First Command (82 page)

“Somebody will listen,” said Big Sister, “if the message comes from you, in your voice. I shall send a robot at once to Maya to tell the story. She still has a great deal of time for you. Then she will call Melbourne and talk to Tabitha, queen to queen and Tabitha will talk to Mr. Delamere—not only as wife to husband but as queen to prince consort . . .

“And then . . .”

“It could work,” admitted Grimes.

And not for the first time he was impressed by Big Sister’s knowledge of human psychology.

Chapter 32

Grimes got off to sleep at last.

He was called the next morning by one of the robots who brought him a steaming pot of tea. Refreshed, he went into the pinnace to make use of the boat’s cramped yet adequate toilet facilities. Then he had breakfast. The robots did their best with what was available and produced for him a filling and tasty enough sandwich meal but, as he became acutely conscious of the savory odors drifting from various houses in the village, unsatisfying. It was obvious that Kane and his entourage believed—as Grimes himself did—in starting the day with eggs and bacon.

He filled and lit his pipe, took a stroll through the settlement accompanied by two of the GP robots. Littles, Pettifers, Grants and Jameses were emerging from their huts. They looked at him but said nothing, did not answer his politely hearty good mornings. He ran into Dr. Weldon and tried to engage him in conversation but the scientist said that he was busy and hastened off. He met more of Kane’s people and none of them had any time to spare for him. There was no sign of Kane himself or of the Baroness.

He went back to the pinnace, used the transceiver to call
The Far Traveler.
Big Sister answered. She said, “Be patient, Captain Grimes. I am doing all that I can. I must ask you to say nothing of this to Her Excellency. I fear that she has become infatuated with Captain Kane—which is largely your fault, of course—and will be more inclined to aid than to frustrate him.”

So it’s all my fault,
thought Grimes resentfully—then recalled how he had spurned what was offered to him in that cave on Farhaven. He said, “I haven’t seen her since last night.”

“Perhaps that is as well,” said Big Sister. And was that a note of worry in the metallic voice? “I am acting in her best interests. You must believe that.”

“I do,” said Grimes truthfully.

By midday he was beginning to feel like an invisible man; nobody knew him or wanted to know him. Obviously Kane had issued orders and those same orders were being obeyed in letter and in spirit. He partook of but did not enjoy another lonely meal in his pneumatic tent. He called Big Sister again from the pinnace. She told him to be patient.

The afternoon dragged on.

The Baroness, accompanied by Kane, made a brief appearance. They ignored him. She looked like a cat who’d just eaten the canary and he like a canary who’d just eaten the cat. They sauntered past him, briefly taking the air, then returned to Queen Anne’s palace.

Eventually Grimes sat down to his evening meal. If he had foreseen that he would be unable to live off the country he would have taken far greater interest in the stocking of the pinnace’s emergency food supplies; beans are undeniably nutritious but apt to become boring. Too, a supply of reading matter would not have come amiss. Worst of all was the feeling of helplessness. He had known and survived crises aplenty in the past—but then he had been an officer of one of the major armed services of the Galaxy. Now he was only a yachtmaster, the flunky of a pampered aristocrat captain of a sentient vessel determined to do things
her
way.

He was preparing for bed in his tent when one of the robots entered. It said, in Big Sister’s voice, “A landing has been made upriver from Stratford. The police forces are on their way in inflatable boats.”

“Why didn’t they come directly here?” demanded Grimes irritably.

“You are supposed to be the expert on military matters, Captain.” Big Sister seemed more amused than reproving. “It should be obvious to you that half a dozen airboats would give ample sonic warning of their approach—and Kane and his people are armed. The dinghies, making use of the current, will carry out a silent approach. You will be at the jetty to receive them. Their ETA is midnight your time, but they could be earlier.”

“All right,” said Grimes. “I’ll be there.”

He was waiting by the river at 2330 hours. It was a fine night and what little breeze there was was pleasantly warm. Glittering starlight was reflected from the black, swift-flowing river. Inland a few lamps still gleamed from the village. As long as they remained burning they would indicate to the waterborne forces that their objective had been reached. If they were, for any reason, extinguished, Grimes had a flashlight that he could use.

