Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  Eventually Maggie joined him there.

  She flopped into an easy chair, demanded a drink. Grimes made her a Scotch on the rocks. She disposed of it in two gulps.

  She said, “I needed that! What a bunch of dim biddies I had to talk to. Oh, it wasn’t so much the talking as the stupid questions afterwards. Most of my audience knew only two worlds, Earth and New Sparta, and were quite convinced that those are the only two planets worth knowing. As a real, live Arcadian I was just a freak, to be condescended to. They even lectured me on the glories of Hellenic culture and the great contributions it has made to Galactic civilization. Damn it all, Hellenic culture is only part of Terran culture, just as Australian culture is. Talking of Australians, and pseudo-Australians, how did you get on with Shirl and Darleen?”

  “I persuaded them to accept commissions in the Amazon Guard. Unluckily—or was it so unlucky?—Fenella was part of the deal. She’s staying on to do a piece on them, and part of the package is that she’s to be allowed free access to the Palace at all times.”

  “Why did you say, ‘or was it so unlucky’?”

  “She might be able to help us. I gained the impression that she’s on the track of something. Is there any way that she could be pressganged into the Intelligence Branch? After all, we were.”

  “But we were—and are—already officers holding commissions in the Survey Service. When admirals say, Jump! we jump. Even you, John, as long as you’re on the Reserve List.”

  “Civilians can be conscripted . . .” said Grimes. “I was. I became a civilian as soon as I resigned from the Service after the mutiny.”

  “As I heard it from Admiral Damien,” Maggie said, “you were offered the Reserve Commission that you now hold. You were not compelled to accept it.”

  “Mphm. Not quite. But there were veiled threats as well as inducements.”

  “Could you threaten Fenella?”

  “I wish that I could. But as I’m not a major shareholder in Star Scandals I can’t.”

  “Inducements?”

  “I’ve already played one major card by getting her the permission to come calling round to the Palace any time that she feels like it. There should have been a quid pro quo. I realize that now.”

  “Now that it’s too late. What we want is an I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you’ll-scratch-mine situation. What inducements can we offer? Mmm. To begin with, I’m the senior officer of the Federation Survey Service on this planet . . . .”

  “I am,” said Grimes indignantly.

  “But only you and I know it. As far as the locals are concerned, as far as Fenella is concerned, you’re no more than an owner-master, waiting here for his little star tramp to come wambling in with her cargo of black olives and retsina. And I have a warship at my disposal. A minor warship, perhaps, but a warship nonetheless.”

  “A Serpent Class courier,” scoffed Grimes, “armed with a couple of pea-shooters and a laser cannon that would make quite a fair cigarette lighter. Commanded by a snotty-nosed lieutenant.”

  “You were one yourself once. But how far could you trust Fenella? Suppose, just suppose, that you spilled some of the beans to her? Could she be trusted?”

  “I think that she subscribes to the journalists’ code of honor. Never betray your sources. Too, there’s one threat that I could use. The Baroness Michelle d’Estang of Eldorado is a Star Scandals major shareholder. I was among those present when Michelle, wielding the power of the purse, killed a really juicy story that Fenella wanted to splash all over the Galaxy.”

  “I take it that Michelle is one of your girlfriends.”

  “You could call her that.”

  “And we’ve other cards to play. Both of us are personal friends of the Archon. And you, I have gathered, have been on more than friendly terms with Shirl and Darleen. Soon, I think, we must have a get-together with Miz Pruin and offer her our cooperation in return for hers.”

  “If you say so,” said Grimes. “And now I suppose that we’d better get dressed for tonight’s state dinner party.”

  “We have to get undressed first,” she said suggestively.

  Chapter 13

  So there was the state dinner party, as boring as such occasions usually are, with everybody, under the watchful eye of the Lady Ellena, on his or her best behavior, with the serving wenches obviously instructed not to be overly prompt in such matters as the refilling of wine glasses. The female guests, thought Grimes snobbishly, were a scruffy bunch, immigrants all, mainly from Earth, most of whom would never, on their home planets, have been invited to a function such as this. The same could have been said regarding the hostess, Ellena.

