First Command (69 page)

Grimes looked up through the forward viewport. There was a target star, not directly ahead but, of course, Big Sister would have compensated for galactic drift. It was one of the second magnitude luminaries in the constellation called, on Botany Bay, the Bunyip. He heard the low humming, rising in pitch to a thin, high whine, as the Mannschenn Drive was started. There were the usual illusions—the warped perspective, the shifting colors, the voice of Big Sister—did she ever stop talking?—sounding as though she were speaking in an echo chamber . . .

“I have often wondered what you humans experience at this moment. I am told that, as the temporal precession field builds up, there are frequently flashes of precognition. Should you be subject to any such I shall be obliged if you will tell me so that I may add to my stored data . . .”

Grimes had often experienced previews of what lay in his future but this time he did not.

“Stand by for resumption of acceleration!”
Sounds, colors and perspective returned to normal and the muffled beat of the inertial drive was once again one of the background noises. Outside the viewports the stars were no longer sharp points of light but vague, slowly writhing nebulosities. “I would suggest, Captain, that you go down now to shower and to dress for dinner. Her Excellency has invited you to sit at her table.”

Grimes unsnapped the seat belt that he had automatically buckled on as soon as he sat in the chair. He got to his feet, took one last look around the control room. He supposed that everything was working as it should. He must tell—or ask— Big Sister to have the instrumentation functioning when, on future occasions, he made an appearance in what, in a normal ship, would have been his throneroom. But he wouldn’t say anything now. He would have to feel his way.

The master’s quarters conformed to standard practice in being sited just below and abaft control. The golden stewardess was awaiting him. She—or was it Big Sister? was that well-shaped head poised on the slender neck no more than decoration?—said, “Your shower is running, sir.”

Grimes went through into the bedroom. The robot followed him. He was oddly embarrassed as he undressed in front of her; she was so human in appearance. He wondered how the Electran metallurgical wizards had achieved the flexibility of the golden integument that covered the joints of her fingers, her limbs. She took each garment from him as he removed it and then threw the discarded clothing into what was obviously a disposal chute. He was too late to stop her. He would have liked to have kept that shabby and not-very-well fitting airship captain’s uniform as a souvenir of Botany Bay.

To his relief she did not follow him into the bathroom. He enjoyed his shower. The water had been adjusted to the temperature that was exactly to his liking and the detergent was not scented, exuded only a faintly antiseptic aroma. When he had finished and had been dried by the warm air blast he went back into the bedroom. He looked with some distaste at the clothing that had been laid out for him. It was standard mess dress insofar as style was concerned but the short jacket and the trousers were of fine, rich purple cloth and there was far too much gold braid. The bow tie to be worn with the gleamingly white shirt was also purple. Grimes remembered being puzzled by a phrase that he had encountered in a twentieth-century novel—
all dressed up like an organ grinder’s monkey.
It had intrigued him and initiated a bout of research. Finally he had found a very old picture of a man turning the handle of an antique musical instrument, apparently a crude, mechanical ancestor of the synthesizer, to which was chained a hapless, small simian attired in a gaudy uniform. The beast’s ears were as outstanding as those of Grimes. That simile, he thought, was fantastically apt when, attired in his new finery, miniature decorations and all, he surveyed himself in the full-length mirror.

Big Sister said through the mouth of the stewardess, “You wear formal uniform far more happily than Captain Billinger did.”

Grimes said a little sourly, “‘Happily’ is not the word that I would employ.”

Automatically he picked up his pipe and tobacco pouch from the bedside table where he had put them when he undressed before his shower. He was about to shove them into a pocket when Big Sister said sternly, “Her Excellency does not approve of smoking.”

He made a noise half way between a snarl and a sigh, muttered,
“She
wouldn’t.” Then he laughed wryly and said, “But I mustn’t bite the hand that rescued me. You must think that I’m an ungrateful bastard.”

“I do,” Big Sister told him.

Grimes was ready for dinner. To a great extent his appetite was governed by the state of his emotions; during periods of stress he would have to force himself to eat and then, the emergency over, he would be ravenous.

In some ways this meal, his first aboard
The Far Traveler,
came up to his expectations. In one way it did not.

