First Command (7 page)

“Heraklion seemed to like the one that he was with last night. It was . . . unnatural.”

“And what were your feelings toward him? Or it?”

Brasidus blushed. He muttered, “As you said yourself, sir, these beings possess a strange, evil power.”

“So they do. So they do. That’s why we must try to foil any plot in which they’re engaged.” He looked at his watch. “Meanwhile, my own original plan still stands. The Council has approved my suggestion that
Seeker
’s personnel be allowed to leave their ship. Today you will, using my car and driver, escort Lieutenant Commander Grimes and Doctor Lazenby to the city, where an audience with the King and the Council has been arranged for them. You will act as guide as well as escort, and—you are armed—also as guard.”

“To protect them, sir?”

“Yes. I suppose so. But mainly to protect the King. How do we know that when they are in his presence they will not pull a weapon of some kind? You will be with them; you will be situated to stop them at once. Of course, there will be plenty of my own men in the Council Chamber, but you would be able to act without delay if you had to.”

“I see, sir.”

“All right. Now we are to go aboard the ship to tell them that everything has been organized.”

A junior officer met them in the airlock, escorted them up to the commander’s quarters. Grimes was attired in what was obviously ceremonial uniform—and very hot and uncomfortable it must be, thought Brasidus. Professionally he ran his eye over the spaceman for any evidence of weapons. There was one, in full sight, but not a very dangerous one. It was a sword, its hilt gold-encrusted, in a gold-trimmed sheath at his left side. More for show than use, was Brasidus’ conclusion.

John Grimes grinned at his two visitors. “I hate this rig,” he confided, “but I suppose I have to show the flag. Doctor Lazenby is lucky. Nobody has ever gotten around to designing full dress for women officers.”

There was a tap at the door and Margaret Lazenby entered. He was dressed as he had been the previous day, although the clothing itself, with its bright braid and buttons, was obviously an outfit that was worn only occasionally. He said pleasantly, “Good morning, Captain Diomedes. Good morning, Sergeant. Are you coming with us, Captain?”

“Unfortunately, no. I have urgent business here at the spaceport. But Brasidus will be your personal escort. Also, I have detailed two chariots to convoy you into the city.”

“Chariots? Oh, you mean those light tanks that we’ve been watching from the control room.”

“Tanks?” repeated Diomedes curiously. “A tank is something you keep fluids in.”

“There are tanks and tanks. Where we come from, a tank can be an armored vehicle with caterpillar tracks.”

“And what does ‘caterpillar’ mean?”

Grimes said. “Over the generations new words come into the language and old words drop out. Obviously there are no caterpillars on Sparta, and so the term is meaningless. However, Captain Diomedes, you are welcome to make use of our microfilm library; I would suggest the Encyclopedia Galactica.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Commander.” Diomedes looked at his watch. “But may I suggest that you and Doctor Lazenby proceed now to your audience?”

“And will the rest of my crew be allowed ashore?”

“That depends largely upon the impression that you make upon the King and his Council.”

“Where’s my fore-and-aft hat?” muttered Grimes. He got up, went through one of the curtained doorways. He emerged wearing an odd, gold-braided, black cloth helmet. He said, “Lead on, MacDuff.”

“It should be ‘Lay on, MacDuff,’ “ Margaret Lazenby told him.

“I know, I know.”

“And who is MacDuff?” asked Diomedes.

“He’s dead. He was the Thane of Cawdor.”

“And where is Cawdor?”

Grimes sighed.

Brasidus, although he could not say why he did so, enjoyed the ride to the city. He, Grimes and Margaret Lazenby were in the back seat of the car, with the Arcadian (it was as good a label as any) sitting between the two humans. He was stirred by the close proximity of this strange being, almost uncomfortably so. When Margaret Lazenby leaned across him to look at a medusa tree swarming with harpies, he realized that those peculiar fleshy mounds, which even the severe uniform could not hide, were deliciously soft. So much for the built-in weapon theory. “What fantastic birds!” exclaimed the Arcadian.

“They are harpies,” said Brasidus.

“Those round bodies do look like human heads, don’t they? They could be straight out of Greek mythology.”

“So you have already made a study of our legends?” asked Brasidus, interested.

“Of course.” Margaret Lazenby smiled. (His lips against the white teeth were very red. Could it be natural?) “But they aren’t just your legends. They belong to all Mankind.”

