Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “Feeding time for the inmates,” Roxanna muttered.

  She and Ingrid stood up. Katie followed their example.

  “We better go and help supervise, although that Murra boy is already there, and he is very good,” said Ingrid. “Some of the bigger kids sometimes try to bully the littlest ones, taking their drinks and sweets. It’s annoying.”

  Murra was already standing beside the cart, apparently giving orders to the boys who looked like him, and as they formed a line, the human children followed their example, queuing up behind them.

  “Ah, very good,” Ingrid called to them. “This way everyone will get his or her fair share.”

  Katie watched the children progress towards the cart where Murra handed each one of them a food package which they took with them to one of the circular sitting areas. The boys who looked like Murra were an orderly, cheerful group; there was no pushing or shoving among them. The human children made a more unruly bunch; there were minor power struggles happening among them. Roxanna and Ingrid patrolled the length of their row, snapping occasionally at one or another of them: one who was picking on her neighbour, another who was drawing undue attention to himself.

  When all the children had their packages, there were exactly four left in the cart. Murra shared them with the three young women and Ingrid led the other three to an empty sitting area where they followed the example shown by the younger ones, and began to devour the contents of the packets which Katie judged to be nutritious, but not particularly tasty.

  She had just finished the fruit juice-like drink included with the food when she sensed the light mind-touch again. At the same time Roxanna addressed her with a question. Katie lifted her hand to signal her, said “Wait,” and closed her eyes to concentrate on the mind touch. This time she was determined to allow Murra—she was sure the communicator was him—in.

  “At last,” said the voice inside her head, “finally someone I can mind speak with. None of the others like you have minds that will open to receive me.”

  Katie carefully formed words in her mind but without speaking them out loud. Was that not the way telepathic communication was done?

  “In our world mind-to-mind speech is not used much. Very few of us have the talent, and almost no-one is trained in its use, even if they have the talent. This is the first time I have consciously used my abilities in this way.”

  “Interesting. Well, I have training in the use of mind-speech and can initiate and lead any communication. We will be able to share information; you can pass on what I have to tell you to the two young women who are old enough to be part of any action plan that we can devise. None of my group are old enough for that; these child-thieves like their prey young. I am surprised at your presence; the last three pick-ups have not fit the pattern of the earlier ones.”

  “I don’t know why Ingrid and Roxanna were taken, but I was not the target when I was grabbed. The cat-men were after my young son, but I was able to stop them. So I guess they took what they were able to get, and that was me.”

  “Ah.” Katie sensed that she had earned the respect of the boy she was communicating with. Briefly she wondered how much he was able to read of her mind, was he perhaps getting images of her smashing berries into a cat-man’s face when she spoke of protecting her son? But this was not the time to explore that; there were more urgent matters afoot.

  “How much do you know about our captors?” she queried. “I know almost nothing, and it seems that Ingrid and Roxanna are as ignorant as I am.”

  “They have been raiding my home world for some time. That much is known. They seem to only pick up boys there, why, we do not know. But it has been going on long enough that our Elders decided that we would try to get a young adept trained in telepathic communications picked up with some of the other boys. A number of my kind scattered among groups of younger boys, and eventually the plan worked, and I was picked up along with three other boys, all much younger than myself. I was supposed to keep in touch with my mentors at the training institute where I studied.”

  “Was supposed to? Are you saying that that didn’t happen?”

  She could sense some distress—carefully controlled—in the mind that she was touching.

  “No, it did not. When I woke up from the drugged sleep I could not mentally reach my home world. It was as if it had disappeared from the universe. That is not supposed to happen—I do not understand it. Distance is not supposed to be a barrier to a mind; nothing physical can bar a mind. And yet, I cannot touch my home.”

  “That is troubling.” Katie had the feeling that there were implications here that she could not grasp.

  “It’s very distressing,” came Murra’s thought. “I was hoping to get help from The Institute and its Adepts to deal with these child-stealers. My people want to put an end to their raiding.”

  Katie sensed frustration and fear behind the words. It appeared that telepathic communication allowed a person to pick up emotions associated with thoughts. She reminded herself that she was dealing with a boy who was still a child, yet thrust into a position of great responsibility.

  “Look, let me talk about this with Ingrid and Roxanna. You are not alone in this; the three of us are just as anxious as you are to find out what is going on, and to right whatever can be righted. I promise to keep you informed of what ideas we come up with.”

  Murra’s presence withdrew and she opened her eyes to face Ingrid’s and Roxanna’s curious stares.

  “And where the heck did you go?” Roxanna asked.

  “Oh, I had a little mental chat with our male friend here,” Katie answered with a grin. “It seems that he’s an adept at telepathy and that I have enough natural ESP that he can communicate with me.”

  “And so?”

  Katie was surprised at the girl’s matter-of-fact acceptance of her explanation. Although, she thought to herself wryly, they all had had to accept quite a bit in the past short while; likely a little bit of ESP was not much to add to it.

  She told the girls, as simply as possible, what she had learned from Murra.

