Ride the Star Winds (36 page)

“But very few, these days, reserved for the use of one sex only,” said Grimes.

“There just wasn’t more than one sex on New Lesbos,” she said, “just as there wasn’t more than one sex here before the planet was thrown open to immigration.”

“She’s a good reporter,” said Grimes.

“The only good reporter is a dead one,” said Phryne. “And boomerangs are toys for backward primitives and kicking should be confined to the Association Football field.”

Grimes laughed. “I take it, Lieutenant, that you were featured in that famous photograph.”

“I was, Commodore. I was wrestling one of the other girls. But men wrestle each other, don’t they? And nobody accuses them of being friendly.”

Yet another useful word stolen from the English language by an overly noisy minority,
thought Grimes.

He said, “What does it matter, anyhow?”

She said, “It matters to me.”

Chapter 12

The Lady Ellena
received Grimes in her office, listened to what he had to tell her.

She said, “You were overly generous, Commodore—but, of course, it is easy to be generous with somebody else’s money. Even so . . . . Commissioned rank for that pair of cheap entertainers . . . .”

He said, “You wanted Shirl and Darleen. Now you’ve got them.”

She said, “I most certainly did not want the Pruin woman. Now it seems that I’ve got her too.”

Grimes told her, “She was part of the package deal, Lady.”

Ellena made a major production of shrugging. “Oh, well. At least I shall not have to mingle with her socially. And I think that the Palace will be able to afford to treat her to an occasional meal in the sergeants’ mess.”

“Or the officers’ mess,” said Grimes. “Shirl and Darleen will be officers . . .”

“Thanks to you.”

“ . . . and they will wish, now and again, to entertain their friend.”

“I cannot imagine her being a friend to anybody. But now, in
my
Palace, she will be free to come and go, to eat food that
I
have paid for, to swill expensive imported beer. But that, of course, is the least of
your
worries, Commodore. After all, it is
your
ship that brings in all such Terran luxuries, at freight rates that ensure for you a very handsome profit.”

“Being a shipowner,” said Grimes, “is far more worrisome financially than being a planetary ruler. I’ve been both. I know.”

“Indeed?” Her thin eyebrows went up almost to meet her hairline. “Indeed? Well, Your ex-Excellency, I thank you for your efforts on my behalf. And now I imagine that you have business of your own to attend to.”

Grimes could not think of any but, bowing stiffly, he made his departure from the Lady Ellena’s presence. He was somewhat at a loose end; Maggie was still at her function, giving her after-luncheon talk and answering questions, and Brasidus was still presiding over the council meeting.

He found his way to his quarters. His suite possessed all the amenities usually found in hotel accommodation, including a playmaster. There were gin and a bottle of Angostura bitters in the grog locker, ice cubes in the refrigerator. He mixed himself a drink. He checked the playmaster’s library of spools. These included various classical dramas in the original Greek and a complete coverage of the Olympic Games, on Earth, from the late Twentieth Century, Old Style, onwards. Unfortunately the library did not include anything else. Grimes sighed. He switched the playmaster to its TV reception function, sampled the only two channels that were available at this time of day. Both of these presented sporting events. He watched briefly the discus throwing and thought that these people would have much to learn from Shirl and Darleen. Then he switched off and got from his bags some spools of his own. He set up a space battle simulation and soon was engrossed, matching his wits against those of the small but cunningly programmed computer.

Eventually Maggie joined him there.

She flopped into an easy chair, demanded a drink. Grimes made her a Scotch on the rocks. She disposed of it in two gulps.

She said, “I needed that! What a bunch of dim biddies I had to talk to. Oh, it wasn’t so much the talking as the stupid questions afterwards. Most of my audience knew only two worlds, Earth and New Sparta, and were quite convinced that those are the only two planets worth knowing. As a real, live Arcadian I was just a freak, to be condescended to. They even lectured me on the glories of Hellenic culture and the great contributions it has made to Galactic civilization. Damn it all, Hellenic culture is only part of Terran culture, just as Australian culture is. Talking of Australians, and pseudo-Australians, how did you get on with Shirl and Darleen?”

