Out of This World

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.

“Thinking about making a run for it?” he said, sympathetically. “We all think about it, sometimes. I suppose you were figuring on the kitchen route? You don’t look like the sort who plans on going out the dorm windows. Or hadn’t you got that far?”

“I was thinking about the kitchen,” Pel admitted, dismayed that this didn’t seem to be news.

“Doesn’t hurt to think, I guess,” Jack said, nodding. “We’ve had a few people try it, but nobody’s ever made it. A couple have gotten themselves killed. Farthest anybody ever got without dying…”

“How do you know they died?” Pel interrupted.

“Because they hauled the bodies back to show us, of course,” Jack replied, unruffled. “Wouldn’t do anyone any good to let any rumors about successful escapes get started. They don’t want to kill us, after all; we cost good money.”

Pel grimaced.

“Anyway,” Jack went on, “the farthest anyone’s gotten is the back courtyard. See, when you go through the kitchen, there’s just one door outside, and that goes into a walled courtyard where they keep the trashcans and so forth, with this big sliding iron door at the back-and the door’s been closed every time anyone’s gotten that far. Apparently it’s always closed when anybody from inside is on that side of the passageway.”

“It can’t always be shut,” Pel protested.

“Of course not,” Jack agreed. “But it is during meals, and the rest of the time the kitchen’s locked.”

“So nobody’s gotten past that door?”

“That’s right. And nobody’s going to. There are only two ways to get even that far, and neither of them is going to be real popular.”

“What two?” Pel asked.

“First, you can rush it-ten or fifteen guys charge in there, and the guards can’t stop them all. Everybody knows that; the guards don’t even try if they see it’s a whole mob. What they do do is sound an alarm, and when everybody goes charging out into the courtyard to try to haul that door open, they find a bunch of thugs with blasters looking down at them from the walls.”

Pel nodded.

“And the second way,” Jack said, “is to create a diversion, so that one or two people can slip through. That’s tough-those guards aren’t stupid, or at least, whoever gave them their orders isn’t. And there are cooks and people in the kitchens; you can’t sneak past them, you have to make a dash for it. The cooks won’t bother you-that’s not their job-but you can’t hide, either, because they’ll see you. So you’ll get out to the courtyard, and you can’t move that door, it takes more than one man to get it open, and before you can come up with anything else the guards will catch on and come out after you and beat the shit out of you.”

Pel thought for a moment, pushing his shovel as he did. He had been disappointed to hear that all his plans were old hat, but surely, there was some overlooked possibility here, one that he could spot.

He had a rule of thumb from his marketing work that came to mind, a question he always asked himself: When you have two possibilities, can you combine them?

“Well,” he suggested, “what if you did that, got one or two guys through to the courtyard, and then ten or twelve guys stormed through, and caught the guards from behind?”

Jack blinked. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t think that one’s been tried while I’ve been here.”

“I think we should try it,” Pel said.

Jack didn’t answer for a long moment. He lifted his pick and hefted it thoughtfully, eyeing Pel.

“Maybe we should,” he said.

* * * *

When he was done he fished a key from somewhere, unfastened the manacles, and stood aside, dangling the cuffs from one hand. Amy didn’t move.

“All right, bitch,” he said. “Get up and clean yourself off, and then let’s get some clothes on you.”

Amy didn’t move; she crouched, trembling with fury and shame, on the floor.

Even Stan had never done that to her.

“Oh, come on,” he said, kicking her in the side. “You weren’t any goddamn virgin.”

She still refused to move.

“Goddamn stupid bitch,” he muttered. He pushed her aside with his foot, the rug where her face and arms rested slipping easily, and opened the front door.

Amy considered a lunge for his leg, now that her hands were free. She shifted her weight, judging the distance.

He glanced down and saw the movement; cautiously, he stepped further away.

“Beth,” he called, “get in here, will you?”

