"Please be seated," ordered Marlene, resuming her own chair. She, tonight, was imperially robed in purple, and an ornate golden brooch—or was it some Order?—gleamed over her left breast. In her hair, as before, was the jewelled coronet. Grimes watched her as she sat down and was suddenly aware that de Messigny was watching him. Glancing sideways, he imagined that he detected jealousy on the tall man's face. But you've nothing to be jealous of, he thought.
And then the robot servitors were offering trays of drinks, and the conversation was light and desultory, normal—"And what do you really think of our world, Mr. Grimes?"
"The most beautiful planet I've seen, Your Grace,"—platitudinous, but a welcome change from the platitudes bandied about in Aries' wardroom, and after a pleasant enough half hour or so it was time to go down to dinner.
Chapter 22
They partook of food and wine in the great banqueting hall, waited upon by the silent, efficient serving robots. Grimes—a young man keenly appreciative of the pleasures of the table, although he had yet to acquire discrimination—could never afterwards remember what it was that they ate and drank. There was food and there was wine, and presumably both were palatable and satisfying, but those sitting around the board were of far greater importance than what was set upon it.
Opposite Grimes was Marlene. On her left, darkly glowering, was Lobenga, and to his left was the Duchess. To Grimes' right was the Lady Eulalia, with de Messigny beyond her. The table should have been a little oasis of light and warmth in the huge, dark hall, a splash of color in contrast to the ranged suite of dull-gleaming armour, the sombre folds of the standards that sagged from their inward pointing staffs. It should have been, but it was not. It could have been imagination, but it seemed to Grimes that the candle flames were burning blue, and the fire in the enormous hearth was no more than an ominous smoulder. Somewhere background music was playing, softly, too softly. It could have been the whispering of malign spirits.
De Messigny, speaking diagonally across the table, said abruptly, "And are the ghosts of your Teutonic ancestors walking tonight, Marlene?"
She stared back at him, her face grave, shadows under her high cheekbones, what little light there was reflected from the jewels in her coronet, an unhappy princess out of some old German fairy story. She said at last, "The ghosts of Schloss Stolzberg stayed on Earth, Henri."
"Unfortunately," added Lobenga, his low rumble barely audible.
"And was the Castle haunted?" asked Grimes, breaking the uneasy hush.
They all turned to stare at him—the Princess gravely, Lobenga sullenly, the Duchess with a birdlike maliciousness. On his right Eulalia laughed softly and coldly, and de Messigny glared at him down his long, thin nose.
"Yes," said Marlene at last. "It was haunted. There was the faithless Princess Magda, who used to run screaming through the corridors, the hilt of her husband's dagger still protruding from between her breasts. There was Butcher Hermann, who met his end in the torture chamber at the hands of his own bastard son. There was S. S. General von Stolzberg, roasted in this very fireplace by his slave-labor farm workers when the Third Reich collapsed . . ."
"We could do without them, "de Messigny stated.
"Hermann and the General, perhaps," cackled the Duchess. "But Magda would have been at home here." As she said this she ceased to be the Grande Dame, looked more, thought Grimes, like the Madam of a whorehouse.
"Yes," agreed the Comte. "She would have been." Had he not looked so long and hard at Marlene as he said it, the remark would have been inoffensive.
Eulalia laughed again. "I have often wondered why some men persist in attaching such great importance to the supremely unimportant." She shrugged her slim, elegant shoulders. "But, of course, Lobenga has no cause to worry about me. Not even on this world. Perhaps, Henri, we could enroll you in a course of study in the so-called Black Arts."
"That filth!" exploded this Comte.
"Sir," the huge Negro told him gravely, "it is not filth. We have seen, on this planet, what happens when Man gets too far away from the mud and blood of his first beginnings. Every member of the Committee of Management, with the exception of Lord Tarlton . . ."
"That materialist!" interjected his wife.
". . . agrees that we are on the right track. There is disagreement regarding which method to employ. Her Grace, for example, pins her faith in super-civilized but decadent orgies . . ."
"Thank you, Lobenga," said the old woman sardonically.
"On the other hand, Her Highness concurs with me that a sacrifice is necessary."
"Then," put in de Messigny, "why were not such few criminals as we have discovered on El Dorado executed here, instead of being sent to their deaths somewhere in outer space?"
"You heard what was said about Hermann von Stolzberg and his descendant, the S. S. General. We can do without such raw material."
"Rubbish!" The Comte's normally pale face was flushed. "Marlene carries in her veins the blood of her murderous ancestors. We all of us carry in our veins the blood of ancestors guilty of every crime—yes, and of every sin—known to Man."
"There has been a certain refining process," the Duchess told him.
"Perhaps that's the trouble. Perhaps we are all too refined. Or perhaps we have culminated in a new species of Mankind that is sterile."
The Duchess cackled. "That from you, Henri? I recall, just the other day, that you were telling me about your illegitimate children on Caribbea and Austral" Then, maliciously, "But are you sure that they are yours?"
