Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (39 page)

“Lady Luck,” said the doctor. “That’s where we’re going.”

“You’re the doctor,” said Grimes. (He did not care much for gambling but, for the time being, the sort of games that were much more to his liking seemed to be out.) “But I was thinking that, for a start, I’d like a change from my own cooking.”

“Not to worry, Captain. Lady Luck feeds her patrons at no extra charge; she makes her profits on the tables and machines. Mind you, she’s not made much out of me. Over a year I usually show a small profit myself.”

They were on the station platform now, looking at the animated holograms adorning the walls. They were joined by three men, obviously spacers, officers from one of the ships in port. They knew the doctor, engaged him in conversation. Grimes—details of the Outward Clearance of
Epsilon Puppis
were of no great interest to him—studied the advertisements. Just when he had come to the conclusion that when you have seen one explicit amatory exhibition you’ve seen them all a single bullet-shaped car slid silently in, came to a stop. Bullet-shaped? There was intentional phallic symbolism in its design.

“This is ours,” said the doctor.

He and Grimes boarded the vehicle, leaving the others on the platform. They were probably bound for the Kathouse or some similar establishment, thought Grimes, not without a twinge of envy.

As soon as the passengers were seated the car started off.

No matter what it looked like its motion was that of a bullet.

Chapter 4

LADY LUCK
was only two stops from Port Aphrodite.

Again there was an escalator ride, this time up to ground level. Again there was the display of explicit advertising, holograms that Grimes had already seen and one or two new ones. He was intrigued by the advertisement for the Church of the Ultimate Experience. What did it have to offer? A Black Mass? Through the swirling, coruscating mists that filled the frame he could just see, or thought that he could see, what looked like a naked woman spreadeagled on an altar with an inverted crucifix in the background.

He and the doctor stepped off the moving staircase into a brightly lit foyer. There were mobiles composed of huge, luminous dice cubes suspended from the shallow dome of the ceiling. There were almost garish murals depicting court cards not only from Terran packs but from those used by other races in the galaxy addicted to their own forms of gambling. Grimes saw the Golden Hive, analogous to the human card player’s Ace, and the Queen Mother, and the Princess, and the Drone, and the Worker-Technician. So the Shaara frequented this establishment. Gambling was one vice that they held in common with Man.

“When you’ve finished admiring the Art Gallery, Captain,” said the Port Doctor, “we’ll go in. There’s a small charge at the door. Did you bring any money with you?”

“Yes,” said Grimes. “I suppose that they’ll take Federation credits . . .”

“They’ll take anything as long as it’s legal tender on its planet of origin. I’m not being mean, you understand, in asking you to pay us in. It’s just that I’ve always found that if somebody else treats me it always starts my winning streak for the night.”

“Mphm. But what about me?”

“For you there’s beginner’s luck.”

“Mphm.” Grimes was unconvinced but allowed himself to be led to the tall blonde standing at the door. She was the first decorously clad female he had seen since landing at Port Aphrodite. It made a change. (There was no change from the Cr50 bill that he tendered.) She was severely attired in an ankle length black skirt, in a long-sleeved, high-collared white blouse with a black string tie. There was a black bow in her hair. She smiled with professional warmth and wished the two men luck.

“What first?” asked the doctor. “Two up? That’s your national game, isn’t it?”

“Tucker,” said Grimes.

“Tucker? What sort of game is that?” Comprehension dawned. “Oh,
it’s food
you mean. But we didn’t come here to eat.”

“I did,” said Grimes. He thought,
I
may as well try to get my fifty credits worth.

“Oh, all right. This way.”

The doctor led Grimes through the huge room, past the roulette tables with the croupiers in their archaic black and white uniforms and the players dressed in everything from stiffly formal to wildly informal attire, pausing only to stop a robot servitor trundling by with a tray of drinks. He took a whisky for himself, sipped and remarked condescendingly, “Not as good as yours, Captain.” Grimes helped himself to gin.

