Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  The Sons of the Sun must have been an important bunch as their building was much bigger and better cared for than any of the other temples around it. Also, it had an intact dome, and a spire reaching for the sky behind the dome.

  “Pretty impressive,” Kati muttered when Jocan had confirmed that yes, indeed, that was what they were looking for. “Does a half-copper get us into this one, or do these guys expect more than that from the curious?”

  “No, but they do get bigger numbers of the curious so they take in more money,” Jocan answered. “But I’m not sure that I want to go into this place today. I’d rather wait outside.”

  There were two men on the massive steps to the temple: one seated on a stair beside a (much bigger) bowl, even as the monkish person had been at the mystery temple entrance, and the other one standing beside him, apparently eyeing the temple surroundings. Jocan was staring at him, and when the man’s eyes fell on the boy, he glared back. Kati was infinitely grateful for the veil she was wearing. She recognized this red-haired man, and realized as she did so, that Jocan knew him too. He was Doctor Guzi from Gorsh’s space ship!

  Abruptly Kati felt her knees giving way and she crumpled to stoop on the ground.

  “Guzi must not recognize you!” the granda subvocalized urgently. “He has a node and could easily recognize your gait from this distance! He’s more interested in the boy at the moment, but you’ll have to pretend to feel ill! You’ll have to shamble away from here; let me take over for a few moments to disguise you!”

  With a pang Kati realized that the granda was right. She allowed it to have its way and when Jocan turned solicitously to attend to Lady Katerina who had fallen, the voice that asked him to help her get back to the Inn was a trembling, old woman’s voice. The Lady Katerina who managed to pull herself up on to her feet was a stumbling, unhealthy mess, shocking Jocan with her sudden sickness.

  “Neither of us will go inside that temple today,” Lady Katerina managed to whisper to Jocan as he led her away, at a slow, unsteady pace.

  At the same time, Kati watched Dr. Guzi from the corner of an eye, but the man seemed more interested in the red-haired lad than in the old woman whom the boy was guiding. She felt a controlled fury emanating from Jocan, an anger directed at the red-headed man on the Temple steps.

  What the heck was going on?

  One thing for sure; Mikal had been right! Why else would Guzi be where he was, except to wait for Mikal to show up in order to spring the trap? She wished that she dared to go inside and see if Guzi had a companion whom she might recognize from the ship. But that was impossible; she could not afford to attract attention to herself.

  Once they were away from the Temple District, the granda let Kati loose, and she stood up straight with a sigh of relief. Jocan stared at her; she ignored his curiosity for the time being. They walked the distance between the Temple area and Mistress Sye’s Inn in silence. Kati kept the veil on her face until they were almost at their suite; then she pushed it back onto her head with an abrupt gesture. Jocan glanced at her apprehensively.

  She kept silent until they were inside the suite, in the kitchenette/living area where the urn of tea that Jocan had prepared that morning was still on the odd little stove, and still hot, although the last embers in the fire-box were dying out. Mikal was nowhere in sight.

  Kati pulled two mugs from a shelf, and gestured to Jocan to fill them from the urn. She waited until they had hot mugs of the soothing tea in their hands before opening her mouth.

  “You recognized that red-haired man standing on those temple steps,” she said then, making it a statement, not a question. “How?”

  Jocan stared into his tea mug. He took a deep breath before answering. Finally:

  “He’s my pa.” The words were flat, emotionless.

  “Your pa? You told Mik that you had no family!” It was an accusation. Kati, though a part of her had expected something along these lines, was nevertheless shocked, and also angry at having been misled.

  “I don’t.” The answer was quick and angry, also. “Just because he’s my pa doesn’t mean he’s family! I know he’s my pa cause my ma told me before she died. She thought that I ought to know who was my pa. But he’d paid good money for her body and didn’t think he owed her, or her get, anything more.”

  Kati set her mug on the table and sat down on a chair next to it. Her head was whirling.

