A cave . . .
He remembered then.
“You are awake, Captain Grimes?”
The voice was a pleasant one, speaking with only the slightest of accents. Grimes turned his head, stared at an elderly native man with wrinkled skin, with protuberant horns over his crimson eyes, dressed in a sort of scarlet sarong on the material of which, in gold, the motif of copulatory deities was repeated over and over. In one hand this individual held a lantern, with pressurized gas hissing incandescently in a mantel, in the other a wooden tray. He set the tray down on a low table beside the wide bed, hung the lantern from a hook protruding from the drapery covered wall.
Grimes turned over, then back again.
“Where is Tamara?” he demanded. “Where is my . . . companion?”
“Do not concern yourself, Captain Grimes. She was taken to her own . . . chamber. At this moment her hand-maidens will be awakening her, as I am awakening you. It is the custom of your people, I believe, to start the day with a cup of tea . . .” A very prosaic looking metal teapot was poised over an earthenware mug; the steam from the dark amber fluid issuing from the spout was fragrant and on any of Man’s worlds would not have been exotic. “Sugar, Captain? Milk?”
It was real tea all right. Grimes sipped the hot fluid gratefully.
“A smoke, Captain? Or is it too early in the day?” Grimes stared at the packet being extended by a three-fingered hand. Caribbean Cublets . . . The trade name of the cigarillos was offensive but their quality could hardly be bettered. He took one, struck it on his thumbnail, inserted the unlit end into his mouth. He inhaled deeply. It was not as good as his beloved pipe, but it was much, much better than nothing.
“Now,” he said, “please tell me . . . What is all this about?”
His visitor made himself comfortable on a three-legged stool. He lit a cigarillo, began to smoke with obvious enjoyment. He said, “My name is Lennay Torith Lannanen.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Lennanen.”
“Mr. Lennay, please, Captain Grimes. Lennay is my father’s family name, Torith that of my mother’s family. But no matter. For many years now I have been the Agent on this world for the ships of the Dog Star Line. It is not a frequent service that they maintain—our exports are few and our imports fewer—but I have become a man of moderate wealth. Also I have acquired tastes for essentially Terran luxuries . . .” He waved his cigarillo towards the tea tray. “But not only am I a successful businessman. I am also . . . High Priest? Yes, High Priest of the Old Religion, Deluraixsamz.
“For at least three generations the devotees of Deluraixsamz have been persecuted, driven underground. But still we meet in secret, in temples such as this. We are . . . qualified to form the nucleus of resistance to the Shaara invaders, just as you and your companion are qualified to be our figureheads.”
“Do your people love Earth so much, then?” asked Grimes.
“To most of the population Terrans are no more than not very pleasant aliens. But have you looked closely at the pictures on the walls and ceiling?”
“Mphm?”
“Delur, you will observe, is depicted as being white-skinned, not blue-skinned. Also—as is not the case with our women—she has a full head of hair, although elsewhere she is hairless. Her eyes are a most unnatural green, not red. She has only one pair of mammary glands. Need I continue?”
“Mphm.”
“And now, her consort. The Lord Samz. He is exceptionally well-endowed.”
Grimes looked down at himself. “I’m not.”
“But, sir, you are—compared to our men. Even in repose you are a veritable giant.”
Grimes could sense what the other was driving at and didn’t like it. “But,” he demurred, “I have a beard.” He fingered his unsightly facial growth. “Your god Samz does not.”
Lennay laughed. “Captain Willard of Sealyham honored me by staying at my home when his ship was last here. Inadvertently he left behind him a tube of the cream that you Earthlings use to remove unwanted hair. When I was obliged hurriedly to vacate my premises—as you can well imagine, almost the first act of the Shaara was to destroy my sun-powered Carlotti transceiver—I swept valuables into a carrying bag before fleeing. By mischance—as I at first thought—the depilatory was among the contents of a drawer that I emptied into the sack.”
“The whole idea is crazy,” snapped Grimes.
