Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

“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.

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.