Escape from the Drowned Planet

by Helena Puumala

  “Ah, some business for Cara!” a woman shouted when she saw the four strangers on their runnerbeasts.

  “Yes,” Yarm called back, “we were directed by a man named Andry to Cara’s Inn. He said that anybody in town could point us to it.”

  The woman came over, together with the man with whom she had been conversing.

  “Good man, that Andry,” she said cheerfully. “He’s sent a lot of business Cara’s way. Of course, Cara does deserve it; she keeps her Inn up to high standards, even if it is small. See, it’s right there on the other side of the park, the biggest building in the village. Cara’s husband, Joely, has a stable for the runnerbeasts in the back, too; the entrance to it is just where the building meets the rock.”

  “You’d think the stable would be dark inside, but it has a pretty ingenious sky-light system lighting it up in the daytime so it’s not,” added the man beside her.

  “Andry said that there was an Alehouse,” Jocan said. “I’m sure looking forward to a mug of beer.”

  “You’ll meet the whole village there, likely, then,” laughed the woman and shooed them on their way.

  Cara’s Inn might have been small but it had all the comforts that Kati had come to expect of the inns on this world. There were only six double rooms altogether, and the quartet engaged two of them, with Mikal and Kati occupying the one with the one large bed and Yarm and Jocan taking the one with the two single beds. Kati felt awkward standing beside Mikal while he requested the sleeping arrangements; she expected, at the very minimum, raised, teasing eyebrows from Jocan, but nothing like that happened. Perhaps Jocan was returning the politesse she and Mikal had shown him (most of the time) during his shipboard romance with Rosine. They had mainly ignored his love-life then, even when, in his naiveté, he had sometimes made it hard to do so. And Yarm had a great deal of liking and respect for Mikal and Kati both; Kati suspected that he was pleased that they had found each other at last.

  The Women’s Bath was small but seemed luxurious to Kati who had not had a proper wash with hot water for more than a week. She took her time there, washing thoroughly, lathering her filthy hair several times. When at last she felt that she was clean enough to allow Mikal to touch her, she left the Bath wrapped in one of Cara’s fine robes and dropped the rest of her dirty clothes at the laundry next door.

  When she reached their room, Mikal was already there, clean from the trip to the Men’s Bath that he had taken with Yarm and Jocan. He wrapped her into his arms immediately, wet hair and all.

  “Jocan’s going to bring us supper from Cara’s kitchen in about an hour,” he told her, nuzzling her neck. “Until then it’s just the two of us, love.”

  *****

  “What I have to explain to you, my dear,” Mikal said when they had their supper on the table between them and Jocan had persuaded Yarm to accompany him to check out Joely’s Alehouse, “is that Chief Komak forcing my hand about our relationship is going to create problems for us, when we reach Lamania.”

  “How so?” Kati’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Lamanians are going to show a great deal of concern for you. That’s the way they are.” Mikal grinned at her. “Not that I think their concern warranted—you’re perfectly able to take care of yourself. Good grief—you’ve saved my life how many times? But to them you are a Wilder, coming from one of what they call the Wilder Worlds, meaning, basically, that you come from outside their sphere of influence. Anywhere outside of the Star Federation is generally spoken of as the Wilder Star Systems, and you certainly come from outside the Federation. Now, Lamania’s Second City is something of a Federation melting pot since there are a lot of Federation bureaucracies there, pretty well all of them that aren’t on the Federation Space Station itself. It’s not unusual to have Federation men show up there with Wilder women in tow; often pretty, young women who have attached themselves to an older, established man who can give them advantages that they cannot get on their home worlds. Well, Lamanian Social Services take a dim view of this; they worry that the naive, unworldly women from the backwoods planets are being exploited by their more worldly partners. So they insist that whenever there is a sexual relationship between a Wilder woman and a Federation man when they arrive on Lamania, the two are separated for a half a Lamanian year, and the woman is established in subsistence housing, given all the privileges of a Lamanian resident; if after the half-year she still wants to be with the man who brought her to Second City, fine, but if she decides she prefers to be on her own, she is encouraged to do so.”

