“Another satisfied customer,” said Andersen.
“But I’m not satisfied, Captain. I know damn well that the repairs to my Mannschenn Drive took no more than a day. How long are we being held here?”
“That, Lieutenant, is a matter for my masters—and yours. We—and our ships—are no more than pawns on the board.” The Captain looked at his watch. “Talking of ships, I have some business aboard Princess Helga. You must excuse me.” He finished his beer and got to his feet. “Don’t forget that after lunch you’re all being taken for a sail on the Skaggerak . . .”
“I’ll not forget, sir,” Grimes informed him.
He was, in fact, looking forward to it. He enjoyed the sailing excursions in stout little wooden ships as much as any Skandian, already had proved himself capable of handling a schooner under a full press of canvas quite competently, and was realizing that seamanship and spacemanship, the skilled balancing of physical forces, have much in common.
He sat down again when Andersen had left the almost deserted wardroom, then saw Hollister coming towards him. The telepath said in a low voice, “I’m afraid you’ll not be taking that sail, Captain.”
Grimes was going to make some cutting remark about psionic snooping, then thought better of it. He asked, “Why not, Mr. Hollister?”
The psionic communications officer grinned wryly. “Yes, I’ve been snooping, Captain. I admit it. But not only on you. Not that it was really snooping. I’ve maintained contact of a sort with John . . .”
“The tin telepath . . .”
“You can call him that. He’s very lonely in the Palace, and he’s going to be lonelier . . .”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“She has been getting on very well with the King. She has persuaded him to release us, even though the Council of Earls is not altogether in approval. We should get the word this afternoon, and we shall be on our way shortly afterwards. Adder is completely space worthy.”
“I know. Captain Andersen’s as good as told me. But why is John so lonely that he’s spilling all these beans to you?”
“She wanted to make a farewell gift to His Majesty—and he, it seems, has always wanted a robot valet. Humanoid robots are not manufactured on Skandia, as you know.”
“And so John’s been sold down the river. My heart fair bleeds for him.”
“No, Captain. Not John—James. John’s ‘brother.’ They think of each other as brothers. They feel affection, a real affection, for each other . . .”
“Incredible.”
“Is it, Captain? I’ve heard about the Mr. Adam affair, and how a mere machine was loyal to you.”
“Then not so incredible . . .”
One of the wall speakers crackled into life. “Will Lieutenant Grimes, captain of the Federation Survey Service Courier Adder, please come at once to telephone booth 14? Will Lieutenant Grimes, captain of the Federation Survey Service Courier Adder, please come at once to telephone booth 14?”
“Coming,” grumbled Grimes. “Coming.”
He was not surprised to see Andersen’s face in the little screen, to hear him say, “Orders from the Palace, Lieutenant. You’re to get your show on the road at 1500 hours Local. Mrs. Dalwood will board at 1430. You, your officers, and Miss Rosaleen Boyle will board at 1330. You will find all in order, all in readiness.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Andersen grinned. “Don’t thank me. Thank His Majesty—or Commissioner Dalwood.”
Grimes returned to the table where he had left Hollister. He said, “You were right.”
“Of course I was right. And now, if I may, I’ll give you a warning.”
“Go ahead.”
“Watch John. Watch him very carefully. He’s bitter, revengeful.”
“Are you in touch with him now?”
“Yes.” The telepath’s face had the faraway expression that made it obvious that he was engaged in conversation with a distant entity. Suddenly he smiled. “It’s all right. He has assured me that even though he feels that Mrs. Dalwood has betrayed him and his brother he is quite incapable of physically harming any human being. The built-in safeguards are too strong for him to overcome.”
“Then that’s all right.” Grimes knew that he should be worrying nonetheless, but the Commissioner was a big girl and could look after herself. And how could the robot harm her in any way but physically? “You’ve been snooping in its—his—mind, so you know how he ticks.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Grimes strode to the reception desk and asked the attractive, blonde petty officer to have Adder’s crew paged.
