Quite suddenly, with Grimes's baggage already loaded aboard Rim Griffon, the mess had blown up to the proportions of an interstellar incident. Port Grimes's Customs refused outward clearance to the ship. The Rim Confederacy's Ambassador sent an urgent message to Grimes requiring him to disembark at once—after which the ship would be permitted to leave—and to report forthwith to the Embassy. With all this happening, Grimes was in no fit state to listen to Captain Wenderby's complaints that he had lost a first class second officer and now would have to sail shorthanded on completion of discharge.
The Ambassador's own car took Grimes from the spaceport to the Embassy. It was a large building, ornately turreted, with metal-bound doors that could have withstood the charge of a medium tank. These opened as the Commodore dismounted from the vehicle, and within them stood saluting Marines. At least, thought Grimes, they aren't going to shoot me. Yet. An aide in civilian clothes escorted him to the Ambassador's office.
The Honorable Clifton Weeks was a short, fat man with all of a short, fat man's personality. "Sit down, Commodore," he huffed. Then, glowering over his wide, highly polished desk at the spaceman. "Now, sir. This Missenden character. What about him? Hey?"
"He seems to have flown the coop," said Grimes.
"You amaze me, sir." Week's glower became even more pronounced. "You amaze me, sir. Not by what you said, but by the way in which you said it. Surely you, even you, have some appreciation of the seriousness of the situation?"
"Spacemen have deserted before, in foreign ports. Just as seamen used to do—still do, probably. The local police have his description. They'll pick him up, and deport him when they get him. And we'll deport him, too, when he's delivered back to the Confederacy."
"And you still don't think it's serious? Hey?"
"Frankly, no, sir."
"Commodore, you made the first landing on this planet. But what do you know about it? Nothing, sir. Nothing. You haven't lived here. I have. I know that the Confederacy will have to fight to maintain the currently favorable trade relations that we still enjoy with Tharn. Already other astronautical powers are sniffing around the worlds of the Eastern Circuit."
"During the last six months, local time," said Grimes, "three of the Empire of Waverley's ships have called here. And two from the Shakespearean Sector. And one of Trans-Galactic Clippers' cargo liners. But, as far as the rulers of Tharn are concerned, the Confederacy is still the most favored nation."
"Who are the rulers of Tharn?" barked the Ambassador.
"Why, the priesthood."
The Ambassador mumbled something about the political illiteracy of spacemen, then got to his feet. He waddled to the far wall of his office, on which was hung a huge map of the planet in Mercator projection, beckoned to Grimes to follow him. From a rack he took a long pointer. "The island continent of Ausiphal . . ." he said, "And here, on the eastern seaboard, Port Grimes, and University City. Where we are now."
"Yes. . . ."
The tip of the pointer described a rhumb line, almost due east. "The other island continent of the northern hemisphere, almost the twin to this one. Climatically, politically—you name it."
"Yes?"
The pointer backtracked, then stabbed viciously. "And here, well to the west of Braziperu, the island of Tangaroa. Not a continent, but still a sizable hunk of real estate."
"So?"
"So Tangaroa's the last stronghold of the robber barons, the ruffians who were struggling for power with the priests and merchants when you made your famous first landing. How many years ago was it? Hey?"
"But what's that to do with Mr. Missenden?" Grimes asked. "And me?" he added.
"Your Mr. Missenden," the Ambassador said, "served in the navy of New Saxony. The people with whom he's been mixing in University City are Tangaroan agents and sympathizers. The priesthood has allowed Tangaroa to continue to exist—in fact, there's even trade between it and Ausiphal—but has been reluctant to allow the Tangaroans access to any new knowledge, especially knowledge that could be perverted to the manufacture of weaponry. Your Mr. Missenden would be a veritable treasure house of such knowledge."
"He's not my Mr. Missenden!" snapped Grimes.
"But he is, sir. He is. You engaged him when he came out to the Rim. You appointed him to ships running the Eastern Circuit. You engineered his discharge on this world, even."
"So what am I supposed to do about him?"
"Find him, before he does any real damage. And if you, the man after whom the spaceport was named, are successful it will show the High Priest just how much we of the Confederacy have the welfare of Tharn at heart."
"But why me? These people have a very efficient police force. And a man with a pale, freckled face and red hair will stand out like a sore thumb among the natives."
The Honorable Mr. Weeks laughed scornfully. "Green skin dye! Dark blue hair dye! Contact lenses! And, on top of all that, a physical appearance that's common on this planet!"
"Yes," admitted Grimes. "I might recognize him, in spite of a disguise. . . ."
"Good. My car is waiting to take you to the High Priest."
* * *
The University stood on a rise to the east of the city, overlooking the broad river and, a few miles to the north, the sea. It looked more like a fortress than a seat of learning, and in Tharn's turbulent past it had, more than once, been castle rather than academy.
