To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga

by A Bertram Chandler

  And when you’re a near-immortal, he thought, death can be important. But, for the first time perhaps, he could see her point of view, could feel with her and for her. Suddenly there was a warmth between them, a warmth that, until now, had been lacking. It could be that it was shared fear that brought them together, shared peril. It could be that, at last, there was the admission of a common humanity.

  But her arms were about him and her face, grimy and tear-stained was lifted to his, and his arms were about her, and her mouth on his was soft and warm and moist, and suddenly all barriers were down, scattered like the clothing that littered the turf around them, and the sun was warm on their naked bodies, although never as warm as the heat of their own mutual generating . . .

  Almost, Grimes did not hear the sharp plop.

  Almost he did not hear it, but he felt the metal strands writhing about his bare skin, biting into his limbs, binding himself and Marlene together in a ghastly parody, an obscene exhibition of physical love.

  Into his limited range of vision, still further obscured by the tangle of the girl’s blonde hair, stepped de Messigny. In his hand he held one of the bell-mouthed net-throwing pistols.

  “A pretty picture!” he sneered. “A very pretty picture.” In spite of the deliberate coldness of his voice, it was obvious that he was struggling to contain his fury. “As for you, Marlene, you slut! An affair with one of us I could have tolerated, but for you to give yourself to a lowbred outworlder!”

  Her voice, in reply, was muffled. Grimes could feel her lips moving against his face. “I’m not property, Henri. I’m not your property.”

  “I would not want you now, you bitch.”

  Grimes saw that the man had pulled a knife from the sheath at his belt. He struggled to get his mouth clear, after an effort was able to mumble, “Put that thing away.”

  “Not yet, Mr. Grimes. Not yet.”

  “But this is not Marlene’s fault, de Messigny.”

  “I have come here neither as judge nor as executioner, Mr. Grimes, although Marlene will be most appropriately punished for what she has done. I have come, only to sacrifice Lobenga’s white goat, and the white goat is you.”

  Grimes waited for the descent of the blade. Stab or slash, what did it matter? Although a stab might be faster. And then de Messigny uttered a choking cry, seemed to be trying to contort himself so that he could strike with the blade at something behind him. Wound tightly about his neck there was a thin, metal tentacle. He was jerked out of sight.

  Grimes heard the threshing sounds of the Comte’s struggles slowly diminish. They finally ceased.

  “The miniwagon . . .” whispered Marlene, “and only a carryall but it has intelligence of sorts, and it’s supposed to protect its mistress to the best of its ability. But it’s slow. It was almost too slow . . .”

  “It . . . it got here in time.”

  “Only . . . just.”

  She was close to him, even closer then she had been before de Messigny cast his net. Suddenly he was acutely conscious of her, all of her. And he had some freedom, not much, but a little, enough.

  “Can you. . . .?” she murmured. Then, “After all, as the old saying has it, we might as well be hung for sheep as lambs . . .”

  “I can . . .” he muttered.

  He did.

  And then, only then, did Marlene give careful orders to the dim-witted machine, telling it to pick up the pistol with its tentacle, telling it how to set the weapon so that a pulse of radiation would cause the net to loose its hold. Neither of them could see what was happening, and Grimes feared that the stupid thing would well-meaningly pick up and fire the Minetti at them.

  But it did not, and each of them felt a brief tingling sensation, and then they were free. Marlene wept again over her slaughtered dogs, stared at the purple-faced, contorted body of de Messigny without expression. She resumed her clothing. Grimes resumed his.

  They clambered into the miniwagon, let it carry them in silence back to the Castle.

  Chapter 26

  They were waiting for Grimes and Marlene in the castle courtyard—Lobenga, the Lady Eulalia, and the Duchess of Leckhampton. They were an oddly assorted trio: the Negro in his leopard skin, with a necklace of bones (animal? human?) and with a hide bag, containing who knew what disgusting relics slung at his waist; his wife robed in spotless white, with a gold circlet about her dark hair; the Duchess in gaudy finery, flounced skirt boldly striped in black and scarlet, sequined lemon-yellow blouse, a blue, polka dotted kerchief as a head covering. The clay pipe that she was smoking with obvious enjoyment should have been incongruous, but it suited her.