  What really irked the Commodore was the ban on smoking. Not even when things got to the coffee and ouzo stage was he able to enjoy his pipe—and normally he liked to enjoy a couple or three puffs between courses.

  He was seated near the head of the high table, with Maggie on his left and the headmistress of the Pallas Athena College for Young Ladies on his right. Maggie had gotten into a conversation with Colonel Heraclion, who was sitting next to her on her other side, leaving Grimes to cope with the academic lady.

  “You must already have noticed changes here, Commodore,” she said.

  Grimes swallowed a mouthful of rather stringy stewed lamb (if it was lamb) and replied briefly, “Yes.”

  “And changes for the better. Oh, the first settlers did their best to recreate the glory that was Greece but, without the fair sex to aid them in their endeavors, all that they achieved was a pale shadow . . . .”

  She waved her fork as she spoke and drops of gravy fell on the front of her chiton. It was rather surprising, thought Grimes, that they succeeded in making a landing as the material of the dress dropped in almost a straight line from neck to lap. He categorized her as a dried-up stick of a woman, not his type at all, with graying hair scraped back from an already overly high forehead, with protuberant pale blue eyes, with thin lips that could not hide buck teeth. Why was it, he wondered, that such people are so often, too often prone to fanatical enthusiasms?

  “The founding fathers—there were not, of course, any founding mothers—were spacemen, not Greek scholars,” she went on. “They knew something, of course, of the culture which they were trying to emulate, but not enough. It has, therefore, fallen to me, and to others like me, to finish the task that was begun by them.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes. For example, you should still be here when the first Marathon is run. It will be a grueling course, from the Palace to the Acropolis. A little way downhill, then on the level and, finally, uphill. The race will be open to everybody, tourists as well as citizens.”

  “Better them than me,” said Grimes.

  “Come, come, Commodore! Surely you are not serious. Taking part in such an event could be one of the greatest challenges of your career.”

  “Foot racing,” Grimes told her, “is not an activity in which I have ever taken part.”

  “And I know why,” she told him. “You are a smoker. I saw you puffing a pipe outside the banqueting hall before you entered. But, even so, you could enter. And—who knows?—you might be among those to finish the course. Think of the honor and the glory!”

  “Honor and glory don’t pay port charges and maintenance and crew salaries,” said Grimes.

  She laughed. “Spoken like a true cynic, Commodore. A cynic and a shipowner.”

  “A man can be both,” he admitted. “And if one is the latter one tends to become the former.”

  “A cynic . . .” she trotted out the old chestnut as though it had been newly minted, by herself . . . “is a man who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.”

  “Mphm.”

  The meal dragged on.

  Finally, after the coffee had been served, there was a display of martial arts in the large area of floor around which the tables stood. There were wrestling matches, men versus men, women versus women, men versus women. (The ladies, Grimes assumed correctly, were members
of the Lady Ellena’s Amazon Guard. He recognized Lieutenant Phryne, although without the leather and brass trappings of her uniform her body looked softer, much more feminine. Nonetheless she floored her opponent, a hairy male giant, with almost contemptuous ease.)

  And then it was the turn of Shirl and Darleen. They were already in their Amazon lieutenants’ uniforms. (Somebody must have worked fast, thought Grimes.) They had boomerangs, little ones, no more than toys, that, at the finish of their act, seemed to fill the banqueting hall like a flock of whirring birds.

  At last it was over, with the boomerangs, one by one, fluttering out through the wide open doorway, followed finally, after the making of their bows to quite enthusiastic applause, by the two New Alicians.

  The academic lady was not among those who clapped.

  “Boomerangs . . .” she muttered. “But they’re not Greek . . .”

  “I suppose not,” said Grimes.

  “And those two women . . . If you could call them that. Mutants, possibly. But officers . . . . In the elite Amazon Guard . . . .”

  “Instructors, actually,” Grimes told her.