Grimes respected the Tharnian priesthood, and the religion that they preached and practiced made sense to him than most of the other faiths of Man. There was something of Buddhism about it, a recognition of the fact that nothing is, but that everything is flux, change, a continual process of becoming. There was the equation of God with Knowledge—but never that infuriating statement made by so many Terran religions, that smug. "There are things that we aren't meant to know." There was a very real wisdom—the wisdom that accepts and rejects, and that neither accepts nor rejects just because a concept is new. There was a reluctance to rush headlong into an industrial revolution with all its miseries; and, at the same time, no delay in the adoption of techniques that would make the life of the people longer, easier and happier.
Night had fallen when the Embassy car pulled up outside the great gates of the University. The guard turned out smartly—but in these days their function was merely ceremonial; no longer was there the need to keep either the students in or the townsfolk out. On all of Tharn—save for Tangarora—the robber barons were only an evil memory of the past.
A black-uniformed officer led Grimes through long corridors, lit by bright electric bulbs, and up stairways to the office of the High Priest. He, an elderly, black-robed man, frail, his skin darkened by age to an opaque olive, had been a young student at the time of the first landing. He claimed to have met the Commodore on that occasion, but Grimes could not remember him. But he was almost the double of the old man who had held the high office then—a clear example of the job making the man.
"Commodore Grimes," he said. "Please be seated."
"Thank you, your Wisdom."
"I am sorry to have interfered with your plans, sir. But your Mr. Weeks insisted."
"He assured me that it was important."
"And he has . . . put you in the picture?"
"Yes."
The old man produced a decanter, two graceful glasses. He poured the wine. Grimes relaxed. He remembered that the Tharnian priesthood made a point of never drinking with anybody whom they considered an enemy, with nobody who was not a friend in the true sense of the word. There was no toast, only a ceremonial raising of goblets. The liquor was good, as it always had been.
"What can I do?" asked Grimes.
The priest shrugged. "Very little. I told Mr. Weeks that our own police were quite capable of handling the situation, but he said, 'It's his mess. He should have his nose rubbed in it.' " The old man's teeth were very white in his dark face as he smiled.
"Tales out of school, your Wisdom." Grimes grinned. "Now I'll tell one. Mr. Weeks doesn't lik
e spacemen. A few years ago his wife made a cruise in one of the T-G clippers—and, when the divorce came though, married the chief officer of the liner she traveled in."
The High Priest laughed. "That accounts for it. But I shall enjoy your company for the few weeks that you will have to stay on Tharn. I shall tell my people to bring your baggage from the Embassy to the University."
"That is very good of you." Grimes took another sip of the strong wine. "But I think that since I'm here I shall help in the search for Mr. Missenden. After all, he is still officially one of our nationals."
"As you please, Commodore. Tell me, if you were in charge how would you set about it?"
Grimes lapsed into silence. He looked around the office. All of the walls were covered with books, save one, and on it hung another of those big maps. He said, "He'll have to get out by sea, of course."
"Of course. We have no commercial airship service to Tangaroa, and the Tangaroans have no commerical airship service at all."
"And you have no submarines yet, and your aerial coast guard patrol will keep you informed as to the movements of all surface vessels. So he will have to make his getaway in a merchant vessel. . . . Would you know if there are any Tangaroan merchantmen in port?"
"I would know. There is one—the Kawaroa. She is loading textiles and agricultural machinery."
"Could she be held?"
"On what excuse, Commodore? The Tangaroans are very touchy people, and if the ship is detained their consul will at once send off a radio message to his government."
"A very touchy people, you say . . . and arrogant. And quarrelsome. Now, just suppose that there's a good, old-fashioned tavern brawl, as a result of which the master and his officers are all arrested. . . ."
"It's the sort of thing that could easily happen. It has happened, more than once."
"Just prior to sailing, shall we say? And then, with the ship immobilized, with only rather dim-witted ratings to try to hinder us, we make a thorough search—accommodations, holds, machinery spaces, storerooms, the works."
"The suggestion has its merits."
"The only snag," admitted Grimes, "is that it's very unlikely that the master and all three of his mates will rush ashore for a quick one just before sailing."
"But they always do," said the High Priest.
* * *
As they always had done, they did.
Grimes watched proceedings from the innkeeper's cubbyhole, a little compartment just above the main barroom with cunning peepholes in its floor. He would have preferred to have been among the crowd of seamen, fishermen and watersiders, but his rugged face was too well known on Tharn, and no amount of hair and skin dye could have disguised him. He watched the four burly, blue- and brass-clad men breasting the bar, drinking by themselves, tossing down pot after pot of the strong ale. He saw the fat girl whose dyed yellow hair was in vivid contrast to her green skin nuzzle up to the man who was obviously the Tangaroan captain. He wanted none of her—and Grimes sympathized with him. Even from his elevated vantage point he could see that her exposed overblown breasts were sagging, that what little there was of her dress was stained and bedraggled. But the man need not have brushed her away so brutally. She squawked like an indignant parrot as she fell sprawling to the floor with a display of fat, unlovely legs.
One of the other drinkers—a fisherman by the looks of him—came to the aid of beauty in distress. Or perhaps it was only that he was annoyed because the woman, in her fall, had jostled him, spilling his drink. Or, even more likely, he was, like the woman, one of the High Priest's agents. If such was the case, he seemed to be enjoying his work. His huge left hand grasped the captain's shoulder, turning him and holding him, and then right fist and left knee worked in unison. It was dirty, but effective.
