"They can, and do, become Saints," I said. "And a Senior Saint ranks an Under-Bishop."
"And who appoints the Bishop?"
"The Synod. And the Saints have a vote."
"But they can never become Bishop. Tell me—are the Saints in a majority in this Synod?"
"There are more Under-Bishops," I said. "But there are more women than men Saints."
"Even so," she said, "we're outvoted. The women, I mean. We should have come before. I can see that. No wonder you people are in such a mess."
"So you've just come to help," said Bean, with tipsy bitterness, "out of the kindness of your little black hearts. So you've just come all this way just to show us how things should be run. I don't believe you. I don't believe in missionaries—either local or imported. You know, Whitley, I've often wondered how you Beulah Landers can stand being bossed around by those Saints of yours—but at least you've a man on top. The men of Earth must be even more gutless than you."
He turned to the Junior Commandante. "Go away, we don't want you. Go away, back to your cackling hens' paradise, and take your rockets and that swill you call tea with you. We'll make our own rockets one day, without your help, and then we'll come and show Earth how things should be run." He got unsteadily to his feet—then, miraculously, held himself stiffly erect. "Thank you for the party," he said. "But we've managed without you for generations. Let's keep it that way."
She said coldly, "You can't put the clock back."
An expression of almost ludicrous amazement spread over his face. "Why," he said, "you've even stolen our motto already. You can't trust 'em, Whitley. I tell you, you can't trust 'em!"
CHAPTER SIX
"What happened?" demanded the Old Man when I returned to the ship. "What did you find out?"
"Didn't Her Holiness . . . ?"
"No. Her Holiness went straight aboard the Show Boat, taking that woman officer with her." He rubbed his chin. "She looks as if she's had a revelation from on high. I don't know what they're doing there. All that I do know is that Adelie—Her Holiness, I mean —has posted six of her biggest and brawniest wenches at the gangway, each with a knife as long as my forearm. They won't even let me pass. What happened?"
"They had some sort of sound magnifying device," I said, "and they called to us to come aboard one of the rockets ..."
By the time I'd finished, the Old Man was as
shocked as Claire King had been, for exactly the opposite reasons. It was hard for him to take the thought that Earth had not been destroyed, but he sized up the danger of this expedition quickly enough. Before we could get into that very deeply, however, there was a knock at the door.
"Yes?" he called. "What is it?"
"There's some women here, sir, from the spaceships. Say they must see their Commandante at once."
The door opened. Claire King stood there, her hand on the butt of the weapon in her belt holster. Behind her twro of her crew were holding the sailor who had announced her coming. She glared at us. "Where is the Commandante?"
"Who are you?" asked the Old Man.
"Sir," I told him, "this is Miss King, the Mate of the spaceship. Miss King, this is Captain Beynon."
"Mr. Whitley, we have no time for social niceties. Where is the Commandante?"
"Miss King," said Captain Beynon, "I would have you remember that this is my ship, and that these are my quarters. I would expect that you, as a senior officer, would display more courtesty towards a shipmaster. Or, perhaps, such things as good manners have died out on Earth—in that case you will find us rather old-fashioned. However, Mr. Whitley and myself were discussing, before you burst in, the whereabouts of your commanding officer. She is aboard the Show Boat, moored alongside us. I have no jurisdiction over the Show Boat. Miss Dale, whom you have met, is commander of that vessel and has posted an armed guard at the gangway between the two ships."
"Commandante Willis said that she would be gone for thirty minutes," said Claire King. "She has not returned to her own ship. Thirty-five minutes have passed."
"I have no authority over the Show Boat," said the Old Man. "But I think we should investigate."
I, for one, didn't fancy a tussle with the guards at the gangway between the two ships. The Old Man called to them, "Will you let us pass?"
"No," said their leader. "No. The Saint said that she was to be undisturbed."
"Will you let me pass?" asked Claire King.
There was a brief hesitation, then, "No, Madam. We carry out the Saint's orders."
"Get back!" the Junior Commandante ordered us sharply.