  “Oh. So you know them. You have some most peculiar friends, Commodore. From which planet do they come?”

  “New Alice.”

  “New Alice?” She laughed creakily. “And how did it get its name? Is it some sort of Wonderland?”

  “Just one of the Lost Colonies,” said Grimes. “Fairly recently rediscovered. A rather odd Australianoid culture “

  “Most definitely odd, Commodore, if those two ladies are a representative sample.”

  “All transplanted cultures are odd,” he said. “And some cultures are odd before transplantation.”

  “Indeed?” Coldly.

  “Indeed.”

  The next time Grimes saw a demonstration of boomerang throwing was at the Amazon Guards’ drill ground. He stood with Maggie, Lieutenant Phryne and Fenella Pruin. He watched Shirl and Darleen as they hurled their war boomerangs, ugly things, little more than flattened clubs, at a row of man-sized dummies, twelve of them, achieving a full dozen neat decapitations. More dummies were set up. This time Shirl and Darleen improvised, snatching weapons from a pile of scrap metal and plastic, speedily selecting suitably shaped pieces, hurling them with great effect. But there were now no tidy beheadings. There was damage, nonetheless—arms torn off, bellies ripped open, faces crushed.

  “Not very effective against well-aimed laser fire,” sneered Phryne.

  “Better than bare fists,” said Grimes. “And, come to that, more effective than your wrestling . . . .”

  “Care to try a fall or two, Commodore?” she asked nastily.

  “No thank you, Lieutenant.”

  Maggie laughed and Fenella Pruin sniggered.

  And then all three of them watched the Amazons, under the tutelage of Shirl and Darleen, trying to master the art of play boomerang throwing.

  “No! No!” Darleen was yelping. “Not that way, you stupid bitch. Hold it up, not across! Flat side to you, not away! And . . . And flick your wrist! Like this!”

  An instructor officer she might be, newly commissioned, but already she was beginning to sound like a drill sergeant.

  Grimes, Maggie and Fenella drifted away from the field. They stood in the shade of a large tree. Grimes was amused when Maggie went through routine bug detection; she was taking her secondment to the Intelligence Branch very seriously. There certainly would be bugs in the foliage, he said, but not of the electronic variety. She was not amused.

  “Now we can talk,” she said.

  “What about?” asked Fenella Pruin.

  “You.”

  “Me, Commander Lazenby?”

  “Yes. You. You’re after a story, aren’t you?”

  “I’m always after stories. Ask Grimes. He knows.”

  “And the story with Grimes in it you weren’t allowed to publish. I know. Do you want to publish the story—if there is one—that you get on New Sparta?”

  “Of course.”

  “Suppose you aren’t allowed to?”

  Fenella Pruin laughed. “Really, my dear! Even I know that a mere commander in the Survey Service doesn’t pile on many Gs.”

  “A commander,” Maggie told her, “with admirals listening to what she has to say.”

  “Am I supposed to stand at attention and salute?”

  “Only if you want to. Anyhow, we can help you, and you can help us.”

  “We? You and Grimes, of all people!”

  Maggie contained her temper. “Miz Pruin,” she said coldly. “You know why I am here, on New Sparta. Making an ethological survey for the Survey Service’s Scientific Branch. You know why Commodore Grimes is here. Waiting for the arrival of his ship so that he may, once again, assume command of her. We know why you are here. Sniffing out a story, the more scandalous the better.”

  “There’s one that I’ve already sniffed out,” said Fenella Pruin nastily. “You’re sleeping with Grimes. And if you don’t watch him like a hawk he’ll be tearing pieces off Shirl and Darleen again.”

  “He’d better not,” said Maggie. “Not while I’m around.”

  “Don’t I get a say in this?” demanded Grimes.

  “No matter who is sleeping with whom, or who is going to sleep with whom,” went on Maggie, “we, the Commodore and I, could be of help to you. We are persona grata in the Palace, as old friends of the Archon. Too, I know my way about this planet. Both of us do.”

  “You could be right,” admitted Fenella grudgingly.

