Upon a Sea of Stars (30 page)
Read Upon a Sea of Stars Online
Authors: A. Bertram Chandler
“I . . . I don’t know, sir.”
“
I
know.” The old man’s voice was triumphant. “It is Sinai.”
Had this been any other ship there would have been a period of relaxation. There were wild pigs and rabbits to hunt, descendants of the livestock abandoned by the original colonists. There were the famous caves, with their rock paintings, to visit. But the animals, their fear of Man long forgotten, came out of the undergrowth to stare curiously at the vessel and at the humans who busied themselves around her, opening side ports to allow the egress of the three pinnaces, already stocked with what would be required for the final stages of the expedition. And nobody was remotely interested in the caves.
Grimes managed to see Clarisse Lane. The ship was almost deserted now, so he was able to make his way down into the women’s quarters without being challenged and stopped. He found her little cabin, hardly more than a cell. She was not locked in, not restrained in any way. She was sitting in her chair, a somber figure in her black dress, staring into nothingness. Her full lips moved almost imperceptibly as she vocalized her thoughts.
With a sudden start she realized that Grimes was standing before her. She whispered, “I—I was talking to Ken.”
“To Mayhew?”
“Yes.”
Saying goodbye
, he thought. He said, “Clarisse, you don’t have to go through with this.”
“I am going through with it, Commodore.”
“You don’t have to,” he insisted. “You’re in touch with Mayhew. And he’ll be in touch with
Rim Sword
. The Admiral told me that she’d be standing by in this sector. She’s probably on her way here now. We can stall off those fanatics until she comes in.”
She said, “I’m going through with it.”
“But why? Why?”
“Because I want to.”
“But you’re not really one of them.”
“I’m not.”
“Sister Lane!” It was the Deaconess. “You asked for a few moments of privacy—and now I find you with this—this lecher! But come. The boat is waiting.”
“I’ll come with you.” said Grimes.
“You will not,” snapped the woman. “A place has been reserved for you in the pinnace carrying the Presbyter and the Rector. They had decided that it is meet that an infidel shall witness the handing down of the Law.”
Clarisse Lane followed the Deaconess from the cabin. Grimes trailed along behind them. They went down to the main air lock, down the ramp to the overgrown apron, stumbling over the tough, straggling vines on their way to the boats. The sun was dropping fast to the western horizon. There was a hint of chill, a smell of dusk in the still air. There was the scent of growing things, and a faint hint of corruption.
Smith beckoned to Grimes from the open door of the leading pinnace. He made his way slowly toward it, walking carefully. He clambered up the retractable steps into the crowded cabin that stank of perspiration and damp, heavy clothing. He found a seat, wedged between two junior officers.
The door hissed shut. The Inertial Drive generator throbbed and snarled. Grimes could not see out of the ports, but he knew that the boat was airborne, was moving. There was no conversation in the cabin, but a metallic male voice reported from the speaker on the pilot’s console, “Number Two following.” After a pause a harsh female voice said, “Number Three following.”
How long the flight lasted Grimes did not know; he was unable to raise his arm to look at his watch. But it seemed a long time, and it seemed a long time that they sat there after they had landed, waiting for the other boats to come down. But at last the door opened and a thin, icy wind whined through the aperture. The Presbyter was out first, then Smith, and eventually Grimes, in the middle of a huddle of officers and civilians.
The plateau was smooth, windswept, an expanse of bare rock. To one side of it were the three pinnaces, and in front of them the men were drawn up in orderly ranks, with only the Presbyter standing apart. In the middle of the circular area were the women, a ragged huddle of somber black.
Grimes’s attention was caught by a blue spark far below, not far from the still gleaming, serpentine river. Had
Rim Sword
landed? No. It was only the control room windows of
Piety
reflecting the last rays of the setting sun.
There was a subdued murmuring as the women walked to stand to one side of the men. No, not all the women. Two remained in the center of the plateau. One was the Deaconess, tall and forbidding. The other was the Clarisse Lane. They had stripped her. She was wearing only a kilt cut roughly from the hide of some animal, clothing like that which had been worn by her ancestresses on this very planet. She was shivering and was hugging her full breasts to try to keep out the cold.