He sat there on the jetty, watching and listening. He would have liked a smoke, in fact went so far as to fill his pipe, but feared that the flare of one of the old-fashioned matches that he always used might attract unwelcome attention. He heard a heavy splash as one of the denizens of the stream—hunter or hunted?—leapt clear of the water and returned to it. He listened to somebody singing in the village, an eerie, wailing song that once he might have assumed to be of Terran Oriental origin. Now he recognized it for what it was. He thought,
For that sort of howling there should be a moon!

From upriver came a faint purring noise. Had he not been expecting it, listening for it intently, he would never have heard it this early. He considered switching on his flashlight, then decided against it. The Morrowvians had inherited excellent night vision from their feline ancestors and would surely see him standing at the head of the jetty.

He could make out the first boat now, a dark blob on the black water. He waved. It stood in toward him. Its engine was switched off and it was carried by the current head on to the stonework. Had it been of metal or timber construction there would have been a loud crash; as it was, there was merely a dull thud followed by a faint hiss of escaping air. Half a dozen figures scrambled ashore, five of them sure-footedly, the sixth clumsily. This one asked, in a loud whisper, “Captain Grimes?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Commodore Delamere, Prince Consort and Dog Star Line Resident Manager. I hope you haven’t brought us out here on a wild goose chase. If you have . . .”

The first boat was pushed away from and clear of the jetty, allowed to drift downstream. The second delivered its landing party and was similarly treated. And the third, and the fourth . .

But the village was waking up. The Morrowvians may have inherited excellent night vision but the alleged Littles, Pettifers, Grants and Jameses had inherited exceptionally keen hearing. There were yelping shouts and then, above them, the voice of Kane bellowing through a bullhorn. Lights came on—not the dim yellow of oil lamps but a harsh, electric glare, fed by the generator and the power cells of Kane’s pinnace. Dark figures boiled out of the huts.

Delamere stood there, frozen. When it came to the crunch, thought Grimes, he was as useless as his Survey Service cousin. But the police did not wait for his orders. Screaming, they ran toward their ancient enemies, stunguns out and ready. Some of them fell, cut down by the similar weaponry being used by Kane’s people.

Grimes ran after the attackers, feeling naked without a weapon of his own. He realized suddenly that he was not alone, that he was boxed in by four of
The Far Traveler’s
golden robots. He felt a flash of gratitude to the omniscient Big Sister. Those giant, metal bodies would effectively shield him from the incapacitating bolts being aimed in his direction.

He was among the houses now. He ran through the village, ignoring the scrimmages going on around him. He charged toward Kane’s pinnace. Kane was standing just inside the airlock of the boat. He was armed—but not with a non-lethal stungun. A brief burst of tracer coruscated about the impervious torso of the leading robot. And then the automaton stretched out a long arm to snatch the machine pistol from Kane’s hand, crumpling the weapon in its grip.

The Baroness was there with Kane, obviously hastily dressed, her shorts not properly pulled up, her shirt open. She was furious. “Take your tin paws off him!” she flared. “My own robots! You obey
me,
damn you!” She saw Grimes. “And
you . . .
What the hell do you think that you’re doing?”

One of the robots found the cable leading from the pinnace’s generator to the lights in the village, picked it up in both hands, snapped it. There was a brief actinic flare, then darkness.

And cats can see in the dark.

Chapter 33

The Baroness was queening
it in her salon aboard
The Far Traveler.

With her were Grimes and Francis Delamere, Prince Regent of Melbourne, Dog Star Line Resident Manager, on Morrowvia, Company Commodore. Delamere, Grimes was amused to note, stood considerably in awe of the Baroness despite his fancy uniform—of his own design—and fancy titles. He was prepared to go along with the story that she was a little innocent woolly lamb and Drongo Kane the big bad wolf.

He said, “It is indeed fortunate, madam, that you realized that the beings revivified by Captain Kane were, in spite of their names and false background stories, of canine and not human ancestry.”

