Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “One good thing about the way they have organized their communities,” Yarm explained, “is that the people charged with selling the fibre are different from the ones who look after the well-being of the Narra. A Caretaker never doubles as a Fibre-Seller, and it’s the Caretakers who decide when the Narra numbers have to be culled or when they can be increased. So, though a Seller can, if he’s the type, play various customers off one another, he can’t actually affect the total amount of fibre available. And, though a particular community can try to be very efficient at shearing and thereby take a larger share of the fibre for their settlement than might be fair, its members can’t affect the total production. The Caretakers are a breed apart; they may live in various communities but their dedication is to the welfare of the Narra and the land that feeds them.”

  “That’s good,” Mikal said. “I’m glad that the Grasslanders go to some trouble to prevent the possibility that things might be skewed by a single person’s or a small group’s greed.”

  “It’s the sort of thing we’re always trying to do on the Northern Plains,” Yarm explained. “I was quite interested to find it here, too. I guess The Disaster really did frighten all of us who inhabit this world. We don’t want things getting out of control ever again.”

  “Is that what led to The Disaster in the first place?” Kati inquired.

  “Something along those lines. That’s what I learned when I first checked out what records remain from pre-Disaster days, before I was considered knowledgeable enough to start my travels. I was sent to speak with a handful of men and women who could read the writings from those days, and to learn to read them myself. They knew a lot, those pre-Disaster folk; they were able to use the planet’s products in ways that we cannot, anymore. But the land exacts a price for its fruit, more for some things than others. And it seems that those people forgot that everything has a limit; they thought that they could keep on taking and using without ever putting anything back. And the greediest ones managed to get themselves into positions in which they were the ones running things, because they were pushy and, well, greedy. Meanwhile other people who could see that things were not going well, found themselves fighting against some of the very powers that they themselves had helped to unleash, without realizing how dangerous they might be in the wrong hands. Once the cycle of destruction had become established, there was no way to stop it. There were last-minute attempts to curb the unhealthy gases from spewing into the world’s atmosphere and to keep everything from heating up. But by then it was too late.

  “There was an interesting tale one of the scholars of the Olden Times told me: apparently a cabal of powerful people tried to buy their way off-planet when things began to fall apart; when the weather patterns grew unstable, and the ice-packs were melting. They had set up a distress call and were waiting for Free Traders to come and rescue them—for a price of course. No Free Trader came, not a single one. The waiting elites, who found themselves at the mercies of the elements just the same as the common people were, could not understand why the Outside was ignoring their distress calls when they had the gold, silver and jewels to pay passage off-world.

  “I remember that the Scholar who was instructing me asked me if I could figure out why the Free Traders did not come. I looked at him, surprised.

  “’Of course,” I said, ‘Isn’t it obvious?”

  “’Is it?’ he queried.

  “’The gold and silver and the jewels meant nothing to the Free Traders. They can be found on many worlds and nobody much needs them, although a lot of people like them. The Free Traders were looking for something that they could resell at a profit and our world was producing nothing any more except bad weather and floods.’

  “’Right,’ the Scholar agreed. ’You are learning fast, young Yarm. A world’s wealth is in what it produces, not in baubles.’

  “He graduated me to a Traveller the following day. That was a long time ago.”

  Yarm sat still for a few moments.

  “I’ll be going to see the Scholars again once I have made my report to the Central Council, just as I do every time I return home. This time, I think I’ll talk young Jocan into coming with me. He has a good mind. I think he will be an excellent addition to the ranks of the educated of this world.”

  *****

  Most of the following nights the foursome spent in similar Roadhouses in small grassland settlements. At each of them, sometime during the evening one of the locals would come by, asking if they had news from GrassWater. Generally the reaction to the formation of the Spinners and Weavers’ Guild was very positive. The Grasslanders liked their world ordered and predictable; windfall profits had little meaning to them, especially if the gain meant that lives would be turned upside down or become difficult. The Grassland and the Narra grazing on it, carefully husbanded, would provide for them, year after year; that was what these people wanted, not windfall profits.

  Kati found this a refreshing take on life, although, obviously, it had been hard won out of a struggle now over four hundred years old. She was starting to understand that her journey along the surface of this planet had also been a voyage of the mind; she had learned a lot over the months that she, Mikal, and Jocan had been travelling. She had had lessons about the world that they were on: its geography, its history and its people. She had learned about the enormous losses of The Disaster, and how the population had coped with those losses. She had found out how the remnants of the people had made new lives for themselves, had learned to support themselves again, with what was left on the planet, perhaps not as bountifully as in the pre-Disaster days, but adequately.

  There had been personal lessons, too. Fate had dropped her, alone, into an environment completely new to her. She had survived; indeed, she had thrived. She had bonded with people in circumstances in which forming relationships was not easy; she was merely passing through their lives and could honour commitments for only a limited time. With Mikal, the one person with whom she possibly had a future, she had been able to build a relationship of trust and respect, and even though she had no idea how it would play out once they had left this world, and reached Mikal’s home on Lamania, she believed that she need not worry about it overmuch. It seemed to her that if she had to be in a situation in which she knew only a single person in the whole Star Federation, Mikal was a good choice for that one person. Luck had been with her when Fate had chosen him for that role.

