To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga (28 page)

Even so, the animal almost reached him, finally collapsed at his very feet.

Slowly, Grimes turned to look at the others—at the Princess, at the robot foresters, at the grinning, tongue-lolling dogs. He felt betrayed, sensed that only his own luck (rather than skill) had saved him.

Marlene stared back, her eyes and wide mouth very vivid in her pale face. Then she made a tremulous attempt at a smile.

“Third time lucky,” she said. “For you.”

“What do you mean?”

“That I’ve shot
my
bolt. Somebody else can do the dirty work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind. Let us return to the castle.”

In silence they walked back out from the dark woods.

Chapter 21

They lay
, supine and naked, on the velvet grass of the lawn that surrounded the swimming pool, soaking up the warmth and the radiation of the afternoon sun. Grimes raised himself on his shoulders, looked at the perfect body of the girl. He thought,
Yes, you may look, but you mustn’t touch.
And he wanted to touch, badly. Hastily he turned over onto his belly.

“What’s bothering you, John?” she asked, her voice lazy.

Can’t you see?
he did not dare to say. Instead, extemporizing, he said, “I’m still puzzled by what you said. After I killed the boar.”

“What did I say?”

“Something about third time lucky. And about somebody else having to do the dirty work.” He was silent for a little. “And, tell me, was the first time when I brought the dynosoar in to a landing? And was the second time when we had the difference of opinion with the rock ogre?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, John. I can’t remember saying anything about third time lucky.”

“Can’t you?”

“No. You must have imagined it. You were rather badly shaken up.” There was a touch of scorn in her voice. “Still, I suppose that it was the first time that you’d ever killed anything at short range.”

“Never mind that. Here’s another point. I gained the impression that your precious Fritz and Fredrik weren’t busting their tin guts to get me out of the jam.”

“You hardly gave them time, did you? Also, they are not supposed to intervene until the last possible moment. It’s like . . . how shall I put it? It’s like the amusement parks you have on most of the overcrowded planets. There are those affairs called . . . roller coasters? Big Dippers? Anyhow, they give their passengers the illusion of danger. We work on the same principle.”

“So El Dorado is just one huge amusement park for the very rich?”

She laughed, but without warmth. “You could put it that way.” She got up slowly, walked to the battlements. Grimes watched the play of the muscles under her smooth skin, the sway of her round buttocks.
Yes,
he thought,
a huge amusement park, with swimming pools on the roofs of Gothic castles, and the illusion of danger when you want it (and when you don’t) and the illusion of glamorous sex. The real thing isn’t for snotty-nosed ragamuffins from the wrong side of the tracks.

She turned to face him. The sun was full on her. She was all golden, the slender length of her, save for the touches of contrasting color that were her eyes, her mouth, her taut nipples and the enameled nails of her fingers and toes.

She said, “You aren’t happy here, John.” There was regret in her voice.

He said, looking at her, “You’re a marvellous hostess. But . . . But I can’t help feeling an outsider.”

“But you
are,
” she stated simply. “All of you, from your almighty Captain down to the lowest rating, are. We can fraternise with you all, but only within limits.”

“And who lays down those limits? Your precious Monitor?” She was shocked. “Of course not.
We
know what those limits are. Normally we just do not mix with those who are not our kind of people. But, as we called your ship in, we realize that we are under an obligation. In
your
case I am trying to make up for the trouble I got you into from the very start.”

“And ever since,” he said.

“That is not fair, John. You impressed me as being the type of young man who is quite capable of getting himself into trouble without much help or encouragement.”

And this young woman has helped me enough,
thought Grimes,
nonetheless. Young
woman? But was she? For all he knew she could be old enough to be his grandmother.

“Why are you staring at me, John?”

“A cat can look at a Queen,” he quipped. “Or a Princess.”

“And many a cat has lost all of its nine lives for doing just that.”

Grimes transferred his attention to a tiny, jewelled beetle that was crawling over the grass just under his face.

She said, “If you aren’t happy here, John, I’ll take you back to your ship.”

“Do you want me to go? “

“No,” she said at last.

