First Command (11 page)

“No. It has to be . . . processed. Skinned, trodden out, exposed to the air in open vats. It takes a long time, but it gets rid of the poison.”

“Poison? I’ll take your word for it.” She handed the fruit back to Brasidus, who threw it onto the bank. “Oh, I should have kept that, to take to the ship for analysis.”

“I’ll get it again for you.”

“Don’t bother. Let the biochemist do his own fetching and carrying. But have you any of the . . . the finished product? You did say that you had brought a flagon of wine with you.”

“Yes, Peggy.” Brasidus reached into the back of the car, brought up the stone jug, pulled out the wooden stopper.

“No glasses?” she asked with a lift of the eyebrows.

“Glasses?”

“Cups, goblets, mugs—things you drink out of.”

“I . . . I’m sorry. I never thought . . .”

“You have a lot to learn, my dear. But show me how you manage when you haven’t any women around to exercise a civilizing influence.”

“Women?”

“People like me. Go on, show me.”

Brasidus grinned, lifted the flagon in his two hands, tilted it over his open mouth, clear of his lips. The wine was rough, tart rather than sweet, but refreshing. He gulped happily, then returned the jug to an upright position. He swallowed, then said, “Your turn, Peggy.”

“You can’t expect me to drink like that. You’ll have to help me.”

You wouldn’t last five minutes on Sparta, thought Brasidus, not altogether derisively. He turned around in his seat, carefully elevated the wine flagon over Peggy’s upturned face. He was suddenly very conscious of her red, parted lips, her white teeth. He tilted, allowing a thin trickle of the pale yellow fluid to emerge. She coughed and spluttered, shook her head violently. Then she gasped, “Haven’t the knack of it—although I can manage a Spanish wineskin. Try again.”

And now it was Brasidus who had to be careful, very careful. He was acutely aware of her physical proximity, her firm softness. “Ready?” he asked shakily.

“Yes. Fire at will.”

This time the attempt was more successful. When at last she held up her hand to signal that she had had enough she must have disposed of at least a third of the flagon. From a pocket in her skirt she pulled a little square of white cloth, wiped her chin and dabbed her lips with it. “That’s not a bad drink,” she stated. “Sort of dry sherry and ginger . . . but more-ish. No—that’s enough. Didn’t you ever hear the saying, ‘Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker’?”

“What is candy?” asked Brasidus. “And liquor is quicker for what?”

“Sorry, honey. I was forgetting that you have yet to learn the facts of life. Come to that, there’re quite a few facts of life that I have to learn about this peculiar fatherland of yours. What is home without a mother?” She laughed. “Of course, you’re lucky. You don’t know how lucky. A pseudo-Hellenic culture and nary an Oedipus complex among the whole damn boiling of you!”

“Peggy, please speak Greek.”

“Speak English, you mean. But I was using words and phrases that have dropped out of your version of our common tongue.” She had slipped a little tablet into her mouth from a tube that she had extracted from her pocket. Suddenly her enunciation was less slurred. “Sorry, Brasidus, but this local tipple of yours is rather potent. Just as well that I brought along some soberer-uppers.”

“But why do you need them? Surely one of the pleasures of drinking—the pleasure of drinking—is the effect; the . . . the loosening up.”

“And the drunken brawl?”

“Yes,” he said firmly.

“You mean that you’d like to . . . to brawl with me?”

Brasidus glimpsed a vivid mental picture of such an encounter and, with no hesitation, said, once again, “Yes.”

“Drive on,” she told him.

Chapter 16

THEY DROVE ON,
through and over the foothills, always climbing, the snowcapped peak of Olympus ever ahead, until, at last, Brasidus brought the car to a halt in the single street of a tiny village that clung precariously to the mountainside.

“Kilkis,” he announced. “The tavern here could be worse. We halt here for our midday meal.”

“Kilkis.” The Arcadian repeated the name, gazed around her at the huddle of low but not ungraceful buildings, and then to the boulder-strewn slopes upon which grazed flocks of slow-moving, dun-colored beasts, many of them almost ready to reproduce by fission. “Kilkis,” she repeated. “And how do the people here make a living? Do they take in each other’s washing?”

“I don’t understand, Peggy.”

“Sorry, Brasidus. What are those animals?”