Stark, incongruous, an easel stood there, supporting a frame square of black canvas, and there was a battery-powered floodlight to illuminate it. At its foot were pots of pigment, and brushes. Raul, the forefather of this girl, had called animals with his paintings. What would she call? What could she call?
“Drink!” said the Deaconess, her voice rang clear over the thin whine of the bitter wind. “Drink!” She was holding out a glass of something. Clarisse took it, drained it.
Suddenly the sun was gone, and there was only the glare of the floodlight. Overhead was the almost empty black sky, and low to the east was an arc of misty luminescence that was the slowly rising Galactic Lens. The wind seemed to be coming straight from intergalactic space.
The Deaconess stalked over the rocky surface to take her stand beside the Presbyter, leaving the girl alone. Hesitantly Clarisse stooped to the pots and brushes, selected one of the latter, dipped it into paint, straightened, stood before the easel.
She stiffened into immobility, seemed to be waiting for something.
They were singing, then, the black-clad men and women drawn up in their stiff ranks before the pinnaces. They were singing. “Cwn Rhonda,” it was, and even Grimes, who had always loved that old Welsh hymn tune, found it hard to refrain from joining in. They were singing, the rumbling basses, the baritones, the high tenors and the shrill sopranos.
Guide, me, oh Thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land!
I am weak, but Thou art mighty.
Hold me with Thy powerful hand!
They were singing, and the girl was painting. With deft, sure strokes she was depicting on the black canvas the figure of a god, white-bearded, white-robed, wrathful. She was painting, and the men and women were singing, and the air was full of unbearable tension and the wind was now howling, tugging at their clothing, buffeting them. But the easel in its circle of harsh light stood steady and the girl worked on. . . .
There was the dreadful
crack
of lightning close at hand, too close at hand, the
crack
and the dazzle, and the pungency of ozone, and the long, long streamer of blue fire licking out from above their heads and culminating on the plain far below, at the spaceport.
There was the burgeoning fireball where the ship had been.
There was the dreadful laughter, booming above the frenzy of the wind, and the metallic crash and clatter as the pinnaces, lifted and rolled over the rim of the plateau, plunged to destruction down the steep, rocky mountain slope.
And
They
were there—the robust, white-bearded deity, a lightning bolt clutched and ready in his right hand, and the naked, seductively smiling goddess, and the other naked one with her bow and her leashed hounds, and she in the white robes, carrying a book, with the owl perched on her shoulder. The lame smith was there, with his hammer, and the sea-god, with his trident, and he with the red beard and the helmet and the body armor and the sword.
Somebody screamed, and at least a score of the men and women had fallen to their knees. But the Presbyter stood his ground.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “Who are you?”
“Little man,” the great voice replied, “we were, we are and we always shall be.”
Grimes realized that he was laughing uncontrollably and saying, over and over to himself, “Not Sinai, but Olympus! Not Sinai, but Olympus!”
There was another supernal clap of thunder and the dark came sweeping back.
They sat around in miserable little groups on the bare mountaintop.
The Presbyter was gone, nobody knew where or how, and the Deaconess, and Smith, and perhaps a dozen of the others. It had been a long night, and a cold one, but the sun had risen at last, bringing some warmth with it.
Grimes, in shirt and trousers, stood with Clarrise Lane, who was wrapped in his jacket.
“But what happened?” he was asking. “What happened? What did you do?”
She said, “I . . . I don’t know. I suppose that I do have some sort of power. And I suppose that I am, at heart, one of the Blossom People. Our religious beliefs are a sort of vague pantheism. . . . And, after all, the Father of the Gods is very similar in His attributes to the patriarchal gods of later religions. . . .” She looked at the sky. “It’s lucky that I’m a telepath as well as being . . . whatever it is that I am.
Rim Sword
will be here very shortly. I hope it’s soon. I have a feeling that when some of our fanatical friends recover they’ll be blaming me for everything.”
“
When
they recover,” said Grimes. “It will take me a long time.” He added, “But I don’t think you’d better return to Francisco with them.”