“All right. I’ll stay, as long as you’ll have me.”

“That wasn’t very gracious.”

“I’m sorry. It was just my proletarian origins showing.”

She told him, “Please don’t let them show tonight. You must be on your best behavior. I, we, have guests.”

“Oh. Anybody I know?”

“Yes. Henri, Comte de Messigny. Hereditary Chief Lobenga and his wife, the Lady Eulalia. The Duchess of Leckhampton. Those whom you have not already met you have seen.”

“The Duchess? Yes. I remember now. On the Monitor, at the masked ball. But the Lady Eulalia?”

“At the voodoo ceremony. It was she on the altar.”

“His wife?”

“Yes. Lobenga is a very moral man, moral, that is, by your somewhat outdated standards.”

And that, thought Grimes, robbed the rites that he had witnessed of much of their sinful glamor. There had been, of course, that revolting business with the white goat but all over the Galaxy, with every passing second, animals were being slaughtered to serve the ends of Man. He, himself, had killed the boar and, quite possibly, sooner or later would enjoy its cooked flesh.

Suddenly he found himself pitying these people with their empty, sterile lives. Messigny, playing at being a spaceman, Lobenga and his wife playing at Black Magic, and the old Duchess casting herself in the role of Grande Dame. And the Princess?
There’s nothing wrong with you,
he thought,
that a good roll in the hay wouldn’t cure.
And yet, looking at her as she stood there, proud and naked, looking down at him, he knew that she would have to make the first move.

She said, “There is a slight chill in the air. Shall we go down?” She walked to the turret that housed the top of the escalator. He followed her. The robot Karl was awaiting them, helped the girl into a fleecy robe, knelt to slide golden sandals onto her slim feet. Grimes picked up his own robe from where he had left it, got into his footwear unassisted. He knew that had he waited a few seconds Karl would have served him as he served his mistress, but the spaceman was neither used to nor welcomed such attention. The moving stairway took them down into the castle.

Grimes, tricked out once again in his dress uniform, sat watching the screen of the playmaster in his living room, awaiting the summons. He had decided to allow himself just one weak drink, and was sipping a pink gin. He was ready for the knock on the door when it came, drained what was left in his glass and then followed Karl through long corridors that were, once again, strange to him. Finally, he was conducted into a room furnished with baroque splendor, in which Marlene and her guests were already seated.

They broke off their conversation as he came in, and the two men and the Princess got to their feet. “Your Grace,” said Marlene formally, “may I introduce Lieutenant John Grimes, of
Aries?”
The Duchess looked him up and down.
If she smiles,
thought Grimes,
the paint will crack and the powder will flake off . . .
But smile she did, thinly, a final touch to the antique elegance already enhanced by an elaborate, white-powdered wig, black beauty spot on the left cheek of her face, black ribbon around the wrinkled neck, gently fluttering fan. She extended a withered hand. Rather to his own surprise, Grimes bowed from the waist to kiss it. She looked at him approvingly.

“Lady Eulalia, may I introduce . . . ?”

Grimes found it hard to believe that this was the naked woman whom he had seen stretched upon the altar, who had participated in the obscene sacrifice, who had been carried into the dark jungle by the giant Negro. She smiled sweetly, demurely almost, up at him. Her skin was hardly darker than Marlene’s, and only a certain fullness of the lips betrayed her racial origin. Her auburn-glinting hair was piled high on her narrow head. Her splendid body was clad in a slim sheath of glowing scarlet. The effect was barbaric, and suddenly, credence restored, he could visualize her as she had appeared on the screen. He felt his ears burning.

“We have met before, young Grimes,” said de Messigny, shaking his hand. Although the grip was firm, it was cold. The Comte was not in uniform tonight, was sombrely well-dressed in form-fitting black, with a froth of lace at throat and wrists. He, like the Duchess, seemed a survivor from some earlier, more courtly age.

“I remember seeing you at the spaceport, Lieutenant,” rumbled Lobenga, a wide, dazzling smile splitting his broad, ebony face. The Hereditary Chief was wearing a white jacket over sharply creased black trousers and, under the white satin butterfly of his necktie, a double row of lustrous black pearls adorned his starched shirt front. “I am pleased with the opportunity to make your acquaintance properly.” The hand that crushed Grimes’ was the hand that had slain the sacrificial goat.

