Wong Lee was waiting there to receive him and so, in his suite, was Su Lin. As though by magic the girl produced a pot of fragrant tea and brought it to him on a lacquer tray as he went into his office and sat down at the desk. He sipped from the cup that she poured for him; the steaming liquid cleared his head. The old man and the girl watched impassively as he opened the first of the folders that Jaconelli had laid out for him.
This contained the information on the Terran staff of the Residence.
Jaconelli, Grimes read, had been born in Chicago. His solitary qualification was Bachelor of Commerce, the minimal requirement for any secretarial post. Surely a Governor, thought Grimes, should be entitled to at least a Master to handle his correspondence and affairs.
Harrison Smith, the ADC, was another Bachelor—of Military Arts. He was a graduate of West Point. His birthplace was Denver. His Terran Army career had been undistinguished; he had not played a part, however minor, in even a police action or a brushfire war.
The Sergeant of the Governor’s Guard, Martello, was another American. Although seven years older than his officer he, too, had been lucky enough to avoid action during his Army service.
The privates were a mixed bunch—one New Zealander, three Poms, a Swede and an Israeli. That all of them had reached early middle age without attaining non-commissioned rank did not say much for them.
The New Cantonese file was a thicker one—but only because there were more names in it. Wong Lee had the biggest entry.
The majordomo was old, even older than his appearance and manner had led Grimes to believe. He had actually been born on New Canton, where his parents had been the owners of the Heavenly Peace Hotel and the Jade Dragon Restaurant. As had been the custom of his people he had commenced his training in hotel and restaurant management at a very early age. In spite of his refugee status he had easily obtained such employment on Liberia although he was never allowed to become the owner of his own establishment. He had applied for the post of majordomo to the Governor when the first of such appointments was made by Earth. He had got the job and for many years had kept it.
All the others had been born on Liberia, some of mixed parentage. Among these was Su Lin, with a New Cantonese father and an Irandan mother. And young enough, thought Grimes, to be his own daughter. He looked up at her from the typed pages. She looked back at him and smiled. He frowned back at her.
Finally he got to the transcript of the telephone conversation that Jaconelli had had with the Bureau of Meteorology. The Secretary, pulling rank as the Governor’s personal representative, had received an assurance from one of the Deputy Directors (the Director had been among those at the reception) that Captain Raoul Sanchez would be released at once from his normal duties and instructed to report at the Residence at 0900 hours tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning? Grimes looked up at the wall clock. This morning.
He said, “Thank you, Mr. Wong. Thank you, Su Lin. I shall not be needing you any more tonight. Please see that I am called promptly at 0700 hours.”
The old man bowed deeply and then glided out of the office. The girl remained.
Grimes said again, “Thank you, Su Lin. Please call me at 0700 hours.”
She said, “But you have yet to retire, Your Excellency. And my duties are to attend you at all times.”
“I am capable of putting myself to bed,” Grimes told her.
“But, Your Excellency, I have been trained . . .”
“And so have I, from earliest childhood—to undress myself and even to fold and hang my clothes properly.”
She laughed at this and it made her even more attractive. If Grimes had not been so well looked after on the voyage out from Earth he might well have yielded to temptation.
“Good night,” he said firmly.
“Good night, Your Excellency,” she said softly.
A little later, wrestling with the fastenings of his archaic finery, he regretted not having retained her services if only to help him to undress.
Chapter 13
She called him at seven, placing the tea tray down on the bedside table with a musical clatter and then whispering softly into his ear, “It is morning, Your Excellency. It is morning.”
Grimes ungummed his eyes and looked up at her. There must be, he admitted, far worse sights with which to start the day. She smiled at him and poured tea from the pot with its willow pattern decoration into a handleless cup on which was the same design. As soon as he had struggled into a sitting posture, propped by the plump pillows that she had arranged for him, she handed him the cup. He handed it back to her. When he first awoke it was not a drink that he needed but the reverse. With some embarrassment—normally he slept naked—he got out of the bed on the side away from her and padded through to the bathroom. The pressure on his bladder relieved, he returned to his bed and slid the lower portion of his body under the covers. This time he accepted the cup and sipped from it gratefully. He saw that she had brought his pipe from where he had left it in the office and had filled it. She put one end of the stem into her mouth, applied flame to the bowl from a small, golden lighter that she brought from the side pocket of her tunic. When it was drawing properly she handed it to him.
