Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III

by A Bertram Chandler

  “You flatter me, sir.”

  “Nonetheless, Grimes, this is not altogether a social call. No, I haven’t come to place you under arrest. Or not yet, anyhow. There were, of course, very extensive inquiries into the Discovery mutiny and you were more or less cleared of culpability. More or less. There are still, however, those in high places who would like your guts for garters.”

  “Mphm.”

  “Cheer up, Grimes. I haven’t come to shoot you.” He sipped. “Excellent coffee, this, by the way. But you always were notorious for your love of life’s little luxuries.” He extended his mug for a refill. “I suppose that this ship keeps quite a good table.”

  “I like it, sir.”

  “I must invite myself to lunch some day. But this morning we will talk business.”

  “Business, sir?”

  “What else? You’re not only a merchant captain, you’re a shipowner. You’re the one who has to arrange future employment for your ship, yourself and your crew.”

  “That thought had flickered across my mind, sir. Perhaps you could advise me. It is some many years since I was last on Earth.”

  “I’ve found you jobs in the past, Grimes. Whenever there was something too out of the ordinary for the other courier captains you were the one who got it. Now, I’ll be frank with you. As Coordinator of Merchant Shipping I work very closely with Intelligence. And Intelligence doesn’t consist only of finding out what’s happening. Sometimes it’s making things happen. Do you get me, Grimes?”

  “Dirty Tricks, sir?”

  “You can put it that way. Also countering other people’s dirty tricks. You know El Dorado, don’t you?”

  “I was there once, sir, when I was a junior officer in Aries. And for a while I was yachtmaster to the Baroness Michelle d’Estang, one of the El Doradan aristocracy.”

  “And you know her husband, Commodore Baron Kane.”

  “He’s hardly a friend, sir.”

  “But you know him. Well, I want you on El Dorado. There’s a shipment of luxury goods to be carried there; wines, caviar, fancy cheeses and such. Normally one of the Commission’s ships would be employed—but, as requested by the Admiralty, the Commission will not have a vessel available. So they will have to charter something. And that something will be your Sister Sue. Who was Sue, by the way?”

  “Just a girl . . .”

  “The young lady on the bicycle exchanging glares with our Commander Lazenby?” Damien got up from his chair to look at, first of all, the solidograph of Maggie, then at the golden statuette of Una Freeman. “H’m. I seem to have seen that face before somewhere . . . On Lindisfarne Base, wasn’t it? That Sky Marshal wench you were supposed to be working with. But, unless my memory is playing tricks, her name wasn’t Susan . . .”

  “It wasn’t,” said Grimes. “It still isn’t.”

  “Of course, you’ve seen her recently . . .”

  (Was that a statement or a question?)

  “She’s the Port Southern Police Commissioner,” said Grimes.

  Damien seemed to lose interest in Grimes’ art gallery, returned to his chair.

  “Now, Grimes, this charter . . .”

  “What’s the catch, sir?” asked Grimes. “I somehow can’t believe that anybody in the Admiralty loves me enough to throw lucrative employment my way.”

  “How right you are, Grimes. You’ll have to work your passage. To begin with, you will be reenlisted into the Survey Service—on the Reserve List, of course, but with your old rank. Commander.”

  And when I’m back in the Service, thought Grimes, they’ll have me by the balls.

  He said, “No thank you, sir. I’m a civilian and I like being a civilian. I intend to stay that way.”

  “Even though you have civilian status, Grimes, you can still be compelled to face a court-martial over the Discovery affair.”

  “I thought you said that it had been swept under the carpet, sir.”

  “Carpets can be lifted. Quite a number of my colleagues would rather like to lift that one.”

  “I’m a member of the Astronauts’ Guild, sir. They’ve tangled with the Survey Service more than once in defense of their people—and usually won.”

  “They probably would in your case, Grimes—but you must know that the legal profession doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘hurry.’ While the lawyers were arguing your ship would be sitting here, idle, with port dues and the like steadily mounting, with your officers wanting their three square meals a day and their salaries. It’d break you, Grimes, and you know it.”