“I persuaded them to accept commissions in the Amazon Guard. Unluckily—or was it so unlucky?—Fenella was part of the deal. She’s staying on to do a piece on them, and part of the package is that she’s to be allowed free access to the Palace at all times.”

“Why did you say, ‘or was it so unlucky’?”

“She might be able to help us. I gained the impression that she’s on the track of something. Is there any way that she could be pressganged into the Intelligence Branch? After all, we were.”

“But we were—and are—already officers holding commissions in the Survey Service. When admirals say, Jump! we jump. Even you, John, as long as you’re on the Reserve List.”

“Civilians can be conscripted . . .” said Grimes. “
I
was. I became a civilian as soon as I resigned from the Service after the mutiny.”

“As I heard it from Admiral Damien,” Maggie said, “you were offered the Reserve Commission that you now hold. You were not compelled to accept it.”

“Mphm. Not quite. But there were veiled threats as well as inducements.”

“Could you threaten Fenella?”

“I wish that I could. But as I’m not a major shareholder in
Star Scandals
I can’t.”

“Inducements?”

“I’ve already played one major card by getting her the permission to come calling round to the Palace any time that she feels like it. There should have been a
quid pro quo
. I realize that now.”

“Now that it’s too late. What we want is an I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you’ll-scratch-mine situation. What inducements can we offer? Mmm. To begin with, I’m the senior officer of the Federation Survey Service on this planet . . . .”

“
I
am,” said Grimes indignantly.

“But only you and I know it. As far as the locals are concerned, as far as Fenella is concerned, you’re no more than an owner-master, waiting here for his little star tramp to come wambling in with her cargo of black olives and retsina. And
I
have a warship at
my
disposal. A minor warship, perhaps, but a warship nonetheless.”

“A Serpent Class courier,” scoffed Grimes, “armed with a couple of pea-shooters and a laser cannon that would make quite a fair cigarette lighter. Commanded by a snotty-nosed lieutenant.”

“You were one yourself once. But how far could you trust Fenella? Suppose, just suppose, that you spilled some of the beans to her? Could she be trusted?”

“I think that she subscribes to the journalists’ code of honor. Never betray your sources. Too, there’s one threat that I could use. The Baroness Michelle d’Estang of Eldorado is a
Star Scandals
major shareholder. I was among those present when Michelle, wielding the power of the purse, killed a really juicy story that Fenella wanted to splash all over the Galaxy.”

“I take it that Michelle is one of your girlfriends.”

“You could call her that.”

“And we’ve other cards to play. Both of us are personal friends of the Archon. And you, I have gathered, have been on more than friendly terms with Shirl and Darleen. Soon, I think, we must have a get-together with Miz Pruin and offer her our cooperation in return for hers.”

“If you say so,” said Grimes. “And now I suppose that we’d better get dressed for tonight’s state dinner party.”

“We have to get undressed first,” she said suggestively.

Chapter 13

So there was the state dinner party,
as boring as such occasions usually are, with everybody, under the watchful eye of the Lady Ellena, on his or her best behavior, with the serving wenches obviously instructed not to be overly prompt in such matters as the refilling of wine glasses. The female guests, thought Grimes snobbishly, were a scruffy bunch, immigrants all, mainly from Earth, most of whom would never, on their home planets, have been invited to a function such as this. The same could have been said regarding the hostess, Ellena.

What really irked the Commodore was the ban on smoking. Not even when things got to the coffee and ouzo stage was he able to enjoy his pipe—and normally he liked to enjoy a couple or three puffs between courses.

He was seated near the head of the high table, with Maggie on his left and the headmistress of the Pallas Athena College for Young Ladies on his right. Maggie had gotten into a conversation with Colonel Heraclion, who was sitting next to her on her other side, leaving Grimes to cope with the academic lady.

“You must already have noticed changes here, Commodore,” she said.

Grimes swallowed a mouthful of rather stringy stewed lamb (if it was lamb) and replied briefly, “Yes.”

“And changes for the better. Oh, the first settlers did their best to recreate the glory that was Greece but, without the fair sex to aid them in their endeavors, all that they achieved was a pale shadow . . . .”