One of her women took from a pouch a glass ball, tossed it so that it fell at the feet of the six guards. It broke with a faint pop and a cloud of white vapor billowed from it. I caught the merest whiff of it— sweet it was, sickly—and it made my head swim. The woman who had thrown the little ball threw a second one—and abruptly the vapor cleared, leaving a grayish powder spread thinly over the deck. The six guards had fallen. I thought at first that they were dead, then saw that they were still breathing.
Claire King ignored them as she boarded the Show Boat. She called to me, "Which way?" I hurried after her, took the lead, led her up the companionway to the alleyway in which the Saint's cabin was situated.
The door was shut. I grasped the handle to throw it open, then hesitated. There were voices inside the cabin. They weren't talking, or quarrelling. They were singing.
"Lesh try it again, dearie," I heard somebody—the Commandante?—say.
"Arise, ye women from your slumbers, Arise, each drudge and household slave! We'll rule the world by force of numbers And the human race we'll save!"
"Perhaps," said Claire King slowly, "we'd better not disturb them."
"Perhaps you'd better not," I said. "Miss Dale seems to have been rather more successful than you were."
Adelie's guards were recovering as we got back to the main deck of the Show Boat. They said nothing, and—a5 they had been disarmed—they did nothing. If looks could have killed . . .
"You'll be feeling sick," Claire King told them casually, "but you'll get over it. Your Saint's all right, so is the Commandante."
"What now, Miss King?" asked the Old Man.
"I'll be getting back to my own ship, Captain. But, with your permission, I'll be posting a guard of my own women, armed, until such time as the Commandante returns."
"Permission is granted. But, frankly, had I the arms and the trained men of our friends in the warship it wouldn't be."
She smiled briefly. "It's your friends, as you call them, aboard the warship that I'm worried about. The men that I met impressed me as being more than slightly belligerent."
The Old Man grinned. "Surely you aren't scared of their swords and crossbows and steam cannon. That anaesthetic gas you used is pretty effective, and if that's a fair sample of your weapons . . ."
"We have other things," said she, with deliberate vagueness.
"Perhaps, before you go," he suggested, "some refreshment?"
"No, thank you, Captain. Some other time . . ."
She snapped orders to her two women, telling them to remain at the foot of our gangway until relieved. She saluted Captain Beynon smartly, strode with sharply clicking heels to the brow between Richmond Queen and the shore, marched, without looking back, to the towering spaceships.
"A capable sort of wench," said the Old Man. He took out his leather case, selected and lit a thin cheroot. He watched the blue, drifting eddies of smoke, squinted up at the sky. "It'll be a calm night," he decided. "The fire birds are coming out. A calm night, black but still. All the same, we'll maintain an officer's watch. Keep an eye on whatever guards your girlfriend sends. Keep an eye on the rockets. Above all—keep an eye on Duke of Albany"
"And how long dp you think we shall be stuck here, sir?"
"Now," he said slowly, "you're asking something. Give our pigeons two days, at least, to get to New Orleans—if they get there. Give the Palace at least another day to make its mind up.
Give the birds from the Palace at least another two days to get to Wyndham's Landing . .
So it went on—six days and six nights of uneasy truce. That first night the Commandante slept aboard the Show Boat, and all that first night the Earthwo-men maintained their guard over their commander. They were well disciplined, the women from the spaceships. I told young Hastings, our Third Officer to make himself pleasant to them, to ingratiate himself with them, to learn what he could. "Damn it all," he complained to me later, "these females just seem to hate men . .
And it was on this first night that one of the Albany Marines died of a broken neck. He accosted one of the sentries on her way to her post of duty, attempted to put his arms around her. As one of my sailors who witnessed the episode said, "She gave a funny sort of a wriggle, and sort of ducked and shrugged, and he went flying over head and came down hard on the back of his neck . . Had not an officer from the warship ordered all men aboard I think that fighting would have broken out there and then.