  “Of course I’m right. And, on the other hand, although you lack our local knowledge, although you don’t have our contacts, you are quite famous for your ability to sniff out scandals. Political as well as sexual.”

  “Bedfellows often make strange politics,” said Fenella.

  “Haven’t you got it the wrong way around?” asked Maggie.

  “No.”

  It was Grimes’s turn to laugh.

  Maggie ignored him, went on, “It will be to our mutual benefit if we pool information. The Commodore and I have our contacts. You now have yours—Shirl and Darleen in the Amazon Guard. Too, if you made yourself too unpopular—as you have done on more than one planet—I could be of very real help to you.”

  “How?”

  “You must have seen that Serpent Class courier at the spaceport. Krait. Her captain, Lieutenant Gupta, is under my orders. I could see to it that you got offplanet in a hurry should the need arise.”

  “You tempt me, Commander Lazenby. You tempt me, although I doubt very much that Lieutenant Gupta’s flying sardine can is as luxurious as Captain Grimes’s Little Sister . . . .” She turned to Grimes. “I was really sorry, you know, when I learned that you’d gotten rid of her. We had some good times aboard her . . .”

  Grimes could not remember any especially good times, either on the voyage out to New Venusberg or the voyage back. But Maggie, of course, had taken the remark at its face value and was glaring at him.

  “Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” said Grimes to Fenella, adding, “That’s one proverb you can’t muck around with.”

  “Isn’t it? Didn’t a grazing cow once say, ‘Never take a horse gift in the mouth . . .’?”

  “Shut up, you two!” snapped Maggie. “Are you with us or aren’t you, Miz Pruin?”

  “I know what’s in it for me,” said the journalist. “Put what’s in it for you?”

  “I’ve told you. Just help in my research project.”

  “And for Grimes?”

  “I’m just helping Commander Lazenby,” he said. “Just passing the time until my ship comes in.”

  “If that’s your story,” she said, “stick to it. But all right, I’ll play. And I’ll expect the pair of you to play as well.”

  “We shall,” promised Maggie.

  Chapter 14

  Fenella Pruin was now allowed into the Palace although she was still far from welcome. Should she chance to meet the Lady Ellena while making her way throug
h the corridors the Archon’s wife would sweep by her as though she didn’t exist. Brasidus himself would acknowledge her presence, but only just. She was tolerated in the officers’ quarters of the Amazon Guard because of her friendship with Shirl and Darleen, both of whom had become quite popular with their messmates. And, of course, she was free to visit Maggie and Grimes any time that she so wished.

  She joined them, this day, for morning coffee.

  After the surly serving wench had deposited the tray on the table and left, after Maggie had poured the thick, syrupy fluid into the little cups, she demanded, “Well? Have you anything to tell me yet?”

  “No,” admitted Maggie. “I am still nibbling around the edges, as it were. The New Hellas people are up to something. But what?”

  “It’s a pity that you can’t join them,” said Fenella.

  “It is. But they know that I’m an officer of the Federation Survey Service. And they know that both Commodore Grimes and I are personal friends, old friends of Brasidus.” She laughed. “Although if it were not for that personal friendship they might try to recruit John.”

  “It’d be my ship they’d want,” said Grimes. “Not me especially.”

  “Why not?” asked Fenella. “After all, you were slung out of the Survey Service in disgrace . . . .”

  “I resigned,” growled Grimes.

  “And you were a pirate . . .”

  “How many times,” he demanded, “do I have to tell people that I was a privateer? And now, Fenella, do you have anything to tell us?”

  She looked at him and said, “I was under the impression, Grimes, that the ethological research project was Commander Lazenby’s baby, not yours.”

  “Commodore Grimes,” said Maggie, “is helping me with it. Just out of friendship, of course.”

  “Of course,” concurred Fenella, twitching her nose. “Of course. But the Commodore was quite recently a servant of the Federation, on the public payroll, as a planetary governor, no less . . . Are you really self-employed, Grimes? Or is it just a cover?”