Ride the Star Winds (16 page)

“Why should we, Your Excellency?” asked Mrs. McReady. Then she condescended to explain. “The straw and the husks are . . . processed. They, too, have nutritional value. You, yourself, have just sampled some of the food made from such materials.”

“Oh,” said Grimes. “So that was the origin of the sludge we tasted. I thought that it came from something worse.”

“Why should we waste good organic manure?” countered the woman.

Grimes pursued the subject.

“So your slaves get the husks and you get the grain. For export.”

“Not slaves, Your Excellency. Indentured labor.”

“Mphm.”

They came to one of the fields, to where a line of steam trucks was awaiting cargo. They dismounted and watched for a short while the huge-wheeled handcarts being pushed in from the slowly receding line of reapers, each piled high with golden, heavy-headed stalks. Men and women, sweating in the afternoon sun, naked save for brief loincloths, tipped the loads out onto the road and then, gathering up huge armfuls of grain-bearing straw, staggered up ramps to the truck beds to restow the harvest. Human beings, thought Grimes, reduced to the status of worker ants. . . . But worker ants do not toil under the watchful eyes of overseers. And these overseers, men and women bigger and tougher-looking than the common laborers, were armed with whips, short-handled but with at least two meters of lash. Usually they just cracked these threateningly while shouting in high-pitched voices—and then Grimes shouted in protest when one of the overseers drew a line of blood on the sweating back of a frail girl.

“The lazy little bitch,” said Laura McReady, “deserved it. Look at the load she’s carrying!”

“Even so . . .” protested Grimes.

“Your Excellency, you are the Governor. Before you became Governor you were a spaceman. With all due respect to you, what do you know of the management of a large agricultural enterprise?”

“Very little,” admitted Grimes. “But I’m learning. And I don’t like what I’m learning, Mrs. McReady.”

“We all have to learn unpleasant lessons, Your Excellency.”

And I shall be teaching some, I hope,
thought Grimes.

He led the way onto the field itself, walking between the furrows, his feet sinking into the soft soil. The incoming handcarts swerved to avoid him—or to avoid Laura McReady, who was walking close behind him. Her they knew but they would not know the new Governor. He came up to the line of reapers, stooped and sweating as they wielded their flashing sickles. He heard the cracking of the overseers’ whips and their shouted orders. He saw a woman, not young, one of the gatherers, straighten up briefly from her labors and stand there, her face turned up to the uncaring sky. For some reason (and who could blame her? thought Grimes) she was weeping quietly.

She stood in tears amid the alien corn . . .
Where did that come from? Not that it mattered. What did matter was that a woman was standing there, in tears, the helpless victim of a harsh economic system and of political hypocrisy.

“Su Lin,” he said, “will you ask her what is wrong?”

“What does it matter, Your Excellency?” asked Laura McReady.

“It does to her, madam.” said Grimes.

Su Lin went up to the woman and, in a soft voice, spoke to her in her own language. The answer came in a rather unpleasant whining voice, punctuated by sobs.

“She says, Your Excellency,” Su Lin told him, “that her husband was promoted to threshing floor foreman. Now he has no time for her. He has taken up with one of the girls working under him.”

“You can’t blame
me
for that,” said Laura McReady smugly.

Grimes ignored this.

“Tell her,” he said to Su Lin, “that I am sorry. Very sorry.”

And what the hell good will that do?
he asked himself.

And what the hell good will that do?
Mrs. McReady, to judge from the expression on her face, was obviously thinking.

She asked, “And now have you seen enough, Your Excellency?”

“For the time being,” said Grimes.

“Then may I suggest that we return to the manor house?” She added, without enthusiasm, “You and Captain Sanchez will be dining with us, of course.”

“Thank you,” said Grimes. “And Su Lin?”

“Your servant, Your Excellency, will be able to take a meal with our own domestic staff.”

And make sure that you keep your pretty ears flapping, Su,
thought Grimes.

Following the line of furrows they made their way back to the waiting trishaws.

Chapter 26

After their return
to the manor house Grimes, Sanchez and Su Lin went back briefly into the airship. There the two men showered and changed—not that they had much to change into, just fresh suits of blue denim enlivened by scarlet neckerchiefs. They held a brief conference in the control cab before making their way down to the roof.