“Goats,” he explained. “The major source of our meat supply.” He went on, happy to be upon more familiar ground, “The only helots allowed to carry arms are the goatherds—see, there’s one by that rock. He has a horn to summon assistance, and a sword, and a spear.”

“Odd-looking goats. And why the weapons? Against rustlers?”

“Rustlers?”

“Cattle thieves. Or goat thieves.”

“No. Goat raiding is classed as a military operation, and, in any case, none of the other city-states would dare to violate our borders. We have the Navy, of course, and firearms and armored chariots. They do not. But there’re still the wolves, Peggy, and they’re no respecters of frontiers.”

“H’m. Then I think that you should allow your goatherds to carry at least a rifle. Is it a hazardous occupation?”

“It is, rather. But the schools maintain a steady flow of replacements, mainly from among those who have just failed to make the grade as hoplites.”

“I see. Failed soldiers rather than passed veterinarians.”

They got out of the car and walked slowly into the inn, into a long room with rush-strewn floor, tables and benches, low, raftered ceiling, and a not unpleasant smell of sour wine and cookery. At one end of the room there was an open fire, upon which simmered a huge iron cauldron. The half dozen or so customers—rough-looking fellows, leather-clad, wiry rather than muscular—got slowly to their feet at the sight of Brasidus’ uniform, made reluctant and surly salutation. And then, as they got a proper look at his companion, there was more than a flicker of interest on their dark, seamed faces.

“You may be seated,” Brasidus told them curtly.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” replied one of them, his voice only just short of open insolence.

The taverner—fat, greasy, obsequious—waddled from the back of the room. “Your pleasure, lords?” he asked.

“A flagon of your best wine. And,” added Brasidus, “two of your finest goblets to drink it from. What have you to eat?”

“Only the stew, lord. But it is made from a fine, fat young goat, just this very morning cast off from its father. Or we have sausage—well-ripened and well-seasoned.”

“Peggy?” said Brasidus, with an interrogative intonation.

“The stew will do very nicely. I think. It smells good. And it’s been boiled, so it should be safer . . .”

The innkeeper stared at her. “And may I be so impertinent as to inquire if the lord is from the strange spaceship?”

“You’ve already done so,” Margaret Lazenby told him, then relented. “Yes. I am from the ship.”

“You must find our world very beautiful, lord.”

“Yes. It is beautiful. And interesting.”

Roughly, Brasidus pulled out a bench from a vacant table, almost forced Peggy down onto the seat. “What about that wine?” he growled to the innkeeper.

“Yes, lord. Coming, lord. At once.”

One of the goatherds whispered something to his companions, then chuckled softly. Brasidus glared at the men, ostentatiously loosened the flap of the holster of his projectile pistol. There was an uneasy silence, and then, one by one, the goatherds rose to their feet and slouched out of the room. The Arcadian complained, “I had my recorder going.” She did something to the controls of one of the instruments slung at her side. An amplified voice said loudly, “Since when has the Army been playing nurse to offworld monsters?”

“Insolent swine!”

“Don’t be silly. They’re entitled to their opinions.”

“They’re not. They insulted me.” Then, as an afterthought, “And you.”

“I’ve been called worse things than ‘offworld monster’ in my time. And you’ve ruined their lunchtime session, to say nothing of my chances of making a record of a typical tavern conversation.”

Reluctantly, “I’m sorry.”

“So you damn well should be.”

The innkeeper arrived with a flagon and two goblets. They were mismatched, and they could have been cleaner, but they were of glass, not of earthenware or metal, and of a standard surprising in an establishment such as this. He placed them carefully on the rough surface of the table, then stood there, wine jug in hand, awaiting the word to pour.

“Just a minute,” Margaret Lazenby said. She picked up one of the drinking vessels, examined it. “H’m. Just as I thought.”

“And what did you think, Peggy?”

“Look,” she said, and her pointed, polished fingernail traced the design of the crest etched into the surface of the glass. “A stylized Greek helmet. And under it, easy enough to read after all these years, ‘I.T.T.S. DORIC.’ “

“I.T.T.S.?”

“Interstellar Transport Commission’s Ship.”

“But I thought that your ship belonged to the Interstellar Federation’s Survey Service.”

“It does.”

“But apart from the Latterhaven freighters, no ships but yours have ever called here.”

“Somebody must have. But what about getting these . . . these antiques filled?”

