Ride the Star Winds (69 page)

And at the finish Seiko standing there, on a low, sea-rounded rock, while, one by one, the silkies each gently placed a flipper on her bare feet before sliding away, down into the sea. It seemed like (was it? could it be?) an act of obeisance, of worship even.

Grimes, his prominent ears still burning with embarrassment, filled and lit his pipe. He demanded, “What . . .” then fell silent.

“It is all right, John,” Seiko told him. “We are alone again. He, the pastor’s spy, is gone. Along the coast road. I am surprised that you did not hear him. He was not very cautious. Anyhow, you can talk without being overheard.”

“I did not hear him,” snapped Grimes. “There were too many other things to listen to. And watch. Just what, in the name of all the Odd Gods of the Galaxy, were the three of you up to?”

“You said that you wished to shock Pastor Coffin’s people, John,” Shirl told him.

“I didn’t say that I wanted to be shocked. The worst of it was that the three of you seemed to be enjoying it.”

“And why should we not?” asked Darleen sweetly. “Have you ever experienced the feel of soft, rich fur against your naked skin? And we learned, on your world, that many human women are not above enjoying sexual relations with their so-called pets, their cats and their dogs and the like.”

“That’s different!” almost shouted Grimes.

“How so, John?” asked Shirl. “Oh, all right. Those pets, on Earth, are not intelligent by human standards. The silkies are intelligent. Unfortunately, as far as we and they are concerned, our bodies are too . . . different.”

“That will do,” snapped Grimes. “Get dressed. And remember this, if Coffin’s man has reported to his master, and if the patrolmen try to arrest us, the three of you are to use only such force as is required to prevent our capture. I want an incident, not a massacre. But I don’t want to spend what’s left of the night in Coffin’s jail.”

But he had no real fears of this latter. He already knew of the fighting capabilities of Shirl and Darleen and strongly suspected that Seiko, by herself, would be more than a match for a small army, provided that this army did not deploy nuclear weaponry.

Nonetheless they made their way back to the ship without incident.

Grimes told Steerforth a somewhat edited version of the night’s doings.

Chapter 26

So the bait
had been noticed. Would Pastor Coffin bite? Grimes had little doubt he would do so, and no doubt at all that the pastor would find Shirl, Darleen and Seiko an impossibly hard mouthful to swallow. As long as there was an incident, as long as Grimes could scream that he and his people, respectable, law-abiding merchant spacepersons, had been assaulted by the Salemites there would be an excuse for Survey Service intervention. Damien had half-promised that the destroyer
Pollux
would be loafing around in the vicinity of New Salem, doing something or other, during the period of Grimes’s stay on the planet.

After spending a rather lazy day Grimes and the three girls emerged from the ship under the cover of darkness and followed their usual route to the beach. It was another brightly starlit night but this time they were not followed. When Grimes got himself entangled in a particularly tenacious bush he envied the pastor’s men. They—assuming that they would be at the shore to watch the horrid goings-on—would have made their way to the beach by the coast road.

They were waiting there. Grimes, by himself, would not have been aware of their presence but Shirl and Darleen, with their super-sharp hearing, were.

“Do we do the same as last night, John?” whispered Shirl.

“No,” said Grimes firmly. (Tonight’s audio-visual tapes would have to be produced as evidence at the inquiry into the almost inevitable incident.) “No. Just a meeting, a conference with the silkies.”

“But can’t we have a swim, even?” asked Darleen.

“All right, all right. Have your swim.” (There was very few worlds—although Salem was one of them—where the spectacle of attractive naked women splashing in the sea would evoke so much as a raised eyebrow.)

Grimes set up the recorder. Seiko stripped and waded out into the water, deeper and deeper, until she was lost to sight. Shirl and Darleen got out of their coveralls, ran down to the sea, fell full length and began striking out in a sparkling flurry of phosphorescence. Grimes lit his pipe. He thought that he heard a faint rustling in the bushes inland from the beach but could not be sure. He was far from being afraid but was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy.

Shirl and Darleen emerged from the water, joined him where he sat. Shirl produced a packet of cigarillos from a pocket in her coveralls. Both girls lit up. Neither made any attempt to get dressed. Grimes remarked upon this.

“The air is quite warm,” said Shirl. “We shall let it dry us.”

