Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

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Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III Page 60

by A Bertram Chandler


  “Looking up the old girl friends, Skipper?” asked Williams cheerfully.

  “Surely you don’t think, Mr. Williams,” said Grimes coldly, “that any El Doradan lady would have anything to do with a mere spaceman?”

  “There are precedents,” said the Mate. “Drongo Kane, for a start . . .”

  And me before him, thought Grimes—but maintained his sour expression.

  Chapter 23

  THE SPACEPORT WAS ALMOST as he remembered it, with only a few minor additions and alterations. And regarding these, he thought, his memory could be playing him tricks. He walked slowly across the apron to the Port Control building, a gleaming, white truncated pyramid topped by the graceful latticework pylon of the control tower. The main door was composed of two huge panels of opalescent glass which swung inward, to admit him, as he approached. He walked over the highly polished floor with its swirling inlaid designs toward the spiral staircase that rose from the center of the huge, high-ceilinged room. He stepped on to the bottom tread. Nothing happened. The last time that he had performed this action—how many years ago?—he had been borne smoothly upward to what were to be his temporary quarters and to much appreciated refreshment. This time, obviously, there were to be no free meals and drinks.

  He turned away from the spiral staircase, walked to an open booth against one of the walls. There was no panel with dials or buttons but he could recall the procedure. Inside the booth, facing the rear wall, he said, “Get me the Princess Marlene von Stolzberg.”

  The rear wall became a screen, three dimensional. From it stared a robot servitor, pewter-faced, clad in archaic livery, black, with silver braid and buttons and white lace ruffles.

  “Who is calling?” asked the metallic voice.

  “John Grimes. Captain John Grimes.”

  The servant moved away from the screen. Grimes was looking into a room, dark paneled, with antique suits of armor ranged against the walls. So she’s still living in the same place, he thought. That gloomy Schloss of hers . . .

  The picture flickered, faded, was replaced by that of one of the other rooms in the castle, a boudoir, frumpishly feminine in its furnishings.

  And she . . . she was not quite a frump, Grimes decided, although she was no longer the golden girl whom he had known. She was not quite fat, although the fine lines of her face were partially obscured by the overlay of fatty tissues. The padded robe that she was wearing concealed her body but, Grimes thought, it must have thickened. (When he had known her she had been a hearty eater.) Her hair was still golden but somehow dulled.

  She looked out at him through blue eyes that were clear but cold, cold.

  “Grimes,” she said without enthusiasm. “John Grimes. Captain John Grimes. Should I congratulate you on your having achieved command? But I see from your uniform that you are no longer in the Survey Service. You are a commercial shipmaster?”

  There was a note of disdain in her voice as she asked the question—or made the statement.

  “Yes, Marlene. But I’m also a shipowner. I own my ship.”

  “The correct form of address, Captain Grimes, is Your Highness. As you should remember.”

  “Your Highness,” repeated Grimes, his prominent ears flushing angrily.

  “And why have you called me, Captain Grimes?”

  “I . . . Well . . . Surely you remember, M . . . Sorry. Your Highness. You sent me a solidograph of yourself and . . . And a baby.”

  “Yes. I remember. My son. The Graf Ferdinand von Stolzberg.”

  “I . . . I wonder if I could see him . . .”

  “To satisfy your idle curiosity? The Graf and yourself would have nothing in common. Are you trying to tell me that you have paternal instincts, Captain Grimes? Ferdinand has never felt the need for a father—and even if he did would not wish to acknowledge a common spaceman as such.”

  “I apologize for wasting your time, Your Highness,” said Grimes at last.

  “The pleasure, if any, was all yours,” she said.

  The screen went blank.

  Grimes filled, lit and smoked a soothing pipe. Then he said, slowly and deliberately, “Get me the Baroness Michelle d’Estang.”

  The screen came alive. This time the robot servitor had the appearance of a human female, a pretty, golden girl in severe black and white lady’s maid uniform.

  “Who is calling, please?”

