First Command

by A Bertram Chandler

  “We are waiting,” said the Baroness unnecessarily. “Now that you are here, will you get the show on the road?” Somehow she contrived to put the question between quotation marks.

  Grimes flushed angrily. “Your orders?” he asked, adding, “Your Excellency,” to avoid further acrimony.

  “To take this pinnace to the settlement reported by Epsilon Pavonis and Investigator.” Then, when Grimes made no immediate move, “Don’t just stand there. Do something.”

  He turned to the robots, tried to imagine that they were Survey Service Marines, although the handling of such personnel he had always left to their own officers or NCOs. “Embark!” he ordered sharply.

  The automata turned as one, strode in single file to the pinnace’s airlock, stepped aboard.

  He said to the Baroness, “After you, Your Excellency.”

  He followed her into the pinnace, saw that she had taken the co-pilot’s seat in the control cab. The robots were standing aft, in the main cabin. The airlock doors closed while he was still making his way to his own chair; he noted that the Baroness had not touched the instrument panel before her. He sighed. This was Big Sister again, showing him who was really in command.

  He buckled himself into his seat. Before he was finished the voice of the ship’s computer-pilot came from the transceiver, “Proceed when you are ready, Captain Grimes.”

  The inertial drive was already running, in neutral gear. He switched to vertical thrust, lifted. The river was ahead; in the bright sunlight it was a ribbon of gleaming gold winding over the blue-green grasslands. There was altogether too much gold in his life these days, he thought. He flew at a moderate speed until he was directly over the wide stream and then turned to port, proceeding inland at an altitude of about fifteen meters. Ahead of him were the distant, towering ranges, their glittering peaks sharp against the clear sky.

  The Baroness was not talkative. Neither was Grimes. He thought, If those were real Marines back there they’d be making enough chatter for all of us.

  He concentrated on his piloting. The controls of the pinnace were very similar to those to which he had become accustomed in small craft of this type in the Survey Service but he still had to get the feel of this one. The river banks were higher now, rocky, sheer, with explosions of green and gold and scarlet and purple where flowering shrubs had taken hold in cracks and crevices. He considered lifting to above cliff-top level, then decided against it. While he was here he might as well enjoy the scenery. There was little enough else to enjoy.

  The canyon became deeper, narrower, more tortuous. And then, after Grimes had put the pinnace through an almost right-angled turn, it widened. The actual river bed was still relatively narrow but, strung along it like a bead, was an oval valley, lushly fertile, bounded by sheer red cliffs unbroken save for where the stream flowed in and out.

  The valley was as described in the two reports. The village was not. It was utterly deserted, its houses dilapidated, many of them apparently destroyed by fire at some long past date. Shrubs and saplings were thrusting up through the charred ruins.

  Grimes set the controls for hovering, took binoculars from their box to study the abandoned settlement. There were few houses of more than one story. The structural material was mud or clay, reinforced with crude frames of timber. The windows were unglazed but from some of them bleached rags, the remains of blinds or curtains, fluttered listlessly in some faint stirring of the air.

  The Baroness had found her own glasses, was staring through them.

  She said softly, “A truly Lost Colony . . . And we have come too late to find any survivors . . . “

  A voice—that voice!—came from the transceiver.

  “May I suggest, Your Excellency, that you observe the cliff face to the north of your present position?”

  Big Sister, thought Grimes, was still watching. She would have her sensors in and about the pinnace and every one of the robots was no more—and no less—than an extension of herself.

  He turned the boat about its short axis to facilitate observation. He and the Baroness studied the forbidding wall of red rock. It was broken, here and there, by dark holes. The mouths of caves? He thought that he could detect motion in some of them. Animals? And then a human figure appeared from one of the apertures and walked slowly along a narrow ledge to the next cave mouth. It was naked. It was a woman, not old but not young, with long, unkempt hair that might, after a thorough wash, have been blonde. The most amazing thing about her was her apparent lack of interest in the strange flying machine that was shattering the peace of the valley with its cacophonous engine beat. Although it was quiet inside the pinnace—its builders had been lavish with sonic insulation to protect the delicate ears of its aristocratic owner—the racket outside, the arythmic clangor of the inertial drive echoing and re-echoing between the cliff faces, must have been deafening.

