Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  That had meant that Jocan had had to abandon whatever possessions he had managed to accumulate in the ruin that he called home. It was too dangerous to try to retrieve them; had he returned for them, or even if Dris had gone to retrieve them, someone would have taken note, and before long, word would have reached Guzi. He would have guessed that the Inn owners might be hiding something—or somebodies—and find a way to investigate. Jocan had shrugged his shoulders at this logic.

  “There’s nothing there that can’t be replaced,” he had said wryly. “I don’t have any family heirlooms. I don’t even have anything that was my ma’s; grandpappy kept it all, sold it maybe; he certainly didn’t offer me anything of hers. I’ve got my memories and they’re easy to tote around.”

  “For extra clothes, I can find some things that Dris has outgrown,” Mistress Sye had told him. “There’s some in the back of a closet that will fit you, I’m sure. It’ll be good to put them to use; they’ve been just sitting there for years.”

  “Mom’s something of a pack-rat,” her daughter Soni had said with a laugh. ”She’s kept all of Dris’ and my old clothes. It’s good to get rid of some of that clutter in the closets.”

  Sye had given her daughter a good-natured swat on an arm with a dish towel. “So come along, girl, you can help me pick out a few things for Jocan, since you’re so keen on closet space.”

  Thus Jocan had acquired a few changes of clothes to take with him. Mistress Sye had also given him a sturdy bag to carry them in; not as convenient as the rucksacks Kati and Mikal had, but perfectly adequate.

  They had been ready to leave well before the appointed hour of the meeting with Dorn and Loka. Which was a good thing, since the comatose Mikal continued to be a problem, especially since secrecy was essential. In the end Jocan and Dris lowered him down into the sewer through the same trapdoor that had been their entry into the Inn early that morning. Meanwhile Mac had gone to the stables to fetch the runnerbeast that he had chosen for the task. It was a steady more than a swift, animal, with sturdy legs and feet, with the clawed toes that were good at grasping at difficult terrain.

  Kati had found the runnerbeasts an interesting variation in the category of beasts of burden. They were really nothing like the horses of Earth, although they served many of the same functions that horses had served on pre-motorized Earth. They were smaller than horses and in appearance resembled dogs, or wolves, more than equinines. Their bodies were powerfully muscled, and they could move very fast while pulling a cart, or carrying a rider a-back. They had retractable claws on their well-padded paws which could be used to advantage on rough ground. They were also very intelligent creatures and tended to bond with their handlers. A notable advantage that they had over horses, Kati saw, was their ability to function in limited spaces which meant that they could be used indoors as well as outside. Assuming, of course, that you had a need to travel a reasonable distance inside, which was exactly the need that they now had.

  Mac’s beast had been pulling a long, narrow cart behind it, and Mikal, wrapped in quilts for padding, had been laid on it, and strapped down with the rope that Jocan had tied him with on the way to the Inn. Mistress Sye had hugged both Jocan and Kati good-bye, wishing them luck. Even Soni had climbed down into the netherworld to wish the travellers a good trip, and then the five of them had departed: Mac, controlling the runnerbeast while walking beside the cart, and Jocan in the lead, while Kati and Dris brought up the rear.

  It had seemed a lot shorter distance between the river and the Inn this time, than it had, when Kati and Jocan had been hauling Mikal between them, with both of them exhausted. This time Kati had been able to appreciate the fact that these sewers were, indeed, well maintained. The platform along which the runnerbeasts’ claws were clicking and the cart wheels were clunking, was even, and in good repair. There was little silting in the sewer stream; Mac must have come down after every storm season, to clear all built-up sand away. That made sense, of course; it was a lot easier to keep an operation like the Inn running smoothly if the essentials, which is what the sewers were, were taken care of adequately. Kati had found herself vaguely wondering who looked after the sewers underneath the Market Square, and whether the toilets of the Inns on the Square had a habit of backing up. She was not curious enough, however, to broach the subject with Dris.