Amy bit her lower lip. The woman would be coming back, and in a minute it would be two against one. This was probably the best chance she would ever get; he probably thought she was cowed and helpless. She lifted herself up on one arm, then threw herself sideways, grabbing at the man’s leg, trying to throw him off-balance. If he fell, she saw, he would hit his head against the wall or the doorframe.

She hit him, but not as hard as she had hoped; the distance was too great. He stumbled back and dropped the manacles, but caught himself, and kicked her in the face.

The cuffs clattered on the hard floor just as his boot hit her jaw, and for a moment Amy confused the sound with what she saw and felt and thought she was hearing her bones rattle. She staggered, but did not fall.

“Shit,” he said. He disentangled himself, stepping back a few feet.

Amy tried to bring herself upright and get out the front door, all at once, but she was still stooped and still inside when one hand closed on the back of her neck. Awkward and off-balance, she was unable to resist as he rammed her head forward, driving her forehead against the doorframe.

Dazed, she slid back to the floor.

He reached down, grabbed her arm just below the shoulder, and hauled her up to her knees.

“Listen, stupid,” he said, “I told you, there’s nowhere to go. So just settle down and live with it, all right? You might even get to like it, if you give it a chance.”

Dazed, her vision blurred, aching a dozen places, Amy reluctantly nodded.

She would wait.

She would not yield, but she would wait.

* * * *

She allowed him a second attempt, and a third.

It made no difference; the sight of her unmanned him.

At the second trial Raven had managed to drive himself from shame to rage, in hopes that his anger would bring his blood to move, would allow him to function, but it did no good. The blood suffused his face and chest, his hands trembled with it-but not his loins.

At the third trial he forced himself not to see her, conjured up in his mind’s eye all the women he had loved before, from sweet little Elenor to the fiery Alison, and still, at her touch, all his lust had faded, he had withered, and again he had failed.

She had him whipped, of course; he had expected that.

And then she sold him.

* * * *

Talk about large-scale diversions and massed rushes was all very well, but Pel didn’t expect it to work. He had his own ideas, ideas he didn’t intend to share.

Jack might well be an informer, after all. He seemed to know almost too much.

The information about the courtyard door was probably accurate, though, and could be useful.

Pel didn’t really expect his first attempt to work; it was more in the nature of a scouting expedition. It was extremely difficult to manage the first step, he found; it wasn’t until the third attempt that he was able to stay awake long enough during his off shift without anyone realizing he was still awake. The heavy lifting and hauling was responsible, he knew.

Eventually, though, he did manage it, and found himself the only person conscious in the entire dormitory.

It was daylight, as it happened, and light slanted in through the windows overhead, so he was able to see clearly. Darkness could have made things more difficult-or given him additional cover, and he wasn’t sure which would be more significant. Carefully, he arose from his cot and stole as silently as he could across the floor to the door.

It was locked.

He had expected that, really. He turned and crept to the lavatory. That door was never locked; after all, someone might well need the facilities at any time.

And the lavatory had another door, opening onto the central passage. That should be locked, too-but he had noticed that the latch was rusty. In the damp air of the building practically anything ferrous was likely to rust.

He had not only noticed that, he had done something about it, hammering at it surreptitiously whenever he could, trying to knock it out of shape.

His efforts had had the desired result; the door hadn’t latched properly. By giving the knob a good hard tug to the left he was able to spring the door open.

Then he was out in the passageway, where he tiptoed quickly to the refectory. The doors between the dining hall and the corridor were open-Pel had noticed that they never seemed to move, from one shift to the next, and had concluded that nobody ever bothered closing them.

The doors to the kitchen were locked, of course, just as they were supposed to be.

He crossed to the tall, narrow windows, and measured the gaps between the bars. They weren’t as wide as he had hoped; he would not be able to slip out that way.

He was improvising, scouting out the situation; he had no coherent plan yet. He stood for a long moment, looking around, trying to think of some way to get through the windows, or through the kitchen.

When did they post those guards at the kitchen doors?

He would come back to that.

He slipped back into the corridor and crept down toward the mine.

And that was where the guard spotted him.

He was beaten methodically, without any particular animus, and then thrown back in his cot.

