To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga

by A Bertram Chandler

  His eyes fully opened, he sat up. Not far from him, sprawled supine on the grass, was Una. She was asleep still. She was completely naked—as he, he suddenly realized, was. (But Grimes, provided that the climate was suitable, had nothing against nudism.) She did not seem to be in any way harmed.

  Beyond her, glittering in the early morning sunlight, was an odd, metallic tangle. Machinery of some kind? Grimes got to his feet, went to investigate. He paused briefly by the golden-brown body of the sleeping girl, then carried on. She would keep. To judge by the faint smile that curved her full lips her dreams were pleasant ones.

  He looked down in wonderment at the two mechanisms on the ground. He stooped, grasped one of them by the handlebars, lifted it so that it stood on its two wire-spoked wheels. So this planet, wherever and whatever it was, must be inhabited, and by people human rather than merely humanoid . . . The machine was so obviously designed for use by a human being, might even have been custom made for Grimes himself. The grips fitted snugly into his hands. His right thumb found the bell lever, worked it back and forth, producing a cheerful tinkling.

  He was suddenly aware of the soft pressure of Una’s body on his bare back. Her long hair tickled his right ear as she spoke over his shoulder. “A bicycle! It’s what I was dreaming of, John! I was pedaling down Florenza Avenue, and somebody behind me was ringing his bell, and I woke up . . .”

  “Yes, a bicycle,” he agreed. “Two bicycles . . .”

  “Then there must be people. Human people . . .”

  “Mphm?” Grimes managed to ignore the contact of her body, although it required all his willpower to do so. He examined the mechanism that he was holding with care and interest. The frame was unpainted and bore neither maker’s name nor trademark anywhere upon it. Neither did the solid but resilient tires, the well-sprung saddle nor the electric headlamp. . . .

  He said, “You’re the expert, Una. What make would you say that these machines are?”

  “Stutz-Archers, of course.”

  “Just as you described to Panzen.”

  “Yes. But. . . .”

  Grimes laughed humorlessly. “I suppose that this is his idea of a joke. Although I’m surprised to learn that a robot, especially one who’s also a religious fanatic, has a sense of humor.”

  She pulled away from him, bent gracefully to lift her own machine from the grass. Her left foot found the broad pedal and her long, smoothly curved right leg flashed behind her as she mounted. She rode off, wobbling a little at first, then returned, circling him. He stood and watched. She was not the first naked woman he had seen—but she was the first one that he had seen riding a bicycle. The contrast between rigid yet graceful metal and far from rigid but delightfully graceful human flesh was surrealerotically stimulating.

  “Come on!” she cried. “Come on! This is great, after all those weeks in that bloody sardine can!”

  Clumsily he mounted. He had to stand on the pedals, keeping his balance with difficulty, until he got himself adjusted and could subside to the saddle without doing himself injury. She laughed back at him, then set off rapidly over the level ground toward a clump of dark trees on the near horizon.

  He followed her, pumping away, gaining on her slowly.

  He drew level with her.

  She turned to grin at him, played a gay, jingling little melody on her bell.

  He grinned back.

  Adam and Eve on bicycles, he thought. It was so utterly absurd, beautifully absurd, absurdly beautiful.

  Together they rode into the copse, into a clearing that gave at least the illusion of blessed privacy, dismounted. She came to him eagerly, willingly, and they fell to the soft grass together, beside their machines. Hastily at first and then savoring every moment they rid themselves of the frustrations that had made their lives in the boat a long misery.

  Chapter 20

  Grimes’ professional conscience and his belly both began to nag him.