  It had been an indication of everything going as planned, that the trip to the river had been entirely uneventful. Once they had reached the river, and had made their way out of the sewer outflow and on to the slightly muddy ground by the water, they had waited only a couple of minutes before a boat had loomed beside them and Dris had hailed Dorn and Loka in a low voice. Mikal in the quilts had been bundled into the boat, to be taken down below, and into one of the cabins as soon as they would be on their way.

  “What do I owe you and Sye and your family for your invaluable help?” Kati had asked before climbing up the rope ladder that Dorn had let down for her and Jocan.

  “Nothing, girl,” Mac had said with a shake of his head. “You paid for the suite for a week and you stayed with us only three nights, and barely that. Your apartment was burgled. No you don’t owe us anything. Just take care of the man and the boy to the best of your ability, and use whatever coin you have left to do so.”

  “Well, I do owe you thanks,” she had responded. “So, thank you, Mac; thank you, Dris; and tell Sye and Soni that I am eternally grateful to them, too.”

  She had shaken hands with Mac and Dris and started to climb up to the boat, leaving Jocan to go through his good-byes without having her hover over him.

  She had helped Dorn and Loka transfer Mikal into one of the four bunks in the tiny cabin which she and Jocan would have to share with him. They had put Mikal into one of the lower bunks and Kati had thrown her rucksack on the other one; Jocan, being young and agile could take one of the upper bunks. Once she was sure that Mikal was secure and as comfortable as she could make him, she had climbed back up on the deck to watch as Dorn had steered the boat into the middle of the river where the current was the strongest. Then, satisfied that all was well for the moment at least, she had returned down below, and curled up on her chosen bunk, still fully dressed, to catch a few hours of sleep before sunrise.

  *****

  In the morning Loka had helped Kati get some broth into Mikal’s stomach, using a tube made of some kind of a reed that Mistress Sye had given her for the purpose. The Innkeeper had taught her how to use it, after she had woken up from the exhausted sleep that she had fallen into, after the crazy trip to the Inn from the Temple District. She had been frightened at the time, thinking that although she and Jocan had managed to transport Mikal to relative safety, they were on a planet that had no high-tech medicine, so how was she going to keep a comatose man watered and nourished until he came to? Mistress Sye, who had said that she was the one who looked after the health emergencies in her family as well as among the Inn clientele, had had a simple, low-tech solution. It amounted to threading the organic tube that she brought out from a cupboard, down the unconscious man’s throat—and Sye did this with such gentle skill that Kati would not have been surprised had she been told that Sye had done this everyday for the last ten years of her life—and then dribbling a liquid, such as broth, down it to be ingested in the man’s stomach.

  One of the things Mistress Sye had done the evening before the midnight trip along the sewer to catch the boat, was to instruct Kati in the use of the tube.

  “The trouble is that you cannot leave it in permanently,” the Innkeeper had said to Kati. “And if you are rough when you thread it down, you can do damage, to vocal chords and such. Therefore you have to do it very slowly and carefully, yet in order to be sure that you won’t drown him, you have to make sure the end is well below the bronchial entrance to the lungs.”

  “Oh, dear,” Kati had wailed, “I have no training in this sort of thing. I’m afraid I'll botch it.”

  “That’s exhaustion talking, young woman,” Mistress Sye
had chided her. ”I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of doing it. Come on, get your hands on the tube. You must do it this time, so that I can see you do it and correct any mistakes.”

  “Give me a little bit of control, girl,” the granda had interrupted her panicky thoughts. “I’m sure I can manage this, especially if I use your ESP abilities to sense the motion of the tube slipping down the throat.”

  Kati had relaxed and let the granda handle the task. It had done an excellent job of course; and Mistress Sye had said “I told you so,” several times. The woman’s praise embarrassed Kati because she felt that all she had done was stand aside to let the granda work, but it was not the time to explain the curmudgeon in her neck to her new friends. So she kept her peace, and mentally thanked her node for its help.