“I suppose they do. Admiral Latterus must have carried well-stocked libraries aboard his ships.”

“Admiral Latterus?” asked Margaret Lazenby curiously.

“The founder of Latterhaven. I am surprised that you have not heard of him. He was sent from Sparta to establish the colony, but he made himself King of the new world and never returned.”

“What a beautiful history,” murmured the Arcadian. “Carefully tailored to fit the facts. Tell me, Brasidus, did you ever hear of the Third Expansion, or of Captain John Latter, master of the early timejammer Utah? Come to that, did you ever hear of the First Expansion?”

“You talk in riddles, Margaret Lazenby.”

“And you and your world are riddles that must be solved, Brasidus.”

“Careful, Peggy,” warned John Grimes.

The Arcadian turned to address his commander—and, as he did so, Brasidus was acutely conscious of the softness and resilience of the rump under the uniform kilt. “They’ll have to be told the truth sometime, John—and I’m sure that Brasidus will forgive me for using him as the guinea pig for the first experiment. But I am a little drunk, I guess. All this glorious fresh air after weeks of the canned variety. And look at those houses! With architecture like that, there should be real chariots escorting us, not these hunks of animated ironmongery. Still, apart from his sidearms, Brasidus is dressed properly.”

“The ordinary hoplites,” said Brasidus with some pride, “those belonging to the subject city-states, are armed only with swords and spears.”

“They didn’t have wristwatches in ancient Sparta,” Grimes pointed out.

“Oh, be practical, John. He could hardly wear an hourglass or a sundial on his arm, could he?”

“It’s . . . phony,” grumbled Grimes.

“It should be as phony as all hell, but it’s not,” Margaret Lazenby told him. “I wish I’d known just how things are here, though. I’d have soaked up Hellenic history before we came here . . . What are those animals, Brasidus? They look almost like a sort of hairless wolf.”

“They are the scavengers. They keep the streets of the city clean. There is a larger variety, wild, out on the hills and plains. They are the wolves.”

“But that one, there. Look! It’s Siamese twins. It seems to be in pain. Why doesn’t somebody do something about it?”

“But why? It’s only budding. Don’t you reproduce like us—or like we used to, before Lacedaemon invented the birth machine?” He paused. “But I suppose you have birth machines, too.”

“We do,” said Grimes—and Margaret Lazenby reddened. It was obviously a private joke of some kind.

“The glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome,” murmured the Arcadian after a long pause. “But this isn’t—forgive me, Brasidus—quite as glorious as it should be. There’s a certain . . . untidiness in your streets. And this absence of women seems . . . odd. As I recall it, the average Greek housewife was nothing much to write home about, but the hetaerae must have been ornamental.”

“Did they have hetaerae in Sparta?” asked Grimes. “I thought that it was only in Athens.”

We do have hetaerae in Sparta, Brasidus thought but did not say, recalling what he had seen and heard in the créche. Sally (another queer name!) had admitted to being one. But what were hetaerae, anyhow?

“They had women,” said Margaret Lazenby. “And some of them must have been reasonably good-looking, even by our standards. But Sparta was more under masculine domination than the other Greek states.”

“Is that the palace ahead, Brasidus?” asked Grimes.

“It is, sir.”

“Then be careful, Peggy. Watch your step—and your tongue.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

“And I suppose that you, Brasidus, will report everything that you’ve heard to Captain Diomedes?”

“Of course, sir.”

“And so he should,” Margaret Lazenby said. “When it gets around, these pseudo-Spartans might realize all that they are missing.”

“And is the fact that they’re missing it grounds for commiseration or congratulation?” asked Grimes quietly.

“Shut up!” snapped his officer mutinously.

Chapter 11

IT WAS NOT
the first time that Brasidus had been inside the palace, but, as always, he was awed (although he tried not to show it in front of the foreigners) by the long, colonnaded, high-ceilinged halls, each with its groups of heroic statuary, each with its vivid murals depicting scenes of warfare and the chase. He marched along beside his charges (who, he was pleased to note, had fallen into step), taking pride in the rhythmic, martial clank of the files of hoplites on either side of them, the heralds, long, brazen trumpets already upraised, ahead of them. Past the ranks of Royal Guards—stiff and immobile at attention, tiers of bright-headed spears in rigid alignment—they progressed. He realized, with disapproval, that John Grimes and Margaret Lazenby were talking in low voices.