He lay there, planning the next step.

* * * *

The man’s name was Walter, but Amy was not permitted to call him anything but “master.” Beth was just Beth; Amy wasn’t sure of the reason for this difference.

Amy’s duties were simple enough; she was to keep the house and its contents clean. Later on, if they trusted her enough, she could help tend the corn, and Beth would take over part of the cleaning, but for the present Amy was not permitted outside the house. Amy was also to be available to Walter whenever he felt the urge-which was fairly often.

She was given a simple white shift, undergarments, slippers, and an apron. She slept on the floor, with a rug underneath and a blanket on top. When she refused an order or resisted in any way, Walter would beat her into submission. If a beating didn’t convince her, she would not be fed until she relented. The manacles were kept handy, and on occasion, when she had disobeyed, they were used to secure her to furniture, where she could watch Walter and Beth eat.

She did not resist very often-enough to maintain her self-respect, but not enough to seriously endanger her health. She knew that she wasn’t going to do herself any good by starving, or letting Walter break bones. If she was ever to get out of this unbearable situation she would have to keep herself reasonably fit.

She thought about escape, but knew she had nowhere to go. She could not get far on foot in any case, and had no idea how to fly the aircar-even if she could start it without the key, which was doubtful. She had heard of hotwiring a car’s ignition but didn’t know it was done, and in any case aircars were not necessarily the same as the cars back on Earth in such details as ignition switches.

Walter was not interested in speaking with her, and besides, he spent most of his time out of the house. Beth was out much of the time as well, but less, and she was willing to talk, and even answer questions-at least, sometimes.

She explained about the inconveniently- short day, and the arrangements they had made to deal with it. She explained the basics of corn-farming, and showed Amy how to handle unfamiliar household equipment.

She answered more personal questions, too.

Yes, Amy was the only slave they had at present; they had had two others at one point, both women, both subject to Walter’s whims, but last year’s crop had been very bad and first Walter had sold the little one, Maggie, and then the other one, Sheila, had died.

At first, Beth insisted that Sheila had gotten sick and died before they could get a doctor for her, but eventually she admitted that Walter had gotten drunk and angry one night and had strangled her. She was buried out back. Beth pointed out the grave, visible from the back windows.

Amy had thought that the bare ground there was a small garden patch; now she stared at it and felt ill.

“He’s not going to really hurt you, though,” Beth said. “He couldn’t afford to buy another slave.”

Somehow, Amy did not find that very comforting.

* * * *

When Raven learned the identity of his new owner, and what the man wanted of him, he realized that this was Arabella’s final insult, her final comment on his own sexual prowess, or lack thereof.

It was, he supposed, to be expected.

He put it to his buyer directly, in blunt terms-how much fun could there be if Raven had to be beaten into submission every time? Raven was stronger than this new owner, so that other slaves would have to do the beating, would be required to hold him down. Was that what this Roland wanted?

What point in owning him, then?

Roland did make one test of Raven’s resolve; thus convinced, and nursing a black eye as a result, he put Raven up for sale.

That was after the flogging, of course.

There were no buyers at first; nobody cared to risk any money until they knew whether or not the slave would live.

* * * *

Reaching the clerestory windows wasn’t as difficult as Pel had feared; standing a cot on end and climbing the ladderlike frame lifted him high enough to reach the sill.

The other slaves simply watched with amused interest; they made no effort to help him, but didn’t hinder him, either. Nobody called for the guards. They all just watched as he chinned himself on the sill, threw up first one arm and then the other, his feet waving wildly all the time.

He hung there for a moment, looking out through the window at gray asphalt roofing and, some distance away, the tumbled gray stone of a mountainside. There were no obvious hazards or obstacles.

Encouraged, he struggled to inch upward, to swing one leg up.

It was harder than it had looked in all those old movies, all those times Indiana Jones had hung from a cliff by his fingers or whatever, but eventually he got himself out the window onto the roof.

He got cautiously to his feet and looked around.

