Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

  “I was bombed,” said Grimes.

  “Inebriation, no matter how induced is no excuse for pollution,” said the beach patrolman.

  “I was bombed, I’m telling you.”

  “I heard you the first time. The fine will be one hundred Federation credits, or the equivalent, if paid on the spot. Otherwise you will have to appear in court.”

  “But these people,” argued Grimes, with a sweeping gesture of his arm, “can tell you . . .”

  “He made a mess all over himself,” said one of the girls, “and then went to wash it off in our clean sea.”

  “The Shaara . . .” insisted Grimes.

  “Come off it, fellow. Whoever heard of one of them going into the water? But I haven’t got all day to waste on you. Are you paying up—if you can pay—or are you coming with me to be charged?”

  Grimes paid up.

  Then he dressed and returned to Little Sister.

  Chapter 8

  HE SPENT THE REMAINING daylight hours catching up with his housekeeping. He called the Port Aphrodite provedores and ordered a few items of consumable stores, including the fresh hen’s eggs that his passenger had been pining for. These were delivered almost at once. When he signed the bill he wondered if those cackleberries came from the fabulous goose but they were neither large nor aureately shelled.

  When everything had been stowed away he cleaned up, then dialled a simple but satisfying meal on the autochef—rare steak and onions with French fried potatoes, a hot, crisp roll with cheese and salad. Presumably refreshments would be available at Katy’s Kathouse but he could not be sure if it would be free, or included in the price of admission. He suspected that it would be hellishly expensive—but if it did happen to be gratis he could always find room for a substantial supper.

  He attired himself in semi-formal evening wear—ruffled white shirt, sharply creased black trousers, highly polished, calf-length black boots. Normally he did not much care for dressing up; his assumption of the modest finery was, perhaps, a reaction to the humiliation of the afternoon.

  He let himself out of the ship, passed the time of day briefly with the Customs guard, walked slowly across the spaceport apron to the subway station. The evening was warm. The sky was dark and clear and in it floated an advertising balloon, spotlit from below, that was a quite explicit depiction of a naked woman. She was, thought Grimes, definitely pneumatic . . . In the soft lighting the station entrance was once again erotic rather than blatantly pornographic. It promised more, much more, than could ever be attained on a highly commercialised pleasure planet such as this.

  Other pleasure seekers were abroad, proceeding in the same direction as himself—passengers from the cruise liners, spacemen and women. He rode down on the escalator behind a fat man and two plump, no-longer-young ladies. He could not help overhearing their conversation.

  “You really should have come out to the beach with us, William. Laugh? I thought I’d die! There was this man, a spacer. No, not from our ship, but a penny pincher all the same. You know the type. Lording it aboard their tin cans in their pretty uniforms and generous as hell with their entertainment allowance grog but too mean to spend a cent when they get ashore. He’d actually brought his lunch with him. In a bag! And then there he was, soaking up the sun—that was free!—when these Shaara flew over. They zoomed in to that rather nice eatery and ordered the sort of sweet, sticky muck that they like. And then they collected up all the soggy containers and took off and bombed the man. You should have seen his face! And I thought that his big, flapping ears were going to burst into flame . . .”

  “People like that shouldn’t go to places that they can’t afford,” said the man. “Oh, well. It taught him a lesson.”

  “He was taught a lesson, all right. He went down to the sea to wash himself off. Then the beach patrol came on the scene and fined him on the spot for polluting the ocean. When he pulled the money out of his wallet you’d have thought he was bleeding to death . . .”

  “Spacemen,” sneered the male tourist. “They’re all the same. They spend practically all of their lives in their little, artificial worlds and just don’t know how to behave themselves on the surface of a decent planet.”

  They reached the bottom of the escalator. Grimes followed the party of tourists on to the platform. The plump, improbable blonde, still chattering to her companions, turned to look at the advertisements on the wall and came face to face with the subject of her funny story. She froze in mid-sentence. She blushed spectacularly—her face, her neck, her shoulders, the overly full breasts that were revealed rather than concealed by the translucency of her dress. Her small mouth, which had been open, opened still wider.

