Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “There were a couple of Oasis City spinners at the meeting who just refused to get it,” Mikal told his audience. “I don’t know if they were just plain stupid, or they were hoping for some kind of a personal gain from being obtuse. They kept saying that surely there were still places where more Narra could be raised; how could it possibly be true that all the grazing lands were already in use? The fellow from GrassWater was very patient, but adamant, with them; he rather impressed me since I was all ready to throw the idiots out of the room, myself. The dolts just nattered on and on, repeating themselves, clearly not even listening to the herder’s explanations which he patiently and thoroughly made, over and over again.

  “Finally Matto stood up and asked the two of them whether or not they were interested in becoming members of the proposed Guild, explaining to them—and everyone else in the room—that once the Guild was set up, the membership in it would be, at least for the time being, limited to the families who had put their names forward when it was organized. Both of them refused; one saying that he had to consult with his family and the other just shaking his head.”

  “Well, I guess that unless they change their minds in the near future, they’ll just be out of luck,” Kati commented. “I guess there are other fibres that they can spin.”

  “But none with the profit margin of the Narra-fibre,” said Yarm.

  “What Matto and company are planning to do is the most sensible solution to the problem,” Mikal stated. “It actually makes it easier for the herders, too, by eliminating operators like those two, who try to break the Grasslanders’ resolve to look after the welfare of their animals.”

  “Do you think that that’s what they are trying to do?” Kati asked.

  “It looked like it,” Mikal replied. “Matto and the Community Representative, Melloi, seemed to think so, too. They were talking about sending word to the other Grassland settlements to ask them to not deal with them, if they should show up, trying to make special deals. Melloi said that he was quite keen on dealing with the Guild as soon as the spinners could get it organized; he said the Community would like to have a steady, defined income from their fibre, and a market that they can count on, rather than having to deal with a large number of individuals who are all chasing each others’ tails, and trying to play the different communities against one another.”

  “One thing I have noticed about people,” Yarm said. “Usually when they come across an organization that works well and makes sense, they’re happy to deal with it. Not to deny that there are exceptions.” He grinned as he spoke the last sentence.

  “Those exceptions always exist,” Mikal commented, smiling to lighten the tone of his words. “They always have and they always will. Everywhere where humans exist. We just have to deal with them the best we can, and not allow them to get to us, and ruin our faith in the rest of humanity.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The quartet rode north out of GrassWater in the dim light of the early dawn, this time on the standard runnerbeasts whose metabolism was not affected by the day and night cycle. Kati missed Ceta and the obvious intelligence of the cold-blooded riding beast, but the animal that she was on was a decent substitute. The standard runnerbeasts were streamlined animals, as she remembered from River City and the trek in the sewers from Sye’s Inn to the river, with Mikal’s comatose body lying on a cart that a runnerbeast pulled. They had not moved fast that time, what with an inert body on their hands, but that particular runnerbeast had been an efficient creature, pulling Mikal along gently but with evident strength. Their journey, now, was very different from that one, with all four of them mounted on the good-quality animals that Jaymo had sold to them, and all their equipment and possessions strapped on to the beasts bodies, mostly in the saddlebags which were the same ones that they had used with the Narra. The sleek, warm-blooded animals covered the miles speedily, right from the beginning; there was no need to wait for the sun to rise and warm up sluggish muscles as there had been in the desert. The animals’ padded feet carried them along in near-silence; there was no clip-clop of hooves that Kati remembered of the horses of her home world. Nobody in GrassWater had been awakened by their pre-dawn passing; they had crossed the town in silence, disturbing no-one.

  By the time the sun rose they were well into the Grassland, following a track across a verdant plain, dotted here and there with clumps of Narra, just in the act of arousing to the new day, while the rising sun warmed off the lethargy of the night. Kati watched the broad landscape unfold before her, and admired the colours; the deep green of the grass and the brilliant blue of the sky above. There was not much else beside the green of the grass, the blue of the sky and the occasional clump of sandy brown which were the Narra, the engine of the area’s economy. There were no trees, no shrubs even, and if there were flowers among the grass they were too small to be seen from the back of the fast-moving runnerbeast.

  Was this starkness of the landscape a legacy of The Disaster? Most likely, she figured. These grasslands had probably been a part of the southern “breadbasket” of the Northern Continent before The Disaster. Thanks to a higher level of annual precipitation, they had not turned into desert like the rest of the area had, but instead had sprouted the grasses that now fed the Narra-herds.

  They travelled all day through the green and blue landscape. The trail they were following mostly headed directly north, making only a few detours here and there to avoid a few hillocks or what looked to Kati like dried-up sloughs. At noon they stopped by a gurgling brook to eat the lunch that Ula’s cook had packed for them before they had left the Inn. Jocan and Yarm collected some dried grasses and reed stalks from the brook side in order to boil water for tea in the handy camp stove which had been salvaged from their earlier ride. Mikal warned them against drinking unboiled water from the creek.

