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III
THE WINDS OF IF

 

Chapter 14

Everything was different, and yet the same.

"Even so," Ralph was saying, "the chow in this wagon leaves much to be desired."

I looked up irritably from the simmering pot of lamb curry on the stove top—and then, obeying an odd impulse, I looked down again, stared at the savory stew of meat and vegetables and hot spices, stared at my hand, still going through the stirring motions with the spoon.

I asked myself: What am I doing here?

"You have about three pet dishes," went on Ralph. "I admit that you do them well. But they're all that you do do well . . ."

This time I did look up at him. What was he doing in civilian shirt and shorts? Then, pursuing the thought, But why should the Federation Government's observer, even though he is a full commander in the Survey Service, be wearing uniform?

"Sandra's getting browned off with the lack of variety," said Ralph.

"Mrs. Malcolm, you mean," I corrected him coldly.

"Captain Malcolm, if you insist," he corrected me, grinning.

I shrugged. "All right. I'm only the catering officer, and she's the captain. At the same time, I am the catering officer, and she's my wife."

"Such a set-up," said Ralph, "would never be tolerated in a Federation ship. To be frank, I came out to the Rim as much to see how the Feminists managed as to investigate the potentialities of this fancy new drive of yours. And this ship, cut off from the Universe for objective years, is the ideal microcosm."

"We get by, out here on the Rim," I said shortly.

"Even so," he said, "you're not a Rim Worlder yourself. You're none of you Rim Worlders, born and bred, except the engineer and that tame telepath of yours. I can understand the women coming out here, but not the men. It must rankle when you're allowed to come into space only in a menial capacity."

"Our boss, Commodore Grimes, is a man," I said. "And most of the Rim Runners fleet is manned by the male sex. Anyhow, there's nothing menial in being a cook. I'm far happier than I was as purser in the Waverly Royal Mail. Furthermore," I said, warming up to the subject, "all the best chefs are men."

Ralph wiped a splatter of curry from his shirt. (I had gestured dramatically with my spoon.) "But it doesn't follow," he said, "that all men are the best chefs."

"Everybody likes my curry," I told him.

"But not all the time. Not for every meal," he said. "Well, Malcolm, I'll leave you to it. And since we have to eat your curry, you might see that the rice isn't so soggy this time."

Interfering bastard, I thought. I brought the spoon to my lips and tasted. It wasn't a bad curry, I decided. It wasn't a bad curry at all. Served with the sliced cucumber and the shredded coconut and the chopped banana, together with the imported mango chutney from Caribbea, it would be edible. Of course, there should be Bombay Duck. I wondered, as I had often wondered before, if it would be possible to convert the fish that flourished in our algae vats into that somewhat odorous delicacy.

Again I was interrupted.

"More curry?" complained Claude Smethwick.

"It's good," I told him. I scooped up a spoonful. "Taste."

"Not bad," he admitted. "If you like curry, that is. I don't have to be telepath to know that you do." He handed the spoon back to me. "But I didn't come here to get a preview of dinner."

"Then what did you come for?" I asked shortly.

"Peter, there's something wrong about this ship. You're the only one that I can talk to about it. Commander Listowel's an outsider, and Doc has gone on one of his verse and vodka jags, and the others are . . . women."

"They can't help it," I said.

"I know they can't—but they look at things differently from the way that we do. Apart from anything else, every one of them is chasing after that Survey Service commander . . ."

"Every one?" I asked coldly.

"Not Sandra, of course," he assured me hastily. (Too hastily?) "But Sandra's got all the worries of the ship—after all, she is captain of the first interstellar lightjammer—on her shoulders, and Martha and Peggy are trying hard to get into Listowel's good books—and bed?—and so there's only you."

"I'm flattered," I said, stirring the curry.

"There's something wrong," he said.

"You said that before," I told him.

"And I'll say it again," he said.

"Well, what is wrong?" I demanded.

"You know the deja vu feeling that you get when the Mannschenn drive starts up? Well, it's something like that. But it's not that . . . it's more, somehow."

"I think I know what you mean . . ." I said slowly.

He went on, "You'll think that I'm crazy, I know. But that doesn't matter—all you so-called normals think that psi people like me are at least halfway round the bend. But I've a theory: couldn't it be that out here, on the Rim, on the very edge of this expanding Galaxy, there's a tendency for alternative time tracks to merge? For example, just suppose that the feminist ships had never got out here . . ."

"But they did," I said.

"But they could very easily not have done. After all, it was back in the days of the Ehrenhaft drive, the gaussjammers. And you've read your history, and you know how many of those cranky brutes got slung away to hell and gone off course by magnetic storms."

"So in this alternative Universe of yours," I said tolerantly, "the Rim Worlds never got colonized."

"I didn't say that. You've only to look at the personnel of this ship—all outsiders but Peggy and myself, and neither Peggy nor I can claim descent from the first families. My ancestors came out long after the Feminist movement had fizzled on Earth, and so did Peggy's . . ."

I stirred the curry thoughtfully. "So on another time track there's another Aeriel, the first of her kind in space, and another Peter Malcolm in the throes of cooking up a really first-class curry for his unappreciative shipmates."

"Could be," he said. "Or the ship could have a different name, or we could be serving in her in different capacities—all but myself, of course."

I burst into song.

 
"Oh, I am the Cook, and the Captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancy brig,
And the Bo's'n tight, and the Midshipmite,
And the crew of the Captain's gig!"

"But not," I was interrupted, "the engineer."

I turned away from the stove. "Oh, it's you, Peggy."

"Who else?" She took the spoon from my hand, raised it to her lips, blew on it. She sipped appreciatively. "Not bad, not bad . . ." A few drops of the sauce dribbled on to the breast of her once-white boiler suit, but she ignored them. They made quite a contrast, I decided, to the smears of black grease. She said, "You'll do me for a rough working mate, Peter."

"Thank you."

She absentmindedly put the spoon into a side pocket that already held a wrench and a hammer. I snatched it back, carefully wiped it and returned it to the pot.

She asked, her voice deliberately casual, "Have you seen Ralph?"

"I think he's gone up to the control room," I told her.

She said sulkily, "He's been promising to let me show him the auxiliary motor room for the last three days."

"After all," I consoled her, "he's not an engineer commander."

"But . . ."

"Curry again?" complained a fresh voice.

I resumed my stirring with an unnecessary clatter. I muttered mutinously, "If my galley is going to be turned into the ship's social club there won't be anything. But aren't you supposed to be on watch, Miss Wayne?"

"The old woman relieved me," she said. "She's showing Ralph just how a lightjammer should be handled." She leaned back against a bench, slimly elegant in her tailored shirt and shorts, nibbling a piece of celery she had picked up from the chopping board. "If the Federation Survey Service doesn't build a fleet of improved Erikson drive wagons it won't be Sandra's fault."

"Love me, love my ship," muttered Peggy.

"What was that?" I asked sharply.

"Nothing," she said.

Both women looked at me in silence, and I was suddenly afraid that what I could read in their eyes was pity.

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