Ride the Star Winds (10 page)

It was Sanchez who answered.

“Shortly after the late Governor Wibberley’s so-called accident there was a salesman here from Electra—not that he called himself a salesman. Trade Representative was his title. He was wined and dined by Estrelita but didn’t make any sales. He was allowed to wander around without supervision—after all, what harm could a woolly witted scientist-engineer do? He enjoyed a liaison with one of our girls, an OAP member.” He grinned. “She put the hard sell onto him and made a convert. Probably only a temporary one but still a convert. She told him about our problems and of the way in which the Governor, who had been taking too much interest in the state of affairs here, had been eliminated. . . .”

“Tanya Mendoza is a friend of mine,” said Su Lin. “She came to visit me here. It was quite natural that she should bring her Electran friend with her and quite natural that I should show him around the Residence. He had a detector with him—although as far as Smith and Jaconelli were concerned he had nothing on him but the usual camera and recorder carried by tourists. He confirmed our suspicions that—as you have said—the Residence is crawling with bugs. He promised Tanya that he would do something about it, something that would not be obvious to the . . . the . . . buggers, is there such a word?”

“There is,” said Grimes, “although its real meaning is not the one that you have given it.”

Looking at her face he saw that she was making some sort of physical effort. He was about to ask what was wrong when Sanchez said, “Very interesting, Your Excellency. Very interesting. . . .”

Then, from behind him, Smith said, “Your Excellency, the airship is approaching now.”

The device had been switched off, Grimes realized. So all conversation from now on was being faithfully and truthfully recorded.

He turned to face his ADC.

“We’ll be right out,” he said.

Chapter 15

The Lutz-Parsival
came in slowly and cautiously.

She was a graceful ship despite her chubbiness, her metal skin gleaming brightly in the sunlight. On her tail fins was painted the insignia of Bardon’s regiment, a rampant golden lion. He would have to get that changed, thought Grimes. To a kangaroo? Why not?

“He’s handling her like a cow handling a musket,” muttered Sanchez disgustedly.

Grimes was inclined to agree. The approach was overly careful and then, in the final stages, clumsy. The ship dropped too fast as the helium in the gas cells was compressed and then lifted steeply as water ballast was dumped to compensate, drenching the gubernatorial party.

“If this,” said Grimes furiously to Smith, “is a fair sample of the Army’s airmanship it’s just as well that I’ve appointed my own pilot!”

“Your Excellency,” replied the ADC, “Lieutenant Duggin is a little rusty. . . .”

“If we were made of metal,” said Grimes, “we’d be getting rusty!”

With his hand he wiped the water from his face. He would have liked to take his shirt off to wring it out.

“Your Excellency,” said Su Lin, “you must go back inside to change into dry clothing.”

“It doesn’t matter, Su. I’ll soon dry out. I want to see what other comic turns that clown up there is going to put on for us.”

The airship circled slowly, once again losing altitude. This time her descent could be measured in millimeter per seconds. It was a long and painful process. By the time that the dangling lines had been picked up by the ground party—soldiers of the Governor’s Guard supplemented by New Cantonese gardeners—Grimes’s clothing was merely damp. And then the pilot did not use his engines for the final approach to the mast but was towed into position by the mooring crew. At last the nose cone was secure in the socket. A ladder was lowered from the control gondola and down it scrambled the plump figure of the pilot, handling himself as clumsily as he had handled the ship. He shambled rather than marched to where Grimes was standing and threw a casual salute in his direction.

“Lieutenant Duggin, Your Excellency. Reporting for duty.”

“Lieutenant Duggin, you are relieved from duty,” Grimes told him. “Lieutenant Smith will make arrangements for your transport back to barracks.”

“But I’m your pilot, sir.”

“You are not. But if ever I require a bath attendant I’ll send for you.”

“But, sir. . . .”

“That is all, Lieutenant. Captain Sanchez, do you wish Lieutenant Duggin to make a formal hand over?”

“It would be advisable, Your Excellency.”

“Very well, Captain. See to it, will you?”