  “Not a problem, Kati,” it had subvocalized to her. “We’ll handle this together until Mikal awakes. Probably by the time he does, you’ll be perfectly capable of doing it without my help.”

  Kati had doubted that. But she had been too relieved to argue about it.

  However, as it turned out, Loka was almost as good a nurse as Mistress Sye had been, and quite as willing to help. Which was good, since she had lots of experience getting things done in a moving boat, whereas Kati basically had none.

  *****

  So here she was, watching a particular corner of the world she was on go by, as the boat floated downstream. Dorn was at the helm, keeping them from running into other boats on the river, although that was not an onerous task since the traffic was light, with most of the downward travelling boats sticking to the central stream with its stronger current, while the upriver travelling ones stayed close to the banks, most of them by the bank that had the hauler beasts plodding along it. An odd boat was being poled upstream on the opposite side of the river by an economical owner.

  “It gets more interesting when the wind is up,” Dorn told Kati and Jocan from his position at the helm. “Then vessels put up their sails and either let the wind take them where they’re going, or, if the wind is from the wrong direction, do some tacking from one side of the river to the other. Then you actually have to know what you’re doing at the helm; the boat can’t just take care of itself, like it is doing now.”

  “When do we get to this town where you’re making a delivery?” Jocan asked Dorn. He had hung about the helm ever since he had awakened that morning. Clearly he was planning to learn as much as he could on this trip, and right now his interest was in whatever Dorn was doing.

  “If the weather stays the way it is today, we’ll be there by midday tomorrow,” Dorn told him. “If we get a wind blowing from behind us, which we won’t, we might be there earlier. If a wind comes up to try to push us back upstream, we’ll have to start tacking, and it may even be supper time tomorrow when we get to Seven Willows.”

  “Are you saying that it’s much more likely that we’ll get wind coming at us, rather than one blowing us downstream?” asked the youth.

  “Yes, indeed. Usually the winds here blow in from the ocean: it’s pretty rare to get them blowing from the land to the ocean, although it does happen occasionally.”

  It was obvious that Dorn enjoyed enlightening his passengers. Jocan was avidly drinking in his explanations, and Kati, too, was keeping at least a portion of her mind on the words. Every little bit of knowledge that she could glean about this planet might come in useful, later.

  Dorn continued:

  “It’s actually just as well that the wind mostly comes from the sea. On the way downriver, we always have the current going for us, so even if the wind slows us down some, we still get to where we’re headed. Going upriver, we have the current against us and it’s helpful if we can make use of the wind.”

  “Don’t you like to hire the boat-pullers to take you upriver?” Jocan asked.

  Dorn laughed.

  “Oh, I’ve had to do it, time and time again, just like every other boat-owner. The winds can be fickle and poling a boat this size, especially with a cargo, is a hard job. But it’s a slow, expensive way to travel and I avoid it whenever I can.”

  If Jocan had further questions, he had to save them for later as Loka climbed up on the deck at that moment to tell them that she had breakfast ready for them in the galley.

  “You go and eat with Kati and Jocan,” she told Dorn. “I’ll take the helm for now. I already ate so I’ll be fine up here for a bit.”

  *****

  After they had eaten, Kati peeked in on Mikal and began to collect the dirty dishes into the galley sink. Dorn had already gone back up on the deck but Jocan was still finishing the last bit of his second helping of tubers. He was a growing teenager, Kati had noted, always hungry the way teens are.

  “Maybe you could ask Dorn to teach you how to run this boat,” she suggested to him. “It would be easier for him and Loka, if one of us could take a turn at the helm. We’ll make faster time down to Delta if we can keep on going through the nights, but doing that might be difficult if only Dorn and Loka can handle the helm. One or the other of them has to be on the job at all times and that can get wearisome.”