  As an officer of the Survey Service, as a spaceman, he had had drummed into him often enough the procedure to be followed by castaways on a strange planet. He could almost hear the voice of the Petty Officer Instructor at the Space Academy. “Point One: You make sure that the air’s breathable. If it ain’t, there ain’t much you can do about it, anyhow. Point Two: Water. You have to drink something, and it ain’t likely that there’ll be any pubs around. Point Three: Tucker. Fruit, nuts, roots, or any animal you can kill with the means at your disposal. Bird’s eggs. Lizard’s eggs. The Test Kit in your lifeboat’ll tell you what’s edible an’ what’s not. If nothing’s edible—there’s always long pig. Whoever’s luckiest at drawing lots might still be alive when the rescue ship drops in. Point Four: Shelter. When it rains or snows or whatever you have ter have some place to huddle outa the cold. Point Five: Clothing. Animal skins, grass skirts, whatever’s handy. Just something ter cover yer hairy-arsed nakedness. You’ll not be wanting to wear your spacesuits all the time, an’ your longjohns won’t stand up to any wear an’ tear.”

  Point Two: Water, thought Grimes. Point Three: Tucker. . . . The other points did not much matter. The atmosphere was obviously breathable. There was no immediate need for shelter or clothing. But he was, he realized, both hungry and thirsty. He did not know how soon night would come on this world and things would have to be organized before darkness fell. He said as much to Una.

  She raised herself on one elbow, pointed with her free hand at the branches of the tree under which they were sprawled. She said, “There’s food. And probably drink as well.”

  Grimes looked. Glowing among the green foliage—more like moss it was than leaves—were clusters of globes the size and the color of large oranges. They looked tempting. They were, he discovered when he stood up, just out of his reach. She came behind him, clasped him about the waist, lifted. She was a strong girl. The fruit came away easily from their stems as soon as he got his hands on them. When she dropped him to the ground he had one in each hand and three others had fallen to the grass.

  He looked at them rather dubiously. The Test Kit in your lifeboat’ll tell you what’s edible an’ what’s not. There was, of course, a Test Kit in the boat—but where was the boat? He said, “I’m going to take a nibble, no more than a nibble, from one of these. Then we wait. If I don’t feel any ill effects after at least a couple of hours then we’ll know they’re safe.”

  She said, “We aren’t wearing watches.”

  He said, “We can estimate the time.”

  He nibbled at the fruit in his right hand. It had a thin skin, pierced easily by his teeth. The juice—sweet yet refreshingly acid—trickled down his chin. The pulp was firm but not hard. There was something of an apple about its flavor with a hint of the astringency of rhubarb.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  He swallowed cautiously. “It tastes all right,” he admitted.

  He sat down to wait for what—if anything—was going to happen. He looked at the orange globe, with its tiny exposed crescent of white flesh, in his hand. What he had taken had done no more than to relieve his thirst temporarily, had hardly dulled the keen edge of his hunger.

  She said, “This is good.”

  He looked at her in horror. She had picked one of the fallen fruit up from the grass, had already made a large bite in it, was about to take a second one. He put out a hand to stop her, but she danced back, avoiding him.

  “Put that down!” he ordered.

  “Not on your life, Buster. This is the first decent thing I’ve had to eat for weeks. And do you think that Panzen, after all that blah about protecting us from ourselves, would dump us down in some place where poison grows on trees?”

  She had something there, thought Grimes. He took another, large bite from his own fruit, murmuring, “Lord, the woman tempted me, and I fell . . .”

  “I don’t see any serpents around,” laughed Una.

  He laughed too.

  They finished what fruit was ready to hand, then got some more. Grimes collected the cores, with
their hard, bitter pips, and disposed of them in the undergrowth while Una sneered derisively at his tidiness. They were no longer thirsty, no longer hungry, but still, somehow, unsatisfied. Their meal had been deficient in neither bulk nor vitamins but was lacking in starch and protein. Having refreshed themselves they must now continue their exploration, to discover what resources were available to them.

  The garden, as they were beginning to think of it, was a roughly circular oasis, about five kilometers in diameter. The ground, save for gentle undulations within the northern perimeter, was level, was carpeted throughout with lawnlike grass. Among the low hills, if they could so be called, was the source of a spring of clear, cold water. The stream followed a winding course to the south, where it widened into a little lake that was deep enough for swimming, that was encircled by a beach of fine, white sand. It would have been deep enough and wide enough to sail a boat on, Grimes thought, if they’d had a boat to sail.

