Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  “So?” said Grimes.

  “So all through your history,” went on Darleen, “you have slaughtered, for your own profit, not only beings lacking real intelligence but those who are as intelligent as you, although in a different way. The whales, the dolphins . . .”

  “We have seen the error of our ways,” said Grimes. “We are trying to put things right.”

  “We? Do you speak for all of your race, John? Oh, you were sent to this world by the Old Crocodile to try to save the silkies—but there is money in this stinking fur trade, just as there has been money in other trades in which Drongo Kane has been involved. Women and boys from their primitive worlds to the brothels of New Venusberg, for example. And Kane is not alone. There are many like him, to whom the only god, among all the odd gods, is money. At times we have suspected that even you worship this god.”

  “Don’t drag religion into it,” snapped Grimes. Then, “You’ve seen silkies now. Are they intelligent beings?”

  Shirl laughed bitterly.

  “We saw,” she said, “a squirming mass of very young beings, wallowing in their own filth, terrified, speechless. Imagine that you are a non-human being from some other planet, seeing human babies in a similar state. Would you think that they were intelligent beings?”

  “So you are not sure,” said Grimes.

  “We are not sure. We know that the fur trade is a brutal one, that is all. We shall have to meet adult silkies and talk with them . . .”

  “Talk with them?”

  “As we talked with the kangaroos, back on Earth. Oh, they are not truly intelligent but they are capable of evolving, doing over a very long time what our ancestors did, with outside help, in a very short time.”

  “The crimes of genetic engineers are many,” said Grimes.

  “We resent that,” they said in chorus.

  “I was speaking in jest. And, in any case, the pair of you are much better looking than a silky in any age group.”

  “We should hope so. But what would a silky think of us? Horribly ugly brutes who slaughter and torture.”

  “They must learn,” said Grimes, “that all human beings—and that includes you, after all you are officially human—are not the same.”

  “Then we shall have to meet them,” said Shirl. “We shall have to commune with them.”

  They passed through the town and then made a detour, following one of the wagons, with its load of shrieking pups, that had made its way inland from the waterfront. It was headed toward a long shed, came to a halt outside its open door. Men clambering up on to the vehicle, threw to the ground the small, squirming, furry bodies. Other men dragged these inside the building.

  “We . . . We would rather not see what is happening,” said Shirl.

  “Neither would I,” said Grimes, “but I’m afraid that I have to.”

  It was an experience that would live long in his memory. The pups, hanging by hooks from a sort of primitive overhead conveyor belt, were being flayed alive and their still-living bodies thrown into a steaming cauldron while their pelts, treated with far greater respect, were neatly stacked on tables.

  A burly man, a foreman, bloody knife in hand, approached Grimes.

  “What are you doing here, spacer?” he demanded.

  “Just . . . Just looking.” And then, unable to restrain his disgust, “Is that necessary?”

  “Is what necessary?”

  “Couldn’t you kill the pups before you skin them?”

  “Keep your nose out of things about which you know nothing. Kill them first, and ruin the pelts? Everybody knows that a pup has to be skinned while it’s still living.”

  “But. . . It’s cruel.”

  “Cruel? How so, spacer? Everybody knows, surely, that the Lord God gave man authority over all lesser beings. How can the exercise of divinely granted authority be cruel?”

  “It need not be.”

  “It does need to be, spacer, if the high-quality pelts are not to be ruined. Too, is not God Himself often cruel in the light of our limited understanding?”

  With an effort, Grimes restrained himself from saying, Thank God I’m an agnostic.

  “But I have work to do, spacer. And you will have seen that no effort is spared to ensure that the pelts we export are of high quality. The pastor has told us that you may be interested in entering the trade.”

  Grimes made his retreat to the fresh, open air but was delayed as a fresh batch of feebly struggling, almost inaudibly whining pups was dragged into the slaughterhouse. When he got outside he walked unsteadily to where Shirl and Darleen were waiting for him.

  He muttered, as much to himself as to them, “This filthy trade must be stopped!”