  Before them was a large box, a three dimensional viewing screen. To one side was the grim effigy of Baron Samedi, the wooden cross in its scarecrow clothing. It should have looked absurd in broad daylight, in these surroundings, but it did not.

  Witch doctor, priestess and fortune teller . . . thought Grimes bewilderedly.

  “What is this?” demanded Marlene. “What are you doing here?”

  “We had to come outside, Princess,” Lobenga told her. “There is magic soaked into the very stones of your castle, but it is the wrong sort of magic.”

  “Magic!” her voice was contemptuous. “That?” She gestured to the extension of the Monitor, in the screen of which the dead man, the dead dogs and the crumpled wreckage of the rogue were still visible. “Or that?” Her arm pointed rigidly at the clothed cross.

  “Or both? “asked the Duchess quietly.

  “You watched?”

  “We watched,” confirmed Lobenga.

  “Everything?”

  “Everything.”

  “And you did nothing to help?”

  “It was all in the cards,” said the Duchess.

  “And you watched, everything. And you felt a vicarious thrill, just as you do at those famous masked balls of yours, Your Grace. There is nothing more despicable than a voyeur, especially one who spies upon her friends.”

  “We were obliged to watch,” said Lobenga.

  “By whom? By what?”

  “The bones were cast,” almost sang Eulalia, “the cards were read. But still there was the possibility of the unforeseen, the unforeseeable, some malign malfunction of the plan. We had to be ready to intervene.”

  “There were quite a few times when you could have intervened,” growled the spaceman. “When you should have intervened.”

  “No,” said Lobenga. “No, Mr. Grimes. The entire operation went as planned.”

  “What a world!” snarled the Lieutenant. “What a bloody world! I’m sorry, Marlene, but I can’t stay in this castle a second longer. I don’t like your friends. Call me a taxi, or whatever you do on this planet, so that I can get back to the ship. Tell that tin butler of yours to pack my bags.”

  “John!”

  “I mean it, Marlene.”

  “Let him go,” said Eulalia. “He has played his part.”

  “As I have,” whispered the princess.

  “Yes.”

  “As Henri did.”

  “Yes.”

  She flared, “What sort of monsters are you? “

  “Not monsters, Marlene,” said Lobenga gently. “Just servants of a higher power.”

  “Of the Monitor?” she sneered. “Or of Baron Samedi?”

  “Or both?” asked Eulalia.

  “Things went a little too far,” said the Duchess.

  “You mean Henri’s death?” queried Marlene. “But somebody had to die.”

  “I do not mean Henri’s death. I mean what happened afterwards. But it does not matter. After all, the English aristocracy has always welcomed an occasional infusion of fresh blood. And, my dear, in a way the child, if there is one, will be Henri’s.”

  “That,” said Marlene, her voice expressionless, “is a comforting thought.”

  “I’m glad that you see it that way.” The Duchess sucked on her pipe, blew out a cloud of smoke that was acrid rather than fragrant. “You know, my dear, the card
s were really uncanny. The Hanged Man kept turning up.” For Grimes’ benefit she explained, “That is one of the cards of ill-omen in the Tarot pack.” She went on, “Of course, we were expecting a death, a violent death, but not in so literal a manner.”

  “Must we go into all this, Honoria?” asked Marlene.

  “If you would rather not, my dear, we will not. But. . .”

  “But what?”

  “Poor Henri was addicted to the use of archaic slang but, oddly enough, only when he was talking to me. Just before he went out to play Vulcan to your Venus and Mars he said that he was going to fix your wagon.” She deliberately took her time refilling and relighting her short pipe. “But your wagon fixed him.”

  “Let us leave these ghouls,” said Marlene disgustedly. Grimes fell rather than jumped out of the miniwagon, then helped the girl to the ground. Together they walked into the castle.

  “Yes, John,” said Marlene. “It is better that return to your ship. You have played your part, more than your part.”

