9
The Survey Service has procedures laid down for practically everything, and as long as you stick to them you will not go far wrong. Grimes didn’t need to consult the handbook titled Procedures For Entertaining Alien Potentates. He had entertained Alien Potentates before. Insofar as the milking of such beings of useful information was concerned he had conformed to the good old principle—candy is dandy, but licker is quicker. Of course, it was at times rather hard to decide what constituted either candy or liquor for some of the more exotic life forms . . . .
The majority of the natives had been shown into the wardroom, there to be entertained by the first lieutenant and—with the exception of Maggie Lazenby—the senior scientific officers. In his own day cabin Grimes had Maya Smith, the two men who constituted her bodyguard, and Maggie. He knew that it was foolish of him to feel ill at ease sitting there, making polite conversation with a naked woman and two naked men. Maggie took the situation for granted, of course—but her upbringing had been different from his. On Arcadia, the planet of her birth and upbringing, clothing was worn only when the weather was cold enough to justify the inconvenience.
“Tea, Maya?” asked Grimes. “Coffee?”
“What’s tea?” she asked him. “What’s coffee?”
“What do you drink usually?” he asked.
“Water, of course,” she told him.
“And on special occasions?”
“Water.”
“Mphm.” He got up, opened his liquor cabinet. The light inside it was reflected brightly from the labels of bottles, from polished glasses.
Maya said, “How pretty!”
“Perhaps you would like to try . . . What would you like to try?”
“Angels’ Tears,” she said.
So she could read as well as speak Anglic. Grimes set out five liqueur glasses on the counter, uncorked the tall, beautifully proportioned bottle and filled them. He handed one to Maya, then served Maggie, then the two men. He lifted the remaining glass, said, “Here’s mud in your eye!” and sipped. Maya sipped. The two men sipped. Maya spat like an angry cat. The men looked as though they would have liked to do the same, but they were too overawed by their unfamiliar surroundings.
“Firewater!” ejaculated the Morrowvian woman at last.
Grimes wondered what the distillers on Altairia would think if they could hear their most prized product so denigrated. This liqueur was almost pure alcohol—but it was smooth, smooth, and the cunning blend of spices used for flavoring could never be duplicated off the planet of its origin. Then he remembered a girl he had known on Dunsinane. He had not minded buying her expensive drinks, but he had been shocked by the way in which she misused them. The ending of what promised to be a beautiful friendship had come when she had poured Angels’ Tears over a dish of ice cream . . . .
He said, “Perhaps this drink is a little strong to those who are not accustomed to it. But there is a way of making it less . . . fiery.” He pressed the button, and in seconds a stewardess was in the cabin. The girl blushed furiously when she saw the nudity of the two Morrowvian men, but she tried hard to ignore their presence.
“Jennifer,” said Grimes, “bring three dishes of ice cream.”
“What flavor, sir?”
What flavor ice cream had that girl used for her appalling concoction? “Chocolate,” said Grimes. “Very good, sir.”
She was not gone long. Grimes took the tray from her when she returned; he was afraid that she might drop it when attempting to serve the naked bodyguards . He set it down on the table, then took Maya’s glass from her. He poured the contents over one of the dishes of ice cream, handed it to her. “Now try it,” he said.
She ignored the spoon. She raised the dish in her two hands to mouth level. Her pink tongue flickered out. There was a very delicate slurping sound. Then she said to her bodyguards, “Thomas, William—this is good!”
“I’m glad you like it,” said Grimes, handing their portions to the two men. Then—”The same again?”
“If I may,” replied Maya politely.
Alcohol, even when mixed with ice cream, is a good lubricant of the vocal cords. Maya, after her second helping, became talkative. More than merely talkative . . . she became affectionate. She tended to rub up against Grimes whenever he gave her the opportunity. He would have found her advances far more welcome if Maggie had not been watching amusedly, if the two bodyguards had not been present. Not that the bodyguards seemed to mind what their mistress was doing; were it not for her inhibiting presence they would have behaved toward Maggie Lazenby as she, Maya, was behaving toward Grimes . . . .
