To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga (37 page)

“Do you think he’d mind if I took over?” asked Alberto. “After all, I’m the only idler aboard this vessel.”

“We’ll think about it,” said Grimes.

“You know what I think, Captain . . .” said Beadle.

“I’m not a telepath, Number One,” said Grimes. “Tell me.”

The two men were sitting at ease in the Courier’s control room. Each of them was conscious of a certain tightness in the waistband of his uniform shorts. Grimes was suppressing a tendency to burp gently. Alberto, once he had been given a free hand in the galley, had speedily changed shipboard eating from a necessity to a pleasure. (He insisted that somebody else always do the washing up, but this was a small price to pay.) This evening, for example, the officers had dined on
saltimbocca,
accompanied by a rehydrated rough red that the amateur chef had contrived, somehow, to make taste like real wine. Nonetheless he had apologized—actually apologized!—for the meal. “I should have used
prosciutto,
not any old ham.
And fresh
sage leaves, not dried sage . . .”

“I think” said Beadle, “that the standard of the High Commissioner’s entertaining has been lousy. Alberto must be a
cordon bleu
chef, sent out to Doncaster to play merry hell in the High Commissioner’s kitchen.”

“Could be,” said Grimes. He belched gently. “Could be. But I can’t see our lords and masters laying on a ship, even a lowly
Serpent
Class Courier, for a cook, no matter how talented. There must be cooks on Doncaster just as good.”

“There’s one helluva difference between a chef and a cook.”

“All right. There must be chefs on Doncaster.”

“But Alberto is
good.
You admit that.”

“Of course I admit it. But one can be good in quite a few fields and still retain one’s amateur status. As a matter of fact, Alberto told me that he was a mathematician . . .”

“A mathematician?” Beadle was scornfully incredulous. “You know how the Blond Beast loves to show off his toys to anybody who’ll evince the slightest interest. Well, Alberto was up in the control room during his watch; you’ll recall that he said he’d fix the coffee maker. Our Mr. von Tannenbaum paraded his pets and made them do their tricks. He was in a very disgruntled mood when he handed over to me when I came on. How did he put it? ‘I don’t expect a very high level of intelligence in planetlubbers, but that Alberto is in a class by himself. I doubt if he could add two and two and get four twice running . . .”

“Did he fix the machinetta?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. It makes beautiful coffee now.”

“Then what are you complaining about, Number One?”

“I’m not complaining, Captain. I’m just curious.”

And so am I,
thought Grimes,
so am I.
And as the commanding officer of the ship he was in a position to be able to satisfy his curiosity. After Mr. Beadle had gone about his multifarious duties Grimes called Mr. Deane on the telephone. “Are you busy, Spooky?” he asked.

“I’m always busy, Captain,” came the reply. This was true enough. Whether he wanted it or not, a psionic radio officer was on duty all the time, sleeping and waking, his mind open to the transmitted thoughts of other telepaths throughout the Galaxy. Some were powerful transmitters, others were not, some made use, as Deane did, of organic amplifiers, others made do with the unaided power of their own minds. And there was selection, of course. Just as a wireless operator in the early days of radio on Earth’s seas could pick out his own ship’s call sign from the babble and Babel of Morse, could focus all his attention on an S.O.S. or T.T.T, so the trained telepath could “listen” selectively. At short ranges he could, too, receive the thoughts of the non-telepaths about him—but, unless the circumstances were exceptional, he was supposed to maintain the utmost secrecy regarding them.

“Can you spare me a few minutes, Spooky? After all, you can maintain your listening watch anywhere in the ship, in my own quarters as well as in yours.”

“Oh, all right, Captain. I’ll be up. I already know what you’re going to ask me.”

You would,
thought Grimes.

A minute or so later, Mr. Deane drifted into his day cabin. His nickname was an apt one. He was tall, fragile, so albinoid as to appear almost translucent. His white face was a featureless blob.

“Take a pew, Spooky,” ordered Grimes. “A drink?”

“Mother’s ruin, Captain.”

Grimes poured gin for both of them. In his glass there was ice and a generous sprinkling of bitters. Mr. Deane preferred his gin straight, as colorless as he was himself.

