To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga (24 page)

But Grimes did not mind. He had decided a long time ago that, much as he liked ships, he did not like big ships. It would be good to get away from
Aries
for a few days or even, with luck, longer. It would be good to eat something better than the mediocre fare served up in the officers’ mess. It would be good to be able to wear clothing not prescribed by regulations.

The door of the air car, a fragile-seeming, beautifully designed machine, a gay, mechanical dragonfly, adorned with nonfunctional fripperies, opened as Grimes approached it. The Princess Marlene raised a hand in casual greeting. She was dressed today in a flimsy green tunic, the hem of which came barely to mid-thigh. On her slender feet were rather ornate golden sandals. Her hair was pulled back to a casual (seemingly casual) pony tail. She smiled, said, “Hi!”

“Your Highness,” replied Grimes formally.

“Throw your gear in the back, then get in beside me.”

“Will your watchbirds mind, Your Highness?” asked Grimes, looking up, rather apprehensively, to the two circling guardian angels.

“Not to worry, Mr. Grimes. They’ve been told that you’re a member of the family, acting, temporary . . .”

“Unpaid?”

She smiled again. “That all depends, doesn’t it? But jump in.”

Grimes didn’t jump in. This contraption seemed of very light construction compared to the ugly, mechanized beetles to which he was accustomed. He got in, watching carefully where he put his feet. He lowered himself cautiously into the cushioned seat. The door slid shut.

“Home,” ordered Marlene.

There was a murmur of machinery and the thing lifted, took a wide sweep around the ship, then headed in a direction away from the distant city.

“And now,” said the girl, “what do they call you?”

“What do you mean, Your Highness?”

“To begin with, Lieutenant, you can drop the title, as long as you’re my guest. And I want to be able to drop yours.” In spite of the friendliness of her voice and manner, the “for what it’s worth” was implied, although not spoken. “I don’t know what planet you were born and dragged up on, but you must have some other name besides Grimes.”

“John, Your . . .”

“You may call me Marlene, John. But don’t go getting ideas.”

I’ve already got them,
thought Grimes.
I got them a long time ago. But I have no desire to be the guest of honor at a lynching party.

“Cat got your tongue, John?”

“No. I was . . . er . . . thinking.”

“Then don’t. Too much of it is bad for you. Just relax. You’re away from your bloody ship, and all the stiffness and starchiness that are inevitable when the common herd puts on gold braid and brass buttons.”

You snobbish bitch!
thought Grimes angrily.

“Sorry,” she said casually. “But you have to remember that we, on El Dorado, regard ourselves as rather special people.”

“That reminds me,” said Grimes, “of two famous Twentieth Century writers. Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald said to Hemingway, quite seriously, ‘The rich are different from us.’ Hemingway replied, ‘Yes. They have more money.’”

“So you read, John. You actually read. A spacefaring intellectual. I didn’t know that there were any such.”

“There are quite a few of us, Marlene. But microfilmed editions aren’t the same as
real
books.”

“You’ll find plenty of real books on this world. Every home has its library.”

“You’ve room here, on this world.”

“There’s room on every planet but Earth for people to live as they should. But your average colonist, what does he do? He builds cities and huddles in almost exact replicas of Terran slums.”

“You aren’t average?”

“Too bloody right we’re not. And we were determined when we purchased El Dorado that overpopulation would never become one of our problems. But . . .”

“But?”

“But once people start dying, that will be the start of the reverse process . . .” Then a laugh dispelled her somber expression. “However did we get started on this morbid subject? And what sort of hostess am I?” Her voice suddenly became that of the guide of a conducted tour. “Slightly ahead, and to our right, you will see the Croesus Mines. They constitute the only fully automated mining operation in the Galaxy . . .”

Grimes looked. There was nothing to indicate the nature of the industrial process. There were no roads, no railways, no towering chimneys, no ugly pithead gear. There was only a low, spotlessly white building in a shallow green valley.

