Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  Joakim had settled into a defiant stance and Jocan judged that there would not be any more information forthcoming. The reminder that he had an accomplice—someone the youth no doubt had to answer to as a junior, even if he was the ship Captain’s spawn—had bucked up his backbone enough to encourage him to shut his loose lips. With a touch of sympathy, Jocan wondered what this other person was like; he had the suspicion that he, or she, was not particularly well-disposed towards Joakim and would welcome a chance to tear a strip off the lad.

  “Well, my friend Tania has agreed to show me the inside of this Temple,” Jocan said cheerfully as he directed her with the hand on her arm to start climbing up the steps. “I guess we’ll take the chance of being imaged by your equipment, and go in.”

  A malicious grin flashed onto Joakim’s face.

  “You’re wasting your time, traveller,” he said to Jocan. “She’s religious. She ain’t gonna spread her legs for you in there, no matter what you might think.”

  At that Jocan came as close to losing his cool as he had in a long time. The skinny shit was a dirty-minded wart-hog! He felt his hand on Tania’s arm tremble; for a split second all he saw was red. He kept climbing up the steps, nevertheless, and drew in a ragged breath. Tania’s face, when he was able to glance at it, had gone white, tears were sneaking down from the corners of her eyes.

  Then they were past Joakim, headed towards the Temple doors. Tania hurried her pace and within seconds she had opened the door, let them in and banged the door shut behind them.

  Jocan let go of her arm and leaned his back against the cool wood.

  “What a disgusting piece of work!” he spat out. “The dork’s mind’s a sewer!”

  “I told you,” Tania whispered, still looking teary. “He rapes a girl with his eyes. Even Saria, and she’s one to play games she shouldn’t be playing with the boys, can’t stand him.”

  “Haven’t the Elders tried to get rid of him? I mean, it’s not the greatest thing for him to be hogging the Temple steps, insulting the passers-by.”

  Tania drew a long breath.

  “I think everybody’s scared of him,” she said in a low voice. “The Eldest, the First of the Elders, that is, said that he’s sure that the boy has off-world weapons on him, and those could kill us before we could do anything to defend ourselves. He’s just hoping that this off-worlder that Joakim is waiting for shows up soon, and Joakim gets him and goes away.”

  “I’m certain that the Eldest is right about the weapons,” Jocan said, shaking his head.

  Joakim’s target was in town; but Jocan was not about to mention that. No way was that skinny shit going to kill Mikal, he thought, and the quartet were going to figure out a way for Mikal to get to the beacon and activate it. That was all there was to it. There were four of them and they would figure out a way to outsmart Joakim and his nameless accomplice. And to that end, he had to examine the interior of The Temple of the Morning Star of the Spring Equinox.

  “Well, now that we’ve broken through the barrier, we may as well take a good look at this place,” Jocan said to Tania, dredging up his reserves of native cheer. “And since we have to walk by the snot on our way back, I guess I’d be just as happy to make a detailed job of it, and put off the inevitable.”

  “Okay,” Tania agreed immediately. “I love showing this place.”

  Jocan looked about him and decided that he could see why. This Temple was very different from the ones he had known in River City, where not much had remained intact after The Disaster, including the temples. There, most of the holy buildings had been stark affairs inside. Whatever statuary and pictures they contained had been rescued by the faithful from the rubble left after the floods had receded. The contents of this Temple had made it through the deluge intact. There was a central altar in the middle, surrounded by exquisitely wrought seating; wooden benches rubbed to a high sheen by countless worshippers’ bottoms, attached to the stone floor with ornate iron legs. The altar itself was divided into two: half of it clearly intended to hold offerings and now filled with vases of cut flowers, and the other half holding a lectern of sorts at which a priest or a priestess, or, in this case, perhaps an Elder, could stand comfortably to speak to the faithful gathered around him or her.

  The walls, where they were not interrupted by windows, were covered with paintings, and underneath each window there was a low ledge on which art objects were displayed. There were bowls of precious metal, statuettes of different kinds of stone, and objects the intent of which Jocan could not begin to guess at.

  His task had suddenly become tricky, he realized. Not knowing what he was looking for, it was going to be tough to pinpoint where the beacon might be. The best he could do was try to remember as much as he could and pass on the information to Mikal. Perhaps it would be necessary to get Mikal into the place with enough time to poke about, himself. How that was going to be accomplished he did not know, what with Joakim keeping watch on the steps and his accomplice, no doubt, somewhere nearby where Joakim could readily alert him.

  There was a huge painting on the back wall of the Temple, the wall closest to the cliff and, for that reason perhaps, windowless. It depicted an ancient cityscape laid out before a mountain which towered over it, with the Temple building standing amongst the houses and the streets, in front of the cliff which Jocan recognized from the outside. In the picture it was night-time and all the buildings, including the Temple, were lit up with bright lights, and there were lights even along the streets. Up above this, the mountain loomed like a dark presence and above it was the starry sky, with one of the stars depicted as larger than the others, just to the right of the mountain’s peak.

  “Is that the Morning Star of the Spring Equinox?” Jocan asked, staring at it.

