Ride the Star Winds (7 page)

“Thank you,” said Grimes.

He followed the ADC to the doorway. Before he could pass through it Su Lin came out of the bedroom carrying his hat, another topper, black this time. Grimes had deliberately forgotten the thing; he took it from her with a brief word of thanks that he hoped she sensed was insincere.

He let Smith pilot him through the labyrinth of corridors.

He thought,
I
must tell Jaconelli to get me a chart of this bloody warren.

Chapter 10

The gubernatorial car
was waiting in the portico, the civilian chauffeur, in his livery of faded, frayed denim and red neckerchief, in the front seat and, beside him, two soldiers in khaki uniform. The rear doors of the vehicle opened. Grimes took off his top hat, climbed in. The ADC followed him. Wong Lee and Su Lin bowed deferentially as the Whispering Ghost purred away from the portico.

Grimes tried to make conversation.

“I’m not used to having an ADC,” he remarked pleasantly to the Lieutenant.

“ADC, Officer Commanding the Governor’s Guard, liaison with the Officer Commanding the Garrison. . . .” The officer’s voice was surly. “I hope that you don’t think up any other jobs for me, Your Excellency. If ever there was a penny-pinching operation, this is it. I’m surprised that they don’t have me doing the cooking. . . .”

“Talking of cooking,” said Grimes, hoping to switch the conversation to a topic dear to his heart, “what’s the chef like?”

“Oh, all right, I suppose, if you don’t mind mucked-up food. He’s New Cantonese, of course. Like all the rest of the Residence mob, with the exception of my men and Jaconelli and myself.” He laughed. “I’m surprised that they didn’t appoint a New Cantonese as Governor. They’d be paying him much less than they’re paying you, Your Excellency.”

“Mphm.” Grimes managed to make it sound like a reprimand. He didn’t like and never had liked moaners. “Some people would think that being appointed ADC to a Governor was an honor.”

“I . . . I suppose so, Your Excellency.”

They sat in silence while the car sped down the winding road toward the city, taking a different route, Grimes noted, from that which had been taken during the journey from the spaceport. Dusk was falling fast but still work was continuing in the fields to either side of the highway. The last of the daylight was caught and reflected by metal implements, by sickles (sickles! in this day and age!) and the blades of hand-wielded hoes. A few of the laborers paused and straightened up to stare at the passing vehicle but most of them took no respite from their back-breaking toil.

Then there were no more fields but, to either side of the wide avenue, there were houses, each in its own garden. All of these buildings were low and rambling, the architectural style vaguely Spanish. Some—but only a few—of the gardens were well-kept; most of them were miniature jungles. The street lights were coming on but not all of them were working.

There was some traffic in the avenue. There was the very occasional solar-electric car. There was a sudden swarm of cyclists, skimming silently through the dusk. Motorized machines, thought Grimes at first, then saw that all the riders’ legs were pumping vigorously. Workers, he decided, domestic servants possibly, returning to their compounds outside the city. And there were trishaws, tricycles with the passengers seated forward, flanked by the pair of leading wheels, with the operator on his saddle astern of them, pedaling hard. Most of the passengers were of Caucasian stock—and all the drivers Mongoloid. Grimes grunted disapprovingly. The use of such transport was justified only during periods of energy crisis—and such days were long past on all of man’s worlds.

Ahead, now, was the President’s Palace, a blaze of illumination, with its profusion of white pillars more Grecian than Spanish. The vast expanse of lawn surrounding the building was like dark green velvet, the drive along which the car made its approach was surfaced with well-raked yellow gravel. A flock of sheep drifted slowly across the headlight beams; the vehicle slowed to a crawl until the animals were past and clear. The driver turned his head to address Grimes.

“What do you think of our lawn mowers, Your Excellency? They’re sort of cobbers of yours, Australian Merinos. Their ancestors came out with the First Fleet.”

The ADC snapped, “Do not address His Excellency without permission, Garcia.”

“Mr. Garcia to you, Mister. And, anyhow, this is
my
world, not yours.”

Grimes shoved his oar in, hoping thereby to avert an acrimonious argument. He asked, “And do you have any other Australian animals here, Mr. Garcia?”

