Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  “True, true. But you must have found, Captain, that any attempt to revive an ancient culture on a new world is as phony as all hell. The aggressive Scottishness of the Waverley planets, for example. And New Zion—have you ever been there?—where all hands stop whatever they’re doing at the drop of a yarmulke to dance the hora . . . . The original culture of the all-male Sparta was phony enough—but it was consistent. But now? Unfortunately Billy Williams isn’t a very good letter writer but I’ve gained the impression that those new colonists have succeeded in reproducing an ancient Greece that never was, that never could have been.”

  “You’ll have time to find out for yourself, Commodore. You told me that you’ll have about three weeks there before your ship drops in. Unluckily I’ve only two days’ work there—just a small parcel of bagged flour to discharge and a consignment of spices to load—and then I shall be on my way.”

  The sonorous notes of the dinner gong drifted through the ship.

  The two men finished their drinks and got up from their chairs to go down to the dining saloon.

  Chapter 3

  Grimes quite enjoyed the voyage.

  Rim Wayfarer was a comfortable, well-run ship, her captain and officers good company. The food was good, even by Grimes’s exacting standards. He was, he admitted to himself, rather surprised. Rim Runners were looked down upon by the personnel of such shipping lines as the Interstellar Transport Commission and Trans-Galactic Clippers and, too, by the officers of the Federation Survey Service. They were the sort of outfit that you joined when nobody else would have you.

  But, thought Grimes, you could do very much worse for yourself.

  The day came when the star tramp dropped from the warped dimensions engendered by her Mannschenn Drive into normal Space-Time. It was a good planetfall, with no more than twelve hours’ running under inertial drive to bring the ship to Port Sparta.

  Grimes was in the control room, keeping well out of the way, when Gunning made his landing. As far as he could see from the viewports and in the screen everything was much as he remembered it. There, on the hilltop, was the Acropolis, gleaming whitely in the rays of the morning sun. Sprawling around the low mountain was the city, laid out with no regard to geometrical planning, a maze of roads and alleys running between buildings great and small, none of them more than two stories high but some of them covering considerable acreage. Yes, there was the Palace . . . . Grimes supposed that Brasidus, as Archon, would be making it his residence. (The Spartan royal house had ceased to be after the revolution.)

  And there was the spaceport. A real spaceport now, capable of handling at least twelve ships at a time. And what ships were in? Obligingly, Gunning’s Chief Officer gave Grimes the use of a screen showing the area toward which Rim Wayfarer was making her approach. There was something big. Grimes stepped up the magnification. A Trans-Galactic clipper, probably a cruise liner. And something small, but not too small. One of the Survey Service’s couriers, Lizard Class. An Epsilon Class tramp—but it couldn’t be Sister Sue. She, as far as Grimes had been able to determine, must now be about halfway from Earth to Sparta.

  Slowly, but not too slowly, Rim Wayfarer dropped to her berth, marked by the three scarlet flasher beacons. As always the Port Captain, like Port Captains throughout the Galaxy, had done his best to make the job an awkward one. With all the apron space there was to play with he still expected Gunning to set his ship down between the big cruise liner and the little courier. Luckily there was very little surface wind. The tramp master cursed good naturedly, as Grimes himself, in similar circumstances, had often cursed. He said to Grimes, “Fantastic, isn’t it, Commodore? When a man is actually serving as a spaceman he will be a prince of good fellows. Once he takes up ground employment, as a stevedore or a Port Captain or whatever, he has absolutely no consideration for those who used to be his shipmates . . . .”

  Grimes said, “I was a Port Captain myself once. On Botany Bay.”

  “And did you berth all the ships in a tight huddle so as to leave hectares of great open spaces?”

  “I didn’t have hectares of great open spaces to play with. Luckily only on one occasion did I have more than one ship in. And then one of them was a relatively small destroyer and the other a really small private yacht.”

  “So you were the exception to prove the rule,” laughed Gunning.