  Then she did turn to look at the noisy intruder. Somehow her attitude conveyed the impression that she wished that the clattering thing would go away. Grimes studied her through his binoculars. Her face, which might have been pretty if cleaned and given a few cosmetic touches, was that of a sleepwalker. The skin of her body, under the dirt, was pallid. That was strange. People who habitually went naked, such as the Arcadian naturists, were invariably deeply tanned.

  She turned again, walked slowly into the cave mouth.

  Three children, two girls and a boy, came out on to another ledge. They were as unkempt as the woman, equally incurious. They picked their way down a narrow pathway to ground level, walked slowly to one of the low bushes. They stood around it, picking things—nuts? berries?—from its branches, thrusting them into their mouths.

  The Baroness said, addressing Grimes almost as though he were a fellow human being, “As you know, Social Evolution in the Lost Colonies is the title of my thesis. But this is devolution. From spaceship to village of mud huts . . . From mud huts to caves . . .”

  “Caves,” said Grimes, “could be better than mud huts. Less upkeep. There’s a place called Coober Peedy back on Earth, in Australia, where the cave dwellings are quite luxurious. It used to be an opal mining town . . .”

  “Indeed?” Her voice was cold again. “Put us down, please. Close to those horrible children, but not close enough to alarm them.”

  If they were going to be alarmed, thought Grimes, they would have been alarmed already. Surely they must have seen the pinnace, must be hearing it. But he said nothing and brought the boat down, landing about ten meters from the filthy urchins. They did not look away from the bush from which they were gathering the edible harvest.

  The airlock doors opened and the little ladder automatically extended. The Baroness got up from her seat. Grimes put out a hand to detain her. She scornfully brushed it aside.

  He said, “Wait, Your Excellency. The robots should embark first. To draw the fire. If any.”

  “If any,” she repeated derisively.

  She pushed past him, jumped down from the airlock to the ground. He followed her. The robots filed out on the heels of the humans. Grimes, with both pistols drawn, stood taking stock. He stared up at the cliff face, at the caves. There were no indications of any hostile action. He was not really expecting any but knew that the unexpected has claimed many a victim. The Baroness sneered silently. Grimes relaxed at last and returned the weapons to their holsters but did not secure the flaps.

  “Are you sure,” she asked, “that you don’t want to shoot those children?”

  Grimes made no reply, followed her as she walked slowly to the little savages clustered around the shrub. The GP robots followed him. The children ignored the intruders, just went on stolidly picking berries—if berries they were—and thrusting them into their mouths.

  They were unprepossessing brats—skinny, dirty, with scabbed knees and elbows, with long, matted, filthy hair. And they stank, a sour effluvium that made Grimes want to breathe through his mouth rather than through his nose. He saw the Baroness’s nostrils wrinkle. His own fel
t like airtight doors the instant after a hull-piercing missile strike.

  He looked at the berries that were growing so profusely on the bush. Berries? Elongated, bright purple berries? But berries do not run to a multiplicity of wriggling legs and twitching antennae. Berries do not squirm as they are inserted into greedy mouths . . . The eaters chewed busily while a thin, purple ichor dribbled down their filth-encrusted chins.

  It was no worse than eating oysters, thought Grimes, trying to rationalize his way out of impending nausea. Or witchetty grubs . . .

  “Children,” said the Baroness in a clear, rather too sweet voice.

  They ignored her.

  “Children,” she repeated, her voice louder, not so sweet. They went on ignoring her.

  She looked at Grimes. Her expression told him, Do something.

  He put out a hand to grasp the boy’s shoulder, being careful not to grip hard or painfully. This required no effort; his own skin was shrinking from contact with that greasy, discolored integument. He managed to turn the child to face him and the Baroness. Then he was at a loss for something to say. “Take me to your leader” did not seem right somehow.

