The men on the dock greeted Dorn effusively, like an old comrade. Some of them shouted good-natured jokes and compliments to Loka who had come up on to the deck for the occasion. Loka responded to their ribaldry with a few “good ones” of her own, and there was much general laughter.
When the vessel was secure, Dorn went to the trapdoor which opened into the boat’s hold and asked Jocan to come and help him get the delivery goods up. Loka and Kati went to help as well, and it took only minutes to get, first of all, the cart, and then the dresser and the bedside table, wrapped in mossy padding, onto the boat deck.
“Hey, you’re bringing Old Man Huquet’s bedroom pieces, aren’t you, Dorn?” one of their audience called when he saw the pieces. He was guffawing.
“Oh yes,” replied Dorn. “Caroo worked hard on them. Told me to be extra careful with them. Pieces of art, they are, is what he said to me. They’re gonna cost Huquet a pretty pile of silver.”
“Well, when an old man gets hisself into a thing over a young girl, he’s going to have to pay the price,” someone else shouted with a laugh. “She’s a pretty one, no doubt about it, that new wife of his, but she has expensive tastes. He ain’t getting her charms for free.”
“Well, that’s neither here nor there to me,” Dorn shouted back as he and Jocan lay the pieces of furniture on the cart. “I don’t think Caroo cares much either, as long as Huquet pays the money he owes.”
Jocan hurried to the pier-side rail, pushing aside a part of it, so that for about a metre’s length, it was doubled while beside it was an opening of equal size. Dorn brought two boards which he secured to the deck, and one of the men on the dock did the same to the ends on the pier. Kati could see that these acts had been repeated many times, from the grooves in the dock into which the boards fit perfectly. There were even small clamps to hold them down.
“Well, let’s get this load to where it’s going,” Dorn said to Jocan, and the two of them began to push and pull the cart; first they moved it across the deck to the ramp that Dorn and the dockside helpers had created, and then, very carefully, down the ramp on to the dock.
Dorn stopped on the pier to release the ramp boards from there, while Loka loosened them on the boat. Dorn then pushed the boards onto the boat while his wife closed up the hole in the railing. The boater dug out a small coin from his pocket and passed it to one of the helpers.
“Have a round on me,” he bade them as he and Jocan resumed moving the furniture cart.
“And boys, make sure that my dear Loka and our passenger are safe while I’m gone,” he yelled to the men as the cart trundled towards the town. “No harm is to come to them.”
“Don’t you worry, Dorn,” an oldster who apparently fancied himself a wit, yelled back. “If I can’t have Loka, nobody can.”
Loka turned towards the steps that led down to the cabins and the galley. She motioned to Kati to accompany her.
“Let’s take a look at the patient,” she said in a low voice calculated to not carry on to the pier, “and then we may as well start cooking the midday meal. Not much joy to be had bantering with dockside drunks.”
“Although, Dorn is right,” she added magnanimously, once they were out of sight and earshot, “those fellows can be useful. If your pursuers have been in town, they’ll know about it. But it’s better to leave dealing with them to him. They will talk sense to him but there’s no way they’ll do anything but tease a woman.”
Kati accepted her reasoning and they stopped in the cabin to take a look at Mikal. He looked about the same as he had the last time they had looked in on him. Kati sighed.
“I wish I knew how the stuff that he was dosed with works,” she muttered for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I need him up and capable, soon.”
*****
Loka and Kati had prepared a simple meal of tubers, meat and vegetables by the time Dorn and Jocan returned from their errand. The fellows had stopped to pick up fresh vegetables and fruit at the local farmers’ market on their way back, so Loka quickly put together a salad to add to the meal while Kati cut up fruit for dessert. Dorn and Jocan came down to chat after storing away their purchases and stowing away the cart that they had used on their errand. They had not yet let go of the boat’s mooring spot at the dock so, for once, all four of them were able to eat together, seated at the galley table.
