Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

They were going to kill him. They were going to kill everybody. He was going to die. Maybe he was already dead. Maybe this was Hell, this Galactic Empire, not part of any living reality at all.

Maybe he was mad.

Maybe he was dreaming-but no. That was Ted’s theory, and he had seen what happened to Ted. Besides, that was the way to false hope, because every dreamer must wake eventually.

Pel knew he was not going to wake up.

* * * *

This mass ablution was distasteful, but Raven had acquiesced, had taken off his garments and placed them neatly in one of the odd little boxes provided. He had stepped into the water chamber, and had allowed the water to wash over him. He was not yet ready to draw attention to himself, beyond the comments already made upon his attire.

When the portcullis fell, though, he cursed his own foolishness in playing along this far.

Now, with his clothes gone, what was to mark him apart from the common mass of humanity? How was he to assert his identity?

True, the clothes would not have been proof, for the veriest madman might contrive himself the appropriate garb to support his tales, but they were all he had, save his own words.

Now, he had only his tongue and his wits.

Further, this locking away seemed a sign that the lordling that had captured them was done with them, and was now consigning them to whatever fate awaited them.

Slavery, most likely-a sorry life tilling the soil somewhere, back bent to the hoe and burnt by the sun.

Cold anger grew in his chest as warm water spilled down his side. Raven of Stormcrack Keep, a mere tender of vegetables?

Not so long as breath remained in him!

* * * *

Amy stared at the steel door. After an initial yip of surprise she hadn’t bothered to shout or scream or protest; some of the other women, though, were not so resigned. Three of the passengers from Emerald Princess were pounding on the metal with their bare wet hands, calling out until the shower room echoed deafeningly.

Slaves, Amy thought, they were going to be slaves. Bill Mervyn was right. That was why the door had dropped, she was certain-buyers would want to see what they were getting. No fancy packaging, no clothes. The showers were genuine enough, because the slavers wanted their merchandise clean, but they also wanted them naked, and how else could that be accomplished without argument?

She looked down at Rachel, who was looking up at her in silent puzzlement.

“It’s okay, honey,” she said. “They don’t want us going back that way, that’s all. They aren’t going to hurt us.”

At least, she thought, not yet. Slavers wouldn’t be eager to damage the merchandise.

But the new owners…

The new owners could be anybody and anything. Sadists, perverts-or just people looking for cheap labor.

If she were lucky, whoever bought her would just want cheap labor.

“All right, ladies,” the matron called. “Out this way, when you’re done washing.”

Amy turned and found that the drab grey door at the far end of the shower room, the door that had looked so much like access to a broom closet or furnace room that nobody had consciously noticed it at all, was now open. The matron was standing there, her billy club in her hand, her blue uniform starting to sag and darken with the moisture in the air.

Amy managed a smile as she told Rachel, “Come on; we might as well get on with it.”

“What about our clothes?” someone shouted; other voices chimed in.

Amy, Rachel, and Susan didn’t bother shouting, but they heard the matron’s explanation. “We’ll have them waiting when you’re dried off. This way, please.”

The women from Earth exchanged glances. They knew better. They would not be getting their clothes back-at least, not for some time yet. Amy wondered if Rachel knew, too.

Susan’s purse was not in sight, and Amy had no idea what her attorney had done with it.

* * * *

Pel toweled himself off quickly, though he had never gotten all that wet; then he stood and waited.

This was no dream, no fairy tale. He wasn’t going to wake up back home. This shower room wasn’t going to melt away like morning mist. He wasn’t going to get out of here by wishing. He couldn’t get back to his own world that easily.

This was real life, and real life was never that simple, there were never any ruby slippers.

In the stories everything came out right in the end. In the stories someone would rescue them, Nancy would still be alive, it would all be a mistake.

This was no story.

Someone might rescue them. It did happen. There were possibilities. There was Prossie Thorpe-or at least, there had been Prossie Thorpe, he had seen her in the waiting room, maybe even in the dining hall, but she might be dead by now. Death only took an instant.

And there might be some way to save himself. The hero of a story would do that, he wouldn’t wait to be rescued. In stories there was always a way out.

But in real life, sometimes there was and sometimes there wasn’t. Sometimes the hostages were rescued; sometimes they died. Sometimes the innocent were saved; sometimes they were slaughtered.

Real life was never as tidy as the stories.

“You done?” one of the guards asked.

He nodded.

“Toss me the towel, then, and I’ll see if we’re ready for you.”

Pel obeyed, and stood naked and waiting while the other men, seeing their protests did no good, finished drying themselves and stood chatting uneasily among themselves.

There were three guards, each with a baton- no blasters, no blades. It occurred to Pel that the thirty or so prisoners could easily overpower them. In the stories, the hero would organize them and they’d do it, they’d overpower the guards- but then what?

Thirty men, naked and unarmed, on a hostile planet, with no idea where they were-what could they do?

In the stories they’d find a way, but this was no story.

Three guards were plenty.

A loud click was audible over the general background noise; Pel turned to see that the door opposite the shower room, a door that had been locked, was now open. One of the three blue- clad men stood beside it, baton at ready.

“Okay, one at a time,” he called. “You!” He pointed at Pel. “You ready? You first.”

Slowly and deliberately, Pel crossed the room.

This was it; he was about to die.

This was the last minute, when the rescuers would burst in with blasters ready-in the stories.

In real life, it was when the victims died like sheep.

Would it be a bullet? A shot from a blaster? Would they cut his throat, butcher him like an animal?

He didn’t know, and wasn’t really sure he cared. He stepped through the door.

Two men were waiting for him in the corridor.

“Hands behind your back,” one of them ordered, as the other grasped his upper left arm. Pel obeyed, and cuffs were slapped on.

He didn’t get a good look at them, and couldn’t turn his head far enough to see them once they were in place, but he could tell from the feel that these were not the slim steel bands used by modern police; they were wider and heavier than that, like old- fashioned manacles.

He considered that dispassionately. Would he be blindfolded, next? Posed against a wall for a firing squad, perhaps? Led up the steps of a gallows?

The guard who had cuffed him took his right arm, the other still held his left. He was led down the corridor and through another door.

As the door opened Pel blinked, and tried to stop, but the pressure on his arms forced him onward. Suddenly horribly aware of his nakedness, he struggled, but to no avail. He felt his scrotum contracting, as if he had just plunged into cold water.

He was being dragged out onto a stage, in front of a crowd of at least a hundred people, men and women; those he could see were dressed in strange but elegant clothing.