“But it is not, Captain. Insofar as our common enemy is concerned it will be a case—as your great playwriter Shakespeare has observed—of the engineers being hoist with their own petard. You were paraded and humiliated as proof that Earthmen are only—as Captain Wong Kuan Yung of Lucky Star would say—paper tigers . . .”
“Lucky Star?”
“A very small tramp vessel. She was chartered to the Dog Star Line. Her crew were interesting people, somehow different from you others. But you obliged me to digress. The Shaara paraded you, degraded you. They put it about that you had been captured in battle and that you might not have been captured had not you been deeply involved in an orgy of unbridled fornication. After the exhibition of that most excellent film the devotees of Darajjan will associate Earthmen with the proscribed Deluraixsamz and will hesitate to ask for the aid of such depraved beings even if they should find the means to do so.”
“Mphm.”
“But there is more, Captain Grimes. There is more. There is the prophecy.” Until now Lennay had been talking quietly but now a note of fanaticism was creeping into his voice. “Is it not written in the Elder Chronicle that it shall come to pass that monsters shall fly over the land and the people be sore afflicted? Is it not written that in those times the mighty Delur and her consort Samz shall return, and shall be mocked and stoned by the unbelievers? Is it not written that Delur and Samz shall be succored by the faithful and will then arise in their burning wrath to scatter the demons from the sky?”
There was a silence, on Grimes’ part an embarrassed one. He asked at last, “Do you really believe all that?”
“Of course,” came the simple reply.
“May the Odd Gods of the Galaxy save us all!” said Grimes.
“Amen,” said Lennay.
Chapter 19
LENNAY CALLED OUT in his own language and three of the native women came in. They made low salaams and murmured something. The only word that Grimes could recognize was “Samz”.
“Go with them, Captain,” said Lennay.
Interesting, thought Grimes. He seems to believe all this Delur and Samz nonsense, yet he still calls me “Captain” . . . The habits of a lifetime as a shipping company agent must be hard to break.
He was escorted by his attendants to an ablutions chamber. This was a small cave in which a natural hot spring cascaded down into a trough, lit by a flaring gas jet. A sub-cavern opened off this. There was another trough with a steady flow of water which vanished down a sinkhole. Its purpose was obvious, but was a god supposed to defecate and urinate? And was he supposed to do so watched by his worshippers? To his great relief the women did not accompany him into the natural water closet but waited outside. When he emerged, however, they took his hands and led him to the shower, went to work on his body with a strongly scented soap and a soft brush. When they had finished one of them handed him the tube of depilatory cream. They all watched with interest as his whiskers melted away under its application. Then there was a mirror, and a comb for his head hair and, after they had dried him with big, fluffy towels, a plain, dark blue sarong.
God or not, he was beginning to feel human.
Ablutions over, the women attired themselves in garments similar to that worn by Lennay, decorated with the Delur and Samz motif. They led Grimes along a gas-lit alleyway—this temple, so-called, was assuming in his mind the proportions of a minor city—to yet another chamber in the rock where Tamara was awaiting him. She, too, was sarong-clad, although hers was gold. An elaborate, pagoda-like golden crown surmounted her lustrous black hair and intricate pendants, interlocking ro
ds and rings, dangled from the lobes of her ears.
She smiled.
She said, “We seem to have been promoted, Grimes. I thought that as Superintending Postmistress I’d reached the very pinnacle of ambition, but . . .”
He grinned.
“I got a kick out of regarding myself as Master under God. But now . . .”
She said, “Deities or not, we have to eat.” She gestured towards a stone table at which were two throne-like chairs.
They seated themselves. The serving women brought in the meal. It was, fantastically, eggs and bacon, with toast and butter and sweet preserve, a pot of hot, strong coffee. The eggs, however, had a subtly fishy flavor, not unpleasant, and whatever animal had contributed the meat from which the bacon had been processed was not a pig, the toast had a nutty taste and the preserve, although slightly acid, was not marmalade, but the coffee was genuine.
She told him, “I have had a long talk with Dinnelor. She is the wife of Lennay, the High Priest and Dog Star Line Agent. They’re real Terraphiles. This meal . . .”
