Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III (82 page)

Two doors of the car opened, one forward, one aft. The Princess, Grimes saw, was sitting in the front seat. She turned her head to smile at him invitingly. She looked softly maternal in a frilly pink dress—and yet there was more than a hint of the slim, golden girl whom Grimes had once known.

He threw his overnight bag into the rear of the vehicle, wondering if he was doing the right thing as he made to board at the front end. Apparently he was; the inviting smile did not fade as he took his seat by his hostess.

The doors closed.

Marlene’s hands remained demurely folded on her lap, were not lifted to take the controls.

“Home,” she ordered.

The car lifted. Inside it was as silent as the pseudo-Rolls had been.

***

She broke the silence, asking, “Do you remember the last time, John?”

“Yes, Marlene.”

“You will find little changed,” she told him. “The Croesus Mines are still in operation . . .”

Yes, there was the low, spotlessly white building in the shallow, green valley. Below it, Grimes knew, were the fully automated subterranean workings. He wondered over how great an area these now extended.

“And the Laredo Ranch . . . Senator Crocker is still playing at cowboys, rounding up his herds and all the rest of it. He’s conquered his prejudice against robot ranch hands now . . .”

Looking down, Grimes saw that a round-up was in progress, a milling herd of red-brown cattle with horsemen keeping the beasts grouped together. Which one of them was Crocker and which were the robots? They all looked the same from up here.

“Count Vitelli’s vineyards. His wines are improving all the time.”

“The Baroness d’Estang,” said Grimes, “kept a good stock of them aboard her yacht,
The Far Traveler
. . .”

“I still find it hard to understand,” she said, “how and why you—of all people!—became a yachtmaster. And to
that
woman, of all possible employers!”

“Mphm.”

“Some people,” she went on cattily, “think that she married beneath her. If anything, the reverse is the case. The Baron is descended from an English lord. He had no trouble at all establishing his claim to the title . . .”

I wonder how much it cost him?
thought Grimes.

“And she, of course, is descended from a French pirate . . .”

“A privateer,” said Grimes. He would have liked to have said,
And you, my dear, are descended from German robber barons . . .
He thought better of it. He would not bite the hand that, hopefully, was going to feed him.

“A privateer,” she repeated. “What’s the difference? Oh, there is a difference now, of course. The Baron’s fleet will do nothing illegal. If I thought otherwise I would not have allowed Ferdinand to volunteer to serve as a liaison officer . . .”

“Will Ferdinand be at the castle?” asked Grimes, half hoping and half fearing that the answer would be in the affirmative.

“No. He is at Port Kane with the other El Doradan officers. Perhaps it is as well. It could be embarrassing if you met him in my company.” Her hands went up to the wheel, grasped it firmly. It was an indication, thought Grimes, that she was determined to control the course of events. “And it will be as well, John, if he never knows that you are his father.”

“Will he be seconded to my ship?” asked Grimes. “Assuming, that is,” he added hastily, “that I join the enterprise.”

“No. If he were it is possible that the relationship would become public knowledge. He will be attached to
Agatha’s Ark
, under Captain Agatha Prinn. A strange woman, John, but, I believe, a highly competent spaceperson. Meanwhile, I understand that Baron Kane intends to appoint you commodore of the privateers. As you will be in overall charge you will be able to keep a watchful eye on my son. Our son.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” said Grimes, “if I’m going to take Kane’s offer.”

“But you will,” she said.

She relinquished her hold on the wheel so that she could point ahead. There, on a hilltop, was the grim, grey pile, a castle that was straight out of a book of Teutonic mythology. Schloss Stolzberg. As before, Grimes wondered how much it had cost to transport it, stone by numbered stone, from Earth.
I wish that somebody would give
me
a job like that,
he thought. He tried to arrive at a rough estimate of what the freight charges would have been.

Chapter 31

SLOWLY, SMOOTHLY,
the car drifted down to a landing in the central courtyard, dropping past flagpoles from which snapped and fluttered heavy standards, golden heraldic beasts rampant on fields of purple, past turrets and battlemented walls, down to the grey, rough flagstones. From somewhere came the baying of hounds. Then as the doors of the vehicle opened, there was a high, clear trumpet call, a flourish of drums.