Brasidus gestured to the innkeeper, who, after a second’s hesitation, filled the Arcadian’s glass first. One did not have to be a telepath to appreciate the man’s indecision. Here was a sergeant—and a sergeant in the Police Battalion of the Army at that. Here was an alien, in what might be uniform and what might be civilian clothing. Who ranked whom?

Brasidus lifted his goblet. “To your good health, Peggy.”

“And to yours.” She sipped. “H’m. Not at all bad. Of course, in this setting it should be retsina, and there should be feta and black olives to nibble . . .”

“You will speak in riddles, Peggy.”

“I’m sorry, Brasidus. It’s just that you’re so . . . so human in spite of everything that I keep forgetting that your world has been in isolation for centuries. But suppose we just enjoy the meal?”

And they did enjoy it. Brasidus realized that his own appreciation of it was enhanced by the Arcadian’s obvious delight in the—to her—unfamiliar food and drink. They finished their stew, and then there were ripe, red, gleaming apples—“Like no apples that I’ve ever seen or tasted,” commented Peggy, “but they’ll do. Indeed they will”—and another flagon of wine. When they were done, save for the liquor remaining in the jug, Brasidus wiped his mouth on the back of his right hand, watched with tolerant amusement as his companion patted her lips with a little square of white cloth that she brought from one of her pockets.

She said, “That was good, Brasidus.” From a packet that she produced from a shoulder pouch she half shook two slim brown cylinders. “Smoke?”

“Is this the same stuff that Commander Grimes was burning in that wooden thing like a little trumpet?”

“It is. Yours must be about the only Man-colonized world that hasn’t tobacco. Commander Grimes likes his pipe; I prefer a cigarillo. See—this is the striking end. Just a tap—so. Put the other end in your mouth.” She showed him how, then remarked, as she exhaled a fragrant blue cloud, “I hope that the same doesn’t happen to us as happened to Sir Walter Raleigh.”

“And what did happen?” Brasidus inhaled, then coughed and spluttered violently. He hastily dropped the little cylinder onto his plate. Probably this Sir Walter Raleigh, whoever he was, had been violently ill.

“Sir Walter Raleigh was the Elizabethan explorer who first introduced tobacco into a country called England. He was enjoying his pipe after a meal in an inn, and the innkeeper thought that he was on fire and doused him with a bucket of water.”

“This fat flunkey had better not try it on you!” growled Brasidus.

“I doubt if he’d dare. From what I’ve observed, a sergeant on this planet piles on more G’s than a mere knight in the days of Good Queen Bess.” She laughed through the wreathing, aromatic fumes—then, suddenly serious, said, “We have company.”

Brasidus swung round, his right hand on the butt of his pistol. But it was only the village corporal—a big man in slovenly uniform, his leather unpolished, his brass tarnished. His build, his broad, heavy face were indicative of slowness both physical and mental, but the little gray eyes under the sandy thatch of the eyebrows were shrewd enough.

“Sergeant!” he barked, saluting and stiffening to attention.

“Corporal—at ease! Be seated.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

“Some wine, Corporal?”

The corporal reached out a long arm to one of the other tables, grabbed an earthenware mug, filled it from the flagon. “Thank you, Sergeant. Your health, Sergeant. And yours, sir.” He drank deeply and noisily. “Ah, that was good. But, Sergeant, my apologies. I should have been on hand to welcome you and . . .” he stared curiously at the Arcadian. “You and your . . . guest?”

“Doctor Lazenby is one of the officers of the starship
Seeker
.”

“I thought that, Sergeant. Even here there are stories.” The man, Brasidus realized, was staring at the odd mounds of flesh that were very obvious beneath the thin shirt worn by the alien.

“They aren’t concealed weapons,” remarked the Arcadian wryly. “And, in the proper circumstances, they are quite functional.”

The corporal flushed, looked away and addressed himself to his superior. “I was absent from the village, Sergeant, as today is Exposure Day. I had to supervise. But as soon as I was told of your arrival, I hastened back.”

“Exposure Day?” asked Margaret Lazenby sharply.

“Yes,” Brasidus told her. “One of the days on which the newly born—those newly born who are sickly or deformed, that is—are exposed on the mountainside.”

“And what happens to them?”

“Usually the wolves finish them off. But without food or water they’d not last long.”

“You’re joking.” It was an appeal rather than a statement or a question.

“But why should I joke, Peggy? The purity of the race must be maintained.”