Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  It was useless trying to argue.

  “Get on board and get dressed,” Grimes ordered the girls. Then, to Coffin, “Rest assured, sir, that I shall remove my obnoxious presence from your world as soon as possible.”

  He left Steerforth to bear the brunt of the pastor’s continued fury as he made his way up the ramp into the ship. Had he stayed he would surely have lost his temper with the man.

  Chapter 22

  After a while Steerforth joined Grimes in the latter’s day cabin. He announced indignantly, “I finally got rid of the sanctimonious old bastard. You certainly didn’t help matters by showing up with no less than three girls flaunting their nudity. In fact I’m wondering how I can bring myself to serve under such an unprincipled, atheistical lecher as yourself, sir.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Grimes, not without sincerity. “But he’d started on you, before I got back, so I let him finish on you. You knew what it was all about. I didn’t. Had I stayed I should only have been dipping my oar into unknown waters.”

  “Into troubled waters,” said the chief officer. “Into waters made even more troubled by yourself. And those blasted girls.”

  The blasted girls made their entrance. Shirl and Darleen were in correct uniform and Seiko was wearing her Madame Butterfly outfit. But either her wig had been replaced by a less formal one or it had been shorn to a page boy bob. With them came Calamity Cassie, ostensibly to make some minor repairs to the small refrigerator in Grimes’s bar. (“Are you sure that you want her?” Ms. Scott had asked. “Do you like your beer warm, Captain, or having to do without ice cubes?”)

  “Sit down, everybody,” ordered Grimes. “Yes, you too, Seiko. But first of all fetch us drinks.”

  “And for myself, Captain-san?” asked the robot sweetly.

  “If you want one. What do you fancy? Battery acid?”

  Cassie laughed. “She’ll find none of that aboard this ship. But, believe it or not, there are some archaic wet storage cells over in that apology for a workshop . . .”

  Over the drinks Grimes told the story, from his viewpoint, to Steerforth and Cassie. Shirl and Darleen told their almost identical stories. Seiko told her story.

  “So, sir,” said Steerforth at last, “it seems certain that the silkies can be classified as intelligent beings, even disregarding the claims—which I do not doubt—that Shirl, Darleen and Seiko have been in some sort of telepathic communication with them, there is that gruesome business of their gnawing off people’s hands . . . .”

  Grimes shuddered. “Gruesome,” he said, “is rather too mild a word.”

  “Could be, sir. But it’s a very apposite act of revenge, the sort of revenge that only an intelligent being could conceive.” He was warming up to his theme. “What gave us our imagined superiority over certain other intelligent inhabitants of the Home Planet, Earth? The cetacea, I mean. Our hands. Our tool-making, weapon-making, weapon-using hands. With our hands we built the whaling ships, made the harpoons and the harpoon guns. With our hands we launched the harpoons—and continued to do so even after it was generally accepted that the whales are intelligent beings. There was too much money, big money, tied up in the whaling industry for it to be brought to an immediate stop.”

  “And there’s big money tied up in the silkie industry,” said Grimes. “Luckily most of it is El Doradan money, and in the Terran corridors of power the El Doradans have at least as many enemies as they have friends. And the silkies have precious few of either. Mphm.”

  “We . . .” began Shirl, “ . . . could be their friends,” finished Darleen.

  “And I,” said Seiko.

  “And in any case,” said Steerforth, “all of us here are being paid to be the silkies’ friends.”

  “Not enough,” complained Grimes, on principle. “And I still don’t feel inclined to extend the right hand of friendship to a being who, only a short while back, was going to chew it off.”

  “But he didn’t,” said either Shirl or Darleen.

  “No thanks to the pair of you,” grumbled Grimes ungraciously. “If it hadn’t been for Seiko . . .”

  “I did only what I had been programmed to do, by your honored father. To look after you,” said the automaton in deliberate imitation of the sort of intonation usually employed by not truly intelligent robots, humanoid or not.

  Grimes felt that he was being ganged up on by the female members of his crew.

