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Chapter 37




HE SAT AT A TABLE in The Happy Kangaroo, by himself, nursing his drink. He did not, unlike most of the other spacers, consider that free liquor was a valid excuse for getting drunk. Malleson and Mayhew had been with him but the Mannschenn Drive chief had wanted to try out a new system in the gaming room, where a roulette table was in operation. Mayhew had gone with the engineer. Was he a telekineticist as well as a telepath, Grimes had wondered idly. A few tables away the Green Hornet and the Countess of Walshingham were sitting. They were not actually hand in hand but conveyed the impression that they were. Elsewhere in the room were three kilted officers from Spaceways Princess, another trio from Pride of Erin in their green and gold finery and a quartet from Agatha’s Ark, their noisy behavior in contrast to the grey sobriety of their uniforms. A dozen of the volunteer bunnies were looking after them. He wondered briefly where most of his own people were. Williams, he knew, was staying on board, with Magda Granadu to keep him company. Neither Mr. Crumley nor Mr. Stewart was much of a shore-goer. And he had heard talk of a picnic and bathing party at a nearby ocean beach—a beer and bunnies orgy, he thought sourly. That would account for the absence of his junior officers.

He watched the stage more with censorious interest than with enthusiasm. Once he would have enjoyed a turn of this nature; now it rather repelled him. He thought that he knew why. Years ago, when he had been a watchkeeping officer aboard the Zodiac Class cruiser Aries, one of his shipmates had been a reservist, a lieutenant who, in civil life, was a second mate in Trans-Galactic Clippers. This young man had a fund of good stories about life in big passenger ships. There was one captain, he told his listeners, who was a notorious womanizer. “We even used to pimp for the old bastard,” said the storyteller. “If he got fixed up at the beginning of the voyage the ship was Liberty Hall . . . But if, for some reason, he failed to score it was hell . . . We all had to observe both letter and spirit of company regulations and a few extra ones that he thought up himself just to make our lives miserable!”

Grimes had no real desire to emulate the TG captain, but . . .

He looked morosely at the stage, at the naked girl who was dancing, an old-fashioned waltz, with a gleaming, humanoid robot. Great art it was not. It was not even good pornography. The girl was gawky and her movements were stiffer than those of the automaton. Her feet were too big.

Somebody dropped into the chair that had been vacated by Malleson. He was dimly conscious of a white collar with a black bow tie, of smooth shoulders, of long, gleaming legs. A bunny, he thought. Another rich bitch putting on the Lady Bountiful act . . .

She said, “You look as though you’d rather be in The Red Kangaroo, on Botany, John.”

He turned his head to look at her properly.

“Michelle,” he said.

It was by no means the first time that he had seen her scantily clothed but this bunny rig imparted to her a tartiness. It suited her, he decided.

She raised a slim hand commandingly and a robar glided up to their table on silent wheels. She said, “I can see what you’re drinking. I’ll have the same.” She addressed the frontal panel of the machine, gay with little winking lights, and ordered, “Two pink gins.”

“Coming up,” the thing replied in a mechanical voice. A section of panel dropped down to form a shelf and on to it slid two misted goblets. Grimes reached out for them, put them on the table.

He said, “And some little eats.”

A dish of nuts of various kinds appeared on the shelf.

“Still Gutsy Grimes,” murmured the Baroness.

“Just blotting paper,” said Grimes, between nibbles.

She raised her glass to him and said, “Here’s looking at you . . .”

“And at you,” he replied.

She sipped—not as daintily as had been her wont when he first knew her, thought Grimes—and then gestured toward the amateur performer on the stage.

“Ashley,” she said scornfully, “thinks that she’s the best since Isadora Duncan, but . . .”

“Who’s she?”

“Lady Ashley Mortimer.”

“No, not her. Isadora Duncan.”

“Really, John, you are a peasant. She was a famous dancer who lived in the twentieth century, old style. But don’t you find the entertainment here boring?”

“I do, frankly.”

She said, “I’d rather like to see your ship.”

He looked at her intently and asked, “Won’t Drongo mind?”

“The Baron,” she said, with a subtle emphasis on the title, “is in El Dorado City, in conference with Baron Takada and others. It is my understanding that very soon now you will be given orders to lift for Kalla.” She tossed the remains of her drink down her throat. “Come on.” She rose to her feet.

Grimes finished his drink, snatched up a last handful of the nuts and then extricated himself from his chair. Together they walked to the door, out into the warm night.

***

The four ships stood there, floodlit towers of metal, three silvery in the glare, one a dull green. On the side of one of the silver ships a flag had been painted, a purple burgee with a gold ball in the upper canton, a commodore’s broad pennant.

“That’s her,” said Grimes. “Sister Sue.”

She said, “I wish that somebody would name a ship after me.”

“You could always ask Drongo to do that little thing.”

“Him!” she snorted with such vehemence that Grimes was not only embarrassed but felt an upsurge of loyalty to his own sex.

