Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Do you intend to demand a 10 percent agent’s commission?” asked Maggie.

  He kicked her under the table and she subsided.

  Ellena did not appear to have a sense of humor. She said, sourly, “Of course, Commodore, if you wish a recruiting sergeant’s bounty, that can be arranged.”

  He said, “Commander Lazenby was only joking, Lady.”

  Maggie said, “Was I?”

  Ellena looked from one to the other, emitted an exasperated sigh.

  “Spacepersons,” she said, “consider things funny that we mere planet lubbers do not.”

  Such as money? thought Grimes.

  “Nonetheless,” she went on, “I shall be greatly obliged if you will endeavor to persuade Miss Shirl and Miss Darleen to enlist in my Amazon Corps. Need I remind you that you are a shipowner whose vessel makes money trading to and from this world? Perhaps if you could bring yourself to call upon them this very morning . . . .”

  “I will come with you, John,” said Brasidus, breaking his glum silence.

  “But you have forgotten, dear, that there is a Council meeting?”

  “I have not, Ellena. But surely such a matter as providing separate toilets for the sexes in the Agora does not demand my presence.”

  “It does so. The status of women on this world must be elevated and you, as my husband, must make it plain that you think as I do.”

  “I’d accompany you, John,” Maggie told him, “but I’m scheduled to address the Terra-Sparta Foundation on the history and culture of my own planet. I can’t very well wriggle out of it.”

  “I’ll organize transport for you, John,” said Brasidus.

  “It might be better if I did,” said Ellena. “It will look better if the Commodore is driven to the Hippolyte by one of my Amazon Guards rather than by one of your musclebound louts.”

  So Grimes, in a small two-seater, a hovercar looking even more like an ancient war chariot than the generality of military vehicles on this world, was driven to the Hippolyte Hotel by a hefty, blonde wench who conveyed the impression that she should have been standing up holding reins rather than sitting down grasping a wheel. She brought the vehicle to an abrupt halt outside the main doorway of the hotel, leapt out with a fine display of long, tanned legs and then offered Grimes unneeded assistance out of the car to the pavement. The doorwoman, uniformed in imitation of Ellena’s Amazons but squat and flabby (but with real muscles under the flab, thought Grimes) scowled at them.

  “What would you, citizens?” she demanded.

  “Just get out of the way, citizen, and let us pass.”

  “But he is a man.”

  “And I am Lieutenant Phryne, of the Lady Ellena’s Amazon Guard, here on the Lady’s business.”

  “And him?”

  “The gentleman is Commodore Grimes, also on the Lady’s business.”

  “All right. All right.” She muttered to herself, “This is what comes of letting theatricals in here. Turning the place into a spacemen’s brothel.”

  “What was that?” asked Phryne sharply.

  “Nothing, Lieutenant, nothing.”

  “The next time you say nothing say it where I can’t hear it.”

  Grimes looked around the lobby of the hotel with interest. All its walls were decorated with skillfully executed mosaic murals, every one of which depicted stern-looking ladies doing unkind things to members of the male sex. There was Jael, securing the hapless Sisera to the mattress with a hammer and a nail. There was Boadicea, whose scythed chariot wheels were slicing up the Roman legionnaires. There was Jeanne d’Arc, on horseback and in shining armor, in the act of decapitating an English knight with her long, gleaming sword. There was Prime Minister Golda riding in the open turret of an Israeli tank, leading a fire-spitting armored column against a rabble of fleeing Arabs. There was Prime Minister Maggie on the bridge of a battleship whose broadside was hurling destruction of the Argentine fleet. There was . . . There was too much, much too much.

  Grimes couldn’t help laughing.

  “What is the joke, Commodore?” asked Lieutenant Phryne coldly.

  “Whoever did these murals,” explained Grimes, “might have been a good artist but he . . .” She glared at him. “But she,” he corrected himself, “was a lousy historian.”

  “I do not think so.”