  “So, because we’ve lain together, you’re a big bad wolf who might be taking advantage of poor li’l me?” She grinned at him. “It’s kind of funny you know.”

  He chuckled.

  “I’m so glad you have a sense of humour, Kati. You know, when we get over this hurdle, we’re going to create a good partnership.”

  She nodded her agreement.

  “Can’t we fib about it?” she then asked.

  “Not with nodes in our heads,” he said shaking his. “Your node will protect your privacy by blanking out details that you consider too personal to include in any report, but the fact of a consummated relationship will come out—especially when its consummation was a public act as ours happened to be.”

  “Shit. That’s true, and nothing to be done about it.”

  She dug into the meal that lay in front of her, pleasantly surprised by the subtle tastes and textures of the food.

  “Mm, this is good. Cara can cook, too.”

  For a few minutes they concentrated on eating, savouring their first mouthfuls, aware that the last meal that they had eaten had been trail food at noon. When they next spoke, most of the food on the tray between them had disappeared.

  “I guess we better make the most of the time we have left on this planet, then,” Kati commented at last, pouring herbal tea for them from a lovely old china pot into delicate mugs.

  Someone in the Sunlit Peak Village had been able to save some nice things from before The Disaster. Kati found it interesting that such items were showing up in the mountains; however, what that fact signified, she had no idea.

  “We might as well,” Mikal replied with a humorous leer. “Since the damage is already done. I was thinking, though, that I’d like to have you put that half-year to use, if you’re willing, by learning everything and anything you can, through all the Lamanian information systems, about whatever strikes you as useful in connection with the slave ship and Gorsh. Because yours is a new brain studying the problem, you may come up with something the rest of us have missed.”

  “That makes sense. I’m hardly going to want to twiddle my thumbs for six months.”

  “It’ll take you a while to find your feet on Lamania. There will be a lot that is new to you. You’ll get assigned a Social Worker and don’t be afraid to make use of the woman—it’ll be a woman. She is supposed to help you adjust to life on Lamania, so anything that bothers you, or that you don’t understand, just ask her. She’ll help you out.”

  “Here I thought that you were going to be my rock, my one familiar touchstone when we got to Star Federation territory,” Kati sighed. “I feel a little bit like the rug has been pulled from under my feet.”

  “Yeah, don’t think that I don’t understand. I do. That was one of the reasons why I was determined to keep our relationship non-physical until we made it home, but that cursed Yaki wasn’t going to get his hands on you, not while I was alive.”

  Kati had to smile. Mikal really was a sweetheart, she thought. And half-a-year was not forever, by a long shot. Besides, they still had time on this world; it would take at least another week to get to the temple where the beacon was. And how long would it take for their ride to come and fetch them, once Mikal had put in his request for pick-up?

  “I guess we better show our faces in Joely’s Alehouse after we finish the tea,” Kati said with a grin, searching the room with her eyes for the clothes she had kept from the laundry. “Otherwise everyone will thin
k were as insatiable as Lassa.”

  Mikal reached over to hug her.

  “Aren’t we?” he asked with feigned innocence, only to have her wriggle out of his hold.

  “You better watch it, bold Borhquan-Lamanian, or I will emulate Lassa and wear you out completely. Remember, I’ve been pretty deprived for some time.”

  She found her pile of clothes and tossed off the robe she had been wearing and began to get dressed, gifting Mikal with a saucy grin.

  He laughed at her while admiring her slim figure. Then he searched the room with his eyes, looking for his apparel. Kati found the pile before he did, grabbed it and tossed it to him, still grinning. He shook his head at her, caught the items and began to dress himself.

  *****

  Joely’s Alehouse was a busy place. It was bursting at the seams with locals and the only reason why Mikal and Kati were able to get seats was that Jocan had told Joely that he was expecting them to show, so Joely had got one of the serving girls to hold back two of his spare chairs for them. There was something else here that Kati had not seen on this world before: in one corner of the room was a tiny stage and a young lad was seated on a stool on it, playing a boxy stringed instrument and singing ballads.

