Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

  That left one obvious choice for a lookout.

  “Fenella!” he called. “Come here, will you?”

  “What for? What’s wrong now? Are you going to make another of your marvelous landings?”

  “Just come here!” shouted Grimes.

  She came. It was too dark for Grimes to see her face but he knew that she was glaring at him. “Yes?” she demanded.

  “I want you to stand the watch. Here. I’ll be staying here myself. Wake me at once if anything happens.”

  “What about them? I’m paying for your services. They aren’t.”

  “They’re trained fighters. You aren’t. I want them to get some sleep.”

  She capitulated suddenly.

  “Oh, all right. I suppose you’re right. Snore your bloody heads off, all three of you.”

  She plumped down beside Grimes, tried at first to avoid physical contact with him but the curvature of the surface on which they had disposed themselves made this impossible. She lit one of the late Dr. Callis’ cigars. Grimes inhaled her smoke hungrily. Nicotine might keep him awake for a little longer but was a price that he was prepared to pay.

  “Did you bring any more of those things with you?” he asked.

  “Yes. Want one?”

  Grimes said that he did. He lit up.

  She asked in a voice far removed from her usual bossiness, “Grimes, what’s going to happen to us?”

  He said, “I wish I knew. Or, perhaps, I’d rather not know . . .” The camperfly struck and bounced off a rock, throwing them closer together. “But we’re still alive. And officially we’re dead; that could be to our advantage. When we turn up, in person, singing and dancing, at Port Aphrodite that’s going to throw a monkey-wrench into all sorts of machinery . . .”

  “You said when, not if . . . And as for the singing and dancing, I’m going to sing. To high heaven. That’s what I’m paid for—but I don’t mind admitting that I often enjoy my work . . .” She drew on her cigar, exhaled slowly. “But I do wish that I’d be able to do something about these girls from New Alice . . .” She lowered her voice in case Shirl and Darleen should still be awake in the cabin, and listening. “But they’re obviously underpeople. Some crazy Australian genetic engineer had kangaroo ova to play around with and produced his own idea of what humans should be. But they have no rights. As far as interstellar law’s concerned they’re nonhuman. Oh, I suppose I could try to get GSPCA interested, but . . .”

  Grimes was dozing off. His cigar fell from his hand, was extinguished, with a sharp hiss, by the small amount of water that had entered the control cab. His head found a most agreeable nesting place between Fenella’s head and shoulder. She made no attempt to dislodge it.

  “ . . . a slave trade’s a slave trade whether or not the victims are strictly human . . .”

  Dimly Grimes realized that somebody was snoring. It was himself.

  “. . . the river seems to be getting wider . . .”

  “Mphm . . .”

  “. . . the . . .”

  And that was the last that Grimes heard.

  ***

  He was awakened by bright sunlight striking through the transparency of the control cab bubble. By his side Fenella Pruin was fast asleep, snoring gently. A duet of snores came from the cabin. He should have stayed on watch himself, he thought. Nobody in the party, however, would be any the worse for a good sleep.

  From the bubble he could see ahead and astern and to port, but not to starboard. He could see the river bank, densely wooded and with high hills in the background. The scenery was not moving relatively to the camperfly—so, obviously, the camperfly was not moving relatively to the scenery. The bank was at least five hundred meters distant.

  He extricated himself from the sleeping Fenella Pruin’s embrace, clambered aft into the cabin. Shirl and Darleen were sprawled inelegantly on a pile of cushions and discarded clothing. They seemed to be all legs, all long, naked legs. Reluctantly Grimes looked away from them to what had been the starboard side of the cabin, to what was now the overhead. There was a door there. He could reach it, he thought, by clambering on the table which, bolted to the deck, was now on its side.

  The table had only one leg. It was strong enough for normal loads but had not been designed to withstand shearing stresses. It broke. Grimes was thrown heavily on to the sleeping girls.

  They snapped at once into full and vicious consciousness. Darleen’s hands closed about his throat while Shirl’s foot thudded heavily into his belly.