  He returned his attention to the controls and the Wayfarer dropped steadily down to a neat landing in the exact center of the triangle marked by the flashing beacons.

  * * *

  The port officials boarded.

  Grimes remained in his quarters until Gunning buzzed him on the intership telephone, asking him to join him and his official guests in his day cabin. He collected his passport and immunization certificates and made his way up to the captain’s flat by the spiral staircase.

  There were three visitors in Gunning’s office. The captain was sitting behind his paper-strewn desk. Sitting in chairs arranged to face the shipmaster were two men and a woman. One of the men—a customs officer?—was in a kilted uniform that was all leather and brass and a plumed brass helmet was on the deck beside him. At least, thought Grimes, customs officers on this planet did not wear uniforms aping those of honest spacemen. The other man—tall, bald-headed—was wearing a dignified, long white robe. The woman, her back to Grimes, was attired in a simple green tunic that left her suntanned arms and most of her shoulders bare. Her hair, braided and coiled around her head, was a gleaming auburn with the merest touch of gold. There was, thought Grimes, something familiar about her.

  “Ah, it’s you, Commodore,” said Gunning, looking up from the documents. “I thought that it was Melissa with the coffee . . . . But we’ll get the introductions over before she brings it in.”

  The two men and the woman got to their feet, turned to face Grimes.

  “Maggie!” he gasped.

  “John,” she said. (She was not surprised.)

  He said, “It’s been a long time . . . .”

  She said, “It’s not all that long since I got you out of that mess aboard Bronson Star.”

  “I mean,” said Grimes, “that it’s a long time since we were here, on this world, together.”

  Looking at her he thought, But she still looks the same as she did then. The face still as beautiful in its high-cheekboned, wide-mouthed way, the figure, revealed rather than concealed by the short, flimsy dress, still as graceful . . . .

  “A long time . . .” he repeated.

  “I suppose that it is, at that,” she said matter-of-factly. “And here am I, still holding the exalted rank of commander in the Scientific Branch of the Survey Service, and here’s you, who’ve been a yachtmaster, an owner-master, a pirate commodore, a planetary governor and the Odd Gods of the Galaxy alone know what else.”

  “A privateer,” said Grimes. “Not a pirate.”

  “Whatever you were,” she told him, “it’s good to see you again.”

  He took her extended hand, grasped it firmly. He would have kissed her—she seemed to be expecting it—if Gunning had not coughed loudly.

  “You already know Commander Lazenby,” said the captain. “But may I introduce Colonel Heraclion, Chief Collector of Customs, and Dr. Androcles, Port Health Officer?”

  Hands were shaken. Grimes took a chair next to Maggie. The ship’s catering officer brought in a tray laden with a large coffee pot, sugar bowl, cream jug and cups. She departed and Gunning poured for his guests.

  The colonel said, “I do not usually attend to such matters as the Inward Clearance of shipping myself. But I bear greetings from the Archon.” From the leather pouch at his belt he withdrew a large envelope, handed it to Grimes. “To you, sir.”

  Grimes took it. It was, he noted, unsealed. He remembered having read somewhere that a gentleman, entrusting a letter to another gentleman for delivery, never seals the envelope. Did the ancient Spartans observe such a custom? (Did the ancient Spartans use envelopes?)

  He pulled out the sh
eet of paper—it was more of a card, really. He read the stiff, unfamiliar calligraphy. The Archon presents his compliments to His Excellency the Commodore Grimes and requests that he will accept the hospitality of the palace during his stay on New Sparta. It was signed, simply, Brasidus.

  Grimes passed the card to Maggie.

  “Good,” she said. “He told me that he would invite you.”

  “Are you staying there?” he asked.

  “Of course.” She laughed. “After all, Brasidus and I are old friends. I could be staying aboard Krait, of course, but, as you should know, Serpent Class couriers are not famous for their luxurious passenger accommodation.”

  “So you’re here on Survey Service business,” remarked Grimes.