“Everything,” the girl went on, “is subterranean, including the rail communication with our few factories and with the spaceport. We do not believe in ruining the scenery of our planet while there is ample space underground for industry. Now, coming up on our left, we see the Laredo Ranch. It is not as fully automated as it might be, but you must understand that Senator Crocker, the owner, enjoys the open air life. It irks him, he says, that he must use robot cowboys for his roundups; but that, on this world, is unavoidable . . .”

Grimes, looking out and down, saw a solitary horseman riding toward a herd of red-brown cattle. Crocker, he supposed, making do without his despised mechanical aides.

“Count Vitelli’s vineyard. His wines are not bad, although they are only a hobby with him. There is some local consumption and considerable export. Most of
us,
of course, prefer imported vintages.”

“You would,” said Grimes sharply.

She looked at him in a rather hostile manner, then grinned. “And you, John, would say just that. But this is
our
world. We like it, and we can afford it.”

“Money doesn’t always bring happiness, Marlene.”

“Perhaps not. But we can be miserable in comfort.”

“Luxury, you mean.”

“All right, luxury. And why the hell not?”

To this there was no answer. Grimes stared ahead, saw on a hilltop a grim, gray castle that was straight out of a book of Teutonic mythology. “Your
Schloss?”
he asked.

“My
what?”
She laughed. “Your pronunciation, my dear. You’d better stick to English. Yes, that is Castle Stolzberg, and in the forests around it I hunt the stag and the boar.”

“Is that all you do?”

“Of course not. As you know very well I am fond of aquatic sports. And I am serving my term on the Committee of Management.”

“And who lives there with you?”

“Nobody. I entertain sometimes, but at the moment I have no guests. With the exception, of course, of yourself.”

“And you mean to tell me that that huge building is for one person?”

“Isn’t it time that you started to lose your petty-bourgeois ideas, John? I warn you, if you start spouting Thorsten Veblen at me on the subject of conspicuous waste I shall lose my temper. And as for Marxism, there just isn’t any exploited proletariat on El Dorado, with the exception of the lower deck ratings aboard
your
ship.”

“They aren’t exploited. Anyhow, what about the people on the other worlds who’ve contributed to your fantastically high standard of living?”

“They were happy enough to buy us out, and they’re happy enough to buy our exports. And, anyhow, you’re a spaceman, not a politician or an economist. Just relax, can’t you? Just try to be good company while you’re my guest, otherwise I’ll return you to your transistorized sardine can.”

“I’ll try,” said Grimes. “When in Rome, and all the rest of it. I shall endeavor to be the noblest Roman of them all.”

“That’s better,” she told him.

Slowly, smoothly, the air car drifted down to a landing in the central courtyard, dropping past flagpoles from which snapped and fluttered heavy standards, past turrets and battlemented walls, down to the gray, rough flagstones. From somewhere came the baying of hounds. Then, as the doors slid open, there was a high, clear trumpet call, a flourish of drums.

“Welcome to Schloss Stolzberg,” said the girl gravely.

Chapter 16

“Welcome to Schloss Stolzberg,”
she said, and suddenly, for no immediately apparent reason, Grimes remembered another girl (and where was she now?) who had told him, “This is Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.” He could not imagine the Princess Marlene using that expression, no matter how friendly she became. And Castle Stolzberg did not look, could never look like Liberty Hall. If there were no dungeons under the grim (or Grimm, he mentally punned) pile, there should have been.

He got out of his seat, stepped to the ground, then helped the girl down. Her hand was pleasantly warm and smooth in his. She thanked him politely and then turned her head to the car, saying, “We shan’t be needing you again. You can put yourself to bed.”

A gentle
toot
from somewhere in the vehicle’s interior replied, and it lifted smoothly, flew toward a doorway that had suddenly and silently opened in the rough stone wall.

“My bags . . .” said Grimes.

“They will be taken to your room, John. Surely, by this time, you have come to learn how efficient our servitors are.”