“Last night,” said Darleen, “we were very uncomfortable when we put on our clothes over wet skins.”

“Suit yourself,” said Grimes.

And why should he be the only one dressed? Because all that was happening was being recorded, that was why. Because friends as well as enemies in the Survey Service would laugh themselves sick when, at the inquiry, the tapes were played, with an audio-visual recording of Grimes enjoying a roll in the hay (or a roll on the sand) with two of his junior officers. Too, why should he give those unseen watchers an even better show than the one that they were already enjoying?

Seiko waded out from the sea, dripping phosphorescence. She was followed by six big silkies. The same ones as the previous night? Grimes couldn’t tell. Apart from differences in size and pelt coloration they all looked the same to him.

The seabeasts disposed themselves in a semi-circle, facing the humans and the pseudo-human and the audio-visual recorder. They talked and sang, and Shirl, Darleen and Seiko replied to them in kind. Now and again Shirl would interpret for Grimes’s benefit.

The silkies wanted just one thing, to be left alone. They admitted that not all humans were as bad, from their viewpoint, as the colonists. They admitted that exchanges of knowledge and of information might be advantageous but, essentially, they had very good reason not to trust humans.

“Not even you, John,” said Shirl sadly. “We—Darleen and myself and Seiko—have been prepared to cast aside the artificial trappings of so-called civilization. You have not. We have made naked contact with the silkies. You have not. And you did not approve, in your heart of hearts, when we did . . . .”

“I’m keeping my trousers on,” growled Grimes. “Tonight especially.”

At last the conference was over. Again Seiko stood on that sea-rounded rock; again the silkies made their obeisance, one by one gently placing a flipper on her slim feet. Then they were gone, back into the sea.

The three women began to get into their coveralls—and from the bushes, armed with staves and clubs, poured Coffin’s men.

The women were caught at a disadvantage, half into and half out of their coveralls. Too, at first, they paid overmuch heed to Grimes’s admonition not to fight back too viciously. And Seiko, upon whom Grimes had been relying, was one of the first casualties. The butt of a long stave struck her fair and square upon her vulnerable navel, where her ON/OFF switch was situated. She did not freeze into complete immobility—the switch had not been fully actuated—but thereafter was able to struggle only feebly. By this time both Shirl and Darleen had been struck about their heads with heavy clubs, as had been Grimes himself. After that he had only confused recollections of the struggle. He was flung violently to the sand, face down, and got his mouth and his eyes full of grit. A heavy boot on the small of his back pinned him in this supine position. His wrists were yanked up and back, pulled together by rough rope that broke the skin. Despite his kicking his ankles were bound.

He heard Coffin’s voice, an unpleasant combination of smugness and harshness.

“We have them. The witch and her three disciples.”

“But one of them is the outworld captain, Pastor.”

“It matters not. Captains may still be sinners and blasphemers, worshippers of false gods. His rank—such as it is—matters not. He will stand trial with the witch and the two shameless trollops.”

Grimes felt hands lifting him. He was dropped on to a hard wooden surface. His nose began to bleed. Somebody was dropped beside him, and then two other bodies on top of him. He heard the squeaking of not-very-well-greased axles and felt the jolts as the unsprung vehicle, whatever it was, was pulled (by manpower, he supposed) along the rough coast road. He managed to lift and to turn his head so that his painfully bruised nose was no longer in contact with the floorboards.

He could speak now, although it required a great effort.

“Seiko . . .”

“Yes . . .” her voice came at last, weak, barely audible.

“You’re the strongest of us. Can you break your bonds?”

“No . . . I have . . . lost . . . my strength. They . . . hit me. You know . . . where.”

“You should not have told us not to fight back,” said Shirl.

“Where . . . are they taking us?” asked Darleen.

To hell in a handcart
, thought Grimes but did not say it.

“What will they do to us?” asked Shirl.

“Throw us into jail, I suppose,” said Grimes. “But not to worry. Mr. Steerforth will bail us out.” (
And how much will that cost
? he wondered, the mercenary side of him coming to the surface.)

Chapter 27

They were not thrown in jail.

