Out of This World

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  A front lawn of neatly-trimmed grass extended out from the house and around the gravel landing area. On all sides of the lawn green corn plants marched in neat rows across the reddish earth.

  The idea of escape struck her. Her feet were free; the man had made no move to stop her when she hopped off the gravel, and now she was a good five feet away, out of his reach. He didn’t look like much of an athlete. If she were to turn and start running, she thought she could probably outrace him and outlast him.

  But where would she go?

  She couldn’t see any human-made structure except the house and aircar, anywhere. She was naked, her hands chained, on an unknown and hostile planet. There weren’t any lawyers or cops to help her this time, no friends or family she could hope to contact.

  Where could she go?

  Reluctantly, she turned and followed her captor toward the house.

  * * * *

  When Raven was first informed of his duties he balked. The rightful lord of Stormcrack Keep, kept to play the stud for some fat old mare?

  “Why else would someone pay five hundred crowns for you?” asked his new mistress’ major domo, who had bid for and bought him on the woman’s behalf.

  Raven had no quick reply.

  In truth, he had no reply at all; he knew too little of his new home to make any guesses.

  And upon further consideration, he decided that perhaps this was for the best. A woman who could afford such luxuries must needs be powerful indeed, in the local hierarchy, and what better way to ingratiate himself than by such services as she was demanding?

  Nor was there any great hurry; she had ordered that he be fed and pampered for a day or two, that he might be up to the task.

  He had not as yet seen her; her agents had collected him after the auction. As he ate and drank he found himself imagining what she might look like. A wealthy woman, they told him, and as his purchase demonstrated; she was presumably not of noble birth, for these people, degenerate barbarians that they were, put no store by ancestry, but he would make allowances for that. And no great beauty, surely, else she would have no need to buy a man’s services. Still, doubtless she would have her virtues.

  Doubtless.

  * * * *

  The food was boring, with a peculiar off taste to it, but it was nourishing. Pel found the work boring, as well, and tiring, but not particularly difficult—it called for endurance, but no great strength or skill. No one abused him; the overseer checked in maybe once an hour, billy club in hand, and then went on to inspect the other work gangs. There were no whips, no groaning wheels, no one dying of exhaustion, none of the clichés of slave- worked mines that Hollywood had taught him. The men worked hard, but were a long way from killing themselves, and as long as the broken rock came out of the shaft on schedule nobody bothered them.

  In fact, the workers exchanged bitter jokes about their situation, and laughed at them.

  Pel didn’t laugh with them. He was gradually coming out of his funk, but was not yet ready to laugh at anything.

  There was a sort of dull comfort in the steady work, in pushing the shovel under the rock, lifting it, and dumping it into the cart. It kept his body busy, kept him moving, so that he couldn’t sink completely into apathy and despair, but it still left him free to think if he wanted to.

  And it tired him, so that when he was off-shift he slept soundly.

  That twelve hours on, twelve hours off was deceptive, he discovered. His gang, along with the rest of Blue Shift, was only permitted to leave their shaft when their replacements from Red Shift had arrived and actually begun working. Walking back out to the refectory and dormitory, being checked out by the clerk at the shaft mouth, finding a seat in the refectory—that took half an hour or more. The refectory crew wasn’t in any great hurry, either. And the meals were fairly leisurely; no one rushed.

  On top of that, if he wanted his sweat-soaked pants laundered, he had to wash them himself, in the lavatory sinks—and most of the men did just that, because odors lingered in the unventilated shafts. Each slave had been issued one pair of pants, and one pair of wool-lined boots—no socks. Not much could be done about the smell from the boots, but washing the pants out each night was a social necessity. Lines for drying ran the length of the dormitory halls, and every night a pair of damp trousers hung over each bed; if a man was too exhausted to wash them, at the very least he hung them to air out. Aside from the smell, moisture seethed constantly in the cool night air; anything left damp with sweat and not hung out was an invitation to mildew and rot.

  With the walk to and from his work area, the leisurely meals, the washing up, and the lines everywhere, Pel found he only had about nine hours to sleep, and no time left at all for any sort of diversion. Nine hours was not excessive at all, given the unaccustomed heavy labor.

  He could speak to the other slaves, of course—on the job, at the table, in the lavatories and dorms. At first, though, he didn’t. They were strangers, not even from his world, and he was still too caught up in his losses.

  The men around him accepted that; nobody bothered him. Occasionally someone would try to include him in a discussion, but nobody forced it, nobody pressured him.

  But he gradually came out of his funk, and by the third day he was thinking again, thinking about just one thing, the one thing that any storybook hero, or any sane man, would think about.

  Escape.

  * * * *

  As Amy and the black-haired man approached the house the front door opened, and a woman appeared. She was short and dumpy, in her forties, her dull brown hair tied back. A shapeless brown floral-print dress covered her from throat to ankle.

  She looked critically at Amy.

  Amy was reminded anew that she, herself, wasn’t wearing anything at all. Even an ugly brown dress would have been an improvement.

  She hadn’t exactly had a choice, though, and at least the weather was reasonably warm. Walking around naked in snow would have been much worse.

