The Rim Gods

by A Bertram Chandler

  "Just as differences between members of the same species are," she said. "Some like raw fish and seaweed. Some don't."

  Grimes and the Odd Gods

  Faraway Quest, the Rim Worlds Confederacy survey ship, was still berthed at Port Fortinbras, on Elsinore. She was still awaiting replacements for the rotors of her outmoded inertial drive unit. More than once, in strongly worded Carlottigrams, Commodore Grimes had requested, demanded almost, that he be allowed to put the repairs in the hands of one of the several local shipyards. Each time he received a terse reply from the Rim Worlds Admiralty's Bureau of Engineering which, translated from Officialese to English, boiled down to Father knows best. He unburdened his soul to the Rim Worlds ambassador on Elsinore.

  "Can't you do something, Your Excellency?" he asked. "There's my ship been sitting here for weeks now. My crew's becoming more and more demoralized . . . ."

  "As well I know, Commodore," the ambassador agreed. "You've some hearty drinkers aboard your vessel, and when they drink they brawl. Perhaps you could stop the shore leave of the worst offenders . . . ."

  "And have them drinking and brawling aboard the Quest? Or, if I really put my foot down, slouching around in a state of sullen sobriety? There's only one thing to do. Get them off this bloody planet and back where they belong, back to their wives and families or, in the case of the tabbies, to their boyfriends."

  "Some of your female personnel are even greater nuisances than the men," said the ambassador.

  "You're telling me. But as an ambassador, Your Excellency, you pile on far more Gs than a mere commodore, a commodore on the reserve list at that. Can't you do something?"

  "I've tried, Grimes. I've tried. But it's all a matter of economics. The Confederacy just does not have the funds in any bank in the Shakespearean Sector to pay for a major repair and replacement job. Those rotors will have to be manufactured on Lorn, and then carried out here in whatever ship of the Rim Runners fleet is due to make a scheduled call to Elsinore . . . ."

  "And meanwhile," the commodore said, "there are mounting port dues. And the wages that everybody aboard Faraway Quest is getting for doing nothing. And the three square meals a day, plus snacks, that all hands expect as their right. And . . . ."

  "I'm a diplomat, Grimes, not an economist."

  "And I'm just a spaceman. Oh, well. Theirs not to reason why, and all that. And now I'll be getting back to my ship, Your Excellency."

  "What's the hurry, Commodore? I was hoping that you would stay for a few drinks and, possibly, dinner."

  "I have an appointment," said Grimes.

  The ambassador laughed. "Another interview for Kitty's Korner? I always watch that program myself. And I've heard that Station Yorick's ratings have improved enormously since Miss Kelly persuaded you to treat her viewers and listeners to your never-ending series of tall tales."

  "Not so tall," growled Grimes.

  "Perhaps not. You have had an interesting life, haven't you?"

  An hour or so later, in his sitting room aboard the old ship, Grimes and Kitty Kelly were enjoying the simple yet satisfying meal that had been brought to them by one of the stewardesses. There were sandwiches constructed from crisply crusty new bread, straight from Faraway Quest's own bakery, and thick slices of juicy Waldegren ham, the flavor of which derived from the smoldering sugar pine sawdust over which the meat had been smoked. (Almost alone among the ship's personnel, Grimes liked this delicacy; that was a good supply of it in the ship's cool stores. He was pleased that Kitty, hitherto inclined to be an unadventurous eater, enjoyed it, too.) There was a variety of cheeses—Ultimo Blue, Aquarian Sea Cream, and Caribbean Pineapple and Pepper—altogether with assorted pickles and the especially hot radishes that Grimes had insisted be cultivated in the ship's hydroponic farm. There was Australian beer—some while ago Grimes had done a private deal with the master of a Federation star tramp not long out from Earth—served in condensation-bedewed pewter pots.

  Nibbling a last radish with her strong while teeth, Kitty slumped back in her chair. Grimes regarded her appreciatively. As she always did, she was wearing green, this time a long, filmy, flowing dress with long, loose sleeves. Above it, the food and the drink had brought a slight flush to the normal creamy pallor of her face, a healthy pallor, set off by the wide scarlet slash of her lips. Below her black glossy hair, this evening braided into a sort of coronet, her startlingly blue eyes looked back at Grimes.

  She murmured, "Thank you for the meal, Commodore. It was very good."

  He asked, "And will you sing for your supper?"

  She said, "You're the one who's going to do the singing." She looked at the bulkhead clock. "It's almost time that we got the show on the road again. And what are you going to talk about tonight? Your adventures as a pirate?"

  "Not a pirate," he corrected her stiffly. "A privateer."

  "Who knows the difference? And who cares? Or what about when you were governor general of that anarchist planet?"

  "Too long a story, Kitty," he said. "And too complicated. By All the Odd Gods of the Galaxy, there never were, before or since, such complications!"

  She said thoughtfully, "That . . . that oath you often use . . . By All the Odd Gods of the Galaxy . . . Did you ever get tangled with any of these Odd Gods?"

  He told her, "I'm an agnostic. But . . . there have been experiences."