He stood with Su Lin and Smith watching as the two pilots walked to the dangling ladder and mounted it. As it took their weight the airship sagged down from the mast and then resumed her horizontal attitude. No further ballast was dumped; no doubt there was an automatic release of pressure from the atmospheric trimming cell or cells.

“Wait here, Mr. Smith, to look after Mr. Duggin after he’s handed over,” Grimes told the ADC.

He walked with Su Lin back to his quarters in the Residence.

* * *

She brought him tea. He sent her away to get another cup so that she could join him in the taking of refreshment.

He asked, “Are you switched on?”

She said, “Yes, Your Excellency.”

“And what are we talking about?”

“I am telling you about the New Cantonese festivals that we still observe on this world.”

“Fireworks, processions of lanterns and dragons and all that?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“I hope to see at least one of your festivals.”

“You will be an honored guest.”

“Thank you, Su.” He sipped from his cup. “Now you can tell me about the underground. What do you do, what do you hope to accomplish?”

“As far as we, and the other refugees, are concerned we want full citizenship. As far as Captain Sanchez and the OAP are concerned they want a return to the egalitarian principles of the original colonists of the planet. All of us are against the regime of Estrelita O’Higgins and Colonel Bardon and the vicious trades that they foster.”

“Such as?”

“The shipping of girls—yes, and boys—to the brothels of various worlds where there is a demand for them, such as Isa and Venusberg. The pleasure houses—so-called—on this planet. The drug trade. And the profiteering in all the stores at which the refugees must purchase the essentials of life to ensure that nobody can possibly save enough money to become financially independent.”

“So you want a revolution.”

“Yes. Not necessarily an armed revolt, although it might have to come that.” (And was this, wondered Grimes, his solicitous handmaiden with her limited but courtly English? She was reminding him more and more of a girl he had once known who had been President of the University of Kandral’s Young Socialist Club and who had finished up as Vice President of the planet.) “We realize that once we take up arms against O’Higgins we shall also be taking up arms against Earth, against the Federation, as represented here by Bardon. If it is at all possible the change must be made by constitutional methods. The Governor is more than a mere figurehead. He has . . . How shall I put it? He has the power to hire and fire.”

“Mphm?” Grimes knocked out and refilled his pipe. Su Lin reverted to her serving maid persona and lit it for him. He thought,
I
shall have to try to break her of
that
habit.
“Mphm?”

“Governor Wibberley was conducting his own investigation of the state of affairs here. He had amassed considerable evidence of malpractices. He was almost ready to act. And then. . . .”

“So you want me, as Governor, to sack Colonel Bardon
and
President O’Higgins
and
all her ministers. . . .”

She said, “There have been precedents. There was one, in
your
country, on Earth, many years ago.”

He said, “There’s more than one Australian precedent. The Governor General, Sir John Kerr, sacked Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Some years previously the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Philip Game, sacked Premier Jack Lang. . . .”

“You see.”

He went on. “And many years before that the garrison in New South Wales deposed the Governor, Captain—as he was then—William Bligh.”

“And wasn’t Bligh,” she asked, “the man who was always having mutinies? You’ve had a few yourself, haven’t you?”

“Which doesn’t mean that I like having them, Su.”

She laughed. “I suppose not. But there must be ways of doing things constitutionally. And to do them without calling Earth first for approval—always supposing that Bardon let you get a message through.”

“Messages did get through, after Wibberley’s death,” said Grimes. “That’s why I’m here.”

“As trouble shooter?” she asked. “Or as shit stirrer? In any case, Bardon’s made sure that no more messages get through without his knowledge.”

“Just who—or what—are you, Su Lin?” he asked.

“You have seen my dossier, Your Excellency.”

“For what it’s worth.”

“There
is
a Su Lin,” she told him. “But she is not on Liberia any longer. She was carefully selected out of all the New Cantonese as being almost my double. I required only minor body sculpture to make me her replica.”

“Then what is your real name?”

“It doesn’t matter. I rather like Su Lin, anyhow.”

“Where are you from? You aren’t from FIA, are you? Or are you? If you are I should have been told.”

“I am not.”

“The Sinkiang People’s Republic?”