  Tania shook her head.

  “No-one knows,” she replied. “Probably. All the papers, information about the rituals and the worship that went on in this Temple before The Disaster were lost. There was nothing like that in here, apparently, so the Eldest of that time must have had them elsewhere, in his house, maybe, and they were washed away by the floodwaters, along with him, his family and his possessions.”

  “So how do you know how to worship the Morning Star of the Spring Equinox?”

  “We don’t,” the girl replied. “We have created new rituals. Rituals that honour the land, the bounty of growing things. Things that matter to us, like love and peace among people, co-operating to stay alive and make something of our lives.”

  She turned to stare at him.

  “It was really hard for everybody left after The Disaster. The Elders want us to remember that, and to understand that the survivors made it through to seed a new generation, by working together and helping one another. And by counting on the land to sustain them, by working the soil and coaxing it to become productive once again. That is what we worship, if you can say that we worship anything.”

  “You know, Tania, that’s beautiful,” Jocan responded softly. “That’s maybe the best thing I’ve heard this whole trip. And it’s not that different from the things I’ve heard elsewhere. All over this world, it seems that people banded together after The Disaster, to survive and to reclaim lives for themselves. They realized that nobody could make it alone.”

  “Still,” said Tania, “when I look at this picture I wish I could have been on the streets of the city, for only a few hours, or maybe a day, to see what it was like then, to experience all those brightly-lit houses and smooth roads for just a little while, just to—you know—to know.”

  “Yeah, I understand what you’re saying,” Jocan answered, looking at the girl a little more carefully.

  So she was another one of those who hungered after knowledge and experience, like himself, like Sany. Only Tania’s wish was to know the past whereas he himself, and Sany as well, wanted to know their world in the present. He was glad that he was interested in the present; the thirst for present knowledge seemed easier to slake.

  After a slow circuit
of the inside of the building, with Tania pointing out pictures and artefacts which appealed to her especially, Jocan came to the conclusion that the beacon was certainly hidden from his eyes. Mikal had told him not to expect to find it; the beacons were concealed from the locals in a different fashion on each planet that had them.

  “Once I know the layout of the Temple and what’s in it, I should be able to make a shrewd guess,” he had told Jocan. “So if you can take a good enough look around that you can describe the place to me in some detail, I ought to be able to figure it out near enough that it’ll be simply a matter of getting there and activating it.”

  Jocan was hoping that such was the case.

  “Ready to walk by our unfriend again?” he asked Tania as they headed for the door.

  “No, but since passing by him is the only way out, I don’t have much choice, do I?” she responded with a sigh.

  “That’s about it, I’m sorry to say.”

  *****

  Yarm started his morning’s work by having a chat with Sora at the reception desk of the Inn. Sora was enjoying a quiet moment with a cup of herbal tea and was only too pleased to have the opportunity to regale an obviously intelligent and inquisitive traveller with information about her home town.

  “I have been travelling around the world gathering knowledge for the Central Council of the Northern Plains,” Yarm began after he had sat down on the chair that Sora proffered him, and had refused a cup of tea on the grounds that he had just finished downing a couple of mugfuls at breakfast.

  “Ah the Northern Plains!” exclaimed Sora, visibly pleased. “Our neighbour to the north, the Salt Rock Town has plenty of dealings with the Northern Plains. We here in Faithville have much less to do with them, or anyone else for that matter, not having nearly as much of anything that others might want.”

  “Yes. I have heard of the industry in Salt Rock Town, although this is my first time travelling home along this road,” said Yarm conversationally. “What I like to do on my travels is find out about the places in which I stop so I can tell my superiors about the world we live in. I’ll find out about the Salt Rock Town in Salt Rock Town, so I won’t bother you for details about them. Instead, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to know about Faithville; it is rather an unusual town in that it is divided into two distinct parts, and it does contain a fairly well-known Temple. Now, to begin with, how does the town govern itself?”

  “Well, on our side of town we have a small Town Council which is elected at a Town Meeting, from citizens who have had their names put up for consideration by fellow townspeople. The Council, once elected, selects one of themselves to act as a Mayor, and he goes about getting done the things that need doing. He sees to things like tax-collecting, hiring people to do whatever work there is to do—I don’t know, you could stop by at his house and ask him what all he does.”

  “You know, I could do that very thing, after I’ve finished talking with you,” Yarm agreed. “What is his name and where could I find him?”

  “Zenco, the Winemaker, is the present Mayor,” Sora replied. “His business produces wine for everybody on this side of town; all you have to do is take your grapes to him and his wife. His place is just down the road from here—there’s a sign with a bunch of grapes and a wine bottle on it—you won’t miss it.”

  “Well, I will certainly have to pay him a visit.” Yarm rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “How’s the crime situation in this town?” he then asked.

  “Crime situation?” Sora seemed slightly taken aback by the question. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you have lawlessness here in Faithville?” Yarm persisted. “You know, people taking what’s not theirs, young kids breaking or defacing public property, that sort of thing?”

  Sora shook her head.