The psionic radio officer sipped genteelly. Then: “I’m afraid that I can’t oblige you, Captain.”

“Why not, Spooky?”

“You know very well that we graduates of the Rhine Institute have to swear to respect privacy.”

“There’s no privacy aboard a ship, Spooky. There cannot be.”

“There can be, Captain. There must be.”

“Not when the safety of the ship is involved.”

It was a familiar argument—and Grimes knew that after the third gin the telepath would weaken. He always did.

“We got odd passengers aboard this ship, Spooky. Surely you remember that Waldegren diplomat who had the crazy scheme of seizing her and turning her over to his Navy . . .”

“I remember, Captain.” Deane extended his glass which, surprisingly, was empty. Grimes wondered, as he always did, if its contents had been teleported directly into the officer’s stomach, but he refilled it.

“Mr. Alberto’s another odd passenger,” he went on.

“But a Federation citizen,” Deane told him.

“How do we know? He could be a double agent. Do
you
know?”

“I don’t.” After only two gins Spooky was ready to spill the beans. This was unusual. “I don’t know
anything.
”

“What do you mean?”

“Usually, Captain, we have to shut our minds to the trivial, boring thoughts of you psionic morons. No offense intended, but that’s the way we think of you. We get sick of visualizations of the girls you met in the last port and the girls you hope to meet in the next port.” He screwed his face up in disgust, made it evident that he did, after all, possess features. “Bums, bellies and breasts! The Blond Beast’s a tit man, and
you
have a thing about
legs . . .
”

Grimes’s prominent ears reddened, but he said nothing.

“And the professional wishful thinking is even more nauseating.
When do I get my half ring? When do I get my brass hat? When shall I make Admiral?
”

“Ambition . . .” said Grimes.

“Ambition, shambition! And of late, of course,
I
wonder what Alberto’s putting on for breakfast? For lunch? For dinner?
”

“What
is
he putting on for dinner?” asked Grimes. “I’ve been rather wondering if our tissue culture chook could be used for
Chicken Cacciatore . . .
”

“I don’t know.”

“No, you’re not a chef. As well we know, after the last time that you volunteered for galley duties.”

“I mean, I don’t know what the menus will be.” It was Deane’s turn to blush. “As a matter of fact, Captain, I
have
been trying to get previews. I have to watch my diet . . .”

Grimes tried not to think uncharitable thoughts. Like many painfully thin people, Deane enjoyed a voracious appetite.

He said, “You’ve been
trying
to eavesdrop?”

“Yes. But there are non-telepaths, you know, and Alberto’s one of them.
True
non-telepaths, I mean. Most people transmit, although they can’t receive. Alberto doesn’t transmit.”

“A useful qualification for a diplomat,” said Grimes. “If he is a diplomat. But could he be using some sort of psionic jammer?”

“No. I’d know if he were.”

Grimes couldn’t ignore that suggestively held empty glass any longer. He supposed that Deane had earned his third gin.

The Courier broke through into normal space-time north of the plane of Doncaster’s ecliptic. In those days, before the Carlotti Beacons made FTL position fixing simple, navigation was an art rather than a science—and von Tannenbaum was an artist. The little ship dropped into a trans-polar orbit about the planet and then, as soon as permission to land had been granted by Aerospace Control, descended to Port Duncannon. It was, Grimes told himself smugly, one of his better landings. And so it should have been; conditions were little short of ideal. There was no cloud, no wind, not even any clear air turbulence at any level. The ship’s instruments were working perfectly, and the Inertial Drive was responding to the controls with no time lag whatsoever. It was one of those occasions on which the Captain feels that his ship is no more—and no less—than a beautifully functioning extension of his own body. Finally, it was morning Local Time, with the sun just lifting over the verdant, rolling hills to the eastward, bringing out all the color of the sprawling city a few miles from the spaceport, making it look, from the air, like a huge handful of gems spilled carelessly on a green carpet.

Grimes set the vessel down in the exact center of the triangle marked by the blinkers, so gently that, until he cut the drive, a walnut under the vaned landing gear would not have been crushed. He said quietly, “Finished with engines.”

“Receive boarders, Captain?” asked Beadle.