“Please be seated,” ordered Marlene, resuming her own chair. She, tonight, was imperially robed in purple, and an ornate golden brooch—or was it some Order?—gleamed over her left breast. In her hair, as before, was the jewelled coronet. Grimes watched her as she sat down and was suddenly aware that de Messigny was watching him. Glancing sideways, he imagined that he detected jealousy on the tall man’s face.
But you’ve nothing to be jealous of,
he thought.

And then the robot servitors were offering trays of drinks, and the conversation was light and desultory, normal—“And what do you really think of our world, Mr. Grimes?”

“The most beautiful planet I’ve seen, Your Grace,”—platitudinous, but a welcome change from the platitudes bandied about in
Aries’
wardroom, and after a pleasant enough half hour or so it was time to go down to dinner.

Chapter 22

They partook of food
and wine in the great banqueting hall, waited upon by the silent, efficient serving robots. Grimes—a young man keenly appreciative of the pleasures of the table, although he had yet to acquire discrimination—could never afterwards remember what it was that they ate and drank. There was food and there was wine, and presumably both were palatable and satisfying, but those sitting around the board were of far greater importance than what was set upon it.

Opposite Grimes was Marlene. On her left, darkly glowering, was Lobenga, and to his left was the Duchess. To Grimes’ right was the Lady Eulalia, with de Messigny beyond her. The table should have been a little oasis of light and warmth in the huge, dark hall, a splash of color in contrast to the ranged suite of dull-gleaming armour, the sombre folds of the standards that sagged from their inward pointing staffs. It should have been, but it was not. It could have been imagination, but it seemed to Grimes that the candle flames were burning blue, and the fire in the enormous hearth was no more than an ominous smoulder. Somewhere background music was playing, softly, too softly. It could have been the whispering of malign spirits.

De Messigny, speaking diagonally across the table, said abruptly, “And are the ghosts of your Teutonic ancestors walking tonight, Marlene?”

She stared back at him, her face grave, shadows under her high cheekbones, what little light there was reflected from the jewels in her coronet, an unhappy princess out of some old German fairy story. She said at last, “The ghosts of Schloss Stolzberg stayed on Earth, Henri.”

“Unfortunately,” added Lobenga, his low rumble barely audible.

“And was the Castle haunted?” asked Grimes, breaking the uneasy hush.

They all turned to stare at him—the Princess gravely, Lobenga sullenly, the Duchess with a birdlike maliciousness. On his right Eulalia laughed softly and coldly, and de Messigny glared at him down his long, thin nose.

“Yes,” said Marlene at last. “It
was
haunted. There was the faithless Princess Magda, who used to run screaming through the corridors, the hilt of her husband’s dagger still protruding from between her breasts. There was Butcher Hermann, who met his end in the torture chamber at the hands of his own bastard son. There was S. S. General von Stolzberg, roasted in this very fireplace by his slave-labor farm workers when the Third Reich collapsed . . .”

“We could do without
them,
“de Messigny stated.

“Hermann and the General, perhaps,” cackled the Duchess. “But Magda would have been at home here.” As she said this she ceased to be the Grande Dame, looked more, thought Grimes, like the Madam of a whorehouse.

“Yes,” agreed the Comte. “She would have been.” Had he not looked so long and hard at Marlene as he said it, the remark would have been inoffensive.

Eulalia laughed again. “I have often wondered why some men persist in attaching such great importance to the supremely unimportant.” She shrugged her slim, elegant shoulders. “But, of course, Lobenga has no cause to worry about me. Not even on this world. Perhaps, Henri, we could enroll you in a course of study in the so-called Black Arts.”

“That filth!” exploded this Comte.

“Sir,” the huge Negro told him gravely, “it is not filth. We have seen, on this planet, what happens when Man gets too far away from the mud and blood of his first beginnings. Every member of the Committee of Management, with the exception of Lord Tarlton . . .”