  “Captain John Grimes, late of The Far Traveler and Little Sister, now master/owner of Sister Sue.”

  The face and upper body in the screen were replaced by those of a man.

  “Micky’s out, Grimesy,” said Drongo Kane. “Will I do?”

  Grimes stared at his old enemy, at the face that looked as though it had been shattered at some time and then reassembled by a careless plastic surgeon, topped by an untidy shock of straw-colored hair.

  “Please tell the Baroness that I called, Commodore Kane,” said Grimes.

  “I’ll do that. You’re looking quite prosperous, Grimesy. And I hear that you’ve got yourself a real ship at last. But I warn you—you’ll not find it so easy to find cargoes to fill her. I should know.”

  “I’ve managed so far,” said Grimes.

  “And how many voyages have you made in that rustbucket of yours? Two, to date. Well, if you get stuck here you can always give me a call. I might, I just might, have something for you.”

  “That’ll be the sunny Friday,” said Grimes.

  (For him to have replied otherwise would have been out of character.)

  “Don’t go looking gift horses in the mouth, Grimes. I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones. But I can always change my mind. And remember—sunny Fridays have a habit of coming around.”

  The screen went blank.

  There was one last call that Grimes thought that he would make.

  “Get me,” he ordered, “Her Grace the Duchess of Leckhampton.”

  The robot servant looking out from the screen was, save for his grey metal face, a traditional English butler.

  “Good morning, sir. Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Captain John Grimes.”

  “Very good, sir. I shall ascertain if Her Grace wishes to speak with you.”

  After a very short wait the butler was replaced in the screen by the Duchess. She looked no older. (But she had never looked young.) Her thin white hair was carelessly arranged. Her cheeks were painted. She was wearing a gaudy emerald and scarlet shirt. There was a necklace of glittering stones that looked far too large to be genuine diamonds—but which almost certainly were genuine—about her wrinkled throat. Her black eyes sparkled from among the too liberally applied eye shadow.

  “Young Grimes,” she cackled, “but not so young any longer. And a captain. This is a pleasure.”

  “It is a pleasure,” said Grimes, not untruthfully, “seeing you again.”

  “And when are you coming out to see me, John Grimes? What about this evening? Can you get away from your ship? But of course you can. You’re the captain now. It is short notice, but I should be able to arrange a little party. I’ll ask Marlene . . .”

  “I’ve already talked to her,” said Grimes. “She didn’t seem all that pleased to see me.”

  “Too bad. She’s a silly girl, and dotes on that useless son of hers. But I shouldn’t have said that, should I? After all, he’s yours too. But whom else can I ask? Michelle? You know her, of course. And that husband of hers. And Baron Takada. And Chief Lobenga and the Lady Eulalia . . . Just leave it to me. And perhaps you could bring one or two of your senior officers . . .”

  “But where do you live, Your Grace?”

  “In El Dorado City, of course. I’ll send a car for you. Can you be ready to leave your ship at 1800 hours?”

  “I can, Your Grace.”

  “Good. I am looking forward to meeting you again, Captain Grimes.”

  He left the Port Control Office, walked back to the ship. He saw that a conveyor belt had been set up to connect with one of the upper cargo ports and tha
t at its base a medium-sized air truck and a couple of spidery stowbots were waiting. As he watched, the first of the cartons slid out of the aperture in the hull, was followed by others in a steady stream. With a smooth economy of motion the robot stevedores loaded them into the body of the truck.

  He walked up the ramp into Sister Sue’s after airlock, took the elevator to the cargo compartment in which the shipment of caviar was stowed. He found Williams there and also the Port Captain, the agent or extension of the Monitor, who, wordlessly, was supervising the activity of the pair of stowbots which were loading cartons onto the top of the belt.

  “Mr. Williams,” said Grimes, “I think that our friend here can be trusted to function as a master stevedore. Come up to see me, please, and collect Ms. Granadu on the way.”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper. I’ll just see the next tier broken—it’s rather tightly stowed—then I’ll be with you.”