She waved her fork as she spoke and drops of gravy fell on the front of her chiton. It was rather surprising, thought Grimes, that they succeeded in making a landing as the material of the dress dropped in almost a straight line from neck to lap. He categorized her as a dried-up stick of a woman, not his type at all, with graying hair scraped back from an already overly high forehead, with protuberant pale blue eyes, with thin lips that could not hide buck teeth. Why was it, he wondered, that such people are so often, too often prone to fanatical enthusiasms?

“The founding fathers—there were not, of course, any founding mothers—were spacemen, not Greek scholars,” she went on. “They knew something, of course, of the culture which they were trying to emulate, but not enough. It has, therefore, fallen to me, and to others like me, to finish the task that was begun by them.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. For example, you should still be here when the first Marathon is run. It will be a grueling course, from the Palace to the Acropolis. A little way downhill, then on the level and, finally, uphill. The race will be open to
everybody
, tourists as well as citizens.”

“Better them than me,” said Grimes.

“Come, come, Commodore! Surely you are not serious. Taking part in such an event could be one of the greatest challenges of your career.”

“Foot racing,” Grimes told her, “is not an activity in which I have ever taken part.”

“And I know why,” she told him. “You are a smoker. I saw you puffing a pipe outside the banqueting hall before you entered. But, even so, you could enter. And—who knows?—you might be among those to finish the course. Think of the honor and the glory!”

“Honor and glory don’t pay port charges and maintenance and crew salaries,” said Grimes.

She laughed. “Spoken like a true cynic, Commodore. A cynic and a shipowner.”

“A man can be both,” he admitted. “And if one is the latter one tends to become the former.”

“A cynic . . .” she trotted out the old chestnut as though it had been newly minted, by herself . . . “is a man who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.”

“Mphm.”

The meal dragged on.

Finally, after the coffee had been served, there was a display of martial arts in the large area of floor around which the tables stood. There were wrestling matches, men versus men, women versus women, men versus women. (The ladies, Grimes assumed correctly, were members of the Lady Ellena’s Amazon Guard. He recognized Lieutenant Phryne, although without the leather and brass trappings of her uniform her body looked softer, much more feminine. Nonetheless she floored her opponent, a hairy male giant, with almost contemptuous ease.)

And then it was the turn of Shirl and Darleen. They were already in their Amazon lieutenants’ uniforms. (Somebody must have worked fast, thought Grimes.) They had boomerangs, little ones, no more than toys, that, at the finish of their act, seemed to fill the banqueting hall like a flock of whirring birds.

At last it was over, with the boomerangs, one by one, fluttering out through the wide open doorway, followed finally, after the making of their bows to quite enthusiastic applause, by the two New Alicians.

The academic lady was not among those who clapped.

“
Boomerangs
. . .” she muttered. “But they’re not Greek . . .”

“I suppose not,” said Grimes.

“And those two women . . . If you could call them that. Mutants, possibly. But
officers
. . . . In the elite Amazon Guard . . . .”

“Instructors, actually,” Grimes told her.

“Oh. So you know them. You have some most peculiar friends, Commodore. From which planet do they come?”

“New Alice.”

“New Alice?” She laughed creakily. “And how did it get its name? Is it some sort of Wonderland?”

“Just one of the Lost Colonies,” said Grimes. “Fairly recently rediscovered. A rather odd Australianoid culture “

“Most definitely odd, Commodore, if those two ladies are a representative sample.”

“
All
transplanted cultures are odd,” he said. “And some cultures are odd before transplantation.”

“Indeed?” Coldly.

“Indeed.”

The next time Grimes saw a demonstration of boomerang throwing was at the Amazon Guards’ drill ground. He stood with Maggie, Lieutenant Phryne and Fenella Pruin. He watched Shirl and Darleen as they hurled their war boomerangs, ugly things, little more than flattened clubs, at a row of man-sized dummies, twelve of them, achieving a full dozen neat decapitations. More dummies were set up. This time Shirl and Darleen improvised, snatching weapons from a pile of scrap metal and plastic, speedily selecting suitably shaped pieces, hurling them with great effect. But there were now no tidy beheadings. There was damage, nonetheless—arms torn off, bellies ripped open, faces crushed.