They were dragged roughly out of the four-wheeled cart and securely bound, with iron chains, to four upright posts, also of iron. Dazedly Grimes looked about him. He and the others had been brought to the open area between the waterfront, with its jetties, and the town. He was facing a long table, on which were three oil lanterns, at which were sitting Pastor Coffin and, one to either side of him, two clerkly men. Other lanterns were hung from tall posts, illuminating the faces of the crowd that had turned up to. . . . To see the fun?

Coffin glared at Grimes from beneath his heavy, black brows. He demanded, in a deep voice, “Prisoner at the bar, how plead ye?”

Grimes mustered enough saliva to wash most of the sand and blood out of his mouth. He spat, regretting as he did so that the pastor was out of range. He spat again.

“Prisoner at the bar, how plead ye?” repeated Coffin.

“I do not plead,” almost shouted Grimes. “I demand. I demand that I and my people be returned, at once, to our ship!”

“Prisoner at the bar, how plead ye? Guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty of fucking
what
?” demanded Grimes, considering that this occasion called for some deliberate obscenity in his speech, realizing, too late, that his words could be misconstrued. (But, he thought, he had not played an active part in that orgy.)

Coffin seemed to be losing his patience. “John Grimes, you will answer my questions. Are you, or are you not, guilty of witchcraft?”

“Witchcraft? You must be joking.”

“This is no joking matter, Grimes. Are you guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

One of the clerkly men was writing in a
big book with an antique-looking pen.

“Your plea has been recorded,” said Coffin. He turned his attention to Shirl. “You, woman. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty,” she replied in a firm voice.

“And you, woman. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty,” said Darleen.

“And . . . you?” Coffin was glaring at Seiko, who was sagging in her bonds.

The robot was speaking with difficulty. “Not . . .” she got out at last. “Not . . . guilty.”

“Very well,” said Coffin. “Now we shall hear the truth. Clerk of the court, call the first witness.”

The man sitting on his right—not, as Grimes had been expecting, the man writing in the book—rose to his feet, called, in a high voice, “Matthew Ling, stand forward! Matthew Ling, stand forward!”

A burly fellow shouldered his way through the crowd, took his stance between the prisoners and Coffin’s table.

“Matthew Ling, identify yourself,” ordered the pastor.

“My name is Matthew Ling,” said the man. “I hold the rank of Law Enforcer Second Class.”

“Tell your story, Law Enforcer Ling.”

“May it please the court,” said Ling, “my story is as follows.” He spoke as do police officers all over the Galaxy when giving evidence, his voice toneless. “Pursuant to information received and to the instructions of Pastor Coffin I followed the four accused from the spaceport to Short Bay. At first I thought that they were members of the Negro race; as the court is aware there are some of those accursed people in the crew of the starship. I caught glimpses of their faces while they were still on the spaceport grounds, and saw that they were black . . .”

“As their faces,” said Coffin, “are black now. And their hands. That alone is damning evidence. Why should a God-fearing man or woman blacken the Lord’s handiwork as evinced on his person? I will tell you. As a badge of submission to the Prince of Darkness. But continue, Law Enforcer.”

“May it please the court . . . I followed the accused through the bush, across the coast road, and then concealed myself in the bushes, in a position overlooking the beach at Short Bay. I watched the accused setting up a device on a tripod, a devil’s machine of some kind that emitted colored lights. Then the male accused sat down on the sand and began to inhale the poisonous fumes of some weed that he was burning in the bowl of a small implement. While he was partaking of his noxious drug the three female accused disrobed. I saw then that their faces and hands were blackened but not the rest of their bodies. The females accused then disported themselves in a wanton manner before the male accused.

“The three female accused waded into the sea. Two of them swam, with unnatural skill. The third one, the one with the black hair, waded out into deep water until she was lost to sight. At no time did she swim or attempt to swim. The other ones returned to the beach and, still naked, sat beside the male accused, joining him in the ritual inhalation of some noxious weed.

“Finally the black-haired female accused came up from the sea, followed by six silkies. What happened then I should never have believed unless I had witnessed it with my own eyes. The three witch-women sported with the silkies. It was a scene of sickening bestiality.” (At last there was a hint of emotion in the flat voice.) “But even the witches and the silkies tired of their lewd games. The silkies returned to the sea. But the black-haired witch stood on a rock, and each silky, before going back to the sea, made a sign of submission to her by placing its flipper on her bare feet. I had seen enough and made my way back to the city, by the coast road, to make my report.”