  “Please take us to your parents,” said the Baroness.

  The boy went on chewing and swallowing, then spat out a wad of masticated chitin from which spines and hairs still protruded. It landed on the toe of Grimes’ right boot. He kicked it away in revulsion.

  “Take us to your parents,” repeated the Baroness.

  “Wha’?”

  “Your parents.” Slowly, patiently, “Your mother. Your father.”

  “Momma. Fadder. No wake.”

  “He says,” volunteered Grimes, “that his mother and father are sleeping.”

  She said, “A truly blinding glimpse of the obvious, Captain. But, of course you are the expert on first contacts, are you not? Then may I ask why it did not occur to you to bring bright trinkets, glass beads and mirrors and the like, as gifts to people who are no better than savages?”

  “I doubt if they could bear to look at themselves in a mirror, Your Excellency,” said Grimes.

  “Very, very funny. But you are not employed as court jester.”

  Slowly she removed the watch from her left wrist. It was a beautiful piece of work, jewel as much as instrument, fantastically accurate. In the extremely unlikely event of The Far Traveler’s chronometers all becoming nonoperational it could have been used for navigational purposes. Its golden bracelet was a fragile-seeming chain, its thin case was set with diamonds that flashed dazzlingly in the sunlight. She dangled it temptingly before the boy’s eyes. He ignored it. He wriggled out of Grimes’ grip, pulled another of the repulsive purple grubs from the bush and thrust it into his open mouth.

  But one of the girls was more interested. She turned, made a sudden snatch for the trinket. The Baroness was too quick for her, whipping it up and out of reach.

  “Gimme!” squealed the unlovely child. “P’etty! P’etty! Gimme!”

  “Take . . . us. . .” enunciated the Baroness slowly and carefully, “to . . . Momma . . . Fadder . . .”

  “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”

  The Baroness repeated her request. It seemed to be getting through. The girl scowled, then slowly and deliberately gathered a double handful of the puce horrors from the branches of the bush. Then, reluctantly, she led the way to the cliff face, pausing frequently to look back. With her busily working mouth, with that sickening slime oozing from between her lips she was not a pretty sight.

  She reached the foot of the rock wall. There was a ledge running diagonally up its face, less than a meter wide, a natural ramp. She paused, looked back at Grimes and the Baroness, at the marching robots. An expression that could have been indicative of doubt flickered across her sharp-featured face. The Baroness waved the watch so that it flashed enticingly in the sunlight. The girl made a beckoning gesture, then started up the path.

  Chapter 16

  Grimes hesitated; a cliff path such as this should have been fitted with a handrail. The Baroness flashed him a scornful look and followed the girl; despite her boots she was almost as sure-footed. Grimes, not at all happily, followed the Baroness. The ledge was narrow, its surface uneven yet worn smooth and inclined to be slippery. There was a paucity of handholds on the cliff face and, looking up, Grimes realized that on some stretches the climbers would be obliged to lean outward, over a sheer drop, as they made progress upward. The robots began to come after Grimes. There was a sharp crack! as rock broke away from the edge of the path, a clatter of falling fragments.

  The Baroness called, “Robots! Wait for us on the ground!” Then, to Grimes, “You should have realized, Captain, that their weight would be too much for this ledge!”

  So should Big Sister! thought Grimes but did not say it They climbed—the half-grown girl, the Baroness, Grimes. They negotiated a difficult crossing of the natural ramp with a horizontal ledge. Fortunately the cliff face here was scarred with cracks affording foot and handholds, although so widely spaced as to alleviate but little the hazards of the traverse. They climbed.

  Once Grimes paused to look back and down—at the gleaming, golden pinnace, at the equally refulgent robots. It was an exaggeration, he knew, but they looked at him like ants standing beside a pencil dropped on to the grass. He was not, after all, so very far above ground level—only high enough to be reasonably sure of breaking his neck if he missed his footing and fell.