  “My ma was thirteen and a virgin.” The words were tumbling from the boy’s mouth, as if, once they started coming there was no stopping them. “My pa paid her old man, her pa, a gold coin to keep her for the two weeks he was staying on planet that time. He’d said that he’d make sure she wouldn’t get pregnant, so’s her pa could still marry her off afterwards to somebody out of town who didn’t know. Well, he lied. Her old man drank up that gold coin before I was born, my ma always said, and she had to go out and whore just to feed me. And then she got sick and died, about two years ago, and I left grandpappy’s house ‘cause I hate him.”

  “Good Lord!”

  It was a heartbreaking tale. Kati found herself groping for some kind word to utter, for some caring phrase that would not sound trite. Meanwhile, the boy who had been standing in front of her had moved to sit down also, across the table from her. He sat there now, looking tightly wound up, his hands wrapped about the tea mug, and his eyes on the table.

  “You’re mother must have loved you a lot to have brought you up to be such a fine lad under such difficult circumstances.” Kati blurted out the first words that came to her tongue, cursing their inadequacy and inappropriateness even as she spoke.

  To her surprise, her words drew a ripple of laughter from the boy.

  “You are such a strange woman, Lady Katerina! I have never known anyone like you! Even Mistress Sye, and she is always kind to me, often looks down on me. And she never would look straight at my mother, only from a corner of her eye, because it does not do for a virtuous woman to gaze directly at a whore.”

  “Well, as a child I was taught to always try to be kind to every person, regardless of his or her station in life,” Kati protested, a bit lamely. Then, always practical, she added:

  “But, you said about this man who fathered you, that he paid your grandfather to keep your mother ‘for the two weeks he was on planet that time’. On planet? Where’s he from any way? Does he come by regularly?”

  Jocan finally raised his eyes to meet Kati’s.

  “Some people say that he’s from this world originally, but I have no idea. Somebody told me that there are red-headed people on the Northern Continent. But if he’s from there, he’s been off planet for years, doing I don’t know what. He comes around every so often, not regularly, doing business for his off-planet boss is what I’ve heard tell.”

  Kati and Mikal had assumed that the planetside inhabitants of this world were ignorant of the goings on in the space around them. Evidently that had been a mistaken assumption. This was the second casual mention of “off-worlders” that she had come across.

  Then she thought of something else.

  “You said that he does ‘business for his off-planet boss’, here. What kind of business?”

  Jocan did not answer. His eyes were on his tea, although so far Kati was sure he had not drank a sip of it.

  She took a deep swallow of her own tea, using the moment to think. She made the decision then, to plunge right in.

  “Do people, especially young people, disappear whenever he leaves?” she asked.

  Jocan raised his face to stare directly at her.

  “What would you know about that?” he asked her. There was an edge to his voice. “Who are you anyway, really? Are you and Mik the two people that he’s looking for?”

  The question did not succeed in shocking Kati. What with the gossip apparently flying around River City, she had expected it, or its like.

  She looked at the boy, weighing the searching gaze with which he was facing her. Mikal might be pissed off with her if she levelled with th
e youngster, but he was not present to argue the point, and it occurred to her that they might be in more danger if she stuck to their story than if she told the truth.

  “I think that it’s quite possible that we are,” she answered quietly.

  He laughed. That did surprise her; there was relief in the sound.

  “Then it’s a very good thing that you didn’t take a room at one of the Inns on the Square,” Jocan said, grinning broadly. “If you had, you would already be in his hands, bound and packaged.”

  “That’s just the sort of thing we were afraid of,“ Kati acknowledged. “What I can’t quite figure out is how come, considering how fast news travels in this place, Mik did not pick up a hint of Guzi’s presence.”

