Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

“Now,” whispered Shirl.

  On silent feet she led the way down the gangway with Grimes close behind her, followed by Darleen, with Seiko bringing up the rear. The night was dark, not even the faintest glimmer of starlight penetrating the thick overcast. Grimes had to keep very close to Shirl, sensing her rather than actually seeing her. When she stopped suddenly he banged into her, kept his balance with difficulty. “What . . . ?” he gasped.

  “Shhh!” she hissed.

  Around the corner of a building came two patrolmen, their lanterns swinging. They were talking quite loudly. “Waste o’ time, tha’s what. Tell me, man, what we a-doing here, all blessed night? Wha’ does he think that these ungodly outworlders are a-going to do? Tell me that.”

  “He knows what he’s doing, what he wants. He says that these spacers, ain’t like t’others, that they’re silky-lovers . . .”

  “An’ they’ll come a creepin’ out o’ their ship in the middle o’ the night to love silkies?” The man laughed coarsely. “Let ‘em, I say—long’s they leave their women so’s we can love them. Did ye set eyes on their wenches? There’s one or two o’ them black ones as I’d fancy . . .”

  “Watch yer tongue, Joel. That’s Godless talk, an’ you know it. The pastor’ll not think kindly o’ ye should I pass it on . . .”

  The voices faded into the distance.

  Twice more, before they reached the spaceport periphery, Grimes and his companions had to freeze into immobility, each time warned by the super-keen senses of Shirl and Darleen in ample time. They did not, of course, go out by the main gate but they scaled the fence, high though it was, without difficulty. On the other side there was bushland but not of the impenetrable variety. But by himself, even in broad daylight, Grimes would have become hopelessly lost. He was grateful when, at last, Shirl told him that it would be safe for him to use his pocket torch at low intensity. At least, now, he was not tripping over roots and getting his face slashed by branches. (It was just as well that these bushes were not thornbearing.)

  Then, surprisingly, they came to a road, the coast road. They crossed it. There was more brush, then there was a beach, and the smell of salt water and the murmur of wavelets breaking on the shore, and a glimmer of pale phosphorescence at the margin of sea and land.

  Seiko lowered the big, black bag to the sand, unpacked it, setting up the audio-visual recorder. Then she kicked off her shoes, shrugged out of her coveralls. Her body was palely luminous—and her black face and hands gave her a wildly surrealistic appearance.

  She said, “All ready, John.”

  Grimes said, “Of course, we can’t be sure that they will come.”

  “They will come,” said Shirl.

  “Sound carries a long way under the water,” said Darleen.

  Seiko waded into the sea. She was a long time vanishing from sight; here the beach shelved gradually. At last she was gone, completely submerged. Grimes filled and lit his pipe, walked up and down, staring all the time to seaward. On other worlds, he thought, there would be the running lights of coastwise shipping, but not here. And on other worlds there would be lights in the sky and the beat of engines, but not here. Did the Salemites put to sea at night? They must do so, now and again, he decided, but only on fur hunting expeditions to the silky rookeries. And there must be fishermen. There was so much that he did not know about this planet.

  “Here she comes,” said Shirl.

  Here she came, at first only a glimmer of phosphorescence about her neck, her still-black face invisible against the black sea surface. And then there were her pale shoulders, and then her breasts, and her belly, and her thighs . . . She was not alone, was being followed up to the beach by six great arrowheads of bio-luminescence, six silkies that disturbed the water only enough to actuate the tiny, light-emitting organisms.

  She walked up on to the firm sand. The seabeasts wallowed after. Shirl and Darleen greeted them with musical grunts. The silkies replied. Grimes, squatting over the apparatus, made sure that all was being recorded. He envied his companions their gift of tongues. It seemed almost that those sounds were making sense. There was emotional content; he was sure of that. There was wonder, and there was sadness, and a sort of helpless bitterness.

  Then Darleen said, “This is not fair, John. You are being left out of the conversation. I shall interpret what has been said already.”

  “Please,” said Grimes.