  Damien was right, Grimes knew.

  He said, “All right. But if I do join the Reserve I’d like a higher rank, with the pay and allowances appertaining while on active duty.”

  Damien laughed. “Always the opportunist, Grimes! But there’s no such animal as a Reserve Admiral and you’ll find Reserve Commodores only in the major shipping lines.” He laughed again. “Far Traveler Couriers can hardly be classed as such.”

  “Captain will do,” said Grimes magnaminously. “But what exactly do you want me for, sir? How does it tie in with that charter to El Dorado?”

  “I can’t tell you that until you’re officially back in the Service.” Damien got slowly to his feet like a carpenter’s rule unfolding. “But I’ll not rush you. I’ll give you until tomorrow morning to make your mind up. Don’t bother to come with me, Grimes. I can find my own way down to the airlock.”

  As soon as he was gone Grimes rang for Magda Granadu. “And bring the coins and the book with you,” he said.

  ***

  Head and two tails . . . Yin. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again . . . K’un.

  “The superior man,” said Magda, “faithfully serves those who can best use his talents. There will be advantage in finding friends in the south and west, and in losing friends in the north and east. In quiet persistence lies good fortune . . .”

  “But I’ve already found friends in the south,” said Grimes. “On Austral, at Port Southern. Yosarian. You and Billy Williams. Even Una Freeman. But where does the west come into it?”

  “There are still southerly aspects to consider. Woomera, where we are now, is in Earth’s southern hemisphere. And perhaps we should take initial letters into consideration. ‘S’ for south, ‘W’ for west. ‘S’ for Survey Service. ‘W for Woomera.”

  “Mphm? But finding friends here? Commodore Damien was never a friend of mine.”

  But wasn’t he? Grimes asked himself. Wasn’t he? Time and time again, during his captaincy of Adder, the little Serpent Class courier, Grimes had gotten away with murder, now and again almost literally. Damien, then Officer Commanding Couriers, must have stood up for him against those Admirals who wanted to make an example of the troublesome young officer.

  “I think,” Magda said, “that the Rear Admiral is a friend of yours. He looked into my office for a brief chat on his way ashore. He said, in these very words, ‘You’ve a good captain here. Look after him.’”

  “Mphm. Well, he’s not such a bad old bastard himself. But we still have that prophecy about losing friends in the north and east. El Dorado is to the galactic north. And its name starts with an ‘E’ . . .”

  “And do you have friends on El Dorado, Captain?” she asked.

  “Well, I did. The old Duchess of Leckhampton . . . I wonder if she’s still alive. And the Princess Marlene . . . And the Baroness Michelle d’Estang . . . All friends, I suppose . . .”

  She read again from the book. “The superior man finds a true master and chooses his friends among those whose natures are compatible with his own.”

  Grimes snorted. “There’s one person aboard this ship whose nature is not compatible! The Green Hornet. I’d like you to get her pay made up so that I can get rid of her. There should be no shortage of qualified officers here, on Earth.”

  “On what grounds will you discharge her, Captain?”

  “Just that her face doesn’t fit.”

  She frowned thoughtf
ully. “I’m afraid that you’ll not be able to make it stick. Hasn’t Billy told you about the Guild on this world? It’s just a junior officers’ trade union. When I was late here, in Borzoi, the Old Man tried to get rid of the third mate, one of those really obnoxious puppies you get stuck with at times. He paid him off—and then the little bastard ran screaming to the Guild. The Guild not only refused to supply a replacement but brought a suit for wrongful dismissal. And slapped an injunction on us so that we couldn’t lift until the case had been heard. Captain Brownlee didn’t improve matters by saying, in court, just what he thought about the legal profession. It did not prejudice the judge in his favor. So he lost the case and we had to take the third mate back. The Dog Star Line was far from happy, of course. Their ship had been grounded for weeks. The captain showed me the Carlottigram he got from Top Office. It was a long one, but one sentence sticks in my memory. ‘We judge our Masters not by their navigation or spacemanship but by the skill with which they walk the industrial tightrope.’”

