When they entered the main room an orchestra was playing for a floor show dance team. In the middle of an intricate step, it suddenly broke off and swung into the stirring Interplanetary Anthem. The startled dancers were lucky that one of them didn’t fall and break a leg.
The some two hundred celebrants in the Moulin Rouge rose to a man and woman and clapped their hands as he followed the headwaiter across the floor. His damned civilian clothes weren’t doing a thing for him, so far as disguising his identity was concerned.
However, prices at the Moulin Rouge seemingly eliminated all but cultivated, upper class clientele. When Don had been seated, they all resumed then own places, and except for covert glances from time to time, he was left to himself. No hand shakers or autograph seekers here.
The table was a good one but discreetly located.
The floorshow resumed.
There was an ice bucket to one side. The head-waiter brought a bottle half out of it. “I took the liberty, Colonel, of chilling a bottle. It is Vintage Mumms and from the owner’s own stock.”
“Vintage Mumms?” Don said. “You mean champagne?” He had never tasted real champagne.
“Yes, Colonel Mathers. I understand that there are but few bottles remaining in the world. It is a shame. When I was a boy it was highly preferred. However, if you do not desire a sparkling wine…?”
“Oh, no. No, no,” Don said hurriedly. “I’ll be glad to try it.”
The maitre d’ was taking care of him personally, though two of his assistants hovered in the background. He expertly flicked out the cork, wrapped the very chilled bottle in a napkin, poured half a glass and looked hopefully expectant.
Don had seen Lawrence Demming go through the routine. He took up the champagne glass and took a small sip. It was the best drink he could remember ever having tasted.
He nodded and said, “Excellent.” The other beamed satisfaction and filled the glass three quarters full.
The headwaiter said, “Is there anything else, sir? Have you dined? Our head chef is impatien…”
“No… not yet,” Don told him. The whole atmosphere was exciting and he loved it. This was the life Demming and Rostoff had hinted at.
Or anything else?” the headwaiter urged.
Don said ruefully, “Perhaps some companionship. I am afraid I know nobody in Geneva except… the President of the Solar System League and some of his aides.”
“Feminine companionship, Colonel?”
Don followed along. “I am very fond of the ladies.” He thought, good grief, does a place as swank as this have a selection of whores?
The other made a slight gesture. “Do any of the ladies present attract you?”
Don still followed along with what he assumed was supposed to be a joke. He said, “Almost all of them. I have never seen such an assemblage of attractive women. Unfortunately…”
“Who do you think particularly attractive, Colonel Mathers? The headwaiter refilled his glass, though it was but half empty.
Don smiled and considered the selection of some one hundred women. He assumed that the headwaiter would produce a professional as near the original as possible. He said finally, “That redheaded girl over there, in the white evening gown. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more attractive young woman, even on Tri-Di shows and, the Almighty Ultimate knows, on Tri-Di, even if they don’t start glamorous, the pro beauticians can make them so.” “A moment, Colonel.”
Don stared after him, in puzzlement, as the head-waiter took off across the room. He stopped at the table where the redhead was seated with a distinguished companion, bent and spoke in low tone to them. For a moment, the man stiffened. The girl shot a quick glance over at Don, then looked away.
The headwaiter had stepped back several discreet feet. The girl whispered something to her escort, who said something in return.
She came to her feet and the headwaiter led her to Don’s table, to his absolute and utter surprise. He shot to his feet.
The headwaiter said, “It is obviously not necessary to introduce Colonel Donal Mathers. Colonel, this is the Graffin Greta von Emden und Garmisch.”
She was looking at him starry-eyed.
Behind her, her escort had stood, and now, very Prussian, he clicked his heels, bowed to Don, turned and strode from the room, looking only straight ahead.
She was quite the most striking girl Don could ever remember having seen. Girl was the term, since she looked considerably younger than she had when seated across the room. She couldn’t have been more than in her early twenties. Her red hair was a dark red and piled atop her head, in a style of years before. Her delicate ears would have inspired a poet.