  During the long ride across the Grassland, she tried to focus her thoughts on the positives of her existence, letting the negatives lie dormant for now. It was hard to think about her son, anyway; much as the empty hole of his loss was still inside her, her life was so different now from what it had been when Jake had been the centre of her universe, that sometimes she was not quite sure whether the past was real. Had she really once upon a time agonized over the question of whether to take Jake with her, or leave him with his grandparents, when she left the Resort to go to University? Maybe she was really still there, in that life, the decision still facing her, and she would wake to it out of a pleasant dream of riding on an odd beast across an alien grassland? What about the children that she had had to leave on Gorsh’s ship when she had escaped from it with Mikal? It was harder to doubt their existence; yet there was not a thing she could do for them at present. That helplessness gnawed at her, but it was also a spur, a whip on her back, keeping her moving on this journey, even when it might have been easier to quit. It helped to know that what she had promised to do for those left on Gorsh’s vessel was not much different from what it was Mikal’s job to do. He was as interested in seeing Gorsh put out of business as she was. Surely he would also help her find the children who had been on the ship—or at the very least, give her pointers as to where to go looking for them!

  *****

  The final night before they reached the border, the travellers spent in a crude shelter by the trail, between it and a muddy stream. It was made of the mud and straw bricks with which all the Grassland bui
ldings—with the exception of about a handful of those in GrassWater—seemed to have been constructed. GrassWater had ostentatiously displayed a few handsome wooden buildings among the mud-brick—a proof of how much Narra-fibre was worth—but the hinterlands were too far from the Oasis City for the Southern Continent’s lumber to find its way there. This trail shelter was the end of the line; built by either the Border Guards or the Narra Caretakers for their own use, and for the use of any other travellers in the area. It was a flimsy defence against the emptiness of the land around them, but even so, the four of them were happy to stay in it.

  “We should reach the border of the Tribal Lands by noon tomorrow,” Yarm said over supper, the map laid out on the ground next to him as he ate, seated on the earthen floor of the shelter.

  “So the time to tread carefully has come,” Mikal said slowly. “We have had our interlude of peace and quiet. Tomorrow we start watching our backs.”

  “We’ll talk to the herders patrolling the border,” Yarm stated. “They’ll have some idea of what the mood in the Tribal Lands may be.”

  “I don’t think it’s ever all that good,” Jocan muttered. “We’ll be watching our backs.”

  Looking at him, Kati realized that she had become used to his new hair colour; it no longer startled her every time she glanced at him. The dark brown actually looked good on him, contrasting distinctly with his pale face. This gave him a sort of a gaunt, poet-look; it made Kati think of John Keats dying of consumption at age twenty-five. The look, however, was deceptive, she well knew. Jocan was not about to die of anything in the near future, certainly not of tuberculosis. He was tough and hale; he’d live a long life. Did tuberculosis even exist on this world, she idly wondered.

  “As long as the Tribesmen do let us travel through,” Mikal sighed. “I’ve looked at that map over and over again, and I’ve bugged Kati about her globe many times, but it does seem to be a simple fact that we cannot get to where we’re going without crossing their Lands. So we’ll have to deal with the Tribes, much as the notion makes me grit my teeth.”

  Kati stared at him. She had not realized that he was this worried. Did he have some ESP; was he tuning into some danger coming at them?

  She turned her attention inward and queried the granda as to what it knew or could put together using her PSI talents.

  “You’re not much of a prognosticator,” her node complained to her. “Maybe what natural talent Mikal has, tends in that direction. There is a tautness in the psychic atmosphere that I can feel, but that does not necessarily mean trouble—it could merely indicate that a physical storm is brewing.”

  “Do you think that I should take his warnings seriously?” she queried.

  “By all means. Always take warnings seriously. Just don’t let them paralyze you. He’s also correct about there being only one passable trail to where you are going, and this is it.”

  *****

  To Kati’s surprise the border between the Grassland and the Tribal Lands was not only guarded but, at least near the trail, fenced and gated. She stared at the gate in bemusement; it looked pretty incongruous where it was, in the middle of mostly empty land. All there was near the gate was the fence which stretched from it into the distance in both directions, and a massive mud-brick building on the Grassland side, without doubt the Field Headquarters of the Border Guards. The border did seem to mark a geographical change; whereas on the southern side of the fence grew the lush grass that the Narra fed on, to the north the grass was shorter and sparser, and scrubby brush grew in clumps among it. The ground also seemed to rise to the north, and further in the distance she could see trees, small and struggling, gnarly trees, but trees nevertheless. They were the first trees she had seen since before GrassWater, where the double line of small trees growing along the dry river valley trail had faded, to be replaced by the abundant grasses.

