Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

  So there was the Chief Collector of Customs in person, accompanied by two micro-skirted, transparently shirted junior customs officers. There was the Port Doctor; there was no need for him actually to sight the clean Bill of Health from Bronsonia—a formality usually carried out by Customs—but Grimes was being given VIP treatment. There was the Port Captain—and his visit was purely social.

  Grimes produced refreshments. (The last batch of Scotch that he had cajoled out of the autochef would almost have passed for the real thing and as he had decanted it into bottles with genuine labels he did not think that anybody would know the difference.) He, Prunella Fenn (he must remember always to call her that) and the three men sat around one table in the main cabin while the two Customs girls went through the ship’s papers at another.

  The Port Captain divided his attention between the ersatz Scotch and Grimes’ passenger. He was a big, florid man with a cockatoo crest of white hair, with protuberant, slightly bloodshot (to begin with) blue eyes, a ruddy, bulbous nose and a paunch that his elaborately gold braided white uniform could not minimise. He looked more like the doorman of a brothel than a spaceman, thought Grimes. (But the Port Captain on a world such as Venusberg was little more than the doorman of a brothel.)

  The Port Doctor—even though he, too, was dressed in gold-trimmed white—looked like an undertaker. He did not divide his attention but was interested only in the whisky. He picked up the bottle, studied the label, put it down again. He lifted his glass, sipped, raised his heavy black eyebrows, then sipped again. He was the first person ready for a refill.

  The Collector of Customs was interested most of all in the financial side of things. What was the actual value of Little Sister? What was the possibility of various solid gold fittings being stolen and sold ashore during her stay in Port Aphrodite? What security arrangements was Grimes implementing?

  Unwisely Grimes said that he was prepared to use arms, if necessary, to protect his property and was sternly told that the ship’s laser and projectile pistols must be placed under Customs seal and that the two laser cannon—Shaara weapons that had been fitted while Little Sister was temporarily under the command of the Rogue Queen—must be dismantled.

  But Grimes was not to worry, the Collector told him. A guard would be on duty at his ramp throughout. (Grimes did worry. He knew who would have to pay for that guard. According to the charter party the charterers would pay all normal port charges and the wages of an armed guard could be—almost certainly would be—argued not to be a normal port charge.)

  Finally Prunella Fenn got a little unsteadily to her feet.

  “I’m off,” she announced. “Jock’s going to show me a good time . . .”

  Jock? wondered Grimes.

  The Port Captain levered himself upright, his hands on the table.

  “I’m ready, Prue, soon as you are.”

  “I’m ready, Jock.”

  As they left the cabin he already had his arm about her slender waist, his meaty hand on her hip.

  The Port Doctor raised his thick eyebrows. The Collector of Customs grinned.

  “Well, Captain,” he said, “I’d best be off myself. Ingrid and Yuri will put your pistols under seal. As for your cannon—as long as you remove the crystals and put them in bond with the hand guns that will be sufficient. I’ll arrange for the Customs guard.” He grinned again. “And enjoy your stay. The only thing that’s not tolerated here is gunplay.”

  He left the cabin far more steadily than the Port Captain had done although he had imbibed at least as much.

  Grimes excused himself to the doctor, went out of the ship. Using the recessed rungs in the shell plating he clambered up to where the cannon were mounted above the control cab. He removed the crystals. Back inside the hull he handed these to the two Customs girls, who put them into the locker allocated for the purpose together with the pistols. They sealed the door with an adhesive wafer, told him that although it looked flimsy it was not and could be removed only with a special tool.

  They accepted a drink—after all, thought Grimes, they had earned theirs, they had been doing all the work—and then left.

  “Have ye any more o’ that quite tolerable whisky, Captain?” asked the Port Doctor.

  Chapter 3

  “THAT LASS O’ YOURS made a big hit with Jock . . .” said the doctor.

  “She’s no lass of mine,” said Grimes.

  “Just the two o’ ye in a wee ship like this? An’ it’s not as though she’s unattractive . . .”

  “You don’t know her,” said Grimes, “like I do.”