“No. The New Cantonese here are no worse off than they would be on New Sinkiang.”

“Then where?”

There was a knock on the door. Grimes saw Su Lin’s face go briefly tense as her vaginal muscles switched off the device that she carried.

Sanchez entered.

“I have taken delivery of the Lutz-Parsival, Your Excellency,” he reported formally. “She seems to be airworthy in all respects, although I shall have to make a more detailed inspection later.”
(To look for hidden bombs,
thought Grimes.) “I have left her at the mast, in the sunlight, to recharge the power cells.”

“I think that I’d like to have a sniff round aboard her myself,” said Grimes, “if you will be so good as to accompany me.”

“Of course, Your Excellency,” said Sanchez.

Chapter 16

“We shall have to give her a name,”
said Grimes to Sanchez as he and the pilot made their way along the catwalk running from stem to stern inside the airship. “LP17 is too . . . impersonal. Ships are more than just . . .
things.”

“What do you have in mind, Your Excellency?”

Grimes thought hard. There had been quite a few ships for which he had felt a real affection, most recently
Little Sister
and
Sister Sue.
He grinned.

“
Fat Susie,”
he said. “She is rather plump, isn’t she? I’ll tell Mr. Jaconelli to organize painters for you to put the new name on the envelope. And at the same time they can change the insignia on the tail fins. I want a kangaroo instead of that tomcat of Bardon’s.”

“People might think,” said Sanchez, “that you’re naming the ship after Su Lin.”

“She’s not fat,” Grimes told him. “But there was a fat Susie, not so very long ago.”

(He wondered where she was now, how she was faring.)

He inspected the comfortable lounge with its wide out-and-down-looking windows on either side, the not-too-Spartan sleeping accommodation, the little galley with a standard autochef. This, if he was going to make much use of
Fat Susie,
would have to be modified to his requirements. He spent some time in the control cab, familiarizing himself with the instrumentation. It would not take him long, he thought, to learn how to fly this thing.

“She’ll do,” he said at last.

He was first down the ladder with Sanchez not far behind him. As he dropped to the ground he heard the air pump start up to pressurize the helium in one of the cells to compensate for the loss of weight.

Sanchez, who would now be living in the Residence, dined with him that evening, the two men taking their meal in Grimes’s sitting room. (He had decided to use the dining room only for state occasions.) They were waited upon by Su Lin. The meal was a good one, traditional New Cantonese cookery. The pilot wielded his ivory chopsticks with as much assurance as did Grimes.

There was no need for Su Lin to activate what Grimes thought of as the anti-bug; conversation consisted mainly of generalities and of astronautical shop talk. Finally Sanchez said good night and left. Su Lin brought more tea, for herself and Grimes.

She said, “I am switched on.”

“Indeed? And what are we talking about, Su Lin? I have to call you that as I don’t know your real name.”

She laughed. “As far as the bugs are concerned you’re living up to your reputation. Casanova Grimes, the terror of the space ways.”

“Do people really think of me like that?”

“Some of them do. Pirate, libertine. . . . Oh, you’ve a reputation all right.”

“Mphm.”

“If Bardon thinks that you’re spending all your time womanizing he’ll not be expecting you to start putting your foot down with a firm hand.”

“Mphm.”

He looked at her. It was obvious that she was enjoying being herself and not playing the part of a faithful handmaiden.

He said, “You were just going to tell me who you’re really working for when Raoul came in.”

“Yes, I was. Do you really want to know, Your Excellency?”

“As long as we’re in private you can call me John.”

“I am honored, John. I’m with Pat.”

With Pat?
Did she mean that she had an Irish boyfriend, Grimes wondered, and therefore out of bounds as far as he was concerned? But PAT was an acronym, he remembered. PAT. People Against Tyranny. He recalled the first time that he had heard of this organization; it was during a spell ashore between ships at Lindisfarne Base. A dictatorial planetary president had been assassinated and PAT had claimed the credit for this act of justice. There had been some discussion of the affair in the junior officers’ mess.

“Aren’t you running rather a risk telling me, Su?”

“I don’t think so, Captain Grimes, Survey Service Reserve.”