Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (67 page)

“Don’t talk to me like that, buster. I’m not one of your crew.”

“Can I see that bill again, madam?” She thrust the sheet of dirty and crumpled paper at him. “Mphm. I see that you’re charging for a
new
playmaster. And that I am not paying. One quarter of the sum you’ve put down should buy a good second-hand one, one far better than that . . . wreck. The bar stools? I’ll let that pass, although I still think that you’re overcharging. The dent in the bar? No. That’s an old damage, obviously. And now, all these bottles . . . Were they all
full
bottles? I’ll not believe that, madam. I note, too, that you’ve charged retail price. Don’t you buy your liquor at wholesale rates?”

“I’m an honest woman, mister!”

“Tell that to the Police Commissioner,” said Grimes. “I’ve no doubt that she’s already well acquainted with your honesty.” He began to feed figures into his wrist companion. “One second-hand playmaster . . . I’ve seen them going for as-low as one hundred credits, quite good ones . . . Six bottles of Scotch at four credits each wholesale . . . Twenty-four credits . . . But as they were almost certainly no more than half full, that makes it twelve credits . . .” He raised his eyebrows. “Brandy, at twenty-four credits a bottle? Even as a retail price that’s steep.”

“Either you pay,” said the woman stubbornly, “or I call the police.”

“Do just that,” Grimes told her. “As I’ve said already, Commissioner Freeman is an old friend of mine.”

“Like hell she is. She hates spacers.”

“In general, yes. But in particular? Ask yourself why she released Ms. Connellan to my custody, although usually she insists that spacers serve their full sentences, with no fines and no bail.”

“All right,” said the woman suddenly. “All right. I’ll take your word for what you say you owe me. Just don’t come back in here again, ever. And tell that green bitch of yours to keep clear of my premises.”

“Who are you calling a green bitch, you draggle-tailed slut?” screamed Kate Connellan. “I’ll . . .”

“You will not!” snapped Grimes. “Collect your bags and put them in the cab. And now, madam, if you’ll make out a receipt for two hundred and ten credits . . . That covers the playmaster, the bar stools and a very generous estimate of the cost of liquor lost by breakage.”

Check and receipt changed hands.

Grimes went out to the waiting cab in which the Green Hornet, two battered cases on the seat beside her, was sullenly established. He got in beside the driver, told him to carry on to the spaceport.

Chapter 8

THE CAB BROUGHT
them into the spaceport, to the foot of
Sister Sue’s
ramp.

Grimes was pleased to see that the loading ramps had been set up around his ship, that already streams of crates and cases were being whisked up from the apron to the yawning cargo ports. This was
real
freight, he thought, not the little parcels of luxury goods that he had been carrying in
Little Sister.
He could read the consignee’s title stenciled on each package: SURVEY SERVICE RECORDS, PORT WOOMERA. There had once been a major Survey Service Base on Austral, which had been degraded to a Sub-Base. Finally, only a short while ago, it had been closed down altogether. The transport
Robert A. Heinlein
had lifted off personnel and all the really important stores and equipment. There had been no great hurry for the rest of the stuff, mainly records going back almost to man’s first landing on Earth’s moon, until the warehouse accommodating the material was required for a factory site.

So perhaps, thought Grimes, this was not real freight after all, except in terms of tonnage. Anybody with any sense would have ordered all that junk destroyed—but the Survey Service, as well he knew, was a breeding ground for planet-based bureaucrats whose dusty files were the temples of whatever odd gods they worshipped.

Nonetheless he had been lucky to get this cargo.

Quite fantastically it had tied in with Magda Granadu’s reading of the
I Ching
. She had thrown the coins and constructed a hexagram on the afternoon of the day that Grimes had renamed the ship.
Huan
, it had been.
Dispersion. There will be progress and success. The king visits his ancestral temple. It will be advantageous to cross the great water and to act with firm persistence.
And in the first line there had been the reference to “a strong horse”—and the Epsilon Class tramps had long been known as the sturdy workhorses of the Interstellar Transport Commission.