  “She’s no’ one o’ the Sisterhood, is she? She didn’t impress me as being that way. But a rich bitch . . . She must be a rich bitch to charter a ship to run her about the galaxy. An’ a rich bitch is what Jock’s been a-huntin’ for these many years. We were shipmates in the Waverley Royal Mail, in their passenger ships, before we came out to this sink of iniquity. He was rich-bitch-chasing then—although, to give him credit, he’d prefer one not so rich but with a modicum of looks to one with all the money in the universe but a face like the arse of a Wongril ape an’ a figure like a haggis. He was too picky an’ choosey. That was his downfall. But that’s aye the way in passenger ships; it’s no’ the ones ye oblige that make the trouble but the ones ye don’t . . .

  “Still, it’s the bawbies that Jock’s after more than hot pussy. An’ although there’s no shortage o’ hot pussy on New Venusberg the best of it has no bawbies attached. But ye mean to tell me that ye weren’t interested in Prunella’s bawbies?” He drained his glass, held it out for a refill. “Ah, but ye wouldn’t be, would ye? A man who owns a solid gold spaceship, e’en though she’s only a wee boat, ‘ll not be short of a bawbie.”

  “She’s not a wee boat,” said Grimes stiffly. “She’s a pinnace. A deep space-going pinnace. And she happens to be built of an isotope of gold only because her original owner, the Baroness d’Estang, liked it that way.”

  “An’ ye bought her from yon Baroness? Then ye’re no’ sae badly fixed yerself.”

  The thickness of the doctor’s Waverley accent, Grimes decided, was in direct ratio to the amount of whisky imbibed. The more Scotch that went in the more that came out.

  He said, “I didn’t buy her. She was a sort of parting gift. In lieu of back and separation pay.”

  “An’ ye let a woman like that slip through yer fingers? Still, I suppose she was ugly as sin an’ old enough to be Methuselah’s granny.”

  “She was neither. She just happened to prefer a villainous bastard called Drongo Kane to me.”

  “Kane? Ye ken Drongo Kane? We hae dealings wi’ the mon, though he’s no’ been here himself for a while. There’s a wee laddy called Aloysius Dreeble, skipper o’ Willy Willy, who comes the no’. She’s owned by Able Enterprises. Get it? Kane . . . Able . . . Och, whatever ye say about Kane ye must admit that the mon has a fine, pawky wit.”

  “Mphm.”

  “But Willy Willy . . . An odd name for a ship . . . Would ye ken if he has a girlfriend called Wilhelmina or some such?”

  “Willy Willy,” said Grimes, “is the Australian name for a small, local whirlwind. But what cargo does this Willy Willy bring here?”

  “Passengers most o’ the while.”

  “So Kane’s in the tourist racket now.”

  “Why for should ye be sneering? Ye’re in the tourist racket yerself, cartin’ rich bitches hither an’ yon atween the stars. An’ talkin’ o’ rich bitches—just how rich is your rich bitch?”

  Grimes remembered that he was bound by the charter party to give the charterer’s representative all possible support. Now would be as good a time as any, he thought, to run her cover story up to the masthead and see if anybody saluted. He would show this drunken quack the specially printed issues of The Bronson Star. No doubt the Port doctor would pass the fictitious information on to his crony, the Port Captain. Then soon it would be common knowledge all over New Venusberg.

  He got a little unsteadily to his
feet.

  “I’ve some newspapers here,” he said. “She doesn’t know that I’ve got them. They’re rather amusing reading . . . A fascinating transition story . . . Miss Goody Goody into Good Time Girl?”

  He got the papers out of a filing cabinet, made room on the table to spread them out, indicated the relevant paragraphs with his forefinger. The Port Doctor was not too drunk to read. He chuckled.

  “Ah, weel, a big prize . . . An’ so long as she stays clear o’ the gamblin’ she’ll have a few credits left when ye lift off from here. O’ course, she may be payin’ for the services o’ the local studs, an’ they don’t come cheap. She’ll no’ be gettin’ much in the way o’ service from Jock—I’m his doctor an’ I should know . . .”He looked up, blinking, at Grimes. “An’ are ye sure, Captain, that ye weren’t obligin’ her? For love or money?”

