Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

“May we talk?” someone asked; Pel didn’t see who it was.

“Nope,” the guard said, smiling. “Sorry. No escape plans. And if any of you gets within five yards of a door, we’ll shoot you dead, no warnings.” He drew a blaster, then leaned back against the wall beside the door. “Good night!”

* * * *

Dazed, Ted looked out at the gathered prisoners.

This dream went on and on and it was so boring! Why hadn’t the pain in his head woken him up? He must be lying on the floor, he might have a concussion, and he had always thought he had a better imagination than this.

Why wouldn’t it stop?

Maybe he was dead, not dreaming, maybe he was dead and this was some antechamber of Hell.

But no, he didn’t believe in any of that, he hadn’t believed in it since he was eight, not really, maybe he never had.

He was dreaming.

He had slept and woken, he had eaten, he had been hit and burned and abused, and the dream still went on and on and didn’t end, and he really wished he would wake up.

He would need to talk to someone about this, he really would. He’d never seen a psychiatrist, never wanted to, but a dream like this might change his mind.

Maybe if he attacked one of the guards, he’d be shot, and that would wake him up…

Or maybe he’d die. Maybe he was really hurt from falling out of bed, maybe he’d had a heart attack, or a stroke.

He wouldn’t risk it.

But he wished he would wake up.

* * * *

Raven pursed his lips angrily.

How utterly foolish, to have fallen prisoner in some petty little raid like this!

It was clear to him now that this was no grand factional dispute, nor any great crusade against the Empire; instead this was some minor warlord’s action, an attempt to gather a little loot without drawing the Empire’s wrath. Emerald Princess would be reported lost, doubtless, but the loss ascribed to wind or weather, monsoon or monster. Even were pirates suspected, how could they know which or where?

And so here he was, Raven of Stormcrack Keep, about to be held for ransom, or sold to slavery, and there was naught he could do to prevent it.

Thus was his struggle to end, then?

Or might he yet win free? Might he draw the aid of whatever warlord was responsible, by promises of booty from Shadow’s conquered lands?

That was a thought to consider, most certainly.

First, though, to survive that long. Would that someone would spare him somewhat to eat!

* * * *

They hadn’t eaten, Pel realized, for at least a day and a half; poor Rachel was starving, her stomach hurting. “Breakfast soon,” he whispered in her ear, as she shifted on the bench beside him, trying unsuccessfully to get to sleep.

She whimpered.

They had dozed fitfully for hours, surrounded by others doing the same. Some of them snored, or at least breathed loudly and sometimes irregularly; some tossed and turned. At least once, someone had fallen off a bench with much commotion and noise.

The guards at the doors were replaced every four hours, as nearly as Pel could judge; after the first change they all wore the dark blue uniforms, rather than the drab grey of the pirates.

He wondered just where they all were, and who these people were, and what was really going on.

And he wondered what he was doing here, and what had really happened to Nancy. Was she truly dead?

She couldn’t be. He looked down at Rachel.

Nancy couldn’t be dead. Martin the navigator must have been wrong, somehow. The whole thing had to be a mistake.

Nancy couldn’t be dead.

He looked up, swallowing hard, his eyes wet.

The line of windows had been visible as a slightly lighter strip of darkness, sprinkled with stars; now, though, the stars seemed to be fading, the darkness lightening.

Dawn?

He hoped so, if only because of the promise of breakfast.

* * * *

Amy felt as if she had just gotten to sleep when the banging woke her. Someone was beating on a metal tray, making a great clanging racket.

“All right, you people,” a man shouted. “Up and at ‘em! Breakfast in five minutes!”

The struggle between hunger and fatigue raged for a long moment, but amid the general stirring and muttering, bringing home the realization that they weren’t going to let her sleep anyway, hunger won out. She got to her feet, stretched, and yawned.

The inside of her mouth felt gummy, and she was sure her breath stank, but that wasn’t anybody’s business but her own any more. Stan had been given to rude remarks about it, back when she was married.

He had also been given to rude remarks whenever she put on weight, and she’d noticed that her breath always smelled worse when she was dieting, which had created a no-win situation-one of many in her relationship with him, even before the whole thing went down the tubes once and for all.

Stan wasn’t here, though. He wasn’t even in this universe , if all this was really happening.

If it was really happening, she repeated to herself. Ted’s dream theory did have a certain undeniable appeal to it.

But she couldn’t imagine herself dreaming about bad breath, and there was Ted with his head bandaged up, and the echoes from the blank walls, the rattle of the metal benches, all the solid little details made the dream theory seem pretty untenable. She couldn’t manage to believe it, though she rather wished she could.

Who was it that could believe six impossible things before breakfast?

Well, it wasn’t her; she seemed to be stuck with a choice of believing one or the other of two, either this was all real or it was all a dream, and she was having trouble accepting either of the available options.

But there just wasn’t any third choice.

“Breakfast! This way to breakfast!” shouted a man at one of the doors. People were beginning to line up there, Amy saw; she tugged her maroon stewardess skirt into place, hung her battered purse on her shoulder, looked around and saw she had nothing else to pick up, and then ambled in that general direction.

The door opened into a short, gloomy, gray-walled passageway. At the far end of the passage the prisoners found themselves in a cafeteria that closely resembled the holding room they had slept in, save that there were tables between the rows of benches, and a serving counter across one end. The line that had formed in the holding room and moved down the little corridor now swerved directly to the serving area without breaking formation; grey metal trays were stacked at the near end, waiting.

Back in Town, on Psi Cass the Deuce, they’d all had to sit and wait, and then had gotten fed-but it had gone much more quickly, and they’d been treated more considerately, and the place, drab as it was, hadn’t smelled or looked anywhere near as unpleasant.

Amy’s stomach pinched at her as she waited her turn; she could smell coffee, could smell food. The contrast with the odor of the waiting room was drastic indeed.

It had been much too long since she had eaten. It had been much too long since any of them had eaten; she could hear stomachs growling.

The one good thing about that was that it meant the line moved quickly; each person was eager to fill his or her tray and get it to a table. No one was kept waiting a moment longer than necessary.

Breakfast was biscuits and sausage and corn flakes and coffee-no eggs, no orange juice, no fruit. The biscuits were fluffy, but almost tasteless; the sausage plainly contained as much filler as meat; and the coffee was thin, watery, and cool.

The corn flakes were fine, except that there was no milk or sugar or fruit to put on them.

It had been long enough since her last meal that Amy ate everything on her plate anyway, and went back for seconds on the biscuit and sausage.