  Then— “It’s you,” said Darleen, releasing him while Shirl checked her foot before it delivered a second blow.

  Grimes rubbed the bruised skin of his neck.

  “Yes. It’s me. Can the pair of you lift me up to the door? There . . .”

  They were quick on the uptake. Their strong arms went around him, hoisted him up. He was able to reach the catch of the door, slide it aft. They lifted him still further. He caught the rim of the opening, pulled himself up and through. He was standing just abaft the starboard wing. It must have acted as a sail; with wind was blowing across the river and had driven the camperfly on to a sandy beach. Beyond this there were trees and bushes, with feathery foliage, blue rather than green. There were hills in the not distant background. Darleen—she must have been lifted by Shirl—joined him.

  She said, a little wistfully, “We could live here . . . There must be animals, and fruits, and nuts . . . And roots . . .”

  “Mphm,” grunted Grimes. Many years ago he had been obliged to live the simple life in Edenic circumstances and this was not among his most pleasant memories. “Mphm.”

  “Help me up!” came a voice from below.

  Darleen fell supine to the surface on which she had been standing, lowered an arm through the aperture. Shirl’s head appeared through the opening, then her shoulders, then her breasts, then all of her. She stood by Grimes, looking, as Darleen had looked, to what must have been to her a Promised Land.

  “This is beaut,” she said in a flat voice.

  “Too right!” agreed Darleen, who was back on her feet.

  “We could start a tribe,” said Shirl.

  Count me out as a patriarch, thought Grimes.

  “Just the three of us,” went on Shiri, “to start with . . .**

  And did that mean the three women, Grimes wondered, or the two New Alicians only partnered by him, with Fenella Pruin somehow lost in the wash? The way that Shirl and Darleen were looking at him the answer to the question was obvious.

  “This is just like the Murray Valley at home,” said Darleen.

  “Too right,” agreed Shirl.

  “But we can’t stay here,” said Grimes.

  “Why not?” asked the two girls simultaneously.

  “We have to get back to Port Aphrodite,” he said.

  “Why?” they countered.

  Fenella Pruin’s voice came from inside the camperfly. “Where is everybody? Grimes, where are you?”

  “Here!” he called.

  With some reluctance the two New Alicians helped her up to the side of the camperfly. Steadying herself with one hand on the up-pointing wing she looked around.

  “All very pretty,” she said at last, “but where are we?”

  “Home,” said Darleen.

  “Home,” said Shirl. “We will settle here—Darleen, John Grimes and myself. We will start a tribe . . .”

  “You can stay if you like,” said Darleen generously.

  Fenella laughed. “I’m a big city girl,” she said. “And, in any case, you’ll have to ask the owners’ permission before you set up house.”

  “The owners?” asked Grimes.

  “Yes.” She pointed. “The owners . . .”

  They were coming down from between the trees and bushes, making their way to the beach. They were . . . human? Or humanoid.

  Their arms were too short, their haunches too heavy. The women were almost breastless. Their skins were a dark, rich brown. Some of them carried long spears, some cruc
iform boomerangs, some heavy clubs.

  They stared at the stranded camperfly, at Grimes and the three women.

  “Good morning!” Grimes shouted.

  “Gidday!” came an answering shout.

  “Where are we?” he called.

  “Kangaroo Valley!” came the reply.

  Chapter 24

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG DAY.

  Grimes had supervised the stripping and dismantling of the camperfly, its breaking up into pieces that could be carried into the bush and hidden. Matilda’s Children—as this tribe called itself—possessed some metal tools, saws, hammers and axes, and the construction of the aircraft was mainly of plastic. Nonetheless it had not been easy work.

  And now it was late evening.

  A fire was burning in the centre of the clearing, now little more than glowing coals. Over it, on a crude spit, the carcass of some animal, possibly a small deer, was roasting. The hot coals flared fitfully as melted fat and other juices fell on them. (Grimes remembered, all too vividly, some of the things that he had witnessed during his incarceration in the Snuff Palace. He did not think that he would want any meat when the meal was ready.) There were crude earthenware mugs of some brew that could almost have passed for beer. Grimes had no qualms regarding this.