The Baroness was awaiting him at the table—and that article of furniture complemented the beautiful woman who sat at its head. There were gold mesh place mats in glowing contrast to the highly polished ebony whose surface they protected, there were slender black candles set in an ornate golden holder, their flames golden rather than merely yellow. The elaborate settings of cutlery were also of the precious metal and the ranked wine glasses gleamed with the golden filagree incorporated in their fine crystal.

And his hostess?

She was wearing black tonight, an ankle-length translucency through which her skin glowed, which left her arms and shoulders bare. The jewels set in the braided coronet of her hair coruscated in the candlelight, could have been some fantastic constellation blazing in the dark sky of some newly discovered planet.

She said graciously, “Be seated, Captain.”

Grimes sat.

The robot butler poured wine for them from a graceful decanter. She raised her glass. He raised his. He refrained from saying, as he would have done in the sort of company he normally kept, “Here’s mud in your eye,” or “Down the hatch,” or some similar age-old but vulgar toast. He murmured, with what he hoped was suitable suavity, “Your very good health, Your Excellency.”

“And yours, Captain.”

The Baroness sipped delicately. Grimes did likewise. He savored the very dry sherry. It might even be, he decided, from Spain, on distant Earth. Such a tipple would be hellishly expensive save on the planet of its origin—but an El Doradan aristocrat would be well able to afford it.

The first course was served in fragile, gold-chased porcelain bowls, so beautifully proportioned that it seemed almost criminal to eat from them. Each contained what was little more than a sample of aureately transparent jellied consommé. Grimes watched the Baroness to see what implement she would use and was relieved when she picked up a tiny spoon and not a fork. When she began to eat he took his own first, tentative spoonful. It was delicious, although he could not determine what ingredients, animal or vegetable, had gone into its preparation. The only trouble was that there was not enough of it.

She said, noticing his appreciation, “I must confess that I did not expect to be able to obtain a
cordon bleu
autochef on a world such as Electra. One imagines that scientists and engineers subsist on hastily snatched sandwiches or, when they can tear themselves away from their work for a proper meal, on overdone steak and fried potatoes. However, I was able to persuade a Dr. Malleson, whom I learned has a considerable reputation as a gourmet, personally to program Big Sister.”

“I have often wondered,” said Grimes, “just who programs the Survey Service’s autochefs. Good food—provided by God and cooked by the Devil.”

She laughed politely. “Nonetheless, Captain, you must admit that the Survey Service is highly versed in some of the electronic arts—such as bugging. During my brief . . . friendship with Commander Delamere I was able to persuade him to allow me—or Big Sister—to take copies of material he holds aboard
Vega,
some of it concerning yourself. At the time I did not think that you would be entering my employ; it was merely that the records will assist me in my researches into social evolution in the Lost Colonies.”

Grimes was conscious of the angry burning of his prominent ears. He knew that the Survey Service Archives contained remarkably comprehensive dossiers on all commissioned personnel and on quite a few petty officers and senior ratings but that such information was supposed to be accessible only to officers of flag rank. And Handsome Frankie was no higher than commander—although with his connections he would probably rise much higher. But Frankie, Grimes recalled, was reputed to be enjoying a clandestine affair with the fat and unattractive woman captain in charge of Records on Lindisfarne Base. Frankie, quite possibly, had the dirt on quite a few of those whom he regarded as his enemies.

“Why so embarrassed, Captain? On both New Sparta and Morrowvia you did your duty, as you saw it. But, in any case, our first call will be to Farhaven—to one of the many Farhavens. It is odd how little originality is displayed by those who name planets . . .”

The butler removed the consommé bowls and the sherry glasses, although not before Grimes was able to finish what remained in his.

“If you wish more of the Tio Pepe,” said the Baroness, “you have only to ask, Captain.”

Grimes’ ears burned again.

The wine to accompany the fish was a demisec white, fragrant but somehow bodyless. It came, Grimes knew after a glance at the label, from the Vitelli vinyards on El Dorado. During his stay on that planet he had never cared for it much. It went quite well, however, with the course with which it was served—a perfectly grilled fillet of some marine creature over which was a tart sauce. The portions, thought Grimes, would have been no more than an appetizer for a small and not especially hungry cat. The Baroness picked daintily at hers. He picked daintily at his. It would have been ill-mannered to have disposed of it in one mouthful.