“Efficient, yes. But they’ve given
me
enough trouble, Marlene.”

“They were doing the jobs for which they were designed. But come.”

She put her hand in the crook of his left arm, guided him to a tall, arched doorway. The valves were of some dark timber, iron studded, and as they moved on their ponderous hinges they creaked loudly. Grimes permitted himself a smile. So the robots who ran this place weren’t so efficient after all. Even a first trip deck boy would have known enough to use an oil can without being told.

Marlene read his expression and smiled in reply, a little maliciously. “The doors
should
creak,” she said. “If they didn’t, it would spoil the decor.”

“Talking of noises . . . Those rowdy dogs we heard when we landed . . . Also part of the decor, I suppose. And was all that baying a recording?”

“Part of the decor, yes. As for the rest, real hounds in real kennels, I told you that hunting was one of my amusements.”

“And where do you keep the vampire bats?”

“You improve with acquaintance, John. But this is not Transylvania.”

They were in the main hall now, a huge barn of a place, thought Grimes. But he corrected himself. A barn, when empty, can be a little cheerless; when full its atmosphere is one of utilitarian warmth. This great room was cheerless enough, but far from empty. Only a little daylight stabbed through the high, narrow windows, and the flaring torches and the fire that blazed in the enormous fireplace did little more than cast a multiplicity of confused, flickering shadows. Ranged along the walls were what, at first glance, looked like armoured men standing to rigid attention. But it was not space armour; these suits, if they were genuine (and Grimes felt that they were), 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. And then had come those equalizers—long bow and crossbow and the first, cumbersome firearms. Grimes wondered if any of this armour had been worn by Marlene’s ancestors, and what they would think if they could watch their daughter being squired by a man who, in their day, would have been a humble tiller of the fields or, in battle, a fumbling pikeman fit only to be ridden down by a charge of iron-clad so-called chivalry.
Grimes, you’re an inverted snob,
he
told himself. He shivered involuntarily as he thought that he saw one of the dark figures move. But it was only the shifting fire and torchlight reflected from dull-gleaming panoply and broadsword. But he looked away from it, nonetheless, to the antique weapons high on the walls, then to the dull, heavy folds of the ancient standards that sagged heavily from their shafts.

He said, “A homey little place you have here.”

It was, of course, the wrong thing. Marlene did not think the remark at all funny. She said icily, “Please keep your petty bourgeois witticisms for your ship.”

“I’m sorry.”

She thawed slightly. “I suppose that the castle
is
home, but never forget that it is history. These stones were shipped from Earth, every one of them.”

“I thought that you came from Thuringia.”

“Yes, I did. But we’re all Terrans, after all, if you go back far enough. And that’s not very far.”

“I suppose not.”

She led him across the hall, past a long, heavy banqueting table with rows of high-backed chairs on either side. She took a seat at the head of it, occupied it as though it were the throne it looked like. In her scanty, flimsy attire 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. Like some wicked, beautiful queen out of ancient legend she seemed, or like some wicked, beautiful witch. The pale skin of her bare limbs was luminous in the semi-darkness, and her body, scarcely veiled by the diaphanous material of her dress, only slightly less so.

She motioned Grimes to the chair at her right hand. He was amazed to find that it was extremely comfortable, although the wood, at first, was cold on the backs of his legs. He wondered what subtle modifications had been made to the archaic furniture, and at what expense. But he hadn’t had to pay the bill. 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 said matter-of-factly, “Angel’s blood, from Deneb VII. I hope you like it.”

“I’ve never tried it before.”
(And that’s not surprising,
he thought,
at the price they charge for it, even on its world of origin.)
“But does it . . . er . . . match the decor?”

Surprisingly she smiled. “Of course, John. In the old days, when the prince and his knights feasted here, there were delicacies from all over the then known world on this table . . .”

Salt beef and beer,
thought Grimes dourly, remembering his Terran history.