  Grimes looked at the girl’s grave face. There was nothing in it for him any more. He looked past her to the shining weapons incongruously displayed on the wall of her boudoir. He thought, I know more about guns than women.

  He said, “I’m sorry it happened.”

  “Don’t be a liar, John. You wanted me from the very first moment that you saw me, and you finally got me.”

  “Are you sorry it happened?”

  For the first time since their return to the castle, she showed signs of emotion.

  “That is a hard question to answer, John. But, no, I am not sorry that it happened. I am not even sorry that it happened the way that it did. What I am sorry about is the humiliation. And, of course, Henri’s death.” Her features suddenly contorted into a vicious mask. “But he deserved it!”

  “And somebody, as everybody here has been telling me, had to die.”

  “And better, I suppose, one of us than one of you. It keeps it all in the family, doesn’t it? Very neat, very tidy.” There were the beginnings of hysteria in her voice.

  “Marlene!”

  “No. Don’t touch me!”

  “All right. But I thought . . .”

  “Don’t think. It’s dangerous.”

  “Marlene, what about the child, if there is one?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well . . . it could be . . . embarrassing. Will you marry me?”

  She laughed then but it was not hysterical laughter. It was not altogether contemptuous. “Oh, John, John . . . The perfect petty bourgeois to the very last. Offering to make an honest woman of me, me, and on a world which can boast the finest medical brains in the Galaxy. Not that our physicians have had much practice in terminating pregnancies. Marry you, John, a penniless Survey Service Lieutenant? Oh; I appreciate it, appreciate the offer, but it just wouldn’t work out. You aren’t our sort of people and we aren’t yours. I’d sooner have married Henri, and he asked me often enough, with all his faults.”

  “We could marry,” he pressed doggedly, “and then divorce.”

  “No. This is El Dorado, not some lower middle-class slum of a planet. And furthermore, John, I shall be a heroine. I shall go down in history. The first woman to conceive on this world.”

  “You don’t know that you have.”

  “But I do. I . . . I felt it.”

  He got slowly to his feet. “I’ll see if Karl has packed my bags.”

  She said, “You don’t have to go.”

  He asked, “Do you want me to?”

  Her expression softened almost imperceptibly. “What if I told you that Lobenga, Eulalia and the Duchess have already left the castle? They have done what they had to do.”

  “And have they? Left, I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  He felt the weakening of his resolution. Those other guests had witnessed what had happened between Marlene and himself but, as servants of the Monitor, there was much that they must have witnessed. Now that he would no longer be obliged to meet them socially . . .

  “You will stay?” she asked.

  “Why?” he queried bluntly.

  “Because . . .”

  “Because what?”

  “Because I want to be sure.”

  “You told me that you were.”

  She quoted, “Only two things in life are certain, death and taxes. Death, John, not Birth. But, together, we can bring some degree of certainty to the fact of conception.”

  He said, “You are a cold-blooded bitch.”

  “But I’m not, John, I’m not.” She was on her feet, her body gleaming golden through the translucent green wrap that she had changed into, her slender arms slightly away from her sides. He took a step toward her, and another, until she was pressed against him. Her hands went up, clasped at the back of his neck, pulled his mouth down to hers.

  There was a discreet, metallic cough.

  The princess pulled away from Grimes, asked coldly, “Yes, Karl?”

  “I must apologize, Your Highness. But a call has come through by way of the Monitor for all personnel of the cruiser Aries. It seems that the ship is urgently required to help quell an insurrection on Merganta, which world, as you know, is only two light years from El Dorado. Lieutenant Grimes’ bags are already in the air car.”

  She said, “You have to go.”

  He said, “Yes.”

  “Good bye.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  “Will you?” she asked, her face suddenly hard, “Will you?” Her laugh was brittle. “Yes, John, come back when you have your first billion credits.”

  He could think of nothing more to say, turned abruptly on his heel and followed the robot to the waiting air car.