He stood on a long, narrow rectangle of slate-gray roofing, extending the full length of the dormitory and lavatory, but only about six feet wide. The “chimney” he had located by its shadow was close by, and he now discovered it to be a vent-pipe from the lavatory’s plumbing.

Behind him, the windows were set in a sheer wall extending much higher than he had expected-it had to be at least twenty feet high, and was topped with an overhang. The edge of the overhang was wrapped in dull grey metal that glinted oddly in the orange sunlight. It looked very sharp.

The height of the wall seemed to imply that there was another story to the building, but there were no more windows above the set he had climbed through, nothing above them but blank concrete. It might simply be intended as an obstacle.

That wall was too high and bare for him to climb. He turned to look at the other sides. Before him was the edge of the roof; he crouched down and peered over.

The wall dropped sheer for a ridiculous distance, given that he was only one story up-at least thirty or forty feet, it looked like.

And about thirty feet away another wall rose, a wall that appeared to be hewn out of the mountainside itself, the space between the walls forming a sort of dry moat.

He worked his way around all three sides, and the moat went all the way around. Nowhere was it narrow enough to make an attempt to jump it reasonable; nowhere was it shallow enough to make a leap down into it reasonable; nowhere did it look possible to climb back out if he once did get in.

Frustrated, he climbed back down into the dormitory-and found four guards waiting for him.

They beat him soundly and removed his bedding, to prevent any attempts at making climbing gear from the fabric.

* * * *

Major Johnston swore quietly under his breath, wishing he could think of some new obscenity. The old ones had all lost their flavor by this time.

“All of them,” he said. “All of them.”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant stood beside the desk, trying to look suitably unhappy and hide the relief he felt that this wasn’t his problem.

Johnston tapped his pen on the desktop and stared up at the lieutenant. He knew the man was glad to not have the responsibility on this one, and he didn’t blame him. Johnston wished he didn’t have the responsibility, either.

And to think he had asked for it, and had been pleased when the FBI decided to leave it all to the military.

“The cars are really theirs? The vehicle numbers match, not just the plates?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that damned phony spaceship hasn’t moved? Nobody’s been inside?”

“No, sir.”

The Major stopped tapping, and for a moment he sat silently. Then, abruptly, he hurled the pen across the room and roared, “Where the hell did they go?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You talked to the neighbors?”

“Someone did, sir, not me, personally.”

“And searched the house?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Legally?”

“Yes, sir; we got a warrant.”

“Nobody saw anything?”

“No, sir.”

“And there wasn’t anything to say where they’d gone? Notes? Maybe something on a computer disk? Anything?”

“Nothing, sir. Some empty pizza boxes, a very hungry cat-nothing else out of the ordinary.”

Johnston growled. “This is ridiculous. The spaceship appears out of nowhere, but does that disappear? No, it just sits there, and instead this… this marketing consultant bails the crew out of jail, and invites the Jewell woman and her lawyer over, and they all vanish. All the cars still there. Like the goddamn Marie Celeste. Lieutenant, does any of this make sense?”

“No, sir.”

“Damn right it doesn’t. Almost makes me believe in the fucking Bermuda Triangle and Charles Fort and all that crap.” He slumped back in his chair.

For a moment he sat silently, and the lieutenant stood, equally silent, and waited.

“The cat,” Johnston said at last. “What happened to the cat?”

The lieutenant cleared his throat. “Well, sir,” he said, “I’ve got the cat at home. He’s a cute little fellow.”

Johnston chewed on his lip for a moment, then snarled, “Good. Keep it. And I want that place bugged. Both places. And watched. If anyone goes in or out of Jewell’s house, or Brown’s, I want to not just know it happened, I want to know who it was and every goddamn word they said. Bug that ship, too. Bug the lawyers’ homes and offices. Everything.”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant started to turn away, but the major’s voice stopped him.

“Lieutenant. Do it legally. Get court orders.

“Yes, sir.”

“Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You think we’ll ever find them?”

The lieutenant considered that carefully, then shrugged.

“No, sir,” he said, “I don’t think we will.”