  “And what happened to Captain Brownlee?” asked Grimes.

  “Transferred to a scruffy little ship on one of the Dog Star Line’s more unpleasant trades.”

  “At least,” said Grimes, “I don’t have any owners to worry about.”

  “But you have an owner’s worries, Captain. You can’t afford to be grounded by legal hassles when you should be flitting around the galaxy earning an honest living.”

  “That’s true. But are you sure that Ms. Connellan will scream to the Guild if I try to pay her off?”

  “She’s already screamed.”

  “Oh. I’d have thought, to judge from the way that she’s been complaining, that she’d be glad to see the last of us.”

  “She’s not altogether a fool,” said Magda. “She knows that she’s virtually unemployable. She’s got a job and she means to hang on to it.”

  Chapter 14

  BY THE TIME Sister Sue was linked up to the Port Woomera telephone system, Grimes’ intention had been to ring his parents in Alice Springs as soon as possible but, after his conversation with Magda, decided first of all to have things out with the Guild.

  He got through to the local secretary, in Woomera City, without trouble. The face looking out at him from the screen was not a young one and at first Grimes hoped that he would be given a sympathetic hearing.

  He said, without preamble, “I’d like to get rid of my second mate, Captain Davis.”

  “Ms. Connellan has already talked with me, Captain Grimes, and I must say that her complaints of sexual and racial discrimination seem quite valid.”

  “I’m not practicing discrimination. I just want her out of my ship.”

  “Then I must warn you, Captain Grimes, that the Guild will give full support to Ms. Connellan.”

  “I’m a Guild member too. Shouldn’t you be looking after my interests?”

  Davis smiled sadly. “You must realize, Captain, that shipmasters comprise less than twenty-five percent of Guild membership. Junior officers are in the majority. You might say that I am their employee. There is another point. You are a shipowner as well as being a shipmaster. As far as the majority of our members are concerned, shipowners are the natural enemies of all good spacemen . . .”

  “Ms. Connellan is not a good spaceman,” growled Grimes. “She is a bad spacewoman.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps. But I’ve only your word for that, Captain.”

  “My chief officer will bear me out. And my catering officer. And my radio officer. And my senior engineers.”

  “Among whom only the chief officer is a Guild member.”

  “So you’re not prepared to help me, Captain Davis?”

  “I have heard Ms. Connellan’s story. You were happy enough to engage her in Port Southern when you desperately needed an officer.”

  “That was then,” growled Grimes. “This is now.”

  “As you say, Captain Grimes, this is now. You are no longer in Survey Service with godlike powers over your crew.”

  Grimes snorted. Any Survey Service captain who tried to come the heavy deity would very soon be smacked down to size by the real gods—not only the admirals but the bureaucrats and the politicians.

  He asked, “Were you ever in the Service yourself, Captain Davis?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not,” said Grimes. “If you had been you wouldn’t be talking such a load of crap.”

  That ended the call—and, no matter what the I Ching had told him, this was one friend that he had not found in the south and west.

  He smoked a pipe and then put a call through to Alice Springs. His mother and father were pleased to hear his voice and see his face again—although not as overjoyed as he thought that they should have been. But they had their own interests, he thought, and he had long since ceased to be one of them.

  “When are you coming out?” his father asked.

  “As soon as I’ve got various pieces of business tidied up here. Things, quite suddenly, seem to have become a little complicated.”

  Grimes senior laughed. “I’ve always thought that you were a sort of catalyst. Things happen around you. But come as soon as you can.”

  “I will,” promised Grimes.

  His mother’s face replaced that of his father on the screen. She had changed very little; slim, rather horse-faced women keep their looks far more successfully than do their more conventionally pretty sisters. She reminded him, fleetingly, of Shirl and Darleen . . . (But surely she had no kangaroos in her ancestry . . .)