  There were widely spaced stands of trees, all with the mosslike foliage, some of which bore the golden fruit with which they were already familiar, others of which carried great, heavy bunches of what looked like the Terran banana and were not dissimilar in either texture or flavor. There were bushes with prickly branches, one variety of which was bright with scarlet blossoms and purple berries, which latter were tart and refreshing. Other bushes produced clumps of hard-shelled nuts which could, in the absence of any proper tools for the job, be broken open by hammering the hard shells against each other. The meat tasted as though it were rich in protein.

  No doubt a vegetarian diet would be adequate, Grimes thought, but he feared that before very long it would prove as boring and as unsatisfying as the lifeboat provisions had been. He said as much. Una said that he was always thinking about his belly but, on reflection, agreed that he had something. Both of them, after all, were members of a flesh-eating culture.

  But the garden was as rich in fauna as in flora. The castaways watched fishlike creatures and crustacea swimming and crawling in the stream and the lake. They found a sizeable flock of herbivores which, apart from their being six-legged, were remarkably like Terran sheep. And there were the birds, of course, brilliantly plumaged, noisy, although their general appearance was that of feathered reptiles. And where there were birds there must be eggs. . . .

  But. . . .

  Garden, or prison?

  The terrain surrounding the oasis was a terrifying desolation. The outflow from the lake, after crossing a sharply defined border that had to be artificial, seeped into dry, dusty, dark brown sand. And that was all that there was outside the garden—a drab, dun, level plain under a blazing sun, featureless, utterly dead, although whirling dust devils presented a mocking illusion of life. Grimes, over Una’s protests, tried to ride out on to it, but the wheels of his bicycle sank deeply into the powdery soil and he was obliged to dismount. He limped back to the grass, pushing his machine, his bare feet seared by the heat of the ground.

  He dropped the bicycle with a clatter, sat with his scorched feet submerged in the cool water of the last of the stream.

  He said, “Looks like we stay put.”

  “We have no option, John,” she replied. “But things could be worse here.”

  “Much worse. But that desert, Una. It’s not natural. This must be one of the worlds wiped clean of life in the war—and one of the planets selected by Zephalon, whoever or whatever he is, for making a fresh start.”

  “For maintaining, as our friend Panzen put it, the cycle,” she agreed. “But we don’t have to like it. I don’t like it. This whole setup, apart from these bicycles, is far too much like the Biblical legend of Eden. And what did Panzen say to us? ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth. . . .’”

  “That’s what Jehovah said to Noah after the Deluge, and that was a long time, many generations, after the original fun and games in Eden.”

  “Leave hair-splitting to the theologians, Buster. Eden or Ararat—so what? It’s the principle of it that I don’t like. I don’t know your views on parenthood, John, but I know mine. I’m just not a mother type. Children? I hate the little bastards.”

  “You were one yourself once.”

  “So were you. You still are, in many ways. That’s why I so very often feel a strong dislike for you.”

  “Mphm.” Grimes splashed with his feet in the water. Then he said, “Even so, we should be prepared to make sacrifices for posterity.”

  “Since when has posterity ever made any sacrifices for us? Oh, it’s all very well for you. You won’t have to bear the brats. But what about me? You may be a qualified navigator and gunnery officer and all the rest of it—but you’re certainly not a gynecologist, an obstetrician. Your knowledge of medicine is confined to putting a dressing on a cut finger. And since Panzen has stolen our boat you haven’t even got The Ship Captain’s Medical Guide to consult in an emergency.

  “So. . . . I’ve been selected to be the Mother of the New Race, there just ain’t going to be no New Race, and that’s final.”

  “Looks like we have to be careful,” muttered Grimes, staring into the clear, slowly flowing water.

  She laughed. “Don’t worry, lover boy. Yet. My last shot is still effective.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ll know all right when it’s worn off. So will you. Until then . . .”