  “No?” He pointed with the stem of his pipe at the very imaginative depiction of the battle off the Falkland Islands. “To begin with, Mrs. Thatcher wasn’t there. She ran things from London. Secondly, by that time battleships had been phased out. The flagship of the British fleet was an aircraft carrier, the other vessels destroyers, frigates and submarines. Thirdly, with the exception of one elderly and unlucky cruiser, the Argentine navy stayed in port.”

  “You seem to be very well-informed,” said the Amazon lieutenant coldly.

  “I should be. My father is an historical novelist.”

  “Oh.”

  The pair of them walked to the reception desk.

  “Would Miss Shirl and Miss Darleen be in?” asked Grimes.

  “I think so, citizen,” replied the slight, quite attractive brunette. “I shall call their suite and ask them to join you in the lobby. Whom shall I say is calling?”

  Before Grimes could answer his escort said, “I am Lieutenant Phryne of the Lady Ellena’s Amazon Guard. This citizen is Commodore Grimes. The business that we have to discuss is very private and best dealt with in their own quarters.”

  The girl said something about hotel regulations.

  The lieutenant told her that the Lady Ellena was a major shareholder.

  The girl said that Shirl and Darleen already had a visitor. A lady, she added.

  “Then I shall be outnumbered,” said Grimes. “I shall be no threat to anybody’s virtue.”

  Both the receptionist and the lieutenant glared at him.

  Chapter 11

  “Come in!” called a female voice as Lieutenant Phryne rapped sharply on the door, which slid open. “Come in! This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.” Then, “Who’s your new girlfriend, Grimes? You never waste much time, do you?”

  Fenella Pruin, sprawled in an easy chair, her long, elegant legs exposed by her short chiton, a glass of gin in her hand, looked up at the commodore. So did Shirl and Darleen, who were sitting quite primly side by side on a sofa, holding cans of beer. Foster’s, noted Grimes, an Australian brand, no doubt brought to New Sparta as part of one of Sister Sue’s cargoes.

  “Lieutenant Phryne,” said Grimes stiffly, “has been acting as my chauffeuse.”

  “And what are you acting as, Grimes? What hat are you wearing this bright and happy morning? Owner-master? Pirate commodore? Planetary governor?”

  “Recruiting sergeant,” said Grimes.

  “You intrigue me. But take the weight off your feet. And you, Lieutenant. And find the Commodore a gin, Shirl, and his Amazon Guard whatever she fancies . . .”

  After the drinks had been organized Grimes found himself sitting between Shirl and Darleen, facing Fenella.

  “Here’s to crime,” she toasted, raising her refilled glass. “And now, Grimes, talk. What’s with this recruiting sergeant business? Let me guess. You’re an old boozing pal of the Archon’s. The Archon’s lady wife is building up her own private army, of which Lieutenant Phryne is a member. Lady Ellena is on the lookout for offplanet martial arts specialists to act as instructors. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And Shirl and Darleen are not only artists with the boomerang but expert in their own peculiar version of savate. Boxing with the feet. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “What’s in it for them?”

  “Lieutenants’ commissions. Standard pay for the rank, plus allowances.”

  “Should we accept, Fenella?” asked Shirl. “It would seem to be a steady job, staying in one place. We are becoming tired of jumping from world to world.”

  “Leave me to negotiate,” said the journali
st. Then, to Grimes, “At times I wear more than one hat myself. As well as being a star reporter I am a theatrical agent. Oh, only in respect of Shirl and Darleen. I sort of took them under my wing when you left them stranded on Bronsonia.” She added virtuously, “Somebody had to.”

  “Is it an agent’s hat you’re wearing?” asked Grimes sardonically. “Or a halo?”

  She ignored this and turned to Phryne. “What’s lieutenant’s pay in the Amazon Corps?”

  “One thousand obols a month.”

  “And what’s that in real money? Never mind . . . .” She used her wrist companion as a calculator. “Mmm. Not good, but not too bad. And the bennies?”

  “Bennies, Lady?”

  “Side benefits.”

  “Free accommodation, with meals in the officers’ mess. Two new uniforms a year. A wine ration . . .”

