Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “When I was here,” it told Kati, “the women, rich women at least, paraded around in gowns; only the poor women wore trousers like men, and they did so because they had to work at jobs involving physical labour. But who knows how things have been since the world, or a good portion of it, drowned.”

  “I expect that it’ll be easier to blend in as a poor person, anyway. Assuming we can blend in; we don’t know what exactly the Up-Aboves look like.”

  She found an outfit that fit her reasonably well. A shirt and trousers of some soft but strong cloth. The closures were laces that she had to tie up and did, although awkwardly. She added a leather jacket on top, and then rummaged around among the clothing until she had found a spare shirt and pants to pack along. Meanwhile Mikal had made his own search and had chosen a couple of similar shirts in a different colour, comfortable pants, and a short coat to wear on top. They decided against trading in their ship-issue boots for the local kind, hoping that their trousers would conceal the alien footgear. Comfort had to count for something, Kati declared, and Mikal noted that if they found themselves having to do some running they could not do so on blistered feet. Their packs, however, they jettisoned in favour of sturdy rucksacks from the Kitfi pile. Into those went the spare clothing and such of their ship gear that they decided they could not live without. The lights and the stunners went in, as well as the balls of rope. They stuffed in the packets of ship issue food that they still had; it was rated “super-nutritious” and they did not know how long it would be before they reached the inhabited regions of the world.

  “Two more things,” The Farseer said when their packs were ready.

  She had left and come back during their packing efforts. Now she stood before them, holding in one hand a small bag and in the other a large, very sharp-looking knife.

  “First, Mikal you will have to shave off the hair that grows down your back. Or, rather, Kati will have to do it for you.”

  Kati and Mikal stared at one another. How did she know? She had not touched Mikal physically and she certainly had never seen his nape. Although she must have mentally heard their puzzlement, the old woman declined to enlighten them. Instead, she simply handed the knife to Kati.

  “This will serve the purpose now, but you will have to get something in the nearest town to keep his neck hairless while you are on this world. That mane of yours, Mikal marks you clearly as an alien. Kati will pass as is in the upper world, I expect, but you may not. I would suggest that Kati acts as the spokesperson, drawing attention to herself, perhaps even pretends to be the one of higher rank.”

  “You mean like she’s the lady and I’m her servant?” Mikal asked flippantly even as he exposed his back for the misery of being shaved. Without water and without lather, Kati thought guiltily.

  The knife turned out to be a marvellously sharp instrument. Kati had no trouble ridding Mikal of the unwanted hair, and with the steadying influence of the granda on her hands she even managed the job without nicking his skin. Nevertheless she was happy to lay the knife aside when she was finished; it was a dangerous instrument.

  She watched, fascinated, as The Farseer picked it up from where she had laid it, with all the confidence of a sighted person. Then the old woman turned back to her and handed over the bag she had hung on to while Kati was doing the shaving.

  “These are, I believe, what you would know as ‘coins’. We have collected them over the years from the tunnel dead, and we are aware that the Up-Aboves deem them to be of great value. We ourselves have no need for such trinkets of exchange; we share the bounty of the planet with each other, and the work that needs to be done to gain that bounty, we also share. But you will need them during your travels, to obtain food, shelter and transportation. So I give these to you Kati; if you are to be the ‘lady’ Mikal spoke of, you need to have the means of a lady.”

  Kati took the bag with a gracious “Thank you”, surprised at the weight of the small bag. She opened the drawstring closure and while Mikal beamed a light into the contents she examined them.

  “My goodness,” she said out loud, “this is a king’s ransom.”

  “So you think it should be adequate for your purposes?” mindspoke The Farseer.

  The granda was examining the coins avidly as Kati ran some of them through her fingers. “Aah, so many golds! Twelve silvers are worth a gold, and twelve coppers worth a silver, though most of those are gold! The head price of a hereditary ruler, indeed!”

  “You understand these coins?” Mikal asked Kati, eyeing her curiously.

  “Well, the granda understands these coins,” Kati replied. “But I understand coins. And paper money, too. Are you saying you don’t? How do you buy stuff, if not with money?”

  “On Lamania you don’t ‘buy stuff’, except at the City Cash Market, where we exchange tokens for goods. The necessities of life are taken care of through a couple of day’s work every six-days, and for anything more that you might want, you work longer.”

  “But you said you worked at a job,” Kati protested. “Don’t you get paid for the job?”

  “Oh, there is something like a credit balance that keeps track of how much work you put in and what sort of a lifestyle that accords you. But that’s not why I work; I work because I like to do what I do. Besides, I am useful to the Federation.”

  Stunned, Kati stared at him for a moment.

  “Well, let’s leave that for now,” she finally said, swallowing. “I guess I better be in charge of the money, since there’s a chance that, with the granda’s help, I’ll be able to use it like a local might. But I think we better divide it up and hide most of it, especially the gold coins; with a treasure bag like this in plain sight we’ll be a target for the first thief that we run into.”

