Ride the Star Winds (12 page)

The girl told him to sit in a chair, went behind him to carry on the work of disguise. He felt the sticky coldness as some adhesive was dabbed on to his skull behind his ears and then her hands as she firmly pressed the prominent appendages to the fast-setting gum. She came around to stand in front of him and looked down at him.

She said, “That’s better. Now, open your mouth, please . . .”

He obeyed.

Her deft fingers inserted a pad, a tiny cushion covered in slick plastic, into each side of his mouth, under each cheek. He was, of course, aware of their presence although they were not uncomfortable.

“Now look at yourself,” she told him.

He got up from the chair and did so. He stared at the chubby-faced stranger who stared back at him from the mirror.

He asked, “Don’t I get a moustache?”

His voice was as strange as his appearance, high, squeaky almost. He could see his expression of surprise.

She told him, “The voice modulator is incorporated in one of the cheek pads. The way you look and the way you sound nobody will recognize you.”

“Perhaps. But just about everybody on this world has face fungus of some kind.”

“All right.” She went back to the things that she had laid out on the bed and selected something that looked, at first glance, like a large, hairy insect. “This is self-adhesive,” she told him. “You’ll need a special spray, of course, to get it off.”

Grimes looked at himself again.

That heavy moustache suited him, he thought. It was a great pity that his modulated voice did not go with his macho appearance. He supposed, ruefully, that he couldn’t have everything.

He took the broad-brimmed black hat, with its scarlet ribbon, that the girl handed him, went through to the sitting room. Sanchez got up from the chair in which he had been sitting when Grimes entered. At first Grimes did not recognize him; the tuft of false beard on his chin was an effective disguise.

Sanchez asked, “Ready, Joachim?”

“Joachim?”

“You have to have a name.”

“Joachim, then,” agreed Grimes. “I rather like it.” He patted his empty pockets. “What do I use for money?”

Su Lin handed him a well-worn notecase and a small handful of silver and copper coins.

She said, “At first you’d better let Raoul do the paying, until you get the feel of the local currency.”

“That shouldn’t be long,” Grimes told her. “As a spaceman I’m used to paying for things, on all sorts of worlds, in all sorts of odd coins and pieces of paper or whatever. And now, as soon as I’ve found my pipe and tobacco, I’ll be ready to go.”

“You will
not
smoke a pipe, Joachim,” said Su Lin severely.

“I’ve seen people smoking pipes in Libertad.”

“And everybody knows that
you
smoke one. There were cartoons in the newspapers when your appointment was first announced; in every one of them you had a pipe stuck in your face. Pipe and ears—those are your trademarks.”

“Mphm.”

“Here’s a packet of cigars, and a lighter. And now, if both of you will follow me, I’ll take you to the truck.”

Grimes thought that he had already acquired a fair knowledge of the geography of the Residence; he soon discovered that he had not. There was a door that he had thought was just part of the paneling in the corridor; beyond this was a corridor of the kind that, aboard a ship, would be called a working alleyway. There was a tradesman’s entrance. Beyond this was the rather shabby van, in the driver’s seat of which the old majordomo was sitting. Wong Lee was not wearing his livery but was looking very dignified in a high-collared suit of black silk, a round black hat of the same material on his head. He ignored Grimes and Sanchez as they clambered into the rear of the vehicle. The door shut automatically as soon as they were aboard. There was a roll of cloth of some kind on which they made themselves comfortable. The only light came from ventilation slits and that—it was all of half an hour after sunset—was fading fast.

The van started, so smoothly that the passengers were hardly aware of the motion. Raoul offered Grimes a long, thin cigar from his pack, took one himself. The two men smoked in companionable silence, broken eventually by the pilot.

He said, “Wong Lee’s letting us off on the corner of May Day Street and Tolstoy Avenue. On the outskirts of the city. From there it’ll be easy to get a trishaw. He’ll pick us up on the same corner at 0100 tomorrow.”

“And how do we fill in the time until then?” asked Grimes.

“Easily, Joachim. I’ll try to give you an idea of the way in which the refugees are exploited here. We’ll do a tour of the pleasure district.”

“Combining business with pleasure, as it were,” said Grimes.