  “I speak as a silky,” sang rather than said the girl. “I speak for the silkies. This is our world, given to us by the Great Being. It is said that, many ages ago, our wise beings, looking up to the night sky, reasoned that there were other worlds, that the lights in the sky were suns, like our sun, but far and far and very far away. And we—no, they—felt regret. We should never know the beings of those other worlds, should never meet them, should never talk with them in the friendship that all intelligent beings must feel toward each other. . . .

  “But others preached hope.

  “The worlds are many, the sky is vast

  “And surely it must come at last

  “That friends shall meet and friends shall talk

  “And hand in hand in love shall walk . . .”

  She laughed, embarrassed. “I am sorry, John; I am no poet. But I tried to translate one of their songs from the olden times. ‘Hand in hand in love shall walk’ is not, of course, a literal translation—but I had to make it rhyme somehow . . .”

  “You’re doing fine,” said Grimes. “Carry on, Darleen.”

  “I speak as a silky,” continued the girl. “And for the silkies. We swam in our seas, and gathered on the meeting places for communion with our fellows, for the fathering and mothering of our children. We sang our songs and we made new songs, and those that were good were fixed for all time in our memories.

  “And then came the ship . . . .” She paused, then said, “There is another song.

  “Came the ship and it gave birth

  “To the things that walk on Earth,

  “With their sharp blades that hack and slay,

  “That stab and rip and gut and flay . . .”

  Shirl interrupted, saying, “I think that we should cut this short, John. Our silky friends are becoming restless; it seems that they must report to their council of elders, which is being held some distance away. And we have to get back to the ship. So I will summarize, without all the poetic language.

  “When men, the first colonists, came the silkies were prepared to be friendly. From the sea they watched the strange, land-dwelling beings, decided that they were intelligent like themselves and decided, too, that there were no reasons for hostility between the two races. Men wanted the dry land. So what? They were welcome to it. Even so, they exercised caution. It was quite some time before the first emissaries came lolloping ashore to make contact with the humans, a party of woodsmen who were felling trees to obtain structural timber.

  “Some of the humans ran in fear but most did not. The ones who did not run set about the silkies with their great axes. Two silkies out of half a dozen, both of them wounded, made it back to the sea to tell their story.

  “But there must have been some misunderstanding, it was decided. There were other attempts at communication—all of them ending disastrously. The silkies decided that the humans just wanted to be left alone. Unfortunately the humans did not leave the silkies alone, although it was not until the start of the fur trade that they became a serious menace . . . .”

  And how had the fur trade started? Grimes wondered. Probably some visiting star tramp, whose captain had been given or who had bought a tanned silky skin . . . This curio shown to some friend or business acquaintance of the tramp master, who realized the value of furs of this quality, especially at a time when humanitarians all over the Galaxy were doing their best to ensure that practically every fur-bearing animal was well and truly protected . . .

  Darleen said, “They ask, can they go now, John?”

  “Of course,” Grimes told her to tell them. “Thank th
em for the information. Let them know that it will be passed on to rulers far more powerful than the Pastor Coffin, and that these rulers will take action to protect the silkies. Oh, and say that I shall want more talks. Ask them if they are willing.”

  There was an exchange of grunts.

  Then, “Come to this beach at any time,” interpreted Shirl, “and when the not-flesh-and-blood woman calls, we shall come.”

  The silkies returned to the sea and Grimes and his people commenced their walk back to the ship.

  Chapter 25

  Their walk back to the ship was without incident and once over the spaceport fence they were able to elude Coffin’s patrols easily. From the after airlock they went straight up to Grimes’s quarters where, before they had time to attempt to wash the pigment from their faces and hands, they were joined by Steerforth. The chief officer grinned as he looked at his black-faced captain and Grimes snapped, “Don’t say it, Number One. Don’t say it.”

  “Don’t say what, sir?” asked Steerforth innocently.

  “You were about to make some crack about nigger minstrels, weren’t you?”