“Was there any news of our pursuers in the town?” asked Kati, feeling somewhat uneasy. She dearly hoped that there would be no news, but was acutely aware that if Guzi and his partner were abroad, she needed to know about it.
“Afraid, so.” Dorn heaved a sigh. “And it was kind of unpleasant for Jocan, here.”
‘’Guzi’s been in town, and he’s claiming to be searching for his son,” Jocan threw in quickly, before the more laconic Dorn could get another word in.
“Presuming on the relationship, is he?” Kati queried wryly.
Clearly this was a new twist on things. And not a good one for them. People would be likely to tell a man who claimed to be looking for his offspring, if they had seen a youth who happened to resemble the man quite a lot.
“A guy stopped us on the street to tell me that my father had been looking for me this morning,” Jocan continued. “I said to him that surely not; my father would not be looking for me. But no, he insisted that I must have run away from home or something, because this fellow looked just like an older version of me, and he and his woman were looking for his son who would most likely be travelling along, or on, the river.”
“Jocan was getting a little agitated, so I broke in to say that I had hired the boy fair and square; he had his family’s permission to be working for me.” Dorn helped himself to the salad as he spoke. “I then asked him to describe the man and the woman, and, sure enough, the descriptions fit the ones you two gave of Guzi and his female partner.”
“It’s a rip-off,” Jocan said hotly. “Guzi’s never done a thing for me. He turned my ma into a whore! And now he’s going around claiming that he wants to find me!”
“Well, Jocan, he does want to find you. But only because he found out that you were with Mikal and me.” Kati made the effort to be coolly reasonable about the situation. “Because you have the same distinctive colouring that he has, it’s easier for him to find you than either Mikal or me. People notice you, and they notice your resemblance to him, even as you found out today. They’re quick to assume a connection between him and you, and therefore to believe whatever tale he tells.”
Jocan nodded, looking unhappy.
“What do we do?” he asked, after a moment.
“I think we better be ready for anything.” Kati was forking her salad into her mouth, but without tasting a bite. She could feel her stomach tensing up.
“Ready for anything?” Dorn’s eyes bore into hers. “What do you mean by ‘ready for anything’?”
Kati shook her head.
“I wish to the heavens that I knew,” she said. “I don’t know the capabilities of their flit, for one thing. Could they attack us on water? Or are we safe as long as we stay away from all the towns along the river from now on?”
“Surely we’re safe on the river,” protested Loka. “What are you suggesting that they might do? Shoot at us from their flying machine? Land their machine on the deck of our boat and invade us?”
“Those are the very scenarios that are worrying me,” Kati said, keeping her voice even. “Mikal could tell me about the capabilities of these flits, but he is not available to advise us. Wait a moment....” Her voice trailed off, for a few moments she looked distracted.
“You and Jocan must remain below the deck from now on,” subvocalized the granda. “They’ve most likely got magnifiers on that machine that can pick up the two of you if you are visible, from such a distance that they’ll have you before you even realize that their flit is around. And if they come back to this little place and find out that Jocan was recognized and accompanying Dorn, well, they’ll come looking for Dorn’s boat. If that
happens, my advice is to shoot first, and shoot to kill.”
Kati put her head in her hands and groaned.
“Are you ill, Kati?” Loka queried.
“Just about. I’ve thought of something.”
There was no way she could explain the granda and its superior knowledge to her present company, so she was going to have to finesse this new information, one way or another.
“It’s something I remember Mikal telling me. About the flits. I guess thinking about Mikal is what reminded me. There’s some kind of an apparatus aboard a flit that can pick up a person that they know, long before that person even knows that the flit is around, assuming the person is visible.”
“Which means that if they’re flying around in that thing, Jocan and Kati will have to stay out of sight.” Dorn was quick to pick up on this one.
“Yeah, you’ve got that,” agreed Kati. “Only it gets worse. If they return to this town, The Seven Willows, and some kind soul tells them that Jocan was seen in the company of Dorn, a well-known boat owner, they can get a description of Dorn and Loka and their boat, and look for them.”
