Replete, Grimes got his pipe and tobacco from his clothing and indulged in a satisfying smoke. The New Alicians sat on either side of him in oddly prim postures, their legs tucked under them.
Grimes was feeling poetic.
“‘Give me a book of verses ’neath the bough,’” he quoted,
“‘A loaf of bread, a flask of wine, and thou,
“‘Beside me, singing in the wilderness . . .
“‘And wilderness were Paradise enow.’”
He laughed. “But I don’t have a book of verses. And, come to that, I’ve never heard either of you singing. . . .”
“There is a time to sing. . . .” murmured Shirl. “And this could be such a time. . . .”
And Darleen had found two large, smooth pebbles, about the size of golf balls, and was clicking them together with an odd, compelling rhythm. Both girls were crooning softly to the beat of the singing stones. There was melody, of a sort, soft and hypnotic. Grimes felt the goose pimples rising all over his skin.
They were not alone. He and the girls were not alone. Silently the kangaroos had come from what had seemed to be empty desert, were standing all around them, regarding them solemnly with their huge eyes. There were big reds and grays and smaller animals. It was as though every variety of kangaroo in all of Australia had answered the New Alicians’ summons.
Shirl and Darleen got to their feet. And then, suddenly, they were gone, bounding away over the desert at the head of the mob of kangaroos. It was hard to distinguish them from the animals despite their smooth skins.
What now? wondered Grimes. What now? He was, he supposed, responsible for the girls. Should he get into the hover-car and give chase? Or would that make matters worse? He stood and watched the cloud of red dust, raised by the myriad bounding feet, diminishing in the distance.
But they were coming back, just the two of them, just Shirl and Darleen. They were running gracefully, not proceeding in a series of bounds. They flung themselves on Grimes, their sweaty, dusty bodies hot against his bare skin. It was rape, although the man was a willing enough victim. They had him, both of them, in turn, again and again.
Finally, exhausted, they rolled off him.
“After the kangaroos . . .” gasped Shirl.
“We had to prove to ourselves . . .” continued Darleen.
“ . . . and to you . . .”
“ . . . that we are really human . . .”
Grimes found his pipe, which, miraculously, had not been broken during the assault, and his pouch, the contents of which were unspilled. He lit up with a not very steady hand.
“Of course you’re human,” he said at last. “The Law says so.”
“But the heritage is strong, John.”
“You aren’t the only ones with a heritage—but you don’t see me swinging from the branches of trees, do you?”
They all laughed then, and shared the last can of beer, and had a last refreshing swim in the waters of the billabong. They resumed their clothing and got back into the hover-car, looking forward to an enjoyable evening of good food and conversation to add the finishing touches to what had been a very enjoyable day.
They were not expecting to find the Grimes home knee deep in acrimony.
Chapter 6
The garage door slid open as the hover-car approached but the robomaid was not waiting to receive them and to take custody of the empty hamper. Grimes was not concerned about this; no doubt, he thought, Seiko was busy with some domestic task. He led the two girls into the house, toward the lounge. He heard the voices of his mother and father, although it was his mother who seemed to be doing most of the talking. She sounded as though she were in what her husband and son referred to as one of her flaring rages. What’s the old man been up to now? wondered Grimes.
“Either that thing goes or I go!” he heard his mother declare.
“But I find her more satisfactory . . .” his father said.
“You would. You’ve a warped mind, George Grimes, as I’ve known, to my cost, for years. But you’ll ship that toy of yours back to Tokyo and demand your money back . . .”
“Hi, folks,” said Grimes as he entered the room.
Matilda favored him with no more than a glance, his father looked toward him appealingly.
“John,” he said, “perhaps you can talk some sense into your mother. You, as a space captain of long experience, know far more about such matters than either of us . . . .”
“What matters?” asked Grimes.
“You may well ask,” Matilda told him. “Such matters as insubordination, mutiny. In my own home . . . .”