  “You’re as safe here, cobber,” said the grizzled Mal, who appeared to be the tribe’s leader, “as anywhere else on this world. They don’t bother us. They leave us be. An’ we could use a bastard like you, with a bit o’ mechanical knowhow. An’ Shirl an’ Darleen’ll be good breedin’ stock. They’re young . . .” He looked over the rim of his mug at Fenella. “About you, lady, I ain’t so certain . . .”

  She laughed shortly. “And I ain’t so certain about you, Mal. But could I have your story again? Everybody was so busy during the day that they couldn’t find time to talk to me . . .”

  “We’re Matilda’s Children,” Mal told her. “We come from New Alice. We were brought here by a man called Drongo Kane who said that he was one of us, although he came from another planet. He promised us loads of lolly if we’d work on this world. An’ there was loads of lolly, at first. An’ then we, the first ones of us, started gettin’ old. The fat, rich bitches from all over, an’ their husbands, wanted younger meat. Nobody wanted us anymore. Not for anything. An’ we had no skills apart from rogering. An’ there was no way, no way at all, of gettin’ back to where we belong . . .

  “We were just turned loose . . .

  “We found this valley. Over the years others of our people have joined us, some of them too old to work among the red lights any more, some of them escaped from places like the Colosseum. We get by.”

  “And why do you call this place Kangaroo Valley?” asked Fenella,

  “It’s a tradition, sort of. Whenever our people have lived together in a strange city, on a strange world, it’s called Kangaroo Valley . . .

  And there was a Kangaroo Valley in London, on Old Earth, thought Grimes. In a place called Earls Court. His father had told him about it when he was doing research on a historical novel the period of which was the Twentieth Century, Old Style. But the people living there had not been descended from kangaroos . . .

  “But why Kangaroo Valley?” persisted Fenella. “What is a kangaroo?”

  “An animal from our Dream Time,” said Mal. “An animal that lived in Australia, on Earth, where our forefathers came from. On New Alice the kangaroo hunt is one of our traditional dances. It is performed here, for money, on New Venusberg.”

  “I’ve seen it,” said Fenella.

  “I’ve been it,” said Shirl.

  ***

  A humpy, a rough shelter of leaves and branches, had been allocated to Grimes and Fenella as their sleeping quarters. They retired to this after the feast. Grimes, unable to face the barbecued meat, had dined on rather flavourless but filling roots that had been roasted in the ashes. Fenella, in many ways tougher than he, had enjoyed the venison.

  Settee cushions, salvaged from the camperfly, were their beds. They stretched out on these, each with a cigar from the aircraft’s now much-depleted stock.

  “Poor bastards,” whispered Fenella. “Poor bastards, thinking themselves human when they’re so obviously not. That reversion to their ancestral characteristics with age . . . In only a few years’ time your precious Shirl and Darleen will look just like the older women. All that they lack is tails . . .”

  “They’re still victims of a white slave trade,” said Grimes.

  “Yes. But legally only animals. How do you think they started?”

  “It must have been very similar to what happened on Morrowvia. One of the old guassjammers, driven off course by a magnetic storm, lost in Space and making a landing on the first world capable of supporting our kind of life . . . Probably a crash landing, with very few survivors, among them a genetic engineer . . . Fertilised kangaroo ova—but the Odd Gods of the Galaxy alone know why!—in the ship’s plasma bank . . .”

  “Mankind,” she said, “has made a habit of spreading its own favourite animals throughout the galaxy . . .”

  “True. There are kangaroos on Botany Bay. Well, anyhow, the era of the gaussjammers was also the era of the underpeople. It got to the stage when the politicians, bowing to the pressure exerted by the trade unions, whose members found their livelihood being taken away by physically specialised underpeople, brought in legislation to make the manufacture of imitation human beings illegal. Of course, it was the imitation human beings themselves who were the main sufferers. And after all these many years the prejudice still persists . . .”

