To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga

by A Bertram Chandler

  “I’m not a telepath, Number One,” said Grimes. “Tell me.”

  The two men were sitting at ease in the Courier’s control room. Each of them was conscious of a certain tightness in the waistband of his uniform shorts. Grimes was suppressing a tendency to burp gently. Alberto, once he had been given a free hand in the galley, had speedily changed shipboard eating from a necessity to a pleasure. (He insisted that somebody else always do the washing up, but this was a small price to pay.) This evening, for example, the officers had dined on saltimbocca, accompanied by a rehydrated rough red that the amateur chef had contrived, somehow, to make taste like real wine. Nonetheless he had apologized—actually apologized!—for the meal. “I should have used prosciutto, not any old ham. And fresh sage leaves, not dried sage . . .”

  “I think” said Beadle, “that the standard of the High Commissioner’s entertaining has been lousy. Alberto must be a cordon bleu chef, sent out to Doncaster to play merry hell in the High Commissioner’s kitchen.”

  “Could be,” said Grimes. He belched gently. “Could be. But I can’t see our lords and masters laying on a ship, even a lowly Serpent Class Courier, for a cook, no matter how talented. There must be cooks on Doncaster just as good.”

  “There’s one helluva difference between a chef and a cook.”

  “All right. There must be chefs on Doncaster.”

  “But Alberto is good. You admit that.”

  “Of course I admit it. But one can be good in quite a few fields and still retain one’s amateur status. As a matter of fact, Alberto told me that he was a mathematician . . .”

  “A mathematician?” Beadle was scornfully incredulous. “You know how the Blond Beast loves to show off his toys to anybody who’ll evince the slightest interest. Well, Alberto was up in the control room during his watch; you’ll recall that he said he’d fix the coffee maker. Our Mr. von Tannenbaum paraded his pets and made them do their tricks. He was in a very disgruntled mood when he handed over to me when I came on. How did he put it? ‘I don’t expect a very high level of intelligence in planetlubbers, but that Alberto is in a class by himself. I doubt if he could add two and two and get four twice running . . .”

  “Did he fix the machinetta?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. It makes beautiful coffee now.”

  “Then what are you complaining about, Number One?”

  “I’m not complaining, Captain. I’m just curious.”

  And so am I, thought Grimes, so am I. And as the commanding officer of the ship he was in a position to be able to satisfy his curiosity. After Mr. Beadle had gone about his multifarious duties Grimes called Mr. Deane on the telephone. “Are you busy, Spooky?” he asked.

  “I’m always busy, Captain,” came the reply. This was true enough. Whether he wanted it or not, a psionic radio officer was on duty all the time, sleeping and waking, his mind open to the transmitted thoughts of other telepaths throughout the Galaxy. Some were powerful transmitters, others were not, some made use, as Deane did, of organic amplifiers, others made do with the unaided power of their own minds. And there was selection, of course. Just as a wireless operator in the early days of radio on Earth’s seas could pick out his own ship’s call sign from the babble and Babel of Morse, could focus all his attention on an S.O.S. or T.T.T, so the trained telepath could “listen” selectively. At short ranges he could, too, receive the thoughts of the non-telepaths about him—but, unless the circumstances were exceptional, he was supposed to maintain the utmost secrecy regarding them.

  “Can you spare me a few minutes, Spooky? After all, you can maintain your listening watch anywhere in the ship, in my own quarters as well as in yours.”

  “Oh, all right, Captain. I’ll be up. I already know what you’re going to ask me.”

  You would, thought Grimes.

  A minute or so later, Mr. Deane drifted into his day cabin. His nickname was an apt one. He was tall, fragile, so albinoid as to appear almost translucent. His white face was a featureless blob.

  “Take a pew, Spooky,” ordered Grimes. “A drink?”

  “Mother’s ruin, Captain.”

  Grimes poured gin for both of them. In his glass there was ice and a generous sprinkling of bitters. Mr. Deane preferred his gin straight, as colorless as he was himself.

  The psionic radio officer sipped genteelly. Then: “I’m afraid that I can’t oblige you, Captain.”

  “Why not, Spooky?”