“Insubordination? Mutiny?” repeated Grimes in a puzzled voice.
“And unprovoked assault upon my guests. My guests.”
Grimes sat down, pulled his pipe from his pocket, filled and lit it. Shirl and Darleen did not take seats but looked questioningly at Matilda, who said, “Perhaps, dears, it might be better if you went to your rooms for a while. This is a family matter.”
The girls left, albeit with reluctance. Grimes settled down in his chair and assumed a magisterial pose. George Grimes was sitting on the edge of his seat, looking as uncomfortable as he almost certainly was feeling.
“I have had my suspicions for a long time . . .” began Matilda.
Surely not . . . wondered Grimes. The old man’s not that kinky . . .
“Quite a long time,” she went on. “But it was only after you and the girls had left this morning for your ride in the desert that I began to be sure. I hope that you had a pleasant day, by the way . . . .”
“Very pleasant,” said Grimes.
“Well, you remember what you had for breakfast. Kippers. You asked me if I’d told it to do them for you. I said that I had not. I was curious, so I asked it why it had served you kippers. It told me that you had asked it to surprise you. So I asked it how it had decided that kippers would be a nice surprise. It told me that normally there are never kippers in my larder but that I had ordered a supply after I’d gotten word that you were coming . . . .”
“And so?” asked Grimes.
“A domestic robot is supposed to do only what it’s been programmed to do. It’s not supposed to possess such qualities as initiative and imagination. Oh, I know that there are some truly intelligent robots—but such are very, very expensive and are not to be found doing menial jobs. But knowing George, I suspected that he had been doing some more tinkering with its programming. His idea of a joke.
“Well, as you already know, I was entertaining the local literary ladies to luncheon. The President of the Society is Dame Mabel Prendergast. Don’t ask me how she got made a dame, although she’s made an enormous pile of money writing slush. She could afford to buy a title. Anyhow, dear Mabel is just back from a galactic cruise. She was all tarted up in obviously expensive clothing in the very worst of taste that she had purchased on the various worlds that she had visited. Her hat, she told us, came from Carinthia, where glass-weaving is one of the esteemed arts and crafts. Oh, my dear, it was a most elaborate construction, perched on top of her head like a sort of glittering fairy castle. It was, in its way, beautiful—but not on her. Human hippopotami should not wear such things.
“We had lunch. It did the serving, just as a robomaid should, efficiently and without any gratuitous displays of initiative, imagination or whatever. The ladies admired it and Mabel remarked, rather jealously, that George’s thud-and-blunder books, as she referred to them, must be doing quite well. We retired to the lounge for coffee and brandy and then one or two of the old biddies started making inquiries about my famous son. You. And wasn’t it time that you settled down? And who were the two pretty girls you’d brought with you? They weren’t Terran, were they?
“I told them—all the more fool me, but I suppose that the brandy had loosened my tongue—that Shirl and Darleen were from a world called New Alice, with a very Australianoid culture. I told them, too, that they were now junior officers aboard your ship and that, until recently, they had
been officers in the elite Amazon Guard on New Sparta. Mabel said that they didn’t look butch military types. I said that, as a matter of fact, they had been officer instructors, specializing in teaching the use of throwing weapons, such as boomerangs. And that they could make almost anything behave like a boomerang. Mabel said that she didn’t think that this was possible. I told her that Shirl—or was it Darleen?—had given a demonstration in this very room, using a round, shallow dish . . .
“Mabel said, quite flatly, that this would be quite impossible and started blathering about the laws of aerodynamics. She had, she assured us, made a thorough study of these before writing her latest book, about a handsome young professional hang glider racer and a lady trapeze artiste. . . .”
“Did they . . . er . . . mate in midair?” asked Grimes interestedly.
“Your mind is as low as your father’s,” Matilda told him crossly. “Anyhow, there was this argument. And it—may its clockwork heart rust solid!—decided, very kindly, to settle it for us. It asked, very politely, “May I demonstrate, madam?” and before I could say no it emptied the chocolate mints out of their dish, on to the table, turned the dish upside down and with a flick of its wrist sent it sailing around the room . . .