“Yes, Number One.” Grimes looked out through the viewport to the ground cars that were making their way from the Administration Block. Port Health, Immigration, Customs . . . The Harbormaster paying his respects to the Captain of a visiting Federation warship . . . And the third vehicle? He took a pair of binoculars from the rack, focused them on the flag fluttering from the bonnet of the car in the rear. It was dark blue, with a pattern of silver stars, the Federation’s colors. So the High Commissioner himself had come out to see the ship berth. He wished that he and his officers had dressed more formally, but it was too late to do anything about it now. He went down to his quarters, was barely able to change the epaulettes of his shirt, with their deliberately tarnished braid, for a pair of shining new ones before the High Commissioner was at his door.

Mr. Beadle ushered in the important official with all the ceremony that he could muster at short notice. “Sir, this is the Captain, Lieutenant Grimes. Captain, may I introduce Sir William Willoughby, Federation High Commissioner on Doncaster?”

Willoughby extended a hand that, like the rest of him was plump. “Welcome aboard, Captain. Ha, ha. I hope you don’t mind my borrowing one of the favorite expressions of you spacefaring types!”

“We don’t own the copyright, sir.”

“Ha, ha. Very good.”

“Will you sit down, Sir William?”

“Thank you, Captain, thank you. But only for a couple of minutes. I shall be out of your hair as soon as Mr. Alberto has been cleared by Port Health, Immigration and all the rest of ‘em. Then I’ll whisk him off to the Residence.” He paused, regarding Grimes with eyes that, in the surrounding fat, were sharp and bright. “How did you find him, Captain?”

“Mr. Alberto, sir?” What was the man getting at? “Er . . . He’s a very good cook . . .”

“Glad to hear you say it, Captain. That’s why I sent for him. I have to do a lot of entertaining, as you realize, and the incompetents I have in my kitchens couldn’t boil water without burning it. It just won’t do, Captain, it just won’t do, not for a man in my position.”

“So he
is a
chef, sir.”

Again those sharp little eyes bored into Grimes’s skull. “Of course. What else? What did you think he was?”

“Well, as a matter of fact we were having a yarn the other night, and he sort of hinted that he was some sort of a mathematician . . .”

“Did he?” Then Willoughby chuckled. “He was having you on. But, of course, a real chef
is
a mathematician. He has to get his equations just right—this quantity, that quantity, this factor, that factor . . .”

“That’s one way of looking at it, Sir William.”

Beadle was back then, followed by Alberto. “I must be off, now, Captain,” said the passenger, shaking hands. “Thank you for a very pleasant voyage.”

“Thank
you,
”
Grimes told him, adding, “We shall miss you.”

“But you’ll enjoy some more of his cooking,” said the High Commissioner genially. “As officers of the only Federation warship on this world you’ll have plenty of invitations—to the Residence as well as elsewhere. Too, if Mr. Alberto manages to train my permanent staff in not too long a time you may be taking him back with you.”

“We hope so,” said Grimes and Beadle simultaneously.

“Good day to you, then. Come on, Mr. Alberto—it’s time you started to show my glorified scullions how to boil an egg!”

He was gone, and then the Harbormaster was at the door. He was invited in, took a seat, accepted coffee. “Your first visit to Doncaster,” he announced rather than asked.

“Yes, Captain Tarran. It looks a very pleasant planet.”

“Hphm.” That could have meant either “yes” or “no.”

“Tell me, sir,
is
the cooking in the High Commissioner’s Residence as bad as he makes out?”

“I wouldn’t know, Captain. I’m just a merchant skipper in a shore job, I don’t get asked to all the posh parties, like you people.” The sudden white grin in the dark, lean face took the rancor out of the words. “And I thank all the Odd Gods of the Galaxy for that!”

“I concur with your sentiments, Captain Tarran. One never seems to meet any
real
people at the official bunstruggle . . . it’s all stiff collars and best behavior and being nice to nongs and drongoes whom normally you’d run a mile to avoid . . .”

“Still,” said Mr. Beadle, “the High Commissioner seems to have the common touch . . .”

“How so?” asked Grimes.

“Well, coming out to the spaceport in person to pick up his chef . . .”