They continued through a smaller but still large chamber in which the Two Up school was in progress. Grimes wondered what coins were being used; they looked to be the same size as antique Australian pennies. He was tempted to linger but one effect that soberup capsules always had on him was to stimulate his appetite. There were card rooms and others for dice, and others in which brightly coloured sparks chased each other around enormous screens. Most, although not all, of the gamblers were human.

At last they came to the buffet. There were long tables loaded with the kind of food that looks like advertisements for itself, that sometimes—but not always—tastes as good as it looks. There was a towering drinks dispenser with a control panel that would not have looked out of place on the bridge of a Nova Class battle wagon.

The doctor made straight for this and, with the ease of long practice, pushed the buttons for a treble whisky. Grimes picked up a plate and browsed. Was that caviar? It was. It probably had not come all the way from the Caspian Sea on Earth—from Atlantia? or New Maine?—but it was edible. And those things like thin, pallid worms weren’t at all bad . . . And neither was the pork fruit salad, although this was at its best only on, Caribbea, the world to which that strange organism, neither animal nor vegetable, was native.

Munching happily, he watched a tall, slim Shaara princess indulging her taste for alcoholic sweetmeats. He had seen a party of Shaara at one of the roulette tables, doubtless she was of their number. He had always rather liked the bee people, still did—with reservations. (He would never forget what he had suffered at the hands—claws? talons?—of that Rogue Queen.) He said to her affably, “They don’t starve us here, Highness.”

She turned to look at him with her huge, faceted eyes. The voice that came from the jewelled box strapped to her thorax was a pleasant soprano.

“Indeed they do not, sir. And no matter what my Queen Captain may say or do, I believe in getting value for my money.”

Her Queen Captain . . . So she must be one of the officers from the Shaara ship in port.

“Are you on a cruise?” Grimes asked.

“Yes.” If she had been endowed with a mouth instead of mandibles she would have smiled. “The ship is a hive with more queens than workers. And are you a spaceman, sir? You have the appearance.”

“Yes, Highness. I am master of the little ship berthed between you and the TG wagon.”

Her eyes glared at him like multiple lasers. “So your ship is
Little Sister.
So you are the man Grimes.”

What had he said wrong?

“You are Grimes. My hive sisters were the Queen Captain and her officers in the ship
Baroom.
We have heard only rumours of what happened but we believe that you destroyed that vessel.”

After what they did to Tamara and myself, and to lots of other people,
though Grimes,
they had it coming to them.

But he said nothing and she said nothing more. They stood there, glaring at each other, astronauts both, with much in common professionally but culturally a universe apart. (But was there such a difference? Terran adventurers, both before and after the dawn of the Space Age, have behaved as reprehensibly as did that Rogue Queen.)

The princess turned her back to him and walked stiffly away, her iridescent wings quivering with rage.

Grimes moved on, in the other direction. The acrimonious encounter had spoiled his appetite. He wandered through a door other than the one by which he had entered, found himself in a room full of game machines.

***

He had always liked such contraptions.

He liked to match wits with computers in simulated space battles but he looked in vain for such entertainment here. The names shining—some softly, some garishly—above the glowing screens made it obvious that the devices had been manufactured for use on New Venusberg, possibly had been made on the pleasure planet. LOVE MARATHON . . . WHIP THE LADY . . . CHAIN ME TIGHT . . . And in the screens themselves, although none of the machines was fully activated, there were hints of pale, sinuously writhing limbs, of rounded breasts and buttocks.

CHASE ME AND . . .

The broadly hinting label appealed to Grimes. To play the game, he discovered, would cost him only a single one credit coin. He went to a change maker, inserted a twenty credit bill into the slot. Silver coins rattled into the receptacle. But they were not coins, only tokens, each bearing on both sides Lady Luck’s stylised roulette wheel. Presumably they could be spent only in this establishment.

Grimes pocketed all the metal discs but one, went back to the machine of his choice. There were no manual controls. There was a sort of padded hood into which he was to insert his head with eyepieces that looked into a replica of the overhead screen. This depicted only what looked like the back view of a naked woman regarded through a heavy mist. He withdrew, located the coin slot, inserted the token then put his head back into the hood.