After that, as Grimes said later, telling about it, it was on for young and old. The three mates, swinging their heavy metal drinking pots, rallied to the defense of their master. The fisherman picked up a heavy stool to use as his weapon. The woman, who had scrambled to her feet with amazing agility for one of her bulk, sailed into the fray, fell to a crouching posture, straightening abruptly, and one of the Tangaroan officers went sailing over her head as though rocket-propelled, crashing down on to a table at which three watersiders had been enjoying a quiet, peaceful drink. They, roaring their displeasure, fell upon the hapless foreigner with fists and feet.
The police officer with Grimes—his English was not too good—said, "Pity break up good fight. But must arrest very soon."
"You'd better," the Commodore told him. "Some of your people down there are pulling knives."
Yes, knives were out, gleaming wickedly in the lamplight. Knives were out, but the Tangaroans—with the exception of the victim of the lady and her stevedoring friends—had managed to retreat to a corner and there were fighting off all comers, although the captain, propped against the wall, was playing no great part in the proceedings. Like the fisherman, the two officers had picked up stools, were using them as both shields and weapons, deflecting flung pots and bottles with them, smashing them down on the heads and arms of their assailants.
The captain was recovering slowly. His hand went up to fumble inside the front of his coat. It came out, holding something that gleamed evilly—a pistol. But he fired it only once, and harmlessly. The weapon went off as his finger tightened on the trigger quite involuntarily, as the knife thrown by the yellow-haired slattern pinned his wrist to the wall.
And then the place was full of University police, tough men in black tunics who used their clubs quite indiscriminately and herded all those present out into the waiting trucks.
Quietly, Grimes and the police officer left their observation post and went down the back stairs. Outside the inn they were joined by twelve men—six police and six customs officials, used to searching ships. Their heels ringing on the damp cobblestones, they made their way through the misty night to the riverside, to the quays.
* * *
Kawaroa was ready for sea, awaiting only the pilot and, of course, her master and officers. Her derricks were stowed, her moorings had been singled up, and a feather of smoke from her tall, raked funnel showed that steam had been raised. She was not a big ship, but she looked smart, well maintained, seaworthy.
As Grimes and his party approached the vessel they saw that somebody had got there ahead of them, a dark figure who clattered hastily up the gangway. But there was no cause for hurry. The ship, with all her navigating officers either in jail or in the hospital, would not be sailing, and the harbor master had already been told not to send a pilot down to take her out.
There was no cause for hurry. . . .
But what was that jangling of bells, loud and disturbing in the still night? The engine room telegraph? The routine testing of gear one hour before the time set for departure?
And what were those men doing, scurrying along to foc'sle head and poop?
Grimes broke into a run, and as he did so he heard somebody shouting from Kawaroa's bridge. The language was unfamiliar, but the voice was not. It was Missenden's. From forward there was a thunk! and then a splash as the end of the severed headline fell into the still water. The last of the flood caught the ship's bows and she fell away from the wharf. With the police and customs officers, who had belatedly realized what was happening, well behind him, Grimes reached the edge of the quay. It was all of five feet to the end of the still-dangling gangway and the gap was rapidly widening. Without thinking. Grimes jumped. Had he known that nobody would follow him he would never have done so. But he jumped, and his desperate fingers closed around the outboard man-ropes of the accommodation ladder and somehow, paying a heavy toll of abrasions and lacerations, he was able to squirm upward until he was kneeling on the bottom platform. Dimly he was aware of shouts from the fast receding dock. Again he heard the engine room telegraph bells, and felt the vibration as the screw began to turn. So the after lines had been cut, too, and the ship was under way. And it was—he remembered the charts tha
t he had looked at—a straight run down river with absolutely no need for local knowledge. From above sounded a single, derisory blast from Kawaroa's steam whistle.
Grimes was tempted to drop from his perch, to swim back ashore. But he knew too much; he had always been a student of maritime history in all its aspects. He knew that a man going overboard from a ship making way through the water stands a very good chance of being pulled under and then cut to pieces by the screw. In any case, he had said that he would find Missenden, and he had done just that.
Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself erect, then walked up the clattering treads to deck level.
* * *
There was nobody on deck to receive him. This was not surprising; Missenden and the crew must have been too engrossed in getting away from the wharf to notice his pierhead jump. So . . . He was standing in an alleyway, open on the port side. Looking out, he saw the harbor lights sliding past, and ahead and to port there was the white-flashing fairway buoy, already dim, but from mist rather than distance. Inboard there was a varnished wooden door set in the white-painted plating of the 'midships house, obviously the entrance to the accommodation. Grimes opened it without difficulty—door handles will be invented and used by any being approximating to human structure. Inside there was a cross alleyway, brightly illuminated by electric light bulbs in well fittings. On the after bulkhead of this there was a steel door, and the mechanical hum and whine that came from behind it told Grimes that it led to the engine room. On the forward bulkhead there was another wooden door.
The Rim Gods Page 6