  Grimes looked at her coldly. He said politely, “I can set your mind at rest, madam. I could well afford that fine. I am the owner as well as the captain of Little Sister. You must have noticed her . . .”

  “The golden ship,” she whispered.

  “Yes. The golden ship. As I have said, I could afford the fine. I just resented having to pay it in those circumstances.”

  (That last was true enough.)

  He turned on his heel, walked away along the platform, his little triumph already turning sour. Was an eccentric billionaire—as that foolish, snobbish woman must now be regarding him—any better than a rough, poverty stricken spaceman?

  The car came in. Grimes was one of the first to board. He noticed that the woman and her friends sat as far away from him as possible. He was among the first out at the Katy’s Kathouse station. The plump blonde and the other two also disembarked but stayed well behind him.

  The foyer of the Kathouse was at the head of the escalator. Grimes had been expecting something highly erotic but he was disappointed. Black-draped walls, a black ceiling . . . Faint, flickering light from tall, white candles . . . Vases of white flowers—natural? artificial?—that looked like lilies . . . A faint mumur of funereal organ music . . .

  Was this the right place?

  There was a pay booth by a black curtained doorway, manned by a cadaverous individual clad in rusty black with the merest hint of white at wrists and throat. Grimes approached this gentleman.

  “Three hundred credits,” croaked the doorkeeper.

  “Does that include refreshments?” asked Grimes.

  “Of course,” he heard the plump lady whispering somewhere behind him, “the very rich are mean . . . That’s how they get to be rich.”

  “Do you take us for a charitable institution?” the man asked rudely.

  Grimes paid up, passed through the curtain.

  Inside there was more darkness—but soft, rosy, caressing. A girl materialised before Grimes, her face and blonde hair pallidly luminous above her severe, chin to ankle black dress.

  “A table, sir? For one?” Her voice was pleasant, her accent Carinthian. “Please to follow.”

  The lighting flared briefly and rosily and she was naked before him. Yes, she was Carinthian all right. Face and body had the Siamese cat sleekness that was the rule rather than the exception among the women of Carinthia. The lights dimmed and she was fully clothed again. A good trick, thought Grimes. He wondered how it was done. Some special quality of the fabric from which her dress was made and something fancy in the way of radiation? He let her lead him between the tables. The lights flared again. Of those seated some were briefly nude and some were not—the professional companions, probably, and the customers.

  She brought him to a small table for two, ignited the black candle in its white holder of convoluted plastic with a flick of a long fingernail. Grimes was amused by the symbolism; there was only one thing that the candle holder could possibly represent.

  He sat down in the chair that she pulled out for him, looked at the menu and the wine list under the transparency of the table top.

  “A drink, sir? Something to eat?”

  It was just as well, he thought, that he had dined before coming ashore. Katy was not as generous as Lady Luck; probably her overheads were higher
and her profits less certain. Twenty credits for a cheese sandwich—and that was one of the least expensive items. Twenty five credits for a small bottle of locally brewed beer . . .

  “Just a beer,” he said. “The Venuswasser.”

  “May I order for myself, sir? I am required to eat and drink with you.”

  At whose expense? wondered Grimes. It was a question to which the answer was obvious. And champagne, he thought. And caviar. But what did it matter? He would put the bite on his charterer for whatever he paid; after all she had as good as ordered him to come here. And if his immediate funds ran out he could always use his First Galactic Bank credit card.

  The candle holder, he saw, was also a microphone. The girl spoke softly into the folds of the vaginal orifice. She ordered his beer first. She ordered champagne—imported, of course. (Grimes thought sourly that probably only the label on the bottle would be imported.) She ordered steak. She slipped several notches in Grimes’ estimation; he always held that the only possible tipple with red meat was a red wine.