“You can put it that way,” said Raoul coldly, very coldly.

Grimes remembered, then, what he had been told when the pilot’s shuttle craft brought him down from the orbiting
Sobraon
to Port Libertad, about the New Dallas girl called Mary Lou who had been one of the entertainers in the Pink Pussy Cat.

He said, inadequately. “I’m sorry, Raoul.”

“There’s no need to be, Joachim. I know that you’re not the sort of man who’ll get much pleasure from what we’re going to see. You’re no Holy Joe—as Wibberley was—but you have your principles.”

“You hope,” said Grimes, adding softly, “and
I
hope.”

The van stopped.

The rear door opened to a warm darkness that was enhanced rather than dispelled by the sparsely spaced, yellow street lamps.

Grimes and Sanchez got out.

Without a word to them Wong Lee drove away.

Chapter 19

It did not seem to Grimes
to be a place at which to wait for a cab—or its local equivalent—but, after a wait of no longer than five minutes, an empty trishaw, its operator pedaling lazily, drifted along, halting beside them when hailed. Yet another New Cantonese, Grimes decided, a little man, scrawny in his sleeveless singlet and baggy shorts yet with muscles evident in his thighs and calves.

Grimes clambered into the basketlike passenger compartment, which was forward of the driver, followed by Sanchez who, before mounting, ordered, “Garden of Delights.”

The trishaw operator grunted acknowledgment and, as soon as his passengers were seated, began pumping his pedals. The journey was mainly through quiet side streets and, Grimes decided, more or less toward the locality of Port Libertad, the glare of lights from which was now and again to the right and now and again to the left but always forward of the beam.

They came to a street that, by local standards, was fantastically bright and bustling. There were street stalls, selling foodstuffs, from which eddied all manner of savory aromas. There were brightly lit facades, establishments whose names were picked out in multi-colored lights.
The Pink Pussy Cat . . . The Dallas Whorehouse . . . The Old Shanghai . . . The Ginza . . . The Garden of Delights . . .

The trishaw stopped.

Grimes got out and began to fumble for money. Sanchez forestalled him, tossing coins to the operator, who deftly caught them. The two men walked into the vestibule of the Garden of Delights where, sitting in a booth that was like a miniature pagoda, an elderly Oriental gentleman who could have been Wong Lee’s slightly younger brother was sitting in receipt of custom.

Again Sanchez paid and led Grimes through a doorway, through an entanglement of beaded curtains, into a large, dimly lit room, the air of which was redolent with the fumes of the incense burners standing on tripods along the walls and between the tables. The decor, thought Grimes, was either phonily Terran Oriental or fair dinkum New Cantonese—but he had never been to New Canton and never would go there. (Neither would anybody else; the planet was now no more than a globe of incandescent slag.) There were rich silken hangings. There were bronze animals that could have been either lions or Pekingese dogs. There were overhead lanterns, glowing parchment globes encircled by painted dragons. There was music—the tinkling of harplike instruments, the high squealing of pipes, the muted thud of little drums.

There was a stage at one end of the hall. On it was a girl, gyrating languidly and gracefully to the beat of the music. She was attired in filmy veils and was discarding them one by one.
(And what the hell,
wondered Grimes,
did Salome have to do with China, or New Canton?)
Nonetheless he watched appreciatively. The girl was tall, high-breasted, slender-limbed. Her dance
was
a dance, did not convey the impression that she was disrobing hastily prior to jumping into the shower or into bed.

Grimes’s attention was distracted momentarily by a waitress who came to their table. She was wearing a high-necked tunic that did not quite come down as far as possible, golden sandals and nothing else. She had brought two bowls of some savory mess, one of rice, what looked like a tall, silver teapot, two small silver goblets, two pairs of chopsticks. She poured from the pot into the cups, bowed and retreated.

“Your very good health, Joachim,” said Sanchez, raising his cup.

“And yours, Raoul.”

Grimes sipped. He had been expecting tea, was surprised—not unpleasantly—to discover that the liquid was wine, a hot, rather sweet liquor. He put the cup down, picked up his chopsticks and with them transferred a portion of rice to the sweet-and-sour whatever it was in his bowl. He sampled a mouthful of the mixture. It wasn’t bad.