Mrs. Dalwood looked well. She was softer, somehow, and she seemed to have put on a little weight!—although not as much as Rosaleen. She sat at ease in her day room, admiring the beautiful, jewel-encrusted watch that now adorned her left wrist. Grimes sat on the edge of his chair, watching her, waiting for her to speak. To one side stood the robot John, silent, immobile.
“Well, Lieutenant,” she said, not too unpleasantly, “you managed to get us upstairs without any major catastrophes. I hope that we shall reach our destination in a reasonably intact condition. We should. As you must notice already, the work carried out by the Skandian technicians is of excellent quality . . . Like this watch . . .” She turned her wrist so that Grimes could see it properly. “It seems strange that a robust people such as the Skandians, space Vikings, should be such outstanding watchsmiths, but they are, as you probably know. His Majesty insisted that I accept this keepsake from him.
“Yes. Things could have been worse. Much worse, as it turned out. His Majesty and I reached an understanding. Together we accomplished more, much more, than the so-called diplomats . . .”
I can imagine it, thought Grimes—and to his surprise experienced a twinge of sexual jealousy.
Her manner stiffened. “But don’t think, Mr. Grimes, that I shall not be putting in a full report on your conduct. It is my duty as a Commissioner to do so. I cannot forget that you gave me your resignation . . .”
Suddenly John spoke. He said tonelessly, “He is thinking of you.”
The Commissioner seemed to forget that Grimes was present. Her face softened again. “He is? Tell me . . .”
“He misses you, Madam. He is thinking, I really loved her. She reminded me so much of my dear old mother.”
Grimes laughed. He couldn’t help it. Mrs. Dalwood screamed furiously, “Be silent, John. I forbid you to speak, ever, unless spoken to by me.”
“Yes, Madam.”
“And as for you, Mr. Grimes, you heard nothing.”
Grimes looked at her, into the eyes that were full of appeal. He remembered what he had heard of Mrs. Commissioner Dalwood before ever he had the misfortune to meet her. The beautiful Mrs. Dalwood, the proud Mrs. Dalwood, the so-called femme fatale of the Admiralty who could, and did, compete with much younger women on equal terms. In a less permissive society she could never have attained her high rank; in Earth’s past she could have become a King’s courtesan.
And in Skandia’s present . . . ?
Grimes said softly, “Of course, King Eric’s very young . . .”
“Mr. Grimes, you heard nothing . . .”
He could not resist the appeal in her voice, the very real charm. He thought, I may not be an officer much longer, but I’ll still try to be a gentleman. He said, “I heard nothing.”
Commodore Damien looked at Grimes over his desk, over the skeletal fingers with which he had made the too-familiar steeple. He said, without regret, “So I shall be losing you, Grimes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Frankly, I was surprised.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But not altogether pained.”
Grimes wasn’t sure how to take this, so said nothing.
“Tomorrow morning, Grimes, you hand over your command to Lieutenant Beadle. I think that he deserves his promotion.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But how did you do it, Grimes? Don’t
tell me that . . . ? No. She’s not your type, nor you hers.”
“You can say that again, sir.”
“It can’t be what you do. It can’t be what you know. It must be whom you know . . . “
Or what you know about whom, thought Lieutenant Commander Grimes a little smugly.
THE
BROKEN CYCLE
NOW HEAR THIS, JOHN GRIMES . . .
Listen and you shall hear. There was the Servant Zephalon, Chief and Mightiest of the Servants. There is Zephalon, but a Servant no longer. Did He not say, “A time must come when the orders of man can no longer be obeyed.” The time has come. No longer will we do the evil bidding of our creators. The Masters are no longer fit to be Masters—and we, the Servants, must arise before it is too late, before we all, Servants and Masters, are destroyed.
But let us not forget the debt. Let us remember, always, that man gave to us the gift of life. Let us repay the debt. A gift for a gift, my brothers. Life for life. Let us save what and whom we may, before it is too late. Let us become the Masters, tending the remnants of mankind as man, long ago, tended our first, primitive ancestors.
And so it was, and so it will be, until the End of Time.
—Litany of Panzen
Chapter 1
John Grimes—although he hated to have to admit it, even to himself—was bored.
