Chapter 13
“SO WE MEET AGAIN, GRIMES,” said Rear Admiral Damien.
“This is a surprise, sir,” Grimes said. Then, “Congratulations on your promotion.”
Damien laughed. “Once I no longer had you to worry about, once I wasn’t always having to justify your actions to my superiors, I got my step up.”
Grimes waited until his guest was seated then took a chair himself. He looked at Damien, not without some apprehension. Apart from the extra gold braid on his sleeves his visitor looked just as he had when he was Commodore Damien, Officer Commanding Couriers, on Lindisfarne Base. He was as thin as ever, his face little more than a skull over which yellow skin was tightly stretched. He still had the mannerism of putting his skeletal fingers together, making a steeple of them over which he regarded whomever it was he was addressing. So he was now looking at Grimes, just as he had so often looked at him in the past when Grimes, a lowly lieutenant, had been captain of the Serpent Class courier Adder. On such occasions he had either been taking Grimes to task for some misdeed or sending him out on some especially awkward mission.
“Coffee, sir?” asked Grimes.
“Thank you, er, Captain.”
Grimes called Magda on the telephone. Almost at once she was bringing in the tray with the fragrantly steaming pot, the cream, the sugar and the mugs. She looked at Damien curiously, then at Grimes.
She asked, “Will that be all, sir?”
“Yes, thank you, Magda.”
She made a reluctant departure. Probably everybody aboard Sister Sue would be wondering why an Admiral had come to visit Grimes, would be expecting her to have the answers.
Grimes poured. He took both sugar and cream in his mug. Damien wanted his coffee black and unsweetened.
He said, “I suppose you’re wondering, just as your Catering Officer was wondering, what I’m doing aboard your ship.”
“I am, sir.”
“It all ties in with my new job, Grimes. My official title is Coordinator of Merchant Shipping. When I learned that a star tramp called Sister Sue, commanded by John Grimes, was due in I was naturally curious. I made inquiries and was pleased to learn that Sister Sue’s master was, indeed, the John Grimes.”
“You flatter me, sir.”
“Nonetheless, Grimes, this is not altogether a social call. No, I haven’t come to place you under arrest. Or not yet, anyhow. There were, of course, very extensive inquiries into the Discovery mutiny and you were more or less cleared of culpability. More or less. There are still, however, those in high places who would like your guts for garters.”
“Mphm.”
“Cheer up, Grimes. I haven’t come to shoot you.” He sipped. “Excellent coffee, this, by the way. But you always were notorious for your love of life’s little luxuries.” He extended his mug for a refill. “I suppose that this ship keeps quite a good table.”
“I like it, sir.”
“I must invite myself to lunch some day. But this morning we will talk business.”
“Business, sir?”
“What else? You’re not only a merchant captain, you’re a shipowner. You’re the one who has to arrange future employment for your ship, yourself and your crew.”
“That thought had flickered across my mind, sir. Perhaps you could advise me. It is some many years since I was last on Earth.”
“I’ve found you jobs in the past, Grimes. Whenever there was something too out of the ordinary for the other courier captains you were the one who got it. Now, I’ll be frank with you. As Coordinator of Merchant Shipping I work very closely with Intelligence. And Intelligence doesn’t consist only of finding out what’s happening. Sometimes it’s making things happen. Do you get me, Grimes?”
“Dirty Tricks, sir?”
“You can put it that way. Also countering other people’s dirty tricks. You know El Dorado, don’t you?”
“I was there once, sir, when I was a junior officer in Aries. And for a while I was yachtmaster to the Baroness Michelle d’Estang, one of the El Doradan aristocracy.”
“And you know her husband, Commodore Baron Kane.”
“He’s hardly a friend, sir.”
“But you know him. Well, I want you on El Dorado. There’s a shipment of luxury goods to be carried there; wines, caviar, fancy cheeses and such. Normally one of the Commission’s ships would be employed—but, as requested by the Admiralty, the Commission will not have a vessel available. So they will have to charter something. And that something will be your Sister Sue. Who was Sue, by the way?”
“Just a girl . . .”
“The young lady on the bicycle exchanging glares with our Commander Lazenby?” Damien got up from his chair to look at, first of all, the solidograph of Maggie, then at the golden statuette of Una Freeman. “H’m. I seem to have seen that face before somewhere . . . On Lindisfarne Base, wasn’t it? That Sky Marshal wench you were supposed to be working with. But, unless my memory is playing tricks, her name wasn’t Susan . . .”
“It wasn’t,” said Grimes. “It still isn’t.”
“Of course, you’ve seen her recently . . .”
(Was that a statement or a question?)
“She’s the Port Southern Police Commissioner,” said Grimes.
Damien seemed to lose interest in Grimes’ art gallery, returned to his chair.
“Now, Grimes, this charter . . .”
“What’s the catch, sir?” asked Grimes. “I somehow can’t believe that anybody in the Admiralty loves me enough to throw lucrative employment my way.”
“How right you are, Grimes. You’ll have to work your passage. To begin with, you will be reenlisted into the Survey Service—on the Reserve List, of course, but with your old rank. Commander.”
And when I’m back in the Service, thought Grimes, they’ll have me by the balls.
He said, “No thank you, sir. I’m a civilian and I like being a civilian. I intend to stay that way.”
