To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga (51 page)

She noticed his look. She complained, “Yes, I’m starved . . .”

“You get the same as we do, Rosaleen.”

“That’s the trouble, Captain.”

“But you have this sort of feeding all the time.”

“Like hell I do. I have my nights off, you know, and then I can catch up on the pastries and candy, and the hot rolls with lots of butter, and the roast pork, with crackling . . .”

“Please stop,” begged Grimes. “You’re making me ravenous.”

She went on, “But aboard your ship I have to toe the line. There’s no escape.”

“I suppose not.”

“But surely
you
can do something. You’ve storerooms, with bread . . .”

“Yes, but . . . “

“You aren’t scared of
her,
Captain?” She looked at him through her big, dark eyes. He had thought that they were black—now he saw that they were a very deep violet.

“Mphm.” He allowed his glance to stray downwards, then hastily looked back at her face. There had been invitation in every line of her ample body. He was no snob, and the fact that her status was that of a servant weighed little with him.
But she was the Commissioner’s servant.
A lady has no secrets from her lady’s maid—is the converse true? Anyhow, they were both women, and no doubt happily prattled to each other, disparity of social status notwithstanding. She said plaintively, “I’m hungry, Captain.”

“So am I, Rosaleen.”

“But you’re the Captain.”

Grimes got off the bicycle. He said, “It’s time for my sauna.” He threw his shorts in the general direction of the hook on which his robe was hanging, strode to the door of the hot room, opened it. She followed him. He stretched out on one of the benches, she flopped on one opposite him. She said, “I’m hungry.”

“It’s those damned robots,” complained Grimes. “Always hanging around the galley and storerooms.”

“They won’t be there tonight.”

“How do you know?”

“They’re much more than cooks. Even I don’t know all the things they’ve been programmed for. This I do know.
She
has been working on a report, and tomorrow it will be encoded for transmission. The way that
she
does it is to give it to John—he’s the one with the little gold knob on top of his head—to encode. And James decodes each sheet as John finishes it, to ensure that there are no errors.”

“Are there ever any?”

“No. But
she
likes to be sure.”

“
She
would.” He wondered when he was going to start sweating. The girl was already perspiring profusely. “Tell me, when does this encoding decoding session take place?”

“After dinner.”

“And there’s no chance of her breaking it off?”

“None at all. When
she
starts something she likes to finish it.”

“Mphm.” The sweat was starting to stream out of Grimes’s pores now. The girl got up, began to flick the skin of his back lightly with the birch twigs. He appreciated the attention. “Mphm. And are you free while all this Top Secret stuff is going on?”

“Yes.”

“And she should have her nose stuck into it by 2000?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Then meet me outside the galley at, say, 2015 . . .”

“
Yes!
”

“Thick buttered toast . . .” murmured Grimes, deciding that talking about food took his mind off other things.

“
Lots
of butter . . .” she added.

“And sardines . . .”

“Fat, oily sardines . . .”

“With lemon wedges . . .”

“With mayonnaise . . .” she corrected.

“All right. Mayonnaise.”

“And coffee. With sugar, and great dollops of cream . . .”

“I’ll have beer, myself, even though it is fattening.”

“We can have beer with, and coffee after . . .”

The door slid open and Hollister came in. Naked, the telepath looked more like a living skeleton than ever. Grimes regarded him with some distaste and wondered if the psionic radio officer had been eavesdropping. To do so would be contrary to the very strict code of the Rhine Institute—but espers, in spite of their occasional claims to superiority, are only humans.

He said, “I’m just about cooked, Rosaleen.”

“So am I, Captain.” She got up from her bench, the perspiration streaming down her still plump body, went through into the shower room. Through the closed door Grimes heard the hiss of the water, her little scream as its coldness hit her. There was the whine of the blowers as she dried off, and then she ran through the hot room on her way back into the solarium.

“Quite a dish, Captain,” commented Hollister.

“We,” Grimes told him coldly, “are neither kings nor peasants.”

He took his own cold shower, and when he stepped out into the gymnasium Rosaleen was gone.