  After that he kept on looking up and ahead—at the Baroness’s shapely rump working in the sweat-stained khaki of her breeches, at the meager buttocks of the naked girl. Neither spectacle was particularly erotic. They climbed, crossing another horizontal ledge and then, eventually, turning off the diagonal path onto a third one. It was as narrow as the natural ramp.

  Ahead and to the left was the mouth of one of the caves. The girl slipped into it, the Baroness followed. Grimes followed her. Less than two meters inside the entrance was an almost right-angled turn. The Baroness asked, “Did you bring a light?” Then, “But of course not. That would have required some foresight on your part.”

  Grimes, saying nothing, pulled his laser pistol from its holster, thumbed the selector switch to broadest beam. It would serve as an electric torch although wasteful of energy and potentially dangerous. But it was not required, although it took some little time for their eyes to become accustomed to the dim illumination after the bright sunshine outside. There was light in here—wan, eerie, cold. It came from the obscenely bloated masses of fungus dependent from the low cavern roof, growing in bulbous clusters from the rocky walls and, to a lesser extent, from the floor itself. The girl led them on, her thin body pallidly luminescent. And there were other bodies sprawled on the rock floor, men and women, naked, sleeping. . .

  Or dead . . . thought Grimes.

  No, not dead. One of them, a grossly obese female, stirred and whinnied softly, stretched out a far arm to a nearby clump of fungus. She broke off a large hunk, stuffed it into her mouth. She gobbled disgustingly, swallowed noisily. There was a gusty sigh as she flopped back to her supine position. She snored.

  There were other noises—eructations, a trickling sound, a splattering. And there was the . . . stink. Grimes trod in something. He knew what it was without looking. Sight is not the only sense.

  Still the girl led them through the noisome cave. They passed adults, adolescents, children, babies, all sprawled in their own filth. They came at last to a couple with limbs entwined in a ghastly parody of physical love.

  “Momma! Fadder!” shrilled the girl triumphantly. “Gimme!”

  The Baroness silently handed the watch to her. It was no longer the pretty toy that it had been when first offered. In this lighting it could have been fabricated from lusterless lead, from beads of dull glass.

  The girl took it, stared at it and then flung it from her. “No p’etty!” she squalled. “No p’etty!”

  She pulled a piece of the glowing fungus from the wall, thrust it into her mouth. She whimpere
d as she chewed it, then subsided onto the rock floor beside her parents.

  “My watch,” said the Baroness to Grimes. “Find it.” After rather too long a lag she added, “Please.”

  Grimes used his laser pistol cautiously, directing its beam upward while looking in the direction from which the brief metallic clatter, marking the fall of the timepiece, had come. He saw it shining against the rock wall. He made his way to it, picked it up while trying in vain not to dirty his fingers. It had fallen into a pool of some filth.

  The Baroness said, “I am not touching it again until it has been thoroughly sterilized. Put it in your pocket. And now, will you try to wake these people?”

  Grimes wrapped the watch in his handkerchief, put it into his pocket, then returned the laser pistol to its holster. He squatted by the sleeping couple. He forced himself to touch the unclean skin of the man’s bare shoulder. He gave a tentative tap, then another.

  “I said wake him, not pet him!” snarled the Baroness. “Shake him!”

  Grimes shook the sleeper, rather more viciously than he had intended. The man slid off the supine body of the woman, fell onto his side. He twitched like a sleeping dog afflicted by a bad dream. Dull eyes opened, peered out through the long, matted hair. Bearded lips parted.

  “Go ‘way. Go ‘way.”

  “We have come a long distance to see you,” said the Baroness.

  “S’wot?” asked the man uninterestedly. “S’wot?” He levered himself to a half sitting position, broke off a piece of the omnipresent fungus from the near wall, brought it toward his mouth.

  “Stop him!” ordered the Baroness.

  Grimes caught the other’s thin wrist in his right hand, forced it down. The man struggled feebly.

  “I am the Baroness d’Estang,” announced the lady.