  She got up from her chair, went to the case containing her audiovisual recorder, opened it, pulled out the extensions with their lenses and microphones.

  She said, peering into the monitor screen. "Yes, that's it. Pipe in one hand, tankard in the other . . . And now, talk."

  "What about?"

  "The Odd Gods, of course. Or, at the very least, One Odd God."

  He said, "Oh, all right. But I must get my pipe going first."

  * * *

  As you know (he started at last), I left the Federation Survey Service under something of a cloud after the Discovery mutiny. For a while I was yachtmaster to the Baroness Michelle d'Estang, an El Doradan aristocrat, and on the termination of this employment she gave me the yacht's pinnance, which was practically a deep-space ship in miniature, as a parting gift. I called her—the pinnance, not the baroness—Little Sister and set up shop as Far Traveler Courier Services. I'd carry anything or anybody anywhere, as long as I got paid. There would be small parcels of special cargo. There would be people waiting to get to planets well off the normal interstellar trade routes.

  It was a living.

  I didn't make a fortune, but there was usually enough in the bank to pay port's dues and such and to keep me in life's little luxuries. It was lonely for quite a lot of the time but, now and again, there were passengers who were pleasant enough company . . . Yes, female ones sometimes, if you must know. But it was the female ones who usually got me into all kinds of trouble. Mphm.

  Well, I'd carried a small parcel of urgently needed medical supplies to a world called Warrenhome—no, the inhabitants weren't descended from rabbits but the name of the captain who made the first landing was Warren—where they were having some sort of plague. A mutated virus. After I'd made delivery and received the balance of the payment due to me, I lost no time in placing the usual advertisements in the usual media. I decided that I'd wait around for a week and then, if nothing came up, get off the planet. There was talk that that virus, a nasty one, might mutate again.

  Luckily (I thought at the time) I didn't have long to wait for my next job. I returned to Little Sister, after a yarn with the Port Captain, just before any usual lunchtime. I saw that a tall woman was approaching the airlock door from the opposite direction to myself. She was dressed in severe, ankle-length black with touches of white at throat and wrists. On her head was an odd sort of hat, black, with a wide, stiff brim. The skin of her strong-featured face was white; even the lips of her wide mouth were pale. Her eyes were a hard, steely blue.

  She stated rather than asked, "Captain Grimes."

  Her voice was deep for a woman, resonant.r />
  I said, "I have that honor, Miz . . . ?"

  She said, "You may call me Madame Bishop."

  I asked, "And what can I do for you, Miz Bishop?"

  She said coldly, "Bishop is my title, Captain Grimes, not my surname. I understand that you are seeking employment for yourself and your ship. I shall employ you."

  I let us both into the ship, seated her at the table in the cabin while I went through into the little galley. I asked her what she would like to drink. She told me coldly that she would appreciate a glass of water. I brought her one, and a pink gin for myself. She looked at this disapprovingly. I pulled out my pipe and filled it. She as good as ordered me to put it away. It wasn't so much the words that she used but the way in which she said them. But I had been learning, ever since I set up in business for myself, that the customer is always right. I put my pipe back in my pocket.

  She asked, "How soon can you lift ship, Captain Grimes?"

  I said, "As soon as I've paid on my bills and cleared outwards."

  "Today?"

  "Yes."

  She asked, "Are you capable of making the voyage to Stagatha?"

  I'd never heard of that world, but Little Sister was capable of going just about anywhere in the galaxy. I told her yes.

  "What will be the single fare for one passenger?"

  I couldn't answer this at once. I didn't know where Stagatha was or how far it was from Warrenhome. I asked her to wait while I switched on the playmaster. She told me that she did not approve of frivolous entertainment. I told her that the playmaster screen served as the read-out for Little Sister's computer and library bank. I don't think she believed me until the requested data began to appear.

  In a short while I had all the information required. The voyage would take six weeks. Then there were all the various expenses accruing over this period—depreciation, insurance, consumption of stores, the salary that I—as owner—was paying to myself as master. And so on, and so on. After all, I had to show a profit. I told her how much I should be asking.

  She said, "We are not a rich church, Captain Grimes, but we are not a poor one. And has it not been written that the laborer is worthy of his hire?" She allowed herself the merest hint of a smile. "Too, you are the only laborer available at this moment of time."

  "Is this voyage a matter of some urgency?" I asked.

  "The Lord's work is always urgent," she told me.

  And so it was that I contracted to carry Bishop Agatha Lewis, of the Church Of The Only Salvation, from Warrenhome to Stagatha.

  * * *

  He paused, looking down into his now-empty tankard. Kitty refilled it for him, refilled her own.

  She said, "So far we haven't had any Odd Gods. These Only Salvation people seem to have been just another nut cult, probably with their own translation of the Christian Bible slanted to make it fit their own beliefs."

  He said, "Even without special translations you can interpret the Bible in a very wide variety of ways, find in it Divine Authority for just about every aberration of which the human race is capable. But the Church Of The Only Salvation did have its own Bible. Bishop Lewis gave me a copy. I tried to read it but the writing was appallingly bad. As far as I'm concerned there is only one Bible. The King James version."