  “We are civilized people in this village,” she stated somewhat huffily. “No-one takes what doesn’t belong to them. They don’t have to. If somebody doesn’t have enough to feed and clothe themselves or their families, their friends, or the town helps them out. And we raise our kids to be respectful of the people and the things around them; they’re not fools enough to cause trouble like that.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” Yarm answered calmly. “It’s always a treat to hear that a town’s free from criminality.”

  “Yeah, that is so,” Sora agreed, growing more friendly again. “We do have a law-enforcer that the town keeps on the payroll, but it’s more an honorary position than anything. He makes speeches about how to be a good citizen, I think. I don’t even know who it is right now, but you can always ask Zenco; he’ll know.

  “The Religious Community takes care of their own enforcing, but I think that they have even less problems than we do—if that’s possible—since they hold everything, except personal items, in common. Not much point in stealing stuff that’s partly your own anyway, is there? “

  “No, I imagine there wouldn’t be much sense to it,” replied Yarm, although he knew quite well that such considerations would not stop someone bent on accumulating a private stash. But he was not here to ruin the good woman’s faith in humanity, since she was lucky enough to live, as she had said, among civilized people.

  “Wait a moment, though,” Sora said, her eyebrows arching. “They’ve been complaining in the Religious Community, lately, I’m told, that there’s some not very nice stranger lad hanging around the Temple. Maybe that’s the sort of thing you mean by ‘the crime situation’, Mister Yarm?”

  Yarm felt a shiver run down his back. Mikal was correct!

  However, Sora could not confirm his notion. All she knew about the situation was what she had heard from other people; she had neither the leisure nor the interest to hang around the Temple to which she owed no particular allegiance. It did not matter that much; Jocan was on his way to check out the Religious Community and the Temple. The youth would ferret out whatever information there was to be discovered, of that Yarm was certain.

  Yarm left Sora to her tea and her tasks, and headed outdoors to see if he could find Zenco the Winemaker. It was possible that Zenco might know more about the unpleasant stranger hanging around the Temple.

  Yarm walked down the front lane in the direction Sora had indicated, admiring the little houses surrounded by lush gardens as he passed them. Here and there he saw signs hung by the garden gates, such as the one Sora had described, but announcing different occupations: one house must have belonged to a candle-maker, another to someone who kept bees and sold the honey, and a third sign claimed a woodworking shop although Yarm could see no other indication of such a shop—perhaps it was hidden in the rear of the house. Then he came to the sign with a bunch of grapes and a bottle on it, and opened the gate to cross the short distance to the house along a narrow path between two rows of grape vines. The vines were beginning to fruit; was that an indication that the summer was well on its way in this part of the world or was this a second crop—a winter crop—of the year? Yarm shook his head and sighed; a world traveller found it hard to keep track of the seasons, since he often moved from hemisphere to hemisphere faster than the seasons could.

  When a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman answered the door at his knock, he introduced himself and told her that he wanted to speak to Zenco in his capacity as the Mayor of Faithville.

  “Oh, of course,” the lady responded. “If you’ll come in I’ll show you to his office. He’s in there right now, looking after some paperwork relating to town business. This Mayor’s job keeps him pretty busy during his spare time, but he felt that he should take his turn at it; it’s his duty. You see, a person has to know how to read and write to do it, and there are not that many people in town who can. So those who can, have to take their turns running the town, otherwise things don’t work out.”

  “Ah, it’s a good thing when people take duty seriously,” Yarm commented. “Life has a way of turning out badly when folk don’t.”

  “You’re right about that. Things don’t run themselves.”

&n
bsp; They had reached the office where a middle-aged, balding man sat at a desk, a pile of papers in front of him and an inkwell and a stylus beside them.

  “Zenco, my dear, here’s a traveller by the name of Yarm, who wants to speak to you,” the woman alerted her husband.

  “Ah, Caly, usher him in,” cried Zenco, turning away from his papers, obviously delighted to have an excuse to put off his study for a while.

  He pointed to a chair beside the desk and Yarm took it even as he made his greetings. Caly left them to return to whatever had been her pursuit when she answered Yarm’s knock.

  “And what is it that I can do for you, Traveller Yarm?” Zenco asked, eyeing his guest curiously.

  For a moment Yarm was silent, eyeing him back. Zenco, the Winemaker, looked like a decent sort, a hard-working artisan, who had probably toiled diligently to gain the literacy which had made him a candidate for the Mayor’s job. Yarm, having had to learn to read and write when he had agreed to take on the task of travelling the world for the Central Council of the Northern Plains, had a healthy respect for the effort it took to become literate according to the fashion of his World. He had been somewhat shocked to find out that Mikal and Kati had picked up at least the rudiments of the system within weeks, but Mikal had explained that the nodes connected to their nervous systems gave them what amounted to an unfair advantage. Someone like this man, Zenco, had likely spent most of his free time for several years, struggling to master the arts of reading and writing.

  Well, here goes, Yarm thought to himself, I have to try.

  “I’m travelling with my adopted son and two friends through your town,” he plunged in, “and it seems that we have run into a problem.”