  “Me, sir? Of course not.” He leered at the women. “I was about to say that Shirl and Darleen—and you, Seiko—are black but comely.” Then he became serious. “How did it go, sir?”

  “Very well, Mr. Steerforth. Very well. We got some good tapes. They will be proof, I think, that the silkies are intelligent beings. But you know as well as I do how slowly the tide runs through official channels, especially when there are deliberately engineered obstructions. And, apart from anything else, it will be months before the tapes get to Admiral Damien—and during that time how many silkies will be slaughtered?”

  “So there will have to be an incident,” murmured Steerforth. “An incident, followed immediately by investigation by the Survey Service.”

  “And I, of course, shall be at ground zero of this famous incident,” grumbled Grimes.

  “Of course, sir. Aren’t you always?”

  “Unfortunately. And now I’m going to get this muck off my face and hands and get some sleep. Goodnight, all of you.”

  Everybody left him apart from Seiko. It was not the first time that he had shared a shower, but it was the first time that he had done so with a robot. (But he already knew that she was waterproof.)

  He slept alone, however.

  In the morning he did not join his officers for breakfast but enjoyed this meal, served by Seiko, in his day cabin. Then he sent for the chief officer.

  He said, “I suppose that Flo and her gang are already in the workshop?”

  “They are, sir.”

  “I’d like you to wander across sometime this morning. Get into a conversation with Cassie—I’m sure that Flo will be happy to dispense with her services. Make sure that you have this mutual ear-bashing where it can be overheard by whatever of Coffin’s goons is lurking around to make sure that nothing is damaged or stolen by my engineers. Wonder, out loud, what the old bastard—me—is up to, sneaking out at night with those two cadets and that uppity little bitch of an assistant stewardess . . .”

  “Captain-san, I am not an uppity little bitch!” protested Seiko.

  But you’re an uppity robot, he thought.

  He said, “And I’m not an old bastard—at least, not in the legal sense of the word. Anyhow, you get the idea, Mr. Steerforth. Try to convey the impression that I and the ladies are Up To No Good. Nameless orgies out in the bush . . .”

  “Can I come with you next time, sir?”

  “Somebody has to mind the shop, and it’s you. And, in any case, I don’t think that you’re doing too badly for yourself, from what I’ve noticed. Aunt Jemima, of late, has been serving your favorite dishes at almost every meal.”

  Steerforth flushed. “Ms. Clay and I have similar tastes, sir.”

  “Indubitably.” Grimes laughed. “But shenanigans, sexual or otherwise, aboard the ship, are one thing. Shenanigans, especially sexual and indulged in by offworlders, on the sacred soil of New Salem, are another thing. You’re free to speculate—and the more wild the speculations the better. Perhaps on these lines. ‘Maybe the old bastard and his three bitches are having it off with the silkies. I wouldn’t put it past them. I’ve always suspected that the four of ’em are as kinky as all hell.’”

  “And are you, sir?”

  “Not especially.”

  “You have a very fertile mind, sir.”

  “Mphm. It runs in the family, I suppose. Oh, you might take a pocket recorder with you so that I can hear a playback of the way that you’ll be slandering me. It will all be part of the evidence.”

  “Not to be used against me, I hope, sir.”

  “If you like,” said Grimes, “I’ll give you written orders to traduce me.”

  Steerforth flushed again. “That, sir, will not be necessary,” he said stiffly.

  Late that evening Grimes and the three girls, their hands and faces again blackened, emerged from the ship. This time the sky was not overcast and the stars were bright in the sky; even Grimes experienced little difficulty in finding his way through the spaceport. As before there were the patrols, carrying their feeble oil lanterns. As before these were easily—too easily? wondered Grimes—eluded. The fence was scaled. Beyond it was the almost familiar bushland. It seemed to Grimes that the same path through it was being followed as before.

  Suddenly Shirl whispered in his ear, “Stop here for a little while, John. Pretend to be lighting your pipe . . . .”

  “Why pretend?” he muttered, pulling the foul thing from his pocket.