  “I see you got one,” the woman said.

  The man didn’t bother to reply.

  “What’d she cost?”

  “Five hundred,” the man growled, pushing past the woman into the house.

  Amy was mincing across the gravel to the stoop by then, trying to keep her feet intact. The woman watched with interest. “That’s not too bad, five hundred,” she said. “And she’s got nice hair, it looks like—hard to be sure, the mess it’s in.”

  The man growled something Amy couldn’t make out as she gratefully stepped up onto the smooth concrete and found herself face to face with the woman in brown. She hesitated, looking down slightly at this person, apparently the mistress of the house.

  “Go on,” the woman said, gesturing. “Get inside.”

  Amy got inside.

  The door opened into a large, open room; the floor was gray concrete spread with bright rag rugs, the walls papered in a wine-red pattern of stripes and blossoms on primrose. Most of the furniture used black iron frames to support upholstered seats and backs, the iron seemingly in rough imitation of early American woodwork.

  The man who had bought her stood by an open door; beyond, Amy could see a cheerful bedroom. “Come here,” he ordered.

  Amy glanced at the woman.

  “Guess I’ll go take a walk,” the woman in brown said. She stepped out the door, closing it behind her.

  “Come here, bitch, if you want those cuffs off,” the man called.

  Amy hesitated.

  Wasn’t it about time for the space cavalry to come charging over the hill? Hadn’t Prossie done anything? Couldn’t the Empire find her?

  The memory of Stan was far clearer than she wanted, just now. This man didn’t look anything like him, but something in his voice had the same ugly edge Stan had developed.

  “Get the fuck over here, bitch!”

  Reluctantly, Amy crossed the room, stumbling over the upturned edge of one of the rugs. The man stepped back into the bedroom as she approached, and to on
e side.

  “On the bed,” he ordered. “On your knees.”

  “Why?” Amy demanded, her throat dry.

  “Why do you think?” he retorted. “If I just wanted someone to do housework, I could’ve gotten someone cheaper than you—a kid or somebody’s grandmother. I couldn’t afford that black-haired one, but you’ll do.”

  “You’re planning...” She swallowed, moistening her throat, and tried again. “Planning to rape me?”

  “What the hell else did I buy you for?”

  The woman was outside somewhere; as far as Amy knew, if she could overpower this one man, she would be safe, at least for the moment. Amy considered kicking him in the crotch, but he was off to the side, the angle was wrong—he could dodge. And she was still manacled, her hands behind her back, which would throw her balance off.

  She didn’t have any weapons, but neither did her captor, so far as she could see.

  She was still trying to think of something when his patience ran out and he grabbed for her arm, saying, “Get over there!”

  She dodged, turned, and ran, with no plan at all except to get away.

  With a growl, he ran after her.

  She was turning, trying to get her hand on the doorhandle, when he caught up with her and punched her in the belly.

  The air rushed out of her lungs, and she felt a sudden constriction, a cramping of her diaphragm, as if she were about to vomit. She doubled over, and his other hand came down on the back of her head, knocking her off-balance. She fell to her knees, slamming her right knee hard against the concrete floor; before she could regain her balance he drove both hands, clenched together, against the back of her head, knocking her forward. She caught herself on one shoulder just before her face hit one of the rugs, but then the man’s booted foot came down on the back of her neck and pressed her cheek down against the coiled fabric.

  “Stupid bitch,” he growled. “Where the hell would you have gone, bare-ass naked and with your hands chained?” Holding her down with his foot, he unfastened his belt. “Get it through your head, I own you. You do what I tell you, or I’ll beat the shit out of you. Give me too much trouble and I’ll kill you—and don’t think it’ll do me any harm, either; on this planet, nobody thinks twice about killing a slave. I’ve done it once already.” He fumbled at the buttons on his fly; from the corner of her eye Amy could see his fingers working.

  This was the time for a rescue, all right. This was it, the last minute, when help was supposed to come.

  It didn’t.

  He bent over her and grabbed her manacled hands, pushed them up behind her back with one hand while the other stroked slowly down her side and across her buttocks. She squirmed, trying to pull away, and he shoved the cuffs viciously.

  She had her breath back now, but if she struggled she knew it wouldn’t help any.

  She screamed.

  That didn’t help, either. He laughed, a harsh, nervous laugh, as he knelt behind her.

  And rescue didn’t come.

  * * * *

  Raven’s first impression was of an infinite field of lace and fine fabric beneath a mountain of flesh. As the door closed behind him he thought that this was surely some mistake, that the bed already held two or three people; was he expected to service them all?

  Then she lifted her head from the pillows and beckoned to him, and even in the dim orange light, even among the myriad pillows and cushions and hangings, her shape became clear, the huge masses of her belly and breasts and thighs.

  The partial erection beneath his robe, prompted by anticipation and imagination, vanished.

  “Come here,” she said, in a thin soprano. “Come and sit beside me.” She patted the bed, her fingers like thick pale sausages.

  Reluctantly, he obeyed.