  “Tell me,” she asked, “have you ever conquered your prejudice against underpeople? In bed, I mean . . .”

  “I don’t think that I have any such prejudice.”

  “And did you and Shirl . . . Or Darleen . . . ?”

  “No,” he said.

  “The way that they look at you I thought that you and they must have been having it off. But you have this odd hang-up, don’t you? You’re afraid that when it’s open and ready for you it’s going to bite you . . .”

  Yet her words did not wound, were not intended to do so. It was not what she was saying but the way that she was saying it that robbed them of their sting. The old Fenella Pruin—temporarily at least—was dead. This was a new one, engendered by the perils that they had faced together. The intimacy of this crude humpy was hardly greater than the intimacy of Little Sister’s living quarters, and yet . . .

  He heard the rustle as she removed the dress that was her only clothing. He was not ready for her when she came to him but was aroused by the first kiss, by the feel of her body against his. She mounted him, rode him, rode him into the ground, reaching her climax as he reached his, as his body purged itself of the months of humiliations and frustrations.

  She spoiled things—but only a little—when she murmured, “I got you before those two marsupial bitches did!”

  But what would it be like, he wondered as he drifted into sleep, with Darleen?

  Or Shirl?

  Chapter 25

  GRIMES EXPECTED that Fenella Pruin would be all sweetness and light the following morning. She was not. She started almost as soon as she opened her eyes. To begin with it was the toilet facilities—a unisex trench latrine in the bushes, a cold bath in the billabong using a crude, homemade soap that would have been quite a good paint remover. Then it was breakfast—the remains of the previous night’s feast, not even heated up, with only water to wash it down.

  Then, puffing furiously at the last cigar, she led Grimes on a tour of inspection of the camp. She complained bitterly about the lack of a camera or other recording equipment and was more than a little inclined to blame Grimes for this deficiency. Grimes told her that she’d just have to make a thousand words worth one picture. She did not think that this was funny.

  They were joined by Shirl and Darleen, who seemed to be in little better temper than Fenella. Shirl muttered, “They live rough, these people. Too rough . . .” Darleen said t
o her, “We should have got our paws on to some of those cushions . . .”

  “There were plenty of cushions in the camperfly,” said Grimes.

  “And Mal’s got them. Him and his wives,” was the reply.

  Fenella Pruin said something about male chauvinist pigs.

  “Rank has its privileges,” said Grimes.

  She stalked on, stiff-legged, the others tailing after her. They came to what seemed to be an open air school. There were the children, squatting on the ground around their teachers. One of these, an elderly woman, was fashioning throwing spears, using a piece of broken glass to shape the ends of the straight sticks to a point. Another one, a man, was demonstrating how to make fire by friction, rubbing a pointed piece of hard wood up and down the groove in a softer piece that he held between his horny feet.

  This teacher was Mal.

  “Good morning,” said Fenella, implying by the tone of her voice that it wasn’t.

  Mal looked up. “Gidday. I’ll find jobs for yer soon as I’ve finished with this mob.”

  Fenella ignored this offer. She asked. “These children . . . Were they born here? In Kangaroo Valley?”

  “Most of ’em. But all born on this world.”

  “Were they all conceived here?” She was looking hard at one of the naked boys, who seemed to be in his early teens.

  “Conceived?” asked Mal.

  “Started. You know . . .”

  “Oh. That. Some here. Some on the way here, from New Alice . . . Like Kev.”

  Grimes looked at Kev. There was something vaguely familiar about the youth’s appearance. Physically he would not have attracted much attention on a bathing beach.

  “And what ships did you come here in?” persisted Fenella Pruin.

  “Just . . . ships.”

  “They must have had names.”

  “Yair. Lemme see, now. I came in one called Southerly something. Southerly Buster. Yair. That’s it. Some o’ the others in Willy Willy. An’ Bombora . . . But yer wastin’ my time an’ it’s time you did somethin’ to earn yer own keep. What do yer do?”