  * * *

  After she was gone, to get herself organized, I made myself a sandwich lunch and tried to get more information about Stagatha from the library bank. It was an Earth-type planet with about the same proportion of land to water. The inhabitants were humanoid. I've often wondered why there are so many humanoid, as near as dammit human, races throughout the galaxy. Was there some Expansion, from Somewhere, before the dawn of history? But on every world there is the evolutionary evidence that cannot be denied that Man descended from lower life forms. Or is there some Divine Plan?

  But I'm just a spaceman, not a philosopher.

  There were photographs of typical Stagathans. These could have been taken on practically any beach on Earth or any Man-colonized planet. The males were, to all outward appearances, well-endowed (but not abnormally so) men. The females tended to be busty, but firm-breasted. The only thing odd was that these photographs had been taken in the streets of a Stagathan town, not at a seaside resort. I finally got around to looking at the vehicles and buildings in the background. Electric cars (I thought). Dwellings, offices, shops—but nothing over one story and everything with a flat roof.

  And that was all. There was no trade with other worlds, no exports, no imports. There had been very little contact with outsiders since the first landing by Commodore Shakespeare, that same Commodore Shakespeare after whom your Shakespearean Sector was named. Every so often some minor vessel of the Survey Service would drop in, just showing the flag and for rest and recreation. But why, I wondered, should the Church Of The Only Salvation be interested in the planet?

  But I had things to do. Bills to pay, outward clearance to be obtained and all the rest of it. Not much was required in the way of stores; my tissue culture vats were in good order and I could program the autochef to turn out quite fair imitations of Scotch whiskey and London gin. Flour I needed, and fresh eggs, and a few cases of the not-too-bad local table wines. Regarding these, I based my order on what I regarded as normal consumption by two people for the duration of the voyage. I could have cut that order by half . . . .

  I made my pre-liftoff checks. Everything was in order, as it almost always was. She was a reliable little brute, was Little Sister. When I was walking around the outside of her, just admiring her, a small motorcade approached from the spaceport gates. There were four archaic-looking ground cars, black-painted, steam-driven, each emitting a thick cloud of dirty smoke from its funnel. From the first one Bishop Agatha Lewis disembarked, followed by half a dozen men and women, dressed in plain black and with broad-brimmed black hats like the one she was wearing. The men were all heavily bearded. Similar parties got out from the other three cars.

  I walked up to the she-bishop and threw her a smart salute. She did not quite ignore me, but her curt nod was of the don't-bother-me-now variety. She made no attempt to introduce me to the assembled elders and deaconesses and deacons or whatever they were. Oh, well, I was only the captain. And the owner. I was only a space-going cabbie. I went back inside the ship to sulk.

  Before long an elderly woman, followed by four men, carrying between them two heavy trunks, came in. She asked me, quite politely, "Where do we put these?" I showed them. The men went back outside.

  She sat down at the table, noticed the tea things that I had not cleared away yet after my afternoon break.

  She asked, in a whisper, "Do you think that I might have a cup, Captain?"

  I made a fresh pot and, with a clean cup, brought it in to her. I could hear some sort of hymn being sung outside, one of those dreary ones all about the blood of the lamb and so forth.

  She murmured, as she sipped appreciatively, "We shall all miss the dear bishop. But we, the synod, decided that she would be the right and proper person to send to Stagatha." She helped herself to a chocolate biscuit, crunched into it greedily. "Surely the similarity of the names is no coincidence. There was a St. Agatha, you know. Not that we approve of the Popish church and their beliefs." She poured herself more tea, added cream and was generous with the sugar. "Yes. We shall all of us miss the dear bishop—although, perhaps, her interpretation of the Word has been a mite too strict."

  I said, "I still haven't been told why Bishop Lewis is going to Stagatha."

  She said, "I thought that you knew. It is because those unhappy people, on that world, are living in a state of darkness, are brands to be plucked from the burning. We heard about it from a spaceman, a young fellow called Terry Gowan, one of the engineers aboard the Cartographer, a Survey Service ship. Would you know him?"

  I said that I didn't. (It is truly amazing how so many planetlubbers have the erroneous idea that everybody in Space, naval or mercantile, knows everybody else.)

  "A very nice young man. A
religious young man. His ship set down here a few weeks after a visit to Stagatha. One of our people went on board her with books and pamphlets. The only one of the crew who was interested was Terry. He came to our prayer meetings. He talked about Stagatha. He brought us audio-visual records that he had taken. We were shocked. Those people, as human as you and me, going about completely . . . unclothed. And their heathen religion! Do you know, they worship their sun . . . ."

  I didn't see much wrong with that. After all, sun-worship is logical. And as long as you don't go to the horrid extreme of tearing the still-beating hearts out of the breasts of sacrificial virgins, it has much to recommend it. The sun, after all—your sun, Earth's sun, Stagatha's sun, anybody's sun—is the source of all life. And there are Man-colonized planets, such as Arcadia, where naturism is a way of life, although the Arcadians don't quite make a religion of it.