Yet Grimes had been dubious, at first, about the wisdom of carrying
that
cargo to
those
consignees. He had left the Survey Service under a cloud, had resigned hastily before he could be brought to face a court-martial. But, apart from the obnoxious Delamere’s attempt to drag him back to Lindisfarne Base from Botany Bay, there had been no moves made to arrest him, although more than once, as a civilian shipmaster, he had been in contact with Survey Service vessels and personnel.

He had gone to Captain Taberner, Resident Secretary of the Astronauts’ Guild on Austral, for advice.

“Not to worry, Captain,” that gentleman had told him. “You’re one of ours now. We look after our own. You’ll get the finest legal defense if—and it’s a big ‘if’—the Admiralty takes any action against you. We fought an illegal arrest case a few years back—you may have heard about it—when some officious destroyer skipper seized a ship called
Southerly Buster
. Captain Kane’s ship. You must have heard about
him
. Anyhow, we won and Drongo Kane was awarded very heavy damages.”

So that was that, Grimes thought. If the Guild’s legal eagles could save the bacon of an unsavory character like Kane they should be able to do at least as well by him.

He let the Green Hornet board first while he walked around the ship. He told her to report as soon as possible to Mr. Williams.

***

Finally he climbed the ramp to the after airlock, took the elevator to the No. 3 cargo compartment. Williams was there with a human foreman stevedore who was directing the spidery stowbots. The mate was harassed looking and his slate grey uniform shirt was dark with perspiration. “Tell those bloody tin spiders of yours,” he was shouting, “that it’s the heavy cases bottom stow and those flimsy crates on top!” He turned to face Grimes. “I had to chase the Green Hornet out of here. Her idea of stowage was big packages under and little packages over, regardless of weight.” He switched to a falsetto voice. “ ‘That’s the way that we always did it in the Commission . . .’” He snorted. “It certainly ain’t the way we did it in the Dog Star Line!”

“Where is she now?”

“I told her to make a check of the navigational equipment.”

Grimes left the mate attending to the stowage, carried on up to Control. There he found Ms. Connellan sulkily tinkering with the mass proximity indicator. She was still dressed as she had been when released from jail.

“Why aren’t you in uniform?” he asked.

“What uniform am I supposed to wear?” she countered. “All my trappings are Interstellar Transport Commission.”

“Then find out,” he told her, “the name of a local uniform tailor. Mr. Williams should know. Get on the telephone and order full sets of uniform trappings for all hands.”

“Including you, Captain?”

“Not including me.”

Some time in the past Grimes had had his own Far Traveler Couriers insignia made up—the cap badge a stylized rider on a galloping horse, in silver, with two golden comets as the surround; the same horse and rider, but in gold, over the four gold stripes on his epaulets. When he could afford it he would put his people into Far Traveler Couriers uniform but it could wait.

“I suppose you know, sir,” said Ms. Connellan, the tone of her voice implying that he didn’t, “that the shipowner is responsible for supplying his personnel, at his expense, with uniform trappings.”

“I know,” said Grimes.

After she left him he began to reassemble the MPI. Luckily she had done no more than to remove the hemispherical cover.

A spacelawyer
. . . he thought.

In any astronautical service, naval or mercantile, such are crosses that their commanding officers have to bear.

Chapter 9

YOSARIAN CAME TO SEE GRIMES
shortly before
Sister Sue
was scheduled to lift off. He was carrying a parcel, a gift-wrapped box. Grimes, taking it from him, was surprised at how heavy it was.

“Just a small gift, Captain,” said the roboticist. “From myself, and from another . . . friend. I hope that you will like it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Yosarian. But the other friend . . . ? Apart from you I don’t have any friends on this planet.”

The fat man laughed.

“Open the parcel,” he said, “and you will see.”

Grimes put the package on his desk. The tinsel ribbon around it was tied with a bow that came undone at the first tug. The metallic paper fell away to reveal a box of polished mahogany with brass fittings. The two catches holding down the hinged lid were easy to manipulate. Inside the box was foam plastic packing. Grimes pulled it out carefully, saw the rich gleam of metal, of gold.

He stared at what was revealed. There was a tiny bicycle, perfect in every detail. Seated upon it was one of Yosarian’s mechanical dolls, a miniature golden woman, naked and beautiful. He recognized her—or, more correctly, knew whom she represented.