  Her black mood had suddenly evaporated, and there was so much of her, and all of it good, and for a brief while Grimes was able to forget his worries.

  Chapter 21

  Life in the garden was pleasant—much of the time far better than merely pleasant—but it had its drawbacks. Lack of proper shelter was one of them. The days were comfortably hot and it was no hardship to go naked—but the nights, under that cloudless sky, were decidedly chilly. Luckily Grimes had foreseen this, and before sunset of the first day had, with Una’s help, managed to build a shelter. Slender branches were broken from convenient trees and lesser foliage torn from bushes as material for this crude attempt at architecture. The most primitive human aborigine would have sneered at the ramshackle humpy, but it was better than nothing. It would do as long as it didn’t rain. But what were the seasons on this world? There almost certainly would be seasons—very few planets have no axial tilt. Was this high summer, or autumn, or (optimistically) winter? Whatever it was, a chill wind arose at night and the hut was drafty, and Grimes, in spite of the warmth of Una’s body against his, would willingly have swapped his bicycle for a good sleeping bag.

  There was—Grimes insisted on doing everything by the book—the problem of digging a latrine trench with only not-very-sharp sticks for tools.

  There was the lack of fire. They had light, when they required it, from the bicycles’ headlamps. These, thought Grimes, must be battery powered, and reasoned that the cells must be charged from dynamos built into the thick hubs of the rear wheels. He hoped that he might be able to start a fire with an electrical spark. Then he discovered that it was quite impossible to take the lamps apart. Their casings were in one piece, and the glass of the lenses seemed to be fused to the surrounding metal rims. The wiring, presumably, ran from dynamo to lamp inside the tubular framework. In the entire structure of the machines there was a total absence of screws, nuts and bolts, even of rivets. They had been made, somehow, all in one piece.

  Grimes knew, in theory, how to make fire by friction, using two suitable pieces of wood. To shape such pieces he needed tools—and there were no tools. There were no stones—on the surface of the soil, at least—from which hand axes or the like might be fashioned. So, not very hopefully, he started to dig, using a stick to break through the turf, and then his hands. The earth was sandy, not unlike that of the desert outside the garden. Una, watching him, made unkind remarks about a dog burying a bone. “If I had a bone,” Grimes growled, “I wouldn’t be burying it! It would be a weapon, a tool . . .”

  She said, “But there must be bones around here somewhere. Those things . . .” she gestured toward
a flock of the sheeplike animals drifting slowly over the cropped grass, “ . . . must die sometime, somewhere.”

  “Mphm?” Grimes stood up slowly in the hole that he had been digging. He was sweating profusely and his naked body was streaked and patched with dirt. “But perhaps they were put here at the same time as we were. There hasn’t been any mortality yet.”

  “Yet. But you could kill one.”

  “With my bare hands? And I’d have to catch it first. Those brutes can run when they want to. And what about skinning it? With my teeth?”

  She laughed. “Oh, John, John, you’re far too civilized—even though with your beard and long hair you’re starting to look like a caveman! You want a gun, so you can kill from a distance.”

  “A gun’s not the only long-range weapon,” he muttered. “A bow and arrow? Mphm? Should be able to find some suitable wood. . . . But what about the bowstring? Vegetable fibers? Your hair?”

  “Leave my hair alone!” she snapped.

  “But we’ll think about it,” he said. “And when we get really hungry for meat we’ll do something about it.”

  He climbed out of the hole, ran to the lake, splashed in. He scrubbed his body clean with wet sand from the narrow beach. He plunged into the cool water to rinse off. She joined him. Later, when they sprawled on the grass in the hot sunlight, the inevitable happened.

  It was always happening.

  It was always good—but how long would it, could it last?

  A few mornings later, when they were awakened by the rising sun, Grimes noticed a smear of blood on the inside of Una’s thigh. “Have you hurt yourself?” he asked solicitously.

  “Don’t be so bloody stupid!” she snarled.