Ride the Star Winds (8 page)

“Contrary to our principles,” said the President firmly.

“You are right as always, Estrelita,” said the fat politician gallantly. “Principles. Of course, if I received a request for permission to enter from, say, an El Doradan, a representative of a society notorious for its devotion to capitalism, I should be obliged to refuse. But the poor, distressed and homeless, of whatever race or color, I must welcome with open arms.”

“We
must welcome,” said the President.

“As I was saying—we must welcome.”

“And can these immigrants become full citizens?” asked Grimes, although he already knew the answer to that question.

“Of course, provided that they show proof that they are fit and proper persons to become Liberians.”

Grimes looked around him. Apart from the servants all those present seemed to be of Terran Anglo-Saxon or Latin stock. There were no Orientals, no Negroes.

“Have any outworlders yet achieved citizenship?” he asked.

“Er . . . no. You see, Your Excellency, the major qualification is freedom. As long as a person is in debt to the State he is not free. Once he has earned enough money to repay the debt he is free . . .”

“Debt?” asked Grimes.

“Resettlement is a costly business, Your Excellency, as you as a shipowner must know. Transportation between worlds . . .”

“The responsibility, I understand, of the Federation.”

“Even so, there are costs, heavy costs. People come here. They must be fed, housed, found employment. . . .”

“Employment,” echoed Grimes. “Menial work. Manual labor, for not very high wages. . . .”

“And would you pay a field hand, Your Excellency, the salary that you, highly trained and qualified, would expect as a shipmaster?”

“The laborer, in any field, is worthy of his hire,” said the President.

Her hand firmly on Grimes’s elbow she steered him away from Lopez, toward the flamboyantly red-haired Kitty O’Halloran, Director of Tri Vi Liberia. She was a large woman, fat rather than plump, and she gushed. “Your Excellency. Commodore. I’m dying to get you on to one of our programs. Just an interview, but in
depth.
Just the story, told by yourself, of some of your
outrageous
adventures. . . .”

“Outrageous?” parried Grimes. “I’m a respectable Governor. “

“But you weren’t always. You’ve been a pirate. . . .”

“A privateer,” he corrected her.

“Who knows the difference?” She tittered. “From what I’ve heard, you didn’t know yourself. . . .”

Again there was the guiding pressure on his elbow. This time he was to meet Luigi Venito, Minister of Interstellar Trade, a tall, distinguished man with steely gray hair and—unusual in this company—a neatly trimmed beard.

“I thought, Your Excellency,” said Venito, “that I might one day deal with you in your capacity as a shipowner. To meet you as a Governor is an unexpected pleasure.”

“Bad pennies,” said Grimes, “turn up in the most unexpected places.”

“Ha ha. But I refuse to believe that the Terran World Assembly would appoint a bad penny to a highly responsible position.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Grimes. “And, in any case, governments are rarely as moral as those whom they govern.”
(There are times,
he thought,
when I feel that I should have a Boswell, recorder in hand, tagging after me . . .)
“I hope that your government is an exception to the rule.”

Venito chuckled. “Some say that we shouldn’t have a government at all, not on this world. But after the first few years our founding fathers—and mothers, of course, Madam President—were obliged to admit that pure Anarchism doesn’t work. A state of anarchy is not Anarchism. But we
are
free, unregimented, doing the things that we want to do as long as we do not infringe upon the rights of our fellow citizens. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. My own ability is trade, buying in the cheapest markets, selling in the dearest. All for the greatest good, naturally, of Liberia . . .”

He had been drinking, of course, not too much, perhaps, but enough to loosen his tongue. Grimes ignored the President’s attempt to push him along to another group. There was one point that he wanted to clear up, a matter that had not been fully dealt with in the data that he had been given to study on the voyage out from Earth.

He said, “You must have made some interesting deals in your time. . . . Agricultural machinery, for example. . . .”

Venito laughed. “Yes. That
was
a good deal! The new colony on Halvan—and the ship carrying all their robot harvesters and the like months overdue! She’s listed as missing, presumed lost, at Lloyd’s. I think that the presumption still holds—but that’s not important. . . .”