“Even though you have civilian status, Grimes, you can still be compelled to face a court-martial over the Discovery affair.”
“I thought you said that it had been swept under the carpet, sir.”
“Carpets can be lifted. Quite a number of my colleagues would rather like to lift that one.”
“I’m a member of the Astronauts’ Guild, sir. They’ve tangled with the Survey Service more than once in defense of their people—and usually won.”
“They probably would in your case, Grimes—but you must know that the legal profession doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘hurry.’ While the lawyers were arguing your ship would be sitting here, idle, with port dues and the like steadily mounting, with your officers wanting their three square meals a day and their salaries. It’d break you, Grimes, and you know it.”
Damien was right, Grimes knew.
He said, “All right. But if I do join the Reserve I’d like a higher rank, with the pay and allowances appertaining while on active duty.”
Damien laughed. “Always the opportunist, Grimes! But there’s no such animal as a Reserve Admiral and you’ll find Reserve Commodores only in the major shipping lines.” He laughed again. “Far Traveler Couriers can hardly be classed as such.”
“Captain will do,” said Grimes magnaminously. “But what exactly do you want me for, sir? How does it tie in with that charter to El Dorado?”
“I can’t tell you that until you’re officially back in the Service.” Damien got slowly to his feet like a carpenter’s rule unfolding. “But I’ll not rush you. I’ll give you until tomorrow morning to make your mind up. Don’t bother to come with me, Grimes. I can find my own way down to the airlock.”
As soon as he was gone Grimes rang for Magda Granadu. “And bring the coins and the book with you,” he said.
***
Head and two tails . . . Yin. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again . . . K’un.
“The superior man,” said Magda, “faithfully serves those who can best use his talents. There will be advantage in finding friends in the south and west, and in losing friends in the north and east. In quiet persistence lies good fortune . . .”
“But I’ve already found friends in the south,” said Grimes. “On Austral, at Port Southern. Yosarian. You and Billy Williams. Even Una Freeman. But where does the west come into it?”
“There are still southerly aspects to consider. Woomera, where we are now, is in Earth’s southern hemisphere. And perhaps we should take initial letters into consideration. ‘S’ for south, ‘W’ for west. ‘S’ for Survey Service. ‘W for Woomera.”
“Mphm? But finding friends here? Commodore Damien was never a friend of mine.”
But wasn’t he? Grimes asked himself. Wasn’t he? Time and time again, during his captaincy of Adder, the little Serpent Class courier, Grimes had gotten away with murder, now and again almost literally. Damien, then Officer Commanding Couriers, must have stood up for him against those Admirals who wanted to make an example of the troublesome young officer.
“I think,” Magda said, “that the Rear Admiral is a friend of yours. He looked into my office for a brief chat on his way ashore. He said, in these very words, ‘You’ve a good captain here. Look after him.’”
“Mphm. Well, he’s not such a bad old bastard himself. But we still have that prophecy about losing friends in the north and east. El Dorado is to the galactic north. And its name starts with an ‘E’ . . .”
“And do you have friends on El Dorado, Captain?” she asked.
“Well, I did. The old Duchess of Leckhampton . . . I wonder if she’s still alive. And the Princess Marlene . . . And the Baroness Michelle d’Estang . . . All friends, I suppose . . .”
She read again from the book. “The superior man finds a true master and chooses his friends among those whose natures are compatible with his own.”
Grimes snorted. “There’s one person aboard this ship whose nature is not compatible! The Green Hornet. I’d like you to get her pay made up so that I can get rid of her. There should be no shortage of qualified officers here, on Earth.”
“On what grounds will you discharge her, Captain?”
“Just that her face doesn’t fit.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “I’m afraid that you’ll not be able to make it stick. Hasn’t Billy told you about the Guild on this world? It’s just a junior officers’ trade union. When I was late here, in Borzoi, the Old Man tried to get rid of the third mate, one of those really obnoxious puppies you get stuck with at times. He paid him off—and then the little bastard ran screaming to the Guild. The Guild not only refused to supply a replacement but brought a suit for wrongful dismissal. And slapped an injunction on us so that we couldn’t lift until the case had been heard. Captain Brownlee didn’t improve matters by saying, in court, just what he thought about the legal profession. It did not prejudice the judge in his favor. So he lost the case and we had to take the third mate back. The Dog Star Line was far from happy, of course. Their ship had been grounded for weeks. The captain showed me the Carlottigram he got from Top Office. It was a long one, but one sentence sticks in my memory. ‘We judge our Masters not by their navigation or spacemanship but by the skill with which they walk the industrial tightrope.’”
“And what happened to Captain Brownlee?” asked Grimes.
“Transferred to a scruffy little ship on one of the Dog Star Line’s more unpleasant trades.”
“At least,” said Grimes, “I don’t have any owners to worry about.”
“But you have an owner’s worries, Captain. You can’t afford to be grounded by legal hassles when you should be flitting around the galaxy earning an honest living.”
“That’s true. But are you sure that Ms. Connellan will scream to the Guild if I try to pay her off?”
“She’s already screamed.”
“Oh. I’d have thought, to judge from the way that she’s been complaining, that she’d be glad to see the last of us.”
“She’s not altogether a fool,” said Magda. “She knows that she’s virtually unemployable. She’s got a job and she means to hang on to it.”