“The setup here,” said Grimes, “reminds me of what I have read of the plantations in the American deep South before the War Between The States. Instead of Negro slaves there are New Cantonese indentured labor—but the only essential difference is that of skin pigmentation. . . .”

“And nobody is strumming a banjo and singing Negro spirituals,” commented Sanchez drily.

“But Commodore Grimes is right,” said Su Lin. “The situation is analogous.”

“Not exactly,” Sanchez insisted. “Far from exactly. Where are the Yankee generals at the head of the Union armies, marching south to free the slaves?”

“It wasn’t quite like that, Raoul,” said Grimes. “In fact, according to some historians, the question of slavery was only a side issue. The major one was that of secession. And I don’t think that Liberia has any desire to secede from the Federation.” He got up from the settee, looked out and down from one of the control cab windows. “There’s some sort of functionary down there. He seems to be waiting for us. We’d better go and join our gracious hosts at the tucker table.”

The McReady butler, a tall, thin, pigtailed man in black-and-white brass-buttoned livery, bowed deeply to Grimes as he stepped from the foot of the ladder to the roof surface.

He said, “The Lord and the Lady are awaiting you, Your Excellency. Please to follow.”

He led Grimes and the others into the elevator cage, scowled at Su Lin when she was standing too close to her master, scowled at her again when she moved to stand by him. The downward journey did not commence until the grouping of the passengers was to the butler’s satisfaction—he standing in solitary state by the control panel, Grimes and Sanchez in one corner, Su Lin in another.

The downward journey was swift and smooth. The door opened. The butler was first out, bowing deeply to Grimes as he disembarked, saying. “Please to follow, Your Excellency.” Then, to Su Lin. “Wait here, woman. You will be sent for.”

She smiled submissively and bowed to the upper servant. She winked at Grimes.

The butler, with a slow and stately walk, led the way along a corridor the walls of which were paneled with some dark, gleaming wood, floored with the same material. There were no pictures or other decorations. They came at last to a hinged door which the butler opened with a flourish. Beyond this was a large room, paneled as was the corridor but with wall ornaments. There were the mounted heads of horned beasts and others ferociously fanged. There were highly polished firearms—antique projectile weapons, modern lasers and stunguns. There were, even, crossed cavalry sabers.

McReady and his wife got up from the deep, black-leather-upholstered armchairs in which they had been sitting. They were dressed for the occasion—the man in a silver-braided and -buttoned black jacket over a ruffled white shirt, a kilt in a tartan that Grimes could not identify (he was no expert in such matters), long socks in the same tartan, highly polished black, silver-buckled shoes. Laura McReady was in high-necked, long-skirted, long-sleeved black with a sash in the same tartan as that worn by her husband.

Both of them looked at the formally informal attire of their guests and allowed themselves the merest suggestion of a sneer.

“Your Excellency,” said the woman, “we must apologize. We assumed that you, as the Governor, would be dressing for dinner.”

“The rank is but the guinea stamp,” quoted Grimes. “A man’s a man for a’ that.”

“Indubitably,” said McReady. He repeated the word, making it sound anything but indubitable. “But be seated, please. A drink or two before dinner, Your Excellency?”

“That will be a pleasure,” said Grimes.

He and Sanchez lowered themselves into deep armchairs, facing the others across the black, gleaming surface of the low round table. There was a decanter already there, a bowl of ice cubes and, standing on ceramic coasters, tour glasses, two of which had already seen used.

“Whisky, Your Excellency? Captain Sanchez? On the rocks?”

“That will be fine,” said Grimes.

“Thank you,” said Sanchez.

The whisky, rather to Grimes’s surprise, was not Scotch. It was bourbon. He didn’t mind. It would have been improved by light conversation during its intake. Words were exchanged, of course, but it was obvious that the McReady couple were trying, without enthusiasm, to be on their best behavior and were annoyed that their guests, sartorially, had themselves made no great effort. After the second drinks—insofar as Grimes and Sanchez were concerned—had been disposed of a gong sounded somewhere outside.