Only to the crew,
thought Grimes,
and their relatives.

“And we had still more refugees coming in and so I said to Lopez, ‘Put these people to work in the fields—and I’ll flog all our agricultural machinery at better-than-new prices!’ And I did just that.”

“Clever,” said Grimes. “Ill winds, and all that. But it wouldn’t have been so good for Liberia if you didn’t have the indentured labor system, if your field workers were being paid decent wages.”

“What is a decent wage, Your Excellency? Enough to buy the necessities of life—food, shelter, clothing—with a little left over for the occasional luxury. That’s a decent wage. On this world nobody goes cold or hungry. What more do you want?”

“The freedom to change your job when you feel like it, for a start.”

“But all our citizens enjoy that freedom.”

“Yes. All your
citizens,
Minister.”

“Citizenship has to be earned, Your Excellency.”

The President not only had her hand firmly on his elbow; she pinched him quite painfully. He took the hint and allowed her to conduct him to a meeting with the Minister for Culture and the lady with him, the Chief Librarian of Liberia.

They knew his background, of course, and, talking down from their intellectual eminence, made it plain that they held spacemen in low esteem.

Chapter 12

The reception was over.

The President and Colonel Bardon, very much like husband and wife getting rid of the guests after a party and looking forward to holding a post mortem on the night’s doings as soon as they were in bed, escorted Grimes out to the waiting car, which was at the head of the queue of vehicles. Most of these were trishaws.

The ADC was there, with the two soldiers. All three of them made a creditable attempt at standing to attention. Grimes wondered briefly how the two enlisted men had spent their evening; obviously they had found congenial company somewhere. He knew how the ADC had passed the time; that officer had been mainly in the company of two not unattractive girls who seemed to have monopolized the services of one of the wine waiters. Surely ADCs, Grimes had thought disapprovingly, should always be at the beck and call of their lords and masters. But this was Liberia where all animals—unless they had the misfortune to be refugees—were equal. (But surely a Governor was more equal than the others.)

“Good night, Your Excellency.”

“Good night, Madam President.” Grimes clasped her extended hand. “Thank you for the party.”

“It was a pleasure having you.”

“Good night, Your Excellency.”

“Good night, Colonel.”

Grimes removed his tall hat before climbing into the passenger compartment of the car. The driver turned his head to regard him sardonically.

“Feeling no pain, Gov?” he asked. (He, too, must have spent a convivial evening.)

When in Rome . . .
thought Grimes resignedly. He said, “I’ll survive.”

“More than your predecessor did . . .” muttered the chauffeur.

The ADC and the soldiers embarked. The doors slid shut. The car drove away.

Grimes drowsed most of the way back to the Residence.

Wong Lee was waiting there to receive him and so, in his suite, was Su Lin. As though by magic the girl produced a pot of fragrant tea and brought it to him on a lacquer tray as he went into his office and sat down at the desk. He sipped from the cup that she poured for him; the steaming liquid cleared his head. The old man and the girl watched impassively as he opened the first of the folders that Jaconelli had laid out for him.

This contained the information on the Terran staff of the Residence.

Jaconelli, Grimes read, had been born in Chicago. His solitary qualification was Bachelor of Commerce, the minimal requirement for any secretarial post. Surely a Governor, thought Grimes, should be entitled to at least a Master to handle his correspondence and affairs.

Harrison Smith, the ADC, was another Bachelor—of Military Arts. He was a graduate of West Point. His birthplace was Denver. His Terran Army career had been undistinguished; he had not played a part, however minor, in even a police action or a brushfire war.

The Sergeant of the Governor’s Guard, Martello, was another American. Although seven years older than his officer he, too, had been lucky enough to avoid action during his Army service.

The privates were a mixed bunch—one New Zealander, three Poms, a Swede and an Israeli. That all of them had reached early middle age without attaining non-commissioned rank did not say much for them.

The New Cantonese file was a thicker one—but only because there were more names in it. Wong Lee had the biggest entry.