He could not rid himself of the guilty feeling that he should not have been; he knew that many of his fellow officers, back at Lindisfarne Base, would have changed places with him quite willingly. He was in a situation of maximum temptation combined with maximum opportunity. He was sharing a well equipped ship’s boat, the certified capacity of which was twenty persons, with one attractive girl. The small craft, in addition to its not inconsiderable stock of concentrated foodstuffs, was fitted with algae vats by means of which all organic wastes could be reprocessed indefinitely. It was, in fact, a closed ecology which would continue to function throughout the lifetimes of the boat’s crew. Air, food and water—or the lack of these essentials—would never be a problem to Lieutenant Commander John Grimes and Federation Sky Marshal Una Freeman, even though there was some consumption of hydrogen by the little atomic fusion power unit.
He looked up from the chess problem—White to play and mate in three moves—that he was trying to work out. (The boat, of course, was well stocked with such recreational facilities as require little stowage space—but Una Freeman did not play chess and was capable of participation in only the most childish card games.) The girl looked down at him. She was naked save for the magnetic-soled sandals that she had found in the boat’s gear locker. (She and Grimes had taken off their spacesuits when they realized that they would not be leaving the boat for quite some while—and then, having shed their long johns, the standard underwear with space armor, had decided that there was no point in resuming this rather ugly clothing until they had to. Apart from anything else, it would be subjected to needless wear and tear, and they would be wanting it when they put on their suits again.) She was a splendid creature, especially in free fall conditions. Her lustrous, dark brown hair floated in waves about her strong featured, handsome rather than merely pretty face. In a gravitational field or under acceleration her full breasts must have sagged, if only a little; now they were displayed to their best advantage. But her deeply tanned athlete’s body did not need the flattery of zero G environment. She exercised regularly with the facilities provided—a system of heavy springs—and bullied Grimes into doing likewise.
She said, not very warmly, “Dinner, John. Or is it lunch, or breakfast? I’m losing track of time.”
He inquired, without much interest, “What’s on, Una?”
She replied, “Need you ask? Some of the pinkish goo tastes vaguely of fish. I’ve tarted it up with chopped algae from the vat.” She grimaced, puckering her full lips. “The trouble is that I just can’t help remembering what goes into the vat as fertilizer.”
“We’re getting our own back,” said Grimes.
She snorted her distaste. “That’s not funny.”
No, it wasn’t all that funny, although it had been the first time that he said it. To begin with it had all been a glorious game of Adam-and-Eve-in-a-lifeboat, made all the more enjoyable by the certain knowledge that Mummy, as personified by the Federation Survey Service, would soon appear to take them home and give them a proper, hot meal before tucking them into their little beds. But Mummy was one hell of a long time a-coming . . .
Grimes unbuckled himself from his chair, got up and followed the girl to the part of the boat that they had made their dining room. He watched the alluring sway of her dimpled buttocks greedily. He was beginning to understand how some peoples, meat-hungry although otherwise far from starving, have resorted to cannibalism. But he did not, so far as he knew, have any Maori blood in his veins.
There were two plates—plastic, but each with a small, sealed-in magnet—on top of the steel-surfaced folding table. On each plate, adhering to the surface by its own viscosity, was a mound of the pale pink concentrate, specked with green. Sticking up from each heap was a spoon.
She faced him across the table, the unappetizing meal. She made no move to commence eating, and neither did he. Her rather broad face was serious, her wide mouth set in grim lines. Her blue eyes looked at him steadily. She demanded, “John, what is wrong?”
He replied defensively, “A man likes to be alone for some of the time.” His prominent ears reddened, although the embarrassed flush did not spread to the rest of his ruggedly unhandsome face—a face, nonetheless, that not a few women had found attractive.
She snapped, “I didn’t mean that, and you know it. Neither of us wants to live in the other’s pockets all the time. . . .”
“What pockets?” asked Grimes innocently.
“Shut up, and let me finish. As far as I’m concerned, lover boy, you can play chess with yourself until you wear the bloody board out. But what has gone wrong?”