  “We do not like wine,” said Darleen. “We like beer.”

  “I think that I could arrange that,” Grimes said.

  “All the more cargo for your precious ship to bring here,” sneered Fenella. “But, anyhow, a generous beer ration must be part of the contract. Imported beer, not the local gnat’s piss.” Again she turned to Phryne. “What extra pay do instructors get?”

  “I cannot say with any certainty. But junior officers often complain that instructor sergeants make more money than they do.”

  “And a sergeant’s pay is?”

  “In the neighborhood of six hundred obols a month.”

  “Which means that they must get at least another five hundred extra in special allowances. Find out how much it is, Grimes, and then argue that a commissioned officer should receive allowances on a much higher scale than a non-commissioned one. And, talking of commissions . . . . What about mine?”

  “I do not think,” said Grimes, “that the Amazon Corps needs a press officer.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that sort of commission. I was talking about my agent’s commission.”

  “Surely even you wouldn’t take money off Shirl and Darleen!”

  “I’ve no intention of doing so, but I expect something for myself for handling their affairs. To begin with, I got some very good coverage of the adventures of the rather tatty troupe that I signed them up with. (Talking of that, I shall expect the Lady Ellena to buy them out of their contract.) Now I shall want coverage of Shirl’s and Darleen’s experiences in the Amazon Guard. With The Woman Warriors Of New Sparta and all the rest of it. Which means that I must be given rights of entry to the Archon’s palace at all times . . .”

  “I did hear,” said Grimes, “that you were given the bum’s rush the one time that you came a-calling.”

  “I was. And I still resent it. Just see to it that it doesn’t happen again.”

  “That is a matter for the Archon.”

  “Or for the Archoness. But you’ll just have to talk her round, Grimes. If she wants Shirl and Darleen, those are the terms.”

  Grimes looked at her through the wreathing fumes from his pipe. The nostrils of her sharp nose were quivering but he did not think that this was due to the reek of burning tobacco. She was on the scent of something. She could be a valuable ally. Although he and Maggie were attached to the Intelligence Department the muckraking journalist was far more skilled at ferreting out information than they, simple spaceman and relatively unsophisticated scientist, could ever be.

  He got to his feet.

  He said, “I’ll do my best, Fenella.”

  She said tartly, “There have been times when your best has not been good enough.” Then she grinned. “But you usually finish up with what you want.”

  He turned to Shirl and Darleen. “Thank you for the drinks. And I hope that I’ll soon be seeing you in uniform.”

  Darleen said, rather wistfully, “We would like to be wearing your uniform, aboard your ship.”

  He laughed and said, “Unfortunately the Merchant Navy, unlike the Survey Service, doesn’t run to Marines . . . .”

  “Perhaps when you next go a-pirating . . .” said Fenella.

  “Mphm,” grunted Grimes. (Piracy, to him, was a very dirty word.)

  Accompanied by Lieutenant Phryne he made his way out of the suite and then down to the parked hovercar.

  Phryne drove back to the palace by a circuitous, sight-seeing route.

  She said snobbishly, “Forgive me for speaking my mind, sir, but those . . . ladies are not, in my opinion, even good NCO material. To become a commissioned officer one must possess at least a modicum of breeding.”

  “And Shirl and Darleen do not?”

  “No. You must have seen them. Drinking their beer straight from the can.”

  “I often do that myself.”

  “But you’re a spaceman, sir. You’re different.”

  “They’re from New Alice. They’re different.”

  “You can say that again. And I don’t suppose that they’ll even know the right knives and forks and spoons to use in the officers’ mess.”

  “I shouldn’t worry. That’s an art that they’ve probably picked up since I last knew them. I remember that Miz Pruin tried to bully what she called civilized table manners into them when she and they were passengers on my ship some time ago.”

  “Miz Pruin . . .” muttered Phryne scornfully. “So now she’s to be allowed the run of the Palace. I had the pleasure of being guard commander when she was evicted.”

  “What have you got against her?”