“Ken,” she told him, “has already got the formalities under way that will make me a Rim Worlds citizen.”
“The obvious one?”
“Yes.”
“And are you going to get married in church?” he asked. “It should be interesting.”
“Not if I can help it,” she told him.
And so, in due course, Grimes kissed the bride and, at the reception, toasted the newlyweds in imported champagne. He did not stay long after that. He was too much the odd man out—almost all the other guests were married couples, and such few women as were unattached made little or no appeal to him. He was missing Sonya, still away on her galactic cruise. Somehow he missed her less at home, lonely though it was without her. There was still so much of her in the comfortable apartment: her books, the pictures that she had chosen, the furniture that had been specially designed to her taste.
Having left the party early, he was at his office, at the spaceport, bright and early the following morning. He received, personally, the urgent Carlottigram from
Rim Griffon
, on Tharn. He smiled as he read it. He had been deskbound for too long, and his recent voyage in the oddly named
Piety
had aggravated rather than assuaged the itching of his feet. Captain Timms, one of the Rim Runners’ senior masters, was due back from annual leave within a few days and, at the moment, there was no appointment open for him. So Timms could keep the chair warm while Grimes took passage to Tharn; the scheduled departure date of
Rim Dragon
for that planet fitted in very nicely with his plans.
“Miss Walton,” he said happily to the rather vapid little blonde secretary, “this is going to be a busy morning. Telephoning first, and then correspondence every which way. . . . To begin with, get me the General Manager. . . .”
Part 2
The Bird-Brained Navigator
HER INERTIAL DRIVE
throbbing softly, all hands at landing stations, all passengers save one strapped in their acceleration couches (a sudden emergency requiring the use of the auxiliary reaction drive was unlikely, but possible), the starship
Rim Dragon
dropped slowly down to Port Grimes on Tharn. The privileged passenger—although in his case it was a right rather than a privilege—was riding in the control room instead of being incarcerated in his cabin. Commodore John Grimes, Astronautical Superintendent of Rim Runners, said nothing, did nothing that could be construed as interference on his part. Legally speaking, of course, he was no more than a guest in the liner’s nerve center; but at the same time he could and did exercise considerable authority over the space-going employees of Rim Runners, made the ultimate decisions in such matters as promotions and appointments. However, Captain Wenderby,
Rim Dragon’s
master, was a more than competent ship-handler and at no time did Grimes feel impelled to make any suggestions, at no time did his own hands start to reach out hungrily for the controls.
So Grimes sat there, stolid and solid in his acceleration chair, not even now keeping a watchful eye on the briskly efficient Wenderby and his briskly efficient officers. They needed no advice from him, would need none. But it was easier for them than it had been for him, when he made his own first landing on Tharn—how many years ago? Too many. There had been no spaceport then, with spaceport control keeping the master fully informed of meteorological conditions during his entire descent. There had been no body of assorted officials—port captain, customs, port health and all the rest of it—standing by awaiting the ship’s arrival. Grimes, in fact, had not known what or whom to expect, although his robot probes had told him that the culture of the planet was roughly analogous to that of Earth’s Middle Ages. Even so, he had been lucky in that he had set
Faraway Quest
down near a city controlled by the priesthood rather than in an area under the sway of one of the robber barons.
He looked out of one of the big viewports. From this altitude he could see no signs of change—but change there must have been, change there had been. On that long ago exploration voyage in the old
Quest
he had opened up the worlds of the Eastern Circuit to commerce—and the trader does more to destroy the old ways than either the gunboat or the missionary. In this case the trader would have been the only outside influence: the Rim Worlds had always, fortunately for them, been governed by cynical, tolerant agnostics to whom gunboat diplomacy was distasteful. The Rim Worlders had always valued their own freedom too highly to wish to interfere with that of any other race.
But even commerce,
thought Grimes,
is an interference. It makes people want the things that they cannot yet produce for themselves: the mass-produced entertainment, the labor-saving machines, the weapons.
Grimes sighed.
