lands.”

  “Do enlighten me,” Kati begged.

  “Yes. Apparently the hereditary Chiefs of the largest and the most important of the Wild Tribes have, traditionally been red-heads. Unfortunately the trait of red hair is not common among the tribal folk, although it is more common with them than anywhere else on our world; everywhere else, in spite of Jocan, it is pretty much non-existent. Even among the Tribes, red hair was mainly limited to the one family of Chiefs, and as the family necessarily married into other families, the trait became much diluted, the red hair colour, even when it showed up, being a lot less bright than it had once been. Of course, it also would show up in this diluted form in the families that now were related to the original red-heads.

  “The common people of the Tribe apparently felt that, somehow, the red-headedness was what conferred legitimacy to their Chiefs, and that meant that it was important for their Chief to have red hair. It became habitual for the Chiefs to marry women who had reddish hair in order to gain the trait for their sons—and that meant that they were marrying their own relatives; thus, unfortunately, further weakening the family tree. Well, in every way except for the red hair; its existence was preserved this way, at least in a diluted form.

  “It seems that the Alifs—that’s what the tribe is called—have a traditional prophesy about a red-haired Chief to come. This man is supposed to lead all the Wild Tribes, not just the Alifs, into a promised land—whatever that might be. According to the man that I talked to, the notion of ‘the promised land’ is pretty vague; his guess was that it just meant that this Chief would bring the Wild Tribes out of their isolation, to join the rest of the world.

  “The present Chief of the Alifs is a middle-aged man whose coppery hair is fading fast. He has not managed to sire a son of any hair colour, even though he has taken three wives so far. His first wife apparently was barren so he took a second wife who actually managed to bear a live one, a sickly, blond-haired girl, and the Chief took this as a sign that there was nothing wrong with his genetics. But when no more children were forthcoming from this second wife he finally, a couple of years ago, married a third woman, not much more than a girl, and this time from a family that was known to not have intermarried with his in generations. So far as my informant knew, this third wife had borne no children so far, although apparently when the Chief married her the tribal Seer predicted that she would bear her husband twins, and that they would be red-haired, a boy and a girl.

  “You can imagine that feelings about red-heads are pretty mixed in this environment. I doubt that the present Chief would welcome a genuine red-head, such as Jocan is, into the fray. Some of his people might take the attitude that they should depose the Chief, an aging man as he is, in favour of a red-haired newcomer. I imagine that the situation could be very unpleasant for Jocan no matter what; I’m sure that he does not want a knife in his back, and I have my doubts that he would welcome the role of a hereditary Chief of one of the Wild Tribes.”

  “Good grief!” Kati cried. “It sounds pretty awful! No wonder everyone has the facts all mixed-up; it’s kind of crazy! To begin with, just the idea that a Chief’s right to his position would be determined by his hair colour strikes me as pretty odd, regardless of any prophesy!”

  “You know, people responded to The Disaster in some peculiar ways,” Yarm said thoughtfully. “My guess is that this is just one off-the-wall reaction, of one bunch of people, to their world falling apart.”

  Jocan wandered into Kati’s room, which was where she and Yarm had been studying the maps. Kati looked up to see a pale-skinned, dark-haired youngster who grinned self-consciously at her. He walked over to the mirror in the room and studied his image in it.

  “So what do you think?” he asked the two adults seated at the table, with Jaymo’s map between them.

  “You look different,” Kati said. “I’m not sure whether I like it or not.”

  She studied Jocan for a few moments in silence, while the youth fidgeted in front of the mirror.

  “I think I’ll get used to it in a couple of days,” Kati finally admitted. ”It doesn’t look bad at all when I think about it objectively; I’m just so used to your shock of red hair that I’m having trouble figuring out who you are without it.”

  “That bright red hair was a very distinctive feature; there’s no nay-saying that,” Yarm agreed. “But the whole point is to not have that feature staring everyone in the face. With that in mind, this is good; and if you’re worried about your looks Jocan, don’t be. You’re as nice looking as a dark-brown-haired young man, as you were with the shock of red, as Kati called it.”

  “But I do look much more ordinary, now,” Jocan opined almost sadly. “I don’t stand out from the crowd.”

