The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [56]
A couple of dozen meters down the shore twenty or thirty men and women, unguarded, were doing their best to clean themselves as well. They didn’t have anyone to hand them towels, but a stack of the things was available for the taking on the beach. Ranjit could identify them as rescued crew by the few he recognized…but he actually would have known who they were anyway, by the rapturous looks of relief these saved-at-the-last-minute souls wore on their faces.
There was one other cluster. These had not been allowed to clean themselves or change their clothes. They lay flat on their faces, fingers locked atop their heads, and they were guarded by three or four of the soldiers, weapons at the ready.
There was no doubt which group they represented. Ranjit scanned the prostrate forms, but if any of the Kanakaratnams were there, he could not recognize them from their backs. None looked small enough to be any of the younger children, either.
One of the soldiers guarding them was taking an interest in Ranjit, shouting something Ranjit could not make out and waving his rifle meaningfully.
It seemed to Ranjit that walking around on his own made the soldiers suspicious. “Right,” he called to the soldier, hoping he knew what he was agreeing to, and looked around at his options.
Which group Ranjit actually belonged to was hard to say. Still, there was no doubt that the former passengers were getting the best treatment, so he flipped a soft salute to the soldier and then strolled over to those waiting for fresh clothing at the men’s side and attached himself to the line, nodding pleasantly to the oldster just ahead of him.
Who didn’t nod back. Instead he scowled at Ranjit for a moment and then opened his mouth and let out a yell for the soldiers. When a couple of them came running, the man was shouting, “This one’s no passenger! He’s one of them! He’s the one who was trying to get me to tell how much my kids would pay to ransom me!”
Which is why, a moment later, Ranjit wound up lying facedown, his hands on his head, between a pair of the largest and—because they had been given no chance to clean themselves up—smelliest of the pirates.
He kept on lying there, for hours.
Those hours were not totally without anything happening, because in the first of them Ranjit learned two important lessons. The first was that he shouldn’t try to lift his head enough to try to look for the Kanakaratnams, because when he did, he was hit with a stick just above his left ear, while whoever was wielding the stick yelled, “Lie still!” The pain of the strike was like a lightning bolt. The second was that he shouldn’t try whispering to his neighbors for information. That got him a serious kick right about where his lowest right-hand rib was. The pain from the kick was indescribable. And the kicker was a soldier, all right, because he was definitely wearing steel-braced army shoes.
After about two hours—when the tropical sun had mounted high in the sky and Ranjit was beginning to feel as though he were being baked alive—something did happen. A new fleet of helicopters arrived, bigger and a good deal more comfortable-looking than the first, and immediately boarded all the passengers—and all those passengers’ reclaimed possessions—to take them to