  When they got back to the spaceport, to the ship, his nausea was almost gone. He saw two women taking a gentle stroll around the ship. One was in uniform, but with slacks instead of the usual very short skirt, the other was wearing what looked like a modified version of the traditional kimono. But who was that with her, in uniform? It was neither the radio officer nor the catering officer; her face was not black. It was none of the female engineer officers.

  The two women saw Grimes, walked to meet him.

  “Captain-san,” said Tomoko, bowing.

  But it was Tomoko who was wearing the uniform.

  “Captain-san,” said the other, also bowing.

  Her glossy black hair was piled high on her head. Her face was very pale, white, almost, and her lips an unnatural scarlet. Rather incongruously she was wearing a pair of huge dark spectacles.

  “Who is this . . . geisha?” demanded Grimes of Tomoko.

  But he knew. He had recognized, although with some incredulity, the voice.

  “Captain-san,” said the third officer, “Seiko-san wanted some exercise, some fresh air . . .”

  “She needs neither,” said Grimes.

  “And you had made it plain,” went on Tomoko, “that she was not to appear before any of the colonists in her true form, as a robot. But I have cosmetics, and a wig, and suitable clothing for her. Her eyes, of course, must remain hidden . . .”

  “And her body,” said Grimes.

  “Oh, no, Captain-san. I have painted her all over, from her head to her feet, with the right touches of color . . .”

  Grimes laughed. “That was unnecessary. A naked female body would give even more affront to the people here than would a robot. All right, Tomoko. And Seiko. Carry on with your stroll. But don’t stray too far from the ship.”

  As he mounted the gangway he muttered, “Exercise . . . Fresh air . . . Why not sunshine while she was about it?”

  “She’s only human . . .” said Shirl or Darleen.

  Chapter 19

  Grimes, with Shirl and Darleen as company, had a sandwich lunch in his quarters. Steerforth came up to join his captain and the two girls for coffee and a talk. Grimes told his chief officer what he had seen.

  “Whether or not the silkies are intelligent,” he concluded, “this fur trade is a sickening business. The slaughter of the pups especially.”

  “Salem is a long way from Earth, sir,” saidSteerforth. “And there’s big money involved, and the El Dorado Corporation has a finger in this particular pie. I need hardly tell you, Captain, how many Gs the EDC can pile on when its interests are threatened.”

  “Mphm. And meanwhile, back at the ranch,” asked Grimes, “how have things been going?”

  Steerforth laughed. “I wandered over to the workshop just after I’d had my lunch, to relieve Kershaw for his. Flo and her gang were having their troubles. She was stomping up and down with a sandwich in one hand and a spanner in the other—she told me that they couldn’t spare the time to return to the ship for a proper meal—and bawling out Calamity Cassie, who’d just perpetrated some piece of spectacular clumsiness, and calling down curses on Able Enterprises . . . .”

  “Why Able Enterprises?” asked Grimes.

  “To quote Flo,” said Steerforth, “This isn’t a workshop. It’s a fornicating junk sh
op!’ Even I—and I’m no engineer—could see her point. That machinery—the generator, the turret lathe and so on—must have been bought on the cheap from Noah’s Ark after she became a total loss on Mount Ararat.”

  Grimes laughed. “Drongo Kane’s an astute businessman. He’s not going to leave new, highly expensive equipment unattended on a world like this. There are just the essentials here, and no more. His own engineers would be expected to make do with what’s in the workshop. My engineers’ll just have to do the same. Did Flo come up with any estimation of the time it’ll take her to complete the repairs?”

  “That she did not, sir. I got snarled at for daring to ask. ‘First of all,’ she yelled, ‘I have to repair the machines that I shall have to use to repair my own machinery!’ Of course, she should never have allowed Cassie within spitting distance of that lathe.”

  “Spread it around,” said Grimes, “that I’m in a vile bad temper, like a raging lion seeking whom I might devour, especially if it happens to be one, any one, of my engineers. This is all costing me money.” He laughed rather humorlessly. “And if Admiral Damien doesn’t see me compensated I shall be in a bad temper!”

  “Meanwhile you might get one of the lifeboats ready for an atmospheric flight. I’d like to take it out for a run tomorrow morning.”

