Chapter 15
The Lutz-Parsival came in slowly and cautiously.
She was a graceful ship despite her chubbiness, her metal skin gleaming brightly in the sunlight. On her tail fins was painted the insignia of Bardon’s regiment, a rampant golden lion. He would have to get that changed, thought Grimes. To a kangaroo? Why not?
“He’s handling her like a cow handling a musket,” muttered Sanchez disgustedly.
Grimes was inclined to agree. The approach was overly careful and then, in the final stages, clumsy. The ship dropped too fast as the helium in the gas cells was compressed and then lifted steeply as water ballast was dumped to compensate, drenching the gubernatorial party.
“If this,” said Grimes furiously to Smith, “is a fair sample of the Army’s airmanship it’s just as well that I’ve appointed my own pilot!”
“Your Excellency,” replied the ADC, “Lieutenant Duggin is a little rusty. . . .”
“If we were made of metal,” said Grimes, “we’d be getting rusty!”
With his hand he wiped the water from his face. He would have liked to take his shirt off to wring it out.
“Your Excellency,” said Su Lin, “you must go back inside to change into dry clothing.”
“It doesn’t matter, Su. I’ll soon dry out. I want to see what other comic turns that clown up there is going to put on for us.”
The airship circled slowly, once again losing altitude. This time her descent could be measured in millimeter/seconds. It was a long and painful process. By the time that the dangling lines had been picked up by the ground party—soldiers of the Governor’s Guard supplemented by New Cantonese gardeners—Grimes’s clothing was merely damp. And then the pilot did not use his engines for the final approach to the mast but was towed into position by the mooring crew. At last the nose cone was secure in the socket. A ladder was lowered from the control gondola and down it scrambled the plump figure of the pilot, handling himself as clumsily as he had handled the ship. He shambled rather than marched to where Grimes was standing and threw a casual salute in. his direction.
“Lieutenant Duggin, Your Excellency. Reporting for duty.”
“Lieutenant Duggin, you are relieved from duty,” Grimes told him. “Lieutenant Smith will make arrangements for your transport back to barracks.”
“But I’m your pilot, sir.”
“You are not. But if ever I require a bath attendant I’ll send for you.”
“But, sir. . . .”
“That is all, Lieutenant. Captain Sanchez, do you wish Lieutenant Duggin to make a formal hand over?”
“It would be advisable, Your Excellency.”
“Very well, Captain. See to it, will you?”
He stood with Su Lin and Smith watching as the two pilots walked to the dangling ladder and mounted it. As it took their weight the airship sagged down from the mast and then resumed her horizontal attitude. No further ballast was dumped; no doubt there was an automatic release of pressure from the atmospheric trimming cell or cells.
“Wait here, Mr. Smith, to look after Mr. Duggin after he’s handed over,” Grimes told the ADC.
He walked with Su Lin back to his quarters in the Residence.
***
She brought him tea. He sent her away to get another cup so that she could join him in the taking of refreshment.
He asked, “Are you switched on?”
She said, “Yes, Your Excellency.”
“And what are we talking about?”
“I am telling you about the New Cantonese festivals that we still observe on this world.”
“Fireworks, processions of lanterns and dragons and all that?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“I hope to see at least one of your festivals.”
“You will be an honored guest.”
“Thank you, Su.” He sipped from his cup. “Now you can tell me about the underground. What do you do, what do you hope to accomplish?”
“As far as we, and the other refugees, are concerned we want full citizenship. As far as Captain Sanchez and the OAP are concerned they want a return to the egalitarian principles of the original colonists of the planet. All of us are against the regime of Estrelita O’Higgins and Colonel Bardon and the vicious trades that they foster.”
“Such as?”
“The shipping of girls—yes, and boys—to the brothels of various worlds where there is a demand for them, such as Isa and Venusberg. The pleasure houses—so-called—on this planet. The drug trade. And the profiteering in all the stores at which the refugees must purchase the essentials of life to ensure that nobody can possibly save enough money to become financially independent.”
“So you want a revolution.”
“Yes. Not necessarily an armed revolt, although it might have to come that.” (And was this, wondered Grimes, his solicitous handmaiden with her limited but courtly English? She was reminding him more and more of a girl he had once known who had been President of the University of Kandral’s Young Socialist Club and who had finished up as Vice President of the planet.) “We realize that once we take up arms against O’Higgins we shall also be taking up arms against Earth, against the Federation, as represented here by Bardon. If it is at all possible the change must be made by constitutional methods. The Governor is more than a mere figurehead. He has . . . How shall I put it? He has the power to hire and fire.”
“Mphm?” Grimes knocked out and refilled his pipe. Su Lin reverted to her serving maid persona and lit it for him. He thought, I shall have to try to break her of that habit. “Mphm?”
“Governor Wibberley was conducting his own investigation of the state of affairs here. He had amassed considerable evidence of malpractices. He was almost ready to act. And then. . . .”
“So you want me, as Governor, to sack Colonel Bardon and President O’Higgins and all her ministers. . . .”
She said, “There have been precedents. There was one, in your country, on Earth, many years ago.”
He said, “There’s more than one Australian precedent. The Governor General, Sir John Kerr, sacked Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Some years previously the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Philip Game, sacked Premier Jack Lang. . . .”
“You see.”
He went on. “And many years before that the garrison in New South Wales deposed the Governor, Captain—as he was then—William Bligh.”
“And wasn’t Bligh,” she asked, “the man who was always having mutinies? You’ve had a few yourself, haven’t you?”
“Which doesn’t mean that I like having them, Su.”
She laughed. “I suppose not. But there must be ways of doing things constitutionally. And to do them without calling Earth first for approval—always supposing that Bardon let you get a message through.”
“Messages did get through, after Wibberley’s death,” said Grimes. “That’s why I’m here.”
“As trouble shooter?” she asked. “Or as shit stirrer? In any case, Bardon’s made sure that no more messages get through without his knowledge.”
“Just who—or what—are you, Su Lin?” he asked.
“You have seen my dossier, Your Excellency.”
“For what it’s worth.”
“There is a Su Lin,” she told him. “But she is not on Liberia any longer. She was carefully selected out of all the New Cantonese as being almost my double. I required only minor body sculpture to make me her replica.”
“Then what is your real name?”
“It doesn’t matter. I rather like Su Lin, anyhow.”
“Where are you from? You aren’t from FIA, are you? Or are you? If you are I should have been told.”
“I am not.”
“The Sinkiang People’s Republic?”
“No. The New Cantonese here are no worse off than they would be on New Sinkiang.”
“Then where?”
There was a knock on the door. Grimes saw Su Lin’s face go briefly tense as her vaginal muscles switched off the device that she carried.
Sanchez entered.
“I have taken delivery of the Lutz-Parsival, Your Excellency,” he reported formally. “She seems to be airworthy in all respects, although I shall have to make a more detailed inspection later.” (To look for hidden bombs, thought Grimes.) “I have left her at the mast, in the sunlight, to recharge the power cells.”
“I think that I’d like to have a sniff round aboard her myself,” said Grimes, “if you will be so good as to accompany me.”
“Of course. Your Excellency,” said Sanchez.