  “Drink only what’s in your waterskins until we get to the next settlement,” he said. “There could be parasites in that water, what with herd animals drinking from the same streams, and who knows what else. Certainly Kati and I have no immunities to any possible micro-organisms, and probably you, Jocan, and Yarm, don’t either, since you don’t normally live in this area.”

  “It always makes sense to be careful with one’s health, but especially, when one is far away from home,” Yarm agreed.

  No-one drank the water from the brook. Kati even poured water from her ‘skin for the tea.

  “Boiling doesn’t kill everything,” she said to Jocan, who did not protest, even as he took over the task of making the tea, using the herbs that Ula’s cook had given them for the purpose, and with the claim that they would strengthen their immune systems.

  *****

  If the day’s travel was more on the dull side than not, it was also fast. The runnerbeasts seemingly ate up the distance, and after weeks of riding Narra, the riders’ bodies seemed to fit so well on the backs of the sleeker animals that the motion felt effortless. Kati, for one, was sure that she could have travelled for hours more when, in the late afternoon, they approached the settlement where they had agreed to spend the night.

  “Is this it for the day?” Jocan queried when they drew towards the dwellings, as if echoing Kati’s thoughts.

  “The sun won’t stay up too much longer,” Yarm said with a grin, “and there are no other settlements nearby. We stay at the local Roadhouse for the night, or we sleep under the stars. Me, I’m old enough to prefer a roof over my head at night—even if the roof is not a fancy one.”

  He led them to the centre of the village where one of the locals directed them to the Roadhouse. This was not an Inn, but only a shelter, with primitive kitchen facilities, in which travellers could fend for themselves. There were a few very minor luxuries, like a bathing room, and a tub and a clothesline for hand laundry. The privy was clean and well supplied with the soft grasses that were used for toilet paper in this part of the planet, and clean water pumped from a well was plentiful. The washing room had warm water that ran down from a roof stor
age where the sun heated it up during the day. Yarm pointed out the mechanism that allowed them to refill the storage tanks before leaving in the morning, so that the next visitors would also have warm water for bathing and clothes washing.

  “All the comforts of home,” Kati said with satisfaction when she sat down, clean and comfortable, to a supper that Jocan had magicked from their supplies and a pailful of assorted root vegetables that a villager who had come by to see if they wanted for anything, had sold him.

  The locals were helpful and curious, but not intrusive. The woman who sold Jocan the vegetables, had told him that there was a residence where young people often gathered to drink a little beer, sing a few songs and tell each other a few tales, if he was interested in an evening’s entertainment. The lads and lasses were usually only too happy to welcome travellers their age; new people meant new stories, and songs not yet sung over, and over again. Jocan said that he might look the place up after he had cleaned up the supper dishes and had a bath. Kati offered to take care of the dishes if he wanted to wash himself after supper, and with a grateful smile, the teen disappeared towards the bathing room with his towel and a change of clothes.

  Mikal came over to help Kati with the dishes while Yarm left to bed the runnerbeasts down for the night.

  “I’m quite surprised how happy I am to be travelling again,” Kati said to Mikal. “When we reached GrassWater I didn’t think that I’d ever want to climb on the back of a riding beast again. I was tired I guess, of the heat and the sand, and the dust that was always creeping inside everything, including my eyes and nose.”

  “The travelling is much easier on the grasslands,” Mikal agreed. “We’re making better time, too. Yarm figures that we’ll get out of the herding grounds in seven or eight days. What sort of speed we can manage after that is anyone’s guess; everything depends on what we’re up against.”

  “By then we should be in the foothills, am I right?” Kati asked. “It’ll be harder riding than this grass country.”

  “The riding will be tougher, certainly. The trail will be getting rougher all the time, from then on, until we reach our destination. However, that’s the least of my worries. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Tribal Lands are going to present us with obstacles. Those people sound just nutty enough to make sport of peaceful travellers.”

  “They’re nutty all right,” Kati muttered. “Old men marrying young women as extra wives; I never could figure out why any society would do a thing that idiotic. It unbalances everything when a few men hog many women, and other men end up as surplus; no families for them. It’s bad for both sexes.”

  “Indeed. And what do chiefs with extra young men on their hands like to do? Engage in violence of some kind, of course. Warring between tribes is common because it keeps surplus men busy while killing many of them. Harassing travellers is not nearly as good, of course, but I’m sure that it’ll do when there isn’t a war going on; at least it’ll keep a few young malcontents busy.”

  “Oh dear, I don’t much care for the picture you’re painting!” Kati exclaimed. “Let’s hope for the best. May sanity prevail among the Wild Tribes, at least for the short time that we have to spend crossing their lands! At least, let’s not think about it yet! Let tomorrow’s troubles take care of themselves—tomorrow.”

  Mikal laughed.

  “We’ve got a week, or more, to refuse to worry,” he said. “It’ll keep.”

  The dishes were done. They went outside together, to see if Yarm needed any help with the runnerbeasts.

  *****

  Before they had time to return to the shelter they were approached by one of the locals, an elderly, important-looking man. He introduced himself as Asa, a Village Elder.