  Three men were idling on a wooden bench beside the Headquarters building. The bench, Kati judged, was made of the sort of wood that The Seabird had brought across the ocean from the Southern Continent, and, therefore, was likely the most valuable item within kilometres. The men were lounging in deceptively relaxed poses; there were three saddled runnerbeasts standing nearby, nibbling unenthusiastically at the grass. All three of the men had their eyes mostly on the quartet, but Kati noticed that as she studied the landscape on the other side of the fence, at least one of the three scrutinized it with her.

  The travellers brought their beasts to a halt near the trio, and Yarm gave the usual Grassland greeting of “Peace be with you” for all four. One of the guards responded with the customary: “And with you as well”. Yarm began to dismount and the guards changed their poses to more obviously alert ones; the one who had spoken stood up.

  “You don’t mind if we hold our nooning break here on this side of the border?” Yarm, as the agreed-upon spokesman, queried the standing guard. “I expect that we’d feel more comfortable here than out there.” He nodded at the scrubland ahead of them, while his three companions climbed down from their mounts.

  The guard, a tall, tough-looking man of about thirty or thirty-five laughed.

  “By all means, eat your lunch before continuing into the Tribal Lands,” he said. “You’ll be glad you did. There’s a little picnic area on the side of this building facing the fence. There’s a pump for clean water and a little fireplace to heat water for tea—all the comforts of home.”

  One of the two other men got up to show them. Kati and Jocan followed him, leading their runnerbeasts to a post beside the building and close to a mud-brick table and two benches. The pump and the little fireplace were beyond the table.

  “Jocan, if you start watering our runnerbeasts, I’ll get a fire going and start water for tea,” Kati said after surveying the situation. “Water Yarm’s and Mikal’s beasts, too, please.”

  “I can help with the animals,” the guard who had directed them offered, to Kati’s surprise.

  He set to work, filling the runnerbeasts’ water dishes at the pump as Jocan unearthed them from the animals’ saddlebags. Kati got him to fill the hot water pot at the same time and then busied herself with building the fire. The fuel here amounted to the same bundles of dried reeds that they had been using across the Grassland. Apparently the Border Guards did not indulge in firewood raids over the fence that they were guarding. She noticed that the young man at the pump was studying her surreptitiously. Was it unusual for a woman to be travelling the route that they were on, she wondered.

  The young Guard introduced himself as Aki to Jocan and her, and said that the other two, who were in a conversation with Yarm and Mikal were Ery and Wey, Wey being of higher rank than either Aki or Ery. Jocan told him all their names, cheerfully explaining that he was the lowest ranking person in their group. Kati snorted at that.

  “Don’t believe all of Jocan’s claims,” she told Aki, “he’s way too competent to be thought of as the wagging tail of any group. We try to think of ourselves as equals in this quartet, but I suppose, physically at least, I’m the least capable, not having the muscle mass the men have.”

  “And don’t believe her tales, either,” Jocan said with a grin. “That’s one resourceful woman you’re looking at. If I had the time, I could tell you stories....”

  “Don’t tell them to anyone among the Wild Tribes,” Aki said with a shake of his head. “The old men are always looking for new wives and they’re not too picky about where they get them from.”

  He looked towards Mikal and Yarm where they were still conversing with the other guards.

  “One of the men will have to claim ownership, I’m afraid,” he said, while Kati’s stomach heaved uncomfortably. “They don’t have such a thing as an independent woman in the Tribal Lands. A woman on her own might as well be shouting that she’s looking for an old, decrepit husband.”

  “Ah, there was a girl I met in GrassWater—she was working with a friend of ours—who said she had run away from the Tribal Lands, and she mentioned something
like that, but I didn’t really pay attention at the time.” Jocan looked stricken, while Kati sat down on the nearest bench, feeling nauseous. “I guess I really should have been listening to her.”

  “Their girls are always running away,” Aki said, sounding irritated, “and they’re always blaming us for stealing them. Like we’d bother! We have women in the grasslands, too, and they’re smarter and better looking anyway! We can’t have women working as Border Guards, though, because the Tribes would try to kidnap them, so ours is an all-male fraternity!”

  Kati got up to check the water and to fetch the tea herbs.

  “One of the men will have to claim ownership, I’m afraid” the young guard had said. Mikal would do it, of course. Well, Yarm would be glad to do it, too, she knew, but Mikal would be the one to put in for it first. He would be sweet; he would say: “Let’s pretend like we’re a married couple, Kati, make it look like we are, to those chauvinists.” And she would be gritting her teeth, thinking, I don’t want it like this, I only want it when it can be real, when we can face each other as two equal people in love. Because, she realized, biting back tears, she was in love with Mikal, had been for some time now, without acknowledging it to herself. Had he seen it? She hoped that he had not; he always behaved in so kind and gentle manner towards her, that it would be humiliating to think that he had just been nice to her because he could see that she had a thing for him, and he did not want to hurt her.

  It was not a good time for an emotional storm. She asked the granda to smooth her ruffled nerves enough so that she could function, and was grateful that the old node did her bidding without comment. She fetched the food that they had set aside for this nooning, most of it purchased at the last village in which they had been. The tea water was boiling and she threw the herbs into it, and set it to steep, close enough to the fire to remain hot but not boiling.