  “Of course. I’d not have gotten passage here—even if it is in a spaceborne sardine can like Krait—otherwise. Research. A study of the effects on a Lost Colony by its assimilation into mainstream Galactic culture. Or of the effects on mainstream culture when assimilated into a Lost Colony. Nothing serious, and all good, clean (for most of the time) fun. Perhaps you’d like to help me in my research. That ship of yours isn’t due in for some time yet.”

  “It should be interesting,” said Grimes. “But haven’t you already found that New Sparta has been spoiled by contact with the rest of the Galaxy?”

  “Far from it,” she told him. “Anything would have been an improvement on the way it was.”

  “That,” said Colonel Heraclion stiffly, “is your opinion, Commander Lazenby.”

  Grimes looked at the man with interest. Yes, he thought, there are men to whom an all-male society, such as New Sparta had been, would be almost a paradise. Oh, well. One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian.

  “I am in agreement with Commander Lazenby,” said Dr. Androcles. “Like the colonel, I was a young man when Commodore Grimes’ ship, Seeker, gave us our first real contact with the outside universe. The people realized then that, for generations, they had been living a lie.”

  “In the opinion of your medical profession, perhaps,” sneered the colonel. “But do not forget that you and your colleagues had been promulgating that same lie.”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” chided Captain Gunning. “I do not think that my day cabin is a fitting venue for a heated argument about New Spartan politics.”

  “It was the outworlders who started it,” said Heraclion sourly.

  “Outworlders,” Maggie reminded him, “who just happen to be honored guests of your Archon.”

  The colonel was about to make a heated reply, then thought better of it. Dr. Androcles laughed.

  “I’ll help you to finish your packing, John,” said Maggie.

  Chapter 4

  When they were alone in his quarters Grimes kissed her. She returned his embrace, then pushed him away.

  “Not now,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of time for this sort of thing in the palace.”

  “Will there?” he asked. “Haven’t you already said that you and the Archon are old friends? I . . . assumed . . . .”

  “Then you assumed wrong. Ellena keeps Brasidus on a tight leash.”

  “Ellena?”

  “His wife. The Archoness, as many call her, although there’s no such rank or title. She’s from Earth. An Australian, of Greek ancestry. Very much the power behind the throne. But finish your packing and I’ll fill you in.” She took from its shelf the solidograph that she had given him—how long ago?—and held the transparent cube, with its lifelike, three-dimensional image of her face and figure, studying it before passing it to him. “You’re something of a sentimental bastard, aren’t you? That’s one of the reasons why I’m rather fond of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And now for putting you in the picture. To begin with, my research project is only a cover. I was seconded to the Intelligence Branch, and by them put under the orders of Rear Admiral Damien.”

  “But he’s not in the Intelligence Branch.”

  “Isn’t he? There are intelligence officers whom everybody knows about and there are intelligence officers who, as it were, hide their light under a bushel. Like you, for example.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. The admiral told me that you had been pressganged back into the Survey Service with the rank of captain on the Reserve List. All very Top Secret, Destroy By Fire Before Reading and all the rest of it. What you did to break up Drongo Kane’s privateering racket was no more—and no less—than Intelligence work. So was what you did on Liberia. Whether you knew it or not you were a member of the Department of Dirty Tricks.”

  Grimes sighed. “All right, all right. But just what dirty tricks am I supposed to be doing here?”

  “Just shoving a spanner into the works.”

  “But Brasidus—from what I remember of him—is a nice enough bloke. I’m sure that he’s a good Archon, whatever an Archon does when he’s up and dressed. There’s never been any talk of tyranny, so far as I know. People are still emigrating to New Sparta from Earth and other planets.”

  She said, “That’s part of the trouble.”

  “How so?”

  “One of our people was among those migrants. Under cover, of course. According to her papers she was a schoolteacher. She sent a few reports back to Earth—and then they stopped coming. Since my arrival here I’ve been able to make discreet inquiries. She was drowned in a boating accident.”