  “You are travelling from GrassWater?” he asked the three of them after introductions had been made and Kati had invited him into the shelter for some herb tea.

  “Yes we are,” Mikal answered with a questioning glance at Yarm, who apparently was perfectly willing to cede the spokesman’s duty to him, this time.

  Kati had settled at the stove to heat water for the tea, glad that she had watched Jocan use the small bundles of tightly tied reeds that the stove burned. She knew how many to use for the fire and exactly how to coax flames and heat enough out of them to get the water to a quick boil. As she added the herbal mixture to the boiling water she thought with some amusement of how much of this world’s domestic practices she had already picked up.

  “Somebody could do an anthropological study, just by looking at what I’ve learned in the kitchens, and at the campfires during this trip,” she subvocalized to the granda.

  “Somebody probably will, once we’re on Lamania,” her node replied. “They’ve got equipment to take a record of what you’ve experienced, through me, to be studied by interested people, and believe it, there are going to be plenty of researchers wanting a peek into your brain.”

  Kati recalled Mikal having explained this sort of thing to her at one time. He had made it sound a lot less disturbing.

  “Do you have any news of what is happening in GrassWater?” Asa was asking eagerly. “We had a messenger come by two days ago, asking us to not make any deals with a couple of spinners from Oasis City. The messenger had no details, only the names and the fact that the word came directly from Melloi, the GrassWater Narra-fibre Seller.”

  “It just so happens that we do,” Mikal answered. “We travelled from Oasis City to GrassWater in a Caravan in which we became friendly with three young men who belonged to spinner families. When they realized the situation on the grasslands—that is, they found out about the necessary limit on the production of Narra-fibre which you, the herders, are enforcing—they came to the conclusion that the spinners and weavers of Oasis City ought to band together to co-operate. The plan is to form a Guild of the spinners and weavers, and then to negotiate common prices for the Narra-fibre, with you, the producers. The spinners belonging to the Guild will all agree to pay the fibre-prices as negotiated by the Guild, and the Guild plans to limit the numbers of the spinners and weavers, so that all in those businesses can make a decent living, without trying to encroach on each other, or to pressure you, the producers, into overcapacity.”

  “And these two men that the messenger named to us? How do they fit into this?”

  “There were two spinners at the meeting that our acquaintance, Matto, arranged, who were hold-outs when it came to the idea of forming a guild. They did not want to co-operate with the rest of the spinners’ representatives present at GrassWater. Matto asked if the Grassland communities could boycott them and negotiate with the new Guild instead, and my understanding is that Melloi was quite enthusiastic about supporting the Guild.”

  “It would certainly make life easier for those in the settlements who, like me, are responsible for selling our fibre. Up to now the system in place has been utterly chaotic—well, ever since the Narra-fibre became so popular. We have tried to honour our old customers, the ones who’ve bought from us for years, but there are always new men coming by, offering more and more money. Some of them are quite demanding; there have been times when I’ve feared for my health, dealing with idiots. Some of them seem to think that they can intimidate the folk in the outer settlements, even if not in GrassWater itself.” Asa shook his head and continued: “We are limiting the fibre production for the good of all. It is for the animals, for the grass that the animals eat, and it is for our communities which depend on both the Narra and the grass. We cannot not do it, no matter how much some spinner wants to make his fortune out of Narra-thread.”

  “It seems to me that this Guild is the best possible response to the problem on the part of the spinners,” Mikal stated earnestly. “It should, given a bit of time, and an opportunity for the organization to get off the ground, solve your problem. You will be selling only to Guild-approved spinners at Guild-negotiated prices, and how much fibre each spinner is to get will be determined by their Guild through internal negotiations. Once the sys
tem is working, the pressure to slip a few more Narra onto the grazing lands to satisfy some pushy spinner who is offering gold where silver used to do, will abate.”

  “We do not want to destroy our livelihood,” the Elder said fervently. “We are the descendants of those who saw our world destroyed, and countless people died in that destruction. Our relationship with our animals and our plants is sacred; we must keep our world safe.”

  Kati wanted to applaud the man’s speech, but contented herself merely with handing him a mug of herb tea. He accepted it with a smile; a smile which lit up his stern face.

  “Thank you Mistress Kati,” he said simply, and Kati passed tea to Mikal and Yarm as well.

  Jocan returned from the bathhouse, looking a bit odd to Kati who was not yet accustomed to his new hair colour. He accepted the tea she offered him, and after being introduced to the Elder, asked him if he knew in which house the young people of the village were gathered.

  “When we have had our tea, I will show you, my lad,” Asa answered cheerfully.

  The Village Elder and the youth set out together after Asa had said his goodbyes. They both seemed to be full of energy and the joy of being alive.

  “Well,” said Yarm when they had gone. “I think you made that man’s day, Mikal, with your news of the Guild.”

  “Maybe I did indeed,” commented Mikal. “I certainly hope that Matto and his ilk will make this thing work. These people deserve to be free of greedy operators trying to get them to make an exception ‘just this one time and for a handsome consideration’.”