  The ship-issue boots had narrow hiding places in the back, which the granda pointed out to Kati. Looking at them, she concluded that they were meant to conceal knives, but they worked just as well to hide a goodly number of the gold coins. Using all four boots she and Mikal managed to secrete three quarters of the gold; this made Kati’s money bag much lighter and their boots considerably heavier, but the extra weight did not hurt the boots which were made of some very light but durable material. In fact, Kati thought that their new weight would make the boots fit into their new environment just a little bit better.

  After all the preparations they were ready for another wagon trip through the underground passages. This trip would be longer than the last one, but this time they knew where they were headed, and that they were among friends. They were welcome guests who were being helped to the next stage of their travels, by friends who could negotiate the tunnels much more easily than they themselves ever could have. The Farseer promised to keep an eye on their progress whenever the Kitfi gestalt came together to study the above-ground world.

  The old woman invited them to the forest picnic area for one last meal before a group of young Kitfi would embark on the escort and hauling duty. Mikal and Kati tossed their rucksacks on the wagon before they headed for the meeting place in the woods; in the valley the sun had gone down and the stars blazed brilliantly in the bowl of the sky. This one last time they followed The Farseer across the grass and down the path through the woods. A crowd of the Kitfi by the pond made way for the crone and her guests, as soon as they approached. The table was heaped with food; once again, nobody in the bowl valley would go hungry.

  It was a wonderful gathering but there was an undertone of sadness to the gestalt mind with which Kati and Mikal again communicated. Their hosts were sorry to see them go.

  “We get very few visitors,” observed The Farseer, “basically none. You are the first in a very long time. We abhor violence, as I believe that I have mentioned to you before. The Up-Aboves have been quick to resort to it in the past. The off-worlders whose ships land among these mountains also often exhibit violent behaviour, and we will have nothing to do with them. We would not have helped you two if our mind search had not shown that you had no killing weapons w
ith you, whereas those following you were armed with such. Had you been similarly equipped, we would have allowed the two groups to fight it out without any interference from us, coming by later to bury the bodies where necessary. However, since the weapons you carry can only send an opponent into an unconscious state but do not kill, we thought it was proper to spirit you away from the killers.”

  “We are eternally grateful to you for that. I have taken an oath to perform my duties without killing,” Mikal said. “I wish to ask you, however: would you object if I make your existence known to the Federation? I would try to be very discreet of course, and keep the knowledge within a circle of government officials and scholars. But it would be useful to be able to tap into the wisdom of your people at some later date; I suspect that the Kitfi could teach a lot to the people of the Federation.”

  “And the prize you are dangling is the possibility of further visitors.” There was laughter behind that thought. “Yes, I give you permission to do so but, please, do exercise discretion. And while you travel the lands of the Up-Aboves, perhaps you can study them, and their present ways, in more detail than we can from our distance. Some of us in the gestalt have begun to suspect that there are those among them who have taken a lesson from The Disaster which struck them with such force, and are leading their lives in a more peaceful fashion. If they exist, we would risk getting to know them.”

  “We will certainly do that. And when we get to the Star Federation I intend to recommend that this whole world be put under Restricted Access. That should end its use as rendezvous place by the criminals of the Space Lanes. But, to do that, Kati and I will have to reach Lamania.”

  Mikal sighed. They still had a long road ahead of them.

  Seated beside him, Kati stiffened her spine. Yes, they had made it over a few hurdles. But the road ahead of them would be a long one, and that was so without considering the promises she had made to her friends on Gorsh’s ship. Add those to what was clear to see and, well....

  Over that last Feast with the Kitfi, Kati and Mikal roughed out a cover story to explain their presence on the road to the riverside city which was their goal. The Farseer told them that there had been tribes of the Up-Aboves living in the mountain valleys above the Kitfi tunnels before the great flood. Most of them had died in the flood; the few that had survived had left, never to return. This was the information as the Kitfi gestalt of the time had gathered it: none of the later ones had been able to add anything to it.

  “However,” The Farseer had said, “I doubt that the Up-Aboves on the flatlands know anything of these mountain tribes that once were. For all they know, some folk may have survived the flood and live on farms or in towns in some secluded valley. The climate is better now for crops in the mountains than it was once, so it seems to me that travellers from a mountain village would be a believable story, and would help to explain whatever the differences in dress, habits and language the two of you will exhibit.”

  “Yes.” Mikal was enthusiastic. “A disaster and the passing of twenty generations will explain a lot of ignorance. However, we’ll have to have a reason for leaving our sheltered home. Why, after twenty generations did we venture out into the wider world from our secluded home?”

  “You said that the beacon should be hidden in a temple, did you not?” Kati’s brain was humming. “If so, then we need to be pilgrims. We are looking for a blessing or some such favour from the gods. If we do the disguise in which I’m a lady and you are my servant, then I could be looking for a cure for infertility because my family needs an heir to whom to pass their valley holding.”