  Grimes made a major production of not replying.

  The Port Doctor laughed. “So ye’re an officer an’ a gentleman an’ ye’re no’ tellin’.” He added, far too shrewdly for Grimes’ comfort, “Perhaps the way it was ye’d rather not.” He poured the last of the bottle into his glass. “An’ now, would ye be havin’ soberups in yer medicine chest? Ye can prescribe for the both of us an’ then I’ll take ye tae see the sights.”

  ***

  The soberup capsules worked as advertised.

  Grimes changed into informal civilian clothing. The evening might turn out to be a wild one and if he were going to make a public spectacle of himself he would prefer not to do so in uniform. The Port Doctor, it seemed, was not troubled by such scruples; he did not, as Grimes expected that he would, go first to his office for a change of attire.

  The two men passed through Little Sister’s airlock. It was evening already. (Where had the day gone?) Outside the pinnace the air was warm, redolent with a heavy scent that might have been that of flowers but which Grimes suspected was artificial. The spaceport lights—except around an Epsilon Class freighter where cargo discharge was in progress—were of low intensity. The floodlights of the passenger liners had been turned on but at no more than a fraction of their normal power so that the big ships had the similitude of faintly luminous, shimmering, insubstantial towers. Music was coming from concealed speakers, drifting on the lazy breeze, a melodious throbbing and wailing of guitars. Romance, with a capital R, was in the air. It was as meretricious as all hell.

  “Sing me a song of the islands . . .” muttered Grimes sardonically.

  “What?”

  “This atmosphere . . . So phonily Hawaiian . . .”

  The doctor laughed. “I see what you mean. Or hear what you mean. I’d prefer the pipes meself.”

  “Mphm?”

  They walked slowly across the apron to the entrance of the spaceport subway station, an orifice in the side of a single storied building the curves of which were more than merely suggestive, that did more than hint at open thighs. And as for the doorway itself . . . Only on a world like this, thought Grimes, could one find such an architectural perversion. Labia majora . . . Labia minora . . . Even an overhanging clitoris . . . A dark, ferny growth to simulate pubic hair . . .

  “Doesn’t this make you feel like a pygmy gynecologist?” asked Grimes as they passed through the pornographic portal, stepped on to the downward moving stairway.

  “I got a nice fee for helping to design it,” said the doctor.

  Grimes looked with interest at the advertisements on either side of the escalator, each one of them a window on to various aspects of this world, each one of them a colourful, three-dimensional moving picture. WINE & DINE AT ASTARTE’S KITCHEN—EVERY DISH A PROVEN APHRODISIAC . . . And with partners like that at the dinner table, thought Grimes, what need for artificial stimuli? (But perhaps in his case there was. The psychic trauma sustained aboard Bronson Star and aboard Little Sister herself had yet to heal.) GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! AT KATY’S KATHOUSE! Katy’s Kathouse? Cats . . . Some of those wenches so lavishly displaying their charms looked like Morrowvians. That tied in. Drongo Kane had trade connections with this world and, quite possibly, had been recruiting on Morrowvia before he finally blotted his copybook on the planet of the cat people. But some of the other women . . . The escalator carried him on down before he could have a proper look. CAVALIER ESCORT SERVICE . . . This, obviously, was aimed at the female tourists. The escorts were tall, virile young men, impeccably clad in archaic formal finery, the fronts of their tight trousers suggestively bulging. Another display—IF YOU’RE TIRED OF ALL THE OTHER LADIES HAVE A WHIRL WITH LADY LUCK! After many a century the roulette wheel was still the universally recognised symbol for games of chance.

  “Lady Luck,” said the doctor. “That’s where we’re going.”

  “You’re the doctor,” said Grimes. (He did not care much for gambling but, for the time being, the sort of games that were much more to his liking seemed to be out.) “But I was thinking that, for a start, I’d like a change from my own cooking.”

  “Not to worry, Captain. Lady Luck feeds her patrons at no extra charge; she makes her profits on the tables and machines. Mind you, she’s not made much out of me. Over a year I usually show a small profit myself.”