Dinner that night was as unsatisfying as usual. A clear soup, a small portion of delicious baked fish with a green salad, a raw apple for desert. Grimes, at the head of the table, tried to make conversation, but the Commissioner was in a thoughtful mood and hardly spoke at all. Beadle, Slovotny, Vitelli, and Hollister wolfed their portions as though eating were about to be made illegal, saying little. The four officers excused themselves as soon as they decently could—Slovotny going up to Control to relieve von Tannenbaum for
his
dinner, Beadle to have a look at the air circulatory system, Vitelli to check up on the Mannschenn Drive. Hollister didn’t bother to invent an excuse. He just left. Von Tannenbaum came down, took his place at the table. He was starting to acquire a lean and hungry look that went well with his Nordic fairness. The Commissioner nodded to him, then patted her lips gently with her napkin. Grimes, interpreting the signs correctly, got up to help her from her chair. She managed to ignore the gesture.

She said, “You must excuse me, Mr. Grimes and Mr. von Tannenbaum. I am rather busy this evening.”

“Can I, or my officers, be of any assistance?” asked Grimes politely.

She took her time replying, and he was afraid that she would take his offer. Then she said, “Thank you, Mr. Grimes. But it is very confidential work, and I don’t think that you have Security clearance.”

It may have been intended as a snub, but Grimes welcomed it.

“Good night, Ma’am.”

“Good night, Mr. Grimes.”

Von Tannenbaum turned to the serving robot which was waiting until he had finished his meal. “Any chance of another portion of fish, James?”

“No, sir,” the thing replied in a metallic voice. “Her Excellency has instructed me that there are to be no second helpings, for anybody.”

“Oh.”

In sulky silence the navigator finished his meal. Grimes was tempted to include him in the supper party, but decided against it. The fewer people who knew about it the better.

The two men got up from the table, each going to his own quarters. In his day cabin Grimes mixed himself a drink, feeling absurdly guilty as he did so. “Damn it all,” he muttered, “this is
my
ship. I’m captain of her, not that cast iron bitch!” Defiantly—but why
should
he feel defiant?—he finished what was in his glass, then poured another generous portion. But he made it last, looking frequently at his clock as he sipped.

20:14 . . .

Near enough.

He got up, went out to the axial shaft, tried not to make too much noise going down the ladder. He paused briefly in the officers’ flat, on the deck below and abaft his own. Faint music emanated from behind the door of von Tannenbaum’s cabin—Wagner? It sounded like it—and loud snores from inside Beadle’s room. His own air circulatory system could do with overhauling, thought Grimes. Slovotny was on watch, and Hollister, no doubt, was wordlessly communicating with his psionic amplifier, the poodle’s brain in aspic. Vitelli could be anywhere, but was probably in the engine room.

The V.I.P. suite was on the next deck down. As he passed the door Grimes could hear the Commissioner dictating something, one of the robots repeating her words. That took care of her. Another deck, with cabins for not very important people . . . He thought of tapping on Rosaleen’s door, then decided against it. In any case, she was waiting for him outside the galley.

She whispered, “I was afraid you’d change your mind, Captain.”

“Not bloody likely.”

He led the way into the spotless—thanks to the industry of the robot servitors—galley. He was feeling oddly excited. It reminded him of his training cruise, when he had been a very new (and always hungry) cadet. But then there had been locks to pick . . .

He opened the door of the tinned food storeroom, ran his eye over the shelves. He heard Rosaleen gasp. “New Erin ham . . . Carinthian sausage . . .”

“You’ll have Atlantan sardines, my girl, and like ‘em . . . Ah, here we are . . . A can each?”

“
Two
cans.”

“All right. Here you are. You can switch on the toaster while I rummage in the bread locker . . .”

He thrust the cans into her eager hands, then collected bread, butter and seasonings. He tore open the wrapper of the loaf, then put the thick slices on the rack under the griller. The smell of the cooking toast was mouth-watering—too mouth-watering. He hoped that it would not be distributed throughout the ship by the ventilation system. But the Commissioner’s overly efficient robots must, by this time, have put the air out-take filters to rights.

One side done . . . He turned the slices over. Rosaleen asked plaintively, “How
do
you work this opener?”

A metallic voice replied, “Like this, Miss Rosaleen—but I forbid you to use it.”