  She smiled at him as the revealing lights flared up again. He was prepared to forgive her for her taste in wine. Her pink nippled breasts were just right, neither too small nor too large.

  “May I have a cigarette?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t use them.”

  She spoke again into the microphone, adding a pack of Virginia Slims to the original order—another imported and therefore expensive luxury.

  Then she said, “Shouldn’t we get better acquainted? I’m Tanya.”

  “Good to know you, Tanya. I’m John.”

  “You’re a spacer, John, aren’t you?”

  “I have that misfortune.”

  She laughed prettily. “Stop kidding. I’ve known quite a few spacers. I prefer them to tourists. But they’re all the same. They like women—but their real mistresses are their ships . . .”

  “Mphm . . .”

  A waitress appeared with the order. A black, half mask with attached pointed ears gave her a vaguely feline appearance; otherwise she was naked. Her figure was lumpy. She would have to do something about it if ever she were to graduate to hostess grade.

  Tanya dismissed the girl curtly, cutting short her attempt to be pleasant to Grimes. She moved away ungracefully, resentment glowering from her bobbing buttocks. Grimes regretted being stuck with the Carinthian woman as his companion for the evening; all too obviously—at least insofar as her own sex was concerned—she was not one of those legendary whores with a heart of gold.

  While he sipped his beer—it wasn’t bad although it had a rather odd flavour—he watched her eat and drink. He thought: And they call me Gutsy! He listened to the sensuous throb of the music that came from the concealed speakers. He looked around at the other tables. To judge from the overloud laughter, the attempts to sing in time to the background melody, inhibitions were being shed. He felt like shedding a few himself. That beer was deceptively strong. Was alcohol the only intoxicant in its composition?

  Rosy spotlights set in the ceiling came on, their beams directed on to the stage at one end of the big room, creating an ellipse of relatively bright illumination. The music was suddenly much louder. The tune was oddly familiar although at first he could not identify it. The tempo was subtly wrong, the rhythm distorted. Then he recognised it. Anger accompanied recognition. Although he prided himself of having shed his regional chauvinism long since he resented the misuse of that good old national song as a dancehall melody.

  The girls pranced on to the stage. Pranced? No, he decided, that was not quite the right word. Hopped? Perhaps, perhaps . . . Yet that word was not adequate to describe the animal grace with which the women moved. They were small-breasted, their legs were heavily muscled. Their navels were abnormally deep. It was those lower thighs that interested Grimes most. (He had always been a leg man rather than a tit man.) There was something distinctly odd about the jointure—odd, but somehow familiar.

  A stout woman strode on to the stage when the music stopped. Her ample breasts were almost spilling out of the low cut black dress that was a second skin over her too ample figure. Her face was chalky white under the flaming red hair, her mouth small despite the great slash of lipstick that unsuccessfully tried to create an illusion of generosity.

  “Katy . . .” volunteered Tanya around a mouthful of steak.

  “Who’s for the kangaroo hunt?” bellowed Katy. “Pay yer money at the door to the dressing room! Only a thousand credits an’ cheap at half the price! No extra charge for hire of costumes!”

  “Kangaroo hunt?” Grimes asked Tanya.

  “One of the specialties of the house,” she told him, with a slight sneer. “Nature red in tooth and claw and all that.” She looked him over. “No. I don’t think that you’d go for games of that sort . . .”

  But there was no shortage of volunteers. Men—tourists and spacers—were getting up from their tables, walking to the door to which Katy had gestured with her plump arm. They paid their money to the girl at the cash desk, went inside. On the stage the dancers were huddled together. They looked frightened but there was more than fear on their faces. Anticipation? Excitement?

  There was music again—electronic yet disturbingly primeval and, to Grimes at least, evocative. He recognised the eery whispering of didgerydoos, the rhythmic clicking of singing sticks, the ominous, soughing bellow of bull roarers.