  “You know very well that we graduates of the Rhine Institute have to swear to respect privacy.”

  “There’s no privacy aboard a ship, Spooky. There cannot be.”

  “There can be, Captain. There must be.”

  “Not when the safety of the ship is involved.”

  It was a familiar argument—and Grimes knew that after the third gin the telepath would weaken. He always did.

  “We got odd passengers aboard this ship, Spooky. Surely you remember that Waldegren diplomat who had the crazy scheme of seizing her and turning her over to his Navy . . .”

  “I remember, Captain.” Deane extended his glass which, surprisingly, was empty. Grimes wondered, as he always did, if its contents had been teleported directly into the officer’s stomach, but he refilled it.

  “Mr. Alberto’s another odd passenger,” he went on.

  “But a Federation citizen,” Deane told him.

  “How do we know? He could be a double agent. Do you know?”

  “I don’t.” After only two gins Spooky was ready to spill the beans. This was unusual. “I don’t know anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Usually, Captain, we have to shut our minds to the trivial, boring thoughts of you psionic morons. No offense intended, but that’s the way we think of you. We get sick of visualizations of the girls you met in the last port and the girls you hope to meet in the next port.” He screwed his face up in disgust, made it evident that he did, after all, possess features. “Bums, bellies and breasts! The Blond Beast’s a tit man, and you have a thing about legs . . .”

  Grimes’s prominent ears reddened, but he said nothing.

  “And the professional wishful thinking is even more nauseating. When do I get my half ring? When do I get my brass hat? When shall I make Admiral?”

  “Ambition . . .” said Grimes.

  “Ambition, shambition! And of late, of course, I wonder what Alberto’s putting on for breakfast? For lunch? For dinner?”

  “What is he putting on for dinner?” asked Grimes. “I’ve been rather wondering if our tissue culture chook could be used for Chicken Cacciatore . . .”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, you’re not a chef. As well we know, after the last time that you volunteered for galley duties.”

  “I mean, I don’t know what the menus will be.” It was Deane’s turn to blush. “As a matter of fact, Captain, I have been trying to get previews. I have to watch my diet . . .”

  Grimes tried not to think uncharitable thoughts. Like many painfully thin people, Deane enjoyed a voracious appetite.

  He said, “You’ve been trying to eavesdrop?”

  “Yes. But there are non-telepaths, you know, and Alberto’s one of them. True non-telepaths, I mean. Most people transmit, although they can’t receive. Alberto doesn’t transmit.”

  “A useful qualification for a diplomat,” said Grimes. “If he is a diplomat. But could he be using some sort of psionic jammer?”

  “No. I’d know if he were.”

  Grimes couldn’t ignore that suggestively held empty glass any longer. He supposed that Deane had earned his third gin.

  The Courier broke through into normal space-time north of the plane of Doncaster’s ecliptic. In those days, before the Carlotti Beacons made FTL position fixing simple, navigation was an art rather than a science—and von Tannenbaum was an artist. The little ship dropped into a trans-polar orbit about the planet and then, as soon as permission to land had been granted by Aerospace Control, descended to Port Duncannon.
It was, Grimes told himself smugly, one of his better landings. And so it should have been; conditions were little short of ideal. There was no cloud, no wind, not even any clear air turbulence at any level. The ship’s instruments were working perfectly, and the Inertial Drive was responding to the controls with no time lag whatsoever. It was one of those occasions on which the Captain feels that his ship is no more—and no less—than a beautifully functioning extension of his own body. Finally, it was morning Local Time, with the sun just lifting over the verdant, rolling hills to the eastward, bringing out all the color of the sprawling city a few miles from the spaceport, making it look, from the air, like a huge handful of gems spilled carelessly on a green carpet.

  Grimes set the vessel down in the exact center of the triangle marked by the blinkers, so gently that, until he cut the drive, a walnut under the vaned landing gear would not have been crushed. He said quietly, “Finished with engines.”

  “Receive boarders, Captain?” asked Beadle.