“Take your claws off me, you tin bastard!”

Grimes turned fast. Behind him the toast smoldered unheeded. His hands went out to clamp on the wrists of the robot, whose own hands gripped the girl’s arms. The automaton ignored him. If it could have sneered it would have done so.

“Mr. Grimes! Rosaleen!” The Commissioner’s voice was hard as metal. In her all-grey costume she looked like a robot herself. “Mr. Grimes, please do not attempt to interfere with my servitor.” She stood there, looking coldly at the little group. “All right, John, you may release Miss Rosaleen. But not until Mr. Grimes has taken his hands off you. And now, Mr. Grimes, what is the meaning of this? I seem to have interrupted a disgusting orgy. Oh, John, you might extinguish that minor conflagration and dispose of the charred remains.”

“Supper,” said Grimes at last.

“Supper?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Rosaleen and I were about to enjoy a light snack.”

“A light snack? Don’t you realize the trouble that went into working out suitable menus for this ship?” She paused, looking at Grimes with an expression of extreme distaste. “Legally, since your superiors, in a moment of aberration, saw fit to appoint you to command, you may do as you like aboard this vessel—within limits. The seduction of my maid is beyond those limits.”

“Seduction?” This was too much. “I assure you that . . .”

“I was not using the word in its sexual sense. Come, Rosaleen, we will leave Mr. Grimes to his feast. He has to keep his strength up—although just for what I cannot say.”

“Ma’am!” The girl’s face was no longer soft, her voice held a compelling ring. “Since you use that word—it was I who seduced the captain.”

“That hardly improves matters, Rosaleen. The commanding officer of a warship, even a very minor one, should not allow himself to be influenced by a woman passenger.”

“You said it!” snapped Grimes. This could mean the ruin of his career, but he had been pushed too far. “You said it, Mrs. Dalwood. I should never have let myself be influenced by you. I should never have allowed your tin dieticians to run loose in
my
galley. I should have insisted, from the very start, on running
my
ship
my
way! Furthermore . . .” He was warming up nicely. “Furthermore, I doubt if even your fellow Commissioners will approve of your ordering an officer to spy on his captain.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Grimes.”

“Don’t you, Mrs. Dalwood? Who put you wise to this little party in the galley? Who would have known about it, who could have known about it but Hollister? I shouldn’t like to be in your shoes when the Rhine Institute gets my report on my psionic radio officer. They’re no respecters of admirals and their female equivalents.”

“Have you quite finished, Mr. Grimes?” With the mounting flush on her cheeks the Commissioner was beginning to look human.

“For the time being.”

“Then let me tell you, Lieutenant, that whatever secrets Lieutenant Hollister may have learned about you are still safely locked within his mind. If you had been reading up on the latest advances in robotics—which, obviously, you have not—you would have learned that already psionic robots, electronic telepaths, are in production. This has not been advertised—but neither is it a secret. Such automata can be recognized by the little gold knob on top of their skulls . . .”

The robot John inclined its head towards Grimes, and the golden embellishment seemed to wink at him sardonically.

“You tin fink!” snarled the spaceman.

“I am not a fink, sir. A fink is one who betrays his friend—and you were never a friend to me and my kind. Was it not in this very vessel, under your command, that Mr. Adam met his end?”

“That will do, John!” snapped the Commissioner.

“I still resent being spied upon!” almost shouted Grimes.

“That will do, Lieutenant!”

“Like hell it will. I give you notice that I have resigned from the Survey Service. I’ve had a bellyful of being treated like a child . . .”

“But that is all that you are.”

“Captain,” Rosaleen was pleading. “Please stop it. You’re only making things worse. Mrs. Dalwood, it was my fault. I swear that it was . . .”

“Anything that happens aboard
my
ship is
my
fault,” insisted Grimes.

“From your own mouth you condemn yourself, Lieutenant. I am tempted, as a Commissioner, to accept your resignation here and now, but I feel . . .” Her features sagged, the outlines of her body became hazy, the grey of her costume shimmered iridescently. “Leef I tub . . .” She was her normal self again. “But I feel . . .” Again the uncanny change. “Leef I tub . . .”