I suppose that we were right to arm the priesthood rather than the robber barons. In any case, they’ve been good customers.
Captain Wenderby, still intent on his controls, spoke. “It must seem strange, coming back after all these years, sir.”
“It does, Captain.”
“And to see the spaceport that they named after you, for the first time.”
“A man could have worse monuments.”
Grimes transferred his attention from the viewport to the screen that showed, highly magnified, what was directly astern of and below the ship. Yes, there it was. Port Grimes. A great circle of gray-gleaming concrete, ringed by warehouses and administration buildings, with cranes and gantries and conveyor belts casting long shadows in the ruddy light of the westering sun. He had made the first landing on rough heathland, and for a long, heart-stopping moment had doubted that the tripedal landing gear would be able to adjust to the irregularities of the surface. And there was
Rim Griffon
, the reason for his voyage to Tharn. There was the ship whose officers refused to sail with each other and with the master. There was the mess that had to be sorted out with as few firings as possible—Rim Runners, as usual, was short of spacefaring personnel. There was the mess.
It was some little time before John Grimes could get around to doing anything about it. As he should have foreseen, he was a personality, a historical personality at that. He was the first outsider to have visited Tharn. He was responsible for the breaking of the power of the barons, for the rise to power of the priesthood and the merchants. Too, the Rim Confederacy’s ambassador on Tharn had made it plain that he, and the government that he represented, would appreciate it if the Commodore played along. The delay in the departure of a very unimportant merchant vessel was far less important than the preservation of interstellar good relations.
So Grimes was wined and dined, which was no hardship, and obliged to listen to long speeches, which was. He was taken on sight-seeing tours, and was pleased to note that progress, although inevitable, had been a controlled progress, not progress for its own sake. The picturesque had been sacrificed only when essential for motives of hygiene or
real
efficiency. Electricity had supplanted the flaring natural gas jets for house-and street-lighting—but the importation and evolution of new building techniques and materials had not produced a mushroom growth of steel and concrete matchboxes or plastic domes. Architecture still retained its essentially Tharnian character, even though the streets of the city were no longer rutted, even though the traffic on those same streets was now battery-powered cars and no longer animal-drawn vehicles. (Internal combustion engines were manufactured on the planet, but their use was prohibited within urban limits.)
And at sea change had come. At the time of Grimes’s first landing the only oceangoing vessels had been the big schooners; now sail was on its way out, was being ousted by the steam turbine. Yet the ships, with their fiddle bows and their figureheads, with their raked masts and funnels, still displayed an archaic charm that was altogether lacking on Earth’s seas and on the waters of most Man-colonized worlds. The Commodore, who was something of an authority on the history of marine transport, would dearly have loved to have made a voyage in one of the steamers, but he knew that time would not permit this. Once he had sorted out
Rim Griffon’s
troubles he would have to return to Port Forlorn, probably in that very ship.
At last he was able to get around to the real reason for his visit to Tharn. On the morning of his fifth day on the planet he strode purposefully across the clean, well-cared-for concrete of the apron, walked decisively up the ramp to
Rim Griffon’s
after air lock door. There was a junior officer waiting there to receive him; Captain Dingwall had been warned that he would be coming on board. Grimes knew the young man, as he should have; after all, he had interviewed him for a berth in the Rim Runners’ service.
“Good morning, Mr. Taylor.”
“Good morning, sir.” The Third Officer was painfully nervous, and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbled as he spoke. His ears, almost as outstanding as Grimes’s own, flushed a dull red. “The Old—” The flush spread to all of Taylor’s features. “Captain Dingwall is waiting for you, sir. This way, sir.”
Grimes did not need a guide. This
Rim Griffon
, like most of the older units in Rim Runners’ fleet, had started her career as an
Epsilon
Class tramp in the employ of the Interstellar Transport Commission. The general layout of those tried and trusted Galactic workhorses was familiar to all spacemen. However, young Mr. Taylor had been instructed by his captain to receive the Commodore and to escort him to his, Dingwall’s, quarters, and Grimes had no desire to interfere with the running of the ship.
Yet.