“More anachronisms for you, Peggy. Those guards. Spears in hand—and projectile pistols at the belt . . .”

“And look at those murals, John. Pig-sticking—those animals aren’t unlike boars—on motorcycles. But these people do have good painters and sculptors.”

“I prefer my statues a little less aggressively masculine. In fact, I prefer them nonmasculine.”

“You would. I find them a pleasant change from the simpering nymphs that are supposed to be decorative on most planets.”

“You would.”

Brasidus turned his head. “Quiet, please, sirs. We are approaching the throne.”

There was a sharp command from the officer in charge of the escort. The party crashed to a halt. The heralds put the mouthpieces of their instruments to their lips, sounded a long, discordant blast, then another. From a wide, pillared portal strode a glittering officer. “Who comes?” he demanded.

In unison the heralds chanted, “John Grimes, master of the star ship
Seeker
. Margaret Lazenby, one of his officers.”

“Enter, John Grimes. Enter, Margaret Lazenby.”

Again a command from the leader of the escort, and with a jangle of accouterments, the march resumed, although at a slower pace. Through the doorway they passed, halted again. There was another prolonged blast from the heralds’ trumpets, a crash of grounded spear butts.

There was the King, resplendent in golden armor (which made the iron crown somehow incongruous), bearded (the only man on Sparta to be so adorned), seated erect on his high, black throne. There, ranged behind him on marble benches, was the Council—the doctors in their scarlet robes, the engineers in purple, the philosophers in black, the generals in brown and the admirals in blue. There was a small group of high-ranking helots—agronomists robed in green, industrialists in gray. All of them stared curiously at the men, from the ship, from whom the guards had fallen away. But, Brasidus noted, there was more than curiosity on the faces of the scarlet-robed doctors as they regarded Margaret Lazenby. There was recognition, puzzlement and . . . guilt?

Grimes, at heel-clicking attention, saluted smartly.

“You may advance, Lieutenant Commander,” said the King.

Grimes did so, once again drawing himself to attention when within two paces from the throne.

“You may relax, John Grimes. At ease.” There was a long pause, then, “We have been told that you come from another world—another world, that is, beyond our polity of Sparta and Latterhaven. We have been told that you represent a government calling itself the Interstellar Federation. Assuming that there is such an entity, what is your business on Sparta?”

“Your Majesty, my mission is to conduct a census of the Man-colonized planets in this sector of space.”

“The members of our Council concerned with such matters will be able to give you all the information you need. But we are told that you and your officers wish to set foot on this world—a privilege never accorded to the crews of Latterhaven ships. May we inquire as to your motives?”

“Your Majesty, in addition to the census, we are conducting a survey.”

“A survey, Lieutenant Commander?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. There are worlds, such as yours, about which little is known. There are worlds—and yours is one of them—about which much more should be known.”

“And this Federation of yours”—Brasidus, watching the King’s face, could see that he had not been surprised by any of Grimes’ answers, that he accepted the existence of worlds other than Sparta and Latterhaven without demur, that even the mention of this fantastic Federation had been no cause for amazement—“it has considerable military strength?”

“Considerable strength, Your Majesty. My ship, for example, is but a small and unimportant unit of our fleet.”

“Indeed? And your whereabouts are known?”

“The movements of all vessels are plotted by Master Control.”

“And so . . . and so, supposing that some unfortunate accident were to happen to your ship and your crew on Sparta, we might, just possibly, expect a visit from one or more of your big battleships?”

“That is so, Your Majesty.”

“And we could deal with them, sire!” interpolated a portly, blue-robed Council member.

The King swiveled around in his throne. “Could we, Admiral Philcus? Could we? We wish that we possessed your assurance. But we do not. It does not matter how and by whom the planets of this Federation were colonized—what does matter is that they own spaceships, which we do not, and even space warships, which even Latterhaven does not. We, a mere monarch, hesitate to advise you upon naval tactics, but we remind you that a spaceship can hang in orbit, clear of the atmosphere—and therefore beyond reach of your airships—and, at the same time, release its shower of bombs upon our cities. Consider it, Philcus.” He turned back to Grimes. “So, Lieutenant Commander, you seek permission for you and your men to range unhindered over the surface of our world?”