  “If it was an accident . . .” said Grimes. “Is that what you’re driving at?”

  “Of course. She was out on a river trip with other members of the New Hellas Association. Colonel Heraclion—although he wasn’t a member of the boating party—is one of the Association’s high-ups. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. New Hellas, when what he wants is Old New Sparta. But the New Hellenes are a bunch of reactionaries. Some—like the good colonel—want a return to a womanless world, the way it used to be. Others—and they’re mainly immigrants—want a return to the way ancient Greece used to be on Earth.”

  “The glory that was Greece . . .” quoted Grimes. “What’s so wrong with that?”

  “Ancient Greece,” she told him, “was glorious, if you happened to be a member of the upper crust and male. If you were a slave, a peasant or a woman it wasn’t so glorious.”

  “But there are women in this New Hellas Association. This murdered agent of yours—all right, all right, of ours—was a member and a woman.”

  “There are some women,” she said, “who, in their secret hearts, would enjoy being human doormats. There are other women who would enjoy being glamorous hetaerae in a society where the other members of their sex were no more than drab Hausfrauen.”

  “Hetaerae and Hausfrauen in the same culture!” laughed Grimes.

  “You know what I mean. Well, it wouldn’t be so bad if the New Hellenes were just trying to attain their ends by democratic means but, according to our late agent, they’re plotting a coup. A coup on classical lines. And then yet another unsavory dictatorship which, eventually, will have to be put down at great expense. If such things can be nipped in the bud . . . .”

  “By whom?”

  “Need you ask, ducky?”

  “Damn it all,” said Grimes, “I’m a civilian. A shipmaster and shipowner. All that I came to this world for was to rejoin my ship.”

  “You’re not a civilian, John. Oh, you may have been for a while, but ever since you accepted that reserve commission you’ve been back in the Service. I’ve written orders for you from Admiral Damien—not with me at the moment but in the captain’s safe aboard the courier. I’ll get them out for you before too long.”

  The intercom phone buzzed. Grimes pressed the Acknowledge button. Gunning’s face appeared in the screen.

  “I hope that I’m not interrupting anything, Commodore, but Colonel Heraclion asked me to remind you that the car is waiting to take you to the palace. If you like I’ll send somebody down to give you a hand with your gear.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” said Grimes. “But don’t
I have to pass Port Health, Immigration and Customs?”

  “The colonel informs me that all formalities have been waived in your case.” The master laughed. “It’s always handy to have friends in high places.”

  The screen went blank.

  Grimes opened the door of his cabin in preparation for the arrival of the junior officer who would help him with his bags. Maggie continued talking but only on topics which, should she be overheard, would give nobody any ideas.

  “Talking of friends,” she said, “I met one of yours a couple of days ago.”

  “But the only person whom I got to know on this world, when I was here before, was Brasidus.”

  “This one’s an offworlder.”

  “From Earth?”

  “No. From Bronsonia. An investigative reporter, she calls herself. She works for that scurrilous rag Star Scandals. She’s doing a series on sleazy entertainment centers on as many worlds as she can get to visit during the time allowed her. She’s tailing along after some outfit calling itself Galactic Glamour, featuring exotic dancers from all over. They’re doing a short season here before pushing on to Latterhaven.

  “Anyhow, I met her when I was slumming, as part of my research. We had a couple or three drinks. She knew that I’m Survey Service. And you know how stupid people are . . .” She assumed a voice that was not hers but which was ominously familiar to Grimes. “Oh, you’re in the Survey Service . . . A commander. Do you know Commander Smith?” She laughed. “What she said was, Do you know Captain Grimes? He used to be in the Survey Service—he got as high as commander, I believe, before they threw him out . . .”

  “I resigned!” growled Grimes.

  “So I said to her, Who doesn’t know Grimes? And she grinned nastily and said, So we share that dubious pleasure. But don’t you want to know who she is?”