“Una Freeman . . .” he murmured. “Commissioner Freeman.”

“As I said, Captain, an old friend of yours. And a friend of mine for quite some years. A charming lady.”

“Mphm.”

“When I mentioned to her that I was going to give you one of my dolls as a farewell gift she said that she would like it to be from both of us. But I got the impression that the combination of naked lady and bicycle was some sort of private joke.”

“At least she didn’t ask you to include a golden can of baked beans. That’s another private joke.”

“But what is the meaning of this?” asked Yosarian. “I was able, easily, to make the lady and her steed to her specifications. But a bicycle . . . ?”

“Miss Freeman and I were working together. It was when she was a member of the Corps of Sky Marshals and while I was in the Survey Service. It’s a long story; you must get her to tell it to you some time. But, fantastic as it may sound, the two of us were cast away on an almost desert planet with two bicycles for company. Mphm. Rather
special
bicycles.”

“I gathered that.”

Carefully Grimes lifted the exquisitely made models from the box, the little woman still sitting on the saddle, her tiny hands grasping the handlebar, her feet on the pedals. He set the toy—or the toys; he did not think that the assemblage was all in one piece—down onto the desk. He let go of it hastily when one foot lifted from the pedal, went down to make contact with the surface on which the bicycle was standing.

“It—she—is attuned to your voice, Captain,” said Yosarian. “Tell her to ride around the desk top.”

“Ride around the desk top,” ordered Grimes dubiously.

The golden foot was back on the golden pedal after giving a backward shove; both feet were on the pedals and the golden legs were working smoothly, up and down, up and down, and the golden filaments that were the wire spokes of the wheels glittered as they turned, slowly at first, and then became a gleaming, transparent blur.

Round the desk she rode, balancing on the very edge of its top, cutting no corners, faster and faster. And then she was actually over the edge with the wheels running on the shallow thickness of the rim, machine and rider no longer vertical to the deck but horizontal.

This was fascinating, but Grimes had to think about getting his ship upstairs in the very near future.

He asked, not taking his eyes from the fascinating golden figurine, “Are there batteries? How is she powered?”

“From any light source, natural or artificial.”

“How do I stop her?”

“Just tell her, Captain.”

Grimes restrained himself from saying ‘Stop,’ realizing that if he did so the golden toy might fall to the desk, damaging itself.

“Back onto the desk top,” he said. (Sometime, he thought, he must make a slow motion recording of that graceful gymnastic maneuvering.) “Back into the box.” (The bicycle ran up the vertical side of the container with ease, hovered briefly in the air before plunging downward.) “Stop.”

“You’re getting the hang of it, Captain,” said Yosarian.

“All I can say,” said Grimes, “is thank you. Thank you very much.”

“You should also thank Commissioner Freeman. The nature of the gift was her idea—and she was the model for part of it.”

“Then thank her for me, please.”

“I will do so.” Yosarian got up from the chair on which he had been sitting. “And now I must go. There is still work for me to do aboard
my
ship.” He extended his hand. Grimes shook it. “Bon voyage, Captain. And good fortune. Oh, I have a message from the Commissioner. She told me to tell you that bicycles aren’t always what they seem, and to remember that.” Something seemed to be amusing him. “Bon voyage,” he said again, and left.

Grimes pottered about his day cabin, making sure that all was secure. He lifted the box containing Yosarian’s—and Una’s—farewell gift down from the desk, stowed it in his big filing cabinet. (There was room for it; the ship, under her new ownership, had yet to accumulate stacks of incoming correspondence and copies of outgoing communications.) He made sure that the solidograph of Maggie Lazenby was secure on the shelf on which he had placed it while he was settling in. He would have to find a suitable site for Una and her bicycle, he thought; it would be a crime to leave her to languish unseen in the box. He remembered another gift from another woman, the miniature simulacrum of Susie. He remembered, too, the troubles that it had brought him. But the mini-Una, he told himself, for all her motility would be no more dangerous than the image of Maggie.

His telephone buzzed. The fleshy face of Williams appeared on the screen.

“Mate here, Skipper. Mr. Yosarian’s ashore now. I’m sealing the ship.”

“Thank you, Mr. Williams.”