The butler appeared and bowed.

“Lord McReady, dinner is served.”

“Your Excellency,” said McReady, “shall we proceed to the dining room?”

The dining room was a huge barn of a place, gloomy, the only lighting being from the candles set in ornate silver holders on the long, polished table. The McReady family, thought Grimes, must have a thing about black wood. McReady stood by his high-backed chair at the head of the not very festive board; Laura McReady indicated that Grimes should take one halfway down the table on McReady’s right. She moved to her own chair at the foot of the table, leaving Sanchez to find his way to a position facing Grimes.

Everybody sat down.

Grimes, his eyes now accustomed to the near darkness, looked around curiously. There were paintings on the walls, ancient-looking oils, uniformly gloomy, horned beasts standing around drearily in a drizzle, another horned beast—a Terran stag?—understandably perturbed by the harassment of hounds. He had been expecting that the McReady estate would be Little Texas; it was turning out to be, inside the manor house at least, Little Scotland. And what would be for dinner? Haggis? He hoped not.

But there was no kilted piper to play in “the chief of all the pudding tribe.” There was only the liveried butler supervising the activities of the New Cantonese maids, pretty little girls in short-skirted uniforms. Somebody, somewhere, had switched on music—and that had no Scottish flavor. Grimes recognized one of the tunes—“The Yellow Rose Of Texas.” He wished that the local representatives of the Clan McReady would be consistent.

The first course was a soup that Grimes categorized as lukewarm varnish. The second course was some sort of flavorless fish, steamed, with a bland, uninteresting sauce. This was followed by boiled mutton accompanied by vegetables with all the goodness stewed out of them. Finally there was an overly sweet fruit tart smothered with custard. The wines, Grimes had to admit, were not too bad. Without them the meal would have been quite impossible.

Throughout there was desultory conversation.

“And what do you think of Liberia, Your Excellency?”

“I have hardly been here long enough, Mrs. McReady, to form an opinion.”

“Have some more of this mutton, Your Excellency. It’s from our own flocks.”

“I don’t think that I have room, Mr. McReady.”

“Oh, but you must. Haven’t I heard somewhere, Your Excellency, that your nickname in the Survey Service used to be Gutsy Grimes?”

“Just a slice, then.”

“Governor Wibberley used to enjoy his visits here. It was on his way back to the Residence from our estate that he was so tragically killed.”

“Oh.”

Grimes looked across the table at Sanchez. Sanchez looked at him.

“That is an unusual name that you have given your airship, Your Excellency.”

“How so, Mrs. McReady?”

“Fat Susie . . .”

“She’s named after a girl I once knew,” said Grimes.

“And did you
call
her Fat Susie? To her face?”

“No.”

“And was she fat?”

“Well, she was . . . plumpish.”

“And where is she now?”

Damn the woman,
thought Grimes.
She sits there like a statue all through the meal and now, once the subject of my murky past crops up, she’s putting me through the third degree . . . And what was the
official
story of Susie’s disappearance?

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.

At last the meal was over.

The party retired to what McReady called the gun room for coffee and brandy and cigars. (Grimes refused the latter and stuck to his pipe.) Mrs. McReady made deliberately half-hearted attempts to stifle her yawns. Grimes said that it was time that he was getting on his way. He thanked his hosts for a very enjoyable day and evening. There was a brief session of not very warm handshaking. The butler escorted the Governor and his atmosphere pilot up to the roof where, black against the darkly luminous sky,
Fat Susie
swung at the mooring mast like an oversized windsock.

Su Lin was waiting for them aboard the airship.

She said, “Look what I found!”

She showed Grimes and Sanchez a small sphere of black metal.

“Where was it, Su?”

“Tucked in between the main gas cells.”

“What is it?”

“Just a ball, an empty ball, not hidden very cleverly and bound to show up on the metal detector I used. Just a warning.”

“I wish it were a bomb,” said Grimes viciously, “so that I could drop it on those bastards!”

“Not selective enough,” she told him. “There are quite a few nice people in the servants’ quarters.”

“And I suppose that you had a nice meal,” said Grimes.

“Very nice, as a matter of fact. Satay, and . . .”