Morning and night she threw in her hook and line and was rewarded by wriggling fish. Some she had learned to throw back, for their flesh was either inedibly tough or tasteless. The small yellowbacks were the sweetest and seemed to throw themselves with selfless sacrifice on her hook.
The bronzed young man had not stranded her without equipment. When dawn had come on that bleak first day, she had discovered hatchet, knife, hooks, line, net, emergency rations in vacuum pack, and an illustrated pamphlet on the resources of the ubiquitous polly tree. She had cast that contemptuously to one side until boredom set in three days later.
For someone who had been as active as Killashandra, enforced idleness was almost a crippling punishment. To pass the time she had retrieved the pamphlet and read it through, then decided to see if she could make something out of this so-universal plant. She had already noticed that many of the tree’s multiple trunks had had satellite trunks removed at an early age. Her manual said that these were cut for the tender heart or the soft pith. both nutritious. Was the locals’ interference with “nature” one of the reasons for their discipline by the mainland?
And how far away was the mainland? She couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how long she had been unconscious. More than a day, at the least. She wished she’d studied the geography of Optheria more closely, for she couldn’t even guess at the location of her island on the planet’s surface. In her first days, she had prowled the island’s perimeter ceaselessly, for there were neighboring ones tantalizingly visible even though they were also small. Hers at least boasted a bubbling spring that flowed from its rocky source mid-island into the lagoon. And, if she could trust her judgment, hers was the largest in the cluster.
Before she immersed herself in polly tree studies, she had swum to the nearest of the group. Plenty of polly trees but no water. And beyond that islet more were scattered in careless abundance across the clear aquamarine sea – some large enough to support only a single tuft of polly trees so she had returned to her island, the best of a bad lot.
Working with her hands and for a varied diet did not prevent Killashandra from endless speculations about her situation. She had been kidnapped for a purpose – to force an investigation of Optherian restrictions. The FSP, much less her own Guild, would not tolerate such an outrage. If – and here her brief knowledge of the Optherians let her down – the Optherians admitted to FSP and the Heptite Guild that she had been abducted.
Still, the Elders needed an operative organ by the time of the Summer Festival, and to do that they needed a crystal singer to make the installation. The crystal they had, but surely they wouldn’t attempt such a delicate job. Well, it wasn’t that delicate, Killashandra knew, but the crystal would prove difficult if not handled properly. So, grant that the Optherians would be searching for her, would they think to search on the islands? Would the islanders be in contact with the Ruling Elders about the terms of her ransom? If so, would the extortion be successful?
Probably not, Killashandra thought, until the Ruling Elders had abandoned any hope of finding her within the next two months. Of course, that could throw their timetable off. It would take nearly three months for a replacement Guild Member to reach Optheria, even if the Optherians admitted the loss of the one already dispatched to them. On her own part, she’d be stark raving lunatic if she was left on this island for several months. And if the Optherians acquired another singer to install their wretched white crystal, that didn’t mean that they’d continue their efforts to find her!
After much deliberation, silent as well as vocal, Killashandra decided that the smart thing to do was rescue herself. Her kidnapper had overlooked a few small points, the most important of which was that she happened to be a very strong swimmer with lungs well developed from singing opera and crystal. Physically, too, she was immensely fit. She could swim from island to island until she found one that was inhabited, one from which she could be rescued. Unless all the islanders were in on this insidious kidnap scheme.
The hazards that she must overcome were only two: lack of water was one, but she felt that she could refresh herself sufficiently from the polly fruit – the tree flourished on all the islands she could see. Too, the larger denizens of the sea constituted a real problem. Some of them, cruising beyond her lagoons, looked deadly dangerous, with their pointed, toothy snouts, or their many wire-fine tentacles which seemed to have an affinity for the same yellowback fish she favored. She had spent enough time watching them to know that they generally fed at dawn and dusk. So, if she made her crossings at midday, when they were dormant, she thought she had a fairly good chance to avoid adding herself to their diet.
Three weeks on the island was long enough! She had a few of the emergency food packets left and they would be unharmed by a long immersion.
Following the directions in her useful little pamphlet, she had made several sturdy lengths of rope from the coarse fiber of the polly tree, with which she could secure the hatchet to her body. Her original clothing was down to shreds which she sewed with lengths of the tough stem into a halter and a loin cloth. By then she had become as tan as her abductor and was forced to use some of the oilier fishes to grease her hide for protection. She would coat herself thoroughly before each leg of her swim to freedom.
Having made her decision, Killashandra implemented it the next day at noon, swimming to her first destination in less than an hour’s time. She rested while she made up her mind which island of the seven visible would be next. She found herself constantly returning to the one farthest north. Well, once there, none were far away if she decided she’d overshot the right line to take.
She made that island by mid-afternoon, dragging herself up onto the narrow shore, exhausted. Then she discovered some of the weak points in her plans: there weren’t many ripe polly fruits on the island; and fish wouldn’t bite on her hook that evening.
Because she found too few fruits, she was exceedingly thirsty by morning and chose her next point of call by the polly population. The channel between was dark blue, deep water, and twice she was startled by dimly seen large shapes moving beneath her. Both times she floated face down, arms and legs motionless, until the danger summoned by her flailing limbs had passed.
She rested on this fourth island all the rest of that day and the next one, replenishing her dehydrated tissues and trying to catch an oily fish. To her dismay, she could only attract the yellowbacks. Eventually she had enough of them to provide some oil for her raddled skin.
On her voyage to the fifth island, a fair sized one, she had her worst fright. Despite the sun’s being at high noon, she found herself in the midst of a school of tiny fish that was being harvested by several mammoth denizens. At one point she was briefly stranded on a creature’s flank when it unexpectedly surfaced under her. She didn’t know whether to swim furiously for the distant shore or lie motionless, but before she could make a decision the immense body swirled its torpedo tail in the air and sounded. Killashandra was pulled under by the fierce turbulence of its passage, and she swallowed a good deal more water than she liked before she returned to the surface.
As soon as she clambered up on the fifth island, she headed for the nearest ripe polly fruit only to discover that she had lost her hatchet, the last packets of emergency rations, and the fish hooks. She slaked her thirst on overripe polly fruit, ignoring the rank taste for the sake of the moisture. That need attended to, she gathered up enough dry fronds to cushion her body, and went to sleep.
She woke sometime in the night, thirsting for more of the overripe fruit which she hunted in the dark, cursing as she tripped over debris and fell into bushes, staggering about in her search until she had to admit to herself that her behavior was somewhat bizarre. About the same time she realized that she was drunk! The innocent polly fruit had been fermenting! Given her Ballybran adaptation, the state could only have been allowed by her weakened constitution. Giggling, she lay down on the ground, impervious to sand or discomfort and fell into a second drunken sleep.