  Chapter 27

  There was the insurrection on Merganta, a bloody affair, in the suppression of which Aries did all that was demanded of her, but no more. Many of her officers and most of her crew felt more than a little sympathy for the rebels. It was Grimes, in command of one of the cruiser’s armed pinnaces, who intervened to stop the mass executions of three hundred women, wives of leading insurgents, turning his weapons on the government machine gunners. For this he was reprimanded, officially, by Captain Daintree, who, later, in a stormy interview with the planetary president, used such phrases as “an overly zealous officer” and “mistaken identity,” adding coldly that Lieutenant Grimes naturally assumed that it was not the forces of law and order who were about to commit cold-blooded murder.

  There was the mutiny aboard the Dog Star Line’s freighter Corgi and the long chase, almost clear out to the Rim, before the merchantman was overhauled and boarded. The mutineers did not put up a fight, for which Grimes, in charge of the boarding party, was profoundly thankful. He had seen enough of killing.

  There was the earthquake that destroyed Ballantrae, the capital of Ayr, one of the planets of the Empire of Waverley. Aries, the only major vessel in the vicinity, hastened to the stricken city, performed nobly in the rescue work and then, from her generators supplied power for essential services until the work of reconstruction was well under way.

  All in all, it was an eventful voyage, and a long one, with the movements of the ship unpredictable. The married men, those who were pining for letters from home, were far from sorry when, at last, Aries was recalled to Lindisfarne Base.

  Almost all the officers were in the wardroom when the mail came on board. They waited impatiently. Finally Hodge, the Paymaster Lieutenant, came in, followed by a rating carrying a large hamper of packages. “Gentlemen,” he announced. “Cupid’s messenger, in person. Sweethearts and wives, all in the same basket. What am I bid?”

  “Cut the cackle, Hodge!” snarled Lieutenant Commander Cooper. “Deal ‘em out, although mine’ll be only bills and please explains as usual.”

  “As you say, sir, Lieutenant Commander, sir. Roll up, roll up, for the lucky dip!”

  “Get on with it, Hodge!” snapped the Navigator. He was not the only one becoming impatient. Luckily the
mail had already been sorted, so there was little delay in its distribution. Most of the officers, as soon as they had received their share, retired to the privacy of their own cabins to read it.

  Grimes looked at his, recognizing handwriting, typescript styles, postage stamps. A letter from faraway . . . From Jane? Nice of her to write after all these years. One from Caribbea. That would be from Susanna. And a parcel, a little, cubical parcel. The address typed, with oddly Gothic lettering. And the stamp in the likeness of a gold coin, and it probably was embossed gold leaf at that . . .

  Surgeon Commander Passifern was demanding attention. “This is interesting,” he declaimed. “This is really interesting. You remember how we were called in to El Dorado so that I could help their top doctor, Lord Tarlton of Dunwich, with his problem. I worked with him and his people—they’ve some brilliant men there, too—quite closely. ‘Diet,’ I said to him. ‘Diet, Tarlton, that’s the answer. Cut out fancy, mucked-up food of yours, get back to the simple life. Don’t over-eat. Don’t drink.’”

  “Physician, heal thyself . . .” muttered Cooper.

  Passifern ignored this, “And it worked. This—” he waved the sheet of expensive looking paper—“is a letter from Lord Tarlton. In it he thanks me—well, us, actually, but he’s just being polite to the ship—for our help. Since we left there have been no fewer than four hundred and twenty-five births.”

  “Did he . . .” began Grimes, “did he say who the mothers were?”

  “Hardly, young Grimes. Not in a short note.”

  “At least,” put in Cooper, “we know that none of us were the fathers.”

  Grimes left the wardroom then. He found himself resenting the turn that the conversation had taken. He went to his cabin, shut the door behind him, then sat down on his bunk. He found the little tab on the seal of the parcel, pulled it sharply. The wrapping fell away.

  Inside it was a solidograph. From its depths smiled a blonde woman, Marlene, a more mature Marlene, a matronly Marlene, looking down at the infant in her arms.

  Grimes had been amused more than once by the gushing female friends of young mothers with their fatuous remarks: “Oh, he’s got his mother’s eyes,” or “He’s got his Uncle Fred’s nose,” or “He’s got his Auntie Kate’s mouth . . .”