  “So,” Roxanna reiterated, “when Murra woke up from the mind-tangler sleep he was unable to contact his Institute, you say.”

  “Was the drug destroying his ability to telepath?” asked Ingrid.

  It was a good question. Katie herself had not thought of it and that was precisely why she had wanted to talk to Ingrid and Roxanna. Four brains were better than one, or even two.

  However, she slowly shook her head.

  “No, I’m sure that wasn’t it. His abilities were okay but, he just could not reach his home world. He said that it was like it was just gone, as if it didn’t exist anymore. And he kept insisting that he should have been able to sense it, that neither distance nor anything else physical can bar a mind.”

  “Do you think that you could mentally reach Earth the way he was trying to contact his Institute?” Ingrid then inquired.

  Katie pondered for a moment, and then shook her head. “I’m not much good at this mind-reach thing. The only reason I can communicate with Murra is because he knows how to touch my mind and make me understand him. He is well trained; I am not trained at all.”

  “I don’t think it matters anyway,” Roxanna said. “Murra was hoping to get some help from his Institute. There’s no-one on Earth who could help us. We’re on our own, as Murra is, it seems.”

  “I mean to keep communicating with him,” stated Katie. “I don’t know what kind of a pickle we have dropped into but if any, and all, of us are to get out, the four of us are going to have to stick together, find things out together, and plan together.”

  “And if one, or more, of us does get away, she is going to have to get help for the others, including the little ones,” added Ingrid emphatically.

  “Yes, indeed. All the little ones, even the ones that were picked up from Murra’s home planet earlier. No-one gets left behind. Anything else is unthinkable.” Katie stressed every word she spoke.

 
Roxanna looked from Katie to Ingrid and then back again.

  “Let’s try to figure out what we could possibly do to help ourselves and our charges before we make solemn promises to better everyone’s lot,” she said. “Not that I have anything against bettering the children’s lot. I’d just like to have some tiny idea of how to go about it.”

  Beside her, Ingrid sighed. “I don’t think that at the moment there’s much we can do except try to keep peace and harmony among the kiddies. Sooner or later something will happen. Eventually they’re going to have to dump us off this ship. Then we have to be ready to act.”

  “In the meantime, let us keep our ears and eyes open.” Katie added. “Let’s learn everything we can, if we can learn anything. What knowledge we gain, we share. And I’ll pass information from us to Murra, and from him to the two of you.”

  *****

  Time passed.

  Exactly how much, was unclear, since the ship’s light/darkness cycle did not conform to Earth’s length of day, nor, according to Murra, to the length of the days on his world. Besides, even during the dark hours there was always a certain amount of light in their quarters and the children tended to mix day and night, since there were no set sleeping places for them, and they were always dressed in the same clothes which they removed only to be washed while they showered themselves. There was nothing resembling a clock in the area they were confined to, so the only way to keep even rudimentary track of time passing, was to count the light cycles and/or the meal times. Such counting had to be done through the use of memory, since, even though perhaps they might have used one of the towels or tissues from the washroom to write on, they had no pen or pencil with which to write.

  Katie, Roxanna and Ingrid did stay busy, since it took a lot of effort to keep the human children occupied, and from growing fractious and badly behaved, in an environment so lacking in amusements. Murra’s children, as Katie had come to think of the others, were, in contrast to the Earth progeny, extremely well-behaved. Katie marvelled at their never-failing courtesy to one another, to the older four, and even to the often snarky little humans. She commented on this to Murra once during their recurrent communications, but he seemed to take this good behaviour for granted; he did not see it as anything extraordinary. When she spoke of the fact to Roxanna and Ingrid, Roxanna pointed out that it might explain why their captors had been going back to Murra’s home world time and again.

  “Maybe the males of Murra’s people make really good slaves,” she said with an edge to her voice. “They’re easygoing and cheerful, no matter what. Lot less trouble than the blacks of the American South would have been in pre-Civil War days.”

  It was not a pleasant thought.

  Katie had learned a bit more about their captors from Murra. He had told her that he was pretty certain that the cat-men were only hired hands, even though they did the actual snatching of the children. The burly man who brought in the food cart at meal times, and rolled it back out again when it was filled with empty packets, was another hiree according to him. Who the actual captors were he did not seem to know any more than the rest of them did, and he did not explain to her how he knew what he did know. Katie was a much too inexperienced a telepath to know if he was hiding something from her. Ingrid, and especially Roxanna, insisted that his claims to knowledge suggested that he must have a source for it that he was not revealing. That might have been so; Katie did not think it impossible. It was just that it did not matter, since her mental contact with him made her profoundly aware of the boy’s innate honesty. She was sure that he was trustworthy and would open up when that made sense, and if he was holding something back, there was a reason for it. Of course, neither Ingrid nor Roxanna could have her certainty of that, and they were apt to be more suspicious than she was of their ally. Roxanna would mutter at times, and this created a certain amount of tension between her and Katie. Murra, himself, appeared cheerfully oblivious of the issue, and Katie was grateful for that.