The screen came alive.

There was a naked woman—slender, but not too much so—with her back to him. She was standing in a forest glade, her pale skin in vivid contrast to the dark foliage of trees and bushes. Grimes was naked too; he could feel the air cool on his skin, the grass damp under his feet. Suddenly this female whose face he had yet to see became the most desirable object in all the universe. He would creep up on her, throw her to the ground and . . .

He must have made some slight, betraying noise.

She turned her head, looked back at him over her smooth shoulder. Her face, framed by long, golden hair, was more than merely pretty, her eyes a wide, startled blue, her mouth a wide, scarlet gash. Her expression combined fear and invitation.

She ran.

Grimes ran.

She was fast and Grimes, he realised, was badly out of condition. But those creamy buttocks, those long thighs, fantastically beautiful in motion, drew him like a powerful magnet.

She ran.

Grimes ran.

He was gaining on her.

He would catch her when she blundered into that bush with the great, purple blossoms.

At the very last moment she changed direction, veering sharply to the right. Grimes was not able to check himself. The shrub, as well as blossoms, bore very sharp thorns.

He extricated himself, cursing. He could feel the blood trickling down his lacerated skin. And she was standing there, legs apart, hands on hips, laughing.

There was only one thing to do to her . . .

But she evaded his clutching hands as she turned, running again, flitting between the trees like a pale wraith. He was after her, losing ground at first then gaining until he stumbled over a tree root; the pain in his bare foot was excruciating. She paused then, looking back, laughing again. Her teeth were very white against the scarlet of her lips.

She let him almost reach her, then was off again.

And they were out of the wood.

Ahead there was low hill and on its summit there was a building—a
temple? White, it was, with pillars, bright against the somehow ominous dark blue sky. Grimes
knew
that he must catch her before she reached this sanctuary.

He would have done so had it not been for the swamp between hill and forest. She knew the path across it, leaping gracefully from grassy hummock to grassy hummock. He did not. He was knee-deep, thigh-deep in stinking ooze before he realised that he must keep to those patches of longer, darker grass, as she was doing.

But she wanted to be caught.

She waited for him on solid ground, laughing still, legs wide-spread, small, pink-nippled breasts provocative.

She waited for him until he had almost gained solidity then turned again, running up the hill. Grimes pursued, his heart thudding, his lungs pumping. He actually got a hold on the long, golden hair floating behind her—and it came away in his hand. Beneath the wig was golden hair again, but short.

She vanished into the colonnade.

Stupidly Grimes stood there.

Should he follow?

Should he withdraw his head from the hood?

Later he wished that he had done so at this juncture.

They
boiled out of the temple, the women, vicious, naked, sharp in tooth and claw. Jane Pentecost he recognised, and the Princess Marlene. There were Una Freeman and Maya, Mavis and Maggie Lazenby. And Michelle d’Estang and fat Susie. And the obnoxious Fenella Pruin as she had been when she derided him after his failure, and Tarnara Haverstock . . .

He turned, pounded down the hill.

He could hear them after him, their surprisingly heavy feet, their shrill, hateful screams. He reached the edge of the swamp. He made a leap to the first little hummock, landed on it, stood there teetering for long, long seconds before jumping for the next.

He missed it.

And they were on him.

Their sharp teeth, their long fingernails were tearing his skin and the flesh beneath it. Their discordant laughter was loud in his ears. There was screaming, too—and loudest of all was his own.

The screen went blank, but he remained crouching there, his forehead pressed into the padding of the hood. His clothing was soaked in perspiration—and worse.

The screen went blank—but the hateful female laughter persisted.

Slowly he withdrew his head, looked around.

Fenella Pruin was there, the embarrassed looking Port Captain by her side. With a visible effort she stopped laughing.

“Grimes, Grimes . . . What an imagination you have! But do I
really
look like that in your eyes? A sort of nudist Dracula’s daughter?”

“You watched in the monitor screen . . .” half asked, half stated Grimes.