  “The boats are always ready, sir,” said Steerforth stiffly. Then, “Which officers are you taking with you?”

  “Just Shirl and Darleen,” Grimes told him. “It’s all part of their training.”

  “Can’t Seiko come with us, John?” asked Shirl. “She’ll enjoy the trip.”

  “Seiko?” Grimes considered the idea then repeated, less dubiously, “Seiko?”

  “Why not, sir?” said Steerforth. “I mean no offense, but you do, at times, display a certain aptitude for getting into trouble. And,” he added hastily, “for getting out of it. But now and again you’ve needed help. Shirl and Darleen, with their somewhat unorthodox martial skills, will be quite good bodyguards. And so would be Seiko. She’s intelligent. And she’s strong. You know those absurdly heavy lids on the yeast culture vats, how it always takes at least two people to lift one off? The other day I saw Seiko lift one by herself, using one hand only. And, even more important, she’s loyal to you. It’s gotten to the stage where nobody dare say anything unkind about you in her hearing.”

  “Mphm . . .” Grimes filled and lit his pipe. “But there’s still the attitude of the colonists toward robots to be considered. We might find ourselves in some situation where Seiko’s presence would be like a red rag to a bull.”

  “But nobody would know that she is a robot, sir. I was with Tomoko when she applied the make-up, the body paint, the cosmetics. And Tomoko made a very thorough job, even to a merkin. You could strip her and nobody would dream that she wasn’t a human woman—as long as you left her dark glasses on.”

  “All right. I’ll take Seiko along. With her and Shirl and Darleen I could fight off an army.”

  “And Cassie, to look after the lifeboat’s engine?” asked Steerforth.

  “That would be tempting Providence,” said Grimes.

  The next morning, right after breakfast, Grimes, with Shirl, Darleen and Seiko, made their way to the Number 1 boat bay. Steerforth was already there, making a last-minute check. With him was Florence Scott, grumbling audibly that she had more important things to occupy her time than getting things ready for the Old Man’s joy ride. Seiko, clad not in kimono but working rig like that worn by Shirl and Darleen, was carrying two large hampers of food for the biologically human members of the party. Her rather too elaborately coiled glossy black wig looked odd over the white boiler suit. An aristocratic Japanese lady, thought Grimes, dressed to make a tour of inspection of a sewage conversion plant . . .

  “She’s all yours, Captain,” said Steerforth, emerging from the boat’s airlock.

  “The innie’s OK,” said Ms. Scott. She grinned sourly. “Just as well that I never let Calamity Cassie overhaul it.”

  “Thank you,” said Grimes. “I’ll leave matters in your capable hands, gentlefolk. Expect me back late afternoon or early evening.”

  “Cleo will be maintaining a listening watch,” said Steerforth. “Just in case. If you should get into trouble it’d be no use calling the so-called Aerospace Control. Their operators never seem to be on duty.”

  “And never on Sunday,” said Grimes. “And today’s Sunday. Oh, by the way, Flo, if the pastor or any of his minions show up to complain about your breaking the Sabbath in the workshop, don’t try to argue. Just look pious and knock off.”

  “You’re the captain,” she said. “And the owner.”

  Grimes followed the women into the boat, went forward to the control cab, sat in the pilot’s seat. He operated the switch that would close the airlock doors, the other one that caused the securing clamps to fall away. He spoke into his microphone, “Number 1 boat to control room. Ready to self-eject.”

  “Eject at will, Number 1,” came the reply. Grimes operated the boat bay door from the control cab, although this could have been done from the ship’s control room. Through the forward window he saw the double valve opening and beyond the outward swinging metal plates blue sky and fluffy white clouds. The miniature inertial drive unit grumbled to itself and the boat lifted a few centimeters clear of the deck and then, obedient to Grimes’s touch, slid forward and out.

  Had his ship been berthed at a normal spaceport Grimes would now have reported his movements to Aerospace Control and would, in fact, have obtained prior permission to hold a boat drill from the Port Captain. But here there was no Port Captain. For much of the time there was not even a Communications Officer. (But there would surely be, thought Grimes, some official seeing to it that port dues and other charges were paid by visiting ships.)