“Oh, it did actually come back—but just out of reach of that uppity robot’s outstretched hand. It crashed into Dame Mabel’s hat. That hat, it seems, was so constructed as to be proof against all normal stresses and strains but there must have been all sorts of tensions locked up in its strands. When the dish—it was one of those copper ones—hit it there was an explosion, with glass splinters and powder flying in all directions. By some miracle nobody was seriously hurt, although old Tanitha Evans got a rather bad cut and Lola Lee got powdered glass in her right eye. I had to send for Dr. Namatjira—and you know what he charges for house calls. And, of course, I shall have to pay for Dame Mabel’s hat. Anybody would think that the bloody thing was made of diamonds!”
“And where is Seiko now?” asked Grimes.
“Seiko? It, you mean. It is back in the crate that it came in, and there it stays. It’s too dangerous to be allowed to run around loose.”
“She was only trying to be helpful,” said Grimes.
“It’s not its job to try to be helpful. It’s its job to do as it’s told, just that and nothing more.”
“What do you know about the so-called wild robots, John?” asked his father suddenly.
“Not much. The roboticists are rather close-mouthed about such matters. Even the Survey Service does not have access to all the information it should. Oh, there are standing orders to deal with such cases. They boil down to Deactivate At Once And Return To Maker or, if deactivation is not practicable, Destroy By Any Means Possible.”
“Just what I’ve been telling George,” said Matilda smugly.
“But from your experience, which is much greater than mine, how would you define a wild robot?” asked George.
“Mphm,” grunted Grimes. “Well, there are robots, not necessarily humanoid, which are designed to be intelligent and which acquire very real characters. There was Big Sister, the computer-pilot of the Baroness Michelle d’Estang’s space-yacht. There was a Mr. Adam, with whom I tangled, many, many years ago when I was a Survey Service courier captain. There have been others. All of them were designed to be rational, thinking beings. But a normal pilot-computer is no more than an automatic pilot. It does no more than what it’s been programmed to. If some emergency crops up that has not been included in its programming it just sits on its metaphorical backside and does nothing.”
“But the rogue robots,” persisted George. “The wild robots . . . .”
“I don’t know. But among spacemen there are all sorts of theories. One is that there has been some slight error made during the manufacture of the . . . the brain. May as well call it that. Some undetectable defect in a microchip. A defect that really isn’t a defect at all, since it achieves a result that would be hellishly expensive if done on purpose. Another theory is that exposure to radiation is the cause. And there’s one really farfetched one—association with humans of more than average intelligence and creativity.”
“I like that,” said George.
“You would, Herr Doktor Frankenstein,” sneered Matilda. “But, from what I’ve told you, do you think that we’ve a wild robot on our hands, John?”
“It seems like it,” said Grimes.
The next morning the carriers came to remove the crate into which Seiko had been packed. Grimes went with his father into the storeroom, watched with some regret as the spidery stowbot picked up the long, coffinlike box and carried it out to the waiting hover-van. He thought nothing of it when George ran out to the vehicle before it departed, to exchange a few words with the driver and, it seemed, to resecure the label on the crate, which must have come loose. George rejoined his son.
“Well,” he said, “that’s that. Luckily Matilda’s a good cook; like you, she can get the best out of an autochef. You and the girls won’t starve for the remainder of your stay here.”
Nor did they.
Chapter 7
The days passed quickly. George Whitley Grimes had gotten over his sulks about being deprived of his glittering toy and Matilda Grimes had forgiven her husband for the damage done by Seiko. The two girls fitted into the family life well. “They’re much too nice for you, John,” his mother told him one morning over coffee. The two of them had gone into Alice Springs on a shopping expedition and were enjoying refreshment in one of the better cafes. (George was still working on his Eureka Stockade novel and Shirl and Darleen had gone off to practice with the traditional boomerangs that they had been given by Dr. Namatjira, whose calls now were social rather than professional.)