The majordomo was old, even older than his appearance and manner had led Grimes to believe. He had actually been born on New Canton, where his parents had been the owners of the Heavenly Peace Hotel and the Jade Dragon Restaurant. As had been the custom of his people he had commenced his training in hotel and restaurant management at a very early age. In spite of his refugee status he had easily obtained such employment on Liberia although he was never allowed to become the owner of his own establishment. He had applied for the post of majordomo to the Governor when the first of such appointments was made by Earth. He had got the job and for many years had kept it.

All the others had been born on Liberia, some of mixed parentage. Among these was Su Lin, with a New Cantonese father and an Irandan mother. And young enough, thought Grimes, to be his own daughter. He looked up at her from the typed pages. She looked back at him and smiled. He frowned back at her.

Finally he got to the transcript of the telephone conversation that Jaconelli had had with the Bureau of Meteorology. The Secretary, pulling rank as the Governor’s personal representative, had received an assurance from one of the Deputy Directors
(the
Director had been among those at the reception) that Captain Raoul Sanchez would be released at once from his normal duties and instructed to report at the Residence at 0900 hours tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow
morning? Grimes looked up at the wall clock.
This
morning.

He said, “Thank you, Mr. Wong. Thank you, Su Lin. I shall not be needing you any more tonight. Please see that I am called promptly at 0700 hours.”

The old man bowed deeply and then glided out of the office. The girl remained.

Grimes said again, “Thank you, Su Lin. Please call me at 0700 hours.”

She said, “But you have yet to retire, Your Excellency. And my duties are to attend you at all times.”

“I am capable of putting myself to bed,” Grimes told her.

“But, Your Excellency, I have been trained . . .”

“And so have I, from earliest childhood—to undress myself and even to fold and hang my clothes properly.”

She laughed at this and it made her even more attractive. If Grimes had not been so well looked after on the voyage out from Earth he might well have yielded to temptation.

“Good night,” he said firmly.

“Good night, Your Excellency,” she said softly.

A little later, wrestling with the fastenings of his archaic finery, he regretted not having retained her services if only to help him to undress.

Chapter 13

She called him at seven,
placing the tea tray down on the bedside table with a musical clatter and then whispering softly into his ear, “It is morning, Your Excellency. It is morning.”

Grimes ungummed his eyes and looked up at her. There must be, he admitted, far worse sights with which to start the day. She smiled at him and poured tea from the pot with its willow pattern decoration into a handleless cup on which was the same design. As soon as he had struggled into a sitting posture, propped by the plump pillows that she had arranged for him, she handed him the cup. He handed it back to her. When he first awoke it was not a drink that he needed but the reverse. With some embarrassment—normally he slept naked—he got out of the bed on the side away from her and padded through to the bathroom. The pressure on his bladder relieved, he returned to his bed and slid the lower portion of his body under the covers. This time he accepted the cup and sipped from it gratefully. He saw that she had brought his pipe from where he had left it in the office and had filled it. She put one end of the stem into her mouth, applied flame to the bowl from a small, golden lighter that she brought from the side pocket of her tunic. When it was drawing properly she handed it to him.

Even an Admiral,
thought Grimes smugly,
wouldn’t be getting service like this . . .
He wondered if he, as a Planetary Governor, outranked an Admiral.
De jure,
possibly, if not
de facto.

He sipped and smoked, smoked and sipped.

She asked, “What does Your Excellency desire for breakfast?”

“What’s on the menu?” Grimes asked.

“Whatever Your Excellency wishes,” she said.

A roll in bed with honey,
he thought. Then,
Down, boy, down!

He said, after consideration, “Grapefruit, please. Then two eggs, sunny side up, with bacon and country-fried potatoes. Hot rolls. Butter. Lemon marmalade. Coffee. . . .”

“At once, Your Excellency?”

“No, thank you. I always like to shower and depilate and all the rest of it first. And dress. . . .”

“What will Your Excellency wear this morning?”

And just what was a Governor’s undress uniform?