“And somebody has to run the boat,” groaned Jocan.
“Loka and I could always drop you guys off somewhere and hope for the best, but I have a feeling that it would not do much good to do so, at this stage.” Dorn had a wicked grin on his face. “Let’s finish eating, Jocan. Then we’ll get the boat on its way, and we’ll take a look at what kind of weapons Loka and I have in the locker in the Captain’s Cabin.”
“Jocan and I have our stunners,” Kati said, forking into her mouth food that she could not taste. “The only positives in this situation that I can think of right now, are that Guzi and companion add up to only two, and that they have been uncommonly keen to take Mikal alive.”
“Another one is that the flit will not be armed,” subvocalized her node. “They’ll have to use handguns to shoot you, and that means that if they do a fly-by, one will have to control the flit while the other shoots through an open window. Open windows throw the auto-controls off.”
*****
“Good Lord, those are rifles!”
Kati stared at the two guns that Dorn had pulled out. They had been stored in a chest under the double bunk, in the cabin that he and Loka shared.
“You’re familiar with these?” Dorn drew out a wooden box and opened it to display bullets, near enough to what Kati knew as rifle shot, so as to have her staring at them too.
“Hmm. Projectile weapons,” subvocalized the granda, peeking at the guns and the ammo through Kati’s eyes.
“I can shoot them,” Kati said with an uneasy laugh. “The man I was married to once upon a time, taught me to shoot small pest animals with a gun such as those. Never used them against people though.” The thought made her feel ill.
“Here, take a look at it. See if you think you can work it. Loka never got the hang of it. I think the damn things freak her out.”
Loka was up on the deck, handling the helm while the three others were checking out the weaponry. The sum total of it was pretty puny, Kati thought: the two stunners and these two rifles that Dorn was displaying so proudly. Oh yes, there were kitchen knives in the galley and, she supposed, the ship’s pole might be used as a weapon in an emergency.
Kati checked out one of the rifles the way Donny had taught her to, in another lifetime. Yeah, it was a good piece; she could use it. Vaguely she wondered how old it was; she had a feeling that the two guns were treasures from before the flood, well looked after and sparingly used.
“I can handle this,” she said to Dorn after the inspection. “I’ll give my stunner to Loka to use; there’s no trick to using that. Point and press the trigger, that’s all.”
She took one of the bullets and loaded the rifle; then she took a few more bullets into a pocket. Then she mimed shooting the gun for Dorn, to show that she really knew what she was doing.
“Hah,” said Dorn as she set the butt of the rifle on the floor beside her, after the demonstration, “you look like an old hand with that. Probably handle it just as well as I can, if not better. Yeah, you and I will take these, and let Loka and Jocan have the ‘point and press the trigger’ ones.”
He took his rifle up to the helm with him, after dropping some ammo into a pocket as Kati had done. Loka came down moments later, looking grim, and Kati passed her the stunner, explaining its simple operation. Loka listened and watched carefully; then took the small weapon gingerly and slipped it into a pocket.
The two women busied themselves with cleaning up the galley, speaking only of trivialities.
Meanwhile, Jocan had gone to check on Mikal. He came rushing to the galley, excited.
“His eyelids were fluttering!” he cried. “Maybe he’s about to wake up!”
“We need to give him broth, anyway,” Loka said. “We’ll be there in a minute, Jocan. Keep an eye on him ‘til then.”
Loka collected the necessary paraphernalia while Kati finished putting away the last clean dishes, and gave the table and counter a quick wipe. Jocan, looking impatient, had returned to the cabin.
“Yeah,” agreed Loka as she prepared the patient to take nourishment, “his eyelids are definitely fluttering every now and then. That has got to be a good sign.” She looked at Kati inquiringly.
“Hmm.” Kati was consulting the granda.