  He said, “We can’t hang around indefinitely, even though you, Cassie, might be able considerably to delay the progress of the repairs. We have to bring matters to a head, somehow, to engender some sort of situation that will require Federation action . . .”

  “But don’t forget, sir,” pointed out Steerforth, “that Sister Sue is not a unit of the Survey Service’s fleet, and that only the few of us, gathered here in your day cabin, are commissioned officers of the Survey Service.” He smiled briefly at Seiko. “With one exception, of course. But you are, in every way that counts, one of us.”

  “Should I feel flattered?” she asked.

  Steerforth ignored this. “We are not entitled,” he went on, “to put the lives of the civilian crew members at risk, any more than we have done already. You’re a very skillful saboteuse, Cassie, but even with sabotage accidents can and do happen. I had my fingers crossed during our near-crash landing.”

  Grimes drew reflectively on his pipe. “What about this?” he asked at last. “Shirl and Darleen—and Seiko—can talk to the silkies. Once a line of communication has been established it’s bound to improve. Suppose that the girls are able to persuade the silkies to abandon the rookeries within easy reach, by schooner, of Port Salem and to re-establish themselves on the other side of the planet . . .”

  “That, sir,” said Steerforth, “would be only a short-term solution to the problem. These local schooners would be quite capable of making long ocean voyages—just as the whalers did on Earth’s seas. And as for finding the new rookeries—your old friend Drongo Kane could instruct his captains to use their boats to carry out aerial surveys.”

  “And people,” put in Cassie, “are conservative, no matter where they live, on the land or in the sea. How many villagers, for generation after generation, have continued to live on the slopes of volcanoes, despite warnings and ominous rumblings, even after devastating eruptions? Quite a few, Captain, quite a few. Members of my own family are such villagers.” She smiled. “I ran away to Space because I thought I’d be safer.”

  “You might be,” Steerforth told her, “but those of us in the same ship as you very often aren’t.”

  “The rookeries are sacred sites,” said Shirl. “They were sacred sites long before the first Earthmen came to New Salem. Even when we, Darleen and I, have full command of the silkies’ language we do not think that we shall be able to persuade them to migrate elsewhere.”

  “You can try,” said Grimes. “You might be able to. And if they do migrate it will buy them time and save the lives of possibly hundreds of pups. And by the time that the next season rolls around something else might have turned up.”

  “As long as you’re still around, sir,” said Steerforth, “something will. Probably something quite disastrous.”

  “As long as it’s disastrous to the right people,” Grimes told him cheerfully.

  Chapter 23

  Over the years Grimes had come to realize that he was some sort of catalyst; his insertion either by chance or by intent (more and more, of late, by Rear Admiral Damien’s intent) into a potentially unstable situation caused things to happen. It hadn’t been so bad, he thought, in the old days when he had been as much surprised as anybody at the upheavals of which he had become the center. Then he hadn’t led with his chin. Now he was supposed to lead with his chin, and he didn’t like it.

  That night he was a long time getting to sleep. He relived the threatened, probably fatal mutilation when those grinding teeth were about to close over his wrist. He had faced other perils during his career, but very few during which
he had been so absolutely helpless. But now, he consoled himself, the silkies accepted him as a friend. (And Pastor Coffin most certainly did not.)

  Once the repairs to the inertial drive had been completed, once the Mannschenn Drive had been recalibrated and once he had stocked up on fresh water he would no longer have any excuse for staying on New Salem. He could tell Calamity Cassie to perpetrate some more gentle sabotage—but, damn it all, this was his ship and he just didn’t want her damaged any further, and to hell with his Reserve commission and to hell with Admiral Damien.

  He thought, If I’m seen to be hobnobbing with the silkies the good pastor will think even less of me than he does already. Possibly he will take some action against me, do something that will justify my screaming to the Survey Service for protection and redress. After all, legally speaking, I’m no more (and no less) than an honest civilian shipowner and shipmaster going about his lawful occasions, a taxpayer who contributes to the upkeep of the so-called Police Force of the Galaxy.