  They were on the station platform now, looking at the animated holograms adorning the walls. They were joined by three men, obviously spacers, officers from one of the ships in port. They knew the doctor, engaged him in conversation. Grimes—details of the Outward Clearance of Epsilon Puppis were of no great interest to him—studied the advertisements. Just when he had come to the conclusion that when you have seen one explicit amatory exhibition you’ve seen them all a single bullet-shaped car slid silently in, came to a stop. Bullet-shaped? There was intentional phallic symbolism in its design.

  “This is ours,” said the doctor.

  He and Grimes boarded the vehicle, leaving the others on the platform. They were probably bound for the Kathouse or some similar establishment, thought Grimes, not without a twinge of envy.

  As soon as the passengers were seated the car started off.

  No matter what it looked like its motion was that of a bullet.

  Chapter 4

  LADY LUCK was only two stops from Port Aphrodite.

  Again there was an escalator ride, this time up to ground level. Again there was the display of explicit advertising, holograms that Grimes had already seen and one or two new ones. He was intrigued by the advertisement for the Church of the Ultimate Experience. What did it have to offer? A Black Mass? Through the swirling, coruscating mists that filled the frame he could just see, or thought that he could see, what looked like a naked woman spreadeagled on an altar with an inverted crucifix in the background.

  He and the doctor stepped off the moving staircase into a brightly lit foyer. There were mobiles composed of huge, luminous dice cubes suspended from the shallow dome of the ceiling. There were almost garish murals depicting court cards not only from Terran packs but from those used by other races in the galaxy addicted to their own forms of gambling. Grimes saw the Golden Hive, analogous to the human card player’s Ace, and the Queen Mother, and the Princess, and the Drone, and the Worker-Technician. So the Shaara frequented this establishment. Gambling was one vice that they held in common with Man.

  “When you’ve finished admiring the Art Gallery, Captain,” said the Port Doctor, “we’ll go in. There’s a small charge at the door. Did you bring any money with you?”

  “Yes,” said Grimes. “I suppose that they’ll take Federation credits . . .”

  “They’ll take anything as long as it’s legal tender on its planet of origin. I’m not being mean, you understand, in asking you to pay us in. It’s just that I’ve always found that if somebody else treats me it always starts my winning streak for the night.”

  “Mphm. But what about me?”

  “For you there’s beginner’s luck.”

  “Mphm.” Grimes was unconvinced but allowed himself to be led to the tall blonde standing at the door. She was the first decorously clad female he h
ad seen since landing at Port Aphrodite. It made a change. (There was no change from the Cr50 bill that he tendered.) She was severely attired in an ankle length black skirt, in a long-sleeved, high-collared white blouse with a black string tie. There was a black bow in her hair. She smiled with professional warmth and wished the two men luck.

  “What first?” asked the doctor. “Two up? That’s your national game, isn’t it?”

  “Tucker,” said Grimes.

  “Tucker? What sort of game is that?” Comprehension dawned. “Oh, it’s food you mean. But we didn’t come here to eat.”

  “I did,” said Grimes. He thought, I may as well try to get my fifty credits worth.

  “Oh, all right. This way.”

  The doctor led Grimes through the huge room, past the roulette tables with the croupiers in their archaic black and white uniforms and the players dressed in everything from stiffly formal to wildly informal attire, pausing only to stop a robot servitor trundling by with a tray of drinks. He took a whisky for himself, sipped and remarked condescendingly, “Not as good as yours, Captain.” Grimes helped himself to gin.

  They continued through a smaller but still large chamber in which the Two Up school was in progress. Grimes wondered what coins were being used; they looked to be the same size as antique Australian pennies. He was tempted to linger but one effect that soberup capsules always had on him was to stimulate his appetite. There were card rooms and others for dice, and others in which brightly coloured sparks chased each other around enormous screens. Most, although not all, of the gamblers were human.

  At last they came to the buffet. There were long tables loaded with the kind of food that looks like advertisements for itself, that sometimes—but not always—tastes as good as it looks. There was a towering drinks dispenser with a control panel that would not have looked out of place on the bridge of a Nova Class battle wagon.