  Grimes carried on up to his quarters, sat down in his day cabin to wait. Before long the mate and the catering officer had joined him.

  “Sit down,” he said. Then he asked, “Are you free this evening?”

  “Free, Skipper? You have to be joking. We’re confined to the vicinity of this blasted spaceport. There’s no public transport. I asked the so-called Port Captain if we could use of the ship’s boats to take a run into the city and I was told that intrusion into El Doradan air space by outworlders is prohibited.”

  “I’ve been asked to a dinner party, Mr. Williams, by the Duchess of Leckhampton. She suggested that I bring two of my senior officers with me. Does the Dog Star Line run to mess dress?”

  “Only in their passenger ships, Skipper, and I was never in them. But I’ve a civilian dinner suit.”

  “That will do nicely. I won’t be wearing uniform myself. And you, Magda?”

  “I’ve an evening dress, Captain.”

  “Good. The Duchess’s air car will be calling for us at 1800 hours.”

  Magda Granadu appeared to be thinking deeply. She said at last, “I feel that this will be an important meeting . . .”

  “Too right it is,” said Williams. “It’ll be the first time in my life that I’ve had dinner with a Duchess!”

  “More important than that, Billy,” the woman told him. “Important for all of us. I think that we should consult the I Ching, Captain.”

  “We can wait until we get to Her Grace’s mansion,” said Grimes, “and she can read the Tarot pack.”

  “Does this Duchess have the gift?” asked Magda.

  “I . . . I think so. When I was here before she came up with a rather uncanny prediction.”

  “And was she working for you—or for herself?”

  “For El Dorado, I suppose,” said Grimes.

  “And my Book of Changes will be working for you, Captain. For us. Would you mind if I went down for the book and the coins?”

  “Go ahead,” said Grimes.

  “She really believes it,” said Williams when she was gone. “Do you, Skipper?”

  “Do you, Mr. Williams?”

  Magda came back, holding the black silk-covered book. She handed the three silvery coins to Grimes. He shook them in his cupped hands, let them fall to the deck. Two heads and a tail. The second throw produced the same result, as did the third. Two tails and a head, then two heads and a tail again. The last throw was a head and two tails.

  “Upper trigram, K’an,” said the woman. “Lower trigram, Ch’ien. The hexagram is Hsu . . .” She read from the book. “Biding one’s time . . . Sincerity will lead to brilliant success. Firmness will bring good fortune. It will be advantageous to cross the great water . . .”

  “That’s our job, isn’t it?” asked Grimes.

  “I suppose so,” she said. “But the Image is . . . interesting and possibly apposite. ‘Clouds drift across the sky as if biding their time. The superior man, in accordance with this, eats and drinks, feasts and enjoys himself.’”

  “There’s no reason,” said Grimes, “why we should not enjoy a free meal.”

  ***

  After they had left his cabin he called Ken Mayhew.

  “Mr. Mayhew,” he said, “I suppose you know that I’ve been invited to dinner with the Duchess of Leckhampton. I’m taking Mr. Williams and Ms. Granadu with me. I’d have liked to have taken you—for obvious reasons—but the old bat said that I could bring two of my officers with me. And unless we break your cover you’re not one of my officers. You’re a passenger, and only a senior clerk on holiday. They’re a snobbish bunch here.”

  “I have already gained that impression, Captain. I have been . . . eavesdropping, receiving unguarded thoughts from all over, trying to pick up something concerning you. There was a woman who came through quite strongly. She was vocalizing her thinking. Should I see him again? But if I invite him here he will be almost certain to meet Ferdinand—and Ferdinand could notice the facial resemblance, even though I had his ears fixed while he was still only a baby. He believes that Henri was his father and I want him to go on believing that. Better a dead aristocrat than an impossibly bourgeois spaceman . . .”