  “Which will be a good thing in the Tribal Lands,” Yarm stated. “Out there you don’t want to stand out and be noticed. You want the exact opposite, which is to fade into the background.”

  “That’s what everyone’s been telling me.”

  He grinned then, and came over to Kati, leaning over her.

  “Here look at this, behind my left ear,” he said, pulling out a strand of hair hidden under the dark brown locks above it. It was red. “I asked Chrys to leave me a tiny bit of my own colour so I wouldn’t forget what it is. So she did, but in a place where it’ll stay hidden until the colour grows out.”

  In contrast with the dark brown dye, the red strand seemed very bright indeed. Kati shook her head.

  “Keep that bit hidden, Jocan,” she told him. “You don’t want to be known for a red-head in the Tribal Lands. Yarm has just been explaining to me their particular obsession with red hair and you don’t want to get caught into that scenario, my young friend.”

  “Yeah. One of Chrys’ colleagues was enlightening me about that business about the Chief of the Alif Tribe having to have red hair. She is from the Tribal Lands; she ran away from home because she didn’t want to marry the old man her folks had picked out for her. She said that she’d rather be a whore in GrassWater any day, instead of the fifth wife of a man old enough to her grandfather. Anyway, she told me that if the Chief saw my hair colour he’d be furious and likely want to kill me, and meanwhile other people would want to depose him and make me the Chief instead of him. I told her that I didn’t want to have anything to do with either of those options—why, I’d have to be an idiot to want to be the leader of some stupid tribe whose old men keep several wives, and many young men therefore don’t get to have even one. She said that she liked my attitude, but having that attitude, I certainly needed the hair dye, if I was going to travel through the Tribal Lands.”

  “It’s good to hear that you have been informed of the seriousness of the situation,” Yarm said. “So just make sure that the inhabitants of the Tribal Land find you totally dull and boring, just an uninteresting young man content with the company of his friends. And we’ll try to have a dull, boring, and safe passage through the Wild Tribes’ possessions.”

  Yarm rolled up the map which had lain on the table and stood up.

  “Will you keep this safe for now?” he asked Kati, handing her the map. “I better go off to Jaymo’s an
d find out how the equipping is coming. When is Mikal due back from his meeting with Matto and his City colleagues?”

  “Soon, I think,” Kati replied, “he said he’d be back before supper for sure. We must be getting to that time reasonably soon.”

  “Be a little while yet,” Jocan said. “I saw the Cook talking to Ula outside the Restaurant when I came in. Sounded like they were discussing the dinner menu.”

  “Just as well,” Yarm said. “It gives me time to check on the progress at Jaymo’s. I’ll meet you at the Restaurant for supper, Kati.”

  “May I come with you to Jaymo’s, Yarm?” Jocan asked. “I want to learn about travel gear for a trip like this.”

  “Come along, my boy, come along,” Yarm answered heartily. “I can always use another pair of willing hands.”

  Left alone, Kati took the rolled-up map and stowed it inside her pack which she was storing under the bed. She pulled out some clean clothes from the luggage while she had it out.

  “Might as well indulge myself by using the Inn’s bathing facilities again,” she said to herself, as she replaced the pack in its storage place. “Soon enough, I’ll get to remain dirty for days on end, or to wash myself with cupfuls of cold water.”

  *****

  They were a cheerful quartet at supper, that evening.

  Mikal told them droll stories about the spinners that Matto, Cay and Jess had asked him to meet, and to whom they wanted him to explain the benefits of working co-operatively. Many of the spinners who had made the trip to GrassWater to try and obtain the best fibre for their establishments, at a decent price, were very receptive to the idea of forming a Guild to ensure that every spinner’s and weaver’s best interests would be served as well as was possible. They had found out the same thing that Mikal’s young friends had: the Grasslanders had in effect capped the Narra-fibre production, and for solid reasons. The spinners were all chasing a resource which was not expanding any more. The herders had done a good job of explaining to them why the fibre production had to remain at the level at which it was now. Either the production was levelled off or there would be a catastrophic crash of the supply at a somewhat later date. A catastrophic crash complete with starving animals, is the way the GrassWater Community Representative had described it, and the herders were not about to abuse the animals that they loved and depended upon.