  “Yes, that sounds plausible,” laughed The Farseer. “With the Up-Aboves infertility is a great tragedy and they do like to pass their possessions from parent to child, especially from father to son. And, let’s see, the Wise Woman of your village told you that you must find such and such a temple and make an offering to its deity; if you do so, you will be able to bear an heir for your family.”

  “And the description of the temple must be broad enough to allow us to continue our journey to the second place you found for us, Madam Farseer, if the first one is not right.” Mikal, too, was getting into the spirit of their cover story.

  “Well, Kati’s Wise Woman would have described to her at least two possible locations for the temple that she needs to find. You will have to make discreet inquiries of the inhabitants, once you get into a target city. You will need to ferret out information about the places of worship there, and decide which of them is the most likely one, considering the locations as we ascertained them, the names of the cults that worship there and so on. But I have faith that you will do so competently enough; you, Mikal, are a professional and Kati clearly is a woman of many talents.”

  As she gathered the meaning of this bit of mindspeech, Kati marvelled at the way the thoughts of the three of them had become mingled during their mental communications. She was certain that The Farseer was using words that she had picked up from either her mind, or Mikal’s, possibly even that of the granda. During this visit, the three of them had all changed; each one of them had learned much from the others. And what about the granda node or the other Kitfi in that gestalt? How had the visit affected them?

  *****

  It was time for Mikal, Kati and their escort to go. The valley was dark or as dark as it ever got on clear nights; Kati estimated that the time must be close to midnight, planet-time. That mattered little to the non-sighted escort, and not much to her and Mikal either, since they were heading into the tunnels. Before boarding the wagon, Kati dared to hug The Farseer who had come to wish them good-bye. She was thrilled when the old woman returned the hug and then turned to embrace Mikal, too. He told her that he would send some discreet Federation visitors to the tunnels once he got home, and then the travellers were back on the wagon and it began to roll underground. Then Kati and Mikal were in the dark again, and time ceased to have much meaning.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The humidity in the air clung to Kati’s tired body like a heavy shroud as she and Mikal tramped down a road that was not much more than a cart-path—in fact, that was exactly what it was, she mused wearily. They had been on this trail for more than two days now, and should have been approaching the outskirts of the city which was their goal, only in the heat and humidity, their progress had been much slower than the speed that they had expected to maintain. Their food was running low; the water supply lower yet, even though they had been able to refresh that at an artesian well, the previous day.

  Kati stumbled, and when righting herself, stepped into a fresh pile of runnerbeast dung; she cursed fluently in several languages, including English, and moved to the side of the road to wipe her boot on the grass. Mikal stopped to wait for her, clearly too tired to even tease her about the incident. Then he shifted to stand closer to her on the shoulder of the track, as a runnerbeast pulling a cart rounded the corner that they had trod moments earlier, coming towards them at a comfortable trot.

  The driver of the cart was not a maniac, the way many of the ones that had zipped by them in the last two days seemed to have been. Sometimes the two of them had barely made it out of the way, before the carter or the rider was upon them. This one seemed to be in no hurry. There was a load on the cart, hidden by a tarp that had been thrown over it. The cart was wider than some, room for two more people on the front seat; it looked like a farmer’s cart taking food crops to market, in the city.

  To Kati’s surprise it stopped beside them.

  “You going to town?” the driver asked in an accent that was quite different from the one that the granda had been making Kati practise for some time now. “Want a ride?”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful,” Kati found herself gushing. “I don’t ever want to step into another cow-pie, if I can help it.”

  Taking on her designated role of “The Lady”, she made haste to be the first one to climb on to the cart, handing her rucksack to Mikal at the same time, so he could throw both it and his, o
n the back of the cart before climbing to sit beside her.

  “Thank you for this,” she added more formally to the cart-driver while they waited for Mikal to get on. “My servant and I have travelled a long way. To not have to walk the last bit of the road is a treat.”

  “I can hear from the way you talk that you have come a long way. Where you from?”

  “From the mountains. Well, a valley among the mountains. It has been a long trek.”

  “Ooh? I had thought that there was nobody left in the mountains, not since The Disaster. At least that’s what everybody always said, them who should know. There’s nobody left in the mountains, that’s what they said.”

  “I know nothing about that,” Kati replied with dignity.

  Mikal was at last seated beside her; the farmer prodded the runnerbeast and the cart swung into motion. “But I, the Lady Katerina of Vale (the name had been chosen by the granda who should have had some knowledge of the world) and my servant, Mik, do exist, and we come from a valley in the mountains. I do not argue with you. But I do assert my existence.”

  “Heh, heh, heh. You’re a smart woman, Lady Katerina. Of course you have no need to argue with me. I can see that you exist, and if you say you come from the mountains I’ll take your word for it. Considering how thick your accent is...well, you have come from a long way away.”

  The granda was doing a little bit of prodding inside Kati’s mind: “Ask about his wife and children. When you meet your social inferiors you must always ask about their families.”

  “But enough about that,” Kati said to the cart-driver, obeying her node. “How fares your family these days? Your wife and children are well and prospering?”