"There is a strong family resemblance," he snapped.
"And so, Henri, you alone on El Dorado are capable of the act of procreation. Why don't you . . ."
"I didn't mean it that way, Honoria."
"We have a guest," Marlene reminded the others.
"And so we have," agreed de Messigny, tossing down almost a full glass of wine. "Or so you have. But we must not offend Mr. Grimes' delicate susceptibilities, although I am sure that an officer of the Survey Service will be able to take the rough with the smooth." He managed to make the last word sound obscene.
"Henri. You know very well that that would be entirely contrary to the rules by which we live."
"You have always made your own rules, Marlene. As we all, at this table, know."
"As we all know," stated Lobenga.
"That is my privilege," she said. "As it is the privilege of all on El Dorado."
"But you told us," complained the Duchess, "that you would, for the good of us all, cooperate. Cooperate, did I say? As I recall it, you were to play a leading part in one of the schemes."
"I did," said Marlene. "I did. But we von Stolzberg's have a family tradition. Shall I tell you? Try to do something, and fail. Try a second time, and fail. Try a third time, and fail. Try a fourth time, and the consequences are unforeseen and disastrous."
"Superstition," growled the Hereditary Chief.
"This from you, Lobenga . . ." murmured the Princess.
"The Old Religion is not superstition!" flared Eulalia. "If we had been allowed to do things our way . . ."
"We still can," said her husband.
"But not," stated the Princess, "in Schloss Stolzberg. I am fully conscious of the obligations of a host."
"Mr. Grimes!" It was the Duchess of Leckhampton addressing him. Then, sharply, "Mr. Grimes!"
He turned to her, still bewildered by the conversation in which he had played no part, but of which he appeared to have been the subject. "Your Grace?"
She was very much the great lady again, and she spoke with hauteur. "Mr. Grimes, I shall apologize to you, even if these others will not. It must be embarrassing for an outsider to be the witness to what, in effect, is a family quarrel. Yes, we are a family here on El Dorado, even though we are of diverse races and origins. But I must commend you, Mr. Grimes, for having the good sense and the courtesy not to take sides."
He tried to make a joke of his reply. "I didn't know whose side to take, Your Grace."
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"Didn't you, Mr. Grimes?" sneered de Messigny.
"No," said Grimes. He allowed his indignation to take charge. "Damn it all, you people are the upper crust of the entire bloody Galaxy, or think that you are. But I tell you that such squabbling at table would not be tolerated in the Fourth Class Ratings' messroom, let alone the wardroom of a ship."
"That will do, Grimes!" snapped the Count.
"That will do, Henri!" almost snarled the Princess. "John was right in what he said."
"John?" echoed de Messigny, with a sardonic lift of his black eyebrows. "But I was forgetting, Marlene. After all, you have Karl and Fritz and Fredrik and Augustin and Johann . . . Although John has the advantage of being flesh and blood, not metal."
"De Messigny . . ." Lobenga's voice was an ominous rumble. "De Messigny, you will be silent." His strange yellow eyes swept the table. "You will all of you be silent, until I have had my say." Then he addressed the Lieutenant directly. "Mr. Grimes, what has happened should never have happened. What has been said should never have been said. But there are forces loose tonight in this old castle. Perhaps, even though there are no ghosts, the centuries of bloodstained history that these walls have seen have left a record of some kind on the very stones. There has been a clash of personalities. There has been sexual jealousy, and so the record has been played back. It was in this very hall, I am told, that Her Highness's forebear, Magda, died of her wounds.
"Be that as it may, Mr. Grimes, too much has been said in your hearing. You know too much, and too little. But I, we, feel that you have the right to know more. Do we have your word, as an officer and a gentleman, that what we shall tell you will never be divulged?"
Grimes' head was buzzing. Could it have been the effects of too much wine, or of something in the wine? And those yellow eyes staring into his were strangely hypnotic.
"Do we have your word?" asked Lobenga.
"Yes," he whispered.
"Is this wise?" asked Eulalia.
"Shut yo' mouf, woman." The deliberate lapse into the archaic dialect was frightening rather than ludicrous. This was the High Priest speaking, not the cultured Negro gentleman. "Shut yo' mouf, all of yo', until Ah is done.
"Mr. Grimes," he went on, "I can tell you that you were to have been honored, greatly honored. But circumstances now are such that, after your stay here, you will be allowed to return to your ship."
"Honored?" asked Grimes. "How?"
"You were to have been the white goat, the goat without horns."
Grimes stared around the table in horror rather than in disbelief.
"It is true," said Marlene.
Chapter 23
"Yes," said Lobenga, breaking the heavy silence, "you are entitled to an explanation."
"You can say that again," Grimes told him.
The Hereditary Chief ignored this. "You are aware, Mr. Grimes," he went on, "of the nature of our problem on this planet."