  “He’s pretty friendly with some of the powers that be in this town. Like the disappearances. It’s always the kids who are inconvenient to the so-called leading citizens—“ he managed to infuse the term with plenty of contempt, “—like the orphans and the otherwise homeless youngsters who end up living in the ruins like I do. I was pretty nearly one of them; a gang rounded me up with the other kids who either did not want to be part of gangs, or else were not wanted by them, for some reason or another. Then when I was waiting to be picked up and shipped off with the others, Guzi took one look at me and told the gang leader to let me go. Said he might be a hardass but he wasn’t hard enough yet, to buy and sell his own get, whoreson or not. I guess I should have been grateful, but I wasn’t, not really.”

  “So he does procure slaves here,” Kati said slowly. “Does he buy them, or just take them off the leading citizens’ hands?”

  “I think he pays a little bit. Not much, the main benefit is that the city gets rid of kids who might become a problem. He usually comes by every year or so, but the last time before this was maybe a half a year ago, so this trip was unscheduled. I heard that one of the gang leaders had told him to go to some other town if he was looking for brats because we hadn’t built up a supply yet, but he had said that he wasn’t here for that. Then he told him that everyone should keep an eye on all the newcomers, couples, especially. A lot of us who don’t much care for him figured you and Mik didn’t count since you weren’t a couple, but a Lady and her servant.”

  “Hmm. Do you know if he’s alone, or did he bring an associate with him? I would have liked to have checked out that Temple to see if there was anyone in there that I’d recognize, but I didn’t dare take the risk of being recognized myself.”

  “So you and Mik are the ones he’s looking for?” Jocan said, grinning broadly.

  “Just keep that information strictly under wraps for now.” Kati waited until he had nodded, solemn again. Then she repeated her question.

  “Yeah, there was a woman with him. The person who saw them had never seen the woman before.”

  “So, two of them. And most likely both of them recognize Mik and me, whereas I can be sure of recognizing only Guzi, and Mik won’t know either one of them.”

  “Are you going after them?” Jocan asked.

  “After them? As in catch them and bring them to justice? No, I’m afraid we don’t have an ice cube’s chance in a volcano, of managing that.”

  ”You could kill them. Isn’t that what he plans to do to you two?”

  “Quite likely. Me, right away. Mik, after torturing him to get information from him. But no, we’re not killers, Mik and I.”

  The door behind them had opened and Mikal stood there, staring at them.

  “No, there will be no killing by us, nor of us, if I can help it.” He closed and locked the door behind him, not the servant, Mik, any more, but the Federation operative, calm and assured.

  “So, Kati,” he addressed her, “you spilled the beans?”

  “It seemed like the sensible thing to do,” she answered him evenly. “The fastest way to get necessary information. Besides, Jocan is more on our side than on Guzi’s.”

  “Ah. So you found something—somebody—you know, in the Temple District?”

  “On the steps of the Temple of the Sons of the Sun. Do you still want to go there and see what you can find out, or do we just make a run for it? According to Jocan, Guzi’s looking for us.”

  “If that’s the case, surely he’s already aware that we’re here.”

  Mikal pulled out another chair and straddled it. He addressed his next words to the boy:

  ”Considering the extent and speed of the informal news network that exists in this burg, by now he must know of our presence, and at least suspect that we’re the people he’s looking for. Why do you think he hasn’t come after us yet?”

  Jocan looked thoughtful. For the first time he sipped at his tea.

  “It’s possible that he’s not getting as much co-operation as he’d like to. From the important folk, or the gang leaders, either. He’s not in a position to do anybody any favours right now, and if he doesn’t have coin to throw around.... You two are spending more money than he is, and no doubt the word has already made the rounds that the Lady Katerina’s gold is good. The people who could help him may have decided that, even if you are who he thinks you are, and not who you say you are, whatever is between you and him is between you and him, and there is no sense in their getting involved.”

  “Dris was spilling beans this morning as well. Is there more of that tea?” Mikal looked longingly at Jocan’s cup.

  Before the boy could move, Kati got up, fetched another mug and filled it from the urn. It was a treat to be able to wait on someone for a change, rather than sit and expect to be waited on herself. She passed the mug to Mikal; he smiled his thanks and took a gulp before continuing with his talk.