  “Hey, cool, entertainment,” she said as soon as she spied him. “Not that anyone can hear him over the din,” she added regretfully.

  “If you like that sort of thing,” said Mikal, “you're going to love The Second City on Lamania. Every tavern employs a singer or a band; you almost can’t have a drinking establishment without music or some other kind of entertainment.”

  “But you’re not going to be able to show me,” Kati pointed out.

  “Nope, sweetling. You’re going to have to discover them for yourself.”

  “Where’s Yarm?” Kati asked, after she and Mikal had got their chairs and room had somehow been made for them at Jocan’s table.

  “He said that he was feeling a little under the weather and went back to our room to sleep,” said Jocan. “I’m hoping that it isn’t serious.”

  “It could be just the wear and tear of travel,” said Mikal. “We’ve been pushing the pace. Maybe we better take it a little easier from now on. Yarm’s not getting any younger.”

  “He’s not exactly ancient.” Jocan protested, “not like those old Tribal women in the Old Women’s Hut.”

  “He’s past middle age, and starting to feel the aches and pains of a lifetime on the road,” Mikal pointed out.

  “He told Jocan and me in the bath, tonight, that he thought that he would give up the travelling once he gets home from this trip,” Mikal added for Kati’s benefit.

  “He wants to teach me what he can, and have me learn the lessons he was taught as a young man,” Jocan said enthusiastically. “Then I can take over the travelling, while he stays home and, as he said, ‘keeps the home fires burning’.”

  “It seems that he is, what we on Lamania refer to as ‘a lover of his own sex’,” Mikal added.

  “Oh, you mean he’s gay,” Kati said. “I’d wondered about that. He has seemed kind of asexual to me.”

  “Gay. You’re talking your own language, Kati. I guess it’s a term to puzzle even a granda node. Not that it matters. But he did mention that he’d had a partner once, but this man had grown tired of waiting all the time for him to come home, and had hooked up with someone else. Now, the last time Yarm had been home that someone else had died, and Yarm had told his ex-partner that if he was interested in picking up from where they’d left off years ago, he would give up his travelling life after this trip.”

  “He said that when he and the partner had been together, they had talked about adopting children ‘cause they both liked to have a family,” Jocan continued the tale. “But the new man—the one that died—had had no interest in children so Yarm’s ex-partner had missed out on that. So Yarm said that if I wanted to be a part of their family, I was more than welcome. I nearly burst into tears to think that I’d have two fathers all of a sudden, when up ‘til now I never had any.”

  “Wow,” said Kati. “I had noticed that Yarm seemed to take a fatherly interest in you Jocan. Amazing, isn’t it the way life works?”

  Jocan looked a little wet at the corners of his eyes.

  “And it means that if I ever have children—other than Lassa’s twins, which are Chief Komak’s, really—they’ll have grandparents. I never imagined that.”

  They were interrupted by the serving girl who finally made it to their table with their mugs and a full pitcher of beer.

  “It’s so crazy here tonight that Joely’s selling all the beer in pitchers,” she explained. “It’s the only way we can keep up.” She shook her head. “We need another tavern in this village the way our folks like to drink. And what’s the point of having Luth singing his songs when nobody can hear him?”

  Yeah, thought Kati, what, indeed, was the point of that?

  *****

  The four ended up staying another two nights at Cara’s Inn.

  It turned out that Yarm had caught a minor bug of some kind and needed rest. Kati did not mind at all—it meant a couple of more nights spent with Mikal. Jocan set out to prove that he was a son worth having, and fetched and carried for Yarm, and nursed him diligently. When Mikal and Kati were not needed to sit with the patient, or to help with some nursing task that Jocan could not manage alone, they walked the two streets of the Sunlit Peak Village, or sat on the stone seats in the park, talking to the villagers.