Even an Admiral, thought Grimes smugly, wouldn’t be getting service like this . . . He wondered if he, as a Planetary Governor, outranked an Admiral. De jure, possibly, if not de facto.
He sipped and smoked, smoked and sipped.
She asked, “What does Your Excellency desire for breakfast?”
“What’s on the menu?” Grimes asked.
“Whatever Your Excellency wishes,” she said.
A roll in bed with honey, he thought. Then, Down, boy, down!
He said, after consideration, “Grapefruit, please. Then two eggs, sunny side up, with bacon and country-fried potatoes. Hot rolls. Butter. Lemon marmalade. Coffee. . . .”
“At once, Your Excellency?”
“No, thank you. I always like to shower and depilate and all the rest of it first. And dress. . . .”
“What will Your Excellency wear this morning?”
And just what was a Governor’s undress uniform?
“I leave it to you. Something informal, or relatively so. . . .”
He put the almost empty cup down on to the tray with a decisive clatter, declined the offer of a refill. When she removed the tea things, carrying the tray through to the sitting room, he got out of bed. There was an old-fashioned bolt on the door to the toilet facilities; he shot it. He completed his morning ablutions, depilation and all the rest of it without interruption. On returning to the bedroom he found that the bed had been made and that clothing had been laid out on it—underwear, a ruffled shirt of orange silk, dark gray, sharply creased slacks. Highly polished, gold-buckled shoes stood by the couch.
He dressed and went through to where a low table had been set with crockery and cutlery, a covered dish of hot rolls, a butter dish and another with the marmalade. There was a pot of coffee, a bowl of sugar crystals and a jug of cream. A prepared half-grapefruit awaited his attention, as did that morning’s issue of The Liberty Star. He sat down, propped the newspaper against the coffee pot and made a start on the grapefruit. He read the account of Madam President’s reception for the new Governor the previous evening. He was amused to see himself referred to as “an officer who achieved great distinction whilst in the Federation Survey Service” and as “a successful shipowner who has put his great administrative and business talents at the disposal of both his home planet and of Liberia.” The piece on Grimes concluded with the pious hope that he, as an experienced captain both of spaceships and of industry, would not feel the urge, as had his predecessor, to meddle officiously in the smooth running of the world that he had been called upon to govern.
The attentive Su Lin—he had not noticed her return—removed the plate with the now empty grapefruit shell, replaced it with that occupied by his eggs and bacon. She asked him how he preferred his coffee. He told her that he liked it black. He hel
d the paper in both hands as she poured.
The eggs, bacon and fried potatoes were just as he liked them. The rolls were crisp. The marmalade, when finally he got to it, was deliciously tangy. By this time he had turned to the INTERSTELLAR SHIPPING—ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES Columns. Sobraon’s arrival and departure were listed as Orbital Only. Willy Willy, with the obnoxious Dreeble commanding, had lifted off, with passengers for Isa—a world rich in metals, Grimes knew, with mining and smelting as the major industries—while the Governor had been enjoying himself at the reception. One did not need to be clairvoyant, he thought, to know what sex those passengers belonged to or for what employment they had been recruited. Bulkalgol and Bulkvega were due out very shortly, with grain, one for Waverley and the other for Caribbea. After that it looked like being a slack time, for some weeks, at Port Libertad. One name among the Future Arrivals caught Grimes’s attention—Agatha’s Ark. He remembered that old flash of prevision he had experienced while Sobraon’s temporal precession field had been building up.
He filled his pipe, brought the stem to his mouth. Before he could strike a match Su Lin was holding the flame from a golden lighter over the charred bowl. Grimes hated having his pipe lit for him but submitted to the attention. He did not mind, however, having another cup of the excellent coffee poured for him.