  “That’s a super idea, Kati,” Jocan said immediately. He brought his dirty dishes over to her to wash. “I think I’ll go and suggest it to Dorn. I want to do something useful anyway; it’s boring to have nothing to do.”

  He hurried off to climb back on the deck. Kati sprinkled a bit of soap-powder into the water in the sink and began to scrub and scrape.

  Loka came down shortly thereafter, shaking her head.

  “So our high-paying passengers have decided to help run the place, too,” she said. “Usually our passengers like to enjoy themselves while on their holiday, expecting to be waited on, hand and foot.”

  Kati grinned at her.

  “I lazed on the deck this morning for what, an hour, two at the most, and got bored already. And Jocan will be driving us all nuts if he has nothing to do. So consider it a kindness to let us participate in the running of this boat. Besides which, we’ll be able to travel faster if we all take part in the work involved.”

  Loka grabbed a dishtowel and began to dry the clean dishes.

  “What you say makes sense, of course. Mind you, there are a lot of folks around who don’t worry about sense.”

  *****

  “So, are there seven willows at Seven Willows?” Kati asked Dorn the next day at about noon as they were coasting towards the town pier.

  Dorn had calculated their arrival carefully, starting to move from the middle of the river towards the shallower water on the side of the Seven Willows, early enough that he expected his boat to make it to the pier without much manual help from the crew. As he had explained to Jocan who, for the past day and a half, had been following his doings with a keen eye and endless questions, the idea was to make the river do most of the work, and only help it with a couple of pushes with the pole, once they were in the shallows around the dock. Besides, on the dock there were always fellows who were glad enough to catch a rope that a boater tossed them, and tie it around one of the mooring posts.

  “They’re pretty slick at it, too,” Dorn had said with a laugh. “Especially for guys who are at an age when they don’t do much anymore, other than hang around the pier, talk to their cronies, and drink beer.”

  “There were seven willows at Seven Willows at one time,” he now answered Kati’s question, chuckling as he monitored the distance between his boat and the dock. “There still are some willows behind the Town Square, along a stream that joins the river a little bit downstream from the dock. But I think the number is wrong these days; there’s more than seven there now. But the name has stuck, since no-one wants to change it every time a new willow shoot pops up.”

  Kati laughed. “Yeah, that would be a nuisance,” she agreed.

  “You mind if I take the boy with me on this delivery?” Dorn asked her, suddenly. “I want Loka to stay on the boat with you and the patient downstairs, but I could use a hand with the stuff. It’s a few piec
es of hand-crafted furniture that a fellow in River City makes for folks all up and down the river. He’s good, so his customers pay good coin for them, but since he depends on me for the deliveries, and to get his money back to him, I have to cart them to the customer personally, and collect from him, too.

  “I think it’ll be good experience for Jocan to see that part of this business; and I can use his physical help with the cart.”

  “If Jocan is willing to do it, I don’t have a problem,” Kati replied.

  Jocan, standing at the rail, watching the town approach, looked back to her and grinned broadly.

  “Of course I’ll go,” he said enthusiastically. “I’ll be interesting.”

  “Keep one eye peeled out for trouble, though,” Kati advised him. “We don’t know if our pursuers have, or haven’t yet, figured out that their prey has flown the coop. They could, if they know that we’re gone, be flitting around, moving a lot faster than we can, making inquiries.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Jocan promised.

  “And when we come back, we’ll talk to the loafers on the pier. They’ll know if anybody’s been in town, asking questions,” Dorn promised.

  The boat’s arrival at the town dock went pretty much as Dorn had predicted. When they had floated to within a couple of metres of the pier, Dorn got out his pole and gave two good pushes with it into the river bottom on the stream side of the vessel. That was enough to propel them next to the dock, and as instructed, Jocan threw the coil of heavy rope attached to the deck with an iron ring, to the nearest of the elderly men standing there. The oldster caught it with an agility that belied his years, and trotted over to the closest empty mooring post, coiling it around that and finishing by knotting the rope ostentatiously.