  The first of the hunters came out from the dressing room. He was naked and the skin of his body had been painted black and that of his face in a ferocious design of white, red and yellow. He was carrying a spear. Grimes stared; surely it was not a real one. He was relieved to see that it was not. The shaft terminated not in a blade but a ball.

  One by one the other intrepid hunters emerged. A few actually looked like real savages but most of them like what they really were, fat, soft men in fancy-undress. Some were .obviously embarrassed, a few were obviously eagerly looking forward to the hunt.

  A tourist woman yelled, “If you could only see yourself, Wilberforce! I’ll treasure this memory to my dying day!”

  Katy called to her, “There’ll be photographs on sale after the hunt, dearie!” Then, “All right you great black hunters! You’ve been told the rules! Go to it!”

  The lights dimmed. The bodies of the naked women, still on the stage, were faintly luminous as were the painted faces of the hunters. The weird music continued and added to it there was a distant howling, no doubt the idea of whoever was playing the synthesiser as to what dingoes should sound like. The girls were shuffling nervously, uttering little, animal squeals.

  A chill breeze blew through the vast room. Something made Grimes look up towards the ceiling. It now had the appearance of a black, clear sky with a scattering of bright stars. Only one constellation was recognisable and that only to Terrans—the Southern Cross.

  The women were squealing more loudly now, jumping from the stage. They were crouching as they hopped, their hands held up to their breasts like forepaws. They scattered, bounding between the tables. One of them brushed by Grimes. Given a tail, he thought, she could have passed for a big, albino kangaroo.

  The hunted were familiar with the terrain, the hunters were not. They blundered into tables, oversetting drinks. Some were deliberately tripped by the outstretched legs of friends or wives or mistresses. But the quarries would have to allow themselves to be run down eventually. That was their job. That was what they were being paid for.

  The first “kill” was not far from where Grimes was sitting. The huntsman, running with his spear extended before him, just flicked his victim on the buttocks with the end of his weapon. She screamed—and it was a real scream. She fell face down, her body twitching.

  The hunter yelled in triumph, pounced on to her, roughly turned her over, spreading her legs. He coupled with her brutally and briefly. He rolled off her, got unsteadily to his feet. Grimes stared disgustedly into the man’s face. Even under the thick paint he thought that he could read shame. The man mut
tered something, shambled slowly towards the dressing room.

  Grimes looked down at the girl, sprawling supine on the floor. She looked up at him. He was shocked by her expression, by the hopelessness of it. He wanted to say something comforting, to do something. He was half way out of his chair when Tanya stopped him.

  “Don’t waste sympathy on the little bitch,” she said harshly. “She’s making a damn sight better living here than she would be on her own lousy planet.”

  “And where is that?” asked Grimes.

  “How should I know? There’re girls here from all over the galaxy. None of us was pressganged.”

  “Mphm?”

  “Of course not. Oh, I admit that getting back to Carinthia after I’ve made my pile won’t be as easy as I thought it would be. Making my pile’s the trouble. By the time I’ve paid the nominal—ha, ha!—rent for my room and bought a few rags and crusts therenot much left of my retaining fee. If it weren’t for the generosity of tourists . . . And spacers . . .”

  “Mphm.”

  “I’m being frank with you, John. If I take you up to my room I shall expect a present.”

  “I’m sorry,” lied Grimes. “I have to be back aboard my ship soon. But if you can tell me anything about these girls there’ll be a present for you.”

  “Cash on the nail,” she said.

  He went into a brief but intense session of mental arithmetic. There would be the bill for the meal and a tip for the waitress. Luckily he did not have to worry about paying his fare back to the spaceport. He extracted notes from his wallet, passed them to her.

  “Is that all?” She shrugged. “Better than nothing, I suppose. Well, all I know about the big-bummed, flat-chested bitches is that they were brought here in Captain Dreeble’s ship, the Willy Willy. They’re under contract to Able Enterprises. Able Enterprises owns a big chunk of this Kathouse. Satisfied?”

  “What language do they speak?”

  “A sort of standard English. With an accent—rather like yours.”