The Liberty Star, he discovered ran to a daily crossword puzzle. He got up from the breakfast table and sat down in one of the easy chairs. Without being asked the girl brought him a slim, golden stylus from the office. But the puzzle was not to his taste; it was not of the cryptic variety. Furthermore it required of the would-be solver an encyclopedic knowledge of Terran political history—names, dates and all. And that, thought Grimes, was not a subject in which he would ever be awarded full Marx. He savored the pun, knocked out his pipe in a convenient ashtray (it had been burning unevenly), refilled it and, Su Lin being temporarily absent, clearing away the breakfast things, lit it properly himself.
He got up and, trailing an acrid rather than an aromatic cloud of blue smoke, wandered out into the corridor and, to his pleased surprise, found his way to the main doorway of the Residence without too much trouble. Servants bowed to him as he passed, the guard on duty at the entrance to the building saluted smartly.
It was pleasant outside, the morning sun warm but not too much so, the light breeze carrying the scent of the gaudy flowers from the big, ornamental beds. The closely cropped grass of the lawn was springy under the soles of his shoes. Su Lin joined him, walking respectfully to his left and half a pace to the rear. He was conscious of her presence and found himself wishing that their relationship was not one of master and servant.
She broke the silence.
“Your Excellency,” she said, “someone approaches from the air.”
“Thank you,” said Grimes. He had already heard a distant clatter, looked up and seen a dark speck in the sky. He stopped walking and stared at it. Su Lin produced from a pocket a thin, round case, about twenty millimeters in diameter. She did something to it and it opened out into a tapered tube. She removed the covers from each end, handed it to Grimes. He realized that it was a telescope, a sophisticated instrument with a universal focus. He raised it to his right eye, managed to bring the approaching aircraft into the field of it. It was a minicopter, little more than a bubble-enclosed chair with two long skids under it as landing gear and over it the almost invisible rotating vanes.
Grimes recognized the pilot. It was Raoul Sanchez. He raised his free hand to wave. The young pilot returned the salutation, altered course slightly so as to come into a landing close to where Grimes and the girl were standing. Almost immediately the little aircraft was surrounded by a small crowd of indignant gardeners, gesticulating and shouting in high-pitched voices, pointing at the barely visible scars that the landing gear of the minicopter had made on the surface of the lawn. Sanchez grinned and shrugged apologetically. A door slid open in the surface of the transparent bubble.
“Better keep off the grass, Captain,” said Grimes. “You’d better shift to the drive before we have a riot on our hands.”
“Will do, Your Excellency.”
The gardeners scrambled back as the vanes started to spin again. The machine lifted, drifted slowly over to the broad drive, settled down again, the skids crunching audibly on the gravel. By the time that Grimes had walked to it Sanchez had unstrapped himself from the chair and disembarked. He was wearing a suit of faded, deliberately frayed denim and a red neckerchief. He bowed formally to Grimes.
He said, “Your aerial chauffeur, Your Excellency, reporting for duty.”
Lieutenant Smith who, accompanied by two soldiers, had come on to the scene achieved an expression that was both sneer and scowl.
Chapter 14
Sanchez led the way around the sprawling Residence to what was almost a minor airport. He had been there before, of course, while his brother had been atmosphere pilot to the late Governor Wibberley. There were hangars—two of them occupied and the third, the very big one, empty. Outside this, at a suitable distance, was a tripedal mooring mast.
Smith said, with, a gesture toward this construction, “Your airship will be delivered this afternoon, Your Excellency. One of the Army’s Lutz-Parsivals. Colonel Bardon has appointed Lieutenant Duggin to be your pilot.”
Before Sanchez could protest Grimes said, “I have made my own appointment, Lieutenant. Captain Sanchez will be flying me.”
“But the Colonel . . .”
“Is not the Governor, I am.”
“But Captain Sanchez is a spaceman . . .”