“Only yourself, Your Excellency.”

Grimes laughed and the ADC growled wordlessly.

“Our beef cattle are Argentine stock,” went on the driver, “and our dairy herds are from some little island back on Earth, Jersey. The pigs and the hens? From anywhere and everywhere, I guess.”

The sheep were finally past and the car increased speed, passing a huge statue, a bronze giantess whose heroic proportions were revealed rather than hidden by her flowing draperies. She was holding aloft, in her right hand, a flaming torch. Clouds of flying insects—or insectlike creatures—attracted by the fatal lure of the flaring gas were immolating themselves by the thousand.

“I have often wondered,” said the driver philosophically, “why the bastards, since they like the light so much, don’t come out during the day. . . .”

An interesting problem,
thought Grimes.

The vehicle pulled up in the wide portico. Waiting to receive Grimes was Colonel Bardon, in all the splendor of his mess full dress. With him was a group of local dignitaries—heavily bearded men in black velvet suits, in white, floppy-collared shirts with flowing, scarlet neckties, women in low-cut, black velvet dresses with scarlet scarves about their throats.

The ADC got out of the car first and stood to rigid attention. Grimes got out, putting on his hat. He raised it as Bardon saluted with a flourish, raised it again as the male Liberians swept off their own headgear—black, broad-brimmed and with scarlet bands—and as the ladies curtseyed. Then the party, Bardon and Grimes in the lead, passed through the huge double doors, held open by white-liveried servitors (more New Cantonese, thought Grimes) into an anteroom large enough to serve as a hangar for a fair-sized dirigible. The vast expanse of floor was local marble, highly polished, in which the multicolored veins were brightly scintillant. The high walls were covered with crimson, gold-embroidered silk. Overhead the huge electroliers glittered prismatically.

Attentive servants took hats, carried them away somewhere. Others swung open the enormous doors affording admission to the Reception Hall. This had a floor area that would have been ample for the apron of a minor spaceport. The decor was similar to that of the vestibule but on a much greater scale. Awaiting Grimes was the cream of Liberian society, the black-and-scarlet-clad Anarchist grandees and their ladies. At the far end of the vast hall were two platforms, red draped. On the lower but wider dais was a band, drums and gleaming brass. On the higher one Madam President was sitting in state; her chair was not quite a throne and the tiara adorning her glossy, black hair was not quite a crown. Behind her was a huge, gold-framed portrait of a heavily bearded worthy.

“Who’s that?” whispered Grimes to Bardon. “Karl Marx?”

“Better not let anybody hear you say that, Your Excellency. That’s Bakunin.”

“Oh.”

The music started. Grimes stiffened to attention, as did Bardon and the ADC. The Liberians also stood, but without rigidity. Nonetheless it was a mark of respect. Many of them sang. Grimes was both surprised and pleased that so many knew the words.

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong

Under the shade of a coolabahs tree,

And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled,

‘Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?’

Grimes wondered if those jumbuks, grazing on the wide lawns outside the Palace, could hear the national song of their long ago and far away homeland. And did they have an ancestral memory of the sheep-stealing swagman, a man who had been far more of an anarchist than these Liberians who attached that label to themselves.

Then it was the turn of the Terran anthem. Hardly anybody knew the words and the tune was not one to stick in the memory.

Sons of Terra, strong and free.

Faring forth through Time and Space,

As far as human eye can see

We run our sacred, fateful race . . .

Grimes wondered which was worse, the words or the music.

Finally Liberia had its innings. Almost everybody sang.

Liberia’s sons let us rejoice

For we are strong and free . . .

“Mphm,” grunted Grimes. Who was free these days?

We sing our song with heart and voice

In praise of Liberty!

And praise we, too, our homeworld, so free from want and care.

Stronghold of all the freedoms—

Advance, Liberia fair!

There was a final flourish of drums, then relative silence.

Bardon said, “And now, Your Excellency, I have to present you to Madam President.”

“Lead on, MacDuff,” said Grimes. He knew that he had misquoted but did not think that the Colonel would be aware of this.