  “According to Dris, there are two off-planet persons, a man with red hair and a short, stout, sour-looking woman. Ring any bells, Kati?”

  “The doctor, Guzi, and possibly one of the crewmembers who herded the kids around when they went for their implants. I saw Guzi, by the way, but we hightailed it as soon as I recognized him, so I never saw the other one. I did not want to risk having him recognize me so I didn’t want to get too close, even in a veil.”

  “That was a wise decision. You came straight back here?”

  “Yes. And then Jocan and I had a talk about his family connections and early life.”

  “Yeah.” Mikal made a wry face at Jocan. “Dris gossiped. People in this town take a strange attitude to women who can’t make ends meet except by selling their bodies. Where I come from that’s nobody’s business beside the people involved. Mind you, there no-one is ever driven to prostitution just to eat or feed your kid; there are lots of other options.

  “But, that’s neither here nor there at the moment. Kati, you asked if I still wanted a look at the Temple of the Sons of the Sun, which without doubt is where the false beacon must be. Yes, I do, if there’s any possible way we can swing it. I want a node record of the thing, if you know what I’m talking about.”

  Kati did not, but the granda did, and a few seconds of focusing on his explanation had her enlightened. She nodded to Mikal who had waited silently while she conferred with her node.

  “So, Jocan, tell me, can we get into the Temple of the Sons of the Sun, without the off-worlders seeing us? There have got to be times when one or the other isn’t hanging around the Temple steps.”

  “I would guess that putting a few extra coins in the guard-monk’s bowl and asking him about the comings and goings of those people might help. But, of course, to do that we’d have to catch the guard-monk while those two aren’t around.”

  “Which means hanging around the place for a long time, maybe. Shit. Won’t do.”

  Mikal emptied his tea mug and got up to check the contents of the urn. He dribbled the last of the tea in it into his cup before returning to his chair.

  “There is another way.” Jocan looked from Mikal to Kati and back again, a trifle uncertainly. “There are passages underground. They’re left over from the days before the flood and not in good shape; lots of them are impassable now. But they us
ed to be sewers and in places people have dug them up again over the years so as to have their waste water run down to the river. The Temple District is one of those places. There are supposed to be entrances into them in all the temples—entrances through which the workers who keep the routes passable, can go down to do their work.”

  “So you’re saying that it’s possible to enter one of these old, reconditioned sewers in one temple and travel through them to another, unseen by prying eyes?” Mikal asked.

  “In theory, you could enter the sewers here at Mistress Sye’s Inn and, if you knew your way around, you could walk all the way to the Temple of the Sons of the Sun. In practise, you can’t. The sewers under the Inn have been cleared out to run wastewater to the river, but there are many places between here and the Temple District where nobody has ever bothered to do any digging.”

  “Hmm. And you know about all this because....”

  “Because a kid living on his own knows all the hiding places there are in a city. I don’t have that many friends and there are those who think I’m not much more than scum. Sometimes it’s good to be able to just disappear.”

  Mikal nodded, looking thoughtful.

  “So, if we got into one of the neighbouring temples, you could guide us into the sewers and then over to the Sons of the Sun, where I could do my thing, and then we could retrace our steps. Is that so?”

  “Yes, and better, yet,” now Jocan was grinning broadly, “I know where to get us into the sewers from the outside of the Temple District, completely undetected. I know of an entrance that I’m pretty sure nobody else even knows is there.”

  “And that Temple, of the Sons of the Sun, when is it likely to be empty?” Mikal asked then. “Is it ever completely empty?”

  “Oh yes, it is.” Jocan’s grin had turned wicked. “Street smarts can come in useful sometimes. There was a guy in one of the gangs who was a nasty bully, before he got what was coming to him in a fight. About a year ago he decided that I was a good target for his crap; nobody cared if I lived or died so I had no one to stand up for me, and he was older and bigger. Well, I got to know my way around the sewers of the Temple District during that time—I pretty well lived there. All the other sewers that are cleared out, too, but especially the Temple District, because for some reason this guy stayed away from there.