  The odor of perfume and her own scent, horribly sweet and cloying, reached him even before he sat down beside her. He did not look at her.

  “Take off that silly robe,” she told him.

  He stood and slowly removed the robe, letting it fall to the floor.

  He had not considered what would happen if he were unable to perform. It was simply not a question that had ever arisen for him before. Refusal, yes, he had thought about that—and he had decided against it. Inability had never occurred to him. He turned to face her, trying to think of other women, beautiful women.

  A little plumpness was a good thing in a woman, certainly, a little flesh on the bones, and he wouldn’t have wanted one of those gaunt, bony scarecrows he had seen betimes, with hipbones that would grind against you and ribs that would dig into your own, but this great pile of powdered flesh scarcely looked human at all, the skin was coarse and pasty, with none of the smooth resilience of a woman’s...

  Yet she was a woman, and he could smell her musk. She was waiting for him, she held the power of life and death over him. However repulsive she might be, she wanted him to make love to her.

  And however repulsive she might be, he would have to try.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  There was only one way out of the mine, so far as Pel could determine. That was through the building complex that included the dormitory and refectory, as well as a great deal of industrial equipment he couldn’t identify—machines that sorted and processed the rocks that were sent up in the carts. Pel never got a clear look at most of that area; he had no business there. He saw glimpses when he came up out of the shaft; he heard the distant rumblings as he ate or slept.

  He had come in that way, but the airbus had landed in an enclosed courtyard, at the bottom of an airshaft somewhere—he would not go out by that route.

  There were no side-shafts, no back way out of the mine itself, so far as he could determine.

  Where he emerged from the shaft each day the cart tracks ran straight ahead, through a large black pair of swinging doors; he and the other workers always turned right into a gray-painted corridor that ran between the refectory and kitchen on the left, the dormitory and lavatory on the right.

  He figured that the ore must eventually leave the complex somehow, and probably not by air, but trying to follow it seemed far too risky; judging by the sound, he was as likely to find himself in a crusher or a furnace as outside.

  So any escape route would have to be from the living areas, rather than the work areas.

  That didn’t look very promising, either. The dormitory’s light and air came from a handful of small clerestory windows—this planet’s architectural preferences, and in fact those of the entire Galactic Empire, from what Pel had seen, seemed to run to clerestories. Getting up to them would not be easy, and since he could not look out, he had no idea what lay beyond.

  He tried watching for shadows when the sun shone—or rather, whatever star served as the sun here; the light was a little more orange than seemed natural. He determined that a chimney or similar structure stood near one window, but beyond that he could learn nothing that way.

  The adjoining lavatory was arranged similarly, and the single clerestory there was frosted and barred. A filthy skylight added a little more light, but no more hope for his escape.

  The refectory had a row of tall, narrow, heavily-barred windows looking out on a small, paved courtyard—little more than an overgrown airshaft, really. It did have a gate into a passageway at one end, but Pel was unable to see where that gate led.

  That left the kitchen, and ordinary workers were not allowed in there. The slaves were not heavily guarded, in general, but at meals the two doors to the kitchen were watched, a billyclub-wielding overseer standing by each.

  Food had to come in somewhere, Pel decided, and where it came in, he could go out.

  Through the kitchens, then—that was the way to go. That was where he would find a way out of the mine complex.

  Even though he was still somewhat dazed with grief and the confusion of his situation, he was rather proud of working this out. This was the sort of thing that a storybook hero would do, Horatio Hornblower or Captain Kirk or whoever—work out the
best way to escape, plan it all out logically and then carry it through.

  In a movie or a novel, of course, this whole episode, being captured by pirates and sold into slavery and all the rest of it, this would all just be a minor episode on the way to the big final confrontation with Shadow, the climactic battle that would save the world—but screw all that, Pel told himself, he would settle for just getting home safely. Let someone else worry about Shadow, or about the Galactic Empire, or about Earth itself; he had his own problems.

  A World War II POW wouldn’t have worried about assassinating Hitler (though he might dream of it); he’d worry about getting home alive.

  And that was what Pel was doing. Take it one step at a time, he told himself, and the first step would be to get out of the mine complex by way of the kitchens.

  Of course, he would still be stranded on a hostile planet, with nothing but his pants and the boots on his feet and whatever he could grab on the way out. He would still need to find Rachel somehow—but he might be able to bring back help to rescue her if he could just get off the planet. Besides, if he was ever to get home to Earth, he would need to find some way to get back to Base One.

  Stowing away, perhaps, or stealing a ship—though he realized he had no idea how to navigate a spaceship.

  Stowing away, then. He would make his break through the kitchen, hide wherever he could, and find his way to the nearest spaceport. That was the only possible route. If he found any friendly faces along the way, he would see about finding and freeing Rachel.

  No storybook hero could do any better, he was sure.

  He arrived at these conclusions without ever mentioning a word about escape to any of his fellow slaves; it was only after he had reached this point in his plans that he decided to risk a few whispered questions while working.

  Jack, the unofficial leader of his work gang, picked up on his hints immediately. He put down the pick he had been swinging.