“And these cigarillos—Smoke?”
“Thanks.”
Lennay came in accompanied by his wife, a woman apparently younger than himself, her blue skin unwrinkled, the little pseudo horns on her bald head less prominent. The High Priest (the Dog Star Line Agent?) made a gesture. The serving women cleared the table, came back with fresh coffee and four mugs, two more chairs.
“You are ready for the day’s work, Captain?” asked Lennay politely.
“What is a god supposed to do?” asked Grimes, then regretted the words. An agnostic himself he had always tried to avoid giving offense to sincere believers.
Lennay frowned sorrowfully. “Captain Grimes, please do not jest. I do not believe that you and Madam Tamara are actually Samz and Delur in person. But I do believe that the god and the goddess are using you as their instruments. I know that you are—or were—a member of the military profession . . .”
“How do you know?” demanded Grimes.
“The Dog Star Line captains and officers have told me about what happened on Morrowvia, have shown to me pictures of the people who were involved. I recognized you. Surely there is only one spaceman Grimes with such splendidly outstanding ears . . .”
Those prominent appendages flushed angrily. Tamara Haverstock laughed.
Grimes said, “All right, I was in the Survey Service. I held the rank of Commander when I . . . resigned. But I’m no expert on land warfare.”
“But you are familiar with weaponry, Captain Grimes. For example, laser pistols. My chief clerk acquired six of them when you and the Lady Delur were rescued.”
“Mphm. Have you any means of recharging them?”
“Regrettably, no. My Carlotti transceiver was solar-powered and, in any case, it was destroyed by the Shaara. But there were also four machine pistols and two light machine guns . . .”
“Ammunition?”
“Only the cartridges that were in the magazines.”
“Mphm.” Somehow that all-purpose grunt was not as satisfactory when delivered around a cigarillo rather than around the stem of a pipe. “Do you people have weapons of your own? Oh, you do have. When we were first put on show a man ran out waving what looked like a pistol and the Shaara cut him down . . .”
“One of us,” said Lennay. “He—how do you put it?—jumped the gun. But, to answer your question, we do have weapons. Unfortunately there are, now and again, wars between our nations. I could have made a huge fortune by importing sophisticated killing devices but I always refused to do so. Now I am sorry. Well armed we would not have been a bleeng—a plum, that is—ripe for the picking.”
“What do you have?” demanded Grimes.
“Cutting weapons. Stabbing weapons. Firearms. A variety of lethal and incapacitating gases and the means for their delivery. One of these latter, actually a potent insecticide, was used to effect your rescue.”
“And do you, personally, the Deluraixsamz, have these weapons?”
“We have access to them. Unfortunately they are all relatively short range and the few attempts that have been made to fight the invaders have ended in disaster. Too, the high ranking military are all devotees of Darajja and fear a resurgence of Deluraixsamz and actually regard the Shaara as their natural allies. There was a Shaara ship here just over a year ago and the Queen-Captain ignored me but, to my certain knowledge, entertained and was entertained by Hereditary President Callaray and General Porron. They will learn, of course, that he who sups with the devil needs a long spoon, but by the time the lesson has sunk in it will be too late for Darijja.”
“Aircraft?” asked Grimes.
“None that are used for fighting. We do have airships for the carriage of passengers and urgent cargoes . . .”
“Buoyancy? What gas do you use for lift? Hydrogen, or helium?”
“I do not understand. Those words are not in my vocabulary.”
Two of the very few that aren’t, thought Grimes. He explained, “Both are gases, both are lighter than air. Hydrogen burns, explodes. Helium is an inert gas.”
“Hydrogen,” said Lennay.
“I take it, then,” said Grimes, “that your Establishment is anti-Deluraixsamz, slightly anti-Terran, pro-Shaara inasmuch as they hope to use the Shaara . . .”
“Yes,” admitted Lennay doubtfully.
“Also, you can give me weapons—the handful taken from the guards, a rather greater number from your own arsenals . . .”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said Grimes, “if I’m to be more than a mere figurehead in your revolt I shall want some idea of the tools that I shall have at my disposal. I shall want maps. I shall want artificers—the handgrips and triggers of the Shaara guns will have to be modified for a start—I shall want samples of your explosives. I shall want to meet your guerrilla leaders . . .”