"Yes." The spaceman was deliberately flippant. "You miss the pitterpatter of little feet and all the rest of it."
"Crudely put, sir. Crudely put, but true. Even though our lives are enormously prolonged, even though our system of safeguards almost obviates the possibility of accidental death, or death by any kind of violence, we are not immortal. And what use is great wealth if you have nobody to whom to leave it? What comfort is a bloodline stretching back to antiquity if it dies out with yourself?"
"Those," said Grimes, "are worries that I'm never likely to have."
"But you are not one of us," stated Marlene.
Lobenga continued. "All we ask, sir, is to be able to live our own kind of life on the planet of our choice. But for this one, but dreadfully important, factor we have no complaints. We are neither impotent nor frigid. Our sex lives are normal, better than normal. But are sterile, even though our finest medical practitioners assure us that there are no physical abnormalities or deficiencies."
"I was told," said Grimes, "that the women who were already pregnant when they came here were successfully brought to term and that their children lived and are now adults."
"That is correct."
"And I learned tonight that Captain de Messigny has fathered offspring on other planets."
"So he tells us," said Lobenga, adding, before the Comte could flare up, "and I have no reason to doubt his word. Furthermore, the Comte de Messigny has, on occasion, acted as procurer, bringing young men of good family to El Dorado for a vacation. Women with wealth and family lines of their own entertained them. But even though de Messigny's friends could, like himself, offer proof of their capacity for parenthood, they achieved nothing here."
"And what is the explanation?" asked Grimes. "Something in the air, or the water? Some virus or radiation?"
"According to Lord Tarlton and his colleagues, no. And we adherents to the Old Religion, in its various forms, are in agreement with the materialists."
"Then have you a theory?"
"We have, sir. If you will be patient I shall try to explain it to you. But, first of all, I shall ask a question. What is life?"
"I . . . I don't know. Growth? But a crystal does that. Metabolism? Motility? The ability to reproduce? We have inorganic machines that can do all these things."
"Perhaps soul would be the correct word," said Lobenga. "Not used in its conventional sense but, nonetheless, soul. Something indefinable, intangible that makes the difference between the organic and the inorganic, between the warm, soupy primordial seas, the lifeless fluids rich in minerals held in solution, cloudy with suspended matter, and the first viruses. And with those humble and simple beginnings the cycle was started. How did the poet put it? Birth, procreation, death—and there's an end to it. But as long as there's death, there's no end to it."
"And somebody or something," cackled the Duchess, "has put a spoke in the wheel of the cycle."
"Yes, Your Grace," agreed Lobenga. "We have. We have interrupted the natural sequence."
"But how?" asked Grimes.
"Imagine, if you can," said the Negro, "a reservoir of soul-stuff, of life-essence on every inhabited planet. Imagine, too, that soul has evolved, just as physical form has evolved. Visualize the act of conception—the coupling of humans, of dogs, cats, fishes, even the pollenization of a flower—and try to see that before the process of growth can commence there has to be a third factor involved, a priming of the pump, as it were. A drop has to be withdrawn from the reservoir and that reservoir is always kept topped up by the process of death."
"I begin to see."
"Good. Now this world, as you know, was utterly sterile when we purchased it, before we terraformed it, with improvements. We brought in our plant life, our animals, ourselves. Insofar as the plants and animals are concerned the normal cycle was resumed in a matter of months, at the outside. There were the inevitable deaths, the equally inevitable births. Insofar as we are concerned, the normal cycle has never been initiated."
"But it could have been," said Grimes. "That is, if your theory is correct."
"How, sir?"
"You, even you, have had criminals. I have seen pictures from the Monitor's memory bank. These criminals, I am informed, were arrested and sent into exile, although it was hinted that they would not live to make planet fall on another world. If, Mr. Lobenga, these men had been executed on El Dorado, surely your pump would have been primed."
"Do you think that we have not thought of that?" asked Lobenga. "There are two valid reasons why this has never been done. To begin with, we have always taken great pains to impress upon the Monitor the sanctity of the lives of all members of the El Dorado Corporation, and have always striven to maintain the Master/Servant relationship, with ourselves, of course, as the Masters. Secondly, if you were going to top up a reservoir of any kind, would you use polluted fluids?"
"Our own souls were dipped out of dirty buckets," chuckled the Duchess of Leckhampton. "Marlene's not the only one here with a murky family past."
"But we have evolved," Lobenga explained
patiently.
"Hah! "exploded the old lady sardonically.
"Then," said Grimes, "there is another solution."
"You are a veritable mine of information, John," the Princess told him.
"I was taught," he said, "that spacemanship is only applied commonsense. And commonsense can be applied to more things than the handling of ships. All right. We know that women who had conceived before coming to El Dorado bore their children here. We have reason to believe that Captain de Messigny has fathered children on other worlds. Then why, why, WHY shouldn't all of you who feel the urge to parenthood do your breeding off-planet?"
To Prime the Pump Page 12