  They stood there while Grimes went through his usual ritual.

  “Yes,” murmured Darleen. “As I thought . . . .”

  “ . . . we are being followed . . .” continued Shirl.

  Somewhere behind them a twig cracked.

  Grimes finished lighting his pipe.

  “One man only . . .” breathed Darleen into his ear.

  Grimes took his time over his smoke. Let the bastard wait, he thought, not daring to make another move until we move on.

  Finally, “All right. Let’s get the show on the road,” he said in a normal voice.

  He knocked out his pipe on the ground, stamped on the last faintly glowing embers to extinguish them. He moved off, letting Shirl take the lead. Darleen followed close behind him and Seiko brought up the rear. They came to the coast road, crossed it. They emerged on to the beach. The recording apparatus was set up on its tripod. Seiko divested herself of her clothing. Shirl and Darleen followed suit, one of them saying, “Let us have a swim first. What about you, John?”

  He said, “The water’s too bloody cold.”

  (If there was to be any confrontation he would prefer to be fully clothed.)

  Shirl pressed herself against him in what must have looked like an amorous embrace. She whispered, “We might as well give the bastard an eyeful.”

  “The three of you can,” he whispered back.

  Seiko, her body palely luminous in the starlight, waded into the sea. The wavelets broke about her legs, her body, flashing phosphorescently. Shirl and Darleen followed her, flinging themselves full length as soon as there was enough depth. They sported exuberantly. It was as though they were swimming in a sea of liquid diamonds. “Come on in!” one of them called. “The water’s fine!”

  “Too cold for me!” Grimes shouted back—but if it had not been for that unseen watcher he would have joined them.

  Finally they tired of their games and came wading into the beach. Droplets of slowly fading phosphorescence fell from their nipples, gleamed in their pubic hair. One did not have to be kinky, thought Grimes, to appreciate such a show. He wondered if he was appreciating it. No doubt his eyes were popping with wonderment, sinful lust and holy indignation.

  “We should have brought towels,” said Darleen practically, attempting to dry herself with her coverall.

  “It is time that Seiko finished singing her song,” said Shirl.

  And now
Seiko emerged from the sea, fully as beautiful as the two New Alicians, adorned as they had been by living jewels of cold fire. The silkies followed her, up on to the beach, grunting musically, and each of them was wearing a coat of radiant color. Grimes wondered how he could ever have thought them ugly.

  “They bid you greeting, John,” sang Shirl.

  “Tell them that I am pleased to see them,” replied Grimes.

  What followed came as a surprise to him. He had been expecting a conversation—a conference? —such as the one in which he had taken part the previous night. But this was more of an orgy. The women—and Seiko was one of them—seemed to be determined to put on a show for Coffin’s spy. Grimes sat there, his pipe for once forgotten, watching in wonderment. The naked human bodies— although one was human only in form—intertwined with the darkly furred bodies of the seabeasts . . . The caresses, the musical murmurings . . . (These tapes, thought Grimes, who had his prudish moments, he would not be submitting to any higher authority back on Earth, he would not be showing to Steerforth back aboard the ship.) Pale female flesh sprawled over rich, dark fur . . . Flippers that caressed breasts and thighs with what he would have thought was impossible gentleness. . . .

  And at the finish Seiko standing there, on a low, sea-rounded rock, while, one by one, the silkies each gently placed a flipper on her bare feet before sliding away, down into the sea. It seemed like (was it? could it be?) an act of obeisance, of worship even.

  Grimes, his prominent ears still burning with embarrassment, filled and lit his pipe. He demanded, “What . . .” then fell silent.

  “It is all right, John,” Seiko told him. “We are alone again. He, the pastor’s spy, is gone. Along the coast road. I am surprised that you did not hear him. He was not very cautious. Anyhow, you can talk without being overheard.”

  “I did not hear him,” snapped Grimes. “There were too many other things to listen to. And watch. Just what, in the name of all the Odd Gods of the Galaxy, were the three of you up to?”