“Such a long time . . .” gushed Maya. “Such a long, long time. . . . We knew we came from the stars, in a big ship . . . . Not us, of course, but our first fathers and mothers . . . . We hoped that some time some other ship would come from the stars . . . . But it’s been a long, long time . . . .
“And then, after the ship called Corgi came, we thought that the next ships would land at Melbourne, and that it’d be years before we saw one . . . . The Queen of Melbourne, they say, now has a cold box to keep her meat and her water in, and she has books, new books, about all sorts of marvelous things . . . . And what are you giving me, Commander Grimes?”
I know what I’d like to give you, he thought. The close proximity of smooth, warm woman-flesh was putting ideas into his head. He said, trying to keep the conversation under control, “You have books?”
“‘Course we have books—but we can’t make any new ones. Every town has a copy of The History; it was printed and printed and printed, years ago, when the machines were still working. . . .”
“The History?” asked Grimes.
“Yes. The History. All about Earth, and the first flights away from Earth, and the last voyage of the Lode Cougar . . .”
“The ship that brought you here?”
“Of course. You don’t suppose we walked, do you?”
“Hardly. But tell me, how do you get about your world? Do you walk, or ride, or fly?”
“There were machines once, for riding and flying, but they wore out. We walk now. Everywhere. The Messengers are the long walkers.”
“I suppose that you have to maintain a messenger service for the business of government.”
“What business?” She pulled away from Grimes, stood tall and erect. It was a pity that she spoiled the effect by wavering lightly. “What government? I am the government.”
“But surely,” Grimes persisted, “you must have some planetary authority in overall charge. Or national authorities . . . .”
“But why?” she asked. “But why? I look after the affairs of my town, Sabrina looks after the affairs of her town, and so on. Who can tell me how much meat is to be dried or salted before the onset of winter? Who can tell me how the town’s children are to be brought up? I am the government, of my own town. What else is needed?”
“It seems to work, this system of theirs . . .” commented Maggie Lazenby.
“ ‘Course it works. Too many people in one town—then start new town.”
“But,” persisted Grimes, “there’s more to government than mayoral duties—or queenly duties. Public health, for example. . . .”
“Every town has its doctor, to give medicine, set broken bones and so on . . .”
Grimes looked appealingly at Maggie. She looked back at him, and shrugged. So he plodded on, unassisted. “But you must have a capital city . . .”
Maya said, “We have. But it does not rule us. We rule ourselves. It is built around the landing place of the Lode Cougar. The machines are there, although they have not worked for years. There are the records—but all we need to know is in The History. . . .”
“And the name of this city?”
“Ballarat.”
So Morrow—presumably he had been master of Lode Cougar—was an Australian. There was a Ballarat, on Earth, not far from Port Woomera.
“And how do we get to Ballarat?” asked Grimes.
“It is many, many days’ walk . . .”
“I wasn’t thinking of walking.”
“The exercise wouldn’t do you any harm,” Maggie told him.
“In my house there is a map . . .”
The telephone buzzed sharply. Grimes answered it. Saul’s deep voice came from the speaker, “Captain, our orbital spy eyes have reported the arrival of another ship. Mr. Hayakawa says that it is Schnauzer.”
So—Schnauzer had arrived, earlier than expected. Presumably Captain Danzellan’s PCO had picked up indications that other vessels were bound for Morrowvia. And presumably he would make his landing in the same location that he had used before, in Corgi. Where was it again? Melbourne. Grimes tried to remember his Australian geography. The Ballarat on Earth wasn’t far from Melbourne. He hoped that this would also be the case on this planet, so that he could kill two birds with one stone.
Lieutenant Saul could look after the shop in his, Grimes’s, absence.
Somebody would have to keep an eye on Drongo Kane.