“Have you no appetite, Captain?” asked the woman. “I always thought that spacemen were much heartier eaters.”

“I am savoring the flavor, Your Excellency,” he said, not altogether untruthfully.

“It is, indeed, a rarity,” she informed him. “The Golden Skimmer of Macedon is, despite protection, almost extinct.”

“Indeed, Your Excellency?”
And how many credits did I shovel down my throat just now?
he wondered.

“Talking of fish,” she went on, “poor Captain Billinger was really a fish out of water in this ship. Isn’t there an old proverb about silk purses and sows’ ears?” She permitted herself a musical chuckle. “But I am mixing zoological metaphors, am I not? Captain Billinger, I am sure, is a most competent spaceman but not quite a gentleman . . .”

Mphm!
thought Grimes dubiously.

“Whereas you . . .” She let the implication dangle in mid air.

Grimes laughed. “There is, of course, the phrase, officers and gentlemen, which is supposed to apply only to the armed forces and not to the Merchant Service. But . . .”

“But what, Captain?”

The slur on the absent Billinger had annoyed him. He said, “To begin with, Your Excellency, I am no longer a commissioned officer of the Survey Service. Secondly, I have always failed to understand how being a licensed killer somehow bestows gentility upon one.”

“Go on, Captain.” Her voice was cold. “If it was airs and graces you wanted, Your Excellency, you would have done well to recruit your yachtmaster from Trans-Galactic Clippers rather than from the Dog Star Line. It’s said about TG that theirs is a service in which accent counts for more than efficiency.”

“Indeed, Captain. When the vacancy next occurs I shall bear in mind what you have just told me.”

The butler set fresh plates before them, poured glasses of a red wine. The vol-au-vents looked and smelled delicious. They also looked as though even a genteel sneeze would fragment them and blow them away.

“I am making allowances, Captain. This is, after all, your first night on board and I realize that in the Survey Service you were not accustomed to dining in female company.”

“Perhaps not, Your Excellency.”

He tried not to sputter pastry crumbs but some, inevitably, specked the lapels of his mess jacket. (He almost made a jocular remark about “canteen medals” but thought better of it.) The meat was highly spiced, stimulating rather than satisfying the appetite. The wine, a Vitelli claret, was excellent. So was the rosé, from the same vineyard, that accompanied the grilled Carinthian “swallows”—creatures that, as Grimes knew, were reptilian rather than avian. They were esteemed by gourmets but were, in actuality, little more than crisp skin over brittle bones.
(A single swallow,
thought Grimes,
may not make a summer but it certainly does not make a meal!)
With these came a tossed, green salad that was rich in vitamins but in little else.

Conversation had become desultory and Grimes was beginning to regret his defense of Billinger, especially since that gentleman would never know that his successor had taken up the cudgels on his behalf.

Finally there came a confection that was no more than spun sugar and sweet spices, with spumante to wash it down. There was coffee—superb, but in demitasses. (Grimes loved good coffee but preferred it in a mug.) There were thimble-sized glasses of El Doradan strawberry brandy.

The Baroness said, “You will excuse me, Captain.”

This was obviously dismissal. Grimes asked, “Are there any orders, Your Excellency?”

“You are employed as Master of this vessel,” she told him. “I expect you, at your convenience, to familiarize yourself with the operation of the ship. After all—although it is extremely unlikely—Big Sister might suffer a breakdown.”

“Goodnight, Your Excellency. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Thank you for your company, Captain Grimes. The evening has been most instructive. Perhaps one day I shall write a thesis on the psychology of spacemen.”

The butler showed him out of the dining saloon. He went to his quarters, disdaining the elevator in such a small ship, using the spiral staircase around the axial shaft. He found that his smoking apparatus had been taken from the bedroom and placed on the coffee table in the day cabin. The pouch, which had been three quarters empty, was now full. He opened it suspiciously. Its content did not quite look like tobacco but certainly smelled like it, and a weed of very high quality at that.
From the yacht’s stores!
he wondered.