The two men rode up in the elevator in silence, each immersed in his own thoughts. Taylor, obviously, was apprehensive. A delay of a vessel is always a serious matter, especially when her own officers are involved. And Grimes was sorting out his own impressions to date. This
Rim Griffon
was obviously not a happy ship. He could feel it—just as he could see and hear the faint yet unmistakable signs of neglect, the hints of rust and dust, the not yet anguished pleading of a machine somewhere, a fan or a pump, for lubrication. And as the elevator cage passed through the “farm” level there was a whiff of decaying vegetation; either algae vats or hydroponic tanks, or both, were overdue for cleaning out.
The elevator stopped at the captain’s deck. Young Mr. Taylor led the way out of the cage, knocked diffidently at the door facing the axial shaft. It slid open. A deep voice said, “That will be all, Mr. Taylor. I’ll send for you, and the other officers, when I want you. And come in, please, Commodore Grimes.”
Grimes entered the day cabin. Dingwall rose to meet him—a short, stocky man, his features too large, too ruddy, his eyes too brilliantly blue under a cockatoo-crest of white hair. He extended a hand, saying, “Welcome aboard, Commodore.” He did not manage to make the greeting sound convincing. “Sit down, sir. The sun’s not yet over the yardarm, but I can offer you coffee.”
“No thank you, Captain. Later, perhaps. Mind if I smoke?” Grimes produced his battered pipe, filled and lit it. He said through the initial acid cloud, “And now, sir, what
is
the trouble? Your ship has been held up for far too long.”
“You should have asked me that five days ago, Commodore.”
“Should I?” Grimes stared at Dingwall, his gray eyes bleak. “Perhaps I should. Unfortunately I was obliged to act almost in an ambassadorial capacity after I arrived here. But now I am free to attend to the real business.”
“It’s my officers,” blurted Dingwall.
“Yes?”
“The second mate to begin with. A bird-brained navigator if ever there was one. Can you imagine anybody, with all the aids we have today, getting lost between Stree and Mellise?
He
did.”
“Legally speaking,” said Grimes, “the master is responsible for everything. Including the navigation of his ship,”
“I navigate myself. Now.”
And I can imagine it,
thought Grimes.
“Do I have to do everybody’s bloody job in this bloody ship? Of course, I’m only the Captain. . . .”
He said, “You reprimanded him, of course?”
“Darn right I did.” Dingwall’s voice registered pleasant reminiscence. “I told him that he was incapable of navigating a plastic duck across a bathtub.”
“Hmm. And your other officers?”
“There’re the engineers, Commodore. The Interstellar Drive chief hates the Inertial Drive chief. Not that I’ve much time for either of ‘em. In fact I told Willis—he’s supposed to run the Inertial Drive—that he couldn’t pull a soldier off his sister. That was after I almost had to use the auxiliary rockets to get clear of Grollor—”
“And the others?”
“Vacchini, Mate. He couldn’t run a pie cart. And Sally Bowen, Catering Officer, can’t boil water without burning it. And Pilchin, the so-called purser, can’t add two and two and get the same answer twice running. And as for Sparks . . . I’d stand a better chance of getting an important message through if I just opened a control viewport and stood there and shouted.”
The officer who is to blame for all this,
thought Grimes,
is the doctor. He should have seen this coming on. But perhaps I’m to blame as well. Dingwall’s home port is Port Forlorn, on Lorn—and his ship’s been running between the worlds of the Eastern Circuit and Port Farewell, on Faraway, for the past nine standard months. And Mrs. Dingwall
(Grimes had met her)
is too fond of her social life to travel with him. . . .
“Don’t you like the ship, Captain?” he asked.
“The
ship’s
all right,” he was told.
“But the run, as far as you’re concerned, could be better.”
“And the officers.”
“Couldn’t we all, Captain Dingwall? Couldn’t we all? And now, just between ourselves, who is it that refused to sail with you?”
“My bird-brained navigator. I hurt his feelings when I called him that. A very sensitive young man is our Mr. Missenden. And the Inertial Drive chief. He’s a member of some fancy religion called the Neo-Calvinists. . . .”