She smiled forgivingly but condescendingly. “The correct form of address, Resident Manager, is ‘Your Excellency.’ As an itinerant representative of the planet state of El Dorado I am entitled to ambassadorial status. But it is of no real importance.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Excellency. But how did you guess that the alleged descendants of the Little, Pettifer, Grant and James women were not what they claimed to be?”

With conscious nobility she gave credit where credit was due. “It was Captain Grimes, actually, who noticed the . . . discrepancies. The way that they swam, using the stroke that, when used by humans, is called a dog paddle. The way that they shook themselves when they emerged from the water. And the odor from their bodies. Have you ever smelted a wet dog?”

“Not since I settled on this planet, Your Excellency. You will appreciate that dogs would not be popular pets here.” He took an appreciative sip of the large martini with which he had been supplied. “Meanwhile—with some reluctance, I admit, but in accordance with your request—we have not dealt harshly with Captain Kane. He has been given twenty-four hours to get his ship, his people and himself off Morrowvia. He will have to pay compensation to Queen Anne and her subjects. In addition he has been charged with the costs of the police expedition to Stratford and has been fined the maximum amount for breaching the peace.”

“And his dupes?” asked the Baroness. “His—if I may use the expression—cat’s paws?”

“They, Your Excellency, have been returned to cold storage until such time as we receive instructions from the Government of the Federation regarding
their
disposition. It is my own opinion that the Founding Father having, as it were, created them, put them in reserve in case his first experiment did not work out. But the need for them never arose.”

Grimes said, “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

Big Sister’s voice came from the playmaster. “Let the lying dogs sleep.”

Surely, thought Grimes, only a human intelligence could be capable of such an horrendous play on words. He wondered how he had ever regarded Big Sister as an emotionless, humorless machine.

Chapter 34

The Far Traveler
did not remain long on Morrowvia after
Southerly Buster’s
departure for an unknown destination. Grimes had reason to believe that the Baroness’s affairs were under investigation by officials of the Bank of Canis Major, an institution wherein lay the real power of the planet. Delamere, for all his fancy titles, was only a figurehead and, furthermore, was the sort of man who would believe anything that a pretty woman told him. The bankers were not so easily fooled and knew somehow that their financial interests in the holiday world had been threatened.

Michelle d’Estang was rich enough and powerful enough to pull a few strings of her own, however, and was able to obtain Outward Clearance before her ship was placed under arrest. Grimes, who had been told a little but not all, took the yacht upstairs in a hurry as soon as the documents were delivered, by special courier, late one afternoon. He regretted that he had not been given time to say goodbye to Maya properly or, even, to renew in depth his old acquaintance with her. Perhaps this was just as well. The Prince Consort of Cambridge would have been quite capable of making trouble.

Once
The Far Traveler
was clear of the Van Allens, trajectory was set for New Sparta and the long voyage begun.

*****

The seas of Earth and other watery planets are, insofar as surface vessels are concerned, two dimensional. The seas of space are three dimensional. Yet from the viewpoint of the first real seamen the Terran oceans must have seemed as vast as those other oceans, millennia later, traversed by spacemen—mile upon mile of sweet damn all. As far as the spaceman is concerned, substitute “light year” for “mile” and delete the breaks in the monotony provided by changing weather conditions and by birds and fishes and cetaceans. Nonetheless, the similarity persists.

A ship, any sort of ship, is small in comparison to the mind-boggling immensity of the medium through which she travels. Disregarding the existence of focal points the chances of her sighting another vessel during a trans-oceanic voyage are exceedingly thin. This was especially so to the days of sail, when it was practically impossible for a captain to keep in a Great Circle track between ports or even to a Rhumb Line—and yet, time and time again, strange sails would lift over the horizon and there would be a mid-ocean meeting with the exchange of gossip and months-old newspapers, a bartering of consumable stores.

Now and again there were even collisions, although each of the vessels involved had thousands of square miles of empty ocean to play around in.

Ships, somehow, seem to sniff each other out. Sightings, meetings are too frequent to be accounted for by the laws of random. This was so in the days of the windjammers, it was still so in the days of steam and steel, it is still so to the age of interstellar travel.