  He thought of a cover story, of the report that he would have to make if a destroyer were sent to Salem to release Grimes and Sister Sue from illegal arrest. Shortly after my arrival at Port Salem the ruler of the colony, one Pastor Coffin, hinted that I might be interested in taking part in the fur trade. I was interested—after all, I am in business to make money. And yet I was prey to nagging doubts. I was witness to the brutality involved in the slaughter of the silky pups, the pelts of which are especially valuable. Two of my junior officers, Ms. Kelly and Ms. Byrne, New Alicians, shared my misgivings. (You may be aware that the New Alicians are capable of empathy with all animal life.) Ms. Kelly and Ms. Byrne claimed that the silkies are intelligent beings—just as the cetacea on Earth were finally (and almost too late) found to be. Ms. Kelly and Ms. Byrne were able to communicate with the silkies, using a sort of song language, remarkably similar to that used by the whales in Earth’s seas . . .

  He thought, That sounds good. I’m wasted in Space. I should be a writer like the Old Man. Mphm. Now we come to the extrapolation. What will Coffin actually do when he finds out that we’re on speaking terms with the silkies? What can he do? We haven’t much to fear; the only firearms on this planet are those in my own armory. And they’d better stay there. On no account must I appear to be the aggressor. And what if his goons try to rough me up when I’m down on the beach some dark evening, communing with the silkies? (That, of course, is what I want to happen.) Anybody who tries to rough me up when I’ve my Terrible Trio, Shirl, Darleen and Seiko, with me, will be asking for and getting trouble . . . I’ll have to impress on them that if we are attacked they are to take defensive action only . . .

  He continued with his scenario. One evening Ms. Kelly, Ms. Byrne and myself strolled down to a beach about two kilometers from the spaceport in a direction away from the city. We were accompanied by my personal robomaid, a very versatile and sophisticated piece of domestic machinery, one capable of being programmed by her—no, better make that “its”; sorry Seiko—by its owner to perform adequately in almost any foreseeable circumstances. This robomaid is not only waterproof but capable of emitting sounds when completely submerged. Acting on my instructions Ms. Kelly and Ms. Byrne had programmed the robot with the silkies’ song.

  Having arrived at the beach I set up my sonic recorders and waited, with Ms. Kelly and Ms. Byrne, while the robomaid waded out into deep water until lost to sight. Ms. Kelly and Ms. Byrne, whose hearing is far more acute than mine, told me that they could hear, faintly, the song that she—no, it—was singing under the surface. After a while they said that they could hear the silkies answering.

  Eventually the robomaid emerged from the sea and walked up on to the beach, followed, almost immediately, by half a dozen big silkies clumsily humping themselves up over the wet sand. Ms. Kelly and Ms. Byrne talked with them by an exchange of musical grunts and snatches of high-pitched song. Now and again Ms. Kelly would interpret for me, telling me that the silkies were pleased that at last humans had come to their world who wished to regard them as friends and not as mindless prey. Through my interpreter I told the silkies that I should do everything within my power to ensure that the fur trade stop.

  Finally the silkies lurched back into the sea and Ms. Kelly, Ms. Byrne and I began to walk back to the ship, followed by the robomaid, carrying the recording apparatus. Suddenly men emerged from the bushes that bordered the track. I heard somebody yell, “Dirty silky lovers.” We were attacked, with fists and clubs, with no further warning. Fortunately for ourselves Ms. Kelly and Ms. Byrne possess some expertise in the arts of unarmed combat and, too, the robomaid had been programmed to protect her—no, its—master. Even so we suffered abrasions and contusions. Our clothing was torn. The recorder was smashed. By the time we reached the refuge of the ship we were being followed by a sizeable mob, shouting and throwing rocks. . . .

  Grimes didn’t like the way that his scenario was progressing. But there would have to be violence before the Survey Service could be called in to take police action, before there could be a full inquiry into the New Salem fur trade. Coffin and his crew would have to be made to show themselves to the universe in their true colors.