“The Great God Grimes demands offerings,” said Tamara sardonically.
“Dog—or bitch—shouldn’t eat dog,” Grimes told her. Lennay and his wife exchanged shocked glances.
Chapter 20
GRIMES WAS NOT A SOLDIER.
He possessed a fair theoretical grasp of space strategy and tactics but knew little of the principles of land warfare; throughout his Survey Service career he had always been elsewhere when courses in this subject were held at Lindisfarne Base. Nonetheless, he had glimmerings. He called for maps and a conversion scale. He demanded an inventory of arms and ammunition and explosives. He wanted to know how many members of the underground had military experience and how many, if any, were still serving in the Taraplan Army.
He got the maps first—a small scale one comprising the entire planet, other small scale ones for its continents, of which Taraplan was one, large scale charts of Taraplan’s coastline and large scale maps of the inland regions. With Lennay instructing he soon got the hang of the various symbols, the color coding that was used in conjunction with contour lines, the stipplings used to indicate population density and all the rest of it.
Lennay put him into the picture regarding probable future developments. It seemed certain that Hereditary President Callaray would soon sign a treaty of peace and friendship with the Shaara Queen and, shortly thereafter, would find some excuse, probably a manufactured incident, to declare war on Desaba, the island-continent-nation to the north. The Shaara would be his allies. First Desaba, then Kootar, then Raitu, then the Pinnerba Confederation. . . Finally, his ride on the tiger over, it would be President Callaray’s turn to be eaten.
And that would be the way of it, thought Grimes. Even if Baroom were not employed as a flying fortress the Shaara would have command of the air. Their blimps were helium filled and would mount long range weapons; the native airships were hydrogen-filled, pitifully vulnerable, and would be armed only with primitive, slow-firing, hand-powered machine guns. Too, the Shaara blimps could be—probably would be—used as carriers for platoons of drones, flying fighters who, with their laser hand guns, would make short wo
rk of the airships. And, he realized, there was his own Little Sister—a virtually invulnerable spacecraft also extremely maneuverable inside an atmosphere, a potential bomber, fighter, troop carrier, or all three.
So the Shaara would have to be stopped, now.
But how?
He studied the map on which the location of the cave-temple had been marked by Lennay, on which was Korong, the town from which he and Tamara had been rescued, and, further to the south east, Plirrit, near which the Shaara had landed, where their ship still was. Grimes was surprised to discover how close he was to what he regarded as enemy headquarters. Since the first landing he had travelled many kilometers by blimp, but, he realized, it had just been a case of there and back, there and back, there and back. This was the most thickly populated part of Taraplan with the major industries, the coal mines, the natural gas wells, the iron and the copper.
He picked up a pair of dividers, did some measuring off. As the crow flew it was just over five hundred drli from the temple to Plirrit. He consulted the conversion scale; that was three hundred kilometers almost exactly. The cave was a mere six drli from the railway track, the line between Korong and the copper mining town of Blit in the mountains to the north west. He assumed that his army—his army?—would have to be assembled in or near the temple and then would have to be transported to Plirrit. It was too far to walk, and a convoy of rail cars would be conspicuous. And, talking of rail cars . . .
He asked, “Mr. Lennay, has there been any sort of search for us? Has anybody found the rail cars that we abandoned?”
Lennay replied, “Very little time has passed since your rescue, Captain Grimes, and we have never, as a people, been in such a hurry as you Earthmen.” He shrugged. “Often I have deplored this, but there are times, such as now, when this leisurely attitude is to the advantage of the True Believer. We have had ample time to ensure that the rail cars cannot be spotted from the air and that the marks of their precipitant passage through the bush have been erased. But there has been considerable activity by the Shaara flying patrols, up and down the railway line. And at least four square drli of the city of Korong have been burned, melted, vaporized with the marketplace as the focal point for the destruction.”
Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III Page 8
