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Chapter 14




BY THE TIME Sister Sue was linked up to the Port Woomera telephone system, Grimes’ intention had been to ring his parents in Alice Springs as soon as possible but, after his conversation with Magda, decided first of all to have things out with the Guild.

He got through to the local secretary, in Woomera City, without trouble. The face looking out at him from the screen was not a young one and at first Grimes hoped that he would be given a sympathetic hearing.

He said, without preamble, “I’d like to get rid of my second mate, Captain Davis.”

“Ms. Connellan has already talked with me, Captain Grimes, and I must say that her complaints of sexual and racial discrimination seem quite valid.”

“I’m not practicing discrimination. I just want her out of my ship.”

“Then I must warn you, Captain Grimes, that the Guild will give full support to Ms. Connellan.”

“I’m a Guild member too. Shouldn’t you be looking after my interests?”

Davis smiled sadly. “You must realize, Captain, that shipmasters comprise less than twenty-five percent of Guild membership. Junior officers are in the majority. You might say that I am their employee. There is another point. You are a shipowner as well as being a shipmaster. As far as the majority of our members are concerned, shipowners are the natural enemies of all good spacemen . . .”

“Ms. Connellan is not a good spaceman,” growled Grimes. “She is a bad spacewoman.”

“Perhaps, perhaps. But I’ve only your word for that, Captain.”

“My chief officer will bear me out. And my catering officer. And my radio officer. And my senior engineers.”

“Among whom only the chief officer is a Guild member.”

“So you’re not prepared to help me, Captain Davis?”

“I have heard Ms. Connellan’s story. You were happy enough to engage her in Port Southern when you desperately needed an officer.”

“That was then,” growled Grimes. “This is now.”

“As you say, Captain Grimes, this is now. You are no longer in Survey Service with godlike powers over your crew.”

Grimes snorted. Any Survey Service captain who tried to come the heavy deity would very soon be smacked down to size by the real gods—not only the admirals but the bureaucrats and the politicians.

He asked, “Were you ever in the Service yourself, Captain Davis?”

“No.”

“I thought not,” said Grimes. “If you had been you wouldn’t be talking such a load of crap.”

That ended the call—and, no matter what the I Ching had told him, this was one friend that he had not found in the south and west.

He smoked a pipe and then put a call through to Alice Springs. His mother and father were pleased to hear his voice and see his face again—although not as overjoyed as he thought that they should have been. But they had their own interests, he thought, and he had long since ceased to be one of them.

“When are you coming out?” his father asked.

“As soon as I’ve got various pieces of business tidied up here. Things, quite suddenly, seem to have become a little complicated.”

Grimes senior laughed. “I’ve always thought that you were a sort of catalyst. Things happen around you. But come as soon as you can.”

“I will,” promised Grimes.

His mother’s face replaced that of his father on the screen. She had changed very little; slim, rather horse-faced women keep their looks far more successfully than do their more conventionally pretty sisters. She reminded him, fleetingly, of Shirl and Darleen . . . (But surely she had no kangaroos in her ancestry . . .)

“We’ll be waiting for you, John,” she said. “I’ll see to it that we have a good stock of gin and a bottle of Angostura bitters.”

“And ice,” he said.

“And ice. Don’t keep us waiting too long—otherwise the ice will melt.”

“Or I’ll drink all the gin,” said his father, back on the screen.

“I’ll have to hang up now,” Grimes said. “I’ve things to see to. Look after yourselves.”

“Listen to who’s talking,” his mother said.







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Framed