“The name is Bardon, Your Excellency. Colonel Bardon.”

The black-and-scarlet crowd parted like the Red Sea before the Israelites, opening clear passage toward the presidential dais along which Grimes, Bardon and the ADC marched, their heels ringing on the marble floor, keeping time to the rhythmic mutter of a single drum. The new Governor was acutely conscious that he was being observed, that he was being curiously regarded by all these bearded men and handsome women. (There may have been some ladies who could not be so categorized but he did not notice any.) He saw that Estrelita O’Higgins had risen from her thronelike chair, was making a stately descent of the short flight of red-carpeted stairs. If only she were holding a torch, thought Grimes, she would look just like one of those statues of Miss Liberty.

She stood there, at the foot of the stairs, waiting for him.

And who bowed to whom? Grimes wondered. Why had he not made a proper study of the protocol for such occasions? She was the (allegedly) elected ruler of a planet—but he was the appointed viceroy of Imperial Earth. Would she extend a gracious hand for him to kiss? At the spaceport they had bowed to each other, practically simultaneously, but this was the official reception, the state occasion.

She knew the drill (surely for this planet only!) even if he did not. She extended her long, smooth, pale arms and flung them around him, engulfing him in a powerful embrace. She must have been eating something with garlic in it, thought Grimes. But he returned her hearty kiss.

She released him, turning him around so that they were both facing the people.

“Comrades!” she cried in her deep contralto. “Comrades! I present to you our new Governor, John Grimes. The Federation, this time, has made a wise choice. John Grimes is a man of action. John Grimes is a man of the world, of many worlds, who knows that each and every planet has its own character. He knows that we, here on Liberia, have our own character. He knows that we have opened our world and our hearts to the poor, the distressed and the oppressed of many planets. There are people here, our guests, who, were it not for us, would be living lives of deepest misery—or who would not be living at all.

“Governor John Grimes, I am sure, will appreciate what we have done, what we are doing.

“I ask you, comrades, to welcome John Grimes and to take him to your hearts, just as you have taken so very many less fortunate outworlders.”

A New Cantonese servant was bowing before them, extending a golden tray upon which were three tall goblets, each filled with a red wine. The President and the Colonel waited until Grimes had taken his before picking up theirs. Other servants had circulated through the hall. Soon everybody was holding a charged glass.

“Viva Grimes!” cried Estrelita O’Higgins, raising her goblet. (She was more than ever like those statues.)

“Viva Grimes!” sounded loudly from the body of the hall. “Viva Grimes!”

And everybody has had a drink but me,
thought Grimes wryly.

He waited until the toast had been drunk, then made his own. “Long live Liberty!” He was probably more sincere, he hoped, than those who, so noisily, had drunk to his health. The wine wasn’t bad, although a mite too sweet.

Chapter 11

Guided by Estrelita O’Higgins,
accompanied by Colonel Bardon, Grimes made the rounds of the great reception hall. The ADC trailed behind for a while, then lost himself in the crowd. The new Governor was introduced to the people who—in theory—were now his subjects. He made and listened to small talk. Now and again he was able to initiate a discussion on more serious matters. He sampled snacks from the buffet tables and enjoyed the savory, highly spiced morsels. An attentive servant continually replenished his glass, even after only a couple of sips. On any other world but this, Grimes thought, a Governor would remain in one place and the people would be brought to meet him. Possibly this Liberian way of doing things was better. At least the newly installed dignitary did not go hungry or thirsty.

He met ministers of state and media personalities. He fended off searching questions about his recent experiences as a commodore of privateers. He asked questions himself, some of which were answered frankly while others were not. Politicians, he thought, were much of a muchness no matter what labels they had attached to themselves.

His conversation with Eduardo Lopez, Minister of Immigration was interesting.

“You must realize, Your Excellency, that I have little choice regarding the ethnicity of our immigrants. To deny any distressed person or persons sanctuary on racial grounds would be altogether contrary to our . . . constitution? Yes. Constitution. . . .”

“I thought,” said Grimes, “that a society founded on the principles of Anarchism wasn’t supposed to have such a thing.”