  “Mphm,” grunted Grimes indignantly. “Am I impossibly bourgeois, Mr. Mayhew?”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” said the telepath diplomatically. “Then there was a man, a spaceman I would say, like yourself. Would it have been this Drongo Kane? So Grimes, of all people, is here. In a real ship. I could use him. After all, he held command in the Survey Service. He’s been in a few naval actions. The only laws for which he has any respect are those he makes himself. But he’s a prickly bastard. I’ll have to handle him carefully. But, first of all, I’ll have to see to it that there’s a shortage of cargoes for his Sister Sue—what a name for a ship!—in this sector of the galaxy. I’ll have to get old Takada on to it. He’s our financial wizard . . .”

  “The Baron Takada,” said Grimes, “is El Dorado’s financial wizard. And am I a prickly bastard?”

  “You are at times, sir. But to continue . . . There was a woman, elderly. Just imagine that young Grimes turning up here after all this time . . . I wish that I were a few years younger. Marlene’s a fool; she should have kept him once she’d got her claws into him. She’s enough money for two and she could afford genealogical research to turn up some sort of patent of nobility for a commoner husband. Michelle wasn’t so absurdly fussy—although you could hardly say that Kane married her for her money. He’s plenty of his own. And he’ll have plenty more—as we all shall!—if that private navy of mercenaries does as well as he says it will . . .”

  “I always rather liked the Duchess,” said Grimes, “although she’s a ruthless old bat. So she’s an investor in Kane’s Honorable Company of Interstellar Mercenaries. Probably everybody is on this world. I’ve noticed that the very rich never miss any opportunity to become even richer. And Baron Takada will be pulling his strings and exporters and importers will be dancing to his tune, and I’ll be sitting here on the bones of my arse, flat broke and getting broker . . . And then Drongo Kane will bob up like a pantomime Good Fairy and offer me, and the ship, a job . . .”

  “You have some peculiar friends, sir,” said Mayhew dryly.

  “Don’t I just. Can you sort of tune in to the dinner party tonight? Let me know, when I get back, if you heard anything interesting.”

  “I think I can manage that, sir.”

  “Good.” He looked at the bulkhead clock. “It’s time I was getting changed.”

  Chapter 24

  GRIMES AND WILLIAMS, dressed in what the mate referred to as their penguin suits, stood at the foot of the ramp watching the Duchess’s air car coming in. With them was Magda Granadu, also wearing a black outfit, high-necked, long-sleeved and with an ankle-length skirt. Its severity was offset by a necklace of opals, by a blazing, fire opal brooch over her left breast and by what was almost a coronet of opals in her piled-high auburn hair.

  You can put an inertial drive unit into any sort of body, of any shape at all, and it will fly. If you want speed throug
h the atmosphere streamlining is desirable. If speed is not the main consideration the streamlining may be dispensed with.

  The Duchess’s car was not streamlined. It was an airborne replica of one of the more prestigious road vehicles developed during the twentieth century, Old Reckoning, on Earth, even to the silver nymph decorating the square bonnet. It drifted down through the evening air, touched, then rolled the last few meters on its fat-tired wheels. The chauffeur—a grey-faced robot clad in black, high-collared, silver-buttoned livery—got down from the forward compartment, marched stiffly to the three humans and saluted smartly.

  “Your transport, gentlemen and lady,” he announced in a metallic voice.

  He turned, walked back to the car and opened the rear door. Grimes held back to let Magda enter first but she said, “After you, Captain.”

  She followed him in, so as to sit between him and Williams. Williams entered. The robot chauffeur shut the door, returned to his own seat. There was a sheet of glass or some other transparency between him and his passengers. His voice came to him through a concealed speaker. “Gentlepersons, you will find a small bar in the panel before you. There is a single button in the padding, which you may press.”

  The car lifted. Grimes, whose mind was a repository of all manner of useless facts, recalled the proud boast of Rolls Royce on one of whose later cars this vehicle had been modeled. The only mechanical sound you can hear is the ticking of the clock on the dashboard. So it was here. The inertial drive is inevitably noisy, yet Grimes and his companions had heard only the faintest mutter as the car came in for its landing. Inside the passenger compartment there was not so much as a whisper to indicate that machinery was in operation.

 

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