“They’re much too nice, for you,” she said. “And I’m not at all sure that I approve of their traveling in your ship as crew members, among all those brutal and licentious spacemen.”
“And spacewomen.” He laughed. “My third officer is Tomoko Suzuki, a real Japanese doll . . . .”
“Not like Seiko, I hope.”
“No. Her innards aren’t on display. And my radio officer is Cleo Jones, black and beautiful. Her nickname, of which she’s rather proud, is the Zulu Princess. The second Mannschenn Drive engineer is Sarah Smith. One of those tall, slim, handsome academic females. Three of the inertial/reaction drive engineers, the chief, second and fourth, are women. The chief’s name is Florence Scott. She looks like what she is, an extremely competent mechanic, and her sex somehow doesn’t register. The second is Juanita Garcia. If you were casting an amateur production of Carmen you’d try to get her for the title role. She has the voice as well as the looks. The fourth is Cassandra Perkins. Like Cleo, she’s a negress. But she’s short and plump and very jolly, so much so that she gets away with things that anybody else would be hauled over the coals for . . . .”
“Such as . . . ?”
“Such as the time when she was doing some minor repairs to the ship’s plumbing system and bungled some fantastic cross-connection so that the hot water taps ran ice water.”
“That might have been intentional. Her idea of a joke.”
“If it was, the laugh was on her. She was the first victim. She thought that she’d like a nice, hot shower after she came off watch at midnight, ship’s time. Her screams woke all hands.” Grimes sipped his coffee and then went on philosophically. “With all her faults, she’s a good shipmate. She’s fun. Even old Flo, her chief, admits it. What none of us can tolerate is somebody who’s highly inefficient and a bad shipmate.”
“And the other way around?” Matilda asked. “Somebody who’s highly efficient but a bad shipmate?”
Grimes sighed. “One just has to suffer such people. My new chief officer seems to be one such. Lieutenant Commander Harald Steerforth, Survey Service Reserve. Harald, with an ‘a’ Steerforth. The last of the vikings. Give him a blond beard to match his hair and a horned helmet and he’d look the part. And he’s indicated that, as my second i
n command, he intends to run a taut ship . . .”
“My nose fair bleeds for you,” said Matilda inelegantly. “But you haven’t mentioned your catering officer yet. Aren’t spaceship catering officers almost invariably women?”
“They are. But when I left Port Woomera I still hadn’t got a replacement for Magda, who’s on leave.”
“You should have asked your father for Seiko, and signed it—I refuse to call that thing her—on.”
Shopping done—mainly pieces of Aboriginal artwork as gifts for Shirl and Darleen—Grimes and his mother returned home. When George heard them enter the house he came out from his study and said, “There was a call for you, John. From your ship. Your chief officer, a Mr. Steerforth. He seemed rather annoyed to learn that you hadn’t been sitting hunched over the phone all day and every day waiting for him to get in touch.” He gave his son a slip of paper. “He asked me—no, damn it, he practically ordered me—to ask you to call him at this number.”
The number Grimes recognized. It was the one that had been allocated to his ship at Port Woomera.
“And I shall be greatly obliged,” said the old man, “if you will reverse charges.”
“Don’t be a tightwad, George!” admonished Matilda.
“I’m not a tightwad. This is obviously ship’s business. John is a wealthy shipowner; I’m only a poor, struggling writer. And after I’ve paid for Dame Mabel’s hat I shall be even poorer!”
“It was your absurdly expensive mechanical toy that destroyed the hat!”
Grimes left them to it, went to the extention telephone in his bedroom. He got through without trouble, telling the roboperator to charge the call to his business credit card account. The screen came alive and the pretty face of Tomoko Suzuki appeared. She smiled as she saw Grimes in the screen at her end and said brightly, “Ah, Captain-san . . . .”
Ride the Star Winds Page 44