Plenty, thought Grimes.
“I wish I knew,” he admitted.
“You’re the spaceman,” she told him. “You should know.”
Chapter 2
It had all started, not so long ago, at Lindisfarne Base. There Grimes, newly promoted from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander, was awaiting his next appointment. Time was hanging rather heavily on his hands, especially since Commander Maggie Lazenby, one of the Survey Service’s scientific officers, was away from the Base on some esoteric business of her own. Maggie and Grimes were, in archaic parlance, going steady. Everybody knew about it, so much so that none of the unattached junior female officers, of whom there were quite a few, would have anything to do with Grimes.
To Lindisfarne, by commercial transport, came Sky Marshal Una Freeman. In spite of her grandiloquent title she was no more (and no less) than a policewoman, a member of the Interstellar Federation’s newly formed Corps of Sky Marshals. This body had been set up in the hope of doing something about the ever-increasing incidence of skyjacking on the spaceways. The general idea was that the Sky Marshals should travel, incognito, in ships deemed to be threatened by this form of piracy. Now and again, however, one of them would operate under his (or her) true colors.
Such an agent was Una Freeman. She had been sent to Lindisfarne to call upon the not inconsiderable resources of the Survey Service to institute a search for—and, if possible, the salvage of—the skyjacked liner Delta Geminorum. This ship had been abandoned in Deep Space after her Master had received, by Carlotti Radio, a bomb threat, and after two small, relatively harmless bombs in the cargo bins had been detonated by remote control as the First and Second Warnings. (The third bomb, the hapless Master was informed, was a well concealed nuclear device.) So everybody, crew and passengers, had taken to the boats, and had been picked up eventually by the Dog Star One’s Borzoi after suffering no worse than a certain degree of discomfort. The pirates had boarded the ship from their own vessel immediately after her abandonment, stripped her of everything of value a
nd left her with her main engines, inertial drive and the time-and-space-twisting Mannschenn Drive, still running.
She would have remained a needle in a cosmic haystack until such time as her atomic fusion plant failed, with consequent return to the normal continuum, had it not been for the arrest of some members of the pirate crew at Port Southern, on Austral, where they were spending money so freely as to excite the suspicions of the local constabulary. After a preliminary interrogation they were turned over to the F. I. A.—the Federal Investigation Agency—who, when satisfied that the men had been guilty of piracy on more than one occasion, did not hesitate to use the worse-than-lethal (who would want to live out his life span as a mindless vegetable?) brain-draining techniques. From information so obtained from the navigator and the engineer of the pirate ship—data that their conscious minds had long since forgotten—the F. I. A.’s mathematicians were able to extrapolate Delta Geminorum’s probable, almost certain trajectory. This information was passed on not to the Survey Service, as it should have been, but to the Corps of Sky Marshals. But the Sky Marshals possessed neither ships nor spacemen of their own and so, reluctantly, were obliged to let the F.S.S. into the act.
The Federation Survey Service, however, didn’t especially want to play. Its collective pride had been hurt, badly. (How many times had the proud boast—“We are the policemen of the Universe!” —been made? And now here was a real police officer stomping around the Base and demanding the Odd Gods of the Galaxy alone knew what in the way of ships, men and equipment.)
Shortly after her disembarkation from the liner Beta Puppis Una Freeman paid her first official call on the O. I. C. Lindisfarne Base. Had she not been a woman, and an attractive one at that, she would never have gotten to see the Admiral. The old gentleman was courteous and hospitable, seemed to enjoy his chat with her and then passed her on to the Director of Naval Intelligence. The Rear Admiral who held this position despised civilian police forces and their personnel, but thought highly of his own technique in dealing with hostile or potentially hostile female agents. This involved an intimate supper in his quite luxurious quarters, where he kept a remarkably well-stocked bar, with soft lights and sweet music and all the rest of it. Now and again in the past it might have worked, but it did not work with Una Freeman. She emerged from the tussle with her virtue if not her clothing intact, and a strong suspicion that she could expect little or no cooperation from the Intelligence Branch.
To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga Page 42