It was on the morning of the second day that Captain Armstrong sent a messenger with a polite request for Captain Beynon to call aboard Duke of Albany to discuss the situation. The Old Man sent for me when he came back, told me that Armstrong, like himself, was waiting for orders. The Albany captain was convinced that the rockets were the advance guard of an armed invasion from Earth. It was the same morning that the two flying machines, each with a set of whirling, flame-spitting vanes above the hull, were assembled and sent up, one flying down river, the other up river, each returning after about an hour in the air. In one of these machines Adelie rode with Commandante Willis. We learned nothing from her, however—since her first meeting with the leader of the expedition from Earth she had shown no interest in either the Old Man or myself.
And so it went on. The spacewomen were doing incomprehensible things aboard and around their ships, the crew of Duke of A Ibany were doing all too comprehensible things aboard their ship, the Show Boat was out of bounds to all mere males—even the Preacher had been evicted from his quarters and exiled to Richmond Queen.
It was Captain Armstrong, of Duke of Albany, who got his orders first. We had, as a matter of fact, wondered how the Duke was going to get word to his warship as, so far as we knew, there were no Wyn-dham's Landing pigeons in Albany.
We heard the thing before we saw it; the air vibrated to a throbbing drone totally unlike the whistling roar of the Earthwomen's helicopters to which, by this time, we had become almost accustomed. We saw the flying ship at last—a dot low in the northern sky, then a blob, then an almost spherical bag from which depended a car. As it flew it left a white trail of steam or exhaust gas, bright and distinct against the dark grey sky. One of the helicopters put up to intercept it, flew to meet it, made contemptuous rings around it. The airship stood steadily on. Over Duke of Albany it stopped, its motor silent. We could see its crew of two men waving to the crew of the warship. We heard shouting and cheering.
From our bridge we saw the bag dropped from the car of the airship, heard the thud as it fell on to Duke of Albany's foredeck. We saw an officer pick it up, carry it to the bridge. Still the airship hovered, using its engines now and again to maintain position.
At last we saw Captain Armstrong come out of his texas, waving a sack. A weighted line was let down from the car of the airship, the bag was made fast to its end and swiftly drawn up into the car. Followed by the cheers of the Duke's men the aircraft turned in a wide, slow circle, made off down river. It was escorted by both helicopters.
"Ingenious," admitted the Old Man, putting down his binoculars. "Same principle as the balloon birds, but with a screw propeller and a steam engine instead of wings . . . Even so, I prefer our girlfriends' machines ..."
"If their engines stop, they come down," I pointed out.
"Don't be old-fashioned, Whitley," he said. Then, "I'd like to know just what friend Armstrong has in his mail . . ."
It was the next morning that the pigeons got in from New Orleans. We saw the old Saint-in-Residence hurrying down to the river from the village, carrying something in his hand. He would have brushed past us, would have gone straight aboard the Show Boat had we not stopped him. "Isn't there something for me?" asked the Old Man.
"Yes, Captain," he admitted grudgingly, handing Beynon one of the two little cylinders that he was holding. Before we could say anything further he was gone, anxious to deliver the other message to Adelie.
I followed the Old Man to the texas, to his cabin. I watched as he drew the tightly rolled paper from its cylinder with a pair of tweezers, spread it out on his desk. It was closely written, with a fine pen, and he had to use a magnifying glass to read it.
"Here we are," he said at last. "Orders. We're to stay here, to support Her Holiness, until such time as Memphis Belle relieves us . . ."
"Memphis Belle?" I asked. "What can she do that we can't?"
"As a ship, nothing. But she's bringing a full company of Mounted Archers up river with her. Meanwhile, we're supposed to maintain friendly relations with both Duke of Albany and the spaceships ..."
"I wish, sir, that somebody'd give them orders to the same effect!"
"And we're to give Her Holiness every assistance that she may demand ..."
"And then?"
"Unless otherwise ordered, we're to leave the Show Boat here as floating headquarters for Her Holiness, and to proceed up river on our lawful occasions."
"That's hardly fair, sir. We saw the whole thing-start."