  “Yes, Number One.” Grimes looked out through the viewport to the ground cars that were making their way from the Administration Block. Port Health, Immigration, Customs . . . The Harbormaster paying his respects to the Captain of a visiting Federation warship . . . And the third vehicle? He took a pair of binoculars from the rack, focused them on the flag fluttering from the bonnet of the car in the rear. It was dark blue, with a pattern of silver stars, the Federation’s colors. So the High Commissioner himself had come out to see the ship berth. He wished that he and his officers had dressed more formally, but it was too late to do anything about it now. He went down to his quarters, was barely able to change the epaulettes of his shirt, with their deliberately tarnished braid, for a pair of shining new ones before the High Commissioner was at his door.

  Mr. Beadle ushered in the important official with all the ceremony that he could muster at short notice. “Sir, this is the Captain, Lieutenant Grimes. Captain, may I introduce Sir William Willoughby, Federation High Commissioner on Doncaster?”

  Willoughby extended a hand that, like the rest of him was plump. “Welcome aboard, Captain. Ha, ha. I hope you don’t mind my borrowing one of the favorite expressions of you spacefaring types!”

  “We don’t own the copyright, sir.”

  “Ha, ha. Very good.”

  “Will you sit down, Sir William?”

  “Thank you, Captain, thank you. But only for a couple of minutes. I shall be out of your hair as soon as Mr. Alberto has been cleared by Port Health, Immigration and all the rest of ‘em. Then I’ll whisk him off to the Residence.” He paused, regarding Grimes with eyes that, in the surrounding fat, were sharp and bright. “How did you find him, Captain?”

  “Mr. Alberto, sir?” What was the man getting at? “Er . . . He’s a very good cook . . .”

  “Glad to hear you say it, Captain. That’s why I sent for him. I have to do a lot of entertaining, as you realize, and the incompetents I have in my kitchens couldn’t boil water without burning it. It just won’t do, Captain, it just won’t do, not for a man in my position.”

  “So he is a chef, sir.”

  Again those sharp little eyes bored into Grimes’s skull. “Of course. What else? What did you think he was?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact we were having a yarn the other night, and he sort of hinted that he was some sort of a mathematician . . .”

  “Did he?” Then Willoughby chuckled. “He was having you on. But, of course, a real chef is a mathematician. He has to get his equations just right—this quantity, that quantity, this factor, that factor . . .”

  “That’s one way of looking at it, Sir William.”

  Beadle was back then, followed by Alberto. “I must be off, now, Captain,” said the passenger, shaking hands. “Thank you for a very pleasant voyage.”

  “Thank you,” Grimes told him, adding, “We shall miss you.”

  “But you’ll enjoy some more of his cooking,” said the High Commissioner genially. “As officers of the only Federation warship on this world you’ll have plenty of invitations—to the Residence as well as elsewhere. Too, if Mr. Alberto manages to train my permanent staff in not too long a time you may be taking him back with you.”

  “We hope so,” said Grimes and Beadle simultaneously.

  “Good day to you, then. Come on, Mr. Alberto—it’s time you started to show my glorified scullions how to boil an egg!”

  He was gone, and then the Harbormaster was at the door. He was invited in, took a seat, accepted coffee. “Your first visit to Doncaster,” he announced rather than asked.

  “Yes, Captain Tarran. It looks a very pleasant planet.”

  “Hphm.” That could have meant either “yes” or “no.”

  “Tell me, sir, is the cooking in the High Commissioner’s Residence as bad as he makes out?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Captain. I’m just a merchant skipper in a shore job, I don’t get asked to all the posh parties, like you people.” The sudden white grin in the dark, lean face took the rancor out of the words. “And I thank all the Odd Gods of the Galaxy for that!”

  “I concur with your sentiments, Captain Tarran. One never seems to meet any real people at the official bunstruggle . . . it’s all stiff collars and best behavior and being nice to nongs and drongoes whom normally you’d run a mile to avoid . . .”

  “Still,” said Mr. Beadle, “the High Commissioner seems to have the common touch . . .”

  “How so?” asked Grimes.

  “Well, coming out to the spaceport in person to pick up his chef . . .”

  “Cupboard love,” Grimes told him. “Cupboard love.”