On the stage the dancer was down to her last veil. She swirled it around her—partially revealing, concealing, affording more glimpses, concealing again, finally dropping the length of filmy fabric. She stood there briefly, flaunting her splendid nudity. She bowed, then turned and glided sinuously from the stage. The orchestra (if one could call it that) fell silent. There was a pattering of applause.

Grimes looked around. There were not, he saw, many customers. There were men, dressed as he and Sanchez were. At two of the tables there were obvious spacers. At one of these the waitress was being mauled. Obviously the girl was not enjoying having those prying hands all over her body but she was not resisting.

“You’ll not get shows like this out in the country, Joachim,” said Sanchez.

(And that, thought Grimes, was the pilot’s way of telling him that there could be bugs here; it was very hard, these days, to find a place that was not bug-infested.)

He said, “That was a lovely dollop of trollop. On the stage, I mean.”

“She’ll not be that way long, Joachim. The signs were there. Her eyes—didn’t you notice?”

Grimes admitted that he hadn’t paid much attention to her face.

“That faraway look. Dreamsticks. Soon she’ll start to wither. The waitresses, too. But there are plenty more where they came from. Don’t tell me that you haven’t had the recruiters around your plantation yet.”

“I thought that they were selling encyclopedias,” said Grimes.

“Ha, ha!”

The music had started again, a livelier tune. The dancer who came on the stage might have been beautiful once, still possessed the remains of beauty. But her movements were clumsy; her strip act was just that and nothing more. When she was completely naked she stood there, swaying, beckoning to various members of the audience. Grimes felt acutely ashamed when he, briefly, was the target of her allure. He was ashamed for his cloth when, finally, one of the spacers got to his feet and shambled to the stage.

“They aren’t going to do it
here!”
he whispered to Sanchez.

“There are rooms at the back, Joachim. She’ll want to go through his pockets in privacy. Her habit’s expensive. But let’s get out of here. It’s not very often that you have a night on the town and there are more places to sample.”

“Wait till I’ve finished my sweet and sour,” said Grimes.

The Dallas Whorehouse was their next port of call. The girls there were all tall and blonde, the music a piano on which a tall, thin and very black man hammered out old-time melodies. He was far better than the instrument upon which he was performing. Grimes recognized “The Yellow Rose Of Texas” and, in spite of himself, was amused by the very well-endowed young lady who borrowed two twenty-cent pieces from a spacer sitting just under the stage and placed one over each nipple, after which she counter-rotated her breasts without dislodging the coins. When she was finished she deftly flipped them into the cupped hands of the spaceman.

“In a few weeks’ time,” said Sanchez sourly, “she’ll have to use paper money—and stick it on with spit.”

“A pity,” said Grimes sincerely.

The pilot looked at his wrist companion. “Finish your beer, Joachim. I have to show you that the big city’s not all boozing and wenching, otherwise you’ll be going back home with a false impression.”

“Give me time to finish the tacos and this chili dip,” grumbled Grimes.

Chapter 20

The next place
that they went to was a very dowdy house, one of a terrace, in a poorly lit side street. As they approached it Grimes wondered what sort of entertainment would be offered in such a venue: something unspeakably sordid, he thought.

There was a doorkeeper, a burly man wearing the inevitable frayed denims and the almost-as-inevitable heavy beard.

“Your contributions, comrades,” he growled, gesturing toward a battered metal bowl on the table before him. There was a clink and rattle of coinage as Sanchez paid for himself and Grimes.

The two men passed through a curtained door into a hall, took seats toward the back. Grimes looked around curiously. The room, he saw, was less than half full. There were both women and men there, some of them obviously Liberians, some New Cantonese, some Negroid, some blondly Nordic. As yet there was nobody on the platform, behind which were draperies of black-and-scarlet bunting, at the end of the room.

Grimes was about to ask what was going on when a tall, heavily bearded man mounted the platform. He was followed by a fat woman, by two other men of average height and, finally, by a girl who was more skinny than slim, whose protuberant front teeth gleamed whitely in her dusky face. She took her seat at a battered upright piano; the others sat behind a long table on which were water bottles, glasses and what looked like (and were) old-fashioned microphones.