  To pass the hours the three young women and some of the children shared their abduction stories. It was during one of these story-telling episodes that Katie discovered—or rather, didn’t discover—where the terms “mind-tangler” and “tangle-juice” had come into the prisoners’ vocabulary.

  “It was Ally,” Ingrid said. “She’s the one I heard use the words, after I came to. I’m sure it was her.”

  But Ally, when questioned, merely looked puzzled, unable to explain much.

  “The ship people,” she said. “They called it that. The ones that made sure we didn’t choke when each of us woke up.”

  “You mean that they talked with you?” Kati asked as gently as she could.

  But Ally just looked puzzled, shook her head and said no more.

  “Another mystery,” Roxanna said, eyebrows high. “On top of all the other ones.”

  “Let’s try to be patient,” Katie suggested. “Sooner or later there will be answers of one sort or another.”

  Roxanna shuddered.

  *****

  Somewhere between twenty and twenty-five of the ship’s light-cycles had passed since Katie’s capture, when things finally started happening. Shortly after the waste from the first meal of the “day” had been wheeled off in the usual cart by the usual burly man, four doors opened simultaneously around the irregularly shaped room. Several people entered, and Katie, who had been leading the children in a sing-along, shut her mouth abruptly, and stood up from her seat. She stared at the newcomers, while the doors behind them closed again. There were four in all, each having entered through a separate door, and they were now curiously watching the captives. To Katie they appeared almost shockingly human: three men and one woman, olive-skinned and dark-haired all. Indeed, they looked more human than Murra did, and somehow, she did not find that in the least reassuring.

  The children around her had fallen silent. Two of the ones nearest to her crowded against her knees, seeking comfort. The others were watching the new adults with apprehensive expressions. Katie saw Ingrid slip a comforting arm around Ally’s shoulders; Ally was cowering against her. Roxanna was standing very straight, her arms crossed across her chest. Murra, his usual imperturbable self, was holding the hands of two of the smallest boys of his kind.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man with the air of authority about him, strode to the middle of the room, the children in his way hurriedly clearing a path. He looked around at the inhabitants of this strange nursery for a few moments; then he turned to Murra and spoke to him—obviously in Murra’s language. There was surprise on Murra’s face and a quick look of satisfaction on the man’s; clearly he was pleased to have given the boy a start.

  The man spoke with Murra at some length, with Murra interrupting him now and then with what must have been questions. Then the boys that were of his kind—all except for him—were gathered together by the three other newcomers, formed into a line, and marched out through one of the doors. The speaker was the last to leave, after a final few words to Murra.

  “All right, Katie,” Roxanna said as soon as the door had shut again, “you better do your communicating thing with Murra, and find out what’s going on. Ingrid and I will try to keep the kids that are left quiet in the meantime.”

  The noise level among the human children had escalated with the closing of the door. The good-natured boys were their friends as far as they were concerned, and now they had disappeared. What did it mean?

  Katie walked over to Murra who nodded and led her to a seating area. They sat down and she relaxed to open her mind to him as she had learned to do, in the time that they had known each other. Then she waited for him to enlighten her.

  “He speaks my language incredibly well,” was the first thing he told her. “I don’t quite understand how he learned it so well. Even if the boys kidnapped the earliest will have grown some by now.... It does not make sense. However, what he told me is that all of us are going to be fitted with some kind of translating devices so we can understand and communicate
in their speech and with one another. I do not quite understand what exactly he meant—he said that the things are alive somehow and are surgically implanted into our bodies, below one of the ears, actually. They are doing the boys first, then the children from your world, and, last of all, myself and the three of you young women.”

  “I suppose none of us gets any say in this? We get the translators whether we want them or not?”

  “That is so. He made it sound like we ought to feel honoured and fortunate that he is doing this for us. He said that he had been lucky enough to get lots of these translator things, enough even for us overaged ones. We need only to wait our turn and ‘the whole universe will be understandable to us’—those were his words. Oh, he did mention that some of us older ones, especially you, since you’re an adult, might experience some sickness after the implantation. The adult brain and nerves are not as flexible as those of a child, and may need time to adjust.”

  “Well, well. Me getting sick will complicate things, that’s for sure. But, what cannot be helped....”

  With an apology she withdrew from the tie with Murra and gave herself a resolute shake. She had to talk with Ingrid and Roxanna, and with their help, prepare the little ones for what was coming.

  *****

  They had lots of time to prepare the children, at least the ones who understood English. A whole light cycle slipped by before Murra’s boys returned, shepherded by three of the adults who had taken them, but without the self-assured man whom Katie took to be the leader, perhaps the ship’s Captain? The boys seemed to be in good spirits and perfectly healthy—and some of them were chatting with the accompanying adults.

  “It looks like whatever was done to them worked,” she commented to the youngsters who were next in line for the treatment. “And none seem to have suffered any hurt.”

  She found that somewhat reassuring.

  The humans and Murra had just finished their first meal of the day, and the returnees, obviously hungry, descended on the food packets still on the cart, opening them and starting to devour the contents even before reaching the seating areas. Meanwhile, the three adults who had brought them back began to collect the human children, to take them away.