“Welcome, again, to Schloss Stolzberg,” said the Princess.

“It hasn’t changed,” said Grimes.

“Why should it have done so, John?” she asked.

To this there was no reply.

He got out of his seat, stepped to the ground, then helped the Princess down. Her hand was pleasantly warm and smooth in his. She thanked him, then turned to address the car.

“We shall not be needing you again,” she told it. “You can put yourself to bed.”

A melodious toot from the vehicle’s horn was the reply. The thing lifted, its inertial drive unit purring almost inaudibly. It flew toward a doorway that suddenly and silently opened in the rough stone wall, then quietly closed behind it.

She put her hand in the crook of his left arm, guided him to a tall, arched portal. The valves were of some dark timber, heavily iron studded, and as they moved on their ponderous hinges they creaked loudly. Grimes did not think, as he had his first time here, that this was an indication of inefficiency on the part of the castle’s robot staff. Those hinges, he had been told, were meant to creak. It was all part of the atmosphere.

They were in the main hall now, a huge barn of a place but, unlike a real barn, cheerless. Only a little daylight stabbed through the high, narrow windows and the flaring torches and the fire that blazed in the enormous hearth did little more than cast a multiplicity of confused, flickering shadows. Ranged along the walls were what, at first glance, looked like space suited men standing at rigid attention. But it was not space armor; these empty suits had been worn by men of Earth’s Middle Ages. By men? By knights and barons and princes, rather; in those days the commonality had gone into battle with only thick leather (if that) as a partial protection. Marlene’s ancestors had fought their petty wars ironclad. Grimes wondered what they would think if they could watch their daughter being squired by a man who, in their day, would have been only a humble tiller of the fields or, in battle, a fumbling pikeman fit only to be ridden down by a charge of metal-accoutered so-called chivalry.

Grimes, you’re an inverted snob!
he chided himself.

She led him across the hall, past a long, heavy banqueting table with rows of high-backed chairs on either side. She took the seat at the head of it, occupied it as though it were the throne it looked like. In her overly feminine ruffled pink dress she should have struck a note of utter incongruity, but she did not. She was part of the castle and the castle was part of her.

She motioned Grimes to the chair at her right hand. It was far more comfortable than it looked. He saw that a decanter of heavy glass had been set out on the table and with it two glittering, cut-crystal goblets. Marlene poured the dark ruby wine with an oddly ceremonial gesture.

She raised her glass to him, sipped.

Grimes followed suit. He remembered that on that past occasion she had given him Angel’s Blood from Wilsonia, one of the worlds of the Denebian system. She was giving him Angel’s Blood again. It was a superb wine, although a little too sweet for his taste. It was also far too expensive for his pocket. Even duty free and with no freight charges it was forty credits a bottle.

She said softly, “I’d like to think that we’re drinking to us. Do you remember how, years ago, I told you that you could come back here to live, to become a citizen, when you had your first billion credits?”

“I remember,” said Grimes. (That was not among his happier memories.)

“You’re a shipowner now, not a penniless Survey Service lieutenant . . .”

“And I’m still not worth a billion C.”

“But you could be, John. If the privateering venture is successful.”

“Mphm.”

“
Must
you grunt?”

“Sorry.”

“I’m telling you, trying to tell you, that now you have the opportunity to become a citizen of El Dorado. A title? Proof of noble ancestry? That’s no problem.” She laughed. “It has been said, and probably quite correctly, that everybody in England has royal blood in his veins. Some monarchs did their best to spread it among their people . . .”

“Such as Charles the Second,” said Grimes. “But I’m Australian.”

“Don’t quibble.”

“I like me the way I am,” said Grimes, “A shipmaster. A shipowner.”

“And a father.”

“Ferdinand,” he said, “is
your
son.”

“And yours, John. You were there too. Or have you forgotten?”

He had not. He accepted the fresh glass of wine that she poured for him. (The decanter, not a small one, was now almost empty.)