"And you'd like to see it finish, eh?" He looked astern to the hulking, smoke-belching Duke of Albany, to the men about her decks busy around the cannon and the rocket projectors. He turned to look inland, to where first one, then the second of the
helicopters rose, whining and clattering, from the ground. The first one was towing a drogue of some brightly colored fabric and at first I could not understand what it was for. Why should a flying machine need a sea anchor? And then I realized its purpose. When the aircraft were well clear of the ships there was an explosive rattle from the second one and I could see a stream of bright sparks, that left a thin tracery of smoke in the clear air, issuing from its cabin. Abruptly the towed target was reduced to fluttering shreds of scarlet rag.
"Automatic guns . . ."I said slowly.
"And you'd still like to see it finish?" asked Beynon quietly and somberly. "Will any of us live to see it finished?"
CHAPTER SEVEN
Then, for five days, there was no further flying —high winds, accompanied by driving rain and hail, grounded the helicopters. We put out extra moorings for Adelie, and helped the Earthwomen rig stays to their ships. Not that Claire and her crew weren't capable, but that they just hadn't got the feel of standing rigging.
When you've worked alongside somebody in a howling gale, sweating in spite of freezing rain, you find yourself feeling a mateship for that other person. So it was with Claire and me.
On the fifth day, at about noon, the wind dropped suddenly and the sky cleared. It was then that we saw down river the twin columns of smoke, saw a few minutes later, the white hull of a sternwheeler rounding the bend.
Richmond Queen exploded into a flurry of activity. We warped her ahead as far as we were able, and
89
even though Captain Armstrong refused to warp astern in Duke of Albany there was adequate berthage for the new arrival. We watched her come alongside, saw old Captain Munro on his bridge, white-bearded, looking like an Old Testament prophet—and sounding, as he bawled orders, like the competent riverman that he was. We saw the rows of stalls on the main deck and the heads of the horses as they looked out, sniffing the land odors. We saw the Mounted Archers standing in stiff ranks, at ceremonial attention.
Smartly the ramp was put out and down and Colonel Lafayette—portly, deceptively jovial—marched his men ashore; they, well drilled, ignored the taunts and insults shouted from the decks of the Albany warship. The Earthwomen were drawn up in military formation for the occasion and Commandantes
Willis and Pearson received the Colonel with all due courtesy, And then, after the troops were disembarked, the horses were led ashore and the working parties discharged tents and supplies.
After matters had been organized Captain Munro, accompanied by Colonel Lafayette, came aboard Richmond Queen. The Old Man and I told Munro and the Colonel as much as we knew—being careful, however, not to say too much about the part played by Adelie Dale.
We were still discussing matters when the two Commandantes boarded. "Captain Reynon," asked Commandante Willis, "are you willing to take passengers up river?"
"That's one of the things that I'm paid for, Madam. Who are they?"
"Miss King—whom you have, of course, met—and Miss Vincent, the Navigator of Commandante Pearson's ship. Miss Dale will attend to the necessary financial adjustments."
"I take it that this is with Miss Dale's approval?" ^
"It is, Captain. We are desirous of seeing as much of Beulah Land as possible, and by utilizing existing means of transport we are conserving our helicopters for more important duties."
"Such as, Commandante?"
"We have to consider the possibility of trouble with the Albany people, Captain."
"You could be right. Mr. Whitley—will you see to it that two staterooms are in readiness?"
I saw to it, and returned to the bridge in time to meet Adelie. She still wore her dedicated expression, spoke to me with condescension. "You will be sailing tonight, Clement," she said. "I am sure that I could not have put Claire or Leslyn Vincent in more capable hands."
"Speaking from experience, Your Holiness?" I asked.
"That was unworthy of you, Clement. However—I have learned from our sisters from Earth of what small value men are." She smiled forgivingly. "The peace be upon you, Clement."
She swept by me, and I went in to see the Old Man. The visitors were on the point of leaving. He shook hands with them, told me to see them to the gangway.
At sixteen hundred hours, the last line was cast off, and Richmond Queen edged out into the channel. It was half an hour's slow steaming to the Locks—and all the way we could hear the voices of the Gospel Singers, the blaring of the Show Boat's steam calliope, the music of Lafayette's drum and fife band. One of the helicopters hovered overhead.
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