  “We’ll be waiting for you, John,” she said. “I’ll see to it that we have a good stock of gin and a bottle of Angostura bitters.”

  “And ice,” he said.

  “And ice. Don’t keep us waiting too long—otherwise the ice will melt.”

  “Or I’ll drink all the gin,” said his father, back on the screen.

  “I’ll have to hang up now,” Grimes said. “I’ve things to see to. Look after yourselves.”

  “Listen to who’s talking,” his mother said.

  Chapter 15

  THE NEXT MORNING DISCHARGE of Sister Sue’s cargo commenced under the supervision, from the shore end, of a bored Lieutenant Commander (S) and, aboard the ship, an increasingly exasperated Billy Williams.

  “Damn it all, Skipper,” he complained to Grimes, “did you ever see such a shower of nongs? Stowbots that Noah must have used to load the fodder for the animals aboard the Ark and brassbound petty officers running them who wouldn’t be capable of navigating a wheelbarrow across a cow paddock! I’m not surprised that you resigned from the Survey Service if this is a fair sampling of their personnel!”

  “That will do, Mr. Williams,” said Grimes coldly.

  He looked out from the cargo port and saw the ground car wearing a Rear Admiral’s broad pennant approaching the ship. So here, he thought, was Damien coming to ask him if he had made his mind up yet.

  He went down to the after airlock to receive his visitor, stood waiting at the head of the ramp. Damien extricated himself from his vehicle, came briskly up the gangway. Grimes saluted him while Kate Connellan, who was just happening by, sneered. The admiral glared at the second mate, then allowed Grimes to usher him into the elevator cage. They were carried swiftly up to the master’s quarters.

  In the sitting room Damien, as though by right, seated himself behind the desk. Grimes looked at him resentfully, then took a chair facing the man who had once been his immediate boss. He needs something to rest his elbows on, thought Grimes, so that he can make a really good production of steepling his fingers . . . Damien did just that and regarded Sister Sue’s captain over the digital spire.

  He said—and it was as much statement as question— “You have accepted the charter to El Dorado.”

  “Yes, sir. Conditionally.”

  “And your conditions?”

  “My promotion to captain if I reenter the Survey Service.”

  “That has been approved. You are now Captain John Grimes, Federa
tion Survey Service Reserve. The necessary documentation should be aboard shortly.”

  “I haven’t finished yet, sir. I have a particularly awkward second officer and I’d like to get shot of her.”

  “That young lady in the airlock? A Donegalan, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. She’s got the Guild on her side and I’ll be involved in wrongful dismissal suit if I empty her out.”

  “Then you don’t empty her out, Grimes. It Is essential that you lift on time for El Dorado.”

  “Mphm. Well, I was hoping to pick up a third mate here. That would improve matters. At the moment the Green Hornet is fifty percent of my control-room staff. But the Guild doesn’t seem to be in a mood to help me . . .”

  “I wonder why not,” said Damien sardonically. “You know, of course, that all telephone calls made out from the Naval Station are monitored? No? Well, you know now. But not to worry, Grimes. I have already made arrangements for additional personnel for you. A Mr. Venner, who holds the rank of a Reserve Lieutenant Commander, will be applying to you for employment. He is a Guild member, of course, so there should be no difficulties. You will also be carrying a passenger—although actually he will be under your orders. If merchant vessels still carried psionic communications officers he would be on your books—but if you signed him on as PCO it would look suspicious.”

  “A PCO, sir?”

  “Yes. A Mr. Mayhew. Or Lieutenant Commander Mayhew.”

  “Mphm. And I suppose that your Lieutenant Commander Venner has some skills not usually possessed by the average merchant officer.”

  “He has, Grimes. His speciality is unarmed combat—and combat using any and all material to hand, however unlikely, as a weapon.”

  “I remember one instructor, when I did a course,” said Grimes, “who demonstrated on a lifelike dummy the amount of damage you can do with a pipe . . .”

  “Iron pipe? Lead pipe?”

  “No, sir. This sort of pipe,” said Grimes, filling and lighting his.