“You have a responsibility,” she went on.

Why didn’t you engineer my discharge from the Survey Service, as, with your wealth, you could so easily have done?
he thought.
But, of course, I didn’t have that billion credits and then it didn’t look as though I ever would . . .

A robutler in black and silver livery removed the now empty decanter and goblets from the table. Another one set down mats on the polished wood. More wine was brought, a chilled Riesling. And there were fat, succulent oysters on the half shell and a plate of brown bread and butter. Despite his nickname, Gutsy Grimes, the spaceman rarely, these days, enjoyed a large lunch, preferring to start the day with a good breakfast and to finish it with a good dinner, with possibly a substantial supper if he were up late.

“From the beds in the Green River,” said Marlene. “I think that you will find them to your taste, John. Their ancestral stock is the Sydney Rock Oyster.”

Grimes enjoyed them. So did Marlene. He thought, patting his lips with a napkin of fine linen,
If that was lunch, I’ve had it. And liked it.
But there was more to come—steak tartare, with raw egg, raw onion sliced paper-thin, gherkins, capers and anchovies, with a Vitelli Burgundy to accompany it. There was cheese, locally made but at least as good as any Brie that Grimes had sampled on Earth. There was, finally, aromatic coffee laced with some potent spirit that Grimes could not identify.

He looked at Marlene through eyes that he knew were slightly glazed. She looked at him through eyes that, as his were, were indicative of the effects of a surfeit of good food and good wine.

She said, “You look rather tired, John.”

He said, “I’m all right, Marlene. It’s just that I usually have a very light meal in the middle of the day.”

“But you
are
tired. Don’t you have a saying, This is Liberty Hall, you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard? This is Liberty Hall. If a guest of mine wants an afternoon siesta, then he shall have one.”

She pushed her chair back from the table. Grimes rose from his own, moved to assist her to her feet. For a second or so she hung heavily in his arms.

She said, “I’ll show you to your room.”

She guided him through corridors, then up one of the spiral staircase escalators that were a feature of El Doradan architecture. They came to a suite that consisted of sitting room, bedroom and bathroom, plainly but very comfortably furnished. The wide bed, seen through the open door of the sitting room, looked very inviting.

“Mix us drinks, please, John,” said Marlene, indicating the bar to one side of the sitting room. “I would like something long and refreshing. Use your own discretion.”

She went through into the bedroom, then to the bathroom.

Grimes went to the bar, studied the array of bottles. The labels of some of these were familiar, others were not. Those that were not looked very, very expensive.

He thought,
I’d better play it safe.

He found gin. In the refrigerator there were bottles of tonic water, the real stuff, imported from Earth. There were ice cubes, and lemons. He busied himself quite happily and, before long had prepared two tall, inviting glasses, each with its exterior misted with condensation.

And now, where was his hostess?

She was in the bed, her plump, naked shoulders creamily luminescent against the dark blue bed linen, her golden hair fanned out on the pillow. Her smile was both sleepy and inviting.

***

Oddly, for him, Grimes was feeling guilty.

The censor who lived in his mind and who, now and again, made himself heard was telling him that he should not be enjoying himself.

Grimes, she’s
fat.
She’s not your sort of woman at all . . .

But she was a most comfortable ride.

Grimes, she’s just using you . . .

And didn’t women always use men?

Grimes, you’re using her. You’re letting her persuade you to do just what you’ve come to this world to do . . .

But why shouldn’t he, he thought rebelliously, enjoy whatever fringe benefits came with the job into which he had been press-ganged by Rear Admiral Damien?

The feeling of guilt diminished but did not quite go away.

All right, all right, the Princess was a mercenary bitch, a founding member of the money-hungry El Dorado Corporation. Grimes, as a privateer commodore, would be a valuable employee of the Corporation. But . . . But she was also a mother, concerned about the safety of the son whom he, Grimes, had yet to meet.

They shared a shuddering climax after which she continued to hold him tightly, her body soft and warm against his. Now he really wanted to go to sleep.

But she said, “John. Darling. What we had so many years ago has not been lost after all . . .”