They strolled slowly over the apron to the foot of Sister Sue’s ramp. There was a sentry on duty there, one of the omnipresent robots, attired in approximation of the uniform of the Federation Survey Service Marines. The thing saluted with mechanical smartness. Grimes acknowledged with deliberate sloppiness.

He and Michelle walked up the gangway to the open airlock door, into the vestibule. The elevator cage, already at this lower level, carried them swiftly and smoothly up to the captain’s flat. Grimes ushered his guest into his sitting room. She sprawled with elegant inelegance in one of the armchairs by the coffee table, her long, slender legs stretched out before her. Grimes took the seat facing her. He saw that Magda had laid out his usual supper—a thermopot of coffee, a large dish of napkin-covered sandwiches. Michelle, too, noted this offering. She bent forward and lifted the napkin. The sandwiches were of new bread, with the crust left on, cut thick—as was the pink ham that was the filling.

She smiled. “You have a female catering officer, don’t you? It looks as though she spoils you as thoroughly as Big Sister used to . . .” Her expression clouded slightly. “I hope that I am not . . . trespassing. Or poaching.”

“No, Michelle. She’s already spoken for.”

“Oh. Do you think I could have some coffee?”

“Of course.”

There was only one mug on the tray but there were others in a locker. Grimes got one out. He filled both vessels with the steaming, aromatic brew, remembered that she preferred hers unsweetened. He added sugar liberally to his own drink.

She nibbled a sandwich.

She said, “Marriage—or marriage to Baron Kane—seems to have coarsened me. Once I would sneer at this sort of food. Now I enjoy it.”

“Mphm,” grunted Grimes through a mouthful.

“This cabin,” she said, “is more you than your quarters aboard The Far Traveler . . . And even if you don’t have a golden stewardess you do have a golden girl . . .” She waved a half-eaten sandwich toward the miniature Una, astride her gleaming bicycle, on the shelf. “Rather pretty. Or even beautiful.”

Grimes got up and lifted the figurine and her wheeled steed down to the deck. “Ride,” he ordered. “Ride. Round and round and round . . .”

She clapped her hands gleefully. “One of Yosarian’s toys, isn’t she? But aren’t they rather expensive?”

“I didn’t buy her,” said Grimes stiffly. “She was a gift. From Mr. Yosarian and . . .”

“And from the lady who was the model?” She laughed. “No doubt one of your ex—or not so ex—girl friends. You know, I’ve always been sorry that you were so overawed by me when you were my yachtmaster. But now that you’re an owner-master, and a commodore . . .”

“But not a baron,” said Grimes.

“But still a privateer,” she told him, “as the first Baron d’Estang was . . .”

There was something more than a little sluttish about her posture. Her bodice had become unbuttoned. The pink nipple of one firm breast seemed to be winking at him. The invitation was unmistakable.

Yet when he got up from his chair and moved toward her she put up a hand to fend him away.

“Wait,” she said. “I have to use your bathroom first. Through there, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She rose sinuously from her seat, walked, with swaying buttocks, to the bedroom, through which were the toilet facilities. Grimes poured himself the last of the coffee from the thermopot. He was still sipping it when she came back, standing in the doorway between day and sleeping cabins.

The glossy white Eton collar and the black bow accentuated her nakedness. A highborn lady she might be—and, at this moment, a tart she most certainly was.

But a high-class tart, thought Grimes, as he got up and went to join her in the bedroom.

In the day cabin the miniature Una Freeman continued her tireless rounds while the solidograph of Maggie Lazenby looked down disapprovingly.

***

“And now,” he whispered, “what was all this about, darling?”

She murmured, “The laborer is worthy of his hire.”

He said, “But this was a bonus.”

“And for me, John. And for me. Besides . . .”

“Yes?”

“I don’t pretend to possess the faculty of prevision . . . But . . . But I don’t think that you’ll be coming back here, ever. I just had to take this chance to do with you what we should have done a long time ago.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She kissed him a last time, her lips moist and warm on his, then gently disengaged herself from his embrace. She swung her long, long legs down to the deck, swayed gracefully into the bathroom. When she came out she was dressed again in her bunny costume.

“Don’t get up,” she told him. “I can see myself ashore.”

“But . . .”

“Don’t get up, John.” She blew him a kiss. “Good night Good bye, and the very best of luck.”

She vanished through the doorway.

She screamed briefly. Grimes flung himself off the bed and ran to the door. She straightened up from rubbing her right foot and glared at him.

“That bloody golden popsy of yours,” she snarled. “It was intentional!”

“She’s only a toy,” said Grimes.

“And a dangerous one.” She grinned. “I’d better go before I kick her off her bicycle and then jump on her!”

She waved and then was gone.

Grimes told the tiny cyclist to stop, picked her up and put her back on her shelf. The integument of the metal body in his hands seemed almost as real as the human skin that, only minutes ago, he had been caressing.







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Framed