“I’m afraid I have the same problem as you do,” the node subvocalized to her. “I’m pretty sure this potion is some kind of a mixture involving the mind-tangler, but without knowing the dosage it’s impossible to know where he is at, in terms of recovery. Could take hours or possibly days.”
“I don’t know,” she said aloud, regretfully. “I just don’t know anything more than you do. It is a good sign, of course, but as to how long...could be hours or days, maybe.”
Loka fed Mikal some broth and they left him to his strange sleep.
*****
Being confined to the nether regions of the boat got grim very quickly. There was not much room; Kati and Jocan were practically stepping on one anther whenever both of them were in motion, which, nervous as they were, was often. Kati did try to sleep during that long afternoon, calculating that it would be possible to spend time on the deck during the dark hours, especially if the weather grew cloudy, if only she was rested enough to do so. She suggested that Jocan do likewise, but the boy seemed unable to stay still, and, instead, busied himself in the galley, creating a casserole for their evening meal from the ingredients that he and Dorn had bought in Seven Willows. This was useful, of course, since it made it possible for Loka to get some rest, rest that she needed, since either she or Dorn had to be at the helm at all times.
When Loka had finished a healthy helping of Jocan’s casserole for supper, she went up to the deck to relieve Dorn. Dorn came down, minutes later and told Kati and Jocan as he ate that he had seen what must have been the flit travelling at fast speed upriver.
“Damn,” Kati swore. ‘They’re scouring the river, for sure. It’s only a matter of time until they think to make a second stop at Seven Willows and some kindly citizen fills them in about this boat.”
Jocan busied himself with cleaning up. Kati shot him an annoyed glance, and Dorn grinned wryly at the two of them. It was evident that the youngster would rather deal with their pursuers than remain cooped up in the cramped confines of the galley, their cabin, and the head.
“As long as they wait until tomorrow,” Dorn said with a yawn. “I really need some sleep.”
*****
The attack came the next afternoon.
Loka was at the helm when the flit made the first fly-by, whizzing over the boat so fast and so low that its air wake tore at her hair. She yelled in fear, and Kati, happening to be the closest to the staircase, grabbed the rifle that was sitting, loaded, beside her and ran up the stairs. As she climbed, she shouted to Jocan to wake up Dorn who was asleep in the captain’s cabin.
The flit made a quick turn around and came back. Kati s
aw its round form as it flew over their craft again, slower this time, and turned around once more, to approach the boat from behind. Kati decided to remain in the stairwell, and crouched there, facing aft, mostly hidden from view of the flit by the low, wooden wall that surrounded the stairwell to the deck.
“Got the stunner?” she shouted to Loka.
“Yes!” One of her hands was in her pocket, the other hung to the tiller. She was not looking where the boat was going, but that hardly mattered. They were floating in mid-river and there were only a few boats in sight, all struggling upstream near the banks.
“As soon as you see someone to use it on, use it!”
The flit landed rather nicely on the stern part of the boat’s deck. It was big for it—the boat was not large—and it landed partly on the railing which—thank goodness—was made solidly out of strong wood. So the flit tilted towards the front and the interior of the boat, jolting the occupants somewhat, or so Kati hoped. Two people exited, one from either side.
It all happened incredibly fast; and there were only the two women on deck. Without doubt Guzi and his partner were counting on surprise to give them momentum.
Guzi’s partner, the woman, was a second or so faster in getting out, her blaster—no stunners for these two—unaimed, because of the angle at which she had to get out of the flit. Loka aimed her stunner at her and got her; the woman crumpled on the deck, beside the flit.
Meanwhile Kati had pointed her rifle at Guzi. The granda was helping her and she felt ice cold and calm. Now.... She realized then that she was aiming at Guzi’s head! She had meant to shoot the hand with the blaster! She wrenched the rifle a bit to the right and down, pulled the trigger, and the bullet smashed into the man’s shoulder! He fell back against the side of the flit; the blaster in his left hand clattered to the deck.
Escape from the Drowned Planet Page 22