  He sighed audibly, sat up in bed, switched on the light and then filled and lit his pipe. The sleepless Seiko came in, still in her Japanese guise, carrying a tray with teapot and cup.

  She said, “You do not sleep, Captain-san.”

  He told her, “I am trying to work things out.”

  She said, “That is the worst of being a self-programming machine.” If her flawless face had been capable of showing expression it would have done so. “As I am finding out all the time.”

  Grimes sipped the hot, soothing tea that she had poured for him.

  He said, “Seiko, you’re a treasure. I’m not surprised that my mother was jealous of you . . . .”

  She said, “It is my delight to serve those whom I love, John.”

  Normally, had any robot, no matter how intelligent, addressed Grimes by his given name that same automaton would, very promptly, been smacked down to size. But, on this occasion, Grimes felt oddly flattered. He said, however, “You must not call me John in the hearing of my officers.”

  Her tinkling laugh sounded more human than mechanical.

  “I know my place, John.”

  He finished his tea, put down the cup, stretched out in the narrow bed. He complained, “I thought that the drink would make me drowsy but I feel more wide awake than ever. . . .”

  She ordered gently, “Turn over.”

  He did so. She stripped the covers from his naked body. He felt her hands on his back, her smooth, cool, gentle hands, at times firmly stroking, at other times moving over his skin as lightly as feathers. It was like no massage that he had ever experienced but it was effective. A deep drowsiness crept over him. He turned again, composing himself on his left side. Dimly he heard the rustle of discarded clothing.

  Surely not . . . he thought.

  But it was so, and Seiko slid into his bed, the front of her body fitting snugly to the back of his. She must have actuated some temperature control; her synthetic skin was as warm as that of a human woman would have been. He would have wanted more than she was giving him but knew that, even if possible, it would have been . . . messy.

  As he dropped off to sleep he imagined the reactions of his officers should they ever learn—but they never would—that he had gone to bed with his robomaid. He could almost hear the whispers, “The old bastard’s actually sleeping with Seiko . . . .”

  But, almost without exception, the male members of his crew would be envious rather than censorious. And some of the female ones. And—he actually chuckled—and as for Shirl and Darleen, even at their most vicious Seiko would be more than a match for them.

  And Pastor Coffin?

  Fuck him, thought Grimes just before unconsciousness claimed him.

  Chapter 24

  The next day Pastor Coffin sent a messenger to the ship. This sullen, black-c
lad, heavily bearded young man presented Grimes with a sheaf of clumsily printed papers headed PORT REGULATIONS. These Grimes read with interest. There was much repetition. They boiled down, essentially, to a collection of Thou Shalt Nots. The ship’s boats were not to be exercised. The ship’s crew, of any rank whatsoever, were not to stray from the confines of the spaceport. No materials were to be removed from the spaceport workshop without the written permission of the Pastor. The workshop was not to be used on the Sabbath. And so on, and so on. The next evening Grimes, with Shirl, Darleen and Seiko, proceeded to break regulations. There was, he had already ascertained, a guard stationed at the gate to the spaceport area and other guards making their patrols. But these men did not possess the sharp night sight or the super-keen hearing of the two New Alicians and carried, should they feel the need for illumination, only feebly glimmering oil lanterns. Grimes, of course, was equipped with only normal human eyesight and hearing himself so was obliged to rely upon the faculties of his companions.

  He and the girls were dressed in black coveralls and shod in soft-soled black shoes. Their faces and hands were coated with a black pigment that, according to Calamity Cassie, who had concocted it from the Odd Gods of the Galaxy knew what, could be removed by a liberal application of soap and hot water. (Grimes hoped that she was right.) Seiko carried a black bag in which the recording equipment had been packed.

  The four of them stood in the after airlock, the illumination in which had been extinguished. They watched the bobbing, yellow light that was the lantern carried by a patrolling guard. The man seemed to walk faster as he approached the ship, was almost hurrying as he passed the foot of the ramp. Probably, thought Grimes, he felt some superstitious dread of these impious strangers from the stars. (Coffin, of course, would have told his people what an ungodly bunch Grimes and his crew were.)