“And a qualified airshipman. Is that not so, Captain?”
“It is, Your Excellency,” replied Sanchez as Smith said nastily, “So was his brother.”
“That will do, Lieutenant Smith!” snapped Grimes while making a pipe down! gesture aimed at the other man. “That will do. Captain Sanchez is my pilot. And now, Captain, shall we look at what toys we have to play with?”
He walked to one of the occupied hangars, into it. The craft housed therein was a small pinnace of a type carried by the larger warships of the Survey Service, a spaceship in miniature. That, thought Grimes, he could fly himself—although legally he couldn’t, his Master Astronaut’s Certificate having been suspended. (Of course there was his Reserve Commission but that was supposed to be kept a secret.) Sanchez opened a door in the pinnace’s side, into the little airlock. Grimes clambered on board, followed by Sanchez and Smith. He went forward first, to the control cab. With two exceptions the instrumentation on the console seemed to be in order. Certain switches, dials and screens had been removed and replaced by blank cover plates.
“No Mini-Mannschenn?” asked Grimes. “No Carlotti deep space radio?”
“They were removed, Your Excellency,” said Smith, “when Colonel Bardon had this pinnace modified for the Governor’s use.”
“Modified how!” demanded Grimes.
“The space occupied by that equipment was required for the bar and for . . . for . . .”
“Mphm,” grunted Grimes. He asked suddenly, “Does the Residence run to its own Carlotti transceiver?” (That was one of the many things, he thought, that he should have found out long before he arrived on Liberia.)
“No, Your Excellency,” said Smith. “Surely you must have noticed that there are no Carlotti antennae on the roof.”
“They could be in the cellar,” said Grimes, “and work just as well!”
Smith made a show of ignoring this and continued, “The only Carlotti equipment is at the spaceport. It is manned and maintained, of course, by Terran personnel.”
And so the Governor, thought Grimes, can communicate directly with Earth only by courtesy of the Garrison Commander.
He completed his inspection of the pinnace. He was not overly impressed. He could not refrain from using his memories of Little Sister as a yardstick. When he made his way out through the airlock Su Lin was there to help him down to the ground. He waved her aside irritably and
then, when he saw her hurt expression, rather hated himself.
He said, “It’s all right, Su. I’m a spaceman. I’m used to getting into and out of these things.”
With the others he made his way into the second hangar in use. The aircraft there was a helicopter, a rather beat-up Drachenflieger, no doubt one of Bardon’s cast-offs. Sanchez looked at the machine disparagingly.
“Governor Wibberley,” he said, “never used this. My brother reckoned that it wasn’t safe.”
“And he, of course,” said Smith, “was an expert on aeronautical safety.”
“You . . .” the pilot growled, his fist raised threateningly.
“Lieutenant Smith,” snapped Grimes, putting a control room crackle into his voice, “you will refrain from making provocative remarks.” Then, his voice a little milder, “Captain Sanchez, I will not tolerate brawling among the members of my . . . family. And now, will you take luncheon with me?”
“Thank you, Your Excellency.”
“And will you, Lieutenant Smith, please inform us when the airship is approaching?”
“Very good, Your Excellency.”
The party walked back to the main entrance to the building, Sanchez beside Grimes, Su Lin the usual half-pace to the rear and Smith, sulking hard, well astern.
It was a leisurely and pleasant meal, with drinks before, served by the attentive Su Lin. The honeyed sand crawlers were especially good, reminding Grimes of the honeyed prawns that he had enjoyed in Chinese restaurants on Earth. With the meal there was rice wine, served warm in tiny cups. When it was over Grimes lit his pipe—waiting until the girl was out of the room—and Sanchez a slim, black cigar.
The pilot said, “I must apologize for having lost my temper with your ADC, Excellency.”
“He asked for it,” said Grimes. “I’ve been considering asking Colonel Bardon for a replacement, but . . .”
“Better the devil you know, sir.”
“Precisely. You must have seen him, now and again, when you visited your brother here.”
Ride the Star Winds Page 7