  There were official parties, and there were unofficial ones. Tarran may not have been a member of the planet’s snobocracy, but he knew people in all walks of life, in all trades and professions, and the gatherings to which, through him, Grimes was invited were far more entertaining affairs than the official functions which, now and again, Grimes was obliged to attend. It was at an informal supper given by Professor Tolliver, who held the Chair of Political Science at Duncannon University, that he met Selma Madigan.

  With the exception of Tarran and Grimes and his officers all the guests were university people, students as well as instructors. Some were human and some were not. Much to his surprise Grimes found that he was getting along famously with a Shaara Princess, especially since he had cordially detested a Shaara Queen to whom he had been introduced at a reception in the Mayor’s Palace. (“And there I was,” he had complained afterwards to Beadle, “having to say nice things to a bedraggled old oversized bumblebee loaded down with more precious stones than this ship could lift . . . and with all that tonnage of diamonds and the like she couldn’t afford a decent voice box; it sounded like a scratched platter and a worn-out needle on one of those antique record players . . .”) This Shreen was—beautiful. It was an inhuman beauty (of course), that of a glittering, intricate mobile. By chance or design—design thought Grimes—her voice box produced a pleasant, almost seductive contralto, with faintly buzzing undertones. She was an arthroped, but there could be no doubt about the fact that she was an attractively female member of her race.

  She was saying, “I find you humans so fascinating, Captain. There is so much similarity between yourselves and ourselves, and such great differences. But I have enjoyed my stay on this planet . . .”

  “And will you be here much longer, Your Highness?”

  “Call me Shreen, Captain,” she told him.

  “Thank you, Shreen. My name is John. I shall feel honored if you call me that.” He laughed. “In any case, my real rank is only Lieutenant.”

  “Very well, Lieutenant John. But to answer your question. I fear that I shall return to my own world as soon as I have gained my degree in Socio-Economics. Our Queen Mother decided that this will be a useful qualification for a future ruler. The winds of change blow through our hives, and we must trim our wings to them.” And very pretty wings, too, thought Grimes.

  But Shreen was i
mpossibly alien, and the girl who approached gracefully over the polished floor was indubitably human. She was slender, and tall for a woman, and her gleaming auburn hair was piled high in an intricate coronal. Her mouth was too wide for conventional prettiness, the planes of her thin face too well defined. Her eyes were definitely green. Her smile, as she spoke, made her beautiful.

  “Another conquest, Shreen?” she asked.

  “I wish it were, Selma,” replied the Princess. “I wish that Lieutenant John were an arthroped like myself.”

  “In that case,” grinned Grimes, “I’d be a drone.”

  “From what I can gather,” retorted the human girl, “that’s all that spaceship captains are anyhow.”

  “Have you met Selma?” asked Shreen. Then she performed the introductions.

  “And are you enjoying the party, Mr. Grimes?” inquired Selma Madigan.

  “Yes, Miss Madigan. It’s a very pleasant change from the usual official function—but don’t tell anybody that I said so.”

  “I’m glad you like us. We try to get away from that ghastly Outposts of Empire atmosphere. Quite a number of our students are like Shreen here, quote aliens unquote . . .”

  “On my world you would be the aliens.”

  “I know, my dear, and I’m sure that Mr. Grimes does too. But all intelligent beings can make valuable contributions to each other’s cultures. No one race has a sacred mission to civilize the Galaxy.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t preach, Selma.” It was amazing how much expression the Princess could get out of her mechanical voice box. “But if you must, perhaps you can make a convert out of Lieutenant John.” She waved a thin, gracefully articulated forelimb and was away, gliding off to join a group composed of two human men, a young Hallichek and a gaudy pseudo-saurian from Dekkovar.

  Selma Madigan looked directly at Grimes. “And what do you think of our policy of integration?” she asked.

  “It has to come, I suppose.”

  “It has to come,” she mimicked. “You brassbound types are all the same. You get along famously with somebody like Shreen, because she’s a real, live Princess. But the Shaara royalty isn’t royalty as we understand it. The Queens are females who’ve reached the egg-laying stage, the Princesses are females who are not yet sexually developed. Still—Shreen’s a Princess. You have far less in common with her, biologically speaking, than you have with Oona—but you gave Oona the brush-off and fawned all over Shreen.”