Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

The pirate reached down with one hand and roughly yanked Benton upright. She didn’t resist; the fight had gone out of her with her breath. She was unable to walk at first, and the pirate dragged her by one arm until, halfway to the door, she got her feet under her.

Martin and Gorney had been unable to release Martin from the other pirate’s stranglehold; now, though, the grip was suddenly released, and Martin almost fell.

“Come on,” the pirate said.

There was no further resistance; the entire party allowed itself to be herded out of the room, and on out of the ship.

* * * *

The holding facility had rough concrete walls and rows of steel benches, but not everybody used them. Some stood along the walls, some crouched on the floor. The room was cavernous, big enough that even without crowding everyone together the entire party of dozens occupied less than a fourth of it. Light came from a row of clerestory windows, far overhead. A narrow corridor at one end led to toilet facilities. The place was dusty and cool and had a faint unpleasant odor to it, compounded of mildew, sweat, urine, and other, less defineable traces.

Pel looked over the crowd.

In addition to the handful he had been with aboard the pirate ship, he spotted Lieutenant Drummond and Captain Cahn, Raven, Valadrakul, Elani, Squire Donald and Stoddard, Prossie Thorpe, Smith, Lampert, Soorn, and Mervyn. Ted Deranian, his head a mass of bandages, sat dazed in one corner, and Pel was relieved to see him alive. Most of the passengers and crew of Emerald Princess were present, but Pel had never become familiar enough with them to put names to them all or say if any were missing.

He looked back to Prossie Thorpe. She was alive-that was promising. She was out of uniform, now wearing a ragged bathrobe rather than the borrowed dress she had been in before; maybe their captors didn’t know she was a telepath. Maybe, even now, she was relaying messages to the Galactic Empire.

He didn’t want to draw attention to her. He returned to scanning the crowd, looking for familiar faces.

Nancy was not there. Neither was Peabody, nor Lieutenant Godwin, nor Alella.

There were three doorways, with pirates guarding each of them; each pirate held a blaster. Susan, Pel noticed, was standing with her back to the wall once again, stiff and tense, trying to watch all three guards at once.

“Now what?” someone whispered.

“Shut up,” one of the pirates called-not angrily, just giving a necessary order. The hand holding the blaster lifted somewhat.

Silence descended, broken by shuffling feet and rustling clothes. Someone coughed.

One of the doors opened, and three more of the grey-clad pirates entered, accompanied by a tall man in blue coveralls. The four of them strode into the room with an air of calm and certain purpose, then stopped.

“All right, everyone hold still,” one of the pirates bellowed. “Sit down, and hold still.”

With varying degrees of reluctance, those who were standing obeyed. Susan’s descent was so quick Pel thought at first she had fallen.

When everyone was seated, the man in blue stretched out a finger and began counting heads. Pel could see his lips moving; he wasn’t sure if he could hear muttered numbers or not.

“Forty-three,” the man announced.

“You missed one,” the smallest of the accompanying pirates said. “I counted myself. Did you see the little girl, there?”

Rachel raised her head from Pel’s lap and blinked.

“You’re right,” the man in blue said. “Missed her. Forty-four, then, and the dead midget. Forty-two healthy adults at fifty crowns each, and half each for the kid and the one with his head shot up. That’s twenty-one fifty, plus twenty for the freak, makes twenty-one seventy.”

“What, half for the kid and the dummy?” the small pirate protested. “Come on! He’s just got his hair burned off, he’s not hurt bad! And she’s older than she looks!”

The man in blue shook his head. “She’s not twelve,” he said. “She’s not even eight. Just take a look at her. Hell, ask her!”

“I’m six,” Rachel volunteered.

“There, see?”

“All right,” the pirate conceded, “but the one with the bandage…”

The man in blue sighed. “Oh, hell, it’s not worth the argument. Twenty-one ninety.”

“Ninety- five .”

“Right, ninety-five.”

One of the other pirates handed him a clipboard and a pen-Pel noticed they looked much like the same implements back on Earth. The man in blue filled out a few lines, then signed at the bottom, tore off the sheet, and handed it to the small pirate. He smiled, folded it, and tucked it away in an inside pocket.

All the pirates were smiling, in fact-not just the four in the central party, but the three at the doors as well.

Then the party of five turned and marched back out, leaving the captives where they were.

“What the hell was that about?” Pel asked, half to himself, before he remembered that the guards preferred silence.

“Prize money,” the nearest guard replied, smiling. “That chit’s sixty crowns for every man on the ship-double shares for the officers, and a bonus for the captain.”

“Sixty-five, I make it,” one of the other guards called.

“Whatever,” the first replied, grinning. “Enough to get good and drunk. And that’s just on these-prize court hasn’t even looked at the ship yet!”

“Shut up, both of you,” the third guard snapped.

They shut up, and Pel sat, thinking. This was the first time any of the pirates had deigned to answer any questions at all, and he rather hoped it was the beginning of a trend.

Prize money-he knew about prize money, more or less, from the novels he had read. It was a method of rewarding ships’ crews for capturing enemy vessels in wartime, by buying their captures from them. It had been dropped over a century ago back on Earth, and with good reason. The whole system struck Pel as a really barbaric idea. It made the crews greedy, made them more interested in catching enemy merchant shipping off-guard than in winning battles.

And even at its worst, back on Earth, he thought it had only been applied to ships and cargo, not to people .

Why would anyone pay prize money for people?

He could think of a few possibilities, and he didn’t like any of them very much. The only good one was also the least likely-that it was just a humanitarian gesture, a way of convincing the pirates to deliver prisoners alive, rather than dead.

Somehow, Pel couldn’t imagine any government making such a gesture.

Of course, that assumed that they were dealing with a government here. If they were, then perhaps “pirates” wasn’t the right term for their captors at all; “privateers” might be more accurate, or perhaps they were actually part of the navy-or space force, or whatever the correct term was-of this particular world. Or country, if the government in question didn’t run the entire planet.

One of the doors opened, and half a dozen men in dark blue uniforms ambled in. Most of the prisoners watched intently.

“Okay, boys,” one of them called. “You can go.”

Mervyn got to his feet, and the man in blue called, “Not you, stupid.”

Mervyn sat down again, as the three grey-clad guards, grinning and slapping one another on the back, jogged out of the room. The newcomers split into pairs, and took up posts at the three doors.

“You people might as well settle in,” one of them called. “You’re staying here tonight, and you’ll go out in the morning, around nine, I think.” He pulled a watch from his pocket and glanced at it. “That’s fourteen hours. We’ll get you in some breakfast before that, I guess, but for now, you might as well sleep.”