Her complexion was of the light fineness that only the northern races seem to be able to achieve. Her nose was slightly thin and aristocratic; her mouth delicate, though full-lipped and red. Don had not failed to notice the perfection of her figure as she crossed the dance floor. It seemed more mature than one of her years would ordinarily have boasted.
The waiters scurried up and held the chairs for Don and the newcomer.
The headwaiter had magically produced a second glass and now poured wine for her, returned the bottle to the ice bucket and made off. The waiters also faded back.
Don was flustered and said, “I hope that your boyfriend wasn’t…”
Her voice went with face and figure, sweet but with a slight trill in it. She shook her head. “But he is not my boyfriend, he is my husband.” Her English was excellent. Seemingly, everyone in Geneva spoke the language.
That stopped him for a moment, but then he thought he understood and said, “Oh, I see. You have a friendly arrangement. Both of you are free to go your own way.”
She opened her gray-green eyes wide. “Oh, no. Our marriage is a happy one. You see, we are on our honeymoon.”
He bug-eyed her and couldn’t think of anything to say.
She said, and her voice was very slight now, and her eyes down, looking into her champagne which she hadn’t tasted as yet, “You see, we both watched, on the Tri-Di, the presentation ceremony this morning. We both cried, although, in spite of the fact that I have known him for years, I have never seen Kurt cry before. Possibly you weren’t aware of the fact that it was all recorded, all taken down on video-tape by the fleet admiral, and it was all replayed on the Tri-Di, all over the world, all over the Solar System. You disobeyed orders. You said, I’m going in,’ and you banged the cocking hammer, I think that is what my husband named it, of your flak-flak gun, or whatever they call it. And some of the commentators say your chances were one in a thousand of surviving at all, not to speak of destroying the monsters.”
Don’s lips were dry. He took a desperate sip of his champagne. She was right, he hadn’t known that the whole thing had been video-taped.
She went on, “Later when the Space Monitors of our fleet came up, eight of them, their commodore continued to video-tape it all. The ruined Miro Class cruiser—I think they called it—that great, hulking spacecraft of the Kradens. And, for a moment, he caught your tiny One Man Scout, flying past its bulk. We have many myths and legends in my country, Colonel Mathers, about knights and princes fighting dragons, but never such a small knight against such a large dragon.”
Don said, “What has this got to do with your husband leaving you here with me?”
Greta said simply, “My husband is honored.”
By this time she had sipped at her wine and smiled at him over the glass. “As I am, to be chosen to be your companion the very evening of the day you won your award.”
A waiter scurried up and refilled their glasses, held the bottle up, saw it was nearly empty, and scurried off with it.
For a moment, Don felt the first twinge within him since he had made his decision in the One Man Scout and went on in quest of glory and wealth. He put the feeling down. Demming and Rostoff had been right. It was a dog-eat-dog system, each man out for himself. Take what you can get. If you don’t, somebody else will.
; The waiter came back with more wine, put it into the ice bucket and swirled it around.
Don invited her to dance and, as to be expected, she was perfect, as her face and figure were perfect. You did not breed such women, save in time, centuries of time.
He said, “What is a Graffin?”
She smiled up at him and said, “In actuality, there is no such thing any more. Some of we who were of the aristocracy, a century and a half ago, still use our titles but they are meaningless. A graffin is the German equivalent of a French countess. The equivalent of being the wife of an earl, in England. My husband is a Graf.”
“I see,” Don said. “So, if the, ah, Kaiser was ever brought back to Germany, you would again be a countess.”
She smiled again. “It seems unlikely.”
As they danced, the other couples made room for them, so that it was as though they were in the center of a circle, which made Don uncomfortable. Something else made him additionally uncomfortable. They would pass the empty table where Greta and her husband had been seated enjoying their honeymoon.
He said, suddenly, “What do you say we get out of here and go somewhere else?”