  Grimes circled Sister Sue at control-room altitude. He saw Tomoko and Cleo Jones standing by the big viewports. They waved to him. He waved back. Still circling, he lifted steadily. The seaport was now in view, with the jetties and, alongside them, the big schooners. From this height the blue-gray ocean looked calm. To the northeast was a large island with three peaks, one tall and two little more than hummocks. To the north was a chain of islets. Below the surface of the sea were brown blotches that could either be rocks or beds of some kelplike weed. Grimes wished that he had maps and charts to cover this planet. He would have to make his own. In fact he was starting to do just that; the boat was fitted with a Survey Service surplus datalog, not at all standard equipment for small craft carried by merchant starships.

  He set course for the archipelago, reducing altitude as he made his approach. Using binoculars he could make out marine creatures swimming below the surface of the sea. Silkies? Could be. Behind him he heard Shirl, Darleen and Seiko chattering, pointing things out to each other. He tried to ignore them.

  Then, “Look!” he heard Shirl exclaim. “That rock! It must be a silky colony!”

  He realized that she was talking to him, swung his glasses in the direction that she had indicated. The surface of the small, rocky island seemed to be alive—but there was not the display of gloriously colored pelts that he would have expected. There was just a slowly heaving olive-green carpet. There was something there, something alive, but it could be no more than some form of motile plant life.

  He said, “The silkies’ hides aren’t that color.”

  “There are silkies there,” stated Darleen firmly. “We can . . . feel it.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Grimes. “It costs nothing to have a closer look.”

  The boat dropped steadily, its mini-innie hammering noisily. Suddenly there was a flurry of motion on the islet. That olive-green carpet went into a frenzy, seemed to be tearing itself to pieces, rags of it flying into the air, falling into the sea. And the silkies who had been hidden under the broad, fleshy leaves of seaweed slithered rapidly into the water, a spectacular eruption of black and brown and golden and silver bodies, the pups first, being pushed and rolled off the r
ock by their parents, the adults last of all.

  (The silky-hunters’ schooners, thought Grimes, would be making a silent approach, not a noisy one as he was. And probably the masthead lookouts would not be deceived, not every time, by the silkies’ camouflage.)

  “Are you landing, John?” asked Shirl.

  “What good will that do?” countered Grimes.

  “Once you have shut off that noisy thing—” Darleen gestured toward the engine casing “—we may be able to call the silkies back.”

  “I suppose it’s worth trying,” said Grimes.

  He made his final approach with great caution. The surface of the rock seemed to be uniformly flat, although in parts was still covered with small heaps of the weed. Grimes did his best to avoid these; they might well-conceal rocky upthrustings or crevasses. Finally the belly skids made contact and the shock absorbers sighed gently and the inertial drive unit subsided into silence.

  “We’re here,” said Grimes unnecessarily. He raised the ship on the NST radio but, although he could have reported the boat’s exact location as read from the datalog, did not do so. It suddenly occurred to him that the pastor, having learned that Grimes was on a snooping expedition, might be maintaining a listening watch of his own.

  “But where are you, sir?” demanded Steerforth irritably.

  “Oh, just on some bloody island. I thought that it would be a good place for a swim, and then lunch.”

  With that the chief officer would have to be content. But surely he would have tracked the boat on the ship’s radar and would have a very good idea as to where she was. But what of Aerospace Control? Had some technician broken the Sabbath to get their radar working? Grimes was certain, however, that those antennae on the control tower had not been rotating while that structure was still within sight of the boat.

  He opened the airlock doors and then led the way out into the open air.

  Chapter 20

  There was no wind and the piles of decomposing seaweed were steaming in the sun, as were the deposits of ordure. The mixed aroma, although strong, was not altogether unpleasant. The silkies, decided Grimes, must be vegetarians. He and the three women walked around the little island, being careful where they put their feet. The shape of this flat rock was roughly rectangular, one kilometer by five hundred meters. On the northern face were low cliffs, about ten meters above sea level. On the southern side there was a gradual slope right into the water, a natural ramp by which the silkies could gain access to their rookery.