  One afternoon Luth showed up in the park with his instrument, and played and sang, a hollowed out gourd at his feet to collect any coins that the listeners might be willing to part with. His music was not of professional quality, but it was very pleasant; better than Kati could have done herself, and she had been playing the guitar and singing for children for years. Luth’s ballads were nice and soft, if not particularly catchy, much better suited to the park than the raucous Alehouse where he had been drowned out by the noise. She complimented him before she and Mikal left, and dropped a couple of coppers into his gourd. He thanked her with a happy smile; the rest of his take for the day had been half-coppers.

  While Yarm was feeling quite sick, all four of them took their meals in the room that he and Jocan shared. That way he had company, and three friends persuading him to eat more than he likely would have eaten alone. This had been Jocan’s idea; every so often he would come up with a notion to try to speed Yarm’s recovery. Kati was somewhat surprised to see how much the youth was affected by Yarm’s illness. He was taking his role as the adopted son pretty seriously, she thought; there was an affectionate, caring side to him that was not always on display. So gamely, she and Mikal fetched from Cara’s kitchen the trays she prepared for their meals, and brought them to the sickroom where the lad separated the soups and sweet dishes, which Cara prepared especially to tempt the patient. At times Jocan actually spooned their contents into Yarm’s mouth.

  Fortunately, Yarm was a tough specimen and remained in a bad way only for one day. The following morning he had begun to recover visibly and by that evening he refused to eat in the room any more, claiming that he was developing claustrophobia from staying in the same room all the time, and they all repaired to the table Cara and Joely had set up in the lobby of the Inn since there was no actual restaurant on the premises. Their daughter, Cays, who did the work of the maid, was visibly pleased because this gave her a chance to clean up the patient’s bed and room, without disturbing him.

  “I think that I’ll be able to ride tomorrow,” Yarm said during supper.

  “Only if you’re certain,” Mikal told him, “and even if you are, we won’t try for an early start. I’ve looked at your map, and there are villages at regular intervals, from now on until we get to the old place with the temple that Kati and I are headed for. Which means that we don’t have to push ourselves quite so hard, and most nights we can sleep in Inns, maybe not ones as nice as this, but we’ll be under roofs, nevertheless. That ought to be better for ev
eryone’s health.”

  “I don’t want to slow you down,” said Yarm.

  “Not to worry about that,” Mikal replied with a laugh. “Right now the situation is such that although Kati and I are still anxious to get where we’re going, we’re also just as keen to not get there in any great rush. So whatever pace you can travel at, will suit us just fine.”

  “What’s going on?” Jocan asked suspiciously.

  Kati and Mikal looked at one another and laughed.

  “As soon as my home world’s Social Services gets hold of us, they’re going to separate us for a half-a-year,” Mikal said lightly, “thanks to Chief Komak forcing my hand about sleeping with Kati.”

  “You’re joking,” Jocan said, shaking his head. “I thought you came from a civilized place.”

  Mikal burst out laughing.

  “Well, Lamanians do have their peculiarities, like all humans,” he chortled. “We actually fell afoul of a rule that is supposed to be very civilized.”

  “It’s supposed to prevent the exploitation of naive outsider women—they call them Wilder Women—by Federation men,” Kati picked up the explanation. “It sounds to me that the idea is to show these women that they are not dependent on the men that bring them to Lamania, but are allowed to participate in Lamanian society on their own terms, regardless of the men. It’s actually a good policy, the more I think about it; it just happens to not suit our circumstances.”

  Yarm laughed.

  “Yeah, you’re not exactly my idea of a naive woman. But possibly the Lamanians won’t credit that without some kind of proof.”

  “They won’t credit it even with proof,” sighed Mikal. “The Social Services people can behave in a very rule-bound fashion, I’m afraid. In Lamania’s Second City, anyway, and that is where we’re going. I suppose there are reasons for their insistence on sticking to the rules—the Second City is a place of ferment, people from all parts of the Federation coming and going, and living there, some for a short time, others permanently.”