As always, there was no bill.
They stopped, in turn, at the various nightspots that Pierre had recommended, breaking the routine of drinking somewhat at the Ba-Ta-Clan where they ate. But even there, the food was taken with wine once again from the private cellars of the manager, and not usually for sale. Don was too far gone by this time to appreciate it.
The fog rolled in somewhere along there and when it rolled out again, it was to find that he and Greta had acquired friends, two Space Service officers in the uniform of captains, and their girls. Nobody was feeling pain. They were in the Pussy Cat Saloon and had evidently been there for some time.
The captains, deferential to Don, in spite of them all being drenched, didn’t discuss his feat against the Kraden, nor his decoration. Possibly that had come sooner while he was in the alcoholic fog, or possibly they thought it would be bad manners, bad taste. It was all very hilarious.
And at the other tables, no matter how loud his party was being, the other club-goers were smiling, looking over at the new hero sympathetically. Obviously, they thought he had every right to be intoxicated on this, of all nights.
Greta was looking at him a little worriedly. She herself had taken far less than any of the others, by the looks of her.
Finally, she whispered to him, “It’s getting very late. Shall we have a last drink in… your suite, or mine?”
He looked at her blankly, woozily. “Your suite? But, well, your husband…”
She cast her eyes down, a characteristic gesture of hers and said in a small voice, “I am sure that my husband is discreet. He will not be there.”
He shook his head in continued amazement at this whole situation. He said, his voice slurring slightly, “Perhaps it had better be your place. There are so many media people, autograph hunters and so forth besieging my hotel that they’d surely spot us and your name would be linked to mine, especially if you and your husband are as well known as I suspect you are.”
“Very well,” she said, taking up her bag.
They said their goodbyes to the rest of the party, as quickly as they could get away. As usual, there was no bill.
Her hotel was the Des Bergues on the Quai des Bergues, opposite the Rousseau Islands. It was far smaller than the Intercontinental but had a distinguished atmosphere, and one that dripped expensiveness. The Graf and his Graffin were obviously not exactly poverty-stricken.
They hurried through the lobby and, for once, Don got the impression that he hadn’t been recognized. Greta took him to a terrace suite on one of the upper floors.
She looked at him quizzically and said, “Are you sure that you want another drink?”
He sank into a chair and grinned at her and shook his head. “No, not at all sure.”
She seemed relieved at that and said, “Just a moment and I’ll be with you… Don.”
The drive over in the open sports car had revived him considerably, but he was still far from being cold sober.
When she reentered, she was in a black negligee, and barefooted. The negligee looked as though it had cost a few months of Don’s pay—if not more.
Her eyes were down, demurely.
He couldn’t take his eyes from her, sweeping her from head to foot and back. The nightgown was translucent, if not actually transparent.
When he had surfeited himself, and was stretched out on his back, breathing deeply, she spoke for the first time, her voice low, as it usually was when she spoke to him. “Did I make you happy?”
“Yes,” he murmured. What else could he say?
She said, so softly he could hardly make it out, “Am I the first woman you have had since your return from destroying the monsters?”
“Yes.”
She sighed, before falling into sleep, “I shall have something to tell my grandchildren.”
IX
Colonel Donal Mathers returned to North America on a Space Service supersonic jet. He could have made it considerably quicker on one of the rocket shuttle craft, but he was in no hurry. He had gotten in with four or five fleet admirals and commodores and they continued the bust, which had started in Paris, all the way to Bost-Wash.
The past eight or ten days—Don had lost count—had been one long prolonged lost weekend. It had begun, of course, there in Geneva but then, one morning, he had awakened in the Nouveau Ritz in Paris. The new Ritz was situated in the same location as the old, on the Place Vendome, and Napoleon the First still graced the top of the pillar in the square’s center. Not that Don would have known; he had never been in Paris before.
When he awakened that day, it couldn’t be called morning, it was to shakily reach out for the bottle of Anti-Ale which he had taken to leaving on the bedside table. He shook out two of them—it took two these days, rather than the prescribed one—and looked for a carafe of water. There wasn’t any. Muttering profanity, he got up and staggered to the bathroom. There was drinking water there, of course, and he shakily poured a glass and washed down his two pills.
Still feeling like death, he wavered into the bathroom and to one of the windows. It overlooked the Place Vendome, which he didn’t recognize, not even recalling ever having seen pictures of it. He thought that possibly he was somewhere in Italy.
Anti-Ale is quick-acting. It had to be. It was customarily taken when the patient felt he was on the verge of hangover oblivion.
The furniture of the living room was Louis the Fourteenth. Not that Don knew, or cared. It looked ornately uncomfortable to him. Something like Lawrence Demming’s Swiss chalet penthouse, on top of the Interplanetary Lines Building in Center City. A damn museum setting.
He made his way over to the desk and was gratified to find a modern TV phone screen there.
He flicked it on and when the face of a very polite young man appeared, said, “Where in the hell am I?”
The other blinked and hesitated a moment before answering in complete detail. “You are in the Royal Suite of the Nouveau Ritz Hotel, in the City of Paris, in the area which was once known as France, in Europe, mon Colonel.”
Don Mathers closed his eyes, the hangover not quite completely killed. “Oh, I am, eh?”
“Oui, mon Colonel.”
“Speak English, damn it,” Don growled, though what the other had said was obviously quite clear.
“Yes, Colonel Mathers. Is there some manner in which I could serve you?”
“Yeah. Send up a lot of breakfast. Oh, just a minute. Is there an autobar in this damn suite?”
“Yes, Colonel Mathers. It is disguised in the, ah, buffet to your immediate right.”
Don flicked off the screen and went over to the buffet. Sure enough, part of the top lifted to reveal an elaborate autobar. He dialed a Bloody Mary, with a double shot of vodka, and stood there, still a bit shakily, until the bottom of the delivery area sank to return with the drink.
He took it up and returned to the window to stare out.
So this was Paris. All his life he had wanted to see Paris.
But what had been his immediate idea of coming here? He couldn’t remember. The last thing he could recall, with any clarity at all, was a fantastic party. He couldn’t even remember who had thrown it. There had been a lot of media people there, but as fellow guests, rather than at work. There had been some fellow Space Service officers, of higher ranks, and, oh yes, there had been several celebrities from the entertainment world. One in particular, the reigning sex symbol of the Tri-Di musical comedies these days.
He closed his eyes and shook his head in an effort to achieve clearer memory. As he recalled, she wasn’t nearly as beautifully sexy in person as she was on lens. However, he couldn’t waste the opportunity. He had spent some time in bed with her. During the party, or after? He was damned if he could remember.
But why in the hell had he come to Paris, and, for that matter, how had he gotten here? The first part of the question finally came to him, but he never did find out the second.
When he had ordered a lot of breakfast, they had taken him at his word. None of this Continental breakfast nonsense, croissants and butter and marmalade and coffee. They brought him every type of breakfast known in the West—and some items from the Orient, for all he knew. Ham, bacon and sausage, all of various types. Eggs a half dozen ways. Cereals. Various types of toast and muffins. Kidneys, kippers and finnan haddie, British style. Caviar, smoked sturgeon and salmon and other Zukouski, Russian style. Cheeses and cold meats, Dutch style. Herring on ice with chives and sour cream sauce, smoked eel and smoked reindeer tongues, Scandinavian style. It had taken three waiters, accompanied by a captain, to wheel it all in.
What the hell did they think he was, a squadron?
The waiters hovered about, but he dismissed them, after giving the captain an autograph. He went on back to the autobar and, in view of the fact that he had finished the Bloody Mary, dialed an ice cold double aquavit. He put that down and returned to the food.
Galactic Medal of Honor Page 9