  “She’s a muckraker. I’ve had experience of her muckraking. I’m from Earth originally, as are most of the women on New Sparta, but for a while I was a member of an experimental, all woman colony on New Lesbos. I soon found out that, when it came to the crunch, I was more heterosexual than otherwise but I was stuck there, with quite a few others, until I’d earned enough to pay my passage back home—and a police constable’s salary was far from generous. Dear Fenella came sniffing around. She did a feature on New Lesbos for Star Scandals. What got my goat was that a photograph of a quite innocent beach party was captioned as a Lesbian orgy. Damn it all, there are nude beaches a-plenty on Earth and other planets!”

  “But very few, these days, reserved for the use of one sex only,” said Grimes.

  “There just wasn’t more than one sex on New Lesbos,” she said, “just as there wasn’t more than one sex here before the planet was thrown open to immigration.”

  “She’s a good reporter,” said Grimes.

  “The only good reporter is a dead one,” said Phryne. “And boomerangs are toys for backward primitives and kicking should be confined to the Association Football field.”

  Grimes laughed. “I take it, Lieutenant, that you were featured in that famous photograph.”

  “I was, Commodore. I was wrestling one of the other girls. But men wrestle each other, don’t they? And nobody accuses them of being friendly.”

  Yet another useful word stolen from the English language by an overly noisy minority, thought Grimes.

  He said, “What does it matter, anyhow?”

  She said, “It matters to me.”

  Chapter 12

  The Lady Ellena received Grimes in her office, listened to what he had to tell her.

  She said, “You were overly generous, Commodore—but, of course, it is easy to be generous with somebody else’s money. Even so . . . . Commissioned rank for that pair of cheap entertainers . . . .”

  He said, “You wanted Shirl and Darleen. Now you’ve got them.”

  She said, “I most certainly did not want the Pruin woman. Now it seems that I’ve got her too.”

  Grimes told her, “She was part of the package deal, Lady.”

  Ellena made a major production of shrugging. “Oh, well. At least I shall not have to mingle with her socially. And I think that the Palace will be able to afford to treat her to an occasional meal in the sergeants’ mess.”

  “Or the officers’ mess,” said Grimes. “Shirl and Darleen will be officers . . .”

  “Thanks to you.”

 
“ . . . and they will wish, now and again, to entertain their friend.”

  “I cannot imagine her being a friend to anybody. But now, in my Palace, she will be free to come and go, to eat food that I have paid for, to swill expensive imported beer. But that, of course, is the least of your worries, Commodore. After all, it is your ship that brings in all such Terran luxuries, at freight rates that ensure for you a very handsome profit.”

  “Being a shipowner,” said Grimes, “is far more worrisome financially than being a planetary ruler. I’ve been both. I know.”

  “Indeed?” Her thin eyebrows went up almost to meet her hairline. “Indeed? Well, Your ex-Excellency, I thank you for your efforts on my behalf. And now I imagine that you have business of your own to attend to.”

  Grimes could not think of any but, bowing stiffly, he made his departure from the Lady Ellena’s presence. He was somewhat at a loose end; Maggie was still at her function, giving her after-luncheon talk and answering questions, and Brasidus was still presiding over the council meeting.

  He found his way to his quarters. His suite possessed all the amenities usually found in hotel accommodation, including a playmaster. There were gin and a bottle of Angostura bitters in the grog locker, ice cubes in the refrigerator. He mixed himself a drink. He checked the playmaster’s library of spools. These included various classical dramas in the original Greek and a complete coverage of the Olympic Games, on Earth, from the late Twentieth Century, Old Style, onwards. Unfortunately the library did not include anything else. Grimes sighed. He switched the playmaster to its TV reception function, sampled the only two channels that were available at this time of day. Both of these presented sporting events. He watched briefly the discus throwing and thought that these people would have much to learn from Shirl and Darleen. Then he switched off and got from his